Nadia's Obsession

Copyright © 2013

by Charles D. Martin.

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by ant information storage and retrieval system, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Chaney-Hall Publishing

Chaney-Hall, Inc.

660 Newport Center Drive, Suite 1220

Newport Beach, California 92660

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidences are the product of the author’s imagination and some that he has met along the walkway of life.

First Edition

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911277

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication

Martin, Charles D., 1937

Nadia’s obsession : a Provocateur novel / Charles D. Martin. -- 1st ed. -- Newport Beach, Calif. : Chaney-Hall Publishing, c2013.

p. ; cm.

ISBN: 978-0-9851984-3-5 (cloth) ; 978-0-9851984-5-9 (pbk.) ; 978-0-9851984-4-2 (ebk.)

A sequel to the novel Provocateur.

Summary: The story of a young Russian orphan girl who comes to America as a mail-order-bride and her encounters with powerful, alpha males.-Publisher.

1. Man-woman relationships--Fiction. 2. Women--Sexual behavior-Fiction. 3. Suspense fiction. 4. Orphans--Russia (Federation)--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.A77782 N33 2013 2013911277

813.6--dc23 1307

Endsheet image by Shigeo Fukuda, © Shigeo Fukuda, Legs of Two Different Genders, Ginza Graphic Gallery (ggg). © Photo DNP Foundation for Cultural Promotion, Shigeo Fukuda exhibition 1975, permissions granted by Shizuko Fukuda. http://www.dnp.co.jp/gallery/ggg_e/

Book consultant: Ellen Reid

Cover and book design: Patricia Bacall

Author photo: Starla Fortunato

For Twyla...my consummate partner on the journey of life and my love beyond human dimensions. She is my totally unrestrained critic and the source of my inspiration.

Lilith (1892), Painting by John Collier

Ancient Hebrew folklore tells of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. Legend has it she was an independent-minded female, an adulteress and a wicked woman. Adam was reportedly the proverbial domineering male and wished to rule her. But Lilith was made of the same earth as Adam, not like Eve who was made from his rib. Thus she saw herself as his equal and refused to be subservient. This independent woman fled the Garden of Eden and left Adam to marry Eve.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I: ROAD TRIP

CHAPTER II: SEARCHING FOR NADIA

CHAPTER III: CHANGE OF PLANS

CHAPTER IV: THE BLACK ROSE

CHAPTER V: MEMORY STICK

CHAPTER VI: THE DIPLOMAT

CHAPTER VII: NADIA GOES TO RUSSIA

CHAPTER VIII: THE BOLSHOI THEATER

CHAPTER IX: CAPTIVITY

CHAPTER X: A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

CHAPTER XI: THE OLIGARCH

CHAPTER XII: THE GRAND BARGAIN

CHAPTER XIII: CHICANERY

CHAPTER XIV: CRUISING THE IONIAN SEA

CHAPTER XV: SCHEFFLER

CHAPTER XVI: FINAL DAYS AT SEA

CHAPTER XVII: BACK IN MOSCOW

CHAPTER XVIII: THE GRANDMASTER

CHAPTER XIX: PASSAGES

CHAPTER XX: SIMI

CHAPTER XXI: VIPERS

CHAPTER XXII: THE GUARDIAN

CHAPTER XXIII: HOME

CHARACTER INSPIRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & CREDITS

PROLOGUE

A CONTINUING STORY FROM THE NOVEL PROVOCATEUR

NADIA was born in Bryansk, Russia, an industrial city near the border of Ukraine and Belarus. Her parents, two university students, could not afford a baby, so they placed her in an orphanage on the day she was born. Never held by her mother, Nadia’s first human contact came from a Russian nurse, a strict woman who delivered her as a newborn to the rundown orphanage where Nadia lived until she was eighteen.

It was a hard beginning to life for this young girl. The struggle to survive dominated every aspect of her youth. She had no family, no friends, and no experience with love or any caring people. This lack of affection would shape her emotional challenges as she developed into a young woman. Another hardship she encountered was abuse by men who sought to take advantage of her impoverished condition.

But Mother Nature had smiled on her, giving her the twin gifts of mental brilliance and beauty. College education in Russia was free for everyone, so Nadia was able to attend a state university. Impressed with her potential, a married couple of professors at the university took her in. During those years, Nadia enjoyed living in a real home. However, once she graduated, her living arrangement ended, forcing her back on the street. To survive, she married a factory worker who turned out to be a heavy drinker and an abusive husband.

Nadia developed a casual friendship with a girl she met at the university. Her name was Sarah. Sarah introduced Nadia to a mail-order-bride site at a local Internet café. Through the site, Nadia was recruited to leave Bryansk and her Russian husband behind and move to America—to California. Upon her departure, Sarah gave Nadia a small garnet ring, which she had acquired from a gypsy woman who claimed that it had the magical power to keep its possessor safe.

What Nadia did not know in making the journey to America was that a woman named Olga, a legendary ex-CIA agent, ran the mail-order-bride program. Olga was operating a high-end catering business in Beverly Hills. It was a legitimate front for an enterprise in which attractive young women targeted wealthy, powerful men and separated them from substantial amounts of their money through clever schemes—missions, as she called them. Over the years, Olga had assembled an exceptional clan of young women—her agents, as she called them. Her links with the CIA remained, and on occasion Olga’s organization was recruited to assist in missions that required the special skills of her coterie. Nadia was Olga’s newest agent, and Olga quickly came to realize her special attributes. She commented once that Nadia’s extraordinary intelligence and beauty made for a lethal combination.

In Olga’s organization, Nadia developed a friendship with another Russian girl by the name of Alexandra. Unlike Nadia, who suffered from childhood emotional deprivation, her friend was a very warm, caring person who easily fell in love. Through her, Nadia began the long journey into a world in which she might one day know love herself.

Nadia experienced a lot of early success. Three missions advanced her standing in Olga’s organization. On these assignments she found herself up against wealthy, powerful males. She would have to draw on all of her feline finesse and intellect to get the best of them. The first was the CEO of a big private company in west LA. The second, Roberto Bartolini, was the rich, arrogant, handsome sponsor of the Italian racing team that was competing in the America’s Cup yacht race series on San Francisco Bay.

Her third mission targeted a Russian oligarch. His name was Vladimir Russoff. That mission involved interdicting a cyber-attack on the US Treasury Auction that was designed to divert a billion dollars into Russoff’s account. Russoff had obtained on loan a copy of the cyber-warfare software platform developed by the Security Bureau of the Russian Federation or FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. In a complex maneuver, Nadia was able to neutralize the threat and make off with the Russian cyber-warfare technology encrypted on a memory stick. This technology could be enormously valuable to the US government agencies that defend against cyber-attacks on America’s military forces or infrastructure. Russoff saw the funds go into his Cayman Islands account. Then, mysteriously, the money disappeared. No one knows what happened to the billion dollars.

CHAPTER I

ROAD TRIP

WWWRRRRR.... THE HIGH SHRILL SOUND FROM the engine of the yellow Lamborghini reverberated through the canyon. It was making its way up the winding roads of the Santa Ynez Mountains northeast of Santa Barbara, California. This was a road not frequently traveled by motorists, but it was a favorite of sports-car enthusiasts and high-performance bikers.

Alexandra, an irrepressible Russian, pressed the accelerator to the floor as the spirited Italian automotive machine sped up the narrow mountain road. She had an insatiable desire for adventure and thrills. Fortunately, she was a skilled driver.

Her passenger, Nadia, was not so sure she was happy to be there. Her body was thrust back against the seat by g-forces like what she imagined a fighter jet pilot would feel. She gripped the seat tightly. This was not her thing. How did she get herself into this situation? She was frightened out of her wits, but she would never admit this to anyone, much less to her friend, Alexandra. As that fabulous machine hugged the curves and switchbacks of this lonely mountain road, its tires let out a loud skreeech. Nadia wanted to scream, but she restrained herself with all of the self-control she could muster.

The yellow Lamborghini sped up the winding road that had been chiseled out of the rolling hills. On this stretch of the back-country of Southern California, not far from the urban coastline, there were no farms, no houses, no people to be seen anywhere. This was a quiet, untouched part of the coastal mountain range. Nature had skillfully shaped the contours of this land into a terrain with subtle, unpretentious beauty. The hillsides were mostly covered with grass, which the summer sun had turned golden. Here and there, gnarly old oak trees accented the landscape. But it all seemed to flash by at light speed.

Nadia looked at her friend, Alexandra, whose long blonde hair was flowing in the wind. Her eyes scanned the profile of Alexandra’s beautiful face: her high Russian cheekbones, her perfectly sculpted nose, her full eyebrows, and her blue eyes, which were intensely transfixed on the road ahead. The broad smile on Alexandra’s face reflected the excitement she was feeling.

Not so for Nadia. She tried to keep her fear to herself as Alexandra took each new turn in the road. Thoughts raced through her mind. ‘After all that I have survived in life, I’m going to meet my end in an auto disaster on this remote mountain road.’

It had all started that morning.

Nadia had sat quietly in a chair in the library of the big Malibu house. It was her favorite place in Olga’s home. She held a copy of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It was an old, well-worn copy that had been printed in Russian. She ran her finger across the beautiful leather cover and wondered how Olga had acquired it and all of the other exceptional books in her library. Many were first-edition collector’s copies.

In her youth, she had escaped from poverty and despair through reading. The story of Anna held a special place in her heart. She had discovered the novel when she was barely old enough to read. Without books, she had no knowledge of the outside world. Her world had been confined to the drab surroundings of the orphanage, where she had spent the first eighteen years of her life. Books expanded her world, allowing her to see the possibilities that existed beyond the limits of Bryansk, the industrial city where she spent her early life. The orphanage was extremely overcrowded and understaffed. There was little food to go around. She often had to fight other orphans for her share. It was a matter of survival. The heating in the building was poor in the cold Russian winters, and finding a blanket to wrap up in—or even to share—at night was difficult. Reading allowed Nadia to escape into her mind—to travel to far-off lands and block out the grim reality that was going on around her.

Reading also exposed Nadia to the emotion of love and romance. But she knew love only from the print on the pages of the books that she read. Nadia’s young existence had been void of affection, and reading Anna Karenina exposed her to the power of love. Given up at birth, a Russian midwife brought her to the orphanage where Russia’s unwanted children lived. The living conditions in the orphanage were terrible enough, but all of these children suffered severely from human detachment and the absence of affection. In the orphanage there was no love— no mother to nurture a young child’s needs. So Nadia grew up untouched by loving hands. Through reading, she learned about affection—between a mother and her child, and between a man and woman. But it was not the same. While she understood love intellectually, she had never felt it as a person. She desperately wanted to experience these feelings at an emotional level, but it was foreign territory for her. It would be a demon that would torment her throughout her lifetime.

That morning, Nadia had risen from her chair and scanned the bookshelves until she came across another favorite, Morpheus, which had been written by the Russian poet Pushkin. She held it in her hands. The cover was frayed and the pages were worn. She knew that long before her others had read, enjoyed, and been enlightened by this book. Given its tattered state, she assumed it to be quite old. She sat back down and took another sip of the sherry, which she placed back on a side table next to her chair. She had first discovered Pushkin’s work at the public library in Bryansk. It had been almost twenty years, but when she opened the book, memories flooded her senses. Like Anna Karenina, she had also committed this book to memory, and she loved it. Time seemed to pass without notice. Then Alexandra entered the room.

So, orphan girl, how are things with you?

Nadia looked up from the book and smiled.

I’m always very comfortable in this room, reading by myself.

Her somewhat gravelly voice still echoed her Russian accent. It had never left her, no matter how hard she tried.

Alexandra was empathetic. Nadia had become like a sister to her, but she had been away for months on her last mission.

Nadia, we need to get away and have some fun, she said.

Alex, you’re a real kick! There isn’t much fun in my life, but you are the one person that always creates it, she continued.

What do you have in mind?

With a wistful manner that Nadia had come to know, Alexandra, with her hands on her hips, flipped her head from side to side, throwing her blonde hair across her face.

Well, I want to get you out of that chair. You are too inclined to escape into that beautiful mind of yours. There’s much more living to be done, and I’m here to get you going.

For Nadia, this was a huge part of her attraction to Alexandra. Alexandra had a way of pulling her out of her intellectual reclusion and making her live. It was a wonderful thing, but it was not easy for Nadia. Nadia’s evasive behavior had been deeply embedded in her since childhood. However, Nadia understood this and she wanted to climb out of the introverted corner in her life. So, it was as though Alexandra was the missionary who was bringing her out, and Nadia was a willing passenger on that journey.

Okay, Alex, said Nadia. You are on. What would you like to do?

Alexandra put her hands on her hips again in a determined stance.

Let’s do a road trip. There are many interesting parts of California that you have not seen. You’ve spent too much time in the cities and in fancy resorts. I am going to show you the back roads. It’s a part of early California where time has stood still. It will be a fun adventure, and it will give us some girl-time together.

Nadia did not hesitate.

Let’s do it.

A smile spread across Alexandra’s face.

We’ll get started tomorrow morning. Just pack a few light things. Nothing fancy, just real casual: jeans and shorts and tops. The car we will have does not have much room.

Nadia didn’t think much about Alexandra’s comment about the car not having much room. None of Olga’s women owned a car themselves. In the basement of the Malibu house there was a large garage where Olga kept a variety of automobiles for her agents to use, depending on their needs. When anyone needed transportation, a valet would bring up the vehicle of choice. It might be a standard car, a Towne car, or a limo. She had not seen the garage, and she did not know what else might be down there.

When the next morning came, Nadia put a pair of jeans, a tank top, a couple of blouses, and other things into a backpack. She had just finished packing when she heard a knock at the door. It was Alexandra.

Time to go, girl, she said.

I’m ready, Nadia responded, walking out of her room to join Alexandra.

The two of them bounded down the stairs to the front door.

I’ve asked Wilson to bring up the car, Alexandra said. Olga just bought a brand new toy, and we are taking it on a spin.

Wilson was an older gentleman who supervised Olga’s motor vehicle fleet. He was a British man of slight build, with graying hair and a well-trimmed beard. He was always a very polite and well-read man for one in his profession. But mostly he knew a lot about cars. When needed, he would also often serve as the driver for Olga’s women. Wilson always wore a black jacket, black trousers, and a crisp white shirt. He also loved his chauffer’s cap, and he wore it every day.

When they opened the front door, a brand new yellow Lamborghini was parked at the curb.

Wow! What a car, said Nadia as her face lit up. But, I don’t see any place to put my backpack.

Just slide it in the back of your seat, Alexandra advised.

Nadia had never learned how to drive, but Alexandra was an expert. She had even had some professional training on driving high-performance cars with one of her lovers. When Alexandra turned the ignition and hit the accelerator you could hear the roar of the engine echo down the block. And they were off.

The yellow hyper-car worked its way down the winding streets to the Pacific Coast Highway. There, they turned right and headed north up the coast. With the blue Pacific on the left and the yellow Lamborghini speeding up the highway, it was quite a sight.

Where are we headed? Nadia asked.

Today, we are just vagabonds—free spirits, Alexandra responded. She then raised her hand straight up into the wind and let out a yell of enjoyment.

Yaahhhooo!

The speedy yellow machine continued up the coast through Ventura and then turned inland on Route 33 toward Ojai. The road then became narrow and there was no traffic. On the roadside, Nadia spotted a sign that said, Jacinto Reyes Scenic Byway. A tortuously winding road through the rugged backcountry of California, it had been long forgotten by city folk. Nadia was in for a ride that she would never forget. Her heart was beating quickly from the terror of Alexandra’s aggressive drive up through the valley. Alexandra was oblivious to Nadia’s fear. She was totally engaged in her diving experience.

The landscape was increasingly hilly and more heavily wooded by old oak trees. As they came around a curve, Alexandra slowed down and turned off the road into a gravel turnout in front of an old wooden shack. This was the infamous Pine Mountain Inn. It really wasn’t an inn; it was a roadhouse bar. It had been a stopping place for cowboys, bikers, and hikers since it opened in 1939.

The wood slates of the dilapidated structure had been weathered through the years. It had a small porch with a roof propped up by four-by-fours, and a wagon wheel leaned against the railing that