The Interpreter Ch. 01

Chapter One -- An Offer She Couldn't Refuse

Communal Apartment Block, Moscow -- May1985

Valerie Arsenyev washed herself with a warm sponge, squeezing the soapy water into a white and blue enamel metal bowl that was chipped around the rim but at least it wasn't rusting. She poured the scummy water into the little sink in her kitchen and it gurgled slowly down the drain. She lifted the kettle off the gas hob and poured hot water into the bowl and then added some near freezing tap water to it until it was tolerably warm.

The water from the tap did not run clear. The pipes in her apartment block were rusty, but it would do. She took a flannel and rinsed away the suds from her svelte body, then dried herself and threw on a threadbare robe. She drained the bowl and put in on the draining board next to the hotplate which she had turned off. Her kitchen consisted of a single bench made from faded, scratched and chipped laminate, a tiny stained steel sink and draining board with two cupboards mounted over it and two cupboards underneath.

On the tiny two-seater laminated dining table was Valerie had laid out her cosmetic collection next to a small cracked vanity mirror mounted on a stand. She pulled out one of the two plastic kitchen chairs and sat down before the mirror to do her makeup. Valerie took her time, trying her best to copy the face of a model in a picture of an old dog-eared copy of Vogue magazine which she had propped against the wall. She didn't have the exact colour palate but she made do. She was careful when she applied her lipstick. The other cosmetics were cheap knock-offs bought at the local market but the bright red Almay lipstick she was using had been purchased on the black market and was expensive. She applied it sparingly but made sure she covered her sensuous lips.

Not really happy that the results matched the picture in Vogue but content that she had done her best, Valerie brushed her hair one more time and walked over to her little cot bed and smiled as she looked down at the clothing she was about to wear.

Valerie Sokolova's State-owned apartment was literally one room: kitchen, dining room, bedroom, all in one. On each floor were shared ablutions: toilets, showers and a machine-wash laundry, although the hot water never got much warmer than tepid and only one washing machine worked. Valerie kept a chamber pot under her bed for urination and used the ablutions only when nature required it.

She had laid out her best clothing: a second-hand navy-blue skirt suit which she had painstakingly repaired and hand sewn to fit her. She had taken up the hem of the skirt to take advantage of her long shapely legs. A white polyester blouse, also altered to fit her body, completed the ensemble. Plain white full-cut tricot panties and a matching brassiere lay beside the suit. Valerie had tried dying the cheap, mass-produced, underwear different colours with limited success. A package of skin-tone pantyhose lay beside the underwear.

In 1985, although Russia could put rockets into space and build nuclear power stations and submarines; it was abysmally inefficient at producing consumer goods. A single factory, the Brest Stocking Mill, manufactured pantyhose in one colour only: skin-tone. The black market was flooded with cheap Chinese manufactured tights and pantyhose which came in different colours. That said, Valerie preferred flesh toned hosiery, she just wished she could get her hands on a pair of the sleek shiny pantyhose available in the West.

She shimmied into the pantyhose being careful not to ladder them with her long, red-painted, fingernails. The pantyhose might not be the best quality but she enjoyed the feeling of the slippery nylon on her freshly shaved legs. Valerie preferred the appearance of panties over pantyhose; it looked more appealing when the panties hid the thicker nylon gusset of the cheap hosiery. She slipped her panties on and put on her bra.

Valerie quickly donned her skirt and blouse and then she sat on the cot and pulled out her prize possession: a pair of black patent leather four-inch stilettos that had cost her nearly a week's wages. They were cheap knock-offs imported from China and sold on the black market but she loved them.

She slipped them on her feet, put on her jacket and checked herself out in her other prize possession: a wooden framed full-length mirror that was chipped around the edges with black patches of missing silver. It had been her mother's and her mother's mother before her.

Valerie was standing in front of the mirror admiring herself; unashamedly admitting that she was strikingly pretty when the door to her apartment burst open.

The two brutish men wore distinctive royal blue piping on their uniforms and their shoulder boards were marked 'GB', meaning State Security, which identified them as officers of the KGB.

Valerie said nothing as the two men hustled her out of her apartment and down the long corridor to the rickety lift. A few doors cracked open but no one came out of their apartments. Behind some of the doors there was a quiet murmuring but the only other sound was the crunch of the soldier's boots on the worn filthy floor.

Valerie knew not to say anything or to protest. It would be useless. These men were goons who were merely following orders and any form of resistance would be met with brutality. Valerie had not even been given the chance to grab her coat before she was led away and outside in bitter cold she began to shiver but not for long. She was pushed into a waiting black GAZ Volga sedan, the guards sitting either side of her. At least the car was warm.

She expected to be taken to prison or possibly just driven out into the woods and executed. She knew how the KGB operated because she worked as an officer in the KGB's Fifth Directorate. Valerie was surprised when the car pulled up in the forecourt outside the KGB Headquarters in Lubyanka Square. Valerie was bundled out of the car and to her surprise led to an office on the third floor; home of the Director of Foreign Operations.

Other than being summarily executed or thrown in a prison cell, Valerie had not thought of any other viable alternative to her fate. She just hoped that her family would not be made to suffer for her sins.

Valerie was led into the office of Ivan Petrov who sat behind a large elaborate desk smoking a cigarette. He waived away the security detail and glared at Valerie is if she were a specimen in a jar. Sitting in a leather armchair near the fireplace was another man that Valerie did not recognise; he too was smoking a cigarette. He eased himself out of the chair with feline like grace and approached Valerie who stood rooted to the spot with fear.

The man circled Valerie, examining her closely, so close that she could smell the cigarettes and aftershave on him. So close that she could see the stitching on his imported Western suit

"Valéry Sokolova, aged twenty four. Analyst in KGB Directorate Five. Unmarried. Mother and father work in a government tractor factory in Minsk; sister works there too -- she's engaged to a soldier currently serving in Afghanistan. You speak fluent English?" Ivan Petrov growled; the last sentence was worded as a question.

Valerie was too scared to speak and just nodded. The man in the good suit was still circling her, studying her.

Ivan Petrov dropped Valéry Sokolova's personnel file on his desk and nodded to his compatriot who stopped circling Valerie but stood so close enough to her that his hip was pressed against hers. He put his hand on Valerie's hip and she wondered what fresh hell awaited her. He found the zip at the side of her skirt and began to tug it. Instinctively Valerie reached out to stop him and the man snatched at her fingers.

"Nyet!" it was the first word that the man had spoken.

Valerie snatched her hand away and bowed her head in shame as the man slowly unzipped her skirt and it fell off her, pooling around her ankles.

The man put a knuckle under her chin and raised her head and glared at her with his piercing blue eyes. Valerie shivered in fear and shame.

The man yanked her panties down to her knees and Valerie began to slowly sob, then he hooked his fingers in the waistband of her pantyhose and pulled them down her thighs.

Valerie's long slender penis fell from between her legs and dangled in front of her like a pendulum.

Then he entwined his fingers in her hair and ripped off her blonde, shoulder-length wig. Her own hair was raven-black and worn a long for an officer of the KGB but Valerie was a deskbound underling and had not worn a uniform since she graduated military training.

Ivan Petrov grunted as he lifted his bulk from the overstuffed chair behind his desk and stood. He pulled his jacket down over his ample belly and his medals rattled in the silence as they clattered together. Ivan made his way over Valerie very slowly, which was his usual gait. He moved like a leviathan across a sea of plush carpet. Ivan circled Valerie the same way his compatriot had.

"What do you think Yuri?" Ivan's breathing was laboured.

"She needs some work but she is perfect for our needs," the man now identified as Yuri replied.

"Can she replace Petra?" Ivan lifted Valerie's chin and studied her beauty.

"She'll be even better than Petra because she has this," Yuri casually swiped at Valerie's cock.

Standing in the office of one of the most cruel and powerful men in the whole of the Soviet Union with her wig ripped off, her skirt around her ankles and her panties pulled down, shivering with fear, the only thing that Valerie could think of was that the two men were using the word 'she'.

Ivan Petrov made a distasteful mew and waved a hand at Valerie, gesturing for her to pull up her underwear, which she did; followed by her skirt which she zipped closed and straightened. Then Yuri handed Valerie her wig which she placed on her head, pinning it back in place and doing her best to comb it out with her fingers.

Standing in the middle of the room in her short skirt and heels with her tousled blonde hair and red lipstick she looked like one of the hookers who worked the more exclusive hotels in Moscow, with the exception that she was more beautiful than most of them.

"Valéry Sokolova, come over here," Ivan sat down behind his desk.

It groaned under his weight and he waved at a series of photographs on his desk. Yuri was pouring vodka from a decanter into crystal glasses.

Valerie approached the desk as ordered and when Ivan gestured for her to move in closer, she did so; so close that her legs were pressed against the edge of the desk.

Arranged on the desk were a series of pictures of her. Working in KGB Directorate Five, Valerie was familiar with photography of this type. The pictures had been taken by a high-power, high-resolution lens, most likely from the apartment block across the quad from hers. Being on the seventh floor, Valerie had not even thought it was necessary to close the curtains to her tiny apartment.

There was a spread of her dressing, putting on her makeup, studying herself in the mirror, strutting and posing around the tiny flat. She blushed when she saw a picture of her with her skirt lifted and her panties pulled down, masturbating to pictures in a magazine.

The next spread had been taken at night, this time from a lot closer. Valerie was walking around the park near her apartment block. Here sitting on a bench, there looking up at a statue and in one picture, accepting a light from a stranger.

Valerie liked to sneak out of her apartment at night and walk the nearby streets and the park. It was exhilarating and exciting and it validated her femininity, proving to her that she could easily pass as a woman. The woman that she truly believed she was supposed to be but had been born into the wrong body and was trapped. No one had ever questioned her or challenged her femininity.

She remembered the night the handsome man had offered to light her cigarette. How she had flirted with him, using the sultry feminine voice she had developed over the years. The man had made her an indecent proposal which she found quite shocking but also quite flattering but of course she had declined. That evening she had dreamt about the man and had a nocturnal emission in the panties she wore to bed.

"Mrs Fyodorova, your next door neighbour is very nosy and she informed on you. We have known about you for some time Valéry Sokolova and usually our recourse for someone like you is to send them to a re-education camp but because of your position in our organisation we decided to wait and see if you could be usefully employed elsewhere within the Directorate," Ivan took the vodka from Yuri and lit another cigarette.

Russian vodka of course but the men were smoking American cigarettes and Yuri's suit looked like it was made in Saville Row. Valerie had never seen such decadence: the leather chairs, the crystal glassware, the Persian rugs and expensive artwork hanging on the walls beside the usual array of patriotic Russian paintings.

"Usefully employed?" Valerie whispered.

They were the first coherent words Valerie had spoken since she had been arrested.

She could hardly believe the sound of her own voice.

Ivan collected the photographs of Valerie and put them in a drawer and then he shook out some more pictures from an envelope and arranged them on his desktop: Valerie's mother and father, and her sister Valentina, not quite as stunning as Valerie but pretty none the less.

"You work for the KGB in Directorate Five. I could accuse you of espionage and have you summarily executed. Your mother and father would be sent to a work camp in Siberia and your sister made to work in a brothel near the Averkyevo training base servicing Spetsnaz soldiers," Ivan tossed Valentina's picture at her.

Valerie swallowed. She knew all of that was possible and even likely but she had been brought here for a reason.

"Sir, you said I could be usefully employed elsewhere within the Directorate. What did you mean by that?" Valerie asked.

"Speak English," Ivan handed Valerie a book of poetry by John Keats.

Valerie opened the book and began to recite Ode on a Grecian Urn in perfect, Russian accented English. Her job at Directorate five was to translate voice recordings and documents from English into Russian. She never asked about the sources of the material that she translated but a considerable amount of the material was highly classified.

She knew that being a closeted transvestite made her vulnerable to blackmail but undoubtedly she had been vetted when the KGB found out about her proclivities and they knew that she remained loyal.

Ivan looked at Yuri questioningly and Yuri nodded at him.

"Ok Valéry, stop speaking now," Yuri said perfectly understandable English.

"I can't tell you yet where this opportunity for employment will lead you but it will be dangerous and you will be undercover," Yuri continued, reverting to Russian.

"As a woman?" Valerie was not stupid.

"Yes as a woman. As I said, we have some work to do on you and a lot of training for you to undertake before you will be ready and there is a deadline," Yuri lit another cigarette.

"I accept," Valerie blurted out.

The alternative was unthinkable.

"Then welcome to special operations Miss Valerie Sokolova," for the first time Yuri used the feminine vernacular of her name.

"Will that be all?" Yuri asked Ivan Petrov who nodded sagely.

"Follow me," Yuri ordered, and Valerie fell in behind him as they walked across the big room to the door.

Ivan Petrov studied Valerie's pert buttocks in the tight skirt and her long legs, her calves perfected by the high heels she was wearing. The man-woman was amazingly pretty and the only time that Ivan had not thought of her a woman was when Yuri had pulled her panties down.

"Stop!" Ivan growled.

Valerie and Ivan stopped in their tracks.

"Leave me with Valerie for a moment Yuri. Wait outside the door. I have some more questions for her," Ivan began to clamber out from behind his desk.

Yuri knew better than to argue with his superior and he closed the door behind himself and waited patiently in the corridor.

Ivan Petrov gestured for Valerie Sokolova to stand in the centre of the room where she had stood during her examination.

Ivan circled her closely, examining her; taking in her beauty and looking for a flaw that would expose her femininity and he couldn't find a single one. She was beautiful and alluring. Her clothes were cheap and shabby but they still made her look sexy and desirable.

Ivan was revolted by what she had hidden under that skirt but if he never had to see it, it wouldn't bother him.

Valerie could feel Ivan's eyes leering at her; ogling her, and she was scared. She'd been ogled plenty during her evening walks but this was different. She had nowhere to run, no one to call out to, no form of defence. But she couldn't deny that deep down she felt a little honoured that a man as powerful as Ivan Petrov was taken with her.

Ivan stopped in front of her, his face inches from hers. She could smell the vodka, the cigarettes and the roast beef he had eaten for dinner.

"You have no idea what awaits you, do you?" Ivan chuckled.

"It can't be worse than a Soviet re-education facility sir," Valerie boldly replied.

Ivan chucked. A deep rumbling laugh that was almost terrifying. He reached out and gently stroked Valerie's cheek.

"You are indeed an amazing woman Miz Sokolova," Ivan's pushed his fingers into Valerie's mouth.

"Let's see how convincing you really are," Ivan put his big paws on Valerie's shoulders and pushed.

At first she hesitated, not knowing what Ivan wanted but he pushed harder and she suddenly understood. She had no choice but to go down on her knees.

"In your new position you will be required to not only pass as a woman; you will be required to behave like one too. That is, you will be required to act like the kind of women who work their trade at the Intourist Hotel," Ivan said struggling to unbuckle his belt.

Valerie knew that the Intourist Hotel was very was a centre for black marketeering and prostitution for hard currency. Since the hotel's guests were foreigners, it became the place where fartsovshchiks - people illegally trading foreign goods banned in the USSR - congregated. All this took place under the watchful eyes of the KGB, which recruited Intourist personnel to spy on hotel guests. People who were given jobs at the Intourist had to go through the most thorough selection and lengthy vetting process, as if they were applying for a job not in a hotel, but with the KGB.

Ordinary Soviet citizens could not use the hotel, even if they could afford to. But the oligarchs used it as their playground, hosting lavish parties with high-end prostitutes on the menu.

Ivan had pushed his trousers down around his ankles and was yanking down his shorts when Valerie finally summoned the courage to look up from the floor.

Ivan's cock was standing proud. It was pink, stubby and thick, a rope of clear pre-ejaculate dribbled from the glans. At least his crotch didn't stink; in fact it smelled of bodywash and talcum powder.

"We have no evidence of you undertaking prostitution but surely a woman of your persuasion must have done this before," Ivan commented as he placed his hands gently on Valerie's head.

Valerie knew what Ivan wanted and she knew that she could not refuse. The truth was that she had never done anything like this before despite what Ivan implied. She'd had dreams of course; similar to the one she'd had about the man who lit her cigarette in the park. But in her dreams she was being kissed and kissing in return. Her dreams were romantic but also there were sexual connotations because they often invoked a nocturnal emission. However Valerie's dreams were more soft-core than hard-core porn. There was kissing and fondling and canoodling but she never experienced penetration of any kind; that was all implied.