Christopher Golden

by Codename Wolverine X-men

  They went to join Silver Fox at the table, sat down noisily, as if they were laborers who’d finished their work for the day. Logan’s German was passable if he didn’t draw too much attention to himself. But North was German, so he did most of the talking in public. Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long.

  Logan was halfway through a drink when they were joined by a thin, plain woman whose dour features were reflected in the severity of her short, black hair. It had been recently shorn, and was all practicality. In the picture they’d been shown of their German contact, the woman had been younger, more attractive, with long and flowing hair. But it was a hard world, and it wore some people down all too quickly.

  “Nice to see you again, Fraulein Haupt,” Maverick said in German, as though the two were old friends, though none of them had ever met the woman before.

  “And you, Herr Nord,” the woman replied, and Logan raised his eyebrows.

  She’d used Maverick’s real name, which wasn’t a good idea, not at all. Of course, Nord had to be a relatively common surname, but still … it wasn’t professional.

  Fraulein Haupt ordered herself a Marzenbier and then turned to smile at Silver Fox and Wolverine.

  “Wie geht es Ihnen?” she asked, an inquiry as to their well-being.

  But her eyes were on Logan, then. Greeting him. Noticing him. Admiring him. Had she been more beautiful, he might have wondered about that. He’d been in love with some extraordinary women in his long life, and incredibly enough, some of them had loved him in return. But Logan knew that at first glance he was only barely handsome. His face was too hard, chiseled, and his hair was wild. And, truth be told, he was damn short.

  But here was Fraulein Haupt, checking him out. It made him decidedly uncomfortable for several reasons, not the least of which was the proximity of Silver Fox, whom he loved with the same passion he felt for the wilderness of his homeland. He and Fox belonged together, as far as Logan was concerned.

  Still, there was something about that look in Fraulein Haupt’s eyes. A mischief that danced there as she looked at him, a playful seductiveness which belied her severe exterior.

  “Gut, danke,” Maverick said.

  Logan realized that he’d never returned Fraulein Haupt’s greeting. He felt more than a little foolish. It wasn’t like him at all to be so distracted. Not at all. He frowned slightly and looked at their contact more closely. There was something not quite right about her, and he wondered what it could be.

  Before they had drained their steins, Fraulein Haupt had suggested they move to her rooms nearby where they could speak more freely. A moment later, they were following her out of the tavern. On the street, Logan didn’t see Creed anywhere, which was good. Creed wasn’t supposed to be seen right about then. He was supposed to watch. Still, Wolverine knew he hadn’t gone far. Sabretooth had a scent he would never forget, and never miss even in a crowd. No, Victor Creed was nearby. Despite his misgivings about the man, if there was trouble, having Sabretooth around was always a good idea.

  Logan almost smiled at the thought. Even if he wasn’t good for anything else, Creed was a pretty big target. Soldiers were likely to shoot at him before they did anyone else. Which would be a crying shame, if you had any affection for homicidal lunatics.

  Fraulein Haupt led the way, arm in arm with North as if they were lovers. Logan and Silver Fox walked side by side as well, but they did not link arms. Even if they were out on the town in Paris together, it just wasn’t the kind of gesture they would have shared. That sort of innocence was lost to them, and not easy to feign, even for those in the business of espionage. North still retained some of it, and perhaps that was why it seemed to come to him so naturally. But Fraulein Haupt? Wolverine had to wonder.

  Even as he considered this, she glanced over her shoulder at him and began to make excuses for the mess they would find in her rooms. Her bedroom, particularly, was a disaster. When she said this, she winked at Logan very purposefully. He ignored her, but felt Silver Fox stiffen at his side.

  He couldn’t help feeling a bit of pleasure at Fox’s reaction. When they were on an op, she was so coldly professional that he was frequently forced to wonder what she really felt. But here it was. And it made him painfully aware of how dangerous their lives were. It was a danger they had lived with from the beginning; a cruel, harsh thing that would never truly allow them to love without reservation.

  Enough of that romantic crap, Logan thought. They had a job to do.

  They followed Fraulein Haupt into the rathole where she had rented rooms. The fat old man at the front desk raised his eyes as they walked in, but averted them just as quickly when Haupt slid a pile of deutschemarks across the desk. Cash. It wasn’t a guaranteed insurance policy, but it was fairly reliable.

  As she held the door for them, Fraulein Haupt smiled knowingly at Logan. He’d had enough. He let his upper lip rise in a kind of silent snarl, and the woman reacted instantly, her face registering, first surprise, then anger. The hell with her. “Just do the job,” he wanted to say. But he didn’t. He’d done enough.

  “Where are they?” he asked her in English, but quietly.

  Logan didn’t think there were unseen listeners. He didn’t hear or smell anyone within the rooms or outside the door. Well, except for Creed—and he had to wonder how Sabretooth had gotten past the fat old desk jockey downstairs—and he was part of the team.

  “They split up yesterday,” Fraulein Haupt answered. “I don’t know when they’ll be back together, but you should wait. I don’t know which of them has the disk.”

  A soft knock at the door caught her attention. It was the cadence of “Shave and a haircut,” without the “two bits” at the end.

  It was Creed.

  But not an emergency, or he wouldn’t have bothered to knock. So what was he doing?

  Fraulein Haupt pulled a Walther Polizei Pistole Kriminal semiauto from under her skirt, but Logan held up his hand.

  “A friend of ours,” he said, and the irony of the word friend wasn’t lost on him. “Let’s see what news he’s got.”

  North opened the door to admit Creed, who met Logan’s questioning gaze with a hard stare. He looked at each of them, then walked slowly across the room to Fraulein Haupt. He sniffed at her, the way a dog might sniff a stranger. The woman’s eyes were wide, but Logan sensed that she was more anxious than afraid, an odd reaction to Sabretooth’s even odder behavior.

  “Creed?” Logan asked.

  “What are you doing, Victor?” Silver Fox wondered aloud. “Have you lost your …”

  Then Creed started to laugh. Almost genuine laughter—a kind of tainted amusement. He reached behind Fraulein Haupt and gave her a pinch, to which she reacted not at all. Again, Logan was surprised. At her lack of reaction. At this entire weird scene.

  “Good to see you again, darlin’,” Creed said, and offered a final chuckle before the mask of the killer once again fell across his face.

  “Sabretooth, what’s goin’ on here?” Logan demanded. “This mission’s got enough bad omens without you freakin’ out.”

  Creed looked at him. “Ah, Logan. She pulled one over on you, runt. She try to pick you up? Girl can twist a man a hundred ways just with a glance, can’t you, Raven?”

  He looked at Fraulein Haupt, who only stared at Wolverine.

  “Aw, come on,” Creed said, growing frustrated now. “This ain’t Fraulein Haupt!”

  Logan stared at him, then at their contact. She looked exactly like the pictures they’d seen of her, with the exception of her hair. So, unless she had a twin …

  “The Haupt babe is probably dead in an alley or a dumpster by now,” Creed claimed. “I knew this one was wrong when I followed you all into the building. Might not even have noticed if I wasn’t lookin’ for somethin’ out o’ place. But only one woman I ever met smells like this lady here. And her name ain’t Haupt.

  “It’s Mystique.”

  Logan was about to speak again. Then the woman just change
d. One moment, Fraulein Haupt was standing in front of them. Then her entire body seemed to just … shift, slightly. Her skin flowed and became something else, someone else entirely.

  Her skin was blue, her hair a flaming red. Her eyes were yellow, but that mischievous quality never left them. She was a mutant—that much was obvious. Nobody in the room questioned it either. With the exception of Silver Fox, they were all mutants.

  Mystique glared at Creed. “So nice to see you again, Victor,” she said, voice dripping with venom.

  “Yeah, babe, it’s a thrill for me, too,” Creed replied with just as much enthusiasm.

  “So now we know your name,” Silver Fox said, moving in closer to Mystique, taking control of the room.

  But Logan wanted to caution her, tell her not to be so sure of herself. There was a danger that radiated from the blue-skinned shapechanger. A quality not unlike the waves of cruelty that came off Creed every time he stepped in a room.

  “Before you all get crazy,” Mystique said, “I’ll answer the questions I know you have.”

  “You’re right,” Maverick said grimly. “You will.”

  “Ooooh, North gets tough,” Creed taunted. “Raven, I think he likes you.”

  Both Mystique and North glared at Creed, but he only chuckled to himself.

  “I killed your contact,” she said, so bluntly that Logan was taken aback.

  “You …” North began, but Mystique cut him off.

  “She was a double,” the woman said quickly. “You should thank me. If I hadn’t killed her, you’d all be dead by now.

  “I wasn’t lying about the Zhevakovs,” she continued. “I know where the husband, Grigorii, is staying. But I don’t think he has the disk. And we’re not the only ones looking for them. Until the wife, Katrina, shows up again, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “What is this ‘we’?” Silver Fox sneered.

  Mystique smiled. “Jealous, honey?”

  Fox said nothing.

  “You need my help,” Mystique said. “Haupt is dead, and would have turned you in anyway. You want to know where Grigorii Zhevakov is? I can show you. We get the disk, I’ll take a copy, that’s all I ask.”

  “Who are you workin’ for?” Logan asked, and watched her face carefully.

  “Not the KGB,” Mystique replied. “That’s all you really need to know.”

  Logan felt them all staring at him, waiting for a decision. He was field commander on this op. It was up to him. He could throw it out to a vote, but that wasn’t the way covert ops were played.

  “All right,” he said at last, and ignored the looks of astonishment on the faces of his teammates.

  Even Creed looked stunned.

  “Well, let’s go, then,” Mystique said easily, and turned to leave the room.

  The others were still staring at him. Creed started to open his mouth, to say something, to ask him what he thought he was doing.

  “Stay with her, no matter what,” he told Creed.

  Sabretooth grinned, and followed Mystique out.

  “You don’t mean to let her have a copy of that disk?” North asked, obviously disgusted at the thought.

  With good reason. It didn’t matter who Mystique was working for. The Agency wouldn’t want anyone having the information on that disk. Anyone. It was the kind of information people killed for on a regular basis. The kind of information they might all have to kill for before this op was over.

  “No,” Wolverine said, once he was sure Mystique and Creed were out of earshot. “No, I don’t.”

  * * *

  Long after midnight, the only sounds that could be heard on the streets of East Berlin were the thunder of marching soldiers, the drone of distant car engines, and the churning of factory machines that ran through the night. Amidst these mechanical harmonies, barely perceptible, were the sounds of suffering, of hungry children crying and frustrated parents shouting.

  A horrid-smelling man in filthy rags huddled down into a stairwell’s depression in a narrow alley where some of the city’s poorest laborers made their homes. The chemical smells wafting through the city to compete had made it a challenge for the man to get his clothing to smell as noticeably bad as it did.

  But that was all part of Haifisch’s job.

  It astounded him that agents of the KGB and Interpol, among others he was certain, could sweep en masse into East Berlin and not expect the local espionage community to take notice. Using his contacts, it had been simple enough to find out what they were all after. Or, rather, who: renegade KGB agents who traveled with secrets worth killing for.

  Huddled as if cold and sick in the narrow stairwell, the shark smiled and waited for his prey. He would move in quickly and silently, and strike before they even knew he was there. The Stasi would promote him and the KGB would praise him, once they got those agents and their stolen information back. Then the chase would be on, as the foreign agents tried to get out of the city without being captured. It ought to be very exciting. Perhaps, if things worked out in his favor, he would be able to kill some of them—even torture them for information he didn’t really need.

  Haifisch smiled even wider, and watched the doorway across the street where he expected to see one of the KGB defectors appear at any moment.

  What he didn’t expect was the sudden thrust of cold metal against the back of his head, and the low, feminine whisper that instructed him, in Russian-accented German, not to move at all.

  Frozen in place, Haifisch remained silent, waiting for the woman to make the next move.

  “If you wish to see the dawn, find another place to spend the night,” she whispered.

  A slow smile crept across Haifisch’s face. The woman didn’t know who he was, nor why he was there. She believed his disguise—and who wouldn’t with that stench? She merely wanted privacy.

  He would be more than happy to give it to her.

  Feigning terror, he whimpered and begged to be allowed to stand so that he could do as she instructed. He would leave, he promised, and not come back until morning.

  “Go, then,” she ordered.

  He rose and moved toward the open end of the alley, beyond which the marketplace stood empty for the long night. He jogged lightly, not wanting to appear too healthy to her.

  Whatever was going to happen, it would be tonight. Soon. And Haifisch was going to be a part of it. But he had the advantage of territory. There were half a dozen Stasi officers, dozens of Polizei, and hundreds of Volksarmee soldiers at his disposal.

  As he stripped away the outer layer of malodorous clothing, Haifisch stood a little taller, held his chin a bit straighter. It was as if the promotion he had been hoping for had already been granted to him.

  After the disgusting old man was out of sight, Katrina Zhevakov looked carefully around the alley, and at the doors and windows of the buildings on either side. Nothing.

  She crossed to the door of the hovel where she and Grigorii had been waiting for Interpol to come through with the papers they had been promised. They would have to move on, now, and quickly. Their defection, it seemed, was going to be much more difficult than it had originally seemed. But they would find a way, somehow.

  Katrina didn’t even have to deliver their signal knock. Grigorii opened the door before her knuckles could touch the wood.

  “You should have killed him,” her husband said in Russian, nodding toward the end of the alley where the filthy creature had fled.

  “He’s got enough troubles,” she replied.

  “It would have been merciful, and more secure for us,” Grigorii said.

  Katrina agreed, but she wasn’t about to tell Grigorii that. Especially when they had far more important things to concern themselves with—like escaping East Germany before the KGB found and executed them.

  “Martina is dead,” Katrina told her husband.

  Grigorii’s face reflected his despair.

  “Murdered?” he asked, though she was sure he knew the answer.

  “Of cours
e,” Katrina replied.

  “No sign of her comrade, the one who was to come for us?” he asked.

  “If she had been able to tell our escort where we were, I suspect we’d have seen him by now,” Katrina said sadly. “We’ll have to think of another way to get out, Grigorii.”

  The couple embraced with a desperation Katrina had never imagined she would feel. They were both capable. The KGB had trained them well. Even without help, they ought to be able to get themselves into West Berlin somehow. It would take some thought, some deception, possibly some killing.

  They had both been trained to kill, but neither of the Zhe-vakovs had ever actually had to do it until several days earlier, when they fled the Soviet Union. There had been a lot of killing since then. And it looked as though it wasn’t over yet.

  “Come,” Grigorii said, still speaking in Russian. “Let’s go inside. We’ve got a lot to think about.”

  Grigorii stepped aside to let her pass. Just for a moment, Katrina felt her years. She knew that she was still attractive, and not only because Grigorii told her so. Forty-four years old, and men still looked at her when she passed on the street. Despite the lines around her eyes and the bit of gray creeping into her hair, she looked good. Most of the time, that alone was enough to make her feel good as well.

  But she felt her age now, weighing on her as she stepped past her husband—a man who was only days away from turning fifty. This was something they ought to have done years ago, when they still had the strength for it. But now …

  No! She wouldn’t allow herself to think such thoughts. They would make it, she vowed to herself. No matter the cost. Freedom waited for them, not so far away at all. Freedom, and a life they had dreamed of for more than twenty years.

  The inside of the building was absolutely disgusting. The rats were everywhere, and they left nothing undamaged. The construction had been shoddy to begin with, but there was far worse than that. Water damage had stained the walls and floor. The ceiling bowed in many places. What had once been curtains were filthy, stained rags. Nobody with a choice would ever have lived there. Even so, they’d had to drive a pair of filthy squatters out the first day. They might have been laborers, but Katrina didn’t think so. Not these men.