[Story] Cold Snap

High tech intrigue and Cold War
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Arty
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[Story] Cold Snap

Post by Arty »

The year is 1972, and the Cold War is about to change forever.


Chapter 1: Cabin

Somewhere in the Kamchatka peninsula, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
1528 Hours, Kamchatka Time, March 12


Admiral Syovodor Alyevin blinked at the light shining through the forest canopy, and slipped a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses on over his eyes. He accepted the hand offered to him by his adjutant, a red-haired girl young enough to be Alyevin's daughter, who helped him down the ramp placed in front of the helicopter Alyevin had just landed in.

“Zhana,” Alyevin greeted his assistant, barely loud enough to be heard over the helicopter's rotors, which were picking up speed to leave now that Alyevin had disembarked. “Is everything ready at the cabin?”

“Yes, Comrade-Admiral,” Zhana said, smiling at Alyevin, who couldn't help grinning back. Young she may be, but in the three months she'd been assigned to him, she'd been a more welcome sight with each day; especially since Alyevin had been transferred out east to the Pacific division, leaving his wife and girlfriends in St. Petersburg, practically on the other side of the world. “Your... friend from Switzerland is waiting for you; he arrived an hour ago.”

“Bastard beat me here,” Alyevin grumped. “Wonder what he's trying to say with that?”

“Apparently that he doesn't have anything better to do than wait on you, Comrade-Admiral,” Zhana said, shrugging.

“Well, then you two have something in common, no?” Alyevin grinned at Zhana, and wasn't too ashamed to enjoy the girl's blush. Nothing had happened between the two of them, but Alyevin would be in Kamchatka for many years now, and Zhana's career in the Soviet Navy was precarious enough that she wouldn't risk being hastily re-assigned if her superior was displeased with her. Alyevin was a man who had gotten where he was by taking opportunities when they presented themselves, whether it was a hole in the American sonar network, a rival commander's incompetence, or the prim but coy nature of a red-haired country girl whose job was literally to carry out Alyevin's wishes twenty-four hours a day. “Did he say anything to you?”

“Nothing important, Comrade-Admiral” Zhana said. “At least, I don't think there was anything important. Of course, you can decide for yourself when you listen to the recording I made.” Zhana reached into her pocket and pulled out a military-green device about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It had no power source that Alyevin could see, only a few speaker holes and a yellow button and a red button. Zhana pushed the yellow one, and offered it to Alyevin.

Alyevin put the device to his ear, and smiled at what he heard.

A man, speaking English with an educated British accent: “Is your master usually this late to meetings, Ms...?”

Zhana, in near-impeccable English, though with an unmistakably Russian accent: “Admiral Alyevin is a very busy man, Mr. Kroner, with many responsibilities to take care of.”

Kroner (to be specific, Malcolm Stavro Kroner, the financial wunderkind of Zurich): “To be sure, to be sure. You never did answer me, about your name.”

Zhana: “No, Mr. Kroner, I did not.”

Kroner: “Well, I can't just keep calling you 'Red,' now can I?”

Alyevin pushed the yellow button, cutting off Kroner's conversation with Alyevin's adjustant.

“He goes on like that for some time,” Zhana said. “As I said. Nothing important that I noticed.”

“Does he frighten you?” Alyevin asked.

“Comrade-Admiral?”

“This man, Kroner. You sounded scared when you were with him – am I wrong?”

Zhana pursed her lips. “No, Comrade-Admiral. You are not wrong. He's... He is a dangerous man, Comrade-Admiral. I, I know that you know that already, but...”

Alyevin smiled, and placed a hand on Zhana's shoulder. “There is no need to worry, Zhana. I am Admiral Syovodor Boranovic Alyevin, and I am the living embodiment of the Soviet Navy, the greatest branch of the greatest military of the greatest nation in the world.”

“Long live the Union,” Zhana responded.

“Long live the Union, indeed. Kroner is rich, certainly, and he has had plenty of success in his less-than-public ventures, but this group of con men and muggers he has put together, whatever they call themselves...”

“WRAITH, sir,” Zhana said.

“Yes, right, a good spooky name for a spooky organization. I'm sure it makes Kroner feel very powerful, like the biggest snake in the pit. He is, however, mistaken about this. At least, he is when he is dealing with me.” Alyevin gave Zhana's shoulder another brief squeeze, then quickened his pace and made a clicking sound in the corner of his mouth.

Out of the forest, ten of the most dangerous men in the Soviet Navy simply appeared, like fog snap-freezing into deadly icicles. Eight took up place around Alyevin himself, while two fell into step just behind Zhana. All wore olive-drab balaclavas over their faces, yet more than a few had cut and burn scars that showed through the eye and mouth holes. Their AK-47s were modified in nearly every way such a weapon could be modded, their sidearms were a museum of handguns and revolvers, and nine of them carried a long knife for close-quarters work – the only one who did not carried a machete instead.

Admiral Syovodor Alyevin smiled, and pushed his sunglasses further up his nose. Malcolm Stavro Kroner thought he was a hard man, a dangerous man. Kroner had no idea what the word “dangerous” meant.

-

The cabin was overgrown with vines and shrubs, and had settled and leaned into the forest's soil until nearly every architectural right angle had been crushed or stretched. None of the men, nor the one woman, standing in the cabin's sole room knew how old the cabin was, or who had originally built it or lived in it, but it looked ancient, and it felt like the kind of place that the Babayaga witch might have used as a winter cottage. Perhaps it had just grown as part of the forest, and the appearance of artificiality was just that – appearance, illusion. Maybe even a trap.

People who spend their lives fighting wars develop a pair of contradictory instincts. On the one hand, they believe what is right in front of them, and very little else. They have learned to trust their senses and logic, because these things have kept them alive through countless encounters with the enemy, the elements, and the often cannibalistic politics of their homeland. Yet on the other hand, they often develop a sixth sense that cannot be accounted for with recon reports, combat doctrine, or even anything so explainable as a gut feeling. Certain situations, places, and objects just feel wrong to those warriors who have walked beside Death and joined Him in His work.

Every single person, in that cabin in the middle of the Kamchatka woods, knew that they stood in a place of murder.

Malcolm Stavro Kroner, chairman of WRAITH, couldn't have looked more comfortable or at home.

“What I cannot figure out,” Admiral Alyevin said, slipping off his sunglasses and taking a seat at the warped wood table opposite Kroner, “is how you got here without ruining that very fine suit of yours. You didn't chopper in, or my men would have seen it, and there are no roads large enough to get anything bigger than a wheelbarrow through. So you must have come on foot, but these woods, they are not kind to men who dress as you do.”

Kroner smiled and ran a thumb along the suit jacket he wore, the color of vanilla ice cream. The white shirt underneath, and the copper-colored silk tie and matching pocket square, were absolutely spotless, as were his vanilla slacks and crocodile-skin boots. “I was given many blessings, Admiral. One of them was a vast supply of old money, another was a mind too great for Cambridge, Harvard, or King's College to contain, and another was the ability to know exactly what the men I deal with want, and how to get it for them.” As if to mock the stifling heat in the cabin's densely-packed air, Kroner tightened the knot of his tie a fraction of a centimeter. “Some days, though, I think my flawless appearance is my most indispensable trait.”

“Yes, well it certainly isn't your vanity,” Admiral Alyevin said. He'd meant it to be a joke, but the Admiral's smile said that he hated Kroner, and everything that he stood for. That was just fine with Kroner. “My question remains, however – how did you and your men get here?”

Kroner glanced behind himself at the four men he'd brought with him. One was Kroner's personal butler, holding a desperately-sweating bucket of ice which protected the last bottle of a French Chardonnay whose line had ended with the burning of the vineyard in 1941, as well as two glasses. Two of them were bodyguards, armed simply with Walther semiautomatics. The last man did not, at first appearance, seem to have a job other than to hold a rather large suitcase that, if it had been fitted with treads and a cannon, could have been mistaken for a very small, gray tank.

“We arrived quietly, calmly, and in impeccable style,” Kroner said, turning back to the Admiral. “And we did so with one billion dollars in cash and untraceable bond in tow.”

Alyevin's eyes narrowed. “The deal was seven hundred and fifty million. If I remember correctly, that is.”

“Well, we are making this deal with American money,” Kroner said, shrugging. “A tip seemed appropriate. I always leave twenty-five percent for the waiter in my favorite restaurant in New York.”

Alyevin sneered. “I am not your waiter, Mr. Kroner.”

“No,” Kroner said, shaking his head as if he was disappointed by the fact. “No, you are not. You are, in fact, the man holding two prototype nuclear attack submarines which even the Kremlin does not know exist – and thus, will not miss. If I remember the deal correctly, of course.” Kroner shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, call the extra two hundred and fifty a down payment on our next deal. I'm sure this will be the first of many lucrative and beneficial meetings.”

Alyevin's sneer abated, though Kroner would not say that it had softened. That was to be expected. For all his power and prestige in the Soviet Navy, Alyevin wasn't really any more complicated a man than the average Moscow street tough. “The Polunuchnaya is waiting at a pre-arranged site for your people to pick up. I will send the precise location to you via fax when we both walk away from this worm-eaten shack. The Utrenyaya... is still undergoing sea trials and systems integration, even I cannot recall it immediately without raising suspicion with my men.”

Kroner steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “Admiral... I have brought you one billion dollars for two submarines. Yet, you've just told me that you only have one submarine to give me. Perhaps I should withdraw my gratuity, hm?”

“As I said, the Utrenyaya is completed, it is merely undergoing routine checks and integration. It will be ready to hand over to you in less than a month.”

Kroner sighed. “Admiral, you had more than three years to bring us both to this place, to close this deal. Surely you could have moved 'less than a month' up a bit.”

Alyevin's eyes narrowed. “And tell me, Mr. Kroner... what does an Anglo-Swiss financier need two prototype stealth submarines by the end of March for, anyway?”

The corners of Kroner's eyes creased. “That is my business, Admiral. Your business, is to get me my submarine.”

“The Utrenyaya is not your submarine,” Alyevin said. “Neither of them are, until that money,” he said, nodding at the case of cash and bonds, “is in my adjutant's hands.”

“And neither of us will get to enjoy the surely amusing sight of your little red mouse trying to lift that case,” Kroner said, “until the Polunuchnaya, and the Utrenyaya, are both in my possession.” Kroner spread his hands, and began to get up from the table. “I'm sorry, Admiral, but I don't think this deal is going to-”

Ten rifle barrels raised, and Malcolm Stavro Kroner stared down each of their sights, into the eyes of the men behind those sights. “Hold your fire,” Kroner said to his own men, and slowly sat back down. He heard the hammers of his men's Walthers carefully settle back down. Kroner turned back to look into the eyes of each of the ten men pointing an AK-47 at him. He saw in each man's eyes a perfect willingness to kill for the one they called master. And yet...

Alyevin cracked his hairy knuckles and grinned at Kroner, turning the financier's attention back to the Admiral. “Don't be scared, Mr. Kroner,” he said. “Sweat and piss will surely ruin that fine suit of yours. To say nothing of blood and fine French wine.”

“Well, Admiral,” Kroner said. “You have me outnumbered, to be sure. Eight to two,” Kroner shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Not a betting man's odds.”

Alyevin chuckled. “Count again, Kroner,” he said. “I have ten men...” Then Alyevin's eyes narrowed, and he began to turn around to face the Russian gunmen.

Someone made a soft whistle, and immediately the tiny cabin exploded into gunfire.

-

The young woman called Zhana had the gun, a tiny custom-made Makarov that only about a dozen people outside of the KGB knew existed, shoot from a spring-loaded wrist holster into her hand, and put one round each between the eyes of the men guarding Malcolm Stavro Kroner. The two men who had flanked her on the way to the cabin, and who had stuck next to her throughout the meeting, stepped forward and, their rifles set on full automatic, made short work of the eight men they had trained with, eaten with, befriended, and fought beside for the last year and a half.

It was all over in less than five seconds, but the girl's ears would, she knew, be ringing for hours afterward. This awful cabin seemed practically designed to focus the acoustics of a gunfight, making the sound itself almost as painful and lethal as the bullets that had made that sound. By the time it was over, only the girl, her two allies, Alyevin, and Kroner and his two lackeys were alive. The lackeys had, to their credit, barely flinched when the gunfire started. This was not, the girl observed, their first rodeo. Which suggested something interesting about Kroner and the people he hired.

“What in the hell is going on?!” Alyevin said, standing up so fast that he knocked his chair over. He spun to stare at the red-haired girl, then shrank back when he saw the expression on her face.

“Shut up, you wrinkled old pervert,” she said, barely resisting the urge to spit in the Admiral's face. “This isn't quite how I wanted things to go, but if it means I don't have to put up with you and your grabby paws for one day longer, then bully for me.”

“Zh... Zhana, my dear, what is-”

“You call me 'my dear' one more time, Admiral, and I swear, I will have Teague here hack your balls off, right on that splintery table,” she said, nodding to one of the men with her. Specifically, the one who had the machete slung over his shoulder. “Now: Shut the sweet fuck up.”

“Ah-ha...” Kroner said, still sitting serenely behind the table. “I thought I detected a hint of an accent.”

“You, too,” the woman called Zhana said to Kroner.

“Expertly masked, instructed by a native, of course,” Kroner continued, “and you must have spent at least a year in Russia just on immersion training. Very, very good. Still, there is just the slightest hint of...” Kroner tapped his chin. “Kentucky. Yes... Chattanooga, or nearby there, if my ears don't deceive me.”

Alyevin's eyes flicked back and forth between Kroner and Zhana. “Ken... Kentucky? But, you're from Belarus, your father ran there from the Germans-”

“The only thing my daddy runs is a Buick dealership,” Zhana said, rolling her eyes. “Now will you both shut your damn mouths, or do I need to repeat myself about the table, the machete, and the testicles?”

Kroner and Alyevin both silenced themselves.

“Alright,” Zhana said. “First of all, you with the suitcase. Anything really in there, or do you just stuff it with pillows and Playboys?”

The man's mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

“Go ahead, Erik,” Kroner said. “Show her.”

The man, Erik apparently, set the suitcase down on the table, turned the tumblers of no less than twelve sets of locks (each with a different combination, as far as Zhana could tell), and opened the case. It hissed like a can of Coke opening, the temperature and pressure difference equalizing. Inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills and manilla envelopes probably filled with bank bonds and untraceable checks.

Zhana whistled appreciatively. “Well, Mr. Kroner, the rumors of your secret fortune were not exaggerated, I see.”

Kroner inclined his head slightly in a bow. “Always good to know that people say such nice things about me.”

She turned to Alyevin. “The Polunachnaya. Where is it?”

“It... I cannot...” Alyevin stammered.

“Teague,” Zhana said. One of the remaining men from Alyevin's security detachment reached over his shoulder, his AK-47 still trained on Alyevin, and pulled out the machete, slowly so that the blade hissed like a snake as it left its sheath.

“Japan!” Alyevin spat. “The sub, it is in the Sea of Japan! In... a small cove, an old Japanese sub pen from the war! We were... we weren't sure if we hid it in Russia that it wouldn't be found by, um, my colleagues.”

“So you hid it the one place you knew they wouldn't look, surrounded by American warships and sonar buoys,” Zhana said. “Well... that makes my job easier. Looks like you get to keep your balls for now. What about the Utrenyaya?”

“Yes,” Kroner said, as if playing the good cop to Zhana's bad. “What about the Utrenyaya?”

“Coop,” Zhana said to the other man hold an AK-47, “if Kroner talks again except to answer my questions, shoot him somewhere painful.”

Kroner smiled and held up his hands. “Merely trying to help.”

“There...” Alyevin started. He swallowed, the sweat pouring off his face and neck and staining his field uniform. “There is no Utrenyaya.”

Zhana raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I... I could only convince the wharves to build one,” Alyevin admitted. “The stealth reactor, the propulsion system, it required some... exotic materials. I thought we could build one first, a prototype, and then another, but the engineers, they were concerned that refining too much, um, material, too quickly, it could...” Alyevin trailed off, licking his lips and wringing his hands.

“It could what?” Zhana said. “Admiral, you may as well get it all out now. I'm willing to offer you asylum in the United States, and I can even spread a rumor about your valiant death at sea, but only if you give me full disclosure and cooperation.”

Alyevin's whole body shook. “It is not... I cannot explain. The materials are not, um, standard, not easily discussed in, ah, such a tense situation. If, perhaps, you could take me to America, I could speak to some of your-”

“Oh for pity's sake,” Zhana said. The she raised the custom Makarov and put two rounds in Alyevin's forehead. The admiral winked one eye, then the other, and fell forward to the cabin's floor. Zhana sighed, and said, in English with a faint Bluegrass twang, “You didn't have a damn clue how it worked, did you, Al?”

Kroner sighed audibly, but he said nothing. Still, the attempt to get Zhana's attention had worked. “So,” she said to Kroner. “What did you need two nuclear stealth subs for, anyway?”

“Rather simple, actually,” Kroner said, sounding dejected. “Much of my, as you called it, secret fortune, comes from smuggling. Rather innocuous items, really – diamonds, medicine, the occasional priceless archeological artifact. Understandably, these are things I'd like moved from one place to another with none of my competitors, or the authorities, the wiser.”

“You wanted the most advanced naval vessel on the planet for... smuggling?”

Kroner shrugged. “And as a personal yacht. I was planning to re-name it, of course.”

Zhana rolled her eyes. “How the hell did jack-offs like you and this guy,” she pointed to Alyevin's corpse “end up running the world?”

“I'd be willing to tell you,” Kroner said. “I know a great deal about the world of, ah, extra-legal business and its dealings with not only the Soviet government, but your own. The admiral was hardly the only man I had deals with – he's not even the only man I planned on meeting this week.”

“Who's the other?” Zhana asked.

“Two conditions,” Kroner said, holding up two fingers. “Two conditions, and I will let you leave here with that suitcase full of money, including the combination to open it, and the name and current location of my next contact, as well as the next ten after that.”

“And these conditions are?” Zhana asked.

“First, you let me live, and to continue to run my business and organization as I see fit, without interference from your government.”

“I'd call that one-and-a-half conditions, really,” Zhana said. She chewed on her lip, then nodded. “Alright. I think I can swing that with my boss.”

“I'm so very pleased to hear that,” Kroner said, looking genuinely happy. “Erik here has all the details – Erik, go ahead and accompany these fine individuals and answer any questions they may have for you. Take the money with you.”

Clearly nervous but just as clearly obedient, Erik picked up the briefcase and stood in one of the cabin's corners, which the soldier named Teague was pointing at with his machete.

“And what's your second condition?” Zhana asked.

“Clearly your name is not Zhana,” Kroner said. “Unless naming traditions in Kentucky have changed drastically since I was there last. I imagine they'll have you as my, I believe the term is 'contact,' for my relationship with whatever branch or agency you work for. And, well,” Kroner grinned. “I can't just keep calling you 'Red,' now can I?”

The woman who had spent the last three months being called Zhana Olagaevna Indrapova, considered, then said to her fellows: “Take Moneybags here out to the extraction point. Make sure he's not wired or anything first. Then, radio the Dugout, give them an update.”

“Ma'am,” Teague acknowledged, and led Erik along by machete-point. The other man, Coop, covered both of them as they exited the cabin and headed back into the stifling forests of Kamchatka.

When they were more or less alone (except for the man who'd done nothing throughout the whole engagement except hold the ice, wine, and glasses), the red-haired woman took a step forward. “Gosely,” she said. “Chandra Gosely, CIA.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Agent Gosely,” Malcolm Stavro Kroner said. “I don't suppose you'd care for a glass of wine?”
I know it’s a mess and it’s half-taped together and it’s old and busted — but it’s mine. And you gotta make that work, right? You gotta make your own stuff work out.
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Siege
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Re: [Story] Cold Snap

Post by Siege »

:lol:

I love it. Kroner's being hilarious as always (he must've missed his cat though!), I should've known it'd be Teague carrying a freaking machete into Russia... And Chandra, man, I bet she'll have mixed feelings about how this meeting went down a few decades down the road.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

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Off naked Chatham show,
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Re: [Story] Cold Snap

Post by Booted Vulture »

Sorry this took me so long to read. It's an interesting start. So many double crosses and faction is so short a time, this really is a CSW story.
Ah Brother! It's been too long!
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Arty
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Re: [Story] Cold Snap

Post by Arty »

Chapter 2: Handoff

Arlington Virginia, United States of America
1703 Hours, Eastern Standard Time, October 27


“You know,” said the man planting himself next to Chandra on the Metro waiting bench, “most kids your age who read that trash want to wear their hair down to their assholes and paint flowers on their cheeks.”

“Most kids my age,” Chandra said, barely glancing up from her copy of Rolling Stone at the man who'd interrupted her reading, “are full of shit.” Her own hair, mostly covered by a black knit beanie, was cut to just barely above the tips of her ears, though her bangs hung almost to the thick, black frames of the birth-control glasses she didn't actually need to wear. In place of flowers on her cheeks, there were pink and brown constellations of freckles.

The man, who looked like an old hippy himself with his wild gray-blond beard and John Lennon glasses, snorted. “But not you, huh? You're an eighteen-year-old intellectual.”

Chandra sighed, and rolled the magazine up like she was planning to whack the dirty old man on the nose with it. “Sixteen.”

The man's eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “No kidding. You look-”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Chandra said. “I haven't been carded in a bar since I was fourteen, and I haven't been hit on by someone my own age since I was thirteen. Take a wild guess which one bugs me more, though here's a hint: you're doing the one that bugs me more.”

The man snorted again, and rolled his own eyes. “Even if you were as old as you look, kiddo, I don't pick up chicks that read Rolling Stone.”

“Not that I'm trying to ingratiate myself,” Chandra said, “but I'm only reading it for Thompson's election articles.”

“Thompson? As in, Hunter S.?” the man asked. “Jesus, this one really is the Year of the Bastard, if that clown's covering the goddamn presidential election.”

“Far as I can tell, he's the only person in America who's managed to piss off both Bobby Kennedy and Bill Westmoreland.”

“And you think that makes him a good journalist?”

“Read it yourself,” Chandra said, handing the man the rolled-up copy of Stone. “Starts on page 52.”

The man took it and sneered at the cover (someone's idea of a Warhol portrait of Kennedy and Westmoreland in garish yellows and pinks) like it was an old high school yearbook photo of himself. Still, he rolled it back up and thumped it against his leg. “Well hell, I guess it'll give me something to do on the train.” The man stood up, rolled his shoulders to pop his neck joints, and looked to see if the train was coming or not. “Speaking of, you wouldn't happen to know when-”

Chandra had already slung her messenger bag back over her shoulder and headed for the stairs leading away from the Metro stop, back down to the streets of Arlington. Her face was one of annoyance and mild fear – natural enough, she supposed, the face of a young girl making a beeline away from a creepy old hippy that had invaded her space.

At least, that's what she hoped any observers would make of it.

Chandra hailed a cab and asked the driver to take her into downtown Alexandria. Once inside the cab, satisfied that the windows were tobacco-stained enough to give her some privacy, Chandra allowed herself a smile. That had been good. Not quite textbook, but that was alright – any mook, her trainer had told her when she was just barely eleven years old, could read a textbook and do what it said. To properly do a handoff, and half of the other things Chandra had been trained to do, required an actor's heart more than a spy's brain. Chandra Gosely, who really was sixteen years old but looked older, wasn't too proud to acknowledge, if only to herself, that she had both.

The cabbie dropped her off about four blocks from her apartment, and she tipped him what she figured a college freshman at George Mason or the local community college would be able to afford, which wasn't much. The cabbie grumbled, but accepted it, and Chandra dutifully looked both apologetic and exasperated at being hassled by the cabbie, by her lack of cash, and by life in general. The cabbie drove off, and Chandra took a few turns around Alexandria's apartment blocks until she finally decided no one was bothering to tail a tired and bored-looking college kid, then headed for home in earnest.

Chandra turned the key in her apartment's lock, opened the door, and immediately reached down to her bag's front pocket to go for the folding knife she kept there. It was the smell that tipped her off – a man's aftershave and cigarette smoke, contrasting terribly with the sandalwood incense she'd taken to burning since she'd gotten back from Kamchatka.

Her hand closed around the knife and it was almost out of the bag before she actually saw who had intruded into her space. Her grip loosened, and Chandra sighed. “You,” she started, “could have called ahead.”

“I could have,” Agent Tracy Sutherland said, smiling at his protege.

Chandra dropped the bag on a coffee table that was older than she was, and plopped herself down in what was probably the ugliest recliner in the D.C. Metropolitan area. “Package has been delivered.”

“I know,” Tracy said, standing up and heading into the apartment's tiny galley kitchen. “That was a great handoff, by the way.”

Chandra leaned forward to look at Tracy, but the man had his back turned to her, and was rooting around in her fridge. “How would you know? No one was watching.”

“You sure about that?” Tracy said, closing the fridge and holding two cans of Budweiser.

“Yeah,” Chandra said, slipping off her thick nerd goggles and fixing Tracy with a stare that most people didn't last long under. “I'm sure. I checked.” She sighed. “Alright, fine, where were they?”

“Nowhere,” Tracy said, popping the top of one of the cans and handing it to Chandra. “You're right – no spotters. At least,” he paused long enough to pop his own can, “none of ours.”

“Then how do you know it was a good handoff?” Chandra asked, taking a sip of her beer.

“Gravy checked in with me just before you got home,” Tracy said, nursing his own. “He's been doing this since the OSS days, back during the 'real war'.” Tracy chuckled. “That's what he calls it. Says we're just dicking around in the sand with the Soviets these days. He knows his spycraft, though, old Gravy. And he said you're one of the best he's ever done a handoff with.”

Chandra couldn't help blushing. If her parents (whoever they were) hadn't been so strongly of Irish and Norse descent, she might have hidden it, but her pale, freckled skin didn't conceal blushes very well – it was the one thing that she'd never been able to hide. “That's... that's good to know.”

“He did have one pointer, though,” Tracy said, finishing his beer in one long chug. “When you're doing a handoff with an older guy, and let's face it that's probably gonna be ninety-five percent of the time, go ahead and look disgusted and hassled, but don't look totally disinterested. Young girls might not want to actively get with every guy who pays them any attention, but they do appreciate the attention.”

“Do they, now?” Chandra said, leaning forward in mock interest.

“That's what Gravy says, and he's-”

“-been doing this since the OSS days, right,” Chandra said. “But tell me this – has Gravy ever been a teenage girl?”

Tracy actually furrowed his brow to think about that for a moment. “I don't think so.”

“Well then, all due respect to the expert spies from the 'real war',” Chandra said, making exaggerated air quotes with her fingers, “but fuck what Gravy thinks.”

“Man just paid you a pretty high compliment.”

“Which doesn't give him the right to pay me a pretty low insult.”

Tracy shrugged. “Fair enough. You gonna finish that?”

Chandra chugged her beer, then held the cold can to the side of her head. “So,” she said. “I'm guessing you didn't just come here to steal my Bud.”

“It's my Bud,” Tracy said. “Well, technically it's the taxpayers' Bud, since they're the ones paying our salaries.”

“It was in my fridge, though,” Chandra said. “Hence, my Bud.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear that three months in the USSR hasn't dampened your capitalist spirit.”

“That what you're here about?” Chandra asked. “The Alyevin gig?”

“Yep,” Tracy said, belching softly. “Although it's sort of morphed into the Kroner gig, since last we talked.”

“That guy,” Chandra said, “gives me the willies.” She set the empty can on the table. “If you want my impression from the field.”

“I do, in fact, want your impression from the field,” Tracy said, and took a pack of Marlboro Reds out. “You mind if I smoke?”

“Only if I can have one,” Chandra said, stick two fingers out toward the couch Tracy was sitting on.

“Nope,” Tracy said. “You're underage.”

“I'm also underage for drinking, but you brought me a beer,” Chandra said.

“Yes, but,” Tracy said, lighting up. “These are my cigarettes.”

Chandra glared at Tracy, and turned the “may I have a smoke?” gesture into a “I hate you and wish something awful would happen to your sensitive areas” gesture.

“So, Kroner,” Tracy said, all business again. “What's he like?”

Chandra sighed, considering her words. “Urbane, well-informed, confident, almost as smart as he thinks he is.” She paused. “Which is still pretty damn smart. Also, I don't think he has much in the way of a fear instinct.”

“As in, he's subconsciously suicidal?” Tracy tapped his ash into the mostly-empty beer can, where it sizzled in the dregs. “That makes sense. A lot of these billionaire and trillionaire guys-”

“No,” Chandra said, shaking her head. “I mean, he really, really thinks he's invincible.”

Tracy narrowed his eyes at her and took a long drag. “Why does he think that?”

“If I had to guess,” Chandra said, shrugging, “he's probably been through seven levels of hell and come out of all of them without even getting his hair mussed or his suit wrinkled. He's got money, and that helps, but he's also got...” she rubbed her nose, which always got sore when she wore her glasses for her college student disguise. “I dunno. Chutzpah, is what I'd call it if I were a Jewish grandmother.”

“Mm-hm,” Tracy said, nodding. “And what would you call it if you were a CIA field agent?”

Chandra glanced at him, accepted the mild admonishment, and said “he's a killer. Again, if I had to guess, I'd say he probably qualifies as a serial murderer. We look hard enough into his past, I think we'll see a lot of bodies.”

“Well, we have indeed been looking into him,” Tracy said.

“And?” Chandra asked.

“Clean as a whistle,” Tracy said. “Way too clean, in fact. With most guys, I'd say that was a rookie mistake, trying too hard to look like a law-abiding citizen, but...”

“But that's not what he's doing,” Chandra said, looking at the apartment's brown and gold shag carpet. “He's taunting us. Us, and probably the NSA, Navy and Air Force intelligence, MI6, the KGB, hell probably everybody. Wants us all to see him, notice him, and dig into him...” she looked back up at Tracy. “And then beat our heads against the wall trying to find anything solid on him. He gets off on it.”

Tracy looked back at her long enough that they both smelled the cigarette's cherry start catching the filter on fire. Tracy cursed and dropped the butt into his can, shaking it a little. Thin blue smoke started streaming up from the can's opening. “Sometimes,” Tracy said, looking down at the smoke, “I forget how good you are at this. Scares me, a little.”

“Why?” Chandra asked. “It doesn't scare me.”

Tracy laughed, but it was a dry, cold laugh, like the autumn wind outside, like the smoke drifting up from the beer can. “That scares me, too.”

-

Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, United States of America
0148 Hours, Hawai'i-Aleutian Time, October 23


The Polunachnaya didn't look much like a submarine to Lieutenant-Commander Amelia Kumahame. In fact, nothing on the boat looked like it should have. The conning tower was barely more than a pimple on a wedge-like main hull, the propeller looked more like a studded mining drill than the screws Ames was familiar with, and while the SEALs and engineers who had driven the boat here from Japan had counted more than twenty torpedoes in the hold, Ames had no idea how the damn things were supposed to be fired, because the tubes were way too small, and besides that, they had no flooding mechanism.

Ames had been analyzing submarines almost since she had joined the Navy five years ago, and growing up on Oahu just minutes from Pearl Harbor, she'd been obsessed with them since she could speak the word “submarine.” While long-standing naval tradition had kept her from joining the Silent Service, Ames had become, more or less by sheer force of will, the United States Navy's leading expert on submarines, and if the brass ever got over their fear of ovaries, she might even get to sail on one. That, however, wasn't likely to happen in her lifetime. So now, every time Ames watched a submarine pull out of the harbor, she had to fight the urge to go swimming after it and demand they either let her on or let her drown.

The one thing that kept Ames sane while she was stuck above sea level was to at least get to poke around subs, to figure out why they broke when they broke, and how to make sure they didn't break again. That was good work, but the really fun part of her job was getting to look at new, weird subs. Usually that meant looking at a British or French sub that had been leant to her in the interest of the NATO nations sharing technology, but every now and then she got to look at something with a red star painted somewhere on the hull.

Peeking into a Soviet or a Chinese boat was always a bit like traveling to some alternate universe where everything was more or less the same, but the details that were different made the familiar things all the stranger. However, the Polunachnaya (or Polly, as Ames and her crew had decided to call her – the Navy never used five syllables when two would do), was less an alternate universe and more of an alien nightmare realm. Looking at the engine room of a Typhoon-class was like being in a world where Dick Nixon, not William Westmoreland, was sitting in the Oval Office, but looking at Polly's engine room was like entering a world where the Earth was a blasted, airless landscape under an infinite night sky where the stars hung in nauseating constellations. Truth be told, Ames didn't even like setting foot on Polly alone.

“So what the hell,” she asked herself aloud, mostly just to hear the sound of her own voice, “are you doing here, Ames?”

The answer to that question was the slick black pill bottle shape in the center of Polly's engine room. It had been running when the SEAL team had boarded Polly off the coast of Japan, and the boat's skeleton crew had claimed, unbelievably, that they didn't know how to turn the engine off. Those Russian sailors had been imprisoned for half a year, and subjected, Ames was sure, to every form of “intense questioning” that Naval Intelligence, the CIA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and probably a dozen other branches and bureaus, could stomach. Not one of the sailors had changed their story. Even stranger, some of the best engineers in the United States Navy (at least, the ones with a high enough security clearance) had also looked at this thing, and the best they'd been able to come up with was that the technology was “at least ten years ahead” of anything that the U.S. or any other NATO country had.

Ames wasn't a nukes specialist (when she'd joined, most the Navy's subs still had run on diesel, and that was just starting to change), but she knew that the first thing anyone should learn about a nuclear fission reactor was how to safely turn the damn thing off if you had to. This engine had been running continuously since at least April 9th, when the SEALs had boarded and stolen it, and probably for a good while before that, too. None of the Russian sailors had actually seen the reactor turned on, not even the boat's chief engineer, with whom Ames had had a few long conversations before he'd been transferred to some hole in the ground.

One of the last things the Soviet engineer, whose name was Lobachev, had told her was “do not spend much time near it. The reactor.”

“Does it have a leak?” Ames had asked him, instantly getting goosebumps at the idea of that thing pumping radiation into her and her crew.

“Not like you mean,” Lobachev had shook his head. “We wear radiation badges, all times. Nothing. But... is like sharing the room with a, um...” he had paused, then mimed a snapping motion with his arms, his fingers curled into mock teeth.

“Uh, shark? Crocodile? Bear trap?”

“Yes,” Lobachev had said, nodding and wagging his finger at her. “Exactly. Very dangerous.”

Ames had believed him then, but only now did she feel like she'd really understood what Lobachev had meant.

None of that was what worried Ames, though. What worried Ames was the fact that sometimes, when she watched it for long enough, Ames thought she could see the reactor... twitching.

Metal did not twitch. Ames could write a forty-page report on all the reasons it was flat-out impossible for metal to move of its own volition at all. Which was exactly what she had just finished doing, knowing that it was probably going to ruin some Admiral's breakfast when he read it tomorrow morning. She had come down to Polly mostly to make sure that what she had just pounded out on her battered Smith-Corona was merely absurd, rather than actually, schizophrenically insane.

It was, Ames supposed, nice to know that she wasn't crazy. That wasn't much consolation, though, when she was looking at a nuclear reactor that shifted in its sleep.

Like it was doing right now.

A metallic thump sounded behind her, and Ames screamed, though her eyes never left Polly's strange, unsettling engine.

“Ma'am?” a familiar, concerned voice said, and Ames breathed a sigh of relief that she felt in the tips of her toes.

“Bolton,” Ames said, finally managing to look away from the reactor. “I am going to strangle you, I swear to God.”

“Ma'am?” Master Chief Petty Officer Donald Bolton said, head cocked to the side like a dog. “Did I startle ya?”

“No, Bolton, I always scream like a little girl when I'm by myself. It's therapeutic.”

Bolton frowned. “Uh, well, pardon me, ma'am, but that don't sound too therer, uh, there-ah, that don't sound like fun at all, ma'am.”

Ames rolled her eyes, but she smiled while she did it. Donnie Bolton was short, skinny, Alabaman, and had probably forgotten more about nautical propulsion systems than even Ames had ever known in her life. If you asked Donnie how to get a boat from one end of the Atlantic to the other using nothing but a gallon of kerosene for fuel, Donnie would mull it over for a few seconds, then ask “just how pure'a kerosene we talkin' here?” On the other hand, if you asked Donnie what his middle name was, his eyes would glaze over and oil smoke would start pouring out of his ears.

“What you doin' down here so late anyway, ma'am?” Donnie asked.

“Just... communing with the spirits, Bolton,” Ames said, nodding at Polly's reactor. The words were barely out of her mouth when she realized that what she'd said wasn't very funny, all things considered. “Why, what are you doing here?”

“Same, s'pose,” Donnie said, shrugging. “Ma'am, anything 'bout this engine seem queer to you?”

This was maybe the tenth time Donnie had asked her that since Polly had docked at Pearl Harbor, but Ames had never been annoyed by it. It was a comfort to know she wasn't the only one who got creeped out by this thing. “Yeah, Bolton, I think this engine's queer as hell. Fact is, I think this whole boat is queerer than a sack full of assholes.”

Donnie squealed laughter at that, and Ames didn't mind at all. It was very strange to hear laughter in this place, but it was a far more welcome sort of strangeness. “That's a pree good one, ma'am.”

“Well, I'm here all week, folks,” Ames said, “try the veal, tip your waitresses.”

“What I can't figure out,” Donnie said, after he'd gotten himself under control, “is how that dang screw works.”

“Yeah,” Ames said, walking backward out of the engine room. She very much didn't want to be there anymore (maybe, she realized, she didn't want the engine to hear them talking about it), but she also didn't want to take her eyes off the reactor. “The shape's all wrong.”

Donnie followed her, and they headed for the gangway that led from Polly out into the big sup pen that the Navy had disguised as a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data center. This was where the Navy kept all their prototype boats in the Pacific, but Polly made the hydrofoil swift boat, the one-man SEAL insertion torpedoes, and the submersible attack helicopters look, by comparison, about as experimental as an oil tanker.

Donnie talked while they walked: “They look like they'll churn water real good, but most'er the thrust ought to just spiral outward, not back. It ought'a ain't do nothing but spin Polly around like a chopper wi' no side rotor. But heck, it worked just fine getting' her here from Japan, and in about two-thirds time it'a take an Alfa-class to do the same run. I tell ya we built one'a our own, ran it through the water tunnel?”

Ames shook her head. “No, when'd you do that?”

“Last weekend,” Donnie said, “when you were in Annapolis.”

Ames nodded, and the two engineers stepped off the gangway and headed up the stairs to the roof. “What did you find?”

Donnie shook his head. “Weirdest thing. We got a miniature built, about one-ta-a-hunnerd scale, made sure the screw was proper shaped an' everything. Had it run off a little 'lectric motor, like what you find in a model train set? Well, it done jus' what I say it would, poor little thing just spun around like a corkscrew, dang near got me pukin' just watchin' it go and imaginin' being' on it.”

“So why doesn't that happen with the real Polly?” Ames asked.

Donnie sighed, and took a step forward to open the roof door for Ames. Whether that was because Donnie was an enlisted seaman and Ames was an officer, or because he was a Dixie gentleman and she was a lady, Ames didn't know. They both stepped out into the cool Hawai'ian night air. Some guy who thought he could play a ukelele was sitting with his feet dangling off the edge of a pier half a klick away, managing to completely mangle the Doors' “Break on Through.” Ames wanted to kick him off the pier to shut him up.

“Well, I jus' don't know, ma'am,” Donnie said. “Sheesh. We had this boat, what, six months now?”

“That's about right, yeah.”

“And we still don't know nothin' about it,” Donnie said. “Yet somehow, the dang Russians built that sucker, pardon my French. I knew they might be ahead of us on a few things, but heck, I didn't think they were that far ahead.”

Ames chewed her lower lip and looked out over the vast, black waves of the Pacific Ocean. The guy with the uke was singing “You know de day destroy de night, night dee-vide de day...” and somewhere out near the horizon, Ames recognized the running lights of a guided missile destroyer pulling out to sea. Compared to how huge, how dark the ocean looked to her just then, that destroyer, one of the most advanced seagoing vessels mankind had ever built, seemed tiny, fragile, and alone.

“You wanna hear a crazy idea, Bolton?” Ames said, almost whispering it.

“What's that?” Donnie said, actually whispering it, in a suitably conspiratorial tone.

Ames grinned for a second at Donnie, but it didn't last. Not up against the sight of that tiny warship disappearing into the horizon, the off-key strumming and lyrics about something from “the other side,” and the thought she almost didn't want to say aloud. “Well, suppose the Soviets didn't build it,” she finally managed.

“Ma'am?”

Ames looked over at Donnie, lips pursed. “What if they found it?”

Donnie's eyes glazed over, but this time Ames couldn't blame him. “Found it where, though, ma'am?”

She didn't have an answer for that one. Not even a guess.

-

Langley, Virginia, United States of America
0931 Eastern Standard Time, October 29


“And pivot!”

Chandra did as she was told, making sure her grip on her “assailant” was secure and her footing correct, then twisting her entire body, starting with her ankles and knees, up through her hips and spine, and finally her shoulders and arms. The man pretending to subdue her, who was almost twice her age and more then twice her weight, flipped end over end and landed on his back with the breath blasting out of his lips.

She leaned over and helped her training partner to his feet. “You alright?” she asked him.

Sergeant Thaddeus Teague, of the United States Marine Corps, gasped air back into his lungs, but gave Chandra a thumbs-up.

“Come on, big guy,” she said to Teague, patting him on a bicep that was about as thick around as her waist. “Suck it up.”

Teague managed to get enough air to laugh. “You're a little shit, Spookshow. Anybody ever tell you that?”

Chandra shrugged. “Just you, Jarhead.”

“Alright, you two, quit flirting,” their trainer, Avram Bozeman, said. “I'm gonna lose my lunch over here.”

“Somebody say lunch?” Teague said, slapping his stomach. “This is hungry work.”

Avram repositioned his glasses on his nose, which he had a habit of doing when he was annoyed. Chandra noticed he did that a lot around Teague. In a wool jacket and a with black bush of hair and beard, Avram looked more like a college professor than a martial arts instructor. Avram, however, had spent his childhood fighting in the Polish resistance movement, against both the Germans and later the Russians. Most of the time, Avram and his friends hadn't had guns or even knives to fight with, but they'd always had their hands, knees, and centers of gravity to use against the occupying forces. Avram had come over to the United States to teach Americans how to do what he did best. He was a great teacher, and Chandra and Teague were living proof of that. Sometimes, Chandra felt a little bad about thanking Avram with pranks and inane questions. Just sometimes, though.

“Gosely,” Avram said. “When you plant your feet for the throw, are you feeling it more in your forward foot, or your back?”

Chandra thought about it for a second. “Forward, I think. Should it be the back?”

“It shouldn't be either of them,” Avram said, shaking his head. “Your balance goes out while you've got an ape like Teague rolling around on your shoulders, and you'll fall with him on top of you. Then you're even more screwed than you were to begin with.”

Chandra sighed, nearly muttered something about how the front foot felt right, but she reined it in. Avram didn't argue with his students, he simply made proclamations. If she didn't follow them, she'd pay the price in the field, and Avram trusted her to understand that. She did.

“Teague,” Avram said, moving on, “I know we're doing this mostly for Chandra's benefit, but you shouldn't have taken that fall as hard as you did, so listen up.”

Teague cleared his throat and straightened his back so he was standing at parade rest. “Listening.”

Avram nudged his glasses. “When you get tossed like that, you can't just bellyflop onto the ground. Otherwise, what happened here on the mat is gonna happen in the jungle, or the back alley, or the deck of a ship, and that'll be the end of you. Can't fight back if you've got no air.”

“Are you critiquing the way I fall, sir?”

“As a matter of fact,” Avram said, standing inches away from the much-larger Teague with no fear whatsoever, “I am. You may be a lean, mean, green killing machine, but you seriously suck at falling.”

“Don't see how that's a problem if I never fall, sir,” Teague said.

“Hmm. That's an interesting point,” Avram said, still looking Teague in the eye. “Gosely. Knock Sergeant Teague on his arrogant ass.”

Before Avram had finished the last syllable of his instruction, Chandra had grabbed Teague's wrist and pressed her sharp hip into his stomach. Teague's breath escaped again, but he still managed to react almost instantly, trying to sweep Chandra's legs out from under her. Chandra jumped over the sweep like she was skipping rope, then curled herself into a ball, still holding onto Teague's wrist, and rolled head-over-heels.

Teague had little choice but to roll with her – his only alternative was a broken wrist – but he ended up on his back, with Chandra's left knee on his collarbone and her right middle and index finger, in place of a knife or handgun, to his temple.

Avram tapped Chandra on the shoulder, and she stepped off of Teague. Avram leaned over, one hand on his hip, the other holding up his glasses. “Everybody falls, Sergeant,” Avram said. “Sooner or later, everybody falls. The trick is to fall correctly, so that you can get back up again, and fall better the next time.” Then he stuck his hand out. Teague looked at Avram's hand suspiciously, but took it, and allowed himself to be dragged to his feet for the second time in so many minutes.

Someone at the back of the padded training room started clapping, and Chandra turned to see Tracy Sutherland leaning in the room's doorway. “Good speech,” he said, replacing his hands in his pockets and walking into the room.

Avram smiled, which was a rare enough occurrence that Chandra couldn't help but smile in response. “Tracer,” he said, mirroring Tracy's stance.

“Bulldozer,” Tracy said, nodding at the trainer. Tracy came over, and they shook hands and started talking about something.

“Oh great,” Teague said under his breath to Chandra. If there was any animosity about Chandra having taken Teague downtown in front of Avram, he didn't show it. “It's another meeting of the Old Soldiers Club.”

Chandra shrugged and crossed her arms. “They gotta feel important somehow, I guess” she said.

“Heh,” Teague replied, and used Chandra's head as an armrest.

“Your armpit smells like a barn,” Chandra said, but allowed Teague to lean on her. It was the least she could do. “Not like the kind where they keep cows, either, like the kind they keep lepers in.”

Teague sniffed his armpit as loudly as possible. “That's the smell of Marine, Spookshow. If they could bottle this stuff, any guy who bought it would be swimming in poon-tang from here to Beijing. Hell, we could probably win the Cold War with nothin' but Marine sweat; all the commie girls would leave their boys for us and the Soviet military would fall apart from blue balls.”

“I don't know why they don't put you in charge, Teague,” Chandra said. “You're clearly wasted on the infantry.”

Teague mused on that for a moment. “Colonel Thaddeus Teague,” he said, slowly and pompously. Then he made blew a raspberry. “Nah. That guy sounds like an asshole.”

“Gosely,” Tracy called to her. “You tired of throwing jarheads around?”

Chandra looked up at Teague and shrugged. “Why, you got anybody who can actually fight? Air Force, maybe?”

“Careful, Spookshow,” Teague said, just a hint of actual menace in his voice. He took his arm off Chandra's head, though, and came to attention as Tracy approached.

“Go get cleaned up, want to talk with you about something,” Tracy said to Chandra.

Chandra nodded, and turned to Avram. “Thank you for the lesson, Master Bozeman.”

“My pleasure, Ms. Gosely, as always,” Avram said. “Teague, you got anywhere to be for an hour?”

“If I leave now,” Teague said, “I can just catch the Sesame Street rerun.”

“Oy. Stick around,” Chandra heard Avram say as she and Tracy left. “I'll show you how to reverse that fall into a choke hold. Yeah, thought that might get your attention...”

-

Langley, Virginia, United States of America
Twenty-eight minutes later


“So, how is he?” Tracy asked, after Chandra had showered and changed into civvies. They walked through the silent and mostly-empty halls of the CIA headquarter's lowest levels.

“Teague?” Chandra asked. “Oh, he's a clown, but he's a great guy to have with you in the field. Decent actor, when he needs to be, and he knows how to use a machete,” She grinned at Tracy. “Just don't tell him I said that. It'll go to his head.”

“Good,” Tracy said. “And Cooper?”

“Harder to say,” Chandra said. “Strong silent type, you know? Though maybe that's just because his Russian wasn't as good as mine and Teague's. Why you ask?”

Tracy put a finger to his lips. “Hold that thought.” Then he opened stairwell door, and Chandra slipped her birth-control glasses on and held her bag to her chest, looking for all the world like a nervous student on her first day at a new school.

Plenty of people on the main levels gave Chandra funny glances, but those glances lasted precisely until they saw Agent Sutherland, and then those people suddenly found something very interesting to look at on the walls or ceiling.

There were maybe twenty-five people in the world who knew exactly who Chandra was, or the fact that she had, essentially, been raised from the cradle by the Central Intelligence Agency. Of those people, maybe eight knew that Chandra had just completed a months-long mission deep inside the USSR's borders, and of those eight only Sergeants Teague and Cooper, Agent Tracy Sutherland, and Chandra herself, knew precisely what had happened on that mission. The official story was that Chandra was some kind of codebreaker savant, and there was a rumor (which Chandra and Tracy were more than willing to perpetuate) that Chandra was just this side of mentally retarded, that she required careful handling and didn't like talking to anyone other than her assigned handler.

There were, of course, less savory rumors flying around about Agent Sutherland and his pet cryptomancer, but that had its own uses – to this day no one in Langley, not even the kids close to her own age, had so much as asked for her number.

It wasn't until they were in Tracy's office, with the door locked and the blinds pulled, that Chandra let her mousy persona fall away with a relieved sigh. “So, what's up?” she asked.

“Your submarine,” Tracy said, taking a seat behind his desk and fishing around in its drawers for cigarettes. “It's weird.”

“Well, we knew that,” Chandra said, shrugging. “Or else you wouldn't have sent me after it.”

“True,” Tracy said, finally locating a pack of Marlboros and lighting up. “Let me rephrase. It's weirder than we thought.” He tapped a report on his desk thick enough that it had to be held together with alligator clips. “Read that.”

Chandra reached forward, took the report, and spent ten seconds putting her mind into the right space for speed-reading. Infiltration, acting, navigation, sleight-of-hand, and combat were the skills she practiced most often, but one of the first that Tracy had ever taught her, when she'd been eight years old, was how to take in as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. In the one year of public high school Chandra had attended, largely at her own insistence, she'd needed barely thirty minutes of studying per night. It hadn't been the homework that had made Chandra decide that high school wasn't a good place for her.

She flipped through the pages, her eyes darting over them with the precision and speed of the camera on a U-2 spy plane. Tracy chain-smoked furiously as she read, a habit he only indulged in when he was nervous. As Chandra read, she began to understand why. “This,” she said, after ten minutes or so, “is ridiculous.”

“Well thank God,” Tracy said. “I was worried that I was the only one who thought a Soviet attack submarine with a heartbeat was 'ridiculous'.” He made air quotes with his fingers, a tic he'd picked up, Chandra realized, from Chandra herself.

“It's got to be just some weird new reactor tech,” Gosely said. “That, or this Lieutenant-Commander Kuma, Kameha...”

“Kumahame,” Tracy finished for her.

“Keemee-meemee,” Chandra said, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out at Tracy. “Maybe she's just spooked because the Reds beat her to the punch.”

“Well, you can decide for yourself when you meet her tonight,” Tracy said. “Hope you didn't have any plans.”

“Well, there was that Sesame Street rerun,” Chandra said, shrugging.

“Har-har.”

“She's in town?”

“Annapolis, but close enough. Her plane lands tonight at five.” Tracy leaned forward, thought for a moment, then passed Chandra the pack of smokes and the ancient Zippo lighter that, supposedly, Tracy's father had carried with him from Normandy all the way to Berlin as a member of the 101st Airborne Division.

“Holy shit,” Chandra said, looking down at the smokes and the lighter as if Tracy had just passed her the prophesying head of St. John the Baptist. “This must be bad.”

“It is. There's something I need to tell you, Chandra,” Tracy said. “Go ahead, light up. You're probably gonna need it.”

Chandra did as Tracy bid, taking a shallow breath of smoke. She didn't smoke often enough to call it a habit (habits were grim death to a field agent), but she enjoyed the taste and smell of tobacco when she could get it. “Okay,” she said. “Spill.”

“This war we're fighting,” Tracy said. “It's got a lot of fronts.”

Chandra narrowed her eyes and took another long drag on the cigarette. “You're not talking about Vietnam, are you?”

“No. The other war.” Tracy shrugged. “The Cold War. And, well, like you said, fuck what Gravy thinks... this is the real war.”

“Long Live the Union,” Chandra said sarcastically.

“That's the thing,” Tracy said. “We're not just fighting the communists. Maybe things would be easier if we were, but... that's not the case. Never has been, really.”

Chandra looked at Tracy for a long time. She'd never seen him quite this anxious, and she'd seen him with the barrel of a revolver pushed against his nostril, held by a Chinese man who very much wanted him and Chandra dead.

“So,” Chandra finally asked. “Who are we up against? Besides the communists, I mean.”

Tracy looked around the room. “Is this room clean?”

Chanda did as Tracy had done, inspecting every corner, every tile on the ceiling, every device that could conceivably be bugged. “I... I think so.”

“You need to be sure. Someone tells you the thing I'm about to tell you, you need to be sure.”

Chandra sighed, put her mind back in something very much like speed-reading mode, and looked again. “This room is clean,” she proclaimed, a minute later.

Tracy nodded. “Good. Chandra... do you remember when the President was assassinated?”

Chandra nodded. “Not, you know, very well, but sure.” She had been seven years old when John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

“So you know who killed him.”

She was about to answer, but everything about this meeting told her that the obvious answer would be the wrong one. “I guess you're about to tell me that it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald.” Her breath took on a shaky quality. “It... it wasn't us, was it?”

“No,” Tracy shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Then who?” Chandra's eyes narrowed, running down a list of suspects. “Castro?”

“Didn't have the reach, the manpower, or the time,” Tracy said.

“The Russians?”

“No reason. Believe it or not, in a lot of ways Kennedy was the best thing to happen to the Cold War, including the folks on the other side of the Iron Curtain.”

Chandra sighed. “The Cosa Nostra? No, they wouldn't have the balls. Chinese?”

“Same as the Russians, maybe even more so.”

“Then...” Chandra shook her head, stubbed out her cigarette, and lit another. She knew she was mirroring Tracy's chain-smoking, and that it would give her a light head and a fluttery stomach, but she couldn't quite bring herself to stop. “...was it an inside job?”

“You could say that,” Tracy said. “There are... certain elements of our government, both civilians and military, who sometimes color outside the Constitution's lines. The CIA can be one of them sometimes... you're living proof of that.”

Chandra nodded.

“Another element is the Department of Defense. Not much of a surprise, perhaps, but... lately, they've been more proactive in their extracurricular activities.”

“Hold on, just... hold on for a second,” Chandra said. The tobacco was starting to hit her brain, but that wasn't what was making her stomach clench. “Okay. Cut to the chase. Did the Department of Defense murder the President of the United States?”

Tracy leaned forward, steepled his hands in front of his chin, and looked Chandra directly in the eye. “From what we can gather, which is quite a lot... yes. Certain members of the Department of Defense, including some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conspired to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.”

“...Jesus. Why?”

“That part we don't know; not exactly, not yet. We do know that Kennedy was, for all his bluster, a diplomat before he was a warrior.”

“Someone tell that to his brother,” Chandra snorted.

“Kennedy's... John's death, it changed Bobby,” Tracy said. “Believe it or not, I know, or knew, both of them personally. Both of them are great men.” Tracy sighed. “I suppose Bobby would have to be. It takes some brass balls to run for the Oval Office a second time, against the guy who knocked you out at the end of your first term.”

“Does he know? Bobby, I mean?”

Tracy pursed his lips and nodded. “Yes. I have to tell you, though, that you are now one of five people on the planet who know that he knows. If the Dee-Oh-Dee thought Robert Kennedy even suspected they were behind his brother's death, I think he'd be next on the chopping block. And... we can't have that.”

Chandra nodded. “So, we have proof, but we can't take the DoD down yet. Why not?”

“Because, among other reason, they've had us over a barrel for the last four years.” Tracy glanced at a tiny portrait hanging on his wall. Chandra turned to look at it, recognizing the smiling face of Richard M. Nixon.

“What, Tricky Dick?” Chandra asked. “So what?”

“So: Director Nixon is Westmoreland's man. The fact that Westmoreland put him in charge of the Agency is... interesting,” Tracy said.

“So what if... oh crap,” Chandra put her hand to her head. This was too much, too fast. She needed time to think, to process... but there wasn't always time for those things. No matter how big the information, no matter the consequences, the problem had to be worked quickly, calmly, and rationally. Chandra took a deep breath, looked up at Tracy, and said: “Westmoreland was in on it. That's what you're telling me.”

“Him and at least twenty other then-current members of the Department of Defense, plus most of their immediate lieutenants, yes. It's a good bet that if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, Westmoreland would not be sitting in the White House right now.” Tracy shook his head, and somehow managed a wan smile. “We'd be living in a very different world, I think, if Jack Kennedy was still around.”

Chandra looked back down at the report she'd read, its front page smeared with gray tobacco ash. “So, what does all this...” she took a moment just to breath and swallow, to accept the absurd and terrifying information she'd just been given. “What does this have to do with the Polunachnaya and its fucked-up engine?”

Tracy sighed, took back the pack of Marlboros, and after what looked like a truly epic internal debate, he tossed them back in his desk. “Well, Chandra, that's where things get truly weird.”
I know it’s a mess and it’s half-taped together and it’s old and busted — but it’s mine. And you gotta make that work, right? You gotta make your own stuff work out.
Mobius 1
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Re: [Story] Cold Snap

Post by Mobius 1 »

I had a completely different backstory for Teague with him being born in 1960, but it doesn't matter because this Teague is pretty cool too and I've always liked the idea of Teague and Gosely working together. Plus, I figure everyone over a certain age who's running around in MAIN ERA (the first two decades of the 21st century) must appear to have like eighty conflicting backstories to the main cast.

edit - A few months ago I put together some notes for the backstory where a lot of the MIDNIGHT people would come together that would end up getting referenced by Teague is ST stories.
SHADOW TEMPEST BLACK || STB2: MIDNIGHT PARADOX
The day our skys fe||, the heavens split to create new skies.
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Arty
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Re: [Story] Cold Snap

Post by Arty »

I completely missed that, which just makes what I have planned for Teague and Chandra that much more weirdly synchronous! Also I goofed which branch Teague was in - should have double-checked on that, huh?
I know it’s a mess and it’s half-taped together and it’s old and busted — but it’s mine. And you gotta make that work, right? You gotta make your own stuff work out.
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