Many years ago...
"Can I begin?" Valeria Jones squinted from the bright light focused on her face.
"Please do."
"Where do I start?" She tittered due to her uncertainty and the hands in her lap gripped each other tighter at the foreign sound. Her thumb moved absentmindedly over her knuckles.
If only she had worn her softer, broken-in jeans. The pair she had on, the latest Levis, was bought off the street from a notorious black market seller. She hadn't had time to wash them, and the stiff newness was uncomfortable under the heat of the lamps. On the other hand, her pink sweater, far from new, was as soft as a cloud. She loosened her hands to pluck at the hem.
"Just start from the beginning." The camera lens moved in closer, so just her head was visible. "When did your parents come here?"
That was easy. I'll just start from there.
Valeria's parents came to Russia in 1964 as Children of the Festival, shortly after their country, formerly known as the Tanganyika Territory, became Tanganyika.
Anisha, her mother, and Manaili, her father, didn't meet each other until they went to Moscow State University. In the many dates that followed, the couple found out their homes in Dar es Salaam were separated by only a few blocks.
Loved blossomed quickly between the two. Once they graduated, they were married by rospis v zagse the day after.
"My parents tried for several years to have a child, and finally, I was born on a cold day in January." Her hands stilled in her lap as Valeria laughed at the long lost memory. "My mother said snow was almost up to her knees when she and my father walked to the subway station from their multi-family apartment, her labor pains in full swing."
She chuckled, her brown eyes dancing. "Mother was afraid she would have me on the subway platform, yet they made it just in time. I was born with no incidents an hour later, kicking and screaming, already determined to have my way."
Valeria's face clouded over, her gaze lost focus in the light.
If only I hadn't been so stubborn...
"What did your parents do for a living?"
"Oh, um." Valeria scratched at the phantom itchiness of the jeans by rubbing her hands down her thighs. "They worked in a research lab that dealt with the race for outer space samples. More specifically, they studied the effects of what space did to the human body."
"So you received your affinity for science from them."
Valeria smiled, outshining the beacon of the lamps surrounding her. "Yes. Yes I did."
"Do you hope your daughter will be the same?"
The camera zoomed in as she patted her belly. The bump under her sweater was barely noticeable. Even at four months along, Valeria was still a slim woman.
Her thoughts drifted to her unborn child and her lips trembled as her hands tightened around each other one more. Tears spilled out to run down her makeup free face without hindrance.
"How can she not? She was engineered to be that way."
***
Valeria, tear free, was back on camera.
"Tell us how she came to be."
Valeria shook her head. "To tell you that, I need to go back about six years earlier."
***
The red-light district of Amsterdam was usually crowded, but this night, in the heavy mist and fog, hardly anyone was about. The lateness of the hour also decreased her chances of being noticed in the black jumper. It clothed her body from neck to ankle. Gloves, and boots took care of the rest. The gun with a silencer, sat zipped up in the side pocket of her lightweight vest, waiting for her targets.
She had followed the couple all the way from Berlin the night before. They had nowhere else to run. All of their other sanctuaries, from Russia to Germany had been eliminated one by one until only the studio above the café was left.
Valeria intended to end their running this very night. Other agents were on the hunt for them, but only she knew where her old friend would hide.
A hand loomed out of the darkness, clutching at her sleeve. It was made sinister by the red lighting of the glass windows that showcased the prostitutes of Amsterdam.
"Hey, meisje! Kom's even hier."
Valeria pulled away, giving the cat-calling man a dark look.
The rebuffed man contemplated only for a moment before throwing the remaining dregs of beer at her retreating back.
"Teef!" he snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth.
The liquid hardly had time to drip down into her jumper when she flattened her palm and caught the man with a hard chop to the throat. He went down sputtering, his windpipe cracked. The woman in the window screamed at the sight. By the time the man's underworld buddies arrived, Valeria had vanished.
The café was located at the corner of Zandstraat and Zanddwarsstraat. There was a side entrance with stairs leading to the apartment above. Valeria was ready to pick the lock, but it wasn't necessary. He was emerging from the mist, a big blond giant of a man. With his stature, it was a wonder how they managed to stay hidden for so long.
Valeria had time to pull out her gun and flip the safety off. When he was close enough for her to see the water droplets plaster his blonde hair to his head, she shot him. A double tap to the heart.
The strength of the man was amazingâa Viking warrior to be sure. He swayed on his feet, recognition of her and what had happened was written on his face like a stone tablet.
He fell to his knees, swayed a bit more like a sapling in the wind, then toppled backward. The keys to the apartment and his wife's demise laid glittering on the pavement.
Valeria lifted the dead weight and stuffed the man's body under the stairs, her shoulders and back straining with the effort. By the time he was as concealed as much as she could make him, Valeria was sweating as if she had just finished a workout session with Demetri.
How proud he would be when she brought him the news of the traitor's deaths.
With that thought in mind, Valeria crept up the stairs to kill her old comrade.
Tatiana Volkov was in the kitchen, preparing a cup of tea. The water on the stove was just beginning to boil when she heard the front door open.
"Aleksei, did you manage to buy the train tickâ "
The cup dropped from her hand to shatter on the floor, the fragments bouncing off the wood to settle around her feet. The air in her lungs turned to dust, choking off further words.
The woman, dressed in black like an avenging dark spirit, was once as treasured as a sister.
There was no joy in their reunion, just the finality of it all. Both knew only one would leave the apartment alive.
"Aleksei is dead. I shot him, Tatiana."
Her husband's killer had yet to look her in the face. Instead, her gaze was on Tatiana's protruding belly. Full of a baby boy due to make his entrance into the world in less than two months' time.
Tatiana nodded, accepting the fate of her husband as easily as a propaganda handout from a person on the streetâtaking it blindly, then folding it into a square and stuffing it down into a pocket to be pulled out and read later.
Valeria closed the door and locked it, motioning with the gun for Tatiana to have a seat on the scuffed up wooden chair in the center of the room. Once the pregnant woman was settled, her hand massaging her stomach, Valeria leaned against the wall and studied her enemy.
"How far along are you?"
"Seven months."
"Where are your passports and money?"
Tatiana's gaze traveled to the brown duffel bag, near the mattress on the floor.
Valeria's dark eyes laughed, her tone, lighter, "Are you from a good country?"
Tatiana smiled despite the dread in her heart. Valeria and Tatiana, the two darlings of the Istochnik, had always gotten the best assignments. The passports they had accumulated were from places most Russians behind the newly fallen Iron Curtain would have given anything to see. Places like America, Kenya, England, and even Jamaica. When a new mission was doled out, it became a joke between the two women agents to ask the other what country they were from.
"Yes. Yes, I am." Tatiana's heart dared to hope. Valeria was a trained killer. She usually shot then asked questions later. Maybe her former friend had grown soft? It would be her only hope.
Valeria opened the door, giving Tatiana a shadow of a smile. "Then go there. Go there and be well."
The assassin slipped out of the door as quickly as she came. Tatiana didn't wait to catch the last glimpse of the retreating form. She was already on the move to pack her things into the brown duffel bag.
"So you knew the boy's parents?"
Valeria's head was down as she concentrated on picking at her nails. "Yes."
"You murdered his father and let his mother go free."
Valeria shifted her gaze from her lap to her inquisitor. The camera lens picked up the change in her eyes as the deed that had haunted her soul for so long turned her brown eyes pitch black.
"Yes. I did."
"Why?"
The onscreen face of Valeria morphed into a mask of regret and anger. "I was assigned to take one life, not two. I'm a monster, true, but I am no devil."
"How did you come to meet Hawthorne's parents in the first place?"
"Through Demetri."
The unseen voice spat questions at Valeria like bullets from a machine gun. "Demetri Petrov? The same Demetri Petrov that inducted you into the Istochnik? The same Demetri Petrov that was your former lover? The same Demetri Petrov that forced you into manipulating the genes of the baby you now carry?
"Yes. Yes. Yes." Valeria banged her fists against her thighs with each word as she cried out her frustration. "The same Demetri Petrov that is the devil incarnate."