to even own a traceable telephone or have an email address. The whiteboard of Grey’s office was covered with every detail he could gather from Reece’s past, an algorithm of names, places, and dates. So far, he couldn’t find the X, but he knew it was only a matter of time.
CHAPTER 12
SVR Headquarters, Moscow
ALEKSANDR PULLED OPEN HIS desk drawer and drew out a small braided loop of hair, a memento of his first real hunt. He had been training at the Institute when he realized how much pleasure it gave him to inflict pain on his fellow human beings. As a young and attractive male recruit, he was chosen for the famed SVR program that trained students in the art of what they unofficially termed sexpionage. The course’s goal was to position the illegal agents to manipulate assets of foreign governments or corporations using their bodies. Because fetishes made for excellent blackmail material, much of the course focused on spotting individuals with unusual or even bizarre sexual preferences.
According to the instructors, it was not uncommon for Western women in positions of influence to seek out men who would dominate and even humiliate them behind closed doors. Deep down, it seemed, these women wanted to play a subservient role to a man. Many of them liked to be choked during sex and students were taught to give them the sensation of actual asphyxiation without causing any permanent physical harm; it was a fine line. Aleksandr found himself wondering if any of what the instructors said about powerful women was true but quickly brushed the thought aside. In the SVR, one did not question authority.
Unlike in the movies, the practical applications of these lessons were not performed in front of the class but took place in a bedroom with an instructor or coach standing by. The entire sessions were filmed for later feedback. It began simply enough, with a fellow student playing the role of the female asset. Ordinary intercourse took a turn when the female began asking to be called filthy names, which Aleksandr complied with. She then requested that he tug on her hair and slap her, just as she had been instructed. Aleksandr struck the side of her head with an open hand above the hairline so as not to bruise her face and felt an immediate jolt of arousal. He struck her harder and harder, knocking her nearly unconscious before he finally wrapped his powerful hands around her throat.
His hands became a vise and he felt himself engorge with a fresh course of blood flow as an erotic switch was thrown somewhere in his brain. His female counterpart began to gasp for air and her face flushed bright red and then purple, the veins and arteries of her neck standing ropelike under her skin. She coughed out the safe word, indicating her desire to discontinue the exercise, but that only drove him to squeeze harder. The instructor stepped in and tried to pull Aleksandr’s hands from her throat but he was in a frenzy of arousal that added to his already considerable physical strength. The instructor yelled for help as the female student began to lose consciousness and, within seconds, three men were prying him from his victim.
One of the men delivered a powerful blow to Aleksandr’s kidney, just as he was reaching his climax, his knees buckling in a combination of ecstasy and pain. He was dragged from the room naked as the instructors attended to the female student’s medical needs. Aleksandr was removed from the course pending an investigation, and only his father’s significant political influence prevented him from being summarily dismissed. The emotional scars of that event caused the female student to voluntarily drop from the program and, after years of substance abuse to self-medicate the trauma of the event from her conscious mind, she eventually died of a heroin overdose.
For Aleksandr, his international postings became his hunting grounds, first for the region’s game, and then for people. It began with the killing of a prostitute in Hungary. Law enforcement officials begrudgingly investigated the murder, a small-caliber bullet to the head, but, thanks to his advanced tradecraft, false identities, and frequent movement, the killing remained unsolved. The murder of women involved in the sex trade in the developing world was not an uncommon occurrence. This sad truth allowed Aleksandr to move among the unwanted, hunting and killing for sport in back alleys and motel rooms in countries difficult to find on a map. Though Aleksandr