Chapter Text
Pallasstraße, West Berlin
September 16th, 1986
21.31 Local Time
The taxi coasted through the street, still dotted with the occasional staggering figure. A West German citizen here, an off-duty GI there. Very occasionally, the odd British soldier, who’d staggered drunken from the old British sector. None of the alcohol, however, interested this fare. Nor, in fact, did the neon lights of the nightclubs, one of the better ones had been attacked already. It was business that interested her, regardless of how her mind attempted to deviate from the fact. She cursed in the back of her head at how inconsiderate the Libyans were. Sure, they had their grievances with the Americans- who didn’t, these days? – but did it warrant going and blowing up one of the less shit clubs around here? She shook her head, turning her attention back to the present, before it was snatched away in an instant by the synth-esque tune playing through the stereo up front.
Hello, ooh-oh, Vienna calling
Hello, ooh-oh, Vienna calling
Talkin' about Stella sitzt in Rio, Stella liegt in Tokyo
Männer fragen sie nach Feuer, nach dem andern sowieso
Sugar Chris dich sehr vermisst, dein Bein und dein Gesicht
Du kannst auf mich verzichten, nur auf Luxus nicht
Womit spielen kleine Mädchen heute, hier und dort und da
Ob in Tucson, Arizona, Toronto, Canada-
Her mind cast back to the last time she had heard that song. It was about this time last year; the song had only recently released and had pretty quickly bounced up the charts over here. Sure, it hadn’t been a number one, but it was still played to death. That will have been the last operation I did as a subordinate, she reflected, watching the city lights go by. ‘You’d better not let me catch you playing this shit, Maxine, or I swear I will tear your fingers off’, Otto had chastised her, having slapped her hand as she reached to turn the stereo up. ‘God forbid what our fucking handlers would think. They’d think you were going soft, listening to this Western garbage.’ That operation had been her ticket to changing everything. Twenty-four or not, the Committee had figured her small form and build made her the perfect asset to play the part of a child. Children were never suspected, they’d decided. So, off she’d been sent with Otto, whom even by her standards was an asshole- to a degree only her instructors had ever hoped to aspire to- and a hardliner. Then again, that’s what happens when your partner for the operation settled in Berlin as part of the 28th Army. Bet his real name was never Otto, either. Her thoughts turned decidedly darker, as the next few days played out in snippets in her head. She may have hated the agent she was assigned to, but it didn’t mean he deserved to be planted by a counter-agent’s bullet to the stomach. It was well that he’d died as fast as he had, the cries of agony he’d given out even in that time she still found hard to clear from her mind. Even that failed to stop her finishing the job: naturally, it took an event like that for her superiors to figure it out that she could handle herself.
And she hadn’t disappointed, as every assignment since then- easily thirty, including all the shorter, two- or three-day jobs- had been completed with all the precision and finesse she’d been trained to use. From some of the sources the Committee had higher up in Western places, she’d made a nice dent in their assets. That, and almost every agent and secret policeman in the West had been shown her face: told to look out for her; told what she’d done; told what she’d do to them if they underestimated her. She liked that infamy, as much as she knew it to be unprofessional.
“Deine halt, Fräulein.” The driver’s announcement shook her from her reminiscing. She opened the door of the checker cab, stepping out onto the pavement, shivering as she did so. She leaned into the front window, handing the driver the money she owed for the journey.
“Shön danke. Behalten Sie den Rest.” She uttered to the driver, as she turned over thirty marks. Twice what the fare cost, but she didn’t mind. In her eyes, the taxi drivers deserved it, for putting up with some of their fares; that, and this guy looked as though he could use the money. The driver smiled, taking the notes out of her hand.
“Shön bitte. Shöner abend, Fräulein.” He replied, softly as she stepped away and onto the street, rubbing her gloved hands together and pulling the neck of her jacket tighter. Scheisse, why does Berlin have to be so cold this time of year? She continued onward, fazed a little by the brisk nature of this autumn. Then again, ten degrees was definitely a damnsight warmer than Siberia. Some bright spark of a clerk had felt that, despite being due to deploy to the West on her first operation, she would benefit from a cold weather survival course. Minus thirty-two, the thermometer on one of the vehicles had said before they dumped her and a fellow agent in the wilds, with a small bag of equipment and a day’s rations to share. It definitely hadn’t been her most comfortable experience; she had, however, taken a morbid satisfaction in knowing that the clerk responsible- who, bless them, had simply gotten the forms mixed up- had been sent on that very course as punishment.
The memory of that clerk being at her knees after they had returned and recuperated from pneumonia still brought a grin to her face. As did thinking about the agents she’d served under as a child, how condescending and untrusting they’d always been. Maxine do this, leave that alone Maxine, Stay here Maxine, you can’t be of use. And yet, when she’d ended up in charge of a few of them a few years later, their attitude had changed completely. And yet she had always been on their level, never condescending, never an asshole-in-charge figure. She felt that in itself was a far more fitting and entertaining way of getting even with them for it. After what had felt like an eternity of work without reward, she’d finally gotten somewhere. Instead of having to lead lackeys, she had operational freedom. She had the choice of what targets she went after, and more importantly the option of not babysitting some bureaucrat that the Americans had their eyes on. She sighed, leaning against a lamp post and watching along the street.
Speaking of bureaucrats, that was exactly what she had been sent to deal with. Happily, this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill kind of person. No, he was more important, something to do with the Dutch delegation to NATO. She hadn’t bothered to learn much of the details of her targets: She felt it a cliché to learn every in and out of who they were, something they only did in Western movies. No, she’d only bothered with two parts of the file: his name, and why they wanted him dead. So, Mr. Joncker of the Dutch Embassy, you’re going to die tonight because you’ve got the access credentials to Volkel airbase. And we want to know exactly how many bombs the Americans threaten us with there, apparently. She still disliked the fact that she’d had to kill people without reasonable cause. Access to a nuclear base seemed pretty pointless when those nukes required the U.S. President to arm them.
Still, she continued with her assignments unerringly. Not because the politics behind them was always agreeable, but because she knew the price she’d have to pay if it turned out she was no longer a willing agent. She knew exactly what the hierarchs had to hold against her, and she had a pretty good idea of how long she’d last anywhere in Germany if that came to light. Finally, her mark appeared. A man stumbling out of a bar further up the street, briefcase still in hand. His suit jacket must still have been in the Embassy, or wrapped around some prostitute he’d paid to go wait for him at his apartment a few blocks away. Good. As always, he’s come straight from the embassy to get pissed. Now, to work. She didn’t even really need to follow him, she could just lay up in the alleyway, in the quieter streets, maybe even in the apartment block itself. She would always choose this method, however. She’d had the occasional target change their routine, go a different way. At any rate, she preferred this. For someone assigned a codename like hers, she was more the hunter than the hunted. The thrill of the chase was a drug she was helplessly addicted to. The sensation of stalking her quarry through the maze that was West Berlin, never truly knowing whether they were on to her, always having that little edge of uncertainty. It made her feel alive. The very thought of her impending task warmed her up a little, against the wind whistling down the street. Even though the Allies had heavily rebuilt their side of Berlin, risen it from the ruins that remained forty years earlier, it still bore distinct scars here and there. She hadn't been over to look at Tiergarten in a long time, but it was still on the mend in places, no matter how hard they tried to regrow all the trees. And who could miss the giant monument to her countrymen, flanked by Howitzers and tanks and guarded at all times by the Red Guard? Sometimes, she felt her nation was more interested in showing off to the West than anything else, especially if that big tower was anything to go by. Fernsehturm, more like 'compensator'.
She tapped a hand against the side of her head as her target took a turn down an alley, about ten metres ahead. As always. Then again, he doesn't suspect someone of following him. Why would he, he's on his side of the wall. She quickened her pace to close the gap, keeping her footsteps as quiet as possible. Not that it'd matter, the drunken ass probably couldn't hear anything over his own slurred thoughts aloud. A moment later, she was within reach. Her hand went to the blade in her pocket. Sure, the Committee had ballistic knives, types that you could kill someone from twenty paces with and never get your hands dirty with. Even the knife she used today had a built-in cartridge, she could kill her target from this distance and probably barely make a sound. However, the cartridge was only used by two weapons: this knife; and the PSS. Both of which would make it pretty obvious who was responsible for the murder. Quickly and silently, the knife drew from her pocket, resting in her left palm as she gauged her quarry.
"Klivchenko sends his regards." She stated flatly in his native Dutch. He spun around, fear written across his face for an instant. He never stood a chance, as in a swift motion she placed her right foot forward, driving the knife in her hand upward between his ribs, and through his heart. He collapsed forward, letting out a slight, quiet, pathetic moan. She caught him, allowing his chest to rest against her torso as she reached a gloved hand around him, twisting the knife once in a slick, violent movement. His body jolted, before going limp.
It is done.
She softly laid his body down, peeling his fingers away from the handle of the black case. Gently, she scrolled in the combination that her superiors had provided, to ensure the case wasn't a decoy. Sure enough, the papers were there. All the documentation was there, everything looked in order. Before she left, she patted him down, removing his wallet and opening it. Must've been his payday. How unlucky, that a common thief should find him on this day. She rifled through its contents, removing the bills from their place, and dropping the wallet back onto his corpse. She neither knew nor cared whether the West bought it any more, it was her M.O. Every hit she'd made, she always made it seem like a simple robbery. That her target had been murdered for the paper in his, or indeed her, pocket. She smiled slightly to herself as she strode out of the alleyway once more, flagging down a cab, and disappearing into the night. Minutes later, a Schupo came across his cold, dead form, indeed surmising that the man was a victim of a simple, petty crime.
Berlin Operating Base, West Berlin
September 17th, 1986
07.55 Local Time
"So, when did you say they found him?" Peterson had seen some pretty rough times as head of the Field side of the Agency. This was rough, however. He hadn't seen the Reds be so brazen in almost twenty years. That disturbed him, deeper than he made clear.
"About ten last night. Cop found him dead in an alleyway. Police reckon it was a simple killing, by what they found."
"Let me guess: Stabbed in the chest, with all his money gone. Surely, she isn't back on the grid, Joe?" Peterson turned and looked out of the window, over the urban skyline.
"Think about it, Al: your average Berlin mugger woulda taken one look at the contents of that case, shit themselves and ditched it. No, those documents going missing can't be a coincidence. And of all the people that a mugger could target, the deputy head of the Dutch delegation?" He turned back around, to face his colleague.
"Surely, the Russians know that-"
"-The President has to send out the arming codes, of course they do. But imagine how much havoc they could wreak if they were to, say, steal one of those things, or plant one of their own there?" Joe drummed his fingers on the desk, before making his next statement. "The problem is, we barely know anything about this fucking agent of theirs, and even if we did our efforts have turned up nothing. We've been trying to nail her for six years, and almost every agent we send after her either comes up empty, or winds up on our doorstep in a duffel bag. No, we need a new solution. We need some way of taking her out, once and for all."
Al left it unanswered, thinking over his next choice of words carefully. He knew exactly why he'd come here, and he had a solution, in his eyes at least. He just wasn't sure that he could convince Joe that it could be done. The agent he had in mind was prolific, if unconventional. Any normal organisation would've taken one look at this sexuality-ambiguous, anarchic headcase and sent her through the door. Not this agency, however. She was something else. It helped, of course, that her father was- had been- in the Agency, he'd subtly trained her here and there. She was by far one of the youngest agents they had in Berlin, barely even old enough to drink Stateside. Yet she could outperform agents who were twice her age, sometimes more. It was just a shame that her wild tendencies had led her straight into one of the Stasi's better spy-catchers. It was awkward that some of their best agents also happened to be inclined away from the norm.
"We have a solution. Well, had." Joe frowned, leaning onto the back of his chair at the statement, dipping his head.
"Lemme guess, the Ruskies already got him." Al shook his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
"Er, no. It's a little more complicated than that. She happens to have been festering in Bautzen Zwei for the past six or seven months, if my sources are correct." Joe froze solid for a moment, as the pieces clicked together in his head. He looked Al square in the eye.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me." Joe went back over to the window, banging on it with his fists, turning back and flopping into his chair. "Fuck! Okay, fine. Why not just ask me to get the Air Force to fucking level the Wall while we're at it? I'm sure the Kremlin will be just fine with us asking to get her back, what with all the shit she did to their intelligence network before they caught her dumb ass." He ground his hands across his face.
Al dropped the file he'd had in his hands onto the desk, right way up for Joe to read. "Yeah, tell me about it. However, IF we can get her back, I think she's our best bet of getting to this, 'Red Deer', that's been such a pain in our ass." Joe opened the file, his heart dropping.
Why the fuck does it have to be her? Of ALL the fucking agents, why is she our best bet? The picture on file had been taken about four weeks before the agent's capture. Smug as ever toward the camera, the last remnants of the blue dye she'd been using as part of her cover in the West sector just fading out. He'd seen the case files of the operations she'd been a part of. Her reputation preceded her in any case. He closed the file and handed it back to Al.
"Alright, alright. I'll see what I can do. No guarantees, so... just try and find a backup choice, okay? Maybe even get the Brits in on this."
"Why'd we need the Brits to help us on this, though? We got enough manpower to start a small war in East Berlin." Al was untrusting as ever toward the British. Then again, as a descendant of one of the Boston Tea Party instigators, that was to be expected.
"Al, they've some pretty good operatives as well you know. Besides, we may need to butter them up a helluva lot."
"How come?" Joe grimaced, as he broke the news.
"Well, the chances are we're gonna have to trade them back some of their A-listers. Or half of Spandau. Probably both." Al huffed a laugh, smirking.
"Well, looks like we're both gonna need new jobs at the end of this."
"Damn straight. I'll call you if I have any luck." With that, Al nodded and left the small office. After he had gone, Joe sat down at his desk, opening the drawer and retrieving his drink of choice: A hip-flask of Schwartzhog. He opened the screw-top, and gulped down a good amount of the liquid.
"God, why are you doing this to me? Six months left in the Agency, and you throw this shit at me. What did I do?" He leaned back in his chair, and sighed. After another few moments of careful consideration, he picked up the phone on the desk and punched in the one number he'd been hoping not to need today.
"Andrew, yes, yes, it's me. Listen, I need a massive favour from you. You're not going to like it..."