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Gare de l’Est arrives with the blare of the train horn and a good few minutes of the breaks screeching intermittently, the smell of hot steel pungent in the air as the Orient Express decelerates. Whistles ring out, footsteps shake the flooring over the undercarriage en masse. Compartment doors slide open and shut, loud through the thin walls between cabins, but the woman in 27B remains seated.
City smells sneak in through the cabin’s open window, discernible under the canopy of the station—oil and smoke, bread and fat, petrichor. Underneath, barely discernible, the ever present hint of piss and shit that’s the hallmark of civilization.
Passengers begin leaving the train, the line down the corridor between cabins snaking and disorganized. Some look into her cabin as they pass, most of them barely older than children, still young enough to be curious. After a good twenty minutes of procession, the woman stands. Checks her open suitcase one last time, closes it, fastens the clasps that’ll keep it shut.
From her purse, she retrieves a West German passport that names her Nora Fuchs. She slides her punched ticket into it, by the black and white photograph that misses her red hair, and the shifting colour of her eyes, and the faint shadows of freckles across nose and cheeks. It’s a wonder the person in the photograph looks like her at all.
A gap in the line of evacuating passengers provides an opportunity. The woman takes it, slides into the open space with her purse and overcoat and bag. She’s not the last to leave the passenger car, not quite, but the Conductor’s countenance already shows the strain of repetitive action, of encroaching tedium. He barely looks at her as she steps off the train. Not once does he glance at her picture.
She strolls unhurriedly through the station, never wavering or asking for direction as she weaves around the families of the returned, waiting with cardboard signs and homemade treats and open arms. The first lesson of espionage is to belong everywhere.
Natalia Romanova learned it well.
The station’s water-closet is tiled in white. An unfortunate architectural decision, considering the sheer amount of dirt that comes hand in hand with constant human traffic. The grout is pitch black in every corner of the room, lightening to grey along the centre of the floor and midway up the walls. God knows how long it’s been since it was clean. The tile Natalia’s looking for certainly isn’t.
She finds below the sink, marked by a chipped corner and the fleck of blue paint marring its edge, the edges of her polka dot skirt tucked between her legs. Natalia draws a small stiletto from the lining of her purse; she slides the tip of the blade into the chipped corner and uses it to lever the loose tile off the wall without breaking it. Grabs it with her other hand, and sets it gently on the ground.
Behind the tile, a bundle of documents wrapped in butcher’s paper held together with twine. Natalia retrieves it, puts the tile back in its place. The bundle holds a small velvet bag and two passports, French, boxed around the edges from wear. Natalia stands, and sets purse and bundle by the sink’s edge. She opens the passports, checks the forger’s work, memorizes the shape of the letters, the rhythm of the signatures. Notes the same last names in both.
Sure enough, the velvet bag holds a golden wedding band, her size, subtly scratched along the lower curve. It seems a woman her age must be married to go unseen, to remain unnoticed. Natalia opens her suitcase, retrieves her wig and hat. She pins her hair tight to the skull, and clips the wig on top. Undoes the buttons of her coat, peels it off, reverses it, slides it back on.
She slides the ring onto her finger, fixes the curling edges of the wig under the dark blue beret. Blond suits her. She doesn't look at all like herself.
Noëlle Dubois exits the water-closet, fashionable yet common purse suspended from the crook of her left arm. The right bares the weight of her worn leather suitcase with ease, her back unbent and her gait even. Noëlle is strong. She used to be a laundress in the years after the war, before Gérard proposed. She’ll have to let him know.
*
The Soldier spots her quickly, on the platform. He’s trained to recognize facial structure under make up, under styling and colour, same as she. This is their third mission together, the fifteenth month of their association. (She knows his face by heart). His approach is confident, the swivel of his hips taking up space, shoulders squared, head held high. It can’t be called anything other than a swagger.
He stops a step away, smiles down at her. The quiet amusement in his eyes doesn’t quite match the impish quality of his smile. It’s there because he knows she’ll see the difference, knows she understands it’s always his eyes that are meant for her. That the rest is for the world.
Natalia takes the step between them. She takes the garment bag that seems to be his only luggage from his hand and sets it by her suitcase, on the ground. She reaches up and up to wind one of her arms around his neck and pull him down. His lips are soft when they part for her, kiss her back slow and warm and unbearably chaste. His right arm circles her waist, hand splayed on the small of her back to hold her close like something out of a Hollywood movie—a farce with a pleasant veneer.
He stays close when she pulls back. She exploits the closeness to brush her hands down the plane of his chest, to deposit Gérard Dubois’ passport into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It’s a bit much, she supposes, what with the way he licks his lips and shifts his weight at the caress. Then again, this is France, and he’s been away, and Noëlle loves her husband. That’s not so uncommon, these days.
“Good trip?” Natalia asks.
“Picturesque,” the Soldier says. He reaches for her suitcase. “Let me.”
It’s gentlemanly, she supposes. Perfectly in character with the kind of man he’s meant to be. Natalia hands the suitcase over. The Soldier offers his arm and Natalia takes it, plates of smooth metal shifting under her fingers, under his clothes. They walk across food stands and vendors under the blinding light and stark shadowed lines of the curved glass ceiling, through the Second Empire arches of the main gates into the kind of humid spring day that heralds the coming of a stifling summer.
The Soldier keeps glancing at her, gaze searching, fond.
“Did you smudge my lipstick?” Natalia asks, finally, covering her eyes from the glare of the sun with a manicured hand. Her hat is nothing but decorative, the way everything about women must be, this side of the geographical divide.
“Hmm?”
“You keep looking at me.”
The Soldier shrugs. “You look good,” he says, pale blue eyes heavy lidded, hot on her.
And what does she say to that? To the Winter Soldier and his bare, honest face, his foolish sincerity? There is nothing to say. His lust ceased to be power the moment he knew he could inspire it in her.
He scans the parking lot, looking for a particular model, a particular set of plates.
The paid ticket on the Citroen’s windshield is recent, but the car’s suitably unwashed. A newer model, to befit a young couple in their prime enjoying the benefits of a boom economy. The Centre thinks of everything, has eyes and hands and ears everywhere. Some days, Natalia even lets the knowledge comfort her.
“You want to drive?” The Soldier asks, the key shinning gold in his gloved hand.
She wants to, but it would only draw attention they don’t need. A woman in the same car as her husband doesn’t take the wheel. Natalia shakes her head. “I shouldn’t,” she says.
The Soldier nods. He keys the door open, sets her suitcase on the backseat. He lowers himself into the driver’s seat, then leans over to unlock the passenger’s door. When she joins him, doors shut and locked and the engine running, he fishes an envelope from his other inside pocket.
“For you,” he says, and sets it in her lap. He peels off the parking lot.
Inside the envelope, the dossiers of the Algerian peace envoy, his detail, and his aide. It’s not in the interest of the Communist world to let a partisan revolution die out in talks. The fact that this particular revolution deprives their enemies of African territories, Natalia has come to understand, is something of a particular bonus.
“Mission parameters?” Natalia asks.
They stop at the intersection, wait for the line of buses across them to pass.
“Transmission at 1800,” the Soldier says. “We should be ready to receive it by then.”
*
Their safehouse is an small apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés that hasn’t been renovated since at least 1935, but which boasts both a toilet and a shower—a feat not only in the neighbourhood but in the whole of Paris. Natalia decides Gérard probably inherited it from a more affluent side of the family. Perhaps they died in the war or the years after, or grew old and moved to the the warmer climates of the mediterranean.
Either one’s the kind of story common enough no one would give it more than a couple seconds’ thought.
The space has been dusted for their arrival, the pantry stocked with a few cans of soup, a string of sausage, a bag of rice, a carton of eggs, garlic and carrot and onions, a loaf of bread. Enough to live on for weeks, or so says the part of Natalia’s mind that’s always going to be a starving child on the war’s endless march.
Dusk arrives orange and lilac and indigo. Natalia watches the sky change from the single bedroom’s open window, ashtray smoking on the ledge and a lit cigarette at her fingertips. The Soldier walks out of the building and onto the sidewalk below. He fixes his hair, straightens his tie. He starts walking west and north, and doesn’t look back. She follows him until he’s out of sight.
The clock on the wall shows a quarter to six. Natalia checks her wristwatch, still set to Moscow time. She takes one last drag from the cigarette, shakes the ash off the burning end and stubs it out on the brick façade. She tucks the remainder back into the pack, and slides the window closed.
Moves to the dining table, with its wireless pale blue radio. She plugs her headphones in, tunes it to the Centre’s local numbers station. Waits. Chews on the end of her pencil, tests the tip against the edge of the pad’s onion paper. Waits.
Her entire life can be summed up like that: a long wait, broken up by flashes of incredible violence.
*
The Soldier sets the rectangular guitar case on the table, opens it to reveal the well oiled pieces of a disassembled rifle, and three saran-wrapped bricks of something orange that dents to the touch.
“Plastic explosive,” he explains when she asks. “New stuff from Prague. They’re calling it B1.”
British operatives had used something like it on the Western front. Explosive 808, it was called. Easy to shape, easy to hide, easy to detonate. Death by fire…Natalia’s seen enough bodies burn to know she’d rather get a bullet through the skull.
“Centre’s put a stay on the kill order,” Natalia says, wiping her hands on the the kitchen rag. (Oh, how she hates cooking). “We’re to recover as much intel on the peace talks as we can.”
“Copy.” The Soldier takes a rolled map from the case and sets it aside on the table. “Party checked into the Bristol about 40 minutes ago,” he says, unrolling the blue print of what turns out—to no one’s surprise—to be Paris. He pins it down by setting coins on every corner, circles the target’s hotel with the stubby, chewed pencil she was using earlier. “Went straight to rooms,” he adds. “Don’t think they’re gonna want to go out much.”
No, they wouldn’t. Not with both the French and their own National Movement out for blood, with bombings in street cafes and Capone-style shootings taking their leaders off the playing field like picking lice from a wound gone sceptic.
It explains why she’s needed here, why the Department would agree to the redundancy of her presence. For all that Natalia’s well versed in it, wet work is the Soldier’s realm. He’s a ghost. He prides himself in anonymity.
Infiltration, deception, manipulation—those require a footprint. Those are Natalia’s gifts.
“We should still do recon later,” Natasha says, salting the broth on the stove top, stirring chopped carrot in. Dotting Is and crossing Ts can’t hurt.
“Of course,” he replies. He comes to stand beside her on the kitchen counter, solid and quiet and thinking so loud she wouldn’t be surprised if she found steam coming out of his ears, out of his nose, out of his mouth.
Natalia raises an eyebrow.
The Soldier shakes his head, points at the ceiling light. At the bug their own people have most likely placed there to remind them of their omnipresence, keep their assets obedient and in place. He grabs a knife from the block, throws an onion up into the air, skewers it on the fall.
“So,” he starts. “How you cutting these?”
Natalia rolls her eyes. “Dice them small,” she says, sliding the cutting board over to him, lest he get the bright idea of trying to chop it mid-air.
*
She’d been listening to Radio Luxembourg in the background, when he came in. As she sets the stew to simmer, the Soldier twists the volume up. He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t say a word, but his presence behind her is magnetic, his stillness careful and controlled and bursting at the seams with the tension of a body aching to move. Natalia turns to him.
For the first time since he entered the apartment, he meets her eyes.
So that’s what you want, Natalia thinks. She lets herself smile, lets that smile be knowing and wide. Natalia grabs the counter with both hands and pushes her chest out, cocks her hip. It stretches the fabric of her blouse, highlights the shape of her breasts underneath.
He notices. He can't not. When his eyes make it back to her face, he bites his lip, raises a single arrogant eyebrow. She can see the hand in his pocket sneak in to adjust matters inside his briefs.
Natalia tilts her head, exchanges the wide grin for the close-lipped smile, knows a dare when she sees one. Someone has to give here. It doesn't matter that she wants him, it won't be her.
The Soldier snorts, smiles back. The strongest thing between them isn't lust so much as understanding. He loosens his tie, peels the glove off his hand, rolls his shoulders out of his suspenders. Stands—practically at attention: legs tense, shoulders straight, chest puffed out—under her scrutiny.
God, he’s beautiful. Every line of his body drawn for a single, brutal purpose; he makes it look easy, makes an art of every move. A beautiful monster, giving himself up to her, smiling like he could love her. Like they’re people who love.
Natalia loved. In hell, she loved. See where it got her. What it left. Duty and honour and loyalty; those are practical. Those can feed you, can keep you healthy, can give you something to live for, when everything else has been taken away.
The somber left turn must have shown on her face. The next thing she knows he’s in her space, hands on her waist like surrender. His breath on her lips is a revelation. A reminder of the blood that still runs through her veins, the air in her lungs, the rhythm of her pulse. Listen, Natalia, listen. You’re not dead yet.
It’s always like this when he’s around, this electric feeling, this…this joy that feels so much like that second of falling before you remember human beings were never meant for flight. And still, even this close he doesn't press, he makes sure the first move is always hers.
“I think I missed you,” Natalia says, loud enough he’ll hear her, low enough for the music to drown out. The beginnings of stubble on his cheeks prickle against her fingertips. She traces his jaw, fits her thumb into the dip of his chin, drags the tip of her nose over his. She does it slow, luxuriates in it, this hidden, dangerous thing.
The Soldier says nothing. He kisses her instead. Kisses her, here, away from prying eyes, like he means it. Slow and deep, every drag of his lips on hers protracted, slick. When he finally closes his eyes his lashes brush against her cheeks. He’s meticulous, as though he’s constructing an argument to convince her she should kiss back—like she doesn't want to, just from looking at the shape of his mouth. He cups her cheek, changes the angle, weaves his thigh between hers.
Natalia rolls her hips into his, swallows the soft little moan it draws from the base of his throat. She fits one of her hands into the back pocket of his slacks, keeps his hips snug against hers, does it again, again, again. When he pulls away he’s panting and hard, heart pounding against her palm.
“You’re a menace,” he says, pitch just as low, voice rounded and gravelly; it goes straight to her gut. “Wanted—wanted to do that the moment I saw you.”
“I could tell,” Natalia says, wiping her lipstick from the corner of his mouth. Surprises herself at the heat it sparks, to see him marked, to see him hers. “It’s the hair, isn't it?”
“No,” he says. “No, I like you red. Love the way it looks in the sun.” He kisses her again, tucks a stray red curl behind her ear as if to prove his point. “S’the way you move round a room, all graceful, like you’re floating. The way your hips move.”
His right hand’s been busy petting her thigh, surreptitiously gathering the fabric of her skirt. He slides his palm onto her skin, over the silky edge of her stockings, rough fingertips tracing the clasp of her garter belt, the crease of her thigh, the edge of her knickers.
Natasha smirks. Says, “The way my ass looks, you mean,” and squeezes his just because she can, because it makes him squirm, thrust his hips into her before he catches himself.
“That too,” he admits, guileless as he gets, snickering, his shoulders shaking with it. Natalia’d never imagined, before him, that sex could involve this much laughter, this sweetness, this kind of imperfect frankness. She’d never once thought it was meant to be fun.
Blindly, face tucked into the crook of his neck, Natalia undoes the knot of his tie, pops the buttons of his shirt. When he finally slides his hand under the cotton of her underwear she sighs in approval, arches into his touch. Drags her teeth over the edge of his collarbone when he palms her ass, chuckles when he flinches. Soothes the skin with her tongue when he returns, the cage of his body around her exquisite, hot to the touch. Safe, most of all.
“Take them off,” she says, squeezing his wrist. He looks up at her, question in his eyes that’s redundant, that he’s always asked—Natalia kisses him quiet before the words even make it out, cards her fingers through his hair, rubbing at his scalp the way she knows he likes.
“Okay,” he breathes against her cheek, warm gun calluses and smooth metal slipping into the elastic of her knickers. “Okay.” He drags them down her thighs until they hit her knees. She kicks them off from there.
His fingers follow the arc of her thigh from hipbone to gracilis; it sets her to shivering. He cups her mons, heel pressing down on her clit. Slowly, he curls the tip of his middle finger into his palm, a smooth, consistent pressure along her opening; her knees tremble, she breathes out in bursts.
He says, “Fuck, how’re you this wet already,” like its been torn out of his throat, pink wet tongue flicking out over his lips.
“All you,” she tells him, voice unsteady, halfway to wrecked, dragging the heel of her hand down the hard line of his cock through his slacks. He twitches against her, moans low in her ear, a deep, needy burr, and she loves that. Loves how vocal he is, when no one’s listening. How unashamed of taking pleasure in her, of pleasing her in turn. She hooks her fingers into his waistband, undoes the buttons of his pants.
“Yeah? You want it?” It’s not a really a question. He says it breathless, a little smug.
“Are you going to make me beg?” Natalia asks. She lets her smirk widen when he pulls her closer, lets herself groan into his mouth when he cups her breast through her shirt with his free hand.
In Bucharest, halfway through the long hours of their stakeout, he’d parted her legs and gone to his knees, licked and sucked and hummed against her cunt until she sobbed. She still shivers at the thought.
“No, sweetheart,” he croons into the shell of her ear, warm, callused fingertips wet with her slick running tight little circles against her clit. “Not tonight.”
And with that, he snakes his left forearm under her ass and hoists her onto his hips.
*
“How d’you want me?” He asks her, her legs wound tight round his waist, heels digging into the dip of his spine, her fingers in his hair. Her lipstick stains his mouth cherry red.
Natalia pulls on his hair. He goes easily, bares his neck to her like she’s not the deadliest thing he knows outside of himself. She kisses him for it, tongue dragging against his, biting his lower lip swollen, tugging on it just to see his eyelids flutter.
She drags her index finger down his chin, over the bump of his Adam's apple, into the soft vulnerable hollow of his throat. Feels him shiver with it. Natalia says, “Just like this.”
“Here?” he asks, eyebrows raised as if incredulous, but he’s grinning, eyes dancing with mischief under the kitchen lights. Grinning, and stepping out of his pants, pushing his briefs under his balls.
“If you think you can manage that,” Natalia replies, imperious, back straight, loosening her hold on him to drop all her weight into his arms.
It makes him laugh. She knows this not because it rings out (it doesn’t), but because she can feel the sound work its way from his chest to his throat, trapped inside his ribcage. It shakes against her hands, the insides of her legs. He nuzzles the swell of her breast, her blouse half-way open, his right hand sneaking under and around to fiddle with the hooks of her bra. He looks up at her, chin digging into her sternum, and says, “Like I said: a menace.”
“Oh, shush.” Natalia rolls her eyes, fingers pressed against his lips.
He smirks and licks, kittenish, at her finger pads. Says, “Hold on, then,” right before he lifts her to line himself up, and drops on his cock. He kisses her through the stretch of it, humming sweetly with it, lips trailing like gossamer over her cheek, her temple, her chin.
Natalia trembles against him, arms shaking around his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut.
“That’s it,” he says, “that’s it, beautiful. Breathe.” And Natalia hadn't noticed that she wasn’t, but the next breath she takes burns all the way into her lungs. Her nails’ve dug raw crescents into his nape, but he doesn't seem to care. He smiles at her, beatific, right hand pressing warm, soothing circles into her back.
The only thing she can do is smile back. Rest her forehead on his, hyper-aware of everything: the heat of his skin, how thick he is inside her, the sweat darkening the hair on his temples, the fever in his eyes. The music crashing over them, oddly synchronized with the thump of his heart. Or maybe that’s hers, wild inside her eardrums.
“So good,” Natalia breathes, into the space between her mouth and his.
“Yeah?” It’s not smug this time. Can't be anything but sincere, the way his eyes trail over her, check on her. He loves to be praised, like this. The first few times it’d surprised her, the way he flushes with it, eyes wide and bright and face clean of everything but the joy of pleasing her.
“Really fucking good,” she replies, clenching around him to see his mouth drop open, feel his breath hitch and his hips stutter, short, delicious little thrusts rubbing right against her sweet spot.
“Natalia,” he groans, metal fingers bruising a dotted half circle into her ass. “Natasha, sweetheart, you gotta move.”
“Not yet, darling,” Natalia says, “not yet.” She tightens her legs around his waist. When he sighs against her lips and closes his eyes she presses her mouth to his ear, says, “Look at you, so big in me, so strong. Only thing better than this is your mouth, how you kneel for me so pretty.”
That makes him shudder. She runs her hand through his hair, thumbs rubbing down the tight skin behind his ears, into the sharp corners of his jaw.
Natalia kisses him, a biting, hungry thing. Natalia lies. She tells him, “You’re mine, do you know that?” and listens to the Winter Soldier whimper when she circles her hips, his mouth hot and sweet on her breast.
Listens to him whisper a soft, “Yes.” A traitorous, “Yours.” And then, worst of all: “Only yours.”
(He can lie just as well as her. Sometimes, she forgets that).
*
She clings to him when he sits them down, after. Allows herself the small pleasure of his skin on hers, of the twin feelings of his chest heaving like a bellows under her cheek and his lips gentle on her temple. The chair creaks under their weight, makes her chuckle into the cusp of his shoulder, breath ghosting over the little rivulets of sweat gathering below the fuzz of hair on his nape. His legs shake underneath her.
“What’s funny?” he asks, warm unsteady palm snaking into her blouse to stroke the clammy skin of her back.
“The picture we’ll make when this chair breaks,” Natalia says, nuzzling at his collarbone, thumb circling the edge of his left nipple over and over. It makes his cock jerk inside her, lazy, more a pulse than a twitch. For all they’ve fucked at every opportunity since the start of this little…dalliance of theirs, she has no memory of him going soft inside her. She’s toyed with the idea, once or twice, or keeping him there, seeing wether he would. She has an inkling it’d end in delirium.
Maybe someday. When they have time; when they can bask in each other instead of fucking like animals in blindspots, in muffled corners; when she no longer needs to swallow the sound of her name on his tongue, in that hot second when orgasm hits him; when discovery might not result in punishment. Someday, but when?
Communism is a bastion, a beacon for mankind, the USSR spearheading a global revolution that grows and strengthens at every turn, and yet—and yet. The Utopia they were promised feels long in coming, these days.
“Yeah,” the Soldier sniggers. He kisses her forehead, her cheek, the fingers of his prosthetic cool on her neck. Hooks a knuckle under her chin, nudges her face up to look at him. “Hey,” he says, something about his face careful, shuttered, almost shy. “That was…that was great.”
Ridiculous man. Like she’d keep coming back to him if it wasn’t, when she’s so much less valuable to the department than he. When the punishment for it would reflect exactly how big that difference is.
“It was, wasn't it?” Natalia says, sitting up and sighing, kissing back. She runs her hands down his chest one last time. Eases off him, nose wrinkling at the feeling of his come dripping out. “You got a handkerchief?” Natalia asks, stepping away to hook his pants with her foot, bending her knee to bring them up to her hands.
“Um, yeah, left pocket,” he says, leaning forward to get his briefs off the floor. He sets them, absentminded, between the rifle and the explosives. Makes her shake her head and giggle at the sight. It’s a weapons only kind of table. Not that she’ll ever say that out loud. He smiles at the sound.
The music fades, is replaced by the host’s voice announcing a variety show, king’s English stiff and precise. The Soldier leans over to turn the volume down.
The handkerchief is soft, and neatly folded, and smells of laundry starch. Natalia turns to the sink and opens the faucet, unfolds the cloth enough to wet a corner. Her body aches in the most pleasant way.
The Soldier touches her elbow, startles her. She didn’t even hear him get up. He steps close, but doesn’t crowd her, gestures to the handkerchief, asks, “May I?”
He leaves her speechless, sometimes. Natalia hands the cloth over, mouth dry, and hikes her skirt up. He’s gentle. Slides it up her thighs, left then right; folds the corner in, and traces her cunt with the clean side, over her folds and then between them, parting them gently. He wets another corner, gives her a second pass. When he’s done, he bends down, picks up her knickers, and presses them into her hand. Kisses her cheek, steps back.
“Thanks,” Natalia says. Feels like she’s just witnessed something, understood something, about her, and him, and this tightrope they’re running on, the abyss underneath. He’s soft. Soft and raw and compromised. And if he lets her, she just might reach in and scoop that softness out. Take it for her own. Wear it like a prize.
*
“Target the aide first?” The Soldier asks, running water over bowls and cutlery. He’s frugal with it in a way that’s too fluid to be conscious, born of long practice. He shuts the faucet off while he soaps and scrubs, and turns it back on when he’s ready for rinsing. She wonders just how poor he was, sometimes, before the Department picked him up.
“Well,” Natalia says, looking at the dossier spread over the dinning table, the photographs of known associates, and routine vices. “He does like them blonde.”
“Hmm.” His voice is gruff, but when she looks at him he’s smiling wryly. “Let’s hope he’s also got Bacri’s trust.”
“And his papers.”
*
Paris is…beautiful isn’t the word. Enduring, maybe. Timeless. There’s character to it. A moodiness to the sprawl of it amidst the cigar smoke and the bustle. It must show on her face, the way it hits her, how she can’t focus on their route, can’t stop looking everywhere.
“You’ve never been here before, have you?” The Soldier asks.
The Seine winds dark in front of her, the crests of slow-moving waves flashing sliver under the streetlights. Natalia shakes her head, and lets the city overwhelm her.
“No,” she says, relishing the way her voice drowns in the cityscape, dies out. It’s the closest thing she’s known to perfect anonymity.
He hears it anyway. He slows them down, gives her time to look all she wants. If she still had a heart, Natalia knows he’d break it.
(A good thing then, that her heart’s dead and buried thirteen years and counting, in the back of a cabin along the Dnieper. Twin graves of soft black earth, the grass green and tall and a bush of wild roses growing over it, because the universe thinks it’s funny).
Beside her, the Soldier turns to the stars. He has such an elegant profile: the high brow, the straight, sharp-tipped nose, the full lips, the strong chin and the dip in it. Every piece of it animated, honest. Kind. Not the sort of face Natasha would expect on a spy, but a good one. It seems easy to trust.
“I think I have,” he says. “During the war.”
The Red Army was never in Paris, but Natalia doesn’t correct him, doesn’t say anything at all.
It’s ironic, more than anything else. Nikita Khrushchev’s secret weapon is an American beaten like white-hot metal into the very reflection of the regime: a nameless brutal fist, a powerful thing, a necessary evil. On his shoulders—their shoulders—the burden of the future, the promise of a more compassionate world.
Tomorrow, they’ll do their jobs. They’ll get what intel there is for the centre to use, and they’ll wait for the kill order. When it comes, there won’t be anyone to stop Algeria from the great revolution that will turn them into allies in the west; into another free communist nation. The world will be better for it.
And maybe, when that goal is reached, when the world they’ve but dreamed of is real and true, when the work is finished…maybe then they’ll be free.
(Maybe then she can love him).