by A. D. Winch
Alexander brought the reading lamp closer and shone it into the bullet hole. He knelt down and peered into the cavity. There, at the back of her head, he could see the shaft. It had been sliced in two by the bullet and shards glistened, in the light.
“So, that’s it,” he said to himself. “They shot through her central power cable.”
Alexander placed Andrea’s eye back in her socket and returned her wig. It was hard to image that such a small object could cause such damage. If he was careful and kept her protected, then he was confident that he could fix the damage. With this in mind, he wrapped her in the sheet, put her in the duffel bag and returned it to the top of the wardrobe. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. After a few minutes, he knew what he was going to do.
If she were still in Russia, the priority would be to find his sister. She may know something about Andrea and Lepley. They would go there together and see if anything could be found to help him repair Andrea. If he couldn’t find his sister then he would find someone who could translate for him, pay them way over the odds and go to Lepley with them instead.
In her diary, his mother had said that she was controlled by the KGB and he decided that this was the best place to start in trying to locate information about his sister. He visited the KGB Museum, the Museum of Federative Security Service of the Russian Federation, and numerous other government buildings. Despite his best efforts, Alexander discovered nothing. The people he met either spoke no English or, if they did, his questions were met with the same response, ‘this information is classified.’
He had more luck online and discovered KGB archives from the former Soviet Union. The countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all had information available on websites, but his searches there only came to dead ends. He tried a different track and read as much as he could by Major Vasili Mirtokhin, a KGB archivist who had defected to the United Kingdom. Once again nothing referred to his mother or sister. By this stage, he had been in Moscow for four weeks and had come to the conclusion that searching for information was not much different than in the times of communism.
The lack of any concrete leads was beginning to make Alexander despondent. For a man who had spent the last ten years staying invisible, he became a little reckless. He was beginning to feel that his search was pointless, but every knock back just made him more desperate to find her. Eventually, he created an anonymous email account and used it to put a three-word advert in a popular newspaper. The advert was in English and Russian and read, ‘Professor Larsen’s daughter?’ and had his new email address. He ran it for a week.
On the seventh morning, he opened his email box expecting to see nothing but spam. However, hidden between ads for products he would never need was an email that jumped out at him.
The sender was simply called ‘Sasha.’ The email title was ‘Professor Larsen’s daughter’ and the message had a similar three-word question, ‘Professor Larsen’s son?’
Alexander began writing a reply immediately. His fingers skated over the keyboard, and he had soon written an essay about his life and his mother. He sat back, read it through and saved it to his drafts. It was not suitable as a first reply. He started again and wrote question after question after question. Once again, he saved it in his drafts.
In the end, he doubted that she would want to meet him, and he wrote very little.
I am Professor Larsen’s son. If you would like to meet, I would be happy to. I am not from Moscow, well apart from being born here, and I do not know the city. If you are from Moscow, and would like to meet, please let me know a day, time and place, and I will be there. Alexander
By the evening, he had a reply.
I live in Moscow. Yes, we can meet. I want to meet you. I am nervous. Please put my name ‘Sasha’ on the table.
Underneath she had written, in English and in Russian, a date, time and the address of the coffee shop Alexander was now sat in.
In only a few weeks, he had managed to find his sister or should he say that she had found him. In a few minutes, he would meet her for the first time. He took from his pocket a bit of paper with her name on and placed it on the table.
The waiter returned, dumped the coffee and honey cake on top of the paper and walked off. Alexander smiled and moved the paper so it could be seen again. He put the coffee to his lips and took a sip.
Sasha had specified that they should meet at eleven, before lunch. The hour came and went, but she did not appear. At eleven fifteen, Alexander had finished his coffee and was staring at the door. Another fifteen minutes passed and he began to eat his honey cake. The waiter returned, and he ordered another coffee.
At twelve o’clock, he was still alone and sat gloomily with his eyes fixed on the door. Young people, old people, couples, businessmen and women had all come and gone in the last hour, but no one had approached his table.
Alexander summoned the waiter and paid the bill. As he looked up from his change, a single woman entered the coffee shop. She was the same height as him and looked of a similar age. She stood in the doorway and looked around the room. She was dressed in a fox coloured fur coat and matching hat, across her shoulder she held a designer handbag and, in spite of the cold, she wore heels and black stockings. Alexander fought back the desire to wave, in case it wasn’t her.
Tentatively, she stepped into the coffee shop. A mobile phone was in her hand, and she was busy texting as she walked in the opposite direction from him. Alexander watched her go and felt deflated. She moved around the large room looking at tables and only approached those with men at them.
It has to be her, thought Alexander as she neared him.
He looked down at the table, but the paper with her name had gone. The waiter had taken it when he had cleared the crockery.
She was soon behind him, and Alexander didn’t dare turn his head to look. As she passed his table, he said, “Sasha.”
The lady stopped and turned. Alexander stood to greet her but then wasn’t sure how. The two of them looked at each other awkwardly, wondering what to do. Neither said anything.
She was slightly taller than him in her high heels. After glancing around the room, she began to undo her coat and removed her hat. Her hair cascaded down to her shoulders. It had been bleached blond recently as there were no visible roots. He tried to guess at the original colour by looking at her eyebrows, but they had been completely plucked and drawn back on. She was heavily made-up. On top of the foundation, she had dusted her cheeks with blusher so that they were prominent and rosy. However, her lips were the most striking and shone with a fiery red.
“Sasha?” Alexander asked, breaking the silence.
“Alexander?” she replied.
They both nodded.
Alexander helped Sasha with her coat. Underneath she wore a black dress which emphasised her curvaceous figure.
They sat down.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” Alexander began, not knowing what else to way.
“You don’t know me,” she huffed in fluent English but with a heavy Russian accent.
“You’re right. I don’t,” he replied, a little taken back.
“But you will have time,” and she smiled.
“I don’t know where to start.”
Sasha put her phone on the table and looked at him. The waiter arrived, and she ordered them both a coffee but did not take her eyes off Alexander.
“You don’t look like me,” she announced.
“But we’re the same height and roughly the same build.”
“I do not have the body of man, no?”
She looked quite upset.
“No, you don’t have the body of a man, I just thought we have a similar kind of body.”
“Rubbish!” and she threw her hand in the air in disgust. “I have curves in all the right places. You do not. I have womanly hips. You do not. I have shapely legs. You do not. I have perfect breasts. You do not.”
Alexander wasn’t sure what to say, everything he had
said so far had seemed to cause offense.
“You have a beautiful body,” he finally replied.
It was the right thing to say. Sasha smiled contentedly and relaxed into her chair.
“Thank you, for noticing. Now that we have established that we don’t look similar, convince me that you are my twin brother.”
“Well, we both have the same mother - Ingrid Larsen.”
“She may have been mother to you but she was not mother to me. True, I came from her womb but you are wrong to say that she was my mother. I was brought up by foster parents who were more sympathetic to the political ideals of the time. When I was old enough, they told me about my real mother, but they were not complimentary. I grew up being told that she was an enemy of the state.”
“But you met her? She came to Russia a number of times to see you, didn’t she?”
Sasha shifted her position in the chair, picked up her phone with her right hand and looked at it while replying.
“She came here and we met. It was not warm. There was no love, but it became friendly over time. When communism fell, I realised that I had been fed lies about her. Ingrid made me see that. We didn’t talk about much like mother and daughter. Just normal conversations like what we are doing.”
“And what were you doing when you met her? What was your work?”
“I was working for KGB.”
“And now? What are you doing now?”
“I am not working for KGB.”
Back to Contents
***
Chapter 8 – OSS Progress Report
Scientists and agents showed their passes and rapidly entered the plain, grey room. Tables had been arranged into a tight rectangle and chairs that were empty were soon occupied. There was random chatter between some of the attendants, and the smell of someone’s body odour began to linger. The room was windowless, and one of the scientists turned up the air-conditioning to make the air fresher. It didn’t work; it just made the room colder.
Professor Schwarzkopf pulled his jumper up to his chin and held it there, with his arms wrapped across his chest. He tried to stifle a cough but failed. When it had subsided, he stared at the empty podium and the stars and stripes projected behind it.
Land of the free, he thought to himself and grimaced. He had been freer in Germany, many years ago.
There was a rumpus by the open doorway. The determined looking solider standing there was refusing to let someone in.
Jean Kurtz waved her badge impatiently in front of the soldier’s face for the third time and tried to walk in.
“I can’t see that Ma’am,” the soldier said politely and held out his hand.
Kurtz smacked the badge into his palm and tutted while he looked at it. An irregular rhythm echoed down the corridor as she tapped her foot impatiently against the floor. The soldier took his time, and then he handed it back with a thank you. She did not reply and walked in as if she owned the place. There was only one seat left. Without hiding her distaste, she sat on a table next to Professor Schwarzkopf.
The scientists had taken over one of the corners of the rectangle. Near to Schwarzkopf and Kurtz sat Professor Warne, Professor Li and Doctor Khan. Doctor Khan had chosen to sit next to Professor Schwarzkopf. Since he had helped her on a number of issues, she had become friendlier towards the oldest member of the team. As she got to know him, she realised that she liked him and trusted his opinions much more than the others. The problem was trying not to make this too obvious.
Apart from the work, and recently Professor Schwarzkopf, she was not enjoying her time on the base. She missed her family back in India. She had started to wonder if the green card that had been rushed through for her, so she could join this team, had been worth it. She did not want to make matters worse by incurring Jean Kurtz’s wrath and be treated with the same disdain as Professor Schwarzkopf.
She smiled fleetingly at Professor Schwarzkopf as he glanced towards her, but he turned to stare at the two agents in the room. They were from the new team - Team Col - but she couldn’t remember what they had been named after, and all the team members looked the same anyway.
Display screens had taken all except one of the remaining places. They sat on the tables like moving portraits, occasionally blinking or looking from side to side.
A soldier entered the room and walked in front of the screens, adjusting the volume on each one as he went. Professor Schwarzkopf turned from the agents and watched. Each screen was labelled. Three of them had Temera, Morocco printed across the top. Underneath were their names - Doctor Noel Bandura, First Lieutenant Olivier Martel and First Lieutenant Florence Caron.
The remaining four screens were nameless and simply listed the locations - Djupidalur, Iceland; Pine Gap, Australia; Haarp Research Station, Alaska; and Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean. Just as Professor Schwarzkopf began to ponder these locations, Agent Angel entered the room. Everyone stood up, except Professor Schwarzkopf, and they did not sit down again until Agent Angel had sat in the remaining seat. Display screens beeped and the faces looked even more self-conscious than before.
Agent Angel banged his huge hands down onto the table. He looked stern and eye-balled everyone around the room. Professor Schwarzkopf thought about blowing him a kiss but decided that he could only push his luck so far.
The room was silent, and Agent Angel began by whispering. Everyone had to lean forward to hear him.
“Since we have tried to get hold of Black Queen and White King we have looked like amateurs. There are many things I can handle, but I will not have this organisation looking like amateurs!”
He slammed his hands down on the desk again, and everyone jumped, including those on the screens.
“I take full responsibility for that. I thought I could assign hand the rendition of two child beings to trained professionals, and they would get the job done. I thought I could assign gathering intel on my Unidentified Flying Objects to experienced scientists, and they would get the job done. I thought…” he paused and looked up.
He whispered to himself, “Oh, Lord, please give me strength,” and then addressed the room.
“But I was wrong! I don’t like it when people say, ‘If you want something done properly you have to do it yourself.’ Yet in this instance, I have had to get involved in this whole situation to ensure, people, that there are no more damn screw-ups!” he looked up again and sighed.
He shook his large head and continued, “From this point onwards we will regularly meet. You will explain to us all, at this table, what you have been doing and what you will be doing. Accountability, people! That’s the name of the game from this point forward and don’t forget it. If we’re not accountable, we get slack and once we get slack we lose our ability to lead. That’s why our country is currently losing its power base to the likes of Brazil, Russia, China,” he glanced at Doctor Khan, “and India. I’m not going to let that happen. We’re not going to lose our power, and we’re going to fight back. It’s time we re-establish ourselves on this planet as THE WORLD POWER! And you’re all going to help me,” he stopped and let everyone digest what he had said. His face had turned red, and he had a steely look of determination in his eyes.
“From now on, you’re going to be accountable. We’ll go round the table. Team Col, get us started.”
Agents Brae and Cairn had cropped hair, no necks and their muscles bulged beneath the fabric of their army fatigues. They looked at each other and then Agent Brae spoke.
“Since Team Jupiter’s fiasco in Poland we have spent considerable time and resources trying to relocate the three assailants.”
Pictures of Ursula, Alexander and Andrea, replaced the stars and stripes on the screen.
“Black Queen returned to Paris fifteen days ago. She broke back into her home with a bunch of local residents. Our agents from Team Omega were put into a situation that could have been potentially damaging for the OSS as an organisation. Fortunately but embarrassingly, our agents managed to retreat to safety. Thus preventi
ng the OSS becoming embroiled in a minor scandal."
Agent Angel banged on the table with his fist, “This is exactly what I am talking about. We shouldn’t be retreating or discussing damage limitation. We should be causing the retreat and the damage.”
Agent Brae looked sheepish and then asked, “Permission to continue, Sir?”
Agent Angel nodded and lit a cigar.
“Our agents remain in Paris but are unable to approach Black Queen’s home due to a continual show of force by the residents and we want to avoid an incident that could be traced back to us. They are keeping careful watch on Black Queen, and I fear that any intervention would cause more problems than it solves. Agent Cairn.”
Agent Cairn sat even more upright in his chair and continued, “We lost the man known as Alexander Johansen when he exited Poland. We managed to follow him until he entered Belarus. We attempted to stop him crossing the border, but the Polish authorities were difficult to contact on Christmas Eve.”
The mention of Alexander Johansen interested Professor Schwarzkopf and he stopped looking at the prominent veins on his hands. There were many questions that he wanted to ask but did not for fear of drawing unwanted attention to himself.
“Amateurs,” huffed Agent Angel.
“We had been able to keep tracks on him. However, recently he has surfaced in Moscow, and we do not think he will evade us again. It is possible to render him immediately but…”
“…but our relations with the Reds are…,” interrupted Agent Angel, “…how should I put this? Delicate. They’ve forgotten all the help we gave them when the commies were overthrown and won’t return the favour as willingly. Yeah, they’re helping but they’re only providing us limited manpower. Now they think they're more powerful than they actually are and like to wield that power. As long as we keep massaging egos they’ll play ball. Moving on! What about the elf?”
“The woman known as Andrea has completely disappeared. She is an enigma that we are currently working on solving.”
