by P F Walsh
“This Russian is bad news, and I don’t want anything to happen to Millie. I’ll call the Prime Minister back and have the Brits pick Kuznetsov clean before leaving. Hell, even X-ray her. All new clothes, old ones stay behind, hair, teeth, and orifices all pre-checked for suicide tricks. I’ll ask for a blood draw for infectious diseases before we take her. Let’s go folks, we have a lady that wants to tell us lots of stuff that we need to know, and why.”
Everyone moved to leave the room, but the President stayed seated and tapped on the table toward Millie to stay in the room.
“Millie, this is a big action I’m asking you to take. I know that you’re British and all, are you OK with doing this? There may be some danger.” He asked as he held her hand with a wrinkled brow.
“Is there a dinner at a nice restaurant involved?” She asked with a smile.
“Yes Ma’am, any restaurant, anywhere.” He said.
“Good, I need to go and pack a bag.” She kissed him on the cheek and dashed out the door, picked up the Secret Service Agent, and went to get to the waiting car outside the White House door. Millie got in the car with the Agent and told the driver,
“Back to my place and wait for me. I need to throw together a bag. Ring up your office, and find out where you’re taking me for the plane, Eddie will know.” The car moved out of the White House grounds and into the traffic.
The unmarked car from the American Embassy pulled up in front of 10 Downing street. Millie Griggs got out and walked straight to the door of the Prime Minister’s residence with a deliberate stride. The car left. The policeman standing at the door stiffened up a bit, wondering,
“’Ere, what’s this?” He stepped in front of the door to block her.
“I beg your pardon Madam; this is a private residence and entrance is not permitted.” Declared with resolute tone.
“Don’t give me that rubbish, I’m Millie and I am expected, I don’t have a lot of time for such as this!” As she leaned forward with expectation he would move. He didn’t.
“I don’t care who you are lady, you’re not expected by me!” He promptly answered. She straightened up and said,
“Oh, dear how did they ever leave you out of the loop.” As she pulled out her mobile, momentarily startling the officer who was not prepared to deal with a weapon. She pressed a speed dial number.
“Yes, it’s me, and I am quite on time but it appears your doorman wasn’t expecting me.” She listened for a minute and ended the call, put the phone in her purse, stood there waiting with her weight on one leg, and her arms crossed. A slight drizzle began, but neither of the antagonists moved to avoid it since there really was no place to shelter close by. A limo pulled up in front, and the door to the house opened. The Prime Minister stepped out opening an umbrella and moved it to cover him and Millie. He turned to address the policeman,
“Edward, this is Millie, you don’t need to know her last name, it’s all quite secret, but if she arrives here, she is to be admitted immediately. Are we quite informed now?” He asked. The policeman, a bit embarrassed despite he actually did his job, nodded and said,
“Right you are sir. Of course.” He replied.
“Very well,” he turned to Millie, “let’s get in the car and get to dinner, shall we?” The driver was holding the rear door open for them to enter. Once they were seated, and closed up, the car drove off, leaving a policeman trying to figure out what just happened, and who the bloody hell was Millie?
That was nowhere near the curiosity of the rakish British media who published a picture of them having dinner with the Prince at a fashionable London eatery. The headline read, “Who is Millie?” Millie’s old British friends were furious that nothing from her had been shared, especially since they thought she was in Washington. Phone calls flew back and forth among them, with none having any idea who their friend of so many idle playgirl years really was? What was this secret life she was leading?
“Dinner with the PM and the Prince?” They were consumed with questions.
Much later, on a rain swept tarmac in London, documents were exchanged and the FBI signed for the transfer of custody under umbrellas. The weather suppressed inclinations to converse much. Svetlana was hustled aboard the G5 Gulfstream, as the aircraft was refueled. She nodded once at Millie as one hand was removed from the handcuffs, and the empty cuff secured to a thick, stainless ring on her seat. The steward served everyone hot coffee after the passenger door was shut. Svetlana, got only warm coffee, since hot was a weapon. Silent in her seat, she sipped the coffee with her free hand to reduce the chill of a cold, wet British night, and the likely surge of emotions she would be enduring. Millie studied her, like all non-professional observers of dangerous people, hoping to see clues as to why someone would do what she did. Such observations were useless of course. Professional spies and assassins were expert at concealing emotions. They were also expert actors.
As Svetlana nursed her coffee, the only sounds were outside the aircraft as the fueling technicians finished up, and capped off the plane’s fuel ports. The fuel truck started up, and moved away. The plane’s engines began to spool up and the ground marshallers, with their lighted wands, began to direct the aircraft to leave the secure reception area and taxi toward the runways. In fifteen minutes, the aircraft, with priority departure clearance, climbed up into the rainy skies of England, and set course for Washington DC.
The Trether fold-ship parked motionless at the missing Outpost site, and began the laborious task of analyzing fragmented tachyons. These resulted from the folding of space on such a massive scale, that some were fractured. The combination of that extremely sparse information, and the Cherenkov radiation smear, would take almost 13 local solars to calculate a gross direction of the departure. The onboard computer system was taxed several times to its load-shedding limits, idling several of the ship’s non-essential environmental processes, in order to process the probability ratios down to an estimated direction of departure.
Staff and officer arguments went on for hours, and reluctantly came to the dual conclusion that the entire Outpost had either been moved or completely destroyed. Those who favored moving won out, as the site analysis rendered not a shred of material from a destroyed small planet. Their concern deepened that another entity had that kind of power. Such an event was unknown. The Ship’s AI was tasked to contact the home planet for a download of the Outpost’s very old monthly reports.
“Doytain, we have a calculated jump direction of the Outpost or whatever took it. Our efforts to calculate the power required were beyond our onboard processing power, but we have an estimated direction of their departure. Terminus of the jump is all guesswork though, since we couldn’t calculate the power level.” The subcommander reported to the ship’s Doytain who had been reading a recent treatise on tachyons.
“Thank you Subcommander, put the team to work looking at what our navigation records show in that direction. We may be able to guess where they went. We will have to be careful in our pursuit, and remain undetected. If this is a warship, it will be massive.” He paused and then asked,
“What is the status of our stores on board?”
“We have stores enough for five lunars even though we did not plan that this would be a long trip, Sir.” The Subcommander responded.
“That should be enough, at least we’re not on the endless search for our Queen. That’s been continuing for a hundred annuals, but now it has risen to a level of frenzy since a new name appeared on the Column of Honors base plinth, in Mook’n Square, above the Queen’s.” He said.
“How is that engraving possible, Doytain?” The Subcommander asked.
“Officially, no one knows. It just appeared there one morning when the
sanitation crew came by to clean the square. The public reason given was vandalism, but there is reluctance to remove it for fear of damaging the plinth. At least that’s the story that was released.”
“Why have we been searching for her so long Doytain? That’
s well beyond a normal lifespan.” The Subcommander asked.
“There cannot be another Queen until we find proof positive that she has passed on. We know there were no heirs when she left, she was well beyond able to produce an heir. Beside all that, we must have the necklace of JihnBaar. Hopefully, it be found with her, it is needed to empower the next Queen.” He continued,
“Our classified experiments with life extending treatments have yielded enormous results, and those secret labs are scattered all over the galaxy. Some of them have not reported in, either with results or location. She could have travelled to one of those, she had her own ship, and may have demanded pledges of silence. Such a demand would seal lips forever. Following some experimental treatment, she may still be alive. As you may have noticed, the Kreig assembly is growing progressively uneasy with the absence of a Monarch. Every decision is being challenged with questions of ‘would our Queen have approved?’, but all that is way above our task assignment. Bring me the travel direction after you complete examining the records of our known contacts.”
“As you command, Sir.” The Subcommander bowed and left the Doytain as he picked up the report he was reading. When the Subcommander left, the Doytain thought,
“I will always wonder why she left Trether without filing a flight plan. She must have ordered that it not be sent. The Doytain aboard would surely have sent it otherwise. What kind of a mission was she on?” He shrugged his shoulders, unable to fathom the decisions of royals, and began to read again.
Millie had ample time to talk with Svetlana as the Gulfstream streaked across the skies at its maximum altitude. She found her an engaging conversationalist, and well read. All their discussions centered on things oblique to world affairs. Regarding the flight itself, concerns had earlier been raised that a Russian military ship may try to take down the plane with a missile. The flight path was constantly changing at random intervals to prevent prediction of location. Adversaries would know it was going to Washington, but would find it very hard to know where it was exactly at any point in time. This extended the flight time, but made it difficult to re-position a ship to intercept the plane with a missile
“Why me?” Asked Millie two hours into the flight.
“Because we knew you are close to the President. I was certain he would become involved. He would make this all happen much more efficiently than a lower level bureaucrat, and with a higher level of protection. I am certain to be designated by Russia for elimination. My country has moles everywhere. I was not safe in England.” Millie nodded at her accurate perceptions. They both settled back to doze. The security team on board did not.
The American interrogation of Svetlana Kuznetsov took three weeks. It was a laborious process, and the interrogators were never really sure they had it all, or if all of it was true. There were multiple elements. First, was the continuous checking of the information using all the United States’ intelligence agencies to verify the veracity of the details along with the intel forwarded by the Brits. Some could not be verified. Then, there was the lassitude of the defector after weeks of questions. That was both a good and negative circumstance. Once weary, the asylum seeker often would refuse to bring up new data under the belief there would be many more hours of questions. On the other hand, weariness reduces guardedness, and new facts slip out. It was a delicate balance.
The interrogation revealed a great deal of information. The first was the answer to the inevitable question regarding her defection: ‘Why?’
Here, the depth of her anger was evident, she described her career as an Air Force Pilot in the Russian Air Force, where she was the consistent victim of male chauvinism. Her commanders didn’t want her, and complained regularly to senior Officers to get rid of her. On her part, she complained about their behavior and the unwanted, spurned intimate offers that dubbed her the ‘Ice Queen.’
She blamed her small inattentions on the discovery of her young daughter’s diagnosis of cancer, and the poor medical treatment she was receiving. This caught the attention of the FSB, today’s version of the old KGB. With the promise of better medical care at an advanced cancer treatment center for her daughter, she agreed to become a field agent, went through extensive training, and was given missions where prospect for survival was much less than ideal. After each mission, she was able to receive a video of her daughter claiming improved treatment and results, as long as her mother kept doing her job well.
It was on the most recent video that she became uneasy. Something was not right. She paused the video and studied everything carefully. That’s when she focused her attention to the IV bag suspended alongside the bed, and connected to her daughter’s arm. She restarted the video, and timed the drops falling in the small cylinder below the bag. Then, she went back to the very first video, and the next, and the next. She realized all these videos were done on the same day with the same IV bag by calculating how much the bag would go down if her daughter was recorded sequentially. Her daughter’s hair was combed differently, and there were changes of hospital patient gown, but the bag went down sequentially. The videos were all posed!
Once she knew that, using her access within the FSB she sent a query to the cancer center under another agent’s name,
“What was the date of death for Nadja Kuznetsov?”
The answer came back the next day, that she had had died several months before after being moved back to the original hospital.
After her discovery that she been coldly ‘used,’ and never told her her daughter had been denied advanced treatment and died, she realized, they decided her daughter could not be saved, despite what they had assured her. They had made a series of videos to go beyond her expected death. The rage that was within Svetlana, when she realized this may have been a political and not medical decision, was indescribable, and quickly converted into searing hate. The bitter resolve to strike back at the FSB, and the Russia that bred them, was easy to come by.
Wearing a disguise, she strode boldly into Mi-6 Headquarters at 85 Vauxhall Cross, London. She walked calmly to the reception desk, identified herself, why she was there, and awaited an agent. In her first interviews with British MI-6, she shared what information she knew about Russian operatives in the UK, but made it plain she was seeking asylum in the U.S. When asked why she didn’t go to the U.S. Embassy, she replied,
“I knew the FSB agent that watched the MI-6 building was sick and there was no surveillance that day. I wanted to have as much of a head start as I could get. They will try to kill me as soon as they can.” She said calmly.
After she had described all this to the FBI interrogator, the flush of satisfaction she felt was gratifying when the question she was waiting for finally came,
“So, Svetlana, what can you tell us that will be valuable enough for us to provide asylum and a new identity?” The interrogator asked softly.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Book Three
Reginald Dawson, former disgraced British Ambassador to the United States, stepped off the United States Starship ’Odyssey’ onto the Hhearn orbital docking station, and struggled to accept that he was now twenty-seven light years away from Earth despite the long trip. He sniffed the air suspiciously and found no detectable difference from Earth. This made his acceptance a bit easier, since he expected some unpleasant and immediate differences to confirm the reality of his arrival. Banished from his former position because of his complicity in compromising the security of the American President’s personal activities, he was to take up a new post as British Consul General and open a Consular office on Hhearn. After a brief pause at the bottom of the ramp, he searched for the face of Wallace Henning, the Earth Ambassador to the Council of Worlds. Finding him was easy, he was the only one in Earth-style clothing.
“Welcome to Hhearn Mr. Dawson.” Wally said, smiling as he stretched out his hand in greeting. “I hope you enjoyed your first interplanetary journey!”
“Quite smooth Ambassador, remarkable really, not considering being
momentarily disassembled, of course.” He replied.
“Right. I recall those moments, hard to describe, but I would say annoyingly unpleasant, however brief.”
“Spot on.” Reginald said.
“I’ve got these for you.” Said Wally, as he displayed a small round medallion and a pocketcom.
“The medallion is a translator that clips anywhere on your lapels or collar. It is essential since the spoken language here is Shrep. Slip the ear piece into your ear. You will be wise to wear it constantly until you feel you can speak the language. There are also new language classes you can attend. The second unit is a pocketcom, much like our British mobiles, also essential. Can’t have you set adrift at first step.” He said, as he handed the pocketcom to Reginald and clipped the translator to his lapel.
“Your pocketcom number is pasted on the back of it for you to memorize. There, now you’re fully equipped to step about.” He said.
Wally indicated with his arm that they should move toward the luggage claim area off to the left. They walked along blending in with arrivals from other ships, while Wally explained that they would be taking a shuttle down to Hhearn once they got his luggage. As they walked along, Reggie could hear in his earpiece, bits and pieces of nearby conversations being translated at a low level. Wally spoke,
“I’ve arranged lodging for you in an apartment building where all the people from Earth stay. The owners have opened a small lounge and bar on the first floor called ‘Earthy.’ It’s a bit of a play on words of course, but it’s a spot where we often come together at day’s end for a sip or two. It can be quite noisy and busy, not so much from all the Earth people, but from Hhearnians who want to meet us. Earth has become a celebrity member through our cultural exchanges and you will find yourself quite popular in a short time.” Wally said.
