That day, Lieutenant Adam Adrova drummed the seat of the VAZ-X limousine with his fingers and said, “Please, driver. Today’s an important day! I’m supposed to talk to the kids about space.”
“Y-yes, sir…!” His underling sitting in the driver’s seat sounded distinctly anxious.
As well he might. Getting the lieutenant to his appointments on time was his job, and right now they were running late.
Our motherland didn’t have the vile custom of traffic jams—but most unusually, Peace Street happened to be a madhouse today. You could see the Space Conquerors’ Monument, but the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics at its base seemed impossibly far away. It was going to take forever to get to their destination. What else was there to do but gaze outside?
Lines of cars packed the roadway, horns honking, everyone impatient.
“You don’t often get to see this in Moscow. This is a unique experience, gospozha.”
For all that, Adam wasn’t upset. He had a beautiful woman sitting beside him, and that seemed to be enough for him.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is par for the course in London.”
The reply came from the young woman in an elegant dress sitting beside him—albeit as far from him as she could manage under the circumstances. Her gorgeous, primarily black dress was, to be frank, not really appropriate for the Soviet Union.
Still, there she was, lovely as a porcelain doll—her skin so white you could almost see the blue veins underneath. It was easy to see why Lieutenant Adam would be in such a good mood, sharing a car with a girl like that.
Which was not, of course, to say that she felt the same way.
“So why are you going out of your way to give a lecture at this particular moment?” she asked.
“Cover,” he replied, his voice forceful but betraying no hint of guilt. “Going about my normal life is actually less suspicious than doing things differently, you know?”
The woman made no effort to hide her annoyance: “I’m not sure there’s much point to a spy trying to avoid suspicion when everyone already suspects him.” Then she asked, “What do you plan to do after?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Aquarium and Organ are on the move.”
“What if you were to lean on the Yankees?” the woman asked. “You could live in a mansion, like Alexander Mogilny.”
“Now, that’s harsh,” Adam said, but he sounded like he was enjoying himself. He gave a shrug, as if to admit he couldn’t compare with an ice hockey player from 180 years ago. “I guess we have one thing in common—we’re both political refugees. I’m going to cross the Iron Curtain and head for Paris, Dover, and London.”
“I should think your first concern would be whether you get out of Moscow alive.”
“It’s not that much of a concern. I’ve got bulletproof everything.” Adam gently stroked the fine leather seat of the limousine, the same way he might let his hand brush the skin of a woman—the gesture just as delicate and nearly as disgusting.
No doubt this was the same air of importance he assumed when inviting a woman into his bed.
And the lady in black didn’t appear to like it.
“You’ll never get clearance to leave the country,” she said.
“No, I don’t suppose,” he replied.
“You ought to have fled to Switzerland or somewhere before things went this far.”
“Oh, please. If it comes to it, I can use my mechanicals to punch through the border.” The lieutenant laughed out loud. He sounded so calm.
The driver was quaking pitifully, but even that seemed to amuse the lieutenant.
The lady in black could no longer restrain an irritated sigh. “Do you always behave like this?”
“In front of women? Yes.” He passed off her sigh with a wink. “There’s another in the air force. And there’s one woman I dare say I love. A singer at the Hotel Ukraina.”
“Don’t tell me you’re having thoughts of trying to get her out with you.”
“Of course I am.”
The lady in black shut her mouth: She’d lost all words at the sheer absurdity of it. Or maybe she was deeply moved.
Whichever it may have been, Lieutenant Adam interpreted her silence in the most favorable way possible. For he knew that in the end, women always ended up like that.
“Have you seen her perform?” he asked. “She’d look right at home on the West End doing Shakespeare.” He acted cool as ice, but if he kept talking about this subject, there was no question he would melt…
The woman was through listening to Adam wax passionate. “Do I need to include my subjective opinion about the matter of your behavior in my personnel evaluation?”
“Thanks to you, my request to transfer to your section was turned down. I’d welcome any suggestions for how to better myself.”
“I see the evaluation went without a hitch, then.” With a refined movement, the woman opened the door of the limousine and began to step out, the black toes of her shoe touching down on the frozen street.
The cutting Moscow wind caught her hair and carried a sweet aroma into the car.
“Well. So long as you produce results, I won’t complain.”
“Tell me, Miss Double-O-Six…”
The woman froze.
“The rumors that you used to be a Marine commando… Are they true?”
“No comment.”
“Tell me your name, then. Second Lieutenant Mary Goodgate, maybe?”
“My name?” The woman he had called 006 smiled like a shark. “It would have to be Vespa.” She turned her back on Lieutenant Adam. “You can put on airs if you like,” she said, and then her lips moved in a whisper: “But even he didn’t only die twice.”
Then 006 hopped out of the car like any willful young lady might. “Do take care,” she said.
Her black dress should have looked completely out of place, and yet in no time at all she had melted into the Moscow crowd and disappeared.
Adam watched her go as if seeing a ghost, then he muttered with resignation, “Well, it’s all good.”
He was no longer thinking about the woman, who had left not even a hint of warmth in her seat. In his thoughts there was only the woman he assumed was waiting for him on the top floor of the hotel, the most beautiful woman in Moscow—tonight like so many nights.
He would go see the kids, talk himself up, and then he would head for the hotel and whisper his love in her ear. Then he would take her hand and say: “Let’s go to the West.”
What look would she give him, that woman like ice? Just the thought of it fired Lieutenant Adam’s passions.
But to do any of that, first he would have to make his way to the museum and do his job.
“Why are the roads so packed today?” he muttered.
A second later, he heard gunshots.