Escape to Constantinople

Both stripped by the bed, without words being exchanged, and Pyotr went down on the bed on his belly. The captain stretched on top of him, and he fed his cock inside Pyotr and showed him that ship's captains could be hungry too. Before the captain had come, Pyotr heard the door to the captain's cabin open, and another senior officer entered and disrobed slowly as he watched the captain fucking Pyotr. Pyotr watched the other officer removing his clothes. He was a florid redhead, tall and thin, but made of solid muscle, and had the longest cock Pyotr had ever seen, which now was standing at a rising angle up from the flaming red hair of his crotch.

"Costas said you had a lively one up here, Captain, and might want some company. After you're done?"

"You know what I like. And he's a prostitute. We can have him together."

Pyotr groaned as the captain rose up into a kneeling position on the bed, bringing Pyotr up with him without dislodging his thick cock from Pyotr's channel. Pyotr was being clutched to the captain's chest, with one of the captain's arms around his belly and Pyotr's thigh on top of the captain's. The redheaded ship's officer knelt on the bed between Pyotr's thighs and grabbed and raised Pyotr's ankles to his shoulders while the captain tipped Pyotr's body back, raising his pelvis.

While Pyotr panted hard, groaned, and gave little cries, the redhead worked his long cock in on top of the captain's inside Pyotr's channel. When he was deeply embedded, the captain and the redhead's faces met over Pyotr's shoulder in a passionate kiss, the two moaned in harmony with Pyotr's grunts and groans, and the redhead started to stroke his cock inside Pyotr and on top of the captain's cock.

After the captain was done, he had the other officer give Pyotr some more beer and food, told Pyotr he was the best male whore they'd had since leaving Constantinople the last time, and returned Pyotr to the crew for their enjoyment.

On the morning of the third day, the U.S. cruiser, the St. Louis, didn't pass the Rion, by. It came alongside, sent a water hose across to the becalmed ship to the parched-throated cries of approval of the refugees on deck, and then took the Rion in tow and headed for Constantinople.

Food for the refugees had already been passed across—the St. Louis apparently had been apprised of the Rion's plight and had come to the rescue prepared. If it had come one or two days earlier, though, there would have been many more mouths to feed than there were now. Pyotr was never more proud, either before or after, in the Russian people as he was that day. As food came on board from the St. Louis, he watched, tears in his eyes, as the starving Russians calmly queued up to receive it and ensured that the very young, old, and inform received their rations first. Pyotr wasn't proud of the circumstance under which he himself still lived, however. But he was now thinking in terms of a survivor, not a Romanov noble. Nobility was not that prized a possession at this time in Russian history, he thought with a great deal of bitterness.

* * * *

The captain of the Rion, out of pride, had refused to have his freighter towed from the Straits of Bosporus at the Black Sea end of the water passage into the Sea of Marmara in the daylight, so it was twilight before the St. Louis, with its derelict captive in tow, entered the straits. It would be nearly eight hours before they reached the great city straddling Europe and Asia. Pyotr was standing at the rails along with the crowd of refugees, thinned out distressingly by the deaths and burials at sea over the previous few days.

He watched the lights on the shore become more densely spaced and bright as the tandem vessels steamed through the Bosporus. The first impressive sight on the approach to the city were the lights of the Rumeli Hisarı, the fortress built in the fifteenth century to guard the approach to the city from the Bosporus and, above that, Roberts College, which was founded and run by American missionaries. The redheaded ship's officer, who had shared him with the captain, had sidled up to Pyotr and gave him a running commentary of the various palaces—the Dommabahce Palace and the Beylerbeyi Sarayi—of the minarets of large, ornate mosques floating on the skyline, the docks, and markets the ships were passing en route to where the Rion was to be birthed at anchor in Buyukdere Bay, along with myriad other Russian refugee vessels.

"Do you know where to go and what you will do in Constantinople?" the officer asked.

"I will seek out the Russian émigré community, I suppose," Pyotr answered. "Just follow them from the ship. I have no better plans for my future than any of the others do. Just to escape the Bolsheviks."

The officer snorted. "You won't need to go far. There are Russian princes under every rock and in every sewer. You will be hard pressed to survive."

Pyotr looked at the man beside him sharply, but there was no reason to believe in his demeanor that he knew of Pyotr's parentage. As depressing—and truthful, Pyotr was sure—as what the ships' officer was telling him was, Pyotr knew he would be better in Constantinople than in Sevastopol. He had wondered constantly over the past few days what had become of Grigory Orlov and his fellow cadets. He hoped that they were to be found in Constantinople already, having been transported on ships that had not foundered as the Rion had.

"You could stay on the Rion," the officer said in a low voice. "The crew has enjoyed you—the captain also. The captain has said it would be good for the crew to have such as you on board when we travel on to Europe when the Rion has been overhauled. We could take you to any of several ports as long as you permitted us to make sport with you until then. You would eat well and have a ceiling over your head at night, which is better than most of these bastards will get."

Pyotr contemplated this offer. The crew had been rough on him—but none rougher than the captain and this redheaded senior officer combined. It would be a way for him to get far, far away from the refugee encampments that already taxed the Turks to the point of groaning—or at least to get ahead of the influx of Russian émigrés into mainland Europe. But then he would be completely on his own. There was no hope he could unite again with the Imperial Military Academy cadet corps, which was the last place his family knew he could be located.

"Thank you, but no. I will take my chances in Constantinople."

"You will know where we are being refitted," the officer answered before he turned and disappeared into the gawking crowd along the rails. "You have until we are patched up and sail away again to decide. The captain has said that there would be money in it for you as well. He would much rather have the crew using you on the ship than whoring on the docks and getting sliced up in their sniffing for it there."

It wasn't much of a choice, Pyotr knew. But he had seen enough of what real life had become to know that it was more of a choice than any of the refugees huddled around him had. And he was not so full of pride any more that we would reject the choice out of hand. He had already crossed that line of prostituting himself for survival. It seemed like he'd been doing that for half of his life—just not as literally as he now was doing.

"And you, sir," he asked. "Do you care if I go or stay?"

"I . . . I would much prefer you stay, of course. As would the captain."

At least there was this, Pyotr thought. At least he still had goods to sell that some wanted to buy. That too was more than most of his fellow refugees had.

Chapter Five: Constantinople

Pyotr lay on his belly on the bed in the cheap hotel, naked, and watched the American, Kenneth O'Dell, equally naked, soaping up his jaw and carefully shaving off a day's worth of blond beard. Pyotr had met the handsome, self-confident man while serving at the refugee soup kitchen near the Sirkidji train station, near the tip of Seraglio Point in Stambul. Stambul was the old city of Constantinople on the Golden Horn, where the Bosporus entered the Sea of Marmara. The main thought in the young Russian's head at the moment was that the American looked good from the rear. He was a good decade older than Pyotr was, but he had the build of an athlete, with broad shoulders tapering down to a thin waist; no hips to speak of, but heavily muscled thighs and well-shaped buttocks flaring from there.

O'Dell had told Pyotr he worked at the American embassy in Constantinople and put in time helping with the food kitchen that Helen Bristol, wife of the chief naval officer and top American diplomat in Constantinople, had set up in the center of the area in which the Russian evacuees had their temporary camps until they—hopefully—could be pawned off on Western countries. In answer to Pyotr's question of how he had kept in such good shape, O'Dell had answered that he had played American football for the 1913 national champion Notre Dame University team and had swum vigorous laps ever since—that he had welcomed the embassy assignment to Constantinople largely because it had enabled him to swim the width of the Bosporus Strait at increasingly wider points. The notion of swimming the Bosporus was romantic to O'Dell because he had read of Lord Byron having done so.

O'Dell had told Pyotr that he was a romantic at heart, and Pyotr thought O'Dell had fucked like one, which Pyotr found both surprising and inviting.

Pyotr had no idea what American football was, but he well appreciated the swimming comments and was impressed at the stamina it must have built up in the American. His stamina throughout the night in the hotel room had, indeed, been impressive, and Pyotr was surprised that what O'Dell had told him about the university sports team he'd been on—the championship year he had played—meant that the man must be pushing thirty. Years older than Pyotr, but the man had fucked like a much stronger, more vigorous man.

Not that a lot of the men who were fucking Pyotr weren't vigorous—the Turks he went with were particularly so—but O'Dell was also the most attentive man Pyotr had lain with. He had been hard for an hour or more at intervals throughout the night, and he prepared Pyotr and worked him such that Pyotr begged for the cock and ejaculated twice to each time O'Dell ejaculated—the first time with O'Dell patiently rubbing across Pyotr's prostate until he had come. At the same time, O'Dell had complimented Pyotr on how many ejaculations Pyotr had given him through the night. He had said that he'd be hard pressed to remain awake at the embassy today because of how many times he'd wanted Pyotr in the night—and had been willingly received by Pyotr—and had exploded with Pyotr.

Pyotr hadn't gotten to sleep much either, but any time he could spend in a hotel room, no matter how primitive, was a comfort to revel in. He was particularly grateful to O'Dell for not treating him as a prostitute even though, in their coupling, there was every reason for O'Dell to know that Pyotr now was quite experienced and harbored few inhibitions. Pyotr sucked and rode a cock like a pro.

Pyotr had been in Constantinople over three months now and was working the streets, along with far too many other of the Russian evacuees, thankfully more women than young men, and sleeping on a pallet in a refugee camp tent during the day. Most of the work he was able to do was in the late evening and early night period and was conducted on the steep-sloped Horhor street near the Hagia Sofia mosque and Topkapi Palace in the old city district of Fatih.

When he first landed in Turkey, Pyotr, along with all of the survivors of the Rion, was taken off the ship on the Isle of Proti, which had been set up as a gateway for the refugees. Here they were deloused; their clothes, including the gray with red trim Imperial Military Academy tunic that had given Pyotr recognition and cachet, were taken from them and burned; and they were given worn but serviceable clothes to wear. Some attempt was made to record their backgrounds at this embarkation point—with Pyotr manufacturing a background that was dull enough to satisfy them without raising their interest—and to attempt to link them up with relatives and friends outside of Turkey who would take them. The more believable they could be that they would leave Turkey quickly, the more likely they were to be permitted out of the filthy, disease-ridden encampments on the Isle of Proti and to cross the water into Constantinople proper.

There were case workers there to talk to the refugees about how they could start fitting into life in Constantinople and prepare for relocating elsewhere. The official who talked with Pyotr had been quite straightforward. He had complimented Pyotr on his looks and obvious cultural refinement, had told him flatly that his best prospects were probably as a male prostitute on the streets or as a waiter in one of the expatriate supper houses, which was much the same thing, and had quickly propositioned him. Pyotr had risen and left the conversation immediately, but the kernel of reality had been set in his head.

After three days in the Proti camps, Pyotr returned to the administrative unit, found a presentable Turkish official who wanted to fuck him, and was then quickly cleared to leave the Isle of Proti behind and disappear into the Russian camps in Stambul's Fatih District on the European bank of the Bosporus.

Pyotr had immediately fallen into the routine of earning a bit of money to supplement what he could get in the refugee camp by walking the streets of the sailor bars near the Seraglio Point docks and sucking off half-drunken sailors from a myriad of nations or letting them quick fuck him against a wall in the alleys off Horhor.

The first time he was taken to one of the cheap hotels in the district was nearly the last time he had worked the streets.

He was on the street in front of one of the bars when he heard a gruff voice call out. "Pyotr Romanov. Count Romanov, is that you?"

The two young men he was standing with to while away the intervals and to give the clients a choice turned their heads toward him in surprise upon seeing that he had reacted. They were both Russian. They knew what a Romanov was. Of course Pyotr was going by the name Apraksin now.

Pyotr checked his reaction and tried to act as if he hadn't heard. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he tried to locate the face of the man who had called out to him, half recognizing the voice. Thus, he wasn't completely surprised when he saw that it was his fellow imperial academy cadet, Nikolai Saltykov, who had worked his way into taking Vasily's place between Pyotr's thighs back during the retreat from Kazan.

Nikolai was dressed like any of the other sailors off the docks now, and he was nearly as drunk as a sailor would be at this time of night. Leave it to Nikolai, Pyotr thought, to be able to disappear back into the working population.

"I'm sorry . . . who?" Pyotr murmured as Nikolai strode up to where they stood. "I don't know . . ."

"No matter," Nikolai declared, obviously understanding from the looks the other two men were giving Pyotr that they had no idea who Pyotr really was. "Come with me." He grabbed Pyotr's wrist with a tight fist, and Pyotr followed where he was being led, saying nothing to Nikolai until they were well out of earshot of Pyotr's two acquaintances.

"How did you come to be here? Are you a sailor now? What of Grigory Orlov?"

"Shut the fuck up. Yes, I'm a sailor now. One has to live. I see how you've chosen to do it. And I don't know what the fuck happened to Orlov—and care even less."

Nikolai pushed Pyotr into the doorway of the nearest cheap by-the-hour hotel, paid for the room, and manhandled Pyotr up the stairs. Once in the room, Pyotr turned to ask Nikolai more questions, but Nikolai punched him in the stomach with one hand, while uppercutting a fist into his jaw with the other, and Pyotr fell back onto the floor. Nikolai kicked him viciously in the ribs and then pulled him up by his hair with one hand and punched him in the face with the other fist. Still holding a crumpled Pyotr with one hand in his hair, Nikolai unbuttoned his fly with the other and pushed Pyotr down on his knees on the floor.

"Suck this, your majesty," Nikolai growled. "And be good at it, or I'll beat your royal ass to a pulp."

They never made it to the narrow bed in the room. After Pyotr had sucked Nikolai's cock hard, the bigger man pushed Pyotr down on all fours, mounted him like a dog, and fucked him brutally, following Pyotr across the floor and brutally thrusting and thrusting again as Pyotr sought a safety that was unattainable. At the far end of the room, beaten and with no more struggle in him, Pyotr was flipped onto his back and just lay there panting and looking dully up at Nikolai's hatred-enveloped face, as the sailor pushed his knees under Pyotr's buttocks and the small of his back and pistoned his channel hard and deep. Nikolai left Pyotr moaning on the floor and clinching his sides with no further explanation how Nikolai had gotten from the Crimea to here.

After that, Pyotr had been wary about where he was in the bar area of the Fatih District and who was coming out of the bars and onto the street. For some reason, even while Nikolai was cruelly fucking him, Pyotr had been nostalgic for the past and wondered even more now who among his fellow cadets, the academy faculty—and his own family, for that matter—was still alive and what they were having to do to remain so.

This encounter with the American embassy man, O'Dell, was only the second time Pyotr had been in a hotel room in the Fatih District—this time a far better one, but still one frequented by prostitutes and their clients. And it was the first time he'd been kept for the night. It also was the first attentive sex he'd had since Grigory Orlov was teaching him how to make the most out of taking the cock, although, as challenging as it was, Pyotr had found the double cocking of Rion's captain and the redhead with the long, long cock about as arousing as he'd ever had—in just the realization that he could take two lustful men at once.

Kenneth O'Dell's commitment to Helen Bristol's refugee soup kitchen near the Sirkidji train station was for early Sunday afternoons. Their hands had touched while O'Dell was scooping gruel into bowls the first Sunday Pyotr had seen him there, and both had looked up at each other in surprise. O'Dell had smiled and Pyotr had then smiled as well. The next Sunday, taking his time in the service, O'Dell asked Pyotr if he smoked.

"I did when I could buy cigarettes," Pyotr asked.

"I'll be finished in an hour," O'Dell had said. "If you'd like to share a cigarette with me, you might stay around. I will gladly spare you one for the company."

Pyotr stayed around. There wasn't much else he needed to do until several hours after the sun went down anyway.

One of the first things O'Dell said to him as they were standing in the shadow of the train station and looking up at the Hagia Sofia mosque was, "You aren't like the rest. You seem better educated. And you carry yourself with more pride."

"My parents were teachers," Pyotr answered. "Simple village teachers outside of St. Petersburg, but I suppose they educated me better than most. And as far as carrying myself with pride, I don't know how you would reach that conclusion. There isn't much pride for a refugee from Russia in these days."

"Are you en route to joining your family?"

"I don't know if I have any family left."

"What will you do?"

"Blow with the wind, I suppose."

Then O'Dell told Pyotr about how he was an American of Irish descent who had gone to Notre Dame University in the middle of the United States and played American football there. And how he was in the American foreign service because he wanted to see the world, and that he was a long-distance swimmer, and loved the exotic atmosphere of Constantinople that left a person free to be what they couldn't be back home in the middle of the United States.