It was true; the coastline seemed to be one of those surreal hand-drawn maps you might find in the front pages of old fantasy books. Everything she could see was too sharp or too steep or too brightly colored to be real.
Reality wasn’t usually all that pretty.
Yet here it was. The vertical plateau of Sugarloaf Mountain rose up in front of her, sheer rock and cable cars and all; Ipanema (like the song) and Copacabana (like the other song) occupied the broad stripe of sand directly south of that—and then the curving seam of land and water broke into an abrupt handful of tiny jagged hills that poked up from the shallow surf, well beyond the row of grand beach hotels.
If she looked hard enough, she could just make out the Copacabana Palace hotel, where back in the 1950s Howard Stark had fallen in love with the view of the sea (or, more likely, the women who swam in it) and purchased the sixth-floor penthouse Natasha and Ava had been using as a base of operations for weeks now.
Natasha had told Coulson she was taking Ava out of S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy so they could combine fieldwork with vacation, but the truth was clear: they had come to South America for one reason.
Vengeance for Alexei.
Ivan Somodorov was dead, but his network of terror remained. The Widows were here to follow the trail of intelligence—what Ava now called the “fact story,” since her Academy training—that could bring Alexei’s murderers to justice and crush Ivan’s network, and with it his infamous Red Room—the spy school that had destroyed both of their lives. The loss of Natasha’s younger brother and Ava’s first love had sent them each reeling in different ways.
And in some of the same ways—
After nothing but setbacks and dead ends in their investigation—questions without answers—today Natasha had decided to take a few hours off. She’d dragged Ava up here on the back of the Harley, disregarding the oppressive afternoon heat, without being able to put into words why.
A feeling.
Natasha only knew she’d experienced it before—once, during a routine S&R (surveillance and recon) op, while climbing over a tiled rooftop at the edge of Havana at sunset.
Another time, she’d sensed it when, on the way to an RDX (rendezvous) she’d flown an Apache low enough over the green-green of a Myanmar rice paddy to interrupt a family of elephants during bath time in the River Mali.
She’d gotten it again while flattened on a rooftop for a recce (reconnaissance mission) in Aleppo, watching the sun rise over the partly destroyed minaret of the Great Mosque as the Syrian city echoed with the dawn call to prayer.
Later, she’d found it in the sudden warm draft of cinnamon and coffee from a nearby vatrushka bakery as she rappelled down from Zhivopisny Bridge to the frozen Moskva during the exfiltration of a compromised Support Asset from the wintery, hostile Rodina, the motherland.
While each of those moments had struck during a Denied Area Operation, Natasha had to admit she’d found something undeniable as well. The remnants of a dream, or maybe just a hope. If the world can still feel like that—even now, after everything—then who knows?
Maybe the cold, orbital ball of nickel and iron and silicon—the worn gravity-bound rock that had miraculously outlasted everything she’d ever cared about—could one day again be something more. Not just death and loss and betrayal and pain. Not loneliness and isolation…
Natasha stared out at the world in front of her, trying to see that now. They had both had a rough year, in a lot of ways, since Alexei had died. Her family was gone, and her friends were divided. If Ava really did plan to keep calling herself the Red Widow—to use her newfound powers for the greater good, or even just for whatever Maria Hill or Coulson had planned for her—the kid would have to find hope somewhere.
Maybe that was what this afternoon was about.
Natasha took a deep breath, focusing on the bright wash of sky in front of her. Give it a rest, Romanoff. What’s wrong with you? You really are turning into some kind of fruit person—
Natasha looked away. Somewhere in the crowd a radio was blasting the city’s unofficial anthem, a moody, crooning bossa nova number from João Giberto. You couldn’t take a cab or walk through a hotel lobby anywhere in the city without hearing it; the melody had been stuck in her head for weeks now. Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking—
“Desculpe—” The crowd of tourists moved, and a dark-eyed, dark-haired young woman in a fitted, retro-looking green shift found herself being shoved toward the railing—dipping perilously close to the edge of the sheer rock hillside—and knocking her elbow into Natasha’s shoulder in the process. Off balance, the girl teetered to one side, over the rail—until the Widow reached out, grabbing her by the arm. Natasha felt the girl’s fingers close around her wrist as she steadied herself.
“Watch it,” Natasha said. “The view’s less pretty from an ambulance.” The girl couldn’t have been much older than Ava.
“Desculpe! Desculpe—” The girl switched into heavily accented English. “Sorry, yes, to excuse. She is to make the accident,” she said, backing away. “She is to distract by the angels.”
“What?” Natasha looked at her. “Angels?”
“She is to mean the sky. English not to be her language.” The girl’s eyes had gone wide; she was clearly panicking. “Forgiving you.” She turned and fled into the throng of tourists.
Natasha watched her go, automatically registering the face. Three seconds and she had it; pronounced bone structure, widely spaced eye sockets, large features, sharp horizontal profile, the accent. She spoke Portuguese, but she was more likely Russian, certainly Eastern European, aside from just her dark hair and eyes. Definitely a trace of the Urals in there, some part of the Caucasus. But there was something else, something off about her, for a girl in—what, her late teens, early twenties? Maybe the speech? Could it be the second language…?
Frowning, Natasha reached up and felt her shoulder. Was that a brush pass? Do I feel a transmitter? A bug or a mic or a tick?
Was that an encounter with foreign intelligence or a klutz?
She let her hand drop again. There didn’t appear to be anything there. She shook her head. Maybe this South American op had finally gotten to her; Coulson had been telling her she was paranoid since she’d left Istanbul, more than a year ago.
Then again, you can’t really call it paranoia when that many people are actually trying to kill you. And I could have sworn the girl was playing trip-and-tag. Not to mention there aren’t a whole lot of Russian tourists in Brazil….
“Natasha! Look!” Ava waved at her frantically from across the platform; one of Rio’s many stray monkeys had climbed up on the wall next to the teen and was now photo-bombing her selfie, screaming at her with his wide, elastic monkey mouth. “Monkey!”
“Congratulations.” Natasha shook her head. “Both of you monkeys.” Ava was in rare form today; Natasha hadn’t seen the kid smile this much since Istanbul. But monkey selfies? Was I like this at the beginning? It had been too long; she couldn’t remember. I just hope she stops talking about going to look for capybaras now.
Natasha looked around again, but the girl in the green dress had vanished.
Strange. She began a closer inspection of the crowd—
Her wrist began to vibrate, though, and she turned to check the Widow’s Cuff peeking out beneath the army surplus jacket she wore over her light-fiber, moisture-absorbing jumpsuit—despite the heat—because heat was better than mosquitoes. And much better than malaria or chikungunya or dengue or zika. (This far south of Panama, even the Black Widow had no choice but to abandon her black leather.)
Seven p.m.? Crap—
She’d almost missed check-in. Again.
Natasha pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes and turned back to her Cuff, tapping a tiny screen to initiate her S.H.I.E.L.D. Sametime connection—secure military real-time communications, using shared tech originally borrowed from the CIA. The U.S. government had a few versions of private internet, and n
one was more private than Sametime—even if Tony Stark called it lame-time. He didn’t trust anything the government (or anyone else) made without him.
She eyed the crowd immediately surrounding her, then leaned forward over the railing for a little public privacy, pretending to check her phone. She let the tiny camera on her Cuff scroll its thousands of microscopic lasers over her right retina. A low tone sounded, and she pressed her left thumb to the sensor on the inside of her wrist, using her right hand to slide her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue earpiece into one ear.
“Tony Stark is the greatest, bestest friend I’ve ever had,” a synthetic version of Natasha’s own voice said in a calm monotone, rattling up from her inner ear. It was her Synth, a digital doppelgänger whom she thought of as Fake Natasha, assigned to secure her comm link. Maria Hill had allowed Tony to add Stark Industries’ own rigorous security protocols to all forms of S.H.I.E.L.D. secure communications he used; otherwise, he refused to use them. As a result, Tony had access to everything, which was how Natasha always ended up with voice-match samples as idiotic as this one.
Real Natasha sighed, pressing her earpiece. “Tony Stark is a class-A megalomaniac who wouldn’t know a friend if she bit him in the—”
“I’m sorry, Natasha, that’s incorrect,” the Synth interrupted smugly. A buzzer sounded, and Real Natasha jumped, startled. It felt like someone had hammered a tiny nail inside her eardrum. Wrong answer.
“Fine. Whatever. Tony Stark is the greatest, bestest friend I’ve ever had,” Natasha repeated sullenly, uttering all the requisite vowels and consonants for her voice match. She knew it had worked when the sound of applause rumbled inside her ear. “Very funny.” She rolled her eyes. “And I’m going to kick his greatest, bestest butt if he doesn’t stop writing himself into my Sametime security protocol.”
The protocol rolled forward. “Match is one hundred percent. Line is secure. Daily lame-time check-in initiated, Natasha.”
“Just like clockwork, along with Tony’s daily lame joke.” Natasha touched the side of her glasses now, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. interface unfolded in a hologram, occupying most of her field of vision. “What do you have for me?” She tapped twice on her Cuff, moving through the interface as she did. Rows of numbered transmissions appeared, now hovering above the skyline of the city.
“Retrieving. One hundred forty-one unread data bursts, Natasha.”
“Sounds like a drag.” Natasha scrolled through a pile of memos as she stared off into the view. “Do I want to read any of them?”
“Seven highly classified. Thirty-eight classified. Ninety-five top secret,” the Synth answered brightly. “Fourteen in the CurrentOps mailbox marked From Phil, with love. Seven in the box marked From Tony, with no love.”
“Send the Phil files to my Cuff. Other than that, can we speed this up? I won’t be able to get to most of these until later.”
“Hill, Maria?”
“File, OpSec.”
“Banner, Bruce?”
“File, personal.”
“America, Cap?”
“File, stressful.”
“Marvel, Cap?”
“File, GopOps.” Danvers ran their highly classified Girls Only Poker Night Operation, and half the mail she sent to Natasha’s box was about whose turn it was to host this month (Maria) or what particular junk food She-Hulk was craving. (Salt-and-vinegar something? Or was that Quake? Natasha had lost track.) It was a small, select crew, but on the nights Natasha was in the city and Carol could be persuaded to make her way down from her command post at Alpha Flight station, where she kept watch over Earth’s first line of defense from orbit…
Well, look out—
You couldn’t be expected to put up with all the crap that came with being the world’s mightiest female super heroes and not have a safe space to compare notes. For the lucky few members of Go Night, as they usually called it, that space was an old conference/poker table in the basement of the New York Triskelion. Conveniently located in the same complex as S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy (for Natasha, who had become a lurker of practically parental proportions, thanks to Ava) and at the bottom of what everyone jokingly called Carol’s private Wonkavator, her transport from Alpha Flight to the Triskelion and back, Go Night was nonnegotiable.
Natasha smiled to herself. Ava was still too green for Go Night, no matter how badly she’d wanted in the game since she’d first heard about it. Which is why the first rule of Go Night is that there is no Go Night. Danvers never should have told her about it, that softy…
Natasha paused. “That all?”
The Synth whirred as it searched the server. “One more, Natasha. UNSUB?”
“Say again?” Natasha covered her other ear, trying to hear.
“Correct, Natasha. The data burst originated with UNSUB,” the Synth repeated. “UNSUB is online now.”
“Wait—an UNSUB? As in, Unknown Subject, on our Sametime? That’s not possible.” Everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. was assigned a single digital profile, and every profile was highly tracked. There were no unknowns—not ever—on a secure line. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? What could get through Sametime and Stark-time?
“Pull it up,” Natasha said, suddenly turning to check the crowd for Ava, who was busy taking panoramic pictures of the view, spinning herself and her cell phone in circles at the edge of the platform.
“Enabling S.H.I.E.L.D. Sametime message now,” the Synth confirmed.
A second text box appeared on the horizon in the center of the screen, and Natasha opened it.
UNSUB: WHEN YOU EXPECT MORE FROM S.H.I.E.L.D. SAMETIME’S FIREWALL…
UNSUB: OR THE AVENGERS’ BLACK WIDOW…
Okay—
Natasha concentrated on the line of text in front of her. As she spoke her answer carefully into the mic, the corresponding words appeared in her holographic field of vision.
N_ROMANOFF: SORRY TO DISAPPOINT. WHO IS THIS?
There was no answer, so she tried again.
N_ROMANOFF: WHAT DO YOU WANT? HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?
Still nothing.
But the user was flagged as active. Someone was lurking in her Sametime account. Ghosting. The name on the account was fake—UNSUB was a military term for an unknown person or persons during an operation—but whoever it was might as well have been waving a red flag.
The next three transmissions didn’t make her feel any better.
UNSUB: #HEROESALLFALL
UNSUB: #LIKETHEWALL
UNSUB: #PAYATTENTION
Pay attention? Natasha frowned. I always do. Who are you?
She watched through her glasses as the projected words glowed in the three-dimensional hologram in front of the rapidly darkening sky. She no longer saw the view.
What are you looking for?
How the words—this person—had made their way through firewall after firewall, relay after relay, into Natasha’s only truly secure account, she had no idea. All she knew was that they were there now, which meant they had access to everything….
Suddenly a third dialogue box appeared—this time lit in glowing red.
A new message from UNSUB.
She watched the letters rapidly appear, one by one—and she was hardly surprised when they no longer assembled themselves into English.
UNSUB: ZHIVOYE OTOMSTIT’ ZA MERTVYKH, NATASHKAYA
UNSUB: THE LIVING AVENGE THE DEAD, NATASHKAYA
UNSUB: HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, PTNETS…
UNSUB: WE HAVE MISSED YOU.
Ptnets—
Only one person had ever called her that. She felt her body begin to shake, the oxygen leave her lungs, her head—
But I fired a bullet into his skull. I saw him die with my own eyes.
At my own hand.
Natasha had no idea she was holding her breath until the voice of her Synth startled her back to reality. “Security protocols have been violated, Natasha.”
Real Natasha hardly listened—her mind was already racing. “Activate Protocol X, security.”
&
nbsp; “Affirmative, Natasha. Protocol X is activated. Taking X Action now.” Then the Synth seemed to hesitate, which Natasha knew was impossible. “Updating: UNSUB has copied and deleted eighty-four percent of your secure personal files, Natasha.”
Natasha’s face went white, but she stayed outwardly calm.
Every action is a message. So is every attack.
You can’t be Ivan Somodorov, so what are you telling me?
I’m listening.
“Compromised files reaching ninety-four percent, Natasha.”
She frowned. “What happened to the protocol? Lock it down, security.”
Play your best hand, go on.
No matter what you try, you won’t stay an UNSUB for long—
“Protocol X has been overridden, Natasha.”
“That’s not possible—”
Instinctively, Natasha began to thread her way through the crowd toward Ava, who still had her eyes glued to her phone. The veteran agent’s heartbeat stayed on double time, and she knew it was panic, though it wasn’t a sensation she’d felt often. The only other thing she felt was a mounting frustration that was capped by fury—and that one, she knew well.
Is that it, UNSUB? You can get to me, but I can’t get to you?
Think again, friend.
The moment that Natasha reached Ava, she grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Time’s up. We’re rolling out.”
Ava tried to wave her off. “Wait up. Did you know, if you catch the sunset at exactly the right second, it glows green instead of orange? Like, bright radioactive slime green. Alien green. Why is that?”
The Synth spoke up through Natasha’s earpiece. “Personal files are one hundred percent deleted, Natasha. So are the following: classified records, medical records, records of service, files flagging Natasha Romanoff, files cross-referencing Natasha Romanoff…”
As bleak as the announcement was, Natasha didn’t care about her files. She kept a copy—three copies, in fact—of everything she cared about in one or another of three external drives stored in three safety-deposit boxes outside of New York City: in Zurich, in London, and in Hong Kong. There were also passports and a few old photographs, plus rubber-band-wrapped envelopes of cash for emergencies—ten thousand euros, ten thousand pounds sterling, and twenty-five thousand American dollars, to be exact. Not enough to arouse suspicion, but enough, in a pinch, to lease a masseria farmhouse in Puglia, the southeastern heel of the Italian boot, for a year. If she had to.
Black Widow: Red Vengeance (A Marvel YA Novel) Page 2