The Soviet Comeback

by Jamie Smith

  Nikita grunted but said nothing. He wanted to begin the mission immediately, wanted to enter the CIA and bring down the USA. The sooner he did, the sooner he could return to his family. He would pick being in Siberia with them rather than in his present Cuban luxury without them.

  “How long before I can use my arm fully again, doctor?”

  “Far more time than we have. I will do what I can, and with intensive physiotherapy and great care you should be able to manage your next mission. I understand it will be less physically demanding than previous ones,” replied Zhikov as he injected Nikita’s daily dose of painkillers into his thigh.

  “What else do you know about my next mission?”

  “Only that it will not be so physically demanding. I do not wish to know any more than what I need to, as your doctor, so do not reveal anything to me! Roll over onto your stomach.”

  The doctor proceeded to dress the wound and was in the midst of inspecting a particularly painful scab crossing the spine in the middle of Nikita’s back, when there was a knock on the door. Ambassador Yitski entered without waiting for a response.

  Doctor Zhikov started at the intrusion, accidentally prodding the scar deeply, causing Nikita to let out a moan of pain.

  The ambassador stopped. “And there was me thinking you were meant to be the toughest agent we possessed,” he said with a wink.

  He had grown a short beard since Nikita had seen him last, which covered his weak chin, making him look more distinguished and giving him a certain gravitas. Nikita could see more clearly now how he had landed a position of such key significance.

  “Ambassador Yitski,” said Nikita, turning his head sideways, as Zhikov continued his survey of his back.

  “Please leave us, doctor,” said the ambassador and waited as the doctor packed up and reminded Nikita that he would return again tomorrow.

  “Mrs Shapova has presented you with your mission documents I trust?” asked Yitski.

  “Ah, yes of course,” said Nikita, pushing himself round onto his back and up in to a sitting position. Mrs Shapova gave him a subtle nod of gratitude. “But due to Dr Zhikov’s visit I have not had a chance to look at them yet.”

  “Very well. If your pain is manageable then we must begin preparations for your next assignment.”

  “I am ready to prepare, thank you.”

  The ambassador pulled up a chair next to the bed, asking Mrs Shapova to pass him the sheaf of papers she had earlier deposited on the bed, then asked her also to leave the room.

  She did so swiftly, giving no sign of her earlier affection for Nikita other than a brief glance back at him as she left the room.

  “So, Agent Allochka, you know the top line of what you will be doing on your next mission. Ordinarily Colonel Klitchkov or someone from the KGB would prepare you for this mission. However, following the death of the US Secretary of Defense, movements in and out of Cuba are being watched even more closely at present, and so I have been given special clearance to brief you on what will be expected.” He paused for a moment. “You know that you will be joining the CIA’s Soviet Counter-intelligence Branch, and it has taken an extraordinary amount of work to make this opportunity possible. It is absolutely vital for the balance of world power that at no point is your cover blown. Understood?”

  “Understood. Will I still be under the alias of Nathan Martins?”

  “No. That alias did not have a background that would be suited to a job such as this. A new alias has been created, and only through agents embedded in various other locations have we been able to assure the robustness of your background and reference checks. No KGB agent currently has a more important or more precarious mission. Mother Russia is relying on you, comrade.”

  “That explains why it has shown me such unceasing kindness,” said Nikita, the faintest hint of a smirk upon the corner of his lips.

  Yitski frowned. “Is there a problem, Allochka?”

  “Not at all, ambassador.”

  “You make a lot of people nervous; do not give me reason to become another.”

  “Why do you think it is I make people nervous, ambassador? After all, I finished top in every category throughout my five years of training and have successfully completed all of my missions so far, as ordered. So I’m curious, what is it about me that would make Mother Russia nervous?” Nikita asked pleasantly, but with a warning in his voice.

  Ambassador Yitski faltered under the gaze of the young man in front of him, whose cold eyes burned with intensity, daring him. He wished he had brought his vodka with him.

  “Curiosity can get you killed, agent. You are little older than a child, and as such more liable to make foolish errors of judgement. I suggest you focus on continuing to be the best agent you can be.”

  Nikita smiled coldly, but maintained his intense stare.

  Yitski chuckled nervously. “Let us not get distracted from the mission at hand!” he said as he started shuffling through the papers before him. “An apartment has been rented for you in Langley, Virginia where you will be based in your new role.” He passed Nikita a detail sheet of his new home. “You will now be going under the name Jacob Marshall. We have had to age you to give you a chance to fit the role. You will be twenty-eight, but luckily the job you have has a habit of making people look old before their time and it should not be difficult for you to pull it off.”

  “How have you got me a job in the Soviet Counter-intelligence Branch without me ever having met them? Surely they are stringent about who they hire?”

  “Correct. We have got you through the door, and we understand that the job is yours providing you pass a series of tests. Curiously for a country with a history of such racial prejudice, the colour of your skin has actually helped you a great deal in this position as they seem less concerned with some of the precautions we expected. I cannot emphasise how impressive your CV is so you have an intense period of study ahead of you.”

  “What sort of tests?”

  “I know there will be a standard lie detector examination given to all agents, which I understand you are most adept at circumventing, da?”

  Nikita nodded.

  “Beyond that, I am unsure, but I should imagine that they are designed to ensure you are who you say you are, and that you are fully capable of carrying out the job to the level they require. They pick only the best for this division.”

  “What do I need to study? I already know quite a bit about Soviet intelligence.”

  “This is an analyst role; there should not be any active field duty. You should be able to adapt fairly quickly, but it is very much a position of information collection and analysing, rather than one of overt action.”

  “I understand.”

  “Colonel Klitchkov would never admit it, and General Secretary Petrenko certainly would not, but our glorious Soviet empire is on the brink of collapse; it is not difficult to see. The INF Treaty represents a unique opportunity to level the playing field with the United States and turn around our fortunes. Your new role is fundamental to that, and the fortunes of our nation are resting firmly on your shoulders. The treaty should be signed very soon following Secretary Conlan’s demise and we along with the US will be expected to start visibly disarming our nuclear arsenal. They need to believe, as does the rest of the world, that we truly are disarming. Only if we deceive them can we regain a place of strength and revive our fortunes. This will then silence the Czechoslovakians and Hungarians, and avoid the crumbling of an empire.”

  “No pressure then,” said Nikita with a faintly arched eyebrow.

  “A great pressure, but the rewards will be even greater if you succeed.”

  “And if I fail?”

  “Failure cannot and must not be an option, agent.”

  “A burnable asset.”

  “Every asset can be burned if they fail, you know how espionage works, agent. Do not feign naivety.”

  He hefted the documents together and passed them to Nikita. “You have a great deal of work ahea
d of you. You must memorise everything in these files to prepare yourself,” he said as he stood up and moved his chair back to where it had been by the dresser. He gave a stiff nod to Nikita and left the room.

  As the door closed, Nikita let out a gasp from the pain he had been containing during their interaction. He allowed his body to sink back down onto the bed and massaged his shoulder which was complaining loudly at the attempt to lift it.

  He closed his eyes and let his body settle into a position in which he was semi-comfortable, the best he could hope for in his current condition. The visits had wearied him greatly and he was content just to rest. Reaching for the phone next to his bed, he ordered some food to be sent to his room. He had become partial to Ropa Vieja, a Cuban shredded-beef recipe, and convinced himself it was the food to help him recover.

  He flicked through the documents briefly, and a small blank envelope dropped out. Curiously, he opened it and inside was a piece of paper torn from a notebook that said simply ‘Straw hat = Pamyat. Yours, Kemran’. Nikita stared at Kemran’s note. What was Pamyat? The word felt familiar but he could not place it.

  The documents felt heavy in his hand, and after stifling a sigh, he put them down to pick up the newspaper and continued to peruse it. As he reached page seven his body stiffened, causing a shockwave of pain to again run through his body, but he ignored it and pushed himself back to a sitting position.

  The headline to the lead article read ‘Fourteen die in Texas bar fire’, above a picture of what Nikita recognised as the building that had once been Paddy’s bar in Odessa, now little more than a burnt-out husk. The article said it looked to be a gas leak. Apparently one man, a former US marine, had managed to force his way out of the front door but had died in hospital due to the severity of the burns he had suffered. Nobody else had made it any further.

  Nikita felt cold. This is what Brishnov meant by ‘dealing with it’. This wasn’t dealing with it; this was a massacre of innocent civilians. He was not so foolish as not to understand that the trio who had attacked him needed to be ‘disappeared’, but to take out another eleven innocent bystanders felt evil. This was not an assassination, it was cold blooded murder and he felt sick.

  “How great the consequences of our choices can be,” he said to himself, wishing he had avoided the bar and found another way to treat his wounds. Clearly Brishnov had been sent to spy on him, so he would not have been allowed to die either way.

  He pulled himself from bed and rolled into the wheelchair kept beside it. He wheeled himself over to the French windows and out onto the balcony, enjoying the reduced pain levels as the painkillers kicked in. He looked out over the Gulf of Mexico and breathed in the warm early evening air. This business was evil, but he would not let his heart blacken like Brishnov’s.

  It was three weeks later that Nikita departed the Russian Embassy in Cuba, looking like a renewed man, albeit one with cold eyes and stiff movements. The helicopter waiting to transport him on the first leg of his roundabout journey to Langley was stirring up dust, leaves and debris from the dry asphalt and made the world look momentarily brown and chaotic. Nikita put on a pair of sunglasses, set his shoulders and walked into the swirling maelstrom and into the CIA.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 16

  ONE YEAR LATER

  The highly polished black shoes barely made a sound on the plush carpet of the White House corridor. They belonged to the slow but steady legs of Secretary of State Harry Bernstein, who was moving deliberately towards a room at the end of the hall. Dressed in a black suit with a royal blue tie, he was well groomed, with his now firmly white hair combed back carefully in an effort to cover as much of his thinning scalp as possible.

  As he reached the door, he nodded to the two Secret Service agents standing either side with hands held behind their back, and knocked firmly.

  “Come on in,” said a deep voice from the other side. Bernstein turned the ornate brass handle and opened the door onto the Oval Office.

  Behind a desk by the window sat the president of the United States, Ernest Callahan. He was writing intently in a notebook, but on glancing up, he put the pen down and rubbed his tired and puffy eyes.

  “Ah, Harry, I got your message,” he said in a voice that oozed authority, as he stood up and shook the secretary of state’s hand. He signalled to the two sofas on the other side of the room, as Secretary Bernstein replied, “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr President.”

  Sitting, the president groaned as he eased himself down. “What have you got for me?”

  Shuffling slightly, Bernstein straightened his suit jacket. “Ah, sir, things are getting a little out of hand out there.”

  “Jesus, Harry, this is not what I want to hear. My approval rating is at the lowest it’s ever been. I need good news. What is it now?”

  “So this is highly classified, sir, but there has been another murder.”

  “Goddam it, I promised to be the tough-on-crime president. I appointed you because you were going to stop spiralling murder figures.”

  “With respect, sir, this is not a regular murder. We believe it is one in a chain of political assassinations.”

  “Then why the hell are you reporting this to me? Where’s Bob McMahon?”

  “Mr President, I’m deeply saddened to be the one to tell you that your assistant for national security affairs is the one who has been assassinated.”

  “What?” said the president, standing and putting his hand to his face. “Dear God, who killed him? Tell me you got the son of a bitch. McMahon is… was a good man.”

  “I wish I could, but the one we believe is responsible is proving to be incredibly elusive.”

  “Who is he, Harry? Stop talking in circles and talk to me plainly.”

  “The code name he has been given is the Black Russian.”

  The president snorted. “There are no blacks in Russia, Harry; they lynch them more than they did in the Mississippi Delta.” He paused. “Well… maybe not quite that much.”

  “Quite so, Mr President, they hate them even more than they hate the homos. But the code name is not a reference to his skin colour, more to the shadows in which he operates. We have absolutely no proof that he actually exists, or even that he is Russian.”

  “Then why come and tell me about this fantasy? I swear to God I’m going to throttle you in a minute, Harry!”

  “I apologise, sir, but I’m secretary of state and not accustomed to dealing in these clandestine matters. The director of the CIA is currently abroad for reasons I’m sure you know more about than I, and with the deputy director of the FBI position not yet filled, the FBI director is unavailable. He briefed me fully ahead of this meeting. There has been a string of deaths over the past six months, and all are of people connected to our intelligence- gathering agencies or holding some form of government office.”

  “How has this not been brought to my attention until now?”

  “Every death has been of relatively low-ranking officials and has been treated as unsuspicious on its own merits. However, the analysts at the FBI have begun to connect dots, and believe that all the deaths were in fact murders. But it goes deeper; they believe they can trace it all the way back to the signing of the INF Treaty, and…”

  “Go on,” urged the president, pacing back and forth.

  “And right back to the death of Secretary of Defense Conlan.”

  The president stopped pacing and stared at his secretary of state, utterly aghast.

  “You’re telling me that Simon was murdered by the Russians?”

  “I’m telling you that the FBI believes it a possibility.”

  Callahan sat back down on the sofa and shook his head. “This is ridiculous.”

  Harry Bernstein said nothing, instead looking at his hands nervously. He would have his payback to the FBI director for forcing him to deliver this to the president.

  “So what you are telling me is that Petrenko has somehow not only got KGB agents onto US soil,
but that one is drifting around the country killing our own agents and even our secretary of defense. All while the Russians are signing the disarmament treaty with me. But you’re telling me this without any evidence whatsoever. What the hell do you want me to do with this? I’m far too busy to deal with the hunches of low-level FBI analysts. I can’t confront the commies with mere hearsay. I imagine they’re busy enough trying to come up with a way of getting out of Afghanistan at the moment, which incidentally is an update I hope to God I’m going to get a more detailed report on.”

  “I understand completely, sir. I should add that every single person whose death is being investigated on this FBI list had been working on Soviet projects.”

  The president gazed coldly at Bernstein. “How about leading with that one next time, instead of leading me around the houses with conjecture.”

  “I appreciate it isn’t a firm lead, but it was felt that there was enough confidence enough that there may be some foul play at work to bring it to your attention, ahead of your next meeting with Mr Petrenko. You may need to tread carefully. If he does indeed have agents working to destabilise our intelligence agencies and government it could be that he isn’t as willing to move beyond the Cold War as it has seemed.”

  “It’s no surprise that he has KGB agents in the US. We haven’t been as effective in weeding out theirs as they have ours, but I can’t see any reason for him to be so brash as to begin assassinations.”

  “Be that as it may, Mr President, I would suggest being vigilant until such time as we are able to furnish you with more concrete evidence.”

  “You find me that concrete evidence and we’ll have our revenge on them for Conlan and McMahon, but don’t come back to me on this until you have anything worth telling me. This feels like one of the more pointless conversations of my time in the White House.” The president stood and walked back to his desk where he sat down. “That will be all, Harry. Transfer the investigation to the CIA; if there’s any merit in this it has connotations for foreign policy. Bring me more.”