Maxim turned the key in the lock twice and carried Zhanna deeper into the apartment.
She tried to resist.
“Don’t make any noise,” he said in a whisper. “If you keep quiet, I’ll let you live. Got it? Whisper.” Slowly, he uncovered her mouth and relaxed his grip. Zhanna was silent as she studied the intruder.
“Money?” she asked softly.
“No.”
“Oh, I get it. My jackass sent you over to say hi. My ex-jackass, that is.”
“He said you were smart, and he wasn’t lying.”
It was then that Maxim noticed that she was also beautiful. Beautiful, as in sexy. The thought occurred to him that there was no real difference between one rape or two. Nikita would understand.
So he changed the character of his grasp: from clenched, to imploring.
He noticed with surprise that she did not try to resist. On the contrary, she seemed to press her body toward him (and she smelled so deliciously female!). She gasped with excitement.
Maxim had an instant hard-on.
But he didn’t lose his head. He took off his coat with the webcam that was always hooked up to the game server, and hung it up in the hall so that the camera was facing the wall. There was no reason for them to watch this.
Zhanna moaned. She squeaked. It was unbelievable. You only come across this kind of girl once every six months, Maxim thought to himself.
He drilled her in her cornhole like a wild animal. Like a baboon. Like an orangutan. And she enjoyed it.
That crazy bitch couldn’t get enough. “More!” she howled, cursing like a Shanghai whore giving herself to a platoon of sailors.
They peeled themselves apart. He listened without interrupting as she praised him. He listened as she cursed her impotent husband. As she begged him to stay. Forever. How happy they would be together. Fucking amazing. Those were the exact words she used:
And then he drilled her some more, with the same ferocity.
He came.
Then he noticed she had an Adam’s apple.
Fuck!
A transvestite!
It was a dirty and dangerous game that Nikita had gotten him into.
He stayed cool, not letting on that he had noticed.
“Let me get us some drinks,” said the transvestite. “Okay?”
“Sure.”
The transvestite brought in two glasses of wine from the next room. And Maxim realized that he wouldn’t drink it even at gunpoint.
He took the glass.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want to watch you drink. You’re so beautiful, I’m sure you drink beautifully too. My cock is ready for action just watching you.”
The transvestite laughed, and took two sips. His Adam’s apple went up and down two times and then stilled. It wasn’t that big. But it was obviously a man’s.
Maxim set his glass down.
“Why don’t we start off with the usual question,” he said, his fingers locking around the transvestite’s throat. Not too tight, but probing. “Who are you working for? Tell me quietly.”
In all likelihood, at that very moment Nikita was glued to his own transmitter, which connected to an opponent’s webcam and mic, and it was extremely important that he not hear a thing. Each player had a transmitter that allowed him to hook up to his opponent’s channels and receive picture and sound from their webcams, broadcast nonstop. The pictures helped players track each other down if they recognized their opponent’s location.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. Now listen carefully: this is your one chance to stay alive. Tell me the truth. Everything, and in great detail. Who hired you and why? And what do they want from me?”
The transvestite shrank back. And spilled the beans. About how they sometimes sent people to him who he didn’t know. And he “served” them, the same way he had served Maxim. Then he would put clonidine into their wine. And when his client fell asleep, he would call a certain Artyom, who would finish them off while they were still knocked out. Then, at night, the body would be taken away by two bald guys in a jeep. The transvestite knew nothing more. The answer why seemed pretty clear, but who was behind this? That was the question.
Another question was how had Nikita turned into such a cunt? The traitor! But Maxim tried not to think about that.
“You don’t kill?”
“No,” answered the transvestite, blanching.
“So you guys have a division of labor and everything. You got one son of a bitch working as a decoy, another giving sexual favors, and the third does the killing. Four and five get rid of the body. You guys are a goddamn hockey team!”
“Please don’t kill me,” whispered the transvestite.
“Did you tell me the truth?”
“Yeah, honest. In the beginning I didn’t know what was going on. I just wanted to make a little dough. But then, after that first time, I couldn’t refuse. They’d get me too.”
“All right, you can live. Call him.”
“Who?”
“The killer, Artyom.”
When the door opened, Artyom got a blow on the head with the handle of a gun. As he was collapsing, Maxim saw that it was Nikita.
