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

Taken aback by her directness, Nikita looked up at her, and now that the magazine was down on the counter, he could see her more clearly.

Big, liquid brown eyes peered at him out of a high-cheeked, golden-brown face, with freckles dappling her nose, and her curls now looking more golden than brown as sunlight landed on her face. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Her thin eyebrows were raised in a question.

“I’m, ah, I’m just browsing, thank you,” he stammered, for the first time in his life.

“Not true, because you were staring at something in the window for nearly five minutes before you came in.”

Nikita flushed, angry for losing himself so quickly on his first full mission.

He looked closer at her, and she gazed back at him defiantly. Time to put some other aspects of his training into practice.

“Maybe it’s not your stock that I found entrancing, maybe it was something else,” he said, lowering his voice and fixing his eyes firmly on hers.

The girl laughed. “You really think a line like that would work?” She asked, lighting up a cigarette, the smoke circling up towards a gently rotating ceiling fan. Her voice had a curiously American twang to it that was throwing him off guard. In a world that had always made it crystal clear that where you were from was vitally important, he felt unnerved by his inability to place her, on an island where it should be obvious.

He grinned. “Epitrèpste mou na sas keràso èna potò.” Let me buy you a drink.

She smiled. “Is that a question or a statement?”

“That depends which will get me what I want.”

“And what is it you want?” She responded, tipping her head to the side as she exhaled the smoke. “Aside from a lesson to improve your truly awful Greek?”

“Right now, all I want is your name, a drink, and…” he picked up the dog carving, “this.”

She looked at him and smiled playfully, “OK, strange man who speaks Greek badly, I’ll let you buy me a drink. But the carving will cost you; it’s from a rare wood only found on the nearby Cyclades islands, called Cyclades ebony. And the sculptor gets to work with it very rarely.”

“The cost is unimportant. Who is the sculptor?” He asked quickly.

“Does it matter? I would guess that you don’t know all of the sculptors in the Sporades.”

Nikita paused, feeling wrong-footed and not knowing what to say.

She laughed at him, a rich throaty sound that came up through the body and closed her eyes.

He giggled sheepishly, immediately feeling idiotic for being sheepish. This was not in his training and it felt uncomfortable and oddly pleasant at the same time.

“You make a good point. But what of my third request? Your name?” he pressed, as she picked up a scarf, and walked with him to the door. They exited the shop as she turned the sign to say closed.

“You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

“I’m Nathan,” he seamlessly lied, conscious of his American accent. “And you?”

She fixed her dark eyes on his, and they glinted in the bright sunshine. “Elysia.”

***

Elysia led him up the narrow street next to her shop which went up a slope and away from the touristy shops lining the streets closer to the seafront. The homes were still pretty and whitewashed, but the paintwork slightly more chipped and the buildings increasingly in need of some love and care.

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

“You said you wanted to go for a drink, so I’m taking you to the sort of place that the islanders go for drinks,” she responded in that direct tone that singled her out as a strong Greek woman. Again, though, he was struck by the hard-to-place accent she used when speaking English.

“Then I shall be led by you,” he said, doing a mock bow.

She smiled but said nothing, and stopped as they came to what appeared to be a house like any other on the street. The door was covered by strings of beads hanging down over it, rattling in the breeze. The door behind them was only half closed and nothing but darkness was visible through the beads. Elysia parted the beads and pushed open the door. Nikita paused, his KGB senses tingling as they always did when entering an unknown property, especially as in this case he was with an unknown person and there was no clear secondary exit. How could he have been so stupid as to be led into such an obvious ruse?

Elysia smiled at him and beckoned him to follow her down what he could now see were dark stairs. Despite his apprehension and the bead of sweat he could feel at his temple, he stepped through the beads and onto the staircase. The stairs curved round to the right as they went down in a half spiral, but he could see a warm glow emanating up from the foot of them past the silhouetted form of Elysia. He could hear some music playing gently and as he reached the foot of the stairs, his eyes quickly drank up his surroundings. He was in a small bar, and his eyes immediately sought out all the available exits, which were not plentiful. The small bar was painted terracotta, with a couple of wooden tables and chairs in the corner and high wooden stools at the bar.

To the right of the bar was a pair of French windows, wide open, with pale translucent curtains pulled aside, swaying in the gentle breeze. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and beyond it Nikita could see there was a terrace looking out over the harbour.

Spotting that he had again stopped in the doorway, Elysia grabbed his hand and pulled him to the bar, which an elderly man was sat behind,