Szabina sat alone on the balcony of her penthouse suite, looking down over the valley of Merano, sipping her specially prepared glass of cool, Turkish coffee.

It was an exciting enough life, traveling from place to place. Her smile widened, glistening white teeth contrasting with the light brown of her drink. She could be where her father was now, that bastard. Languishing away in some hell hole in Hungary, doing manual labor until the day he died.

She took a contemplative sip, admiring a particularly pretty wisp of cloud coming off the tip of a faraway mountain. He had beaten her every time he caught her with those language books. Szabina knew now, as she knew then, that he only did it because he realized how much better she was than him. Eight years old and already better than a pathetic forty-three-year-old mill worker whose wife had left him as soon as she was free of the child she had been forced to bear.

Somewhere in the streets below, a group of violinists began playing a fugue. Her favorite. Her eyes flickered shut as she leaned back in her plush red chair, her remaining senses all at once taking in the sound of the violins, the feel of the sun on her rapidly darkening skin, and the smell of the basket of flowers Molokov had sent up last night.

Better than Budapest any day.

She opened her moss green eyes slowly, blinking against the sunlight, her head lolling to one side to get a better look at the flowers, perched on the balcony railing.

Molokov was exciting enough she supposed. She didn’t love him; she didn’t care to love anything. Love was not in her nature. She knew the word in six different languages but couldn’t begin to tell you what it meant. She knew it was something you made and like all man-made things, it didn’t last.

Szabina did not crave love the way most women did. She craved excitement. She craved change. She craved always that which was just outside of her reach. It was a dangerous obsession, but it was a dangerous time. Stalin had been dead for nearly ten years and things in the U.S.S.R had never been more tenuous, tensions with the western world never as defined, the specter of nuclear war looming at the back of everyone’s mind.

A cold war, they called it - a war of words, she thought of it. Words were weapons she knew how to wield as expertly as any sniper with a rifle and a scope. Molokov was not her first contact within the KGB and she doubted very much he would be her last. They went through operatives the way little girls go through dollies and with just as much care. Still, he was one of the few who sent flowers, who allowed himself a sentimental flare.

Yes, Szabina thought, biting her lip and smiling. He was becoming one of her favorites. Perhaps she would sleep with him after all. Closing her eyes, she began to conjugate Italian verbs aloud, preparing for their meeting in an hour with the informant they had come all this way to meet. To challenge herself, she added in the same verbs in English, the grab-bag language always giving her trouble.

Io gusto...I taste...Tu gusti...You taste...Lui gusta...He tastes...Noi gustiamo...We taste...Voi gustate.... You taste...Loro gustano...They taste…

The words rolled off and around her tongue like a piece of hard candy and Szabina felt herself smiling. Eyes fluttering shut, she placed her coffee down on the small table at her elbow and then, with quick, careful movements, she undid the sash of her robe and let the fluffy, white cotton drop open at her sides, revealing the sheer silk negligee underneath.

Io tocco...I touch...Tu tocchi...You touch...Lui tocca...He touches...Noi tocchiamo...We touch...Voi toccate...You touch...Loro toccano...They touch…

Her soft fingertips glided across her collarbone, first one hand caressing her, then the other. She pressed herself back into the cushions, letting her long legs stretch out in front of her. With a gasp, soft but not too soft, she allowed her fingertips to graze her petite breasts, her nipples hard already between her words and the cool breeze coming in off the balcony.

Io vengo...I come...Tu vieni...You come...Lui viene...He comes...Noi veniamo...We come...Voi venite...You come...Loro vengono...They come…

Neck and back arching up to the sky, Szabina felt dizzy, her fingers crawling across her torso like spiders, petting at the curve of her hip in one moment, pressing in at her side at another. Her thighs spreading, her right hand drifted lower and lower. Her breath hitched as she slid a finger against the most sensitive part of herself and then, just as she was about to cry out, the telephone inside her room began to ring.

She listened to the shrill bell rattle once, then again, frozen in time on her chair, and then deflated, eyes opening and lips curving up into a smirk. Szabina stood with a hop and strode into her bedroom, tying up her robe as she went.

She lifted the phone off its cradle on the fifth ring. “Pronto,” she said, holding the handset a little way away from her ear.

“What are you doing?”

The clipped, disapproving English that echoed down the line made Szabina want to giggle, but she controlled herself. She sighed, twirling the telephone cord around her finger, and looked upward into the small electric chandelier that hung there.

“Couldn’t you tell? Or does the camera on the balcony not have audio?” She winked into the second camera, disguised as a piece of ceiling molding. “I was conjugating.”

“Cute.”

Szabina would never understand the American penchant for saying the exact opposite of what they really meant. She was about to say as much when the person on the other end of the line continued, “You meet with the Italian and Molokov in less than an hour. Get dressed, get ready, and don’t forget we need to know the name of the mole in Austria.”

Szabina put on her best pout. “Are all CIA agents as much fun as you, Miss King?”

“Remember,” said Agent King, ignoring the bait that had been dropped for her, “we’ll be watching.”

Szabina waved at the ceiling camera. “I never forget.”

The line went dead with a loud click. Szabina, pleased to her core, trotted off to the bathroom to start preparing for what was promising to be a more interesting meeting than she had anticipated.

It was an exciting enough life, traveling from place to place. You met all sorts of people. Harriet King was her first contact with the CIA and Szabina hoped she would remain in her charge for a long while. She didn’t love her; she didn’t care to love anything. Love, after all, was not in her nature. But she had always craved what was just outside of her reach, had craved excitement, change; it was the only language she truly understood.

Robin Jeffrey was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming to a psychologist and a librarian, giving her a love of literature and a consuming interest in the inner workings of people’s minds, which have served her well as she pursues a career in creative writing. She has been published in various journals across the country as well as on websites like The Mary Sue and Introvert, Dear. More of her work can be found on her website, RobinJeffreyAuthor.com.