How I Met Your Mother Ch. 09

"I'm sorry...there was nothing I could do..." Alvin muttered. "He'd already lost too much blood..."

"What? What?" Piotr asked, shock setting in and the blood draining from his face as he slumped back into a chair.

"You were supposed to save him!" Lena screamed. "You weren't supposed to kill him!"

"He's dead. The bullet was too deep for me to extract it -- he must have bled out. I think it must have nicked one of the main..."

Blam! Blam! Blam!

The three short gunshots struck Alvin in the chest, knocking him backwards into the kitchen door and propelling him back into the room he had just left. The sudden eruption of violence startled Piotr -- it took him a moment to register exactly what had just happened in front of his eyes. Looking over at the smoking barrel of the pistol, he realised his could see tears rolling down Lena's face.

"We need to get out of here..." She muttered, staring at Alvin's body. "We need to bury him..." Piotr grabbed Lena as she made to move towards the kitchen, suddenly finding his attempts to drag her out of the apartment as best as he could meeting stiff resistance. She struggled, breaking free of his grip and twisting clear from him.

"What the fuck are you doing? We need to get out of here!" Piotr screamed. "In case you didn't notice, those gunshots tend to echo around in buildings when you don't use a suppressor!" In the blink of an eye he found himself staring down the still-smoking barrel of Lena's sidearm.

"We can't leave Boris here!" She screamed. The air was still for a moment -- Piotr remaining motionless as Lena's hand began to shake slightly. They were both breathing hard, neither of them sure what the other was about to do. There was the distant sound of several voices talking in the hallway outside the apartment, enquiring as to what was going on. "It's not right...we can't let him be found like this..."

"We have to go Lena, please! Someone will call the Police and I'm not in the mood for a shootout." His plea was met with the same stoic silence. Piotr took a step backwards -- seeing Lena flinch slightly he stopped. "Listen to me -- after everything we've been through..."

"I'm asking you for your help -- Boris would have done anything for us; we owe him the same. You remember Helmand? Do you remember how he dragged you out of the back of that burning truck? Do you recall the scars he suffered saving your life?" Lena's words seemed to get through to Piotr, striking a chord within him. His demeanour shifted, his shoulders slumped slightly.

"Okay. What do we do with him?"

****

The Russian Embassy

London

One week later

"Can you do it?"

Inno sat at his desk and pondered the question. Sat across from him in a cramped, confined space in the basement of the embassy was Rejic Grenic; a relatively low level member of the diplomatic corps attached to the delegation in London. Dressed in a worn brown suit with glasses that looked slightly too large for his features, the junior delegate was clearly uncomfortable in the presence of the KGB officer.

"Are you doubting whether I'm capable of this task?" Inno answered him with his own quandary. Grenic appeared to go visibly pale now, fearing the worst. Inno opened up a draw on his desk and pulled out a pad that he began scribbling something down on.

"No, no, it's not that -- it's just that new KGB officer -- Ignakov. Frankly he scares me. There's something about his eyes that makes me feel like he's looking straight into my soul."

"Calm down my friend, let me deal with that young upstart." Waving away Grenic's concerns, Inno continued. "We live in uncertain times at the moment, however I give you my word that I will help you now in exchange for a favour from you later if needs be." he added as he tore the piece of paper off and handed it to Grenic. There was a series of numbers and the name Benedict on it. "Call that telephone number from somewhere private -- somewhere outside the Embassy and speak to that man -- tell him that the Bear has told you to speak to him. He will take it from there on." The relief on Grenic's face was evident as he stood up, enthusiastically shaking Inno's paw-like hand.

"Thank you -- you've no idea what this means to my family..." The ringing of the telephone on Inno's desk cut off the junior diplomat. Ushering him out of the room, Inno answered it as politely as he could manage.

"Yes?"

"Please tell me that you've not been letting Sascha stay up until all hours of the night?" The mock stern tone of the question made the Russian smile.

"Of course I have -- she has been reading the latest intelligence reports as they come in." He joked. "Rest assured that our daughter is fine. How is East Berlin?"

"Grey and wet as usual." Svetlana quipped. "I can't help but feel that Ignakov has gotten me chasing shadows out here. We've spent the best part of a day interviewing some dissidents who think they know something shocking only to draw a complete blank. Really, I'm just wasting my time here."

"Well we all have our orders to follow my dear. How is Demetriov coping with the weather?"

"He's complaining as normal. Honestly I can't remember a time when he didn't moan about something." Inno could hear the sounds of people moving around in the background of the call. "I did find something amongst our interviewee's personal belongings that might interest you," Svetlana looked at the diary of notes that she had confiscated from one of the East Germans she had been interrogating all day. "But we'll talk more about that..." In the background Inno could hear the sound of Yuri's voice urging Svetlana to go to the door. "Look, I have to go - I'll speak to you in the morning before we head back."

"Okay my swan -- be careful." The call ended and Inno placed the receiver back in its cradle. Looking at the clock on his desk he decided it was time to check on his daughter.

****

Russian Embassy 206 Fugelstrasser East Berlin

1:13 am

Ending her phone call and silently muttering to herself, Svetlana turned around to see that Yuri was beckoning for her to join him in the hallway of the building. Exasperated, she trudged across to him, stuffing the diary into her suitcase on her way.

"What could possibly be so important that...?" Svetlana began to say. Yuri prevented her from continuing.

"Did you know there's another member of KGB here?" Svetlana shook her head. "They've just taken Gruber and Mohr from the holding cells."

"What?" Svetlana was now moving, pausing only to scoop up her sidearm and slam the door behind her. "Come on -- if we're quick we might be able to catch up with them."

****

By the time Yuri had managed to get the car out of the car park of the embassy, Svetlana had learned everything she needed to know about the supposed KGB officer who had removed the two German journalists from the rooms in the basement of the embassy. A crude video recording had enabled her to identify the car the red-haired woman had taken them away in. It took them less than ten minutes to relocate them on the nearly empty Fugelstrasser.

"So, what's the plan?" Yuri asked as he maintained a reasonable distance from the Polish Trabbant so as not to be noticed.

"We follow them for now -- we need to know who they are before we make our move." Svetlana replied, nervously running her fingers along the dashboard of the car.

"Do you think it's the Stasi?" Svetlana shook her head.

"No -- they'd never have the gall to just walk into the Russian Embassy and pretend to be KGB. No, this is something different." She added as they moved through the quiet city streets and headed towards one of the larger industrial bases on the outskirts of Berlin. Shortly thereafter the Trabbant picked up speed, then darted away to the left, disappearing behind one of the bulky edifices that proudly proclaimed itself the manufacturing heart of the city. Reacting just a moment too late, Yuri almost crashed the car before finding another left turn some six hundred yards up from where their quarry had vanished.

Navigating their way through the dark without headlights on to avoid drawing attention to them, the two KGB officers slowed to little more than a crawl. Just as Svetlana was about to lose her patience with the pace of their pursuit Yuri turned the corner onto wasteland that the buildings backed onto and they both saw the Trabbant parked up at an awkward angle. The momentary flare of gunfire from within the vehicle prompted Yuri to throw the headlights back on, illuminating a figure at the side of the car firing into the two figures who occupied the back seats, and push his foot down onto the accelerator pedal.

Everything seemed to slow down as Svetlana saw the figure twist and heard the unmistakeable noise of machinegun fire raking across the front of their car. The sound of bullets slamming into the radiator, then the engine block and finally arcing across the windscreen, peppering the two occupants with glass filled her ears. Her brain registered something -- a brief flare of pain in her right arm -- before the car swerved wildly, slamming into the side of a brick wall at speed.

The world was silent for a moment -- then the sound of footsteps approaching increased. Svetlana's head was swimming; her body was on fire, yet she tried to extricate herself from the mangled wreckage of the staff car. She struggled to open the door handle by reaching across her body with her left hand, subconsciously noting that there was blood running down her right arm as it was crushed against the metal superstructure of the car. Grasping the handle she tried to pull it only to find it unresponsive.

The sound of footsteps stopped and Svetlana heard the clicking, methodical noise of a fresh magazine being loaded into something before the interior of the car was filled once again with the buzzing staccato bursts of gunfire. Feeling the bullets tear through her body, Svetlana's last conscious thoughts were of her daughter -- the angelic face of Sacha filling her mind before she sank into oblivion.

Content that the machine pistol had done it's job, Lena Marakova moved around to the passenger side of the car. Prising the door open, Svetlana's body fell out of her seat. Allowing herself a sense of satisfaction that a chapter in her life was over, she knelt down and removed the solid gold band wedding ring from Svetlana's finger before walking away. Half an hour later she found a public telephone box wherein she dialled a number from a scrap of paper in her jacket pocket.

"Ignakov, it's done." After delivering her curt message she hung up and vanished into the night.

****

The dulcet tone of the small private telephone in Inno's private quarters woke him from his sleep. Reaching for the bedside lamp and his glasses, he muttered under his breath as he snagged the phone before it woke his daughter.

"Karagin is dead." Inno instantly recognised Piotr's voice. "Lena's gone off the deep end -- I don't know..."

"What happened?" Inno interrupted him.

"We were in Canada -- I don't know, everything happened so fast..." the strain in Piotr's voice was clear.

"Okay, calm down. Where are you now?" Inno asked, hoping for some sort of clarity so he could start to formulate a plan in his mind.

"Uhmm...Oslo, I think? Yes, yes - Oslo. The old KGB safe house just outside the city."

"Stay there -- I'll be with you in the morning."

****

Gepetto's Restaurant

2010

Saturday Night

"Your Charlie Chaplin once said that observed from a distance, life is funny -- it's only when you look at it up close that it's tragic." Inno said as he nursed the drink in his hands before looking down at the manuscript that sat on the table. Andrew looked over at him for a moment, seeing the hurt in his friend's eyes. "I found Piotr holed up in the safe house -- a babbling wreck of paranoia and fear. He'd been drinking; it took me the best part of a day to convince him to come back to London with me."

"Did he tell you what had happened?" Andrew probed. Inno shrugged his shoulders.

"He was vague -- he told me about Karagin's death and how Marakova had been taking a greater lead in things regarding our little...experiment in free enterprise -- generating contacts, making deals that the others knew nothing about, that sort of thing. He helped Grenic to defect and after that I never saw him again -- the last thing I'd heard was that he'd disappeared to America."

"Yeah -- that's something else I wanted to ask you about -- this whole defection thing. What on Earth were you thinking?" Inno smiled at Andrew's question.

"The world was changing -- to the outside world nothing was wrong, however the reality was the core of the Soviet Union was starting to crumble." He took a drink from his glass of wine. "Besides, I knew I was going to need Grenic in the future if things went wrong."

"His daughter, right?" Andrew's question was met with rueful smile.

"Not initially but that's how it turned out. I gave her the diary from those German journalists that Svetlana found in Berlin all those years ago. From there she -- how you say -- just connected the dots." Pausing for a moment for Inno to order another large vodka from their waiter, Andrew continued onward.

"Okay, so getting back to Piotr -- what happened after he disappeared into the middle of nowhere?"

"Then the bottom fell out of the world." Inno replied. "The official report into Svetlana's death indicated that it had been foreign intelligence services who had killed her; however a few weeks later I received a package with her wedding ring and a note, telling me to keep my nose out of things that were no longer any of my business." Inno said as he devoured the last vodka he had ordered. Andrew could tell he was visibly distressed by everything they had discussed.

"Lena right?" Inno's answer was a nod mixed with a sorrowful smile. "And I take it that everything that happened with Sacha and Irina last year was a repercussion, right?"

"I'd been making a few discrete enquiries as to whether Lena was still active. She'd been running weapons the last anyone had heard -- through some Croatian or Serbian group in the Adriatic I think. I must have gotten closer to the truth than I realised."

"So what happens now? I mean, this book changes everything -- for both of you." Andrew's concerns were waved away by Inno.

"I'm not worried about my reputation -- that's been in the gutter for some time now -- and I don't think justice can be achieved any longer. I just want the truth to be known, for myself and my family."

"Well, I can appreciate that mindset." Andrew said as he gestured to the waiter to bring them the bill. "Come on, let's get out of here old man -- I think we've talked enough for one night."

****

Perched on the edge of a rooftop in the driving rain, Lena Marakova waited, her attention focused solely on the entrance to the restaurant she had been staking out for nearly three hours. Looking through the green/black hue of the night vision scope of the Dragunov rifle, her patience finally paid off as she saw two figures exit the building. Carefully tracking their movements she slowly exhaled as she pulled the trigger.

****

St Martins Hospital 8 hours later

The wheezing sound of the ventilator mingled softly with the respective electronic tones of the life support machines that were working overtime to ensure the body in the bed was kept alive. Leah sat next to the bed, her eyes red and bloodshot as she reached out and softly took hold of the hand resting next to her. Closing her eyes and offering up a silent prayer, the sound of the door opening interrupted her.

She looked up into the weary, fragile looking face of her husband. His shirt was stained with blood and his voice sounded shaky as he spoke to her, trying his best to keep his own emotions in check as he looked at the comatose figure of Inno Annentskji in the hospital bed.

"The doctors said that he's stable at the minute; however everything is going to be touch and go for the next seventy two hours." He moved over to her and sat down on the other chair next to her. "I've tried to get in touch with Sacha but I've drawn a blank on that -- I didn't really feel like leaving a message for her."

"That's okay -- we'll try her later." Leah said, wrapping her arm around her husband's shoulder.

"There was so much blood..." he muttered. "I mean, you think there's going to be a lot of blood but nothing can prepare you...and it just happened so fast...one minute we're talking about football, the next..."

"Ssshhh, try not to think about it baby." Leah whispered. "Come on, we need to get you home. You need to sleep and then we can come back later today when you've gotten cleaned up."

"Yeah, yeah you're right -- after all, nothing's going to happen to him in here, not with that armed police officer they've put on the door." Andrew replied. He stood up, initially unsteady on his feet before Leah helped him. Arm in arm they walked out of the small private room, almost colliding with a red-headed nurse as they left.

Closing the door securely behind her, the Nurse stood still in the room for a moment, surveying the still figure in front of her. Moving carefully forwards she leant down so that her lips were almost touching Inno's right ear.

"I know you can hear me in there Annenskij, so I'm only going to say this once." The hushed words were clearly spoken in a deep Russian accent. "I could have killed you tonight but I didn't. This is your final warning; if you continue to try to pursue me then I'll take them all away from you -- your daughter, your granddaughter, even your little English friend and his pretty little family." One of the electrical devices in the room detected a fleeting increase in his heartbeat as Lena Marakova smiled to herself. "So, do I make myself clear?" There was, as she expected, no verbal response other than the monotonous beeping of the life support machines. "Good. Now I will see myself out."

Leaving the room and exiting the hospital, she caught sight of the English couple driving away in a silver coloured Golf. For a fleeting moment Lena caught the eye of the woman driving and thought there was something familiar about her. Discarding it as a foolish notion brought on by the late night and lack of sustenance over the last few hours, she continued to walk towards the car park where she entered a black BMW and melted away into the night.