And she told him about the unlamented Sergey and the burned-out apartment.
“If your cover was gone, why the hell did you cancel the extract?”
“You supposed to save me, but you shot from sky?” She teased him. “Not the kind of hero-pilot a good girl is looking for.”
“Then what kind of hero-pilot is ‘a good girl’ looking for?”
6
This girl was enjoying the hero-pilot sitting just across from her. He kept surprising her. Soon she might be telling him her real story. Actually, probably no reason not to. Why not.
“I am Lyudmila Bykov. That is truth. I’m am named for Lyudmila the most famous woman sniper ever. She kill many German and Romanians here, in Sevastopol, during the World War Second. I am also pissed-off war orphan. Pissed-off, yes?”
Manny nodded that she’d gotten it right.
“I am nineteen when the Prime Minister Yanukovych enforcers put down the supporters of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Yulia want closer ties to NATO and was jailed for it. Everybody except Russia declare her trial all bad. Unfair. My parents were very close to Yulia and were executed in their beds by ‘criminals unknown.’ A CIA recruiter found me when I was very drunk and very, very pissed-off. With their help I change my name, I start working here as coordinator, to help in government offices, with Russian Black Sea Fleet. You know they are stationed here? In Sevastopol?”
“I almost got to see them up close and personal last night,” and she didn’t like the darkness of the frown on his face. Ever since he had untied her, he had looked relaxed and cheerful. But she did not forget the gun that was still sticking out from his belt and she could see the anger still there. She was glad it was not aimed at her.
“I still work in office. No, no more. Last night I killed Alisa and became Irinia.”
“Who is really Lyudmila. Good story, Grand Duchess.”
“Why do you keep calling me this?”
Manny shrugged as he crossed to the stove. His movements were quick and precise. It was the third time he had freshened their coffees though neither of them were drinking much. She had the feeling that he wasn’t very good at sitting still. Usually she wasn’t either, but the aspirin hadn’t gone to her head.
“Where did you learn such good English?”
“Parents. They buy me tutor so I’m ready to ready to serve in Tymoshenko’s government. As I say, true believers for all the no good it did them.”
“So how to get out of here?” Manny was pacing about the kitchen.
“Out of where?”
“Crimea.”
She looked up at him, “I’m not leaving.”
“You don’t look stupid.”
“There’s someone who betrayed me. I have to deal with that.” She was going to take Lesia Melnyk apart if it was the last thing she did to that sooka!
“You going to end up dead in the process?”
She didn’t have a good answer to that.
This time Manny came to a stop. He squatted close in front of her. “There’s got to be a better choice than staying for revenge, Lyudmila.”
If there was, she couldn’t think of it. Hope was something she had stopped believing in long before Sergey and his report.
“My parents called me Mila,” and she did her best not to cry. Perhaps she would see them soon…too bad she didn’t believe in that either.
7
It rapidly became clear to Manny that he wasn’t going to make it out of Sevastopol alive without Mila’s help. She made a few discreet inquiries among her friends and Russian security was way up since the destruction of his helicopter. Nobody knew what had exploded outside their harbor, but their increased readiness eliminated any rescue by air. And by sea was even dodgier, which was why they’d risked the extraction by air in the first place.
“Sometimes the only way out is through,” he had to solve this.
For two days they barely slept as they strategized, discarding theories and escape routes as fast as they thought them up.
“There’s no way that cutting your hair and dying it black would buy you more than a few days. It didn’t work in the Jason Bourne movies. It won’t work for you, Duchess. You’re too goddamn beautiful. And if you don’t show up for work on Monday, all sorts of alarms will going off.”
After the initial sadness that had almost broken his heart to watch, Mila rallied. Her knowledge of government and the Russian military was deep…and not helping.
“Maybe our ticket out of here is the woman who betrayed you. Tell me about your traitor”—weird thing to say to a spy. “This Lesia who informed on you to the SVR. We have to figure this out.”
When he said “we” she’d shot him a smile that could have lit up the sky.
“What?”
“For almost a decade it has been ‘me’,” her voice was an intimate whisper. “You said ‘we’.”
“That’s how the world spins,” he spoke quickly to cover what he really wanted to do next.
He crossed to the window to get a little more distance.
“I’ve got a team out there working the problem for me,” he waved toward the back of the building next door, an abandoned warehouse.
His team had fed him several ideas during very brief radio calls, though none had panned out yet.
“The whole world doesn’t work like the Russians and the CIA. Hell, I thought Patty and Quinn were going to fly right into the Russians’ guns to extract me. I had to risk the radio to call them off while I was swimming for shore.”
And when he was sure that he once again had control of himself, they went back to their planning, but it had changed. It had changed from ‘me’ to ‘we’ in a way that Manny hadn’t anticipated. High pressure situation be damned, every single thing he learned about Grand Duchess Lyudmila of Sevastopol, the more he appreciated her. At a level of risk that only a Night Stalker could understand, she had fed a constant stream of actionable intelligence to the West. It hadn’t been enough to save Crimea from the Russians, but it had probably saved the rest of the country from invasion.
By Sunday night they had a plan.
It was shaky as hell, but they had one.
When they were both too weary to think up another contingency, they’d dropped down side by side on a couch in what could laughably be called a living room.
“What do you think our chances are? To survival?”
Manny shrugged, “Anyone else, thirty percent at best. You and me, Duchess? I’m betting my life on it being a hundred.”
“Are you always so positive?”
“Never saw much fun in focusing on the other side of that coin. I mess up plenty, but that’s not where I live.”
“That is good,” she nodded to herself, then nodded again. Her hair a slick slide of gold that he wanted to toy with every time she moved. “It’s not what I have done in past, but it’s what I will do in future. What about after?”
“You mean after, as in if we get out of this alive?”
8
She poked him in the ribs, “When we get out of this alive.” She liked the intimacy of the gesture.
“Right. Well, I’ve got some buddies who would love to meet you.”
Mila could feel her skin go cold. She knew what kind of “buddies” people wanted to introduce pretty blonds to. It had served her well as a spy in the Ukraine, but Alisa, Irina, and Lyudmila were all three sick of being used for their body.
“They’re in this odd little intelligence group with no name. Finding a trained insider in Ukrainian politics, fluent in English and Russian…they’re definitely going to want to meet you.”
“That…” wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “Do they work with you very much?” Or would he be far away if she worked with them?
Manny was nodding. “That’s kind of their purpose. It would be nice if…”
She could hear him taper off, as if worried that he’d crossed some line. He was the strangest man she’d ever met.
First, she hadn’t woken up naked and raped.
Once he’d released her—which he had done long before she would have if their roles had been reversed—she’d waited through the first day, expecting it to happen anyway. Or at least sex to happen; he didn’t strike her as a cruel man.
But by now, they’d rarely been more than a step apart for two days and still he’d done nothing, though the way he watched her there was no question he’d wanted to.
Well, now she wanted to as well. No matter what he said, their chances weren’t good—their plan was simply the best of many terrible options.
She rose and, taking him by the hand, pulled him to his feet. Once they reached the bedroom, he did an incredible job of making her feel absolutely grand.
9
Hi, honey. Look who else decided to come along with Lesia?”
Manny just about swallowed his tongue. Their plan had included a dinner with the woman who had betrayed Mila’s—no, she was back to being Alisa for one more night—Alisa’s trust.
Just her.
Instead, the two women were followed closely by a man in full military uniform who wore the one star and no red stripes insignia of a major general of the Russian Federation.
“This is Lesia. Who I told you so much about,” Alisa was being a bubbly blond that he barely recognized, the party-girl facade worn by the Grand Duchess of sheer balls—bringing a major general to dinner. She turned to her former friend, a very attractive brunette. “And this is Manny. Isn’t he just the cutest?”
That was a new one, but Manny wasn’t going to argue.
Their escape plan was to convince Lesia to invite them out to her dacha in the country…where she apparently played mistress with her lover the general. Once clear of Sevastopol and the heavy protection surrounding the Black Sea Fleet, they could signal Patty and Quinn to meet them at the dacha, backed up by the hammer blow of the 5E Company in close support.
However, Lesia had not come alone.
“And this is Vlad,” the crazy blond hung onto the general’s arm for a moment. “He’s in charge of the Naval helicopter fleet at Kacha.” Alisa said that last bit like it was a slightly confusing throwaway line, but Manny heard “helicopter fleet” loud and clear. In that moment he forgave Alisa everything. There had to be a way to use this.
He was suddenly damn glad that he’d arranged for the fliers of the 5E to hold at thirty kilometers out, pending his final call. He wanted to avoid a reenactment of three nights ago and it was a distance they could cover in six minutes or less. Who could predict where the evening was headed.
Dinner was a strange and surreal affair. Manny’s role was pretending to be a foreign correspondent, a Canadian who had somehow finagled a visa into an area where no press were allowed. Except he knew nothing about being a reporter and his one trip to Canada had been a drunk weekend during the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs between the New York Rangers and the Montréal Canadiens.
The bait they’d dangled to get Lesia to the meal had been vague hints that Manny was only posing as a Canadian reporter and was actually Alisa’s “big” contact. A next-tier intelligence coup that Lesia would be unable to resist. So unable to resist, that she’d brought the general along to witness her glory. Perhaps if she delivered both US agents, the unmentioned wife would become powerless and the beautiful Lesia would gain the Mrs. General prize.
Throughout the meal, Alisa teased and flirted outrageously. Rather than playing footsie under the table, as would fit the events going on above the table, she kept a constant hard pressure of her leg wrapped about his. He could tell her nerves were stretched right near the breaking point, almost as badly as the woman he’d met three days ago—drunk and dressed as a man.
But rather than showing it, she was magnificent. Sparkling, downright effervescent, and damned fun despite the crazy situation.
Not surprisingly, the dinner topic that he and Vlad landed on was helicopters. As long as that was the topic, Manny could pretend to be a war correspondent who knew about helicopters from various embeds he’d done with forward teams.
It took a while for Manny to realize that Vlad was out of the loop here. He was just under the impression that he was having a lively dinner with one of his mistress’ friends. And he definitely liked Alisa. So much so that Manny was forced to pay more and more attention to the mistress so that she didn’t become angry.
Then Alisa let slip that Manny had flown helicopters himself.
Military ones.
What the hell? He didn’t catch on to what she could possibly be thinking until she nodded ever so slightly toward the general, at the same moment she kicked him sharply under the table.
After that the conversation shifted. He and General Vlad Kozlov were suddenly best buddies and soon Manny was dancing around the edges of what technologic insights he could share without violating his own Top Secret clearance.
And Lesia was, in his amateur-reporter opinion, no master spy. However, she was a very drunk one and was soon swept up in the chatter of their lively evening.
10
Alisa hung on for the wild and drunken ride to Kacha Airbase. It turned out that nothing would do, after a little coaxing and a few teasing suggestions on her own part, except for General Vlad Kozlov to show Manny the latest technology out of Russia. It had just arrived and he was very proud of having it under his local command.
“I am only Ukrainian general that Russians keep,” he’d boasted. “They trust me very much. I am most important Ukrainian man in Crimea military.”
Thankfully being a major general also earned him a driver, a silent and sober man able to escort them safely across the twenty-kilometer transit from the restaurant in the heart of Sevastopol to the base. The general was certainly in no condition to drive. He and Manny were singing together in some terrible mixture of three languages.
“It is beautiful machine. It will make Americans sick it so good,” the general slipped back and forth between Ukrainian and Russian making his speech broken and slurred. Lesia was even worse off.
Alisa—she had to stay solidly in her Alisa mode just a while longer—wished she could drag Manny aside. First, she’d kiss him for being so completely amazing at dinner.
Truth be told, she couldn’t wait to jump him. She’d been scared to death, but Manny had been so calm and smooth that everything had worked…so far.
That was the second thing she wanted to do: drag Manny aside and ask, “What the hell are we doing?” Any remnants of their original plan had been cleared off the table along with the tabak börek dumplings with broth and long before the arrival of the pennik apricot pie and the third bottle of Massandra wine—served with lots of vodka on the side.
Of course Manny was too sotted to answer. More than once he’d groped Lesia’s breast instead of her own. It was ironic, considering how they’d met, that she was the only one still sober enough to care about such things.
But before she could collect her thoughts more than to recognize that the hand on her knee and working its way up her skirt was not Manny’s, they arrived at the airbase.
Reacting to steadfast refusal on Manny’s part, the general soon forced him into the pilot’s seat then sat beside him in the copilot’s seat. She and Lesia were placed close behind them at the engineering stations.
“This,” Vlad slapped the top of the central console. “This is a Kamov Ka-35 Airborne Early Warning platform. With this, we can see ballistic missile, submarine launch, ship launch, American helicopter…” He nudged Manny with an elbow and apparently thought he was lowering his voice, though he wasn’t. “We can even see what our women would hide from us but is there for a man’s taking. Da? Da?”
“Yes!” Manny agreed with a fist pump.
The general tr
ied to copy the gesture but was so drunk that he cracked his elbow hard on the door. Lesia had passed out in her seat.
“Should we take it up for a test?” Manny asked in an oddly meek tone, then he turned and winked at her—very soberly.
Take it up for a… Oh my god! Manny was brilliant. The newest Russian technology could take them out of Crimea…and it would be a major coup to deliver it to the American technicians for study. There wouldn’t even be any political fallout as it would look like the general and his mistress were defecting. If this worked, the Americans would also get everything Lesia and Vlad knew.
Manny winked again and nodded toward the general.
Oh!
“Please, Vlad,” Alisa poured all the begging she could into her voice. She leaned forward between the pilots’ seats far enough to press a breast against his arm and pawed at his chest. “Please, Vlad. Let me see her fly!”
“Zroby tse!” The general commanded with a broad wave of his arm that clipped Manny with a solid punch. “Do it! Da, go!” Then he shouted confidentially to Manny, “We shall show both these wenches many fine things tonight.”
And Manny began cycling up the helicopter. As soon as the radios blinked to life, he spoke to the general.
“You better tell the tower we’re taking it out. So they don’t shoot us down.” He said it like the funniest joke in the world and Vlad roared with laughter.
“Yes! Yes! Good idea!”
Then Alisa had another idea and once more held tightly onto the general’s arm, “Take us over the water. I want to see the moonlight on the Black Sea. It’s so romantic, Vlad. Tell them that, too.”
And the general did.
11
This is Lieutenant Manfred Malcolm. Are we a go?”
“Roger that,” the Air Mission Commander called out. “We’re a go.”
“This should be a quick one, if we can trust intel,” Manny called back, knowing exactly who had done the background research for the mission.
The Ides of Matt 2016 Page 20
