Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series)

by Raechel Sands

  She’d liked to have bought candyfloss for two other children, but she knew it wouldn’t keep. Instead she chose two paper bagful’s of candy, and put them away in her Bulgari bag.

  As Felicity walked through some trees to another part of the grounds, her AI vision scanned for Jimmy and Brian. Jimmy, older and bolder, was hiding behind a distant hedge.

  She whistled a tune she had taught to him—the opening bars from the whistle in the film Twisted Nerve as used in another movie she loved, Kill Bill.

  She listened for an answering whistle.

  There it was—the theme from The Great Escape. From behind the hedge, a tall boy of 10 came running towards her.

  She handed him a candyfloss.

  ‘Hel o, Jimmy. Where’s Brian?’

  ‘He’s about somewhere, Miss.’

  She handed him a second candyfloss. ‘For Brian. And here’s some spending money for you both.'

  She handed him two 10 pound bil s.

  ‘You remember about tomorrow? What we planned?’

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  ‘Oh yes, Miss.’

  ‘Okay, enjoy yourself.’

  After Jimmy scampered off in search of his brother, Felicity went to the badge-making stal , and ordered two badges.

  From the next stal , C was running the Bagatelle. He didn’t have any customers, so he watched Felicity casual y. As the badges were being stamped out, she crossed to C and handed him his candyfloss, biting into the last one herself.

  ‘Mind if I use your OhZone Scanner on the Op?’ she said.

  ‘Pick it up from Miss Banks tomorrow afternoon. How much longer do I have to mind this stal ?’

  ‘I’l let you know,’ answered Felicity. ‘And man up. Smile.

  You’re doing your bit for society.’

  She returned to the badge stal , and the stal keeper handed the badges over. One read— Emma, the other— Olga.

  River Heights, Victoria Embankment.

  The Grinin’s Penthouse.

  The day before, Sokol had taken Farringdon, who was to act as a cook and live and sleep there, to the penthouse.

  Although he was only OhZone technical grade, he was reliable and would always report to her as well as Blanka. She was, after al , OhZone second-in-command. There were plenty more OhZone techies.

  But she got a shock when she presented him to Major Grinin.

  A new security placement, Irish-born Mick the Mick, had joined the MI5 protection team, and was already acting as cook.

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  ‘I get it,’ Grinin laughed. ‘Everyone wants to come and live with me!’

  Having questioned him more about his culinary credentials than his security clearance, Grinin was pleased with his new cook. Mick had learnt Russian cuisine during three postings on secondment to MI6 at the British Embassy in Moscow.

  ‘That settled it for me,’ Grinin declared. ‘I am surrounded by security, but a real cook! I couldn’t be happier.’

  Standing next to her husband, Diana frowned and politely asked Sokol if they would like to stay for tea. With equal polite-ness, Sokol declined and returned Farringdon to his duties in the back of the water company truck.

  On the day of Emma and Olga’s birthday, Sokol arrived at 3 p.m., a full hour early. Emma ran into her arms, but Olga was preoccupied with her new toy tiger.

  ‘I made him myself,’ Olga said proudly, ‘and look what he does.’

  She pressed the tiger’s heart, and a voice recording played Major Grinin’s gruff voice:

  Come on Olga, come on Emma.

  Let’s play the hiding game.

  Grinin explained that the hiding game was a Russian form of hide-and-seek that he had invented.

  It not only incorporated Russian dol s and clues, but also treats at different stages of the search.

  As Sokol, Diana, Grinin, officer Gabor and the children played the hiding game, along with the toy tiger, the Nanny and Mick the Mick put the finishing touches to the food.

  When the various other guests and their small children arrived, they were regaled by a spectacular array of Russian

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  cuisine and served Russian Caravan tea.

  No one from MI6 per se had been invited; Grinin had agreed with Blanka that to invite officers friendly to their cause, such as Russia and Jude, would compromise them.

  The twins received a giant birthday card from The Office, however.

  It was a playful Alice in Wonderland design, beautiful y handmade and painted by Miss Banks’ niece, Robin (from MI6

  payrol ). The card was signed by the Banks, the entire OhZone crew, and over 40 other officers.

  Blanka arrived holding a present for both the children. They kissed her dutiful y, and rushed to tear open the blue wrapping paper.

  Blanka believed little girls should be free to wear blue, so the Kilburn Cosmonauts tiny-size Rugby shirts were the light blue of the team.

  Olga quietly wrapped her Rugby shirt around her toy tiger.

  But Emma spent the rest of the party wearing her blue shirt on top of her party dress.

  ‘It’s just for today,’ laughed Diana to Blanka. ‘Maybe it wil be an emerald green one soon,’ she whispered.

  Blanka winked back.

  But, for the twins, the hit of the party was Nearby, dressed—in an actual Russian, 19th century ball gown.

  Nearby rarely dressed up. But for the twins’ party she decided to put the boat out. It was mainly to amuse the kids, but she thought that Diana and Grinin would like it too. The historical bal gown was not hard to obtain: she spoke perfect Russian and worked for MI6.

  Painting her nails silver with gold bits on was—wel , most

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  unusual. Everyone was surprised, and stunned by her appearance.

  Grinin feigned to not know who Nearby was.

  ‘You must be a Russian princess in exile, who has come to us through a time warp!’ he declared.

  He then had his radio theme song, Ra Ra Rasputin put on, and lead everyone dancing in a circle around his colorful y lit aquarium. Nearby held his one hand, and Diana, mischievously, held his ass.

  Emma and Olga thought the best fun was to ride along the Turkish carpets, on the trail of Nearby’s dress.

  The grandest carpet was between the aquarium and Grinin’s desk at the panoramic window.

  ‘It’s a magic carpet,’ shrieked Emma excitedly.

  Olga turned to her toy tiger, and asked:

  ‘Is it?’

  She moved the tiger so it could whisper in her ear, and listened to its reply. Olga nodded her head, then turned and pronounced to everyone:

  ‘It’s a secret carpet.’

  ‘Ah,’ whispered Grinin, confidential y to her and Emma, as the lights were switched off for them to blow out the six candles on their birthday cake (which was shaped like the continents of the world).

  ‘It’s a secret carpet!’

  With a whoosh he raised his arm dramatical y to the ceiling.

  The light of the tropical fish aquarium angled on his chiselled, bearded face.

  ‘Secret magic,’ he said, looking at his young daughters. ‘It’s the most powerful kind.’

  I hope to God it is, Nearby said to herself, as she pulled the twins along on her dress.

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  The Ides of March

  Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year.

  Cram them full of noncombustible data,

  chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.

  Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy…

  1953, RAY BRADBURY - FAHRENHEIT 451

  Germany. Berlin.

  Schönefeld Int
ernational Airport.

  A t 10:45 p.m., Polish captain Edith Stein checked for Travoltas on the EPRs, opened the throttles, and released the ground brake. Ryanair 8545, the last flight from Berlin to London, set off.

  It was scheduled to fly into Stansted, London’s smal er airport. Nobody who was anybody in espionage used Heathrow, not if they wanted to get into Britain undetected. And the young woman in coach seat 32A did.

  The take-off was bumpy, thought the spy travelling on a Swiss passport in the name of Aude Halpern. Yes, the north

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  runway was in need of its refurbishment.

  As a jet pilot herself, KGB Captain Lara Starikova, also felt the slight pause the engines made on the take-off rol .

  Looking out the window at the aircraft’s metal wing extending into the thin German night, Lara thought about her aunt, General Valentina Starikova, famous for being the first woman in space. When thinking of her, Lara felt a certain tension in her heart. She loved her aunt—yes, she could say that clearly—but she was also intimidated by her.

  She recalled Valentina’s curt briefing that morning.

  ‘We don’t want Grinin to make a vaccine. Neither does C.

  The British have a new AI-hybrid, Felicity Robinson, who they wil deploy. She is not loyal to OhZone, but to C.’

  ‘So she wil –’ Lara had started to say.

  Valentina held up her hand.

  ‘I don’t want political discussion. As you know, you are due for promotion at the end of the year. This extremely delicate mission cal s for someone who I can trust completely: 101 per cent.’

  As full throttle was engaged, Lara switched on her reading light. She was making her second attempt to read Dostevsky’s The Idiot in English. Not because she found it difficult—but because she did not approve of Constance Garnett’s translation.

  ‘Mrs Garnett,’ she told her literary friends, ‘puts too much milk in Dostoyevsky’s good black Russian tea.’

  She opened the hefty novel at her bookmark.

  The portrait was indeed of an extraordinarily beautiful woman … photographed in a black silk dress of an extremely simple and elegant cut; her hair, which

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  appeared to be a dark brown color, was done in a simple, homespun style … her forehead was pensive; her expression was passionate and, as it were, haughty.

  Am I a real Russian when I think in English? thought Lara.

  Nastasia going to her death, like Kitty. An extraordinarily beautiful woman, like Kitty.

  Lara lifted up the bookmark—a faded color photograph. In the way that cousins sometimes look like sisters, the woman in the centre of the photograph clearly looked like her—although the woman was heavily pregnant.

  It was the last photograph taken of Kitty Maguire before she was murdered.

  Lara remembered it wel .

  In the picture, Kitty stood—with Valentina on one side, and Lara aged 14 on the other—next to the majestic singing fountains of Peterhof Palace, St Petersburg.

  The photographer was none other than Grigori Grinin.

  ‘You look so like Kitty now,’ Valentina had said. ‘You even have her green eyes. Very striking. I strongly recommend brown contact lenses for this assignment.’

  ‘She was only my second cousin,’ Lara retorted.

  Valentina laid her hand on her arm. ‘But the likeness grows with the years. You could pass for her. Comrade Grigori has a strong bond with the Starikova family. Use the memory of Kitty to change his mind.’

  Being a Starikova was why Lara had been chosen for the mission. Her Sergeant had already arrived in London with the rest of the team.

  As the Boeing 737-800 ascended into German cloud, it rocked; and Lara slipped the photograph of Kitty Maguire inside the back cover of The Idiot.

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  Back on duty at Liverpool Street station, in London, Nearby sat at a cafe table in the empty 24-hour book store, sipping organic apple juice. The timer on her iPhone beeped—the Paris flight had landed. She had 40 minutes to wait before the passengers would arrive.

  She stood and browsed the bookshelves, and, in the science fiction aisle, she found the book she was looking for: Fahrenheit 451.

  She’d seen an analog film version of the Truffaut movie the month before at The Gate in Notting Hil , and she loved the stars, Oskar Werner and Julie Christie.

  Nearby remembered the credit, ‘Based on the novel by Ray Bradbury.’ She’d looked him up. The Nazi book burnings, Stalin’s Great Purge, the communist witch hunts in America: they al gave Bradbury a profound contempt for government overreach, so he wrote Fahrenheit 451 about a society where firemen burn books, and the citizens are told what to believe by their screens.

  She thought about her work at MI6 and experienced a flush of shame. She looked down at her feet. Under her stylish heels, she noticed an unusual gold and red Persian rug on the floor, depicting what looked like Mount Olympus.

  ‘Sweeping things under the carpet isn’t the half of it,’ she said.Sitting down at her table, she took the Filofax from her bag.

  Inside the binder was a smal photo of Kitty, which Blanka had given her. The likeness to the Russian agent she was hoping to tail was clear. She opened her diary at the weekend of the 14th–15th.

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  ‘The Ides of March,’ she read from it.

  She paid for Fahrenheit 451, and headed for the concourse.

  She had mugshots of Lara Starikova and the usual suspects, and had memorized them (they were taught to do that in a second, in spy school).

  Passengers from Paris trooped out of platform 7 in ones and twos. Nearby didn’t spot any KGB agents. After the travellers had gone, four armed Met police and two women dog handlers were left on the concourse. Nearby smiled at the women, briefly petted the dogs, and headed past the public sculpture back toward Café Fox.

  As she passed the bronze, she noticed the title: Für Das Kind. Her German was MI6-taught, but she knew what it meant: For the child. Someone had put white roses at the children’s feet. International Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27th, came into her mind. Where was the train in her head going? And if it wasn’t the Kindertransport, then what was its destination? She shivered in the cold, and hurried up the steps.

  She ordered a hot chocolate and a Latte (before the café washed out the machines), a cranberry flapjack and an OMG

  slice. Blanka had given her a packet of Lindors, but she didn’t fancy chocolates.

  Chocolate was bad for Blanka, but no one dared stop her.

  Sokol was the only one who mentioned it. Nearby loved Blanka but it was hard to live up to the standards of the most highly regarded Intel igence agent in the world. There were rumours about the wet jobs Blanka had done. Only rumours.

  Apparently, there were never any bodies, Nearby reflected.

  Did Blanka have a more terrifying secret than chocolate addiction?

  The barista placed the drinks on the tray and took her cash.

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  They were the only people in the café now.

  ‘Are you on al night?’ she asked, in the home counties accent she had careful y cultivated.

  ‘Only til eight,’ the barista joked, in broad Irish.

  This made Nearby giggle, and the barista winking made her giggle more. She carried her tray to a different window table (also commanding a view of platform 7) and checked the time.

  An hour to go before the Berlin passengers.

  She sipped her hot chocolate. As she contemplated the dark, creamy liquid she imagined Julie Christie drinking hot chocolate with her. She’s 75 and lives not far away. Does she come here? Pete says I look like her. When she was in her heyday.

  But real y she looks more like Kitty. Or did Kitty look more like her? If two people look exactly like each other, who looks like who?

  What about twins? Or doppelgäng
ers like Felicity and me?

  Nearby tossed her head, and discretely adorned herself with her distinctive eau de parfum. She had bought it out of her first MI6 pay check: a gift to herself, to remind her that—but for Blanka—she would probably have ended up in a body bag that cold February twenty-fifth, four years ago.

  Some one had left a book open on another table.

  ‘A reproduction of a first edition,’ she chuckled. ‘ Ulysses by James Joyce. Shakespeare and Company, Paris.’

  She thought of the il ustration of the Ha'penny Bridge on her copy; of the River Liffey back home. She saw herself there with her own mother, and once again thought about Blanka’s.

  Kitty. She felt she knew her so wel . Just then the book’s most famous sentence leapt into her head:

  — History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

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  ‘Kitty was pretty. Joyce’s daughter was pretty too,’ Nearby said, under her breath. ‘A dancer. Lucia: that’d been her name.

  Dated Samuel Beckett. Counselled by the great Carl Jung.

  Zürich, diagnosis schizophrenia. English mental hospital, 35 years. Her father’s muse. Forgotten. Written out of history.’

  Then Nearby remembered!

  Lucia!

  Kitty had gone off in search of Lucia! A different Lucia…

  Lucia of Fatima. The shepherd girl.

  And Kitty had been written out of history

  too.

  A tear of indignation ran down Nearby’s cheek.

  ‘Hitler said Genghis Khan was only remembered as the founder of the world’s greatest empire,’ she muttered. ‘What about the rest of the world? People who weren’t the masters of war or words? What kinda history do ordinary people get— zip, nada, nothing.’

  The tear landed on the title, Ulysses, and Nearby stared at the letter ‘Y’ through the glistening bead her eye had created.

  ‘The clever Greek, the one who was trying to get home.

  Mr James Joyce, you bloody Irish poet. What were you trying to do? Two men are lost. You get Leopold home, drunk. But Stephen continues to wander. We know, we feel, he’l eventual y write the novel we’re reading. He’ll escape the nightmare of history the only way he can—by writing his own history. The true history of that bloody, priest-ridden race. His Ireland.