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

him, whose cold eyes burned with intensity, daring him. He wished he had brought his vodka with him.

“Curiosity can get you killed, agent. You are little older than a child, and as such more liable to make foolish errors of judgement. I suggest you focus on continuing to be the best agent you can be.”

Nikita smiled coldly, but maintained his intense stare.

Yitski chuckled nervously. “Let us not get distracted from the mission at hand!” he said as he started shuffling through the papers before him. “An apartment has been rented for you in Langley, Virginia where you will be based in your new role.” He passed Nikita a detail sheet of his new home. “You will now be going under the name Jacob Marshall. We have had to age you to give you a chance to fit the role. You will be twenty-eight, but luckily the job you have has a habit of making people look old before their time and it should not be difficult for you to pull it off.”

“How have you got me a job in the Soviet Counter-intelligence Branch without me ever having met them? Surely they are stringent about who they hire?”

“Correct. We have got you through the door, and we understand that the job is yours providing you pass a series of tests. Curiously for a country with a history of such racial prejudice, the colour of your skin has actually helped you a great deal in this position as they seem less concerned with some of the precautions we expected. I cannot emphasise how impressive your CV is so you have an intense period of study ahead of you.”

“What sort of tests?”

“I know there will be a standard lie detector examination given to all agents, which I understand you are most adept at circumventing, da?”

Nikita nodded.

“Beyond that, I am unsure, but I should imagine that they are designed to ensure you are who you say you are, and that you are fully capable of carrying out the job to the level they require. They pick only the best for this division.”

“What do I need to study? I already know quite a bit about Soviet intelligence.”

“This is an analyst role; there should not be any active field duty. You should be able to adapt fairly quickly, but it is very much a position of information collection and analysing, rather than one of overt action.”

“I understand.”

“Colonel Klitchkov would never admit it, and General Secretary Petrenko certainly would not, but our glorious Soviet empire is on the brink of collapse; it is not difficult to see. The INF Treaty represents a unique opportunity to level the playing field with the United States and turn around our fortunes. Your new role is fundamental to that, and the fortunes of our nation are resting firmly on your shoulders. The treaty should be signed very soon following Secretary Conlan’s demise and we along with the US will be expected to start visibly disarming our nuclear arsenal. They need to believe, as does the rest of the world, that we truly are disarming. Only if we deceive them can we regain a place of strength and revive our fortunes. This will then silence the Czechoslovakians and Hungarians, and avoid the crumbling of an empire.”

“No pressure then,” said Nikita with a faintly arched eyebrow.

“A great pressure, but the rewards will be even greater if you succeed.”

“And if I fail?”

“Failure cannot and must not be an option, agent.”

“A burnable asset.”

“Every asset can be burned if they fail, you know how espionage works, agent. Do not feign naivety.”

He hefted the documents together and passed them to Nikita. “You have a great deal of work ahead of you. You must memorise everything in these files to prepare yourself,” he said as he stood up and moved his chair back to where it had been by the dresser. He gave a stiff nod to Nikita and left the room.

As the door closed, Nikita let out a gasp from the pain he had been containing during their interaction. He allowed his body to sink back down onto the bed and massaged his shoulder which was complaining loudly at the attempt to lift it.

He closed his eyes and let his body settle into a position in which he was semi-comfortable, the best he could hope for in his current condition. The visits had wearied him greatly and he was content just to rest. Reaching for the phone next to his bed, he ordered some food to be sent to his room. He had become partial to Ropa Vieja, a Cuban shredded-beef recipe, and convinced himself it was the food to help him recover.

He flicked through the documents briefly, and a small blank envelope dropped out. Curiously, he opened it and inside was a piece of paper torn from a notebook that said simply ‘Straw hat = Pamyat. Yours, Kemran’. Nikita stared at Kemran’s note. What was Pamyat? The word felt familiar but he could not place it.

The documents felt heavy in his hand, and after stifling a sigh, he put them down to pick up the newspaper and continued to peruse it. As he reached page seven his body stiffened, causing a shockwave of pain to again run through his body, but he ignored it and pushed himself back to a sitting position.

The headline to the lead article read ‘Fourteen die in Texas bar fire’, above a picture of what Nikita recognised as the building that had once been Paddy’s bar in Odessa, now little more than a burnt-out husk. The article said it looked to be a gas leak. Apparently one man, a former US marine, had managed to force his way out of the front door but had died in hospital due to the severity of the burns he had suffered. Nobody else had made it any further.

Nikita felt