Zara's Game

by Jo Black

‘Do you have time to talk?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We should sit down.’ Zara walked over and sat in one of the chairs.

  ‘Don’t tell me, he’s charmed you with his immense power and you are leaving me for him.’

  ‘He’s not really tall enough. No, this is something else.’ Alex frowned, he settled into the chair. ‘I met your grandfather. Outside. He was feeding the birds.’

  ‘Yes. He does that...’

  ‘He told me quite a story.’

  ‘Yes...he does that as well. Look Zara, I’ve been out in the cold all day. Can I get a shower and something to eat first? As much as I’d love to hear about what the old man has to say, I’m sure I’ve heard it all before.’

  ‘Sure...’ Alex kissed Zara, got up and headed into the adjoining bathroom. Zara walked over to the case. As curious as she was to know the contents, she respected the president’s warning and placed it out of the way in the wardrobe.

  86

  Alex was busy packing his bags on the bed as Zara stared out of the window.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go back to Ibiza? I can send Vane and his boys to keep watch over you there.’

  ‘No...I think I’ll stay here if that’s okay.’

  ‘Sure. This is about the most secure place on the planet, as long as G.W doesn’t have a spot of the mental and drop a warhead on it out of the blue.’

  ‘There’s a good bunker I hear.’

  ‘Grigor’s going to send you some help. We need a Subject Matter Expert on the package to provide testimony to Saddam. If it comes from here then he’ll trust it. Assuming we find all the components.’

  ‘I’ll get on with it. Alex, before you go, can we talk about what your grandfather said?’ Alex sighed and zipped up his bag. ‘I know it’s the past and you don’t want it dragged up, but I just want to understand you better.’

  Alex nodded reluctantly. He walked over to the table and poured a glass of vodka. ‘Well you won’t get that from him. Given the amount of Pavlo’s Special Blend the old fool drank I’m surprised he can remember which country he is in.’

  ‘He seemed quite lucid. He told me what happened to your parents.’

  ‘Did he give you the baby in the basket tale?’ Zara nodded. ‘I used to get that one. Usually on the second bottle of vodka of the day before he took his belt off and figured some reason I deserved the end of it.’

  ‘You don’t believe it?’

  ‘He’s a bitter old man Zara. My mother hated him; he was one of Stalin’s henchmen. He had no good in him at all, that’s how he survived. Birds of a feather and all that. He only got sentimental in his old age now he’s realised he’s nothing more than a museum piece.’

  ‘So it’s not true?’

  ‘He hated my mother for loving a British spy because he hated what that represented. The idea that even with all that ideology she could cross that invisible wall they created to divide us into our tribes, and love someone from the enemy’s camp. Especially given my father belonged to the most hated of classes in The Party – the landed inherited wealth gentry. My mother was pregnant before she was married, you can imagine what a scandal that would have caused. Lead dancer of the Bolshoi, K.G.B star agent knocked-up by her millionaire M.I.6 lover. Not exactly the stuff The Party wanted on the gossip circuit. She told the old man that so she didn’t end up in some gulag with everyone else that didn’t tow The Master’s line. He was from the era when people denounced close members of their own family to save themselves. Parents denouncing their children, children denouncing each other, husbands, wives. I think even the dog would have joined in if they’d figured out a way to get a paw-print as a legal signature on a confession. It was a deception.’

  ‘You believe the official version?’

  ‘They lived in an expensive Belgravia townhouse. The burglar confessed to it in Belmarsh and got sent down for it. My father committed suicide because he couldn’t stand life as a neglected former agent in some rundown communist apartment. He didn’t defect, so he didn’t get any kind of heroic pat on the back and welcome to Moscow. He ran away to avoid the consequences after her death when it came to light she was working for the K.G.B. They thought he was a double agent but he wasn’t. It didn’t matter though, just the suspicion back then was enough – he’d have been ostracised from society, followed everywhere he went. But having gone from a life of wealth and privilege to one of poverty and neglect, plus the heartbreak of grief. What was left? Me? He never gave a fuck about me, took too much of my mother’s affection from him. Whatever went on, both my parents took it to the grave. And I was left with a bitter old relic of Stalinism who didn’t have a shred of care in his body to comfort a child who’d lost his mother. That’s why I ran away. The man lied for a living. I don’t think he even knows what’s true and what isn’t.’

  Zara nodded. ‘I guess not...’

  ‘I don’t care. Nothing will bring them back or undo it. There are no happy stories in Russian history Zara. We were born into tragedy, it’s all we really know.’

  ‘And what about us?’

  Alex shrugged. ‘I’m half English, you’re not Russian. I think we’ve got a seventy-five percent chance of a happy ending,’ Alex said with a smile.

  ‘I’ll take those odds.’

  ‘Me too...’ Alex walked over to Zara. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘We make our own way in this world Zara. Some things are better left in the past. Our future is what matters. And we can exert some control over that.’ Alex kissed Zara softly on the forehead. ‘Everyone keeps telling me what they think I am, asks other people who they think I am, nobody ever asks me who I know I am.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then you know who I am. I’m the man who loves you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Then we have all we need to be happy. I ask for nothing more.’ They kissed. ‘Now I have to go to Mombasa and hunt down the parts for a nuclear weapon in an international plot to frame a sovereign nation’s dictator as a casus belli for war.’

  ‘I should have married a plumber.’

  ‘I’d come home stinking of shit every day.’

  ‘Electrician then.’

  ‘You’d get bored. Before long you’d have me putting wiretaps and hidden cameras in just to spy on people. We can’t change who we are.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose we can.’ They hugged warmly. ‘Take care in Mombasa.’

  ‘I’ll call you as soon as we have something new. Keep working on what we already have.’

  ‘I will do.’

  Alex picked up his bag; he walked over to the door, stopped and stared at Zara. She smiled at him. He nodded and smiled back before departing with some sense of reluctance. Zara drew a deep breath. Her head swimming with the conflicting versions between the man she knew, or at least thought she knew, and the recollections of an old stranger. The seemingly mediating voice of reason from the president, who likely had his own dog in the fight somehow. Not that she could really trust him, she couldn’t even trust his version of the Japanese surrender being anything other than manufactured propaganda, no doubt written by Stalin himself and recorded as fact.

  She looked across at the case before overwhelming curiosity and a desire for answers took firm hold. She walked over and picked it up, took it back to the table, carefully placed it down and unlocked it. She removed the file container from within and carefully broke the seal on it with a toast knife from her plate before removing the stacks of bound documents. She piled them up, took one off the stack, removed the red ribbons holding the bundled intelligence reports and documents together and started reading through them slowly. She struggled at first, despite her best efforts, the Cyrillic was still hard to decipher, but little by little she started to piece together the nuggets of intelligence they contained. She stopped briefly and stared out the window as a small bird landed on the window ledge outside and stared through at her. She smiled softly. ‘Hello little friend. Are you here to spy on me?’ She pic
ked up her plate of toast crumbs, gently opened the window as to not scare off her visitor, and lifted the plate to sprinkle the crumbs on the top of the snow covered ledge before retreating her hand. The bird looked around briefly then started quickly pecking at the crumbs. ‘You were hungry.’ She stared at the bird as it moved down the line, lifting its head up occasionally to check for bigger birds that may threaten it before seemingly looking at Zara. ‘You should come back again at lunch. Breakfast is at eight. Lunch is served at noon on the dot. Dinner is served at seven, formal dress is not required.’ The bird hopped along the ledge to the shelter of the corner and tucked itself down to rest. She spoke softly to it. ‘You keep an eye out for burglars, and I’ll keep watch for the cat. Deal?’

  Next In Series…

  Zara Scott Returns in: AGENT OF CHAOS (May 2018)

  * * *

  The Blades return in:

  WHISKY MIKE DELTA

  (The Blades SAS III)

  April 2018

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  Tiger Lane returns in:

  THE TIGER SANCTION

  (Tiger Lane Book 1)

  March 2018

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  Thank you for reading

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  ZARA’S GAME

  by

  JO BLACK