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

“You don’t behave like a CIA analyst…” John began, falling silent as Nikita walked towards him, but the smirk didn’t leave his face.

Nikita pulled John’s arms behind him and prepared to put handcuffs on him. As he did, John pushed backwards, hard, driving Nikita into the low wall around the fountain. He lost his balance and fell into the water, but managed to hold onto the bodyguard, pulling him with him.

Before he was able to spring to his feet, John was on him, holding him under the water. Looking up at the face from underwater, Nikita thought John looked strangely distorted and multi-hued. Almost automatically he swivelled and swept John’s leg. It barely moved but did enough to loosen the pressure on him momentarily to get out of the hold by placing his wrists between John’s hands and forcing them upwards and outwards.

Nikita propelled himself backwards, cracking his head on the stone wall. He stood up dizzy as John launched a fresh attack at him. Nikita ducked the assault, noticing that it hadn’t been a trick of the water, and John’s face really had become blotchy. He came up from his low position with an uppercut which John attempted to dodge, but Nikita caught the end of his nose, which came away from the face and flung up into the air, coming to land in the water behind him.

Nikita looked at the face in front of him with no hint of surprise. The long, curved nose had been replaced by a short, horribly familiar, straight one. The sallow, smooth skin tone had now been largely washed away by the water, leaving a pinched, pale face with broad, high cheekbones. And an angry scar running from the corner of one eye out to the ear.

“Hello comrade,” Taras Brishnov sneered in Russian. As he spoke, his facial muscles seemed to relax and unbunch from the position he’d been holding them in to become John. The rounded face became thinner and gaunter.

“You do not seem surprised,” he said curiously.

Nikita did not reply, instead throwing himself at him, but Brishnov stepped calmly to one side, leaving Nikita swiping at thin air and stumbling forwards. Brishnov kicked him ferociously in the lower back, causing Nikita to wail out loud despite himself and fall forward onto the wall again.

Both men were soaked to the bone, and Brishnov was laughing now. “So much fuss made over the Black Russian,” he spat. “So much energy wasted on so pathetic a man, a dirty little African posing as a Russian. Hell will freeze over the day any Russian breeds with a black,” he said, all trace of the smirk now gone.

Nikita sat in the water and looked desperately for a way up. He felt for the knife in his boot but Brishnov kicked his hand away contemptuously.

“Every trick, you think you know, I have been doing for a decade longer. They call you the greatest Russian agent? You are nothing more than Klitchkov’s pet.”

Nikita laughed bitterly. “Perhaps, but rather his pet than his sacrificial lamb, sent to the slaughter and betrayed by his own country.” The smile fell from Brishnov’s face.

“You lie!” he said, thrusting a fist at Nikita, who ducked and threw a counter punch at Brishnov’s side. Brishnov spun and launched a rear kick at Nikita’s knee; Nikita jumped above it and launched the side of his hand at Brishnov’s neck.

To onlookers it was hard to keep pace with the two elite KGB agents, both trained in the same skills, but both with very different approaches. The rapid thrusts moved like lightning as they danced and splashed their way around the fountain.

Brishnov’s style was one of rapier-like flicks and movements, but from a clearly stiff military background. Nikita moved more slowly, but with more fluidity and more strength. He attacked less but made more connections with his opponent. However, Brishnov’s connections were more damaging and began to take their toll. Both were looking for a weakness in the other to exploit, and both struggling to find one.

They broke apart, both gasping for breath, both struggling to maintain a firm foothold on the mossy bottom of the pool. With a jolt, Nikita realised he could not beat Brishnov. Not with his fists.

“Why do you think I came here today? Why do you think I was with Chrastek that day you shot him?” asked Nikita.

Brishnov said nothing, just eyed Nikita again with his cold smirk.

“My order to pursue a threat to the vice president did not come from the CIA. It came from home. Klitchkov passed on orders from Yerin himself. Yerin ordered you to be killed,” lied Nikita.

“This is why you can’t trust blacks,” sneered Brishnov. “I know Yerin better than you could possibly know; he would never betray me.”

“He betrayed you, and so has your country. You are lost with no hope, Taras,” whispered Nikita, reverting back to English as he became aware of a crowd of people drawing near. He caught sight of flashing blue lights in his periphery just before he heard a familiar voice say, “Jake!”

In his peripheral he saw Sarah Chang standing there, her eyes wide with horror. It was then he realised it wasn’t water trickling down his face, but blood. It distracted him for just a millisecond too long as he felt Brishnov’s fist power into his belly, driving the wind out of him. He tried to draw breath but couldn’t and looked desperately up at Brishnov.

“A girlfriend, Nikita?” he continued in Russian, shaking his head and tutting gleefully.

Sensing the danger, Nikita fixed his face into a look of ambivalence. “Just a pleasant distraction, although unlike you I don’t play with my food quite so violently,” he said, choking through shallow, rasping breaths. He tried to block the look of intense sorrow that fell across