Cristelle Comby - Red Lies

On her way out of the briefing, she yielded to her only pleasure in this dreary life and headed to her favourite bar. She pushed the door open and saw that the place was almost empty. Aside from the bartender behind the counter, there were only two men seated at a table by the window.

Sofiya headed for the bar where wooden stools butted up against the brass foot rail of the high counter. She climbed on one, crossed her bare legs, and put her cap on the tin counter.

The bartender, a balding man with a thick belly, faced her with a warm smile. “Comrade Litvinova. The usual?” he asked, knowing better than to question her reason for being here.

It was only ten in the morning, but she already wanted to wash the day away; it had begun with Serov entering her apartment, and his lascivious gaze when he’d watched her get dressed. A cold shiver ran down her spine at the memory. She hated the man. She’d hated him since the first time he’d tried getting between her legs—and she’d said no—eight years earlier.

Serov was a pervert, but she knew how to handle men like him. She knew how to handle all types of men; the FCD had taught her that. It was all about understanding their deepest needs and desires—and then giving them exactly that.

Her superior liked his whores to be young and shy; she had found out one night as she trailed him through dark streets. Though she was already twenty-six when he was assigned to her, he’d have enjoyed taking her to bed—if she’d agreed to play the frightened little bird for him, which she hadn’t. It was with a show of confidence and without breaking his gaze that she’d turned him off. Her attitude and words had been neither childlike nor shy, and he’d soon gotten the message.

For the time being, Serov was her superior, but she’d long since learned that things changed quickly in their line of work. And who knows, maybe one day she’d get the order to slit his throat.

Sofiya looked at the bottles and upside-down glasses in the racks above the bartender’s head, and the very visible laminated governmental notice that informed her that alcohol consumption was forbidden in the mornings. “The usual,” she confirmed.

The bartender’s smile widened, and he fetched a label-less bottle from under the counter. “One very strong glass of water, neat—coming right up.”

When Mikhaïl Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party the year before, one of his first actions had been to curtail the consumption of alcohol in the entire Soviet Union. The prices of beer, wine, and vodka went up, and shops were only allowed to sell alcohol between 2 pm and 7 pm.

Funnily enough, that did little to stop the drinking. If you knew where to go, you could still purchase alcohol at all hours, including at “drunk corners” and from cab drivers—not to mention the frequent appearance of bootlegged surrogate alcohol and home-made booze. But Sofiya was a traditionalist, and she liked drinking her vodka pure—no matter the hour.

The midday sun was high in the sky when both FCD officers arrived at the military airfield. Their ride, a twin-engine cargo aircraft, was ready and waiting for them on the tarmac.

With her suitcase in one hand and her uniform cap in the other, Sofiya looked at the plane with some trepidation. The faded off-white paint and numerous scratches and bumps made it look like something Aeroflot put in production in the early forties. Serov hadn’t seemed to mind, and he’d climbed the steps without pause. Trusting that her government knew what it was doing and had its agents’ safety at heart, the young woman followed him inside.

She found her superior seated in the left-hand row, pouring himself a drink from a miniature bottle. He’d packed several bottles, she noted, but gave no sign of wanting to share one with her. Serov was aware of her penchant for stiff drinks, and she supposed he wanted her sober to discuss the mission; a good thing she’d stopped at the bar on the way, then.

The pilot entered the cabin and locked the airplane door behind himself. Without a glance in their direction, he moved to the flight deck. Looking around, Sofiya noted that they were the only passengers in the twenty-seater. The intercom buzzed to life an instant later, and a gruff voice announced, “Prepare for take-off, please.”

She fastened her seatbelt and let her gaze wander outside. The right propeller whirred to life in front of her eyes, and she felt the plane start to move. In the distance, the countryside zipped by at increasing speed and was soon replaced by a sea of grey clouds.

“Did you read the file?” Serov asked once he’d finished his drink.

“Of course,” Sofiya replied, annoyed he’d asked. She may not like this mission or having to work with him, but she was still a professional. And she would give this assignment her best, as she always did.

“Glad to hear,” the man said, opening a second miniature. “Let’s hope you will not forget where you are this time.”

Staring at the cloudy skies, she clenched her teeth to avoid saying something she might regret later. Once, she’d made a mistake. Once. But it looked like Serov would use every opportunity he could to remind her of that lapse in judgment.

It had happened two years ago when she’d been wrapping up a job in eastern Switzerland. She was ready to board a train to head back home when an overzealous guard asked her for her credentials. Her cover was that of a college student from Winterthur visiting Zurich, and she had the documentation to match. Only when she’d given it to him, she spoke in German, momentarily forgetting that the locals only spoke Swiss German. Though both languages had similarities, they could hardly be mistaken for each other, something she’d learned the third year of her formation. Had she been sober, she would never have made such a blunder. But she’d allowed herself two shots of a local brew to celebrate the end of a successful assignment. It took her a lot of sweet-talking and a quickie in the men’s room with the guard to get out of that train station without handcuffs. Now, it was a black mark on her ledger, and that ordeal served her as a reminder to stay off the booze while on a mission.

“Also, nowadays, people who are caught drunk at work or in public will be prosecuted,” Serov reminded her as if he guessed at her thoughts. “And we wouldn’t want that, now; would we?”

Things change , she remembered, as she clenched the fingers in her lap into fists, and men like Serov sometimes die in tragic accidents .

In the back of a flower-delivery van, Sofiya was dressed to the nines. She had swept her brown hair up in a bun and adorned her slender neck with a thick pearl necklace. A long emerald-green dress with a deep cleavage hung close to her shapely hips.

She checked her makeup one last time in her pocket mirror before turning the ceiling lamp off.

“It’s about time,” muttered Serov from behind the wheel.

“Beauty cannot be rushed,” she explained, as she placed the compact back in her purse.

The driver looked at her reflection in the rear-view mirror. “Got everything?”

“Of course.” She turned her back to him and moved to the back door. “See you at the rendezvous point.”

With that, she left the van and crossed the street to a nearby building. In the cover of darkness, she pushed open a small wrought-iron gate and crossed through a courtyard unseen. Even in the dim light, she could see that the Östermalm domain facing her was imposing. There was no one around, and she sneaked to the backdoor that had been used all day for deliveries. At precisely ten o’clock, she knocked three times on the large wooden door. A dark-skinned man in a waiter’s uniform opened and ushered her in. Without a word, he led her through the larder and into a small corridor that opened into the reception hall.