The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

“Ignore Taras, he has been doing this for too long and has forgotten how to talk pleasantly,” said Yitski.

“There is nothing pleasant about what we do. Let me take out Zurga, why have this n—”

“Enough, Agent Brishnov!” snapped the ambassador. “It is not for you to decide who carries out what mission. You follow orders, agent, and you would do well to remember that.”

Nikita was staring coldly at Brishnov. “Any special requirements?” he asked the ambassador, without taking his eyes off his fellow agent.

Before Yitksi had a chance to reply, Brishnov spoke. “Make it messy. This svoloch has betrayed Mother Russia; we need to send a message to anyone else who might think about betraying my country.”

“Calm down, comrades,” said ambassador Yitksi. “But Agent Brishnov is right; we need to send a message, also to the Americans.”

Nikita looked into the eyes of Ambassador Yitski. “It will be done.”

Brishnov rose and walked quickly from the office. Nikita followed behind, and as he stepped over the threshold into the secretary’s office, Brishnov whispered into his ear, “I will be watching you. Slaves cannot be trusted.”

With the eyes of the secretary on them both, Nikita clenched his fists and fought the urge to respond, instead smiling passively at the secretary as he received his documents for the mission ahead. When he turned to look behind him, Brishnov was gone.

“Agent Allochka, are you listening?” the business-like secretary demanded, noticing him looking at the doorway. The elderly lady peered at him over her half-moon spectacles, her face looking all the more severe for her hair which was fiercely pulled back into a bun.

“Ah yes, of course, Mrs Shapova.”

Her eyes softened slightly. “You are not the first new agent to come through here you know, all puffed up with their own belief in how invincible they are. So often it is the last time I ever see them; do not be one of them. Stay vigilant, young man.”

Nikita was stunned; Mrs Shapova was the first Russian to ever show even the slightest interest in his wellbeing.

Losing his cool demeanour for a moment, he stuttered, “Ah, oh, OK, yes, I shall hope that this isn’t the last time you see me, ma’am.”

She smiled benignly, handing him his documentation. “Your flight to Athens—”

“Athens? I thought I was going New York.”

“Our sources tell us that your target is currently on the Greek island of Skyros. Your flight leav—”

“I do not speak Greek; I have learned an American accent.”

“You had better learn fast then, comrade,” said Ambassador Yitski from the door.

Mrs Shapova handed him a Greek-Russian phrasebook.

“A phrasebook?” he exclaimed disbelievingly.

“We all have to start somewhere, dear,” she responded. “Your flight leaves in two hours.”

Yitski chuckled from the door, “You do not want to start disagreeing with Mrs Shapova here. Think of it as a working holiday! Good luck, agent, we are relying on you.”

CHAPTER 7

Nikita sat on the balcony of his room at the San Marco Hotel in Houlakia Bay on the North West coast of Skyros. The tiny island, only eighty-one square miles in size, sat at the foot of the Sporades Archipelago, lost somewhere between Greece and Turkey, somewhere between the east and the west. He allowed himself a moment to absorb the view before him of whitewashed walls overlooking the deep blue Aegean Sea, with islands dotted on the horizon and a warm breeze gently playing across his face. He had never seen anywhere so beautiful.

I’m a long way from Kamenka, he thought to himself, sipping a glass of cold water. He bit into his chicken souvlaki and spread the contents of the envelope Mrs Shapova had provided across the table in front of him.

The face of Josef Zurga looked up at him. He had an ill-favoured look, although Nikita suspected it had been doctored to look that way. He was grateful; he needed to dislike the man. Zurga was almost snarling at the camera, his balding, coarse black hair giving way to the oily-looking face of one who has been corrupted by politics.

“So this is what a double agent looks like…” he muttered to himself.

He cast his eyes across Zurga’s vital statistics, and saw nothing to strike fear into him in the forty-year-old man standing at only five feet ten inches. But he knew that what Zurga lacked in brawn, he made up for in brains, which is how he had managed to stay alive this long.

More intimidating would be getting into the fortress where he was staying, atop a hill overlooking the old port of the island. A sniper shot from across the valley would be ideal, but would not be nearly messy enough for the men at head office, and more significantly for Brishnov, who, Nikita suspected, might be a problem he would have to deal with at some point. In a strange way Nikita could see why Zurga would have been drawn to hiding away on this tiny, barely inhabited island. With its history in the Greek civil war, which pitched communists against the US-backed capitalist government, and its location between Europe and Asia, Zurga had found a place that reflected his own politics — caught in two minds.

Gazing out across the pink oleanders to the green-blue sea, a plan began to take shape in his mind. As he began ruminating on it, he suddenly heard the slightest sound coming from inside the apartment, like the slow exhalation of one trained in being silent. Fighting the instinct to tense up, Nikita channelled the calm from his years of training, and looked casually around for what was at his immediate disposal.

On the balcony with him was just a table, chair, and collection of papers and photographs. He propped up one of the photographs, and with the slant of the light was able to see the blurry outline of the apartment behind