Escape to Constantinople

The young Russian himself didn't make it too much further before he ran into the back of a horse-drawn cart with a thin, Western-clothed man atop flicking a whip and repeatedly yelling "American relief doctor; make way" in broken Turkish.

Amazingly, everyone in the street was making way for the cart. Pyotr was about to try to move around it when the canvas sacks at the back of the cart were raised far enough for him to see a face of an angel appear and two thin arms reaching out toward him. A voice was crying out, "Pyotr. Here. Climb under here. Quickly."

And numb from surprise and shock, Pyotr felt Katya Betskoya drawing him into the cart and pulling canvas sacking over his body.

* * * *

"I don't know how the Petrosians are faring," Katya answered. "I fear the worst. Gurgen saw what was happening in Sevastopol and had his own ship there. We sailed a few days before the Bolsheviks invaded the Crimea and came here, to Smyrna, where Gurgen had family and part of his business in the Armenian quarter."

"I was with Samuel at the American relief agency camp when the fires, killing, and looting started in the Armenian quarter. I couldn't go back to the Petrosians' house, and Samuel was coming down to the harbor to open a clinic in a house down on the harbor and said it was best if I came with him. I have been helping at his clinic and he said this was where the help would be needed."

Pyotr and Katya were sitting off to the side of where the American doctor, Samuel Covington, and the aid workers who had already arrived at the small house opening directly onto the Smyrna quay were setting up cots and examination and treatment stations. Each of the relief workers wore a badge of safe passage with their name, age, and gender penned on them, issued by the Turkish army, to give them whatever safety was possible in the pandemonium around them. Katya had such a badge. There was none for Pyotr.

As yet there were no refugees who had found a clinic was opening in the harbor, although the wailing that could be heard from beyond the stone walls of the house indicated that crowds of frightened and wounded Greeks and Armenians were already arriving at the quay and it would not be long before the clinic would be swamped with business.

Katya had brought food and water to Pyotr and had said she could sit with him for a few minutes before she was needed. She listened calmly to Pyotr's explanation of why he too was in Smyrna and the two spoke of the coincidence of circumstances that had brought them together again—and avoided talking about the probable fate of the Petrosians and Theo Maneates.

Samuel Covington came over to them as Pyotr was finishing the simple meal Katya had given him. Pyotr and the American doctor had already met briefly, and Covington was more focused on Katya now than on the young Russian who had suddenly appeared and with whom, Covington had been told in brief terms, Katya shared some sketchy past.

As Covington and Katya conversed quietly about preparations for the onslaught of patients, Pyotr had time to look the American over. There was familiarity between the two that warned Pyotr that their relationship wasn't a casual—or even just a professional—one. The American doctor was tall and thin, wore glasses that apparently he would be nearly blind without, and had sandy-colored hair and a receding hairline. He seemed both patrician and severe in aspect and clearly was on edge from the great responsibility facing him within hours.

"We all need to get some sleep, for as long as we can," Pyotr heard Covington say to Katya in a louder voice than he had been speaking to her in as Pyotr gave him the once over.

"There are rooms upstairs, Pyotr," Katya said. "The cots there will be needed by patients soon enough, but you should take one in the room at the back of the building until it is needed. We also will need to think of some way to keep you safe but away from here until you can board one of the evacuation boats that should arrive at any time."

"Some way to keep me safe?" Pyotr asked.

"Yes. The Turks are unlikely to pay much attention to whether you are Russian rather than Greek or Armenian, and they are taking away all Greek and Armenian men of serviceable age. Samuel tells me the Turkish authorities will be searching through this building every couple of hours to ensure we aren't harboring any Greek or Armenian men. You have no badge, so there is no protection for you here—and not much for the rest of us if the Turks think we are harboring a fugitive. It won't be safe for you to be out on the quay either without some sort of disguising of your age and gender. I will try to think of something. For now, try to get some sleep and gather your strength."

Pyotr went to the room as assigned and slept fitfully enough that not more than an hour later he heard the sounds from the room to the front of the building—sounds that were familiar. Without thinking he rose from his cot and moved quietly out into the hallway and to the slightly open door of the room at the front.

By all rights he should have been shocked and angry and disillusioned all at once, but his life so far had become so taken up in turmoil and his attraction to Katya was so strong that, other than being surprised, he did not lose any of the ardor he had for her.

Katya was on her back on the edge of the cot, her skirt-covered legs reaching to the floor, and Samuel Covington, thin, wiry-muscled, naked and in full arousal, was crouched over her. She was nestled in one of his arms and his other one was up under the front of her skirt, up to his elbow. From the rustling movement of the material of Katya's skirt, Pyotr could tell that Covington was working the center of her. His face was plastered to hers and they were kissing deeply and moaning almost in harmony. As Pyotr watched, Covington pushed Katya's skirt up to her waist, exposing her well-turned calves, thighs, and naked pelvis. Pyotr gave a little cry, which the couple didn't hear above their own sounds of lustful arousal, and sank to the floor, his eyes wide and unable to look away. Covington was masturbating Katya's cock, which was hard and long. Nothing could pull Pyotr's attention away from seeing the cock on Katya. He remained, collapsed on the floor, as their lovemaking continued and climaxed. There was no question that Covington knew who and what he was coupling with—or that he too was in high arousal, his cock, not as long as Katya's, curving up in a hard arc from his groin. The American lowered his head to Katya's belly, and to her audible sigh, opened his mouth over her shaft and slowly descended on it as she began a slow, rhythmic thrusting of her slim hips and reached for and encased Covington's shaft in her small fist.

At the moment of penetration, Samuel Covington was laying on his stomach on the cot, with his hands dragging the floor on either side and his head lolled to the side. The expression on his face was one of ecstasy, and he was panting hard and moaning in a low drone. Katya, her skirts gathered up around her waist and her legs and hips naked, straddled Samuel's hips and began fucking him in long, deep, masterful thrusts. Katya's balls were slapping against Samuel's buttocks cheeks in a tattoo that sounded like jabs of a shovel in mud to Pyotr's ears. The man was groaning and grunting and writhing under her, begging her to fuck deeper and faster, as she reached back through his thighs, pulled his cock through, and pumped it with her fist. There was no question who mastered who. The act of Katya fucking the American sent a current of electricity through Pyotr's body.

Where one day there may have been disbelief and disgust, Pyotr now, once the shock had passed, only felt arousal and the wish that Katya would be fucking him like the transvestite was fucking the American doctor. After Katya arched her back, gave a little cry, ejaculated inside the doctor, and collapsed on his back. Covington turned his face to hers and the two were kissing deeply, Pyotr gathered himself up from the floor in front of the door, returned to his cot in the other room, and masturbated himself to a fitful sleep in which he dreamed of Katya doing to him what she had done to the American doctor. There had been no question that the American had thoroughly enjoyed the coupling, nor that he was under Katya's full control.

On the morrow, Pyotr found that Katya's plan for him was to dress him in women's clothes—which gave him a little thrill of being as close to her emotionally as possible—and to send him out on the quay to wait, in disguise, with the women, young children, and old men out there in the hope of getting on an evacuation ship—if and when they arrived in the harbor.

Katya spent as much time as she could out there with him to help him avoid contact with other people who might discover he wasn't a woman. And thus it came to be that they were there together, at midnight, the night that a Turkish unit of soldiers raided into the crowd in search of women, girls, and boys to kidnap, defile, and send off into another world.

Two soldiers saw the beautiful Katya and each leaned down and grabbed an arm and started to pull her in two different directions. A third arrived and started to organize an effort to pull her toward the edge of the crowd. Other refugees were stirring, and the women were beginning to keen their warning of the presence of vultures. Pyotr leaped up and grabbed the men who were struggling with Katya. He managed to break their hold enough that Katya pulled free and melted into the crowd as the searchlights from the Allied naval vessels started to pan over the crowd.

The soldiers piled on Pyotr and manhandled him toward the edge of the crowd and the dark shadows of the buildings bordering the open quay. They had not yet discovered that he wasn't a young woman. As they got to the edge of the crowd and the opening of a road up into the Turkish quarter, though, an officer appeared, barked orders, and the soldiers released Pyotr and evaporated into the shadows. They had ripped away enough of Pyotr's clothing, though, that he was revealed to be a young man.

Other soldiers stepped forward prepared to take hold of him and start his way into the afterlife as they were doing with all other Greek and Armenian men of his age, when the officer barked orders again.

The officer was Captain Edom Yilmaz. He took possession of Pyotr, marched him up into the Turkish quarter in a quick step to his quarters, where he pushed Pyotr up the stairs to his bed chamber, bound him firmly to the bed, whipped him into whimpering submission, and fucked the stuffing out of him.

* * * *

"Pyotr, thank god you're alive. But we haven't much time. The Turk could come back at any moment."

Pyotr struggled to open his eyes. Both were swollen from the beating the captain had given him while he fucked him over the hours—Pyotr had no idea how many. He was still tied to the bed, but Katya, Mikhail, and the American doctor were each at a corner, cutting the bounds away with knives.

"Wha . . .?" was the best that Pyotr could manage. He was bruised and in pain in every muscle.

"Shhh, conserve your strength," Katya hissed. "I saw you being taken away and I sent one of the Turkish relief workers to follow you. The clinic has been closed down. The Turks see no need to give health care to the refugees on the quay; they'd prefer all of the refugees died. Samuel will take us back to the encampment in the cart. An American destroyer is off the coast there to evacuate the relief team, and Samuel is saying that you, Mikhail, and I are part of the team."

She paused and looked down at Pyotr's face. It was evident to Pyotr that she expected him to ask why the American would do this for her. But Pyotr knew why. He didn't ask, and he didn't judge. He only envied. Instead, he mumbled, "Mikhail too?"

"Yes, he's going with us. The American ship will take us all back to Constantinople. Now don't exert yourself further; you'll need what's left of your strength for the journey under sacks in the cart."

Chapter Seven: Constantinople Redux

Moaning was Pyotr's only defense against the glorious onslaught, He was gripping the thin coverlet on the bed in both his fists and teeth. He was crouched over the side of the bed, his legs spread and his bare toes digging into the wood of the floor. His cock had been pulled back between his legs, and it, his balls, and his entrance were being assaulted by expert lips and tongue and scraping teeth until, in a groan of surrender, he came in a fountaining of cum. Only then, after Pyotr had been completely satisfied did the American diplomat stand, hunch over his back, grab his legs in a wheelbarrow stance, press the head of his skin-sheathed cock inside Pyotr's channel, and worry Pyotr's prostate with it until Pyotr came again. Then and only then, when Pyotr was completely spent, did Kenneth O'Dell turn Pyotr on his cock so that the young Russian faced him. Propping Pyotr's ankles on his shoulders, he began pumping Pyotr fast and deep so that Pyotr gasped and panted and writhed under the older, larger man and cried out how much he wanted exactly what he was getting.

No man who Pyotr had ever lain under fucked him as fully and satisfyingly as Kenneth O'Dell did. And no one was capable of taking him so lovingly either. He varied his fucking. One day, he'd be rough and overpowering; another day he'd be gentle and solicitous of Pyotr's every need and wish. Pyotr called no favorite; O'Dell could do whatever he wished with him, and he would melt to it as he never had done for any other man.

As both lay on the bed exhausted, O'Dell repeated the plea that he had made each Sunday for the past four weeks.

"This is no mere dalliance, Pyotr. I'm sure not for you any more than it is for me. You body doesn't lie to me. I'm being assigned back to the States in the spring. You can come with me. You must come with me. Surely you want to leave Constantinople. I can make a new life for you—for us—in the States. But I must start the paperwork soon if it is to happen smoothly."

Pyotr sighed with regret as he'd done each previous time. "I cannot come with you. I've told you that before. Nothing has changed."

"But why? You've never given me a good reason why. Don't you want me? Is it that you cannot lay with just one man? I will share you if that's what you must have. I'll do anything to make you happy."

"You know it's not that," Pyotr said, turning and running his fingers over O'Dell's jaw line and then leaning in to him and giving him a kiss. "You do everything to make me happy. I just can't leave Constantinople and go with you."

And Pyotr couldn't tell him why he couldn't. He did love O'Dell above almost all others. But he couldn't go with him to the States as long as there was a chance for him and Katya.

Even though life would inevitably be changed in the spring when Kenneth O'Dell left Constantinople, for now it was almost as if Smyrna had never happened. Pyotr was back in Constantinople, working now as manager of Theo Maneates's Turkish interests—until, Theo's wife in Athens said, Theo returned from Smyrna. Of course, though they wouldn't say it, neither Pyotr nor Theo's wife really thought that ever would happen. He was still being paid a pittance, but he had status now. And that was much harder for a Russian refugee to achieve in Constantinople than money.

Pyotr had also returned to helping on Sunday afternoon in Helen Bristol's Russian refugee soup kitchen at the Sirkidji train station in Stambul. Although nearly two years after the initial influx most of the faces of the Russian refugees had changed, because many of the original evacuees had managed to go on to other countries and new lives, White Russian refugees were still flowing out of Russia via the Black Sea and washing up on Constantinople's docks.

Kenneth O'Dell was still working at the soup kitchen on Sunday afternoons as well, and thus O'Dell was still taking Pyotr to a Horhor Street hotel after their shift was over and fucking him to heaven. What was new was that the quality of the hotel they used had improved and O'Dell was now using the skin condoms he preferred and brought himself rather than the latex ones the hotel had initially provided. O'Dell had suggested that they forgo the condoms altogether, but Pyotr had correctly seen that as a subtle attempt by O'Dell to solidify their relationship and make it monogamous. That was when Pyotr had said he could not commit to being only with O'Dell. Although at the time Pyotr had been afraid that O'Dell would then leave him, such was his control over the American diplomat that he said he would live with Pyotr's decision. Pyotr wasn't fucking other men, though. In his mind, however, he was still available to Katya whenever she wanted him, so he couldn't bring himself to pledge total commitment to O'Dell. He could not bring himself to tell the American this.

Just as before, Pyotr was being invited to the Bristols' weekend cruises in the admiral's flagship, Scorpion, when they invited Kenneth O'Dell, and Pyotr usually accepted the invitation. Now nearly everyone pretty much knew—but didn't say—that O'Dell and Pyotr were a pair. But as long as both were handsome and witty and played an expert hand of bridge, Helen Bristol didn't care what they did in their shared cabin. The admiral possibly would have cared if he'd known, but he was much too busy, as the senior U.S. diplomat in Constantinople, not knowing—or, more accurately, turning a blind eye to—what was going on in Turkey to know what was going on inside his wife's weekend cruise parties.

O'Dell and Pyotr also were being openly seen in each other's company in Constantinople restaurants and nightclubs. Pyotr no longer was a chauffeur but now was the Turkey manager for the Maneates holdings, a major provisioner of the U.S. missions in Turkey. So it wasn't out of keeping for the two men to fraternize in public.

It was during one such meal together, at the expatriate community restaurant and night club, Moscovite, that Pyotr was to see something he was always to remember later.

"Who is that extraordinary-looking man at the table over there with those six children?" he asked Kenneth. He had brought O'Dell's attention to a chunky, middle-aged man in a U.S. naval admiral's uniform sitting at a table with six children of various sizes gathered around him. The man had gray hair in abundance but was sporting a black handlebar mustache. "The man is obviously American, but the children all look Russian and he must be old enough to be their grandfather. I didn't realize that the Moscovite served children this late in the evening."

"Who?" O'Dell asked, tearing his attention away from the tough chicken breast he was wrestling with and looking in the direction in which Pyotr's fork was pointing. "Oh him. That's Admiral Newton McCully. He's such a commanding figure here that the Moscovite would serve goats if they pattered in here by his side."

"Not the Admiral McCully of the Crimea evacuation?" Pyotr declared.

"The same," O'Dell answered.

Pyotr looked back at the admiral with renewed respect. McCully was a legend in the region and a hero to the Russian evacuees. As the American observer to the White Russian army in the Black Sea region, McCully had pressed—over Bristol's objections even—for American involvement in the evacuation from the Crimea before anyone else had seen the need. He had eventually prevailed, and the ships under his command, the cruiser USS Galveston and destroyer Smith Thompson were in the forefront of the Allied forces participation in that evacuation, making trip after trip between Sevastopol and Constantinople until the Bolshevik army had overrun the city.

"But the children?" Pyotr said. "Is there a story there?"