Episode 2 #5
Rei folded himself down into a kneel beside Sevastyan, on the opposite side from the door. If Sevastyan needed to reach the exit with celerity, he wouldn’t have to move past him.
Anton switched to English. “How’s things?
” He still spoke it with an American accent, as if he couldn’t shake the years of training that had made him a deep plant in California decades before.
He’d left for that assignment when Sevastyan had still been in diapers, and then made a whole new family there to solidify his cover.
For all that Anton had been an embedded agent, that family he’d made was still more important to him than Sevastyan had ever been.
Sevastyan glanced around. More of his unease around Anton solidified as he took in the dingy room and careless housekeeping.
This wasn’t the space of a man still trying to fulfill a mission.
This was the den of a man who was unconsciously giving up.
Sevastyan studied Anton’s face. “I’ve been assigned to Chicago, routing there through Berlin.
It could be a long assignment. Wanted to check in. ”
Anton narrowed his eyes. “I thought we agreed we were both staying away from Chicago.”
“You and I did. Not the directors. Orders are from the Yadro. In person.” Sevastyan dropped against the back of the couch and spread his arms, shrugging. “Don’t see a way out of this one.”
“Then stay far away from anything Reevesworth or Collin.” Anton reached for a bottle of Ararat brandy from Armenia and set out two tumblers on the edge of the table in front of him.
Collin. The golden son. The blameless one.
The boy who’d gotten to have a mother and father and a childhood for twelve years instead of twelve minutes.
Sevastyan carefully didn’t look at his father.
There was no way he could follow his father’s demands.
Collin was the lover of Richard Reevesworth.
Gang Junseo was sharing a roof with Collin, if not a bed.
There were rumors that Damian Sathers was involved intimately with Richard Reevesworth and his husband.
There was no reason he might not also be involved with Reevesworth’s lover.
And Reevesworth had already taken an interest in Gang Junseo.
They could be all in together, the five of them.
Only time would reveal the depth of their connections.
Sevastyan tapped one of the tumblers as if impatient for the older man to pour.
Anton grunted and splashed out generous shots into both glasses.
Sevastyan swirled the brandy and sipped. “That’s going to be hard. I’m on the Gang Junseo case.”
“Fuck,” Anton hissed. He slammed the bottle down on the table, making clusters of debris rattle and bounce. “Get out of it. Make up an excuse. Don’t get near that.”
Sevastyan shook his head. “Too late.”
“Then why are you here? You know we have to keep a low profile since Mikhail was caught. What if they know you visited me right after getting this?”
Sevastyan raised one eyebrow. “Has anyone come asking about that? Mikhail took that job because of an old contact. That was his crew. He’s not even your father-in-law anymore.
Neither of us has spoken to him in years.
The only link between Mikhail and us is Collin, and Mikhail’s the one who involved him.
You’re clear. I’m not even on the map. Mikhail wasn’t even properly Merchari. Contractor only.”
“Maybe for the directors. It’s plenty to make Raska start sniffing around.”
“Raska is playing with her new man-toy in Greece.”
“That won’t last long.” Anton drank deeply and poured himself a second round.
Sevastyan watched his father’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he sucked down the alcohol. “Da, how long? This lying low. You never said how long would be needed.”
Anton shook his head, swirling the brandy in his glass.
He was rocking slightly, elbows on his knees, hunched toward the table.
“Don’t know. Maybe just lie low for a year or two.
Wait for the heat to blow off. Let different names get in people’s mouths.
We just need to be ready, for when they make a mistake.
Then we’ll have everything we need—evidence, organizational map, names—everything. ”
“Twelve years,” Sevastyan said softly. “We’ve been doing this for twelve years. They haven’t made a mistake big enough. Perhaps a mistake mistake requires assistance.”
Anton shook his head again, not meeting Sevastyan’s eyes. “Too dangerous.”
Are you even trying? Sevastyan bit down on his doubt, keeping it behind his teeth.
Sevastyan
Russia, twelve years ago
Sevastyan shrugged out of his coat and tossed it over the back of the ratty couch.
The entire place felt unlived-in and dusty, but there were sounds of movement upstairs and in the back.
The man who had let him in was like so many of his mother’s flunkies, nondescript, slightly dimwitted looking, and silent.
He wore dark khakis and a wool coat and stood near the door.
The guns he was sporting weren’t even a little bit hidden. A warm, motherly welcome, for sure.
Sevastyan looked around again. It was a new house to him. His mother had texted him the address with orders to show up. Considering he’d been in New York at the time, attending class, merely arriving had taken over twenty hours of travel to manage.
Which was just like her. His professors were going to throw fits.
The only saving grace was that he’d managed to send in most of his homework for the next few days once he’d landed at the airport in Moscow.
Just as a safety precaution, he’d left his computer, fake papers, and foreign phones behind in a lock box at a bank.
Let her try to mess with him. He’d learned a few things, and he had his own money.
Did she really think he wasn’t going to start a side hustle with the way she was jerking his chain around?
Do this, do that, be available. The woman was batshit, as his UK classmates would say.
Of course, he wasn’t going to uni with any of them because she wanted him to cultivate a United States accent and United States contacts. So off to New York it had been.
The door at the back of the front room opened abruptly, and his mother stepped through.
She was a full ten centimeters or more shorter than Sevastyan.
The two of them looked nothing alike. Her hair was dark, where his was blond almost to the point of being white.
She had rounded features, but his were angular.
A hint of her Mongol heritage could be seen around her eyes and the undertone of her skin.
One had to be looking for Asian features to even guess at them in Sevastyan.
If anything, he was a throwback to her father, a Russian from the far western end of the country with ancestral roots in the Rus and Viking history of the nation.
“Mother.”
She glared at him. “What took so long?”
Sevastyan raised both eyebrows. “New York to Heathrow. Heathrow to Amsterdam. Amsterdam to Moscow. Moscow to here.”
She scowled. “You’re not over there to learn nasty western manners toward your elders.”
Sevastyan spread his hands. There was no reasoning with her when she was like this. And he hadn’t messed up. So someone else must have.
“Come.” She motioned with a clipped dip of her head and turned back, leading him down a hall and up stairs. The house was bigger than it looked from the front, and it was set up more like an office building than a home. The living room and tiny kitchen by the front door was just a front.
“When’s the last time your father spoke with you?”
“Right after I graduated, so like, four months ago. He sent a text.”
“About what?”
The hair on Sevastyan’s spine prickled. “Graduating. He asked me what I was going to study in New York. I told him econ and languages.”
His mother did not respond. There were men ahead, and a woman. One of the men opened a door and his mother led the way inside.
Cuffed to a table under bright lights was Sevastyan’s father, face bruised, eyes dark and hollow. Sevastyan’s steps slowed as he entered and their eyes met.
Anton groaned and looked away. “Really, Raska? You had to involve him?”
“He’s your son, of course he’s involved.”
Sevastyan’s eyes took in the space. The walls were reinforced to block sound.
There were no windows. Some of the items in the room actually looked modern, unlike the rest of the house.
There were cameras and recording equipment.
He didn’t recognize any of the people around, but not all of them were flunkies.
One of them looked like they probably had as much if not more authority than his mother.
The floor was covered in pinned-down tarps.
Someone, not naming names, was ready for torture.
His mother pointed to a plain metal and plastic chair with four spindly legs. It faced his father across the table he was cuffed to. “Sevastyan, sit.”
He didn’t want to. By all that might be holy, he didn’t. His father was looking away, refusing to meet his eyes. And none of the flunkies would meet his eyes either.
So he was already being dismissed and set aside. People didn’t like to look at someone about to be othered. Execution was certainly a sort of othering.
Fuckety fuck fuck. And he’d scrambled to get his ass across the Atlantic for this.
Sevastyan lowered his lanky body into the chair. It was too low and too small. He sprawled on it, slouching with his legs spread out. Fine. He’d play his mother’s game. She’d made the first several moves. Now it was his turn.
Sheep didn’t talk before their throats were slit. So he wouldn’t be a sheep. He tilted his head toward his father and lifted his chin in a greeting. “Thought you were in California.”
His father glanced at Sevastyan’s mother, confused. “I was.”