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alongside Ryerson's so he could get some rest. Ryerson had pretended to go to sleep, then slipped away when the kid started snoring. Then he set to work trailing Marina Suslova. At a distance, of course. One of the crewmen on the press plane told him that the Russian woman was some kind of a reporter, and man, would he like to fuck her. The kid was still in that dazed state Ryerson knew so well, after Suslova came on loud and strong to you. It was a message no flesh-and-blood man could resist. |
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Then he had mingled with the Russian media people and discovered that there was no such person as Marina Suslova on the list of Russians in the camp. His informant, a young television technician, had told him that the woman he described was Ekaterina Marchenka, the representative of Komsomolets Rusiya, a former Ukrainian Young Communist publication now sustained at subsistence level by the state. "By the Intelligence Directorate and the security forces," the technician grumbled. "Or so most of us think. No one has ever read a copy of her magazine. We doubt anyone ever will." |
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Suslova had seen him following her, talking to the other Russians. Clearly, she knew he was here. And as clearly, she made it plain that she had no inclination of acknowledging that they even knew one another. He could almost hear her. "Do not be silly, Yosip. Neither of us has anything to gain by betraying the other. Actually, you have more to lose than I." Thank God she didn't know how much he'd told Kellner about her and Camilla Varigfuzzed up, of course, to hide how involved he'd been with Marina. |
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She must have some errand here; she never did anything without a damn good reason. Her cover as a journalist was thin. But then she and her handlers probably hadn't had much time to create what the spooks called "the legend." |
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Ryerson had almost frozen to death waiting outside Marina's tent to see if she had any special mischief in mind. He had followed her to the dock, watched while one of the sailors |
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