Andromeda

This post takes us back to the beginning of the novel, where Anna was first interrogated by General Uri Konstanine. Anna was most confused and afraid she was losing her sanity when she saw two figures standing above her. Two figures the General did not see. They were a grizzled man in a threadbare blue robe, and a woman wearing a little black dress who had a family resemblance to Anna but was a decade older.

“Where are you taking me now?” Anna asked, shaking with a sudden chill. Anna didn’t know if she should cry or scream. Just then, she could do neither.

“No place you haven’t been before.” Odin took her arm and together they stepped through a hole in time. “But now you will see things with open eyes.”

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Anna knew exactly when and where she was. It was November, 1956 all over again. Odin had transported them back in time to her first interrogation with General Konstantine. She and Odin stood against the back wall of Uri's office. Anna looked on as she saw herself, her past self, hanging by chains from the ceiling.

“Come now, my dear!” the general said with an annoyed tone. He stood behind her with his whip in hand.

“I told you a dozen times already,” the Anna from the past sobbed. “I’m Anna Singer. I’m an aid worker on an exchange visa. I’ve been here in Budapest for two months. I don’t know anything about this stupid revolution.” Then she mumbled something about coming from Watertown, Massachusetts.

Anna Future and Odin watched as Uri continued his interrogation and soon confronted Anna with the recording of Andrew Locket’s telephone call to her, the call that gave her away.

“This Locket of yours, he must have been the stupidest spy ever,” Odin said. “Your rendezvous had already been arranged, he didn’t have to confirm. And he knew the phone was tapped. It looks like he set you up!”

“No, Odin, Andrew would never do that. You see, we were — how can I put this — we were intimate.”

“You were a fun mistress for Locket. But it was time for him to move on to another girl. What a convenient way to get rid of you — giving you up to the Soviets.”

“Odin, you’re wrong. Andrew would never do that to me.”

Odin turned back to the interrogation of Anna Past. “Let’s watch, there’s more.”

Anna held Odin’s arm tight, fingers digging into flesh as she watched her past self being hoisted up so she could barely stand on tiptoes with her high-heeled shoes. To relive this was traumatic. To relive it looking on as a third person brought her psyche to edge of the abyss.

“When I saw two people looking at me, I thought I was going mad,” Anna whispered.

“No. You were quite sane,” Odin said. “Actually no one sees us, not because they can’t, because they won’t. What we are, you and me standing here, would shatter their illusions of reality. Therefore, they refuse their eyes. Absolutely refuse. I am surprised at your past self’s clarity. I admire that. You saw us here, even if it was just a glimpse.”

Odin and Anna continued watching the interrogation as lash after lash caught the past Anna’s back.

Anna remembered how she held out long enough for Andrew to get away. She saw it all again, this time she stood behind Uri, watching him calculate every throw of the whip, watching the tip just touch her skin, and watching her past self dance on the chains with each crack. Each throw of the whip had been expertly placed, but at that time she didn’t know Uri’s skill. Only the last few throws actually cut the outer layer of skin, and those left but the slimmest lines of raised flesh.

Anna watched her past self as Uri made light conversation, or so she thought, until she slipped and revealed that she was indeed a CIA agent.

She watched as Uri touched her between the legs. She couldn’t believe how receptive she had been, even after the whipping she’d received and the cruel stance he'd forced her take for so long.

“I knew he played my emotions. But, was I really like that?”

“Oh yes,” Odin said. “You are a very special lady. It’s no wonder Uri fell instantly in love with you.”

“He what!”

Odin shushed Anna as they watched Uri pleasure her past self with his hand between her legs as she hung from the chains. Anna could do nothing more than watch open-mouth as she climaxed while suspended from the ceiling.

“You must admit, from his point of view, this was rather amusing,” Odin said. Then he added, “It wasn’t selfish greed that ultimately convinced General Konstantine to whisk you away for himself.”

They watched as Anna Past held out long enough for Locket to get away. General Konstantine was visibly disturbed when he learned he’d missed the rendezvous time and lost a chance at his rival.

“Guard, take her away!” he called out.

“What!” the past Anna cried. “I thought you were going to let me go.”

“If I'd have received a satisfactory answer,” he snapped.

Future Anna and Odin watched as the past Anna was led out by a guard. General Konstanine sat back in his swivel chair. He propped his elbows on the desk and buried his head in his hands.

“We shall step forward one day and watch the rest of this interaction,” Odin told her.

The light and shadows changed in the room. Anna realized he had whisked her ahead in time. General Uri Konstantine was still sitting at his desk, but was now leafing through a dossier. He scribbled notes in the margins.

A guard shoved Anna into his office. She was naked except for a blanket around her shoulders.

“Good morning, Andromeda,” he said as she stood two paces in front of his desk.

“Good morning, sir,” Anna replied. “How was your night? Mine was hell, thank you.”

Anna watched as General Konstantine leafed through the pages of the report. And she watched her past self fidget while standing naked at attention.

“At least you had a bed,” he said. “I slept here on this desk. I gave you my only blanket.” He scribbled a note in the margin of one of the pages. “Anna, this has just arrived from Moscow. It has some interesting information about you.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Yesterday, I had intended to let you go.”

“But?”

“Information has come to me which would make your release undesirable.” He made another note on the next page. “I have decided what to do with you. It will seem to the outside world that you’ve disappeared in the churn of this revolution. You will, instead, be taken to my flat here in Budapest where you will live among my household staff.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I most certainly am. This will be easier for you if you accept your new lot in life with the grace and dignity I know you have inside,” The General said as he closed the report, stood up, and walked around the desk to her.

“And what will I be doing for you in your apartment?” Anna asked.

“You will amuse me,” the General said.

Anna knew what was going to happen next. She watched her past self slap General Uri Konstantine across the face.

“That was brave of you,” Odin said. “What did he do to you next?”

“He tied me to his desk and gave me a caning,” Anna said.

“What are you going to do with me?” her past self asked.

“Lie face down over the desk,” General Konstantine said casually as he fished through the desk’s top drawer.

General Konstantine made his Anna count the strikes of the cane. He also threatened to start all over again if she would squirm or jump. Future Anna watched her past self lie as still as she could and count off the smacks across her bottom.

“Anna, look, there’s your dossier,” Odin said, pointing to the folder on the desk under Anna’s naked left breast. “It’s got everything Uri knows about you.” Then to the Anna Past he casually said, “Mind if we look at that?”

“Odin, I thought you couldn’t talk to her?” Anna future said.

“She knows we’re here,” Odin told her. “She just doesn’t know whether to believe her eyes.” He had trouble pulling the folder out from under Past Anna’s sweaty skin. The folder stuck to her skin so he simply pulled the pages of the report out from within.

Past Anna could do nothing more than count off the General’s caning. But she watched in confusion as Odin and her future self leafed through the papers.

“That's not my dossier. That's Locket's,” Anna said as she flipping through the file.
“Only at the end does it mention me, and only as being his next liaison.”

“You were a very small fish,” Odin said. “General Konstantine wouldn't even have bothered with you if he wasn't smitten by you from the start.”

“He let Locket get away so he could toy with me?” she wondered.

“Loki,” Odin corrected. “The mischief maker. Uri would never have been able to catch that rascal. He’s one of us. A god.”

… to be continued …

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Andromeda

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Andromeda, a novel by Joe Nobel, Part 64 – Anna ... and Anna