When murder isn’t considered murder, but instead a reasonable and acceptable course of action, what will you do in response?
Chapter One
Sitting in her office in the Bereznik capital city of Katannia, the woman called ‘Svetlana Bugayev’ by her superiors (of which there were few), ‘Cobra’ by her peers and subordinates (the second group was far larger than the first) and Roza- ‘Rose’, by her fiancé, only allowed herself only a moment of irritation when the morning’s intelligence updates did not include the confirmed death of Adam Svenson. Death was the preferred outcome, but he was out of the way, that was acceptable.
Svetlana made herself let go of her feelings about it. Yes, irritation and the ensuing annoyance were useful emotions for the motivation they gave, but outside of that they were a distraction. She could not afford distractions. Not now. Not with the end of the mission so very close.
Setting the file on her plain pinewood desk, she drew across the steaming glass of tea brought in by her aide de camp, picked up the accompanying wedge of lemon and squeezed a few drops into the steaming black tea. A quick swirl with the silver teaspoon from the set she’d inherited from her grandmother - today was Wednesday so that meant the one with a tumbled amethyst set into the handle - and the tea was prepared. Svetlana picked up her tea glass and admired the thin gold foil designs on the cup - again, since it was Wednesday, it meant today’s glass had the twining vines with their arrow-head leaves. She blew on the tea, watched the curls of steam as they caught the thin beams of winter sunlight streaming into her strictly utilitarian office, and relaxed into the embrace of her one luxury - her softly padded, oxblood leather office chair.
The noise of the outside world was well muffled by thick lexan and thicker stone, the room was warm, and the tea a comforting weight in her hands. Safe and secure, she sipped her tea and permitted her thoughts to drift as she reviewed the events of the meeting last night with the junta who ruled Bereznik.
‘Those men were so dramatic, we’d have been done so much sooner if they hadn’t wasted so much time.’ She felt her lips twist at the memory of raised voices, red faces, chairs being shoved back and fists pounding tables. Such displays of machismo and bragado by General Berenora and his lackeys embroidered their perceived authority, so of course they’d indulged in a great show of temper when the different arms of the operation were called to account for recent results - and recent failings. They’d tried to make her - the lone woman in the room - the scapegoat of course, but she’d deftly reminded them that while she had delivered the device (because of course they’d turned to her to deliver it, she was the best) it was Yuri Broz of the Cyber-Influence Network who had advocated using the Libertarian patsies, as opposed to her more traditional missions (which had all been successful.)
A smile touched the corners of her mouth at her counterpart’s white-faced terror when the generals had turned on him. But she had slipped in amidst the threats levelled at Yuri - the gulag, the firing squad and more - reminding the generals that yes, while the original plan had yet to come to fruition, there were still good results that they could profit from: the Western capitalists pigs had been reminded of their own mortality and the closeness of death, and encouraged to fear the (exaggerated) danger lurking within their own walls. A little nudge here, a push there, and they’d be distracted by the idea of the wolves in their sheepfolds, their attention on their own territory instead of on them. And a distracted enemy, she reminded them, is one who is looking the wrong way, weakened, and ripe for the plucking.
That had soothed the ruffled feathers, calmed tempers, and earned her the gratitude of the Cyber-Influence Network’s top man.
‘And while the men huff and puff and strut like so many peacocks with their tunics dripping with medals and ribbons for this and that,’ she took another sip of tea, ‘I will get the real work done.’
She figuratively turned away from the memory, it was time to move on. Yes, a victory was a delightful thing to savour, but just like annoyance, it was a distraction if she lingered on it too long, and she had so much work to do.
‘I must pressure my agent at the W.A.S.’ Svetlana tapped one finger against the rim of her tea glass. ‘I need confirmation before we can proceed.’ She slid her eyes across her office to the stark white wall covered with photos she had slowly and painstakingly assembled as she prepared for the operation: images of Adam Svenson and the surviving nine of his team of twenty. The thick dossiers associated with the photos occupied the entire top drawer of her filing cabinet, and she had memorised almost all of them.
‘Well, there were nine survivors when I started,’ she reminded herself with a flicker of a thin smile.
There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that if they hadn’t attended to the man and his team before attempting to open up W.A.S.’ secrets again, striving to break through their security and plunder their secrets like oystermen cracking open shells for both meat and pearls, that the organisation would have immediately called upon its most successful counterintelligence agents to replicate their earlier feat. ‘And we cannot have that, no, not this time,’ Cobra mused.
She slouched with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, slowly swivelling the chair back and forth while plans and ideas drifting through her mind like leaves on a pond as she brooded - plans about both about the near future, and what was to come later. She could not be content with where she was, contentment was the path to complacency, but her plans would take time to come into full flower and she needed to be patient ‘Good things take time, after all,’ she reminded herself, sitting up to take a sip of her now tepid tea. ‘Easy come, easy go, but what you value, you will fight for, and I will fight for my people and my country. Bereznik will have her place amongst the nations, with or without their cooperation.’
0o0o0
“I’ll tell your mum.”
Scarlet, mid pivot in readiness to get off the bed in his usual ward and finish discharging himself AMA - against medical advice - froze and looked at the CMO with genuine concern. His mother Mary Metcalfe was a formidable woman (she had to be, she’d raised him), an ex-WAAF nurse who’d worked in some notorious hotspots. This was a threat with teeth to it. “...you wouldn’t.”
Fawn crossed his arms over his chest. “Try me.”
Paul hesitated. While he was almost certain that the CMO wouldn’t pierce the twin veils of secrecy around his personal life and his medical records to tattle to his mum, ‘almost’ wasn’t ‘completely’. Yes, he routinely pushed boundaries wherever he could - that was part of why he’d been selected - but he wasn’t (despite the opinions of some) actively suicidal. Reckless, yes, impulsive (to outside eyes), yes, but not suicidal.
‘...I’d better not,’ he decided as he swung his feet back up onto the bed and pulled the covers over his legs. ‘Fawn’s had a bad run just now with Adam and I, pushing things would be a bad idea.’
“Thank you,” Fawn told him, picking up his chart and making some notes. “Give me another twelve hours, Captain, that’s all I need to make sure you’re actually fit for duty and not running on sass and stubbornness.”
“I’ll concede on the stubbornness but not the sass,” Paul shot back in his best cut-glass accent as he tried to stack the thin pillows into something approximating proper thickness by stuffing two into the same pillowcase. “I do not sass. That’s Magenta. I snark.”
He got a sceptical eyebrow in reply, but Paul could still detect the smile that Fawn was fighting to hide.
A final scribble, the chart went back to the end of his bed, and Fawn was putting the pen back into his lab coat pocket and squaring his shoulders in preparation for a possible fight. “Look,” he began, “Scarlet, like it or not, you need to take it easy. I know you want to help get the bastards who hurt Blue, but you’ve spent the past few days playing antivenom horse. You need to take some recovery time before the next crisis hits, not just for this thing,” he tapped his chest, “but for this thing,” he tapped his forehead. “This was a rough one and Blue’s on the mend, but he’s not out of the woods yet.”
Paul nodded slowly, that did make sense, but that statement also told him something else, a subtext that he teased out from between the lines. “You might need me as a donor again.”
The CMO’s sigh was a verbal grimace. “I hate it, I abso-bloody-lutely hate it, but yes, I might need you to break in there and stick your hand in the sharps bin again. Not right now,” Fawn was quick to add, “I’ll say something if it’s becoming necessary.”
“Understood. I’ll do my best to stay close,” Scarlet promised. ‘Now that I can actually think straight… Fawn does not look in the best condition. And he was rather careful to say ‘I need’, not ‘Blue’... oh.’ Dots connected, conclusions were drawn, and Paul couldn’t help but feel ashamed for the position he’d gone and put the doctors in by circumventing their oaths as he had. ‘I took the choice out of their hands, and considering the value I place on the ability to choose… that was wrong of me.’ Aloud he broached the topic with a “Doctor?”
“Yes?” Fawn clearly had noticed there was something bothering him.
“Ah, about before,” Paul gestured in the rough direction of the isolation ward, “I am sorry about the stunt I pulled. That was unkind of me to do to you and the team.” He firmly stomped on the urge to justify his actions with a more detailed explanation, that wouldn’t have helped and actually would have detracted from his apology.
Fawn blinked and a flicker of a smile briefly crossed his face. “Thanks.” The smile was already gone when he went on to say “I get why you did it, and you probably saved Blue’s life, but next time talk to us about it first. We’ve got access to all sorts of things, depending on what the bug is, we might be able to sort it out without you having to suffer too.”
“Understood,” Scarlet nodded, and he did.
“So,” the topic change was blatant and unwieldy, but they both went with it, “since you’re going to be staying here for a bit, you can do me a favour by pulling rank on Green and getting me an update on how the colonel is getting on with convincing W.A.S. to play nice.”
Now it was Scarlet’s turn to blink. “I thought you don’t want patients getting updates on ongoing missions?”
“Usually I don’t,” Fawn agreed, “but you need the information or you’re going to be climbing the walls and I want the information because who the hell hears ‘my former employee got attacked with genetically-engineered ebola by the people who tried to kill him while he was busy saving our collective asses’ and decides they don’t want to participate in the investigation?” The doctor snorted. “I want to know how they’re justifying that.”
“Me too.” Scarlet was already getting off the bed to go to the intercom. “Me too.”
Chapter Two
Due to the nature of a round planet and the human conceit that is time zones, Colonel White, Captain Ochre and Captain Grey arrived just after the morning parade at W.A.S.’ headquarters in rural California. Just over two hour’s drive from NASA’s famous proving ground the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the closest town was a ‘blink and you miss it’ place called Blackwells Corner and it was surrounded by vast amounts of nothing - which was exactly what you wanted if you were flying in an aircraft that hadn’t had all the bugs worked out yet.
Getting into the sprawling facility was easy thanks to their IDs and the warrant that Grey showed the gate guard. Getting into the ‘L’ shaped office block that sprouted radar dishes on one end and an air traffic control tower on the other took somewhat longer - a rather crude delaying tactic as evidenced by hurried phone calls being made in guard shacks and booths at several points along the way - which meant by the time they barged into the commander’s office, White had progressed from ‘annoyed’ to ‘irritated’, and the commander was ready and waiting for them, seated behind an ornate oak desk with Gary York standing beside him in an approximation of parade rest.
Personally, White was far more impressed by York than Phillip. York was a wiry man with hard eyes and his black hair was cropped short in a buzz cut. His uniform - a light grey shirt, black trousers and black dress shoes - was perfectly razor-creased and every badge and ribbon was ruler straight. Phillip was just as sharply presented with not a strand of his salt and pepper hair out of place, but that was where the similarities ended. He held his head like he was posing for a Roman sculptor, but had the face and paunch of someone who regularly restocked their humidor and liquor cabinet. Theoretically he was in his forties, but his habits and excesses had prematurely aged him.
“Commander Leo Phillip,” White began, an edge of censure curling into his voice, “you are a difficult man to get in contact with.”
“I’m a busy man, something I’m sure you can appreciate, Colonel White,” Commander Phillips said with an almost ingratiating smile as he stood up and came around his desk. He beckoned York forward. “Colonel White, this is Gary York, my head of counterintelligence.”
Perfunctory handshakes were exchanged and when White felt the slip of paper York passed over with the action, he maintained his stony expression and was quick to secrete it in his palm before Phillip could detect anything amiss.
No offer of chairs, water or other hospitality was made as Commander Phillip leaned against his desk with arms crossed over his chest. “So what is so urgent it brings you all the way out here?”
“Someone has been very busy killing off your former teammates, Mister York.” White felt he was quite justified in ignoring the commander and directing his attention at Gary York. “Adam Svenson is currently hospitalised after an attempt on his life. Yourself and Ms Aggie Graves are the only other survivors.”
“Svenson?” Gary snorted. “I heard about that. If he kicks it I’m breaking out the Glenfiddich and pouring myself a double to celebrate.”
“Really now.”
To Gary’s credit he didn’t falter despite the cool note in White’s voice. “Really.” Gary barely stopped the sneer before it could finish forming. “Svenson’s a silver spoon, trust-fund nepo baby who got a taste of the real world, got scared and ran off to the safety of daddy’s money.” Another derisive snort. “As soon as he got his big damn hero moment, he was outta here.”
“I don’t suppose you have anything else to add?” White turned to W.A.S.’ commander.
“He’s summed it up,” was Commander Phillip’s nonchalant reply. “Look, Colonel White, I’ve read through the data your guy sent me and so far it’s chaff in the wind. Yes, it’s sad what happened to the others, but I’m not seeing any evidence that it was anything more than just the stuff that happens. The only actual, credible, assassination attempt was on Svenson, and according to the documents I’ve seen that was some libertarian kooks drinking the anarchist Kool-Aid.”
White chose to ignore the inaccurate terminology and privately was very impressed with how well his officers were maintaining their poker faces. He could only see their seething tempers because he knew them so well. “You are a brave man, Commander Phillip,” was what he chose to say, his tone as close to a drawl as he ever got, “you are being warned of an imminent threat and are choosing to ignore it in favour of whatever personal grudge you have against someone who saved your organisation from being shut down.”
While Commander Phillip went red-faced at the insult, his mouth opening and shutting like a particularly witless goldfish, White turned to his officers. “Gentlemen, we are done here.”
Twin ‘S.I.G’s, then Ochre and Grey formed up around him and they passed out of the building and into the brightening Californian morning, the sky overhead a hard blue streaked with brushstrokes of white cloud. They got into the car and out the gate without incident, Ochre driving with White in the front passenger seat and Grey in the back, and they were halfway to Blackwells Corner when White deemed it safe to speak.
“I am impressed with your composure, gentlemen,” he began, then showed them the slip of paper. “It seems that not everything is as it seems at W.A.S. York slipped this to me.”
“What does it say?” Ochre kept his attention on driving, though he clearly itched to get a look at the message.
“ ‘David’, co-ordinates and a time,” White told them, already leaning forward to input the numbers into the car’s computer and see what location it spat out.
“It could be a trap,” Grey cautioned.
“Agreed,” White nodded, “but this is a risk we will have to take.”
“What’s the location?” That was Ochre.
“A restaurant, ‘Willow Ranch’, in a nearby town called Bowerbank,” White reported. “And the time is 1430.”
“Plenty of time to get into plain clothes and check things out,” Grey opinioned.
“Indeed.” White was already studying the area around the restaurant on the map, identifying lines of sight and access in and out of the building. “Back to the airfield, Captain Ochre.”
“S.I.G.”
0o0o0
It was forty two minutes of travel time to the Spectrum-owned airfield they’d landed at this morning. It took twenty minutes to locate and change into civilian-passing outfits of hiking boots, jeans, tee shirts and windbreakers in muted colours, followed by a half hour nap while a civilian car was arranged by the on-site staff - time zones were hell on circadian rhythms and sleeping when you could was SOP. That was followed by another fifty two minutes of travel time in a blue saloon car, then they were pulling up in a parking lot a few doors down from Willow Ranch. It was a ‘mom and pop’ style place, dressed up to suit the name, and the signage out front boasted about the barbeque chicken and brisket, cold beer, and wood fired pizza on offer.
Not a single trace of it showed in their facial expressions or body language, but White could sense Grey and Ochre’s stress levels shooting up as they got out of the car and began a circuitous route to the restaurant. He understood it completely - escorting one’s Commander in Chief to an off-base meeting was one thing, escorting one’s CIC to an unscheduled meeting based solely on a note directing them to a location they hadn’t had a chance to scope out properly was something else entirely.
Both eyes on their surroundings, scanning faces, cars and windows for anything untoward, Charles silently repeated his usual vow whenever he was dirtside on a mission: ‘I swear I will not be foolish.’ He knew his officers would lay down their lives to safeguard his, it was part of their duty, and every time he was in a position like this he both hoped and prayed that they would never have to do so. Half of his bluster and ranting aboard the USS Panther II had been to cover his own deep upset over one of his officers dying in his defence. Yes, he had been well aware that Scarlet would recover, but that did little to lessen the shock of it in the moment. Death was supposed to be a permanent condition, after all.
“All clear,” Ochre murmured as they approached the building.
“S.I.G.” White acknowledged, letting Grey lead the way inside and Ochre take up the rear.
Going by the thinning crowd and the state of the tables, the lunch rush was winding down. A sign posted just inside the doors said ‘Please seat yourselves’ so they did, selecting a four-top table off to the right (because most people scan a room from left to right) that had clear lines of sight to the front entrance, kitchen and fire exit, but without putting any of them squarely in front of one of the four-paned windows.
A teenaged waitress in a plaid shirt, apron and black slacks came by with a jug of ice water, glasses and menus, and as soon as she bustled away to clear the other tables, an unassuming woman of medium height and build came from the direction of the bathroom. She was simply dressed in jeans and a plain yellow tee-shirt, a cracked leather bomber jacket slung over her left arm, and her brown hair was cut in a chin-length bob. She slid onto the empty chair next to Grey, put the jacket across her lap and murmured “I’m ‘David’,” as she picked up a menu. “As in ‘David and Goliath’ - I flew the cargo planes and all the other big ones. You’d know me as Aggie.”
“Good afternoon,” White nodded to her, recognising her from the file photo he’d seen on Cloudbase. He also, with a flicker of amusement, recognised how often she’d had to explain her callsign. “Can we talk here?”
“Yes, I swept it for devices before you got here and I know and cleared the staff,” she told them, but her business-like mein faltered when she asked “is Shoehorn okay? Duck updated me.”
“I presume you are referring to Adam Svenson and Gary York?” White asked, ignoring the little movement and flinch when Grey kicked Ochre under the table in warning. White kept his smile on the inside. Knowing Ochre as he did, he would be capitalising on ‘Shoehorn’ at the first opportunity, and knowing Blue, he’d make him regret it as soon as he could.
“Oh, yes,” Aggie flushed a little. “It’s been years, but old habits.”
“Understandable,” White nodded. He could see smudges of tiredness under her eyes, the set of her shoulders and the line of her mouth eloquently describing the stress she was under. That she was leaning into the comfort and familiarity of call signs was only natural. “He is safe and recovering,” was all he said. Yes, though she and they had checked the area, it was wise to be circumspect.
Aggie sighed in relief. “Thank you, sir.”
The waitress returned and conversation paused long enough for orders to be placed - beef enchiladas for Ochre, pulled pork tacos for Grey, three bean soup for himself and jerk chicken for Aggie, and as soon as the waitress was out of earshot, Aggie took up the briefing.
“Duck got in touch with me about three weeks ago, just before Rabbit, Jessica Lawrence, got run off the road by a truck in San Diego,” she began. “Bang’s death, Alistair Trigger, made him suspicious. The guy was a health nut and a hypochondriac, if he had any chance of having a heart attack he’d have picked it up months ago. Duck did some digging, followed up on some of the others, got suspicious, and reached out to me since I’m the only one still relatively local, I run a glider business nearby.” Her expression turned grim. “Two days later I checked my security, found tampering around my hangar and when I inspected my glider, someone had frayed the control cables.”
“So you went to ground?” Ochre asked.
“Yes.” She looked around the trio. “This has to be Bereznik. Plenty of people want into W.A.S.’ archives, but there’s only one country that would want to take out my team.”
“Isn’t York worried he’s a target?” Grey queried.
“He is.” Aggie’s lips thinned. “But he lives on base and he’s absolutely certain the only way to stop whatever Bereznik have planned is to be the man on the inside. He’s been pretending to be angry about Shoe to throw people off while he figured out how to reach out to him without getting caught. His act is believable, those two worked really well together but socially?” She shook her head and made an exasperated noise. “They mixed like oil and water. He’s gotten over it, but Duck was very sour when Shoe resigned, he said it was giving up when the glory work was over and leaving us with the drudge work. Duck’s always been laser focused on ‘The Mission’, so he kinda missed the fact that ‘attempts on your life getting other people killed’ might make you want to change jobs. Taking up Shoe’s role made him realise that.”
“I see,” White nodded slowly as he absorbed that information. “What about Commander Phillip?”
Aggie snorted. “In the job for less than a year and can’t see past the edge of his desk. On paper he’s an aeronautics engineer but he’s a political hack who made nice with the right people and got the job when Commander Torres had a stroke. He was supposed to be an interim commander, but the oversight committee’s taking their sweet time picking a replacement. Duck never liked him, so he’s been playing him the whole time.”
White sensed the look between Grey and Ochre and quite agreed with their unspoken message: it was terribly convenient timing, and he said as much, but Aggie shook her head.
“I doubt it,” she told them, “Gary did a deep dive into his background and finances, he’s an idiot, but he’s also a goody-two-shoes and so clean he squeaks.”
“Be that as it may, this is Bereznik and it’s not just any agent hunting you; it’s Cobra, and we cannot take any chances.”
“Cobra?” Aggie’s eyes got wide. “Duck mentioned her being on his suspect list.” She swore softly. “This is bad.”
“Does Duck have any idea what Cobra might be after?” Ochre queried. “Something she’d want badly enough to risk wiping out a mostly retired counterintelligence team before making a serious play for it?”
Aggie drummed her fingers on the table top. “There’s nothing exciting on base right now… some civilian aircraft, the latest Learjet, and a turbo-prop.” She considered the question for a moment longer. “There’s a new one due later in the year, a dual purpose passenger/cargo jet called a ‘Swift’. I’ve got no idea why she’d be interested in that, it’s another civvie plane.”
White was very glad of his long years of practice at keeping a mask over his expressions. ‘Swift’ was the development name for the next generation of Spectrum Passenger Jet. If Bereznik got their hands on that… well, he could think of multiple uses and none of them were good. ‘I should have seen the link,’ he rebuked himself, ‘I was aware it was close to flight tests, and of course it would go to W.A.S. as part of the testing process.’ “Perhaps there is something else on the horizon she is after,” was what he chose to say.
“There has to be, or she’s wanting our archives to get at some of the things that were on base earlier. There was a whole slew of military jets last year.” Aggie drummed her fingers on the table again, looked around the restaurant, then turned her attention back to them. “Before you ask, I’m staying put. I’m Duck’s outside contact and don’t take this the wrong way, but he doesn’t trust you yet.” She picked up her jacket, pulled a simple burner phone from an inside pocket and slid it over to White. “You can reach me on this.”
“Understood.” White pocketed it. “We’d best part ways for now, you’ve been in the open for too long.” From an interior pocket of his own jacket he took out two cards - a credit card that he handed to Ochre with the instructions of ‘have our meals packaged ‘to go’, and a business card that he handed to Aggie. “Should you need to call us.”
“Thanks, sir,” she nodded as she accepted the card and Ochre got up to settle the bill.
“If I may,” White asked, wanting to both fill in the time while they waited for the food and indulge his own curiosity, “how did Svenson earn the callsign ‘Shoehorn’?” He’d already known about Blue’s callsign of course, but the story behind it had never made it into the file, there were no incidents of note that could have explained it, and Blue had never shared it. Some call signs were obvious - such as the now deceased ‘Bang’ - but he simply couldn’t trace the logic chain that led to Blue being dubbed ‘Shoehorn.’
Aggie chuckled. “You can blame Commander Torres for it and Adam absolutely did. We were in the same intake. First parade, the commander was walking down the line of us new recruits while giving her welcome speech. She stopped at Adam, looked at him and said ‘we’re gonna have to shoehorn you into the cockpit, aren’t we?’ and it stuck. He hated it, so of course we used it every chance we could.”
White dearly wanted to chuckle as well, but he kept it suppressed. ‘Blue will certainly endeavour to make life very interesting for Ochre should he dare use that callsign around the Angels.’ “And ‘Duck’?” he asked aloud.
This time she grinned broadly. “First weekend liberty we got, we went to Blackwell’s Corner and got really drunk. We were staggering back to the cars when some ducks came flying overhead. I don’t know why, but he jumped up and somehow grabbed one out of mid air. So we’re all standing there and he’s holding this really angry duck and doesn’t know what to do with it. Of course that’s when a patrol car comes along and the deputy rolls down his window and shouts ‘Whaddaya think ya doin’!?’ at York. He got such a fright he threw the duck into the patrol car and we bolted.”
“You all escaped, I take it?” Hiding his amusement was much more difficult this time around. Young people and escapades were indeed a universal constant.
“Just barely.” Her grin broadened. “Shoe got us outta there, he was the designated driver and that man drives like he flies.”
“So I’ve heard.” White allowed a sliver of his amusement to show as Ochre made his way back with the bags of food and the three of them stood with much scraping of chairs against the wood-planked floor. “Be careful, Ms Graves, be very, very careful,” he cautioned as Ochre handed the jerk chicken over.
“I will.” The jacket went around her shoulders, then she pulled a much abused New York Yankees baseball cap from her back pocket and crammed it down over her hair. “Tell Shoehorn I said hi.” With that she vanished through the kitchen door.
White watched her go, then turned back to his officers. “Back to base,” he ordered. “We have a great deal of work to do.”
Chapter Three
Hours later, once everyone had returned to base, they gathered in Sickbay to update each other - both on what they knew and what they didn’t know yet but needed to. The doctors did not approve, but reluctantly allowed it with a stern command of ‘one hour, that’s it’ - out of all of them, Blue had the most experience with the Bereznik External Security Agency; they needed his insight.
Even stripped of everything that could be moved, the little room attached to the isolation ward was crowded with the data terminal, four captains, Colonel White and Green crammed into it, but they made it work, and an adjustment on the intercom meant that they could clearly hear Blue without him needing to strain himself.
“Long story short,” Magenta was wrapping up his briefing on the extensive files he’d gotten from Spectrum Intelligence, “Bereznik is gearing up for something big, but no one knows what. SI have over twenty microfiles and counting of the industries they’re tapping, the groups they’re influencing and what they’re suspected to be importing.” His growl was one of frustration. “Usually we don’t have enough information, but this time we have too much.”
That got a round of nods and noises of agreement. Information and how to sort it was a fickle beast in the intelligence game, prone to biting you as well as your opponent. If you weren’t careful in how you sifted it and what lens you viewed it through, you could easily find yourself drawing the wrong conclusions.
‘As my mentor often said, when you want something badly enough,’ White reminded himself, ‘you will find it.’ He didn’t have to look to know that he and his officers all wanted Cobra and Bereznik stopped, they would have to toe the line with care or they’d quickly get lost and disoriented, looking the wrong way and leaving their opponent with a free hand.
“Mags, filter for aircraft constructed related,” Blue croaked. “Bereznik psychology: they want to be respected and feared like other nations, that means being like other nations. They can only buy so much, they have to be able to build. That’s what they were after last time - the plans and flight data so they could build. Timing’s too convenient, they have to be after the new SPJ.” He sank back into the pillows, and shut his eyes, still terribly weak.
“On it.” Magenta turned to the data terminal.
“But why are they after the SPJ?” Scarlet had his arms crossed and shifting his weight from foot to foot because he couldn’t pace in the room’s tight confines. “If they’re after our aircraft for their military it would make more sense for them to target the Interceptor, but that one never got tested at W.A.S. They could certainly try to use a homemade SPJ in a false flag operation, but it would be easier to simply ambush one that’s close to the border or send a raiding party to one of our airfields and steal one. We’d be able to put the alert out on the jet’s transponder code and tail number, but they could do a hell of a lot of damage in the meantime.”
His eyes still closed, Blue waved a hand for attention and fumbled for the bedside intercom. “You’re thinking like a Spec Ops. Not like Bereznik. This has been months in planning and months in execution. It’s bigger than stealing a jet and making us look bad.”
“How big?” Ochre asked.
“Dunno. Big.”
“Thus far we have four lines of inquiry,” White observed, “if the SPJ is indeed their target or not, what Bereznik are importing, how they are infiltrating W.A.S., and what they could do with a cloned SPJ.”
That was when Magenta turned away from the terminal, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I have an idea that could answer at least three of those. It’s rough, but it might work, and even if it doesn’t work all the way, it’ll still hamstring their operation.”
“Go on,” White told him.
“Blue, you mentioned Bereznik psychology. Would you say Bereznik are a proud people?”
A moment to consider that, then Blue nodded. “Very.”
“Perfect.” Magenta was wearing a dangerous expression as he turned to the rest of them. “Like my Ma used to say, play the player, not the game. We know Cobra has to be good, she’s one of three women in a high ranking position in Bereznik, and to keep that position she has to consistently deliver excellent results or she’ll be replaced by one of the many men there who think she belongs in a kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. So,” he started counting off points, “we’ve got an utter perfectionist who’s been killing off anyone with a chance of interfering with her plans for W.A.S. So far she’s gotten all but three of them - that’s three black marks on an otherwise perfect record - and I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t have agents looking for wherever Blue’s been squirrelled away. We know Bereznik have tried and failed to get him before, so if she can knock him off that’ll be a double notch on her belt: succeeding where her male predecessor failed.”
“I think I see where you are headed, Captain,” White nodded slowly. “I approve. How would you suggest we get the information out?”
“We’ve got journalists on retainer and the attack on the Svenson family drummed up a lot of interest,” Magenta pointed out. “A whisper in the right ear about ‘the recent victim of the libertarian group The Collective has been moved to ‘X Hospital’ for further treatment’ and the media will pounce. We stick a wig and some makeup on Scarlet, ship him and some of us dressed up as nurses and orderlies off to whatever hospital we convince to play along, and we’ve just baited a nice little trap for Cobra or whoever she trusts the most to take care of something like this on her behalf. SI can keep digging, that’s their job after all, while we wait and see if we can lure in Cobra.”
Scarlet smiled slowly. “Magenta,” he declared, “I like the way you think.”
0o0o0
Exhausted after a very trying day in the office, being able to go home to her cosy apartment, take off her shoes and coat and sprawl on her three-seater couch was sheer decadence. That Anatoly had immediately handed her his draft book with a big smile and ‘Lana, I have finally slain the dragon! It’s finished! Read this, I’ll get dinner going’ had been the perfect way to pivot between ‘work’ and ‘home’, and she gladly settled in to read her fiancé’s latest poem while he turned on the radio and strode into the kitchen with a will and a purpose.
Warm and comfortable with a smile touching her lips, she read the last line, then set down the book so she could watch Anatoly dance around the kitchen, humming along with the music as he put the finishing touches on dinner. It was so good to see him happy! Writer’s block had been styming him for days now, a dark cloud that had followed him everywhere. But now it was the complete opposite, and his joy was contagious.
She let herself bask in all of it, these were emotions she could savour, and savour them she would.
“Well, what do you think?” Anatoly asked, grinning at her. A flourishing lift of a pot lid got a dramatic billow of steam off the pasta. “With gusto/ did my words flow/erudite and…” he frowned and dumped the pasta into the strainer. “Hm. I’ll need to think on that one.” A hearty shake of the strainer, then the pasta was back into the empty pot, he took the sauce off the heat, and hunted out a ladle so he could dish up.
“Later, love, you’ve already bested one dragon today,” Svetlana told him as she got up, turned down the radio and started setting the table. “I loved it, especially your illustration of how even though the rainbow is a prophecy of bad weather, in the same moment it holds the hope of future sunshine.”
“That was inspired by you, my rose,” Anatoly smiled gently as he came to the table with a laden plate in each hand. “You are the storm, the tempest that rages and blows, but also the warmth of the sun and the gentle breeze that kisses the blossoms of spring.” He punctuated his words with a gentle brush of lips against her brow.
“You charmer,” Svetlana giggled. Lines like that were her weakness and something that he ruthlessly exploited every chance he got. Rhyming couplets scrawled on notepaper and shoved into her locker in school had been how he’d first professed his affection for her, and he continued to hide little notes in her books, pockets and sock drawer.
“Yes, I am,” he beamed, very proud of himself and rightly so. “Come, Lana, let’s eat before the food gets cold.”
“It smells so good!” Svetlana fetched the jug of water and a lemon from the fridge. She was about to pour it for them when the telephone rang - not the regular line, but her secured ‘work’ line.
Well used to scenarios like this, Anatoly took over pouring the water and slicing the lemon into wedges, then sat in his spot and waited while she finished listening to the person on the other end of the phone.
“Yes… yes… have my car come around,” she paused and flicked a glance at Anatoly, “in the morning, usual time. Have a travel packet ready for me. Goodbye.” The handset back on the stand, she came over and sat down.
“You’re not leaving now?” Anatoly asked curiously as he picked up his silverware. That was normally what happened whenever there was a call on that phone - they’d quickly eat dinner together, she’d grab her coat and bag and be down just in time for her driver to bring the armoured car around.
“No.” Svetlana smiled, reached over and squeezed his wrist gently. “I’ve been so busy lately I’ve barely seen you, and the problem isn’t going to be going anywhere. We have time, Tolya, and,” she nodded to the messy pile of notes on the other end of the table, “we still have half a wedding to organise. Let’s eat, finish the seating plan, then get an early night.”
“As always, my rose, you make an excellent point.” Anatoly smiled. “Eat up, we’ll need fortification for this!”
“We certainly do.” Svetlana picked up her knife and fork and put the thought of Svenson out of her mind for now. He could languish in Walter Reed Hospital for a day, and then she would gladly help him into the eternal night.
Chapter Four
‘I’m not going to complain about Sickbay’s ‘ugly scrubs’ for at least a month,’ Scarlet silently vowed, ‘and I’ll be an exemplary patient for the next two.’
He did not like Walter Reed Hospital.
When they arrived, they’d insisted on putting him in a backless gown like all the other patients and it was only by virtue of Kirimiko taking mercy on him that he kept his scrub trousers, currently hidden by the blanket. He had very good reason to anticipate a fight and he liked to have something on his legs, carpet burns and gravel rash hurt like the dickens and if he didn’t clean the wound before it healed over he risked getting something trapped in his skin, which was a royal pain to fix afterwards.
‘Time to check the area again.’ Making every movement look as close as possible to the natural shifting of a sleeping person, Scarlet cracked an eye open and turned his head slightly to check on his surroundings. The biohazard ward was, yet again, empty, but in the process he caught a glimpse of his reflection in one of the stainless steel cabinets that lined the walls and it startled him for a moment, he just didn’t recognise himself!
‘Blond hair looks so very wrong on me, but the entire process was worth it for the laugh I got out of Adam when I went to the observation window to show him.’
They’d tried a wig first, but the feeling of the wig cap pressing his hair into his scalp had scraped his nerves like nails on a chalkboard, so he’d been dispatched to the base hairdresser along with Karen, who knew how to dye eyebrows. Two goes with the bleach and a bottle of ‘Nordic blonde’ later, and he barely recognised himself. A dip into his stash of emergency chocolate to pay Magenta - Pat would ensure the photos Rick took would ‘mysteriously’ vanish - and then he was turned over to the resident expert in medical makeup - James - to make him look like he was on death’s door.
‘And that was interesting indeed.’ His experience with makeup was 99% of the greasepaint variety - light shades on the low parts of the face, dark on the high parts, and don’t forget your ears, neck, and eyelids. When he’d done medical/casualty evac training in the WAAF, that makeup had consisted of pre-made injuries that were tied onto one’s leg or arm, rubber body parts bought from post-Halloween sales, generous sloshes of fake blood, and a bunch of soldiers hamming it up to see if they could make the medics crack - and yes, the lucky ones who got the arterial bleed simulating wounds absolutely tried to squirt people with it.
This experience was quite different.
James had rubbed hand cream through his hair to make it lank and greasy, his natural pallor was pushed towards a grey shade, and a dusting of darker makeup under his eyes and in the little hollow of the cheek below the ear gave him a sunken, more cadaverous look. Liquid latex on his lips made them cracked and chapped, a range of bruises of various ages decorated his arms and a couple of spots on his neck and face, and a good dousing with setting spray ensured everything would stay put. Where on earth they’d found the translucent red sclera lenses he didn’t know, but fitting them was an experience he could happily say ‘one and done’ about. An oxygen mask and IVs in both elbows completed his guise, a very stale gym towel was found and doubled bagged, ready to be stashed in the room to provide the ‘sick patient’ smell in case someone came in without a suit on, and to complete the illusion he clambered into the infectious disease transport capsule for the flight down.
The staff at Walter Reed were mostly cooperative - they’d had experience with similar things, considering their patient base included generals, commanders, admirals, spies and presidents - he’d been settled into the ward and the accompanying Spectrum people had been neatly inserted here and there as orderlies, nurses, overt and covert guards. He had his pistol under his pillow, a couple of knives tucked away here and there, an emergency alert button hidden under the covers, the oxygen, IVs, and monitoring equipment were all rigged to either break away or fall off, and Green was haunting the hospital’s security system like a guardian angel.
‘So far so good… oh hallo…’
Someone was in the antechamber to his ward.
‘Odd. Kirimiko was in just a little while ago.’
While the viewport was fogging with the ‘pre-entry clean’ to protect patients from new infections, Scarlet risked a quick glance up at the monitoring equipment to check the time and confirm this was not one of the expected visits on his memorised timetable - half of which were busy work to maintain the illusion of a sick patient and half of which were to check and touch up his disguise.
It wasn’t either of them.
‘Strike one.’
Scarlet tapped the alert button, made sure he had a good line of sight to the door, and that both of his hands were close to weapons. He didn’t grab them yet; he didn’t know for sure who this was or what they were up to, and if it was Cobra, they wanted to take her alive.
The inner door slid open and the person stepped inside. They were dressed like one of the Walter Reed nurses or doctors in one of their sleek, self-contained, pale blue bio-haz suits, a sterile tray in hand. Between how he had to peep at her through cracked open eyelids and the glare of light reflected off the faceplate he couldn’t see much, but he could make out female-like features, a pointed chin and brown hair tied back: she looked like the photo they had of Cobra.
‘Strike two.’
It was really, really, really hard to keep himself relaxed as the woman set the tray on a workstation. If he pounced too soon and she was one of Walter Reed’s staff who didn’t get the memo, everything would be wasted and Cobra would be scared off. He continued to observe as she opened up the packaging on a syringe… ‘... And there’s strike three. That is not sterile technique, not by a long shot.’
She pulled back the plunger and filled it with air before attaching a needle to the end, which removed all possible doubt as to her intentions.
‘Air embolism. Clever, but not clever enough, Cobra.’ Scarlet waited as she approached the bed, syringe in one hand and reaching for the running line on one of his IV bags with the other.
The second she was in range, he whipped both hands up to grab her wrists. At the same time the antechamber doors slid back to admit Ochre, Magenta and Grey. Cobra snarled something, dropped the syringe and half-yanked Scarlet out of the bed as she tried to break free of his iron grip, at the same time kicking the work table towards the three men.
Scarlet snarled back at her, half-fell the rest of the way out of bed and lost his grip on her right arm in the tussle. Lightning fast punches aimed at her ribs and gut had zero effect - she had to have armour on under the suit - then she whipped her body around, he staggered off balance, and pain exploded in his left leg as her foot connected with his knee and snapped it backwards with a sickening wet pop. Not even he could keep his grip and he collapsed to the floor with a howl of agony, clutching his wounded leg as Cobra backed up, her eyes on the other three captains and her hands going for the sides of her suit.
Bang-Bang-Bang-Bang!
Ochre only blinked when the body hit the floor, his smoking pistol in hand. “Mags, get Kirimiko! Grey, Scarlet!”
“Captain Ochre, report!” White snapped over their radios.
“Sir.” Though he was still breathing hard from the adrenaline rush - the fight had only taken seconds - Ochre was ice cold as he moved to stand over the corpse, his pistol trained on the chest and not looking at the shattered faceplate and the bloody mess the helmet contained. “Cobra’s dead. I know we were supposed to take her alive if possible, but they’ve got bio-weapons, she was in a suit and going for something, and I wasn’t going to chance it.”
“Understood.” And by the colonel’s tone, he did. “Status?”
“Scarlet’s hurt, Kirimiko…”
“Is here!” Medical kit in hand, the nurse rushed in and dropped to her knees next to Scarlet, her eyes wide when she saw his leg. “Scarlet, look at me, I’m going to take care of you,” she automatically began the soothing litany as she dug out a pre-loaded syringe with the special ‘knock out a bull walrus’ cocktail that seemed to work on Scarlet. “Let’s get this into you, okay?”
Scarlet managed a nod, his right arm across his mouth to muffle his screams and his left hand clutching Grey’s in a white-knuckled grip.
“Secure the scene, Captain Ochre, SI is enroute,” Colonel White ordered. “Nurse Kirimiko, the medevac helicopter will be ready and waiting. Captain Magenta, liaise with Green, find out how she got in and backtrack as far as you can. Captain Grey, organise a cordon around the facility, we don’t know if she was acting alone.”
“S.I.G.” Ochre answered for them all. The body hadn’t gotten back up so he holstered his pistol and turned to holler out the door at the gathering gawkers. “Someone get us a stretcher! We need a hand in here!”
0o0o0
Six and a half hours later, Scarlet was back in his usual ward, sitting up in bed with a brace on his knee keeping things together while it healed, an experimental, hip-down ring block keeping him comfortable, and a copy of Beowulf keeping him entertained.
knock-knock
Paul looked up from his book as Rick poked his head in the door.
“Huh! You haven’t escaped yet!”
Paul grabbed his pillow and whipped it at Rick. “Sod off!”
Rick laughed as he caught the projectile with his free hand and tossed it back, careful to aim it at Paul’s chest, not his still healing leg. “Hey, watch the friendly fire! I come bearing gifts!”
“Gifts?” Paul set the book down and put the pillow back behind his head.
“Yep.” Rick held up the paper bag he was holding. “That french chocolate bread you like so much and an update on the mission. Which do you want first?”
“The update.” Scarlet made himself as comfortable as possible.
“According to the listening posts, Bereznik is still quiet,” Ochre said as he sat down on the visitor’s chair and put the paper bag of pain au chocolat on the side table, well within Paul’s reach. “I think we’ll have made them pull their horns right in with what happened at the hospital.”
“Good.” Scarlet’s expression was not nice. “Who’s going to follow up on their germ warfare?”
“That’s still a work in progress, plenty of folks are wanting a piece of it. Last we heard from Mags’ friends at SI the World Intelligence Network were campaigning pretty hard for the lead role.”
“Hn. As long as someone shuts it down, I don’t really care who takes lead.”
They both glanced in the direction of the iso ward where Adam was still recovering.
“What about Cobra?” That was what Scarlet really wanted to know about.
“We figured out how she got into the room: she told the guards that the last nurse forgot something in the ward. She had all the right IDs and Bereznik somehow slipped a fake employee profile into the database so when they checked, she came up clean. SI have the body. There wasn’t much left of her face but they’re doing a reconstruction anyway,” Ochre told him. His head tilted to one side as a question occurred to him. “Huh. What do they do with the bodies of enemy agents anyway?”
“Embalmed, into a casket and buried in an unmarked grave somewhere. Every now and again they get repatriated in an exchange, if their country admits it was them and wants them back, that is.” Scarlet rubbed a hand over his face, glanced at his faint reflection in the observation window and scowled. “As soon as I’m out of here, I’m heading to the barber’s.” His reflection got another sour look. “Logistics had better have that dye ready.”
“Not gonna keep it and see what your mom thinks?” Rick teased, grinning. “Oh, hey, you could go red and match Rhapsody. It’d really make you ‘Captain Scarlet’!”
Paul gave him a withering look, then unexpectedly grinned. “What a good idea,” he enthused. “You’ll be quite all right pulling my groundside duties, won’t you? Since I won’t match my ID until this,” he waved at his hair, “grows out or I get a new ID.”
Rick pretended to think about that. “You know, maybe not. You haven’t got the complexion for red or blond.”
Paul laughed. “Oh, I don’t know, I could keep it for a month or so, see if I get used to it.”
“Yeah?” Rick grinned. “Well…” he trailed off, his grin quickly fading.
Scarlet wasn’t looking at him any more.
He was looking through the open door at the tannoy in the main area of Sickbay, his eyes sharp and expression intent.
The tannoy crackled, then, THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE MYSTERONS, rolled out of it. WE KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR US, EARTHMEN…
Chapter Five
Cobra paced the length of the waiting room’s chequerboard floor and seethed.
Usually she wouldn’t have indulged the emotion for this long, but it was a sorely needed distraction from the cumulative events of the day.
Before the sun crossed the horizon, she’d been in her office at the Bereznik External Security Agency to finalise the infiltration plans. That Spectrum was trying to lay a trap was obvious - it was exactly what she would have done in their position - but chances were high that Svenson truly had been sent to the hospital, the Biological Warfare Department had assured her their strain of ebola was indeed that bad. The opportunity to both kill Svenson and thumb her nose at Spectrum was just too good to pass up, the generals had agreed, and the mission had been approved.
What had happened next made Svetlanna stop and grind her teeth. She had been on her way out the door when her phone rang with news that almost made her heart stop: on his way to his job at the Central Bereznik University, Anatoly had been hit by a bus.
Her decision had been easy. A snapped instruction to Franciszek Sokolov, her aide de camp, ensured the bus driver would be brought to the cellars of the B.E.S.A., and a phone call summoned Anastasia Chmiel to take her place. Anastasia was her favourite assassin and a near enough lookalike that they wouldn’t have to waste time changing the various fake IDs and travel documents. A second call had her car brought around to take her to the Katannia General Hospital.
Once there, she’d been advised that it was bad. Anatoly had immediately been taken into surgery and wasn’t expected to be out of it for another eight hours at least. She had set up camp in the waiting room closest to the operating theatre and recovery ward, summoned her most loyal agents to put a proverbial ring of steel around the hospital, and Franciszek, truly a wonderful man, proved his worth once again by arranging a string of motorcycle couriers so she could continue to send and receive messages and updates to keep herself busy while waiting for news on Anatoly.
The long hours had rolled on with only sporadic updates from the surgical team. Unlike some of her peers she didn’t bother them for more, they had her beloved to focus on and she couldn’t distract them. She had been in the middle of dictating a note for one of her procurement teams in Europe when a motorcycle courier had roared up to the hospital with an urgent message: Anastasia had been killed and the mission was a failure.
Another courier had screeched to a halt only minutes later (which made it obvious there was a internal leak in her organisation, a problem she would attend to in the morning) to inform her that the generals were summoning her to a meeting to explain why the assassination of Svenson had failed twice now.
She’d indulged in a storm of cursing at being pulled away, but once in the car she’d subsumed her rage, frustration and fears under her ice-cold discipline and made her plans: she had to survive this meeting if she was to see her beloved again.
Once again she strode into the grand meeting room of the military junta and once again she had to endure the egos of men and wait out their dramatics as they castigated her for the failure of the mission. After they’d roared and rumbled and spent enough of their tempers to impress each other with their collective outrage, they’d finally gotten down to business: why had she had sent someone else and not gone personally - the key point in her defence after the first attempt on the American.
She’d had her answer ready. It had galled her to use the Minister for Culture and Language’s own words against him - the man was the very definition of a letch and constantly undressing her with his eyes - but he and the rest simply couldn’t argue against ‘what woman of Bereznik would I be if I abandoned my fiancé when he needed me most?’. It was a key line in a recent movie he’d overseen. Yuri Broz hadn’t been present, but his lieutenant Jan Savinov had been and had voiced his support and agreement - the Cyber-Influence Network had not forgotten her intervention on behalf of their top man.
That had pushed the generals into the mood to listen as she pointed out that Spectrum and the W.A.S. now likely thought that she was dead - she and Anastasia could have been sisters and they did not have her DNA, fingerprints or dental records to identify her for sure. With her considered dead, they would consider her plan dead along with her, since the plans of failed servants of Bereznik were rarely picked up by another. W.A.S. would drop their guard, she’d told them, Spectrum would turn their attention elsewhere, and they’d slip into the proverbial hen house like a cunning, grey-whiskered fox, raid it, and vanish into the night, leaving the ‘farmers’ none the wiser.
They already had the raw materials thanks to the B.E.S.A. procurement teams and it would set up phase two and three oh so brilliantly, she had told them, which had pleased the generals so very much. They liked to be cunning and clever, outwitting their enemies with their brilliant schemes. It made them feel so very intelligent and sly, like the master strategists they saw themselves as being. The junta’s egos now sufficiently stroked, a few other points of discussion were tabled and dealt with, she flattered them into generously awarding a ‘hero of Bereznik’ pension for Anastasia’s elderly mother, then she was in her car and on the way back to the hospital.
Here, safe, she had allowed her temper to rise once again, both purging herself of the emotion and distracting herself. Anatoly was still in theatre, and it had been over twelve hours by now. The agony of the waiting was becoming intolerable, she needed the outlet or she would go mad.
“Cobra, the surgeon is coming,” one of her men quietly warned over the concealed radio in her ear.
Svetlanna faced the door and composed herself. Calm, serene and unruffled, her face was a blank mask as the heavy door opened to admit a small man with wise eyes, tousled salt and pepper hair, and wearing clean blue scrubs under what was obviously a much treasured white lab coat, going by the way the pockets and cuffs had been repaired. He looked tired, but satisfied.
“Ma’am,” he began, “I am Doctor Balakin. I can tell you that the surgery was a success. He is in the recovery ward and waking up as we speak.”
Despite herself, Svetlanna sighed in relief. “Thank heavens.” A little shake got herself back into business mode. “What are his injuries?”
“His pelvis was shattered by the hit, along with his right femur, which we have had to pin together. He had some cracked ribs and a little internal bleeding. Fixing his fractures and ensuring he did not have a perforated bowel or a pneumothorax is why it took so long,” Doctor Balakin informed her. “He will be in hospital for at least two weeks and will need twenty four hour care for at least three weeks after that, followed by physiotherapy and rehab. We will know more by next week, once he has had a chance to start healing and the worst of the infection risk is over.”
Svetlanna nodded to herself, two weeks would be more than enough time to vet a team of carers and ensure they had everything Tolya would need for his recovery. “Can I see him?”
“Of course.” Doctor Balakin’s face creased in a gentle smile. “This way.”
She made herself notice every detail - every chipped tile, every seam in the linoleum floor - and every face on her way to the recovery ward, using it to ground herself in the here and now and not lose herself in contingencies, planning and the question of ‘what if’ that always haunted her.
Finally they were through into the recovery ward and the doctor stepped back to allow her access to the bed.
Anatoly looked like he’d been in a plane crash. His right leg was in traction, there were IVs in his arms feeding blood and painkillers into him, his face was swollen and a mass of bruises, and he looked so small and pale in the hospital bed.
“Tolya?” She hated the wobble in her voice in front of the strangers, but the way Anatoly forced his eyes open and immediately looked for her washed the shame away.
“Rose!” he croaked.
“Doctor, a moment, if you please?” Svetlanna gave both him and the attending nurses a significant look.
“Of course.”
The staff were veterans of encounters with the government - the room was quickly emptied.
“You came?” Tolya’s smile was weak but very much present as she sat on the edge of the bed and took his least-damaged hand in hers.
“Of course I did, love.” Svetlanna didn’t shame herself for the gathering tears. Imagining was one thing, seeing the reality of what had happened to her darling was something quite different.
“But your mission? Project Stormcastle?” Anatoly’s concern was clear despite the slurred words and unfocused eyes.
Svetlana smiled, carefully leaned in and brushed her lips against his brow. Anatoly always mixed up his prefixes when he was drunk, it seemed that painkillers did the same thing. “There was a setback, but I have turned this to our advantage. They’ll relax their guard…”
“And then,” he hooked two fingers to imitate the fangs of a cobra and clumsily lashed at the air, “you strike!”
She laughed softly. “Yes, yes I will.” Bending down, she touched another tender kiss against his forehead. It was irrational, but she was terrified he’d shatter like cracked glass if she applied any more pressure than a feather-light brush. “As soon as you are well enough we’ll go to our dacha in the countryside. Peace, privacy, and beautiful scenery for you to write about.”
“And your company?” He curled his fingers around her’s and looked up at her with pleading, puppy-dog eyes.
“My company and several days of my absolute and undivided attention,” she promised. “And once this is over, I promise you won’t have to get hit by a bus to have it again.”
“You’ll retire?” Anatoly asked hopefully. This had been a long-running conversation for quite some time now.
“I will,” she smiled. “I want babies, Tolya, they deserve to be raised in safety and with both of their parents in attendance, not pulled away by constant emergencies and missions.” She kissed him again. “And Project ‘Stormcastle’,” she smiled at his pout when he realised she was teasing him, “will ensure their safety.”
End Part 2…