Laynie Portland, Spy Rising—The Prequel

by Vikki Kestell

  “Do you know how?”

  “Certainly. I am a Swede. I was born to the water.”

  “Well! Then I shall look forward to sailing with you.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, a long, sleek car, noticeably larger than the vehicle Artem and Linnéa had arrived in, pulled into the yard. Everyone present at the dacha—Artem’s mother, Artem, Linnéa, and four servants—gathered in the yard to greet Artem’s father as he stepped from his car.

  Ivan Kuznetsov was an imposing figure, a large man, not fat or barrel-chested but tall and solidly built. He stood, slowly buttoned his suit jacket, and surveyed his family and servants. Then he walked forward, kissed his wife on both cheeks, and murmured an affectionate greeting. He moved on to Artem.

  Artem, the same height as his father but of a thinner build, smiled. “Papa!”

  “My son,” Ivan replied, kissing him also. “It has been too long.”

  “I am glad you could come, Papa,” Artem said, so obviously proud of his father.

  Kuznetsov shifted his eyes to Linnéa. Beneath heavy brows, gray eyes twinkled. “And who is this? Is this your young friend from school for whom I moved half the heavens to procure a visa, Artem?”

  “Yes, Papa. May I present Miss Linnéa Olander? She can stay only two weeks with us, but Daria and I are very pleased she is here. Thank you, Papa, for making it possible.”

  Linnéa offered her hand to him. “Dobryy den’, sir.”

  He ignored her hand, grasped her arms near their shoulders, and kissed her on both cheeks. “You are very welcome in my home, Miss Olander. I thank you for being a good friend to Artem and Daria. You will always hold a place in my heart for your kindness to them.”

  Linnéa was touched. “Th-thank you, sir.”

  He nodded and passed on, murmuring words of greeting to the household staff. Two bodyguards whose bulging arms made their suits look like they’d been poured into them, followed after Kuznetsov.

  “My father likes you, Linnéa,” Artem grinned. “This is a good thing.”

  “What would it look like if he did not like me?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Oh, you would not wish to find out, Linnéa. You must trust my word on this.”

  DINNER THAT EVENING was at eight, a feast by any stretch of the imagination. The table in the dacha’s big room, set before an unlit fireplace, was laid in formal fashion, and Daria’s family—her, her parents, and a younger brother and sister—were to join them.

  “We dress for dinner when Father is here,” Artem confided in her. “Daria’s mother is tall and slender like you. She is bringing a few dresses for you to choose from.”

  “Um, okay.”

  When Daria arrived, she introduced Linnéa to her parents and siblings. Daria and her mother led Linnéa to her room to change for dinner.

  “I hope I have brought you something that you would care to wear,” Daria’s mother, Sofíja said.

  Linnéa stared with awe at the three dresses Sofija’s maid had laid upon the bed, each a designer original probably costing more than the combined total of everything Linnéa owned. “But they are all quite beautiful. I don’t know how to thank you for your kindness.”

  Sofíja beamed. “Not at all. We are happy you are here.”

  “I will help you dress,” Daria told Linnéa. “We should hurry. Uncle Ivan does not like dinner to be delayed.”

  Linnéa, with Daria’s assistance, slipped into a gauzy blue gown that dropped below her ankles but showed off her bare shoulders and long neck. Linnéa could scarcely believe what she saw in the mirror.

  “Oh, Linnéa! You are so beautiful!”

  Linnéa laughed. “Thank you, my sweet friend.”

  When Linnéa and Daria arrived at the dining table, Artem, his father, and his uncle stood. Sofíja nodded her approval and whispered something in Artem’s mother’s ear that made them chuckle.

  “Artem,” Ivan said to his son, “Your guest is lovelier than your letters described.”

  Linnéa blushed. Artem grinned. The rest of the table laughed with good nature. When everyone was seated, Linnéa looked around, feeling welcome and comfortable but also a little puzzled.

  What a lovely family, she thought. Perhaps Russians are not the boogeymen we have thought them to be.

  Artem was looking at her. Everyone was looking at her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Artem said, “Father asked a question of you, Miss Olander.”

  “Oh! I apologize, Mr. Kuznetsov. I was caught up in my own thoughts.” She sighed with a smile. “I was thinking what a lovely family you have and how welcome all of you have made me feel.”

  Ivan inclined his head. “I am glad you feel comfortable with us, Miss Olander, and I compliment you on your Russian. It is nice to hear it spoken well by a Swede. I was merely asking of your aspirations when you finish your degree?”

  “Ah. Thank you; you are most kind. Well, I have a love for technology and scientific innovation, Mr. Kuznetsov. I would like to work on the cutting edge of technology acquisition and transfer, to assist and speed emerging technologies from the laboratory and the test floor to the world marketplace.”

  It was a rehearsed line, one she had used before, but it did not garner the reaction she had presumed it would. She was surprised and more than a little concerned to see Kuznetsov’s brows sink and his eyes narrow and glisten like hard stones.

  “I see. A bold aspiration for so lovely a woman.” He picked up his wine glass and sipped it, all the while watching her, searching her, speculation glittering in those hard, glinting eyes.

  “I’m sorry—have I said something amiss?”

  “In Russia, Miss Olander, technology belongs to the state. We who lead the state also guard our emerging technologies. We who lead decide a technology’s uses and safeguard its proliferation so that the state benefits from it. I have sent Artem and Daria to school in Stockholm so that they will safeguard our technology in the future.”

  Artem’s expression had gone flat. He was carefully addressing his dinner, his chin down. The table had dropped into silent watchfulness.

  And everything within Linnéa snapped into its masked mode.

  She nodded, thoughtfully, as if reflecting upon Ivan Kuznetsov’s words. “Yes. Yes, I see the wisdom and advantages of what you describe, Mr. Kuznetsov.”

  She lifted her glass to him and added, every word sincere, “Thank you for gifting me with this new perspective—I had not thought of technology in this way, that it should benefit the whole and not the few.”

  She hesitated and frowned. “It is not what I have been taught.” The barest hint of criticism accompanied her last statement, as though she had only realized that she disagreed with her capitalistic instructors.

  Kuznetsov sniffed. “They should teach the Communist ways in your Western schools, no?”

  “You make another valid point, sir,” Linnéa murmured.

  The occupants at the table seemed to breathe simultaneously. The tension that had squeezed them as a whole drifted away as quickly as it had risen.

  Artem smiled awkwardly, but Linnéa’s smile in return was sweet and open, without pretension, full of good will.

  “I am having such a lovely time, Artem,” she said before them all. “Thank you again for inviting me.”

  “To Miss Olander,” Ivan Kuznetsov ordered, lifting his glass.

  The diners raised their glasses and repeated, “To Miss Olander!”

  Linnéa blushed and dipped her chin.

  Inside, she thought, Oh, now I see how it is. Dissent at your own peril and risk the ire of a “benevolent” tyrant.

  She slipped a bite of meat into her mouth. I think our assessment of the Soviets was spot-on after all.

  THEY WERE LYING ON the dock, Artem, Daria, and Linnéa, drowsing in the sun after swimming all morning. Linnéa had only the remainder of this day and one more before her flight left Moscow for Stockholm.

  “My brother Bogdan comes tomorrow afternoon,” Artem mu
rmured. “He is bringing a friend with him. It is too bad you are leaving so soon after they arrive. We would have had such good times! Are you certain you can stay no longer?”

  “There’s no telephone here, Artem, and I have changed my plans once already. I must go home and earn some money.”

  “Isn’t your tuition paid for by the state?” Artem could become querulous quite easily.

  “Yes, and if I don’t squander the little that is left of my father’s life insurance, I will have enough to buy books and pay my rent through next June.”

  “See? You have plenty. You do not need to go home to work in a common street market.”

  “I also care to eat occasionally,” was Linnéa’s dry response.

  “Leave her alone, Artem,” Daria ordered. “Our parents give us everything. She has no one. Let her be.”

  Linnéa blinked. She has no one. Let her be. After close to four years in Sweden, how accurately that described how she felt. Increasingly alone. With no one.

  What did you expect while learning and practicing deception? that old voice whispered. That you would find happiness? For you?

  She turned over, but the voice, once started, would not shut up.

  She climbed to her feet. “One more dip! First one to the platform wins!”

  She was halfway across the water to the diving platform before Artem and Daria reacted.

  “LINNÉA, THIS IS MY brother, Bogdan. Bogdan, may I present Miss Olander, our friend from school?”

  Linnéa greeted Artem’s brother, whom she decided was in his late twenties but who already wore the weight of his responsibilities on his creased brow and in the shadows hanging beneath his eyes.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Bogdan.”

  “As it is to meet you, Miss Olander. May I introduce my dear friend, Pyotr?”

  “Pyotr Sergeyevich Anosov, at your service, Miss Olander.”

  A shaft of lightning, sizzling hot then icy cold, pierced Linnéa’s chest. She clenched her teeth to keep her smile intact, to maintain control over her reaction, her expression. Shifting her gaze from Bogdan to his friend, she saw first the square superhero jaw, then the jet-black hair above.

  She lifted her hand. “Linnéa Olander. A pleasure to meet you, Pyotr.”

  She couldn’t look in his amber eyes as he shook her hand. Instead she passed over them and concentrated above, on his forehead, blocking everything else out. Her vision had tunneled, leaving the edges blurry. Darkened. She allowed only what she chose to see to enter that narrow field of focus.

  “Sadly, Miss Olander could only stay two weeks with us, and her plane leaves tomorrow,” Artem explained. “She and our driver must leave for the city before breakfast to make her flight.”

  “That is indeed regrettable—don’t you agree, Pyotr?”

  “Very much so. I should have liked to know you better, Miss Olander. You are Swedish, are you not?”

  “Yes, I am.” She turned away, toward Artem and Bogdan.

  Bogdan said a few more things that Linnéa responded to; his friend stayed silent.

  Why are you here? Linnéa kept asking herself. How in the world could we have run into each other—and here of all places?

  Artem took Linnéa’s arm and gently tugged on it. “Linnéa, it is past time for lunch, and you must be starved—you are looking a bit peaked, I think.”

  Linnéa grabbed on to his suggestion. “Yes, thank you. I am famished.”

  LINNÉA LEFT THE FOLLOWING morning, managing to avoid encountering Bogdan’s friend again. She boarded her flight at a quarter to ten and arrived in Stockholm at half past noon. Before she collected her luggage, she found her way to the closest pay phone.

  She called the Marstead employee line, collect.

  “Alpha seven three three five.”

  “One moment, please.”

  As usual, a Marstead “moment” was minutes.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve arrived home; I’m still at the airport.”

  “Yes? Do you have something to report?”

  “The names of those I met lest I forget anything.”

  Olaf chided her. “It couldn’t have waited for us to meet face to face? Or is something wrong?”

  “I wanted to report sooner than that, and a pay phone at the airport is safer than one on the street. Let me . . . let me list the names, please.” From memory, she recited the name of every individual, even the Kuznetsov’s servants, in the order in which she’d encountered them.

  She reached the end of her list with, “Bodgan Kuznetsov and his friend, Pyotr Sergeyevich Anosov.”

  Olaf sucked in his breath. “Pyotr Anosov. You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  Her handler spoke more to himself than to her. “Well, that was unexpected.” To Linnéa he replied, “What about him?”

  “I . . . I was in training with him. Four years ago.”

  “Ah. I see now why you were anxious to report. Did it shake you? Did either of you give an indication that you knew the other?”

  “No, and we didn’t speak after introductions.”

  “Very good, Linnéa. It is uncommon but not unheard of to meet an operative we knew . . . from before. Thank you for calling it in. I understood him to be in Moscow, but I’ll check with his handler to ensure that all is well.”

  “He . . . perhaps he came to Ivan Kuznetsov’s dacha for the same reasons I did. To observe Kuznetsov.”

  “Yes, very likely.”

  LINNÉA SAT UP AND WIPED the fatigue from her face. The chance encounter with Black had shaken her and, in the weeks since then, even while home on leave, she hadn’t been able to let it go.

  If only Artem’s brother had come a day later.

  If only I hadn’t accepted Artem’s invitation!

  But she had. And when Bogdan had introduced his friend and the familiar voice had reached her, stunned her? When she’d seen the same astonishment ripple over Black’s face—even if the other observers had not noticed? In that instant, shock and desire had resonated from him to her. Like an invisible tidal wave, longing had surged from him, had crashed into her . . . and she’d been undone.

  A fire ignited between them that, even now, Linnéa could not escape: It pulsed within her, a crazed, hot yearning. While she’d been Laynie, while she’d been in America with her parents and Sammie, the need had cooled somewhat. But the moment she’d reached London and become Linnéa again, her desire had reignited. From London to Stockholm, it pummeled her, demanded what she could not have. It clawed at her—a craving, incessant hunger.

  I must get a grip on myself, on my emotions, on my body.

  I must.

  ALTHOUGH SHE WAS TIRED from the long transition back to Sweden, Linnéa found it difficult to fall asleep. When her worn body succumbed at last to its needed rest, she tossed fitfully, her dreams troubled.

  In them, Black whispered her name: Mags. Maggie. His gentle fingertips stroked her cheek . . .

  Linnéa woke with a start. A dark figure sat beside her on the edge of the bed.

  “Maggie.”

  She gasped and shuddered. “Black?”

  “Shhhh,” he soothed her. “Yes. It’s me.”

  “How? What are you doing here?”

  “Could I stay away after seeing you again, after learning who and where you were? A few weeks after we met, I left Russia for my ‘annual leave.’ The moment I set foot on American soil, I turned around and came back, but you weren’t here.”

  “But . . . how did you find me?”

  “I searched Artem’s room at the dacha; he had you in his address book. Then, when I arrived in Stockholm and you weren’t here, I realized you were likely home on leave, too. So, I have been in Stockholm, for weeks, waiting for you to return.”

  Linnéa reached for the lamp at the side of her bed. His hand closed around hers.

  “No lights, please. That would not be wise.”

  “But I want to see you.”

  “I want to see you, too, but I want t
o hold you more.”

  They fell into each other’s arms, touching, embracing, murmuring their desires and longings.

  “Oh, Mags! I have been only half a man since we parted at the airport in Baltimore. When I saw you again, my heart nearly burst for joy.”

  She could only weep—weep for the ache that his presence soothed, the emptiness he filled.

  Arms entwined, they lay back on her bed. They came together in the dark.

  Chapter 16

  THEY REMAINED SEQUESTERED in Linnéa’s apartment for two days. Two days of bliss, of shutting out the world around them, of ignoring every distraction. They allowed nothing to disturb or separate them.

  Neither of them were unrealistic; they knew their situation was and could only be transitory but, by tacit agreement, they didn’t speak of what came next—not until the evening of the second day approached, when Linnéa was scheduled to meet with Olaf and receive her next assignment.

  Her head bowed, Linnéa told him what he already knew. “If I don’t go, if I miss our rendezvous, he will come looking for me.”

  “I understand.”

  “And you? When are you scheduled to transition from the States back to your assignment?”

  His chin—that dear, sharp, jutting chin!—touched his chest. “The day before yesterday.”

  “Oh, no . . .”

  Marstead will not forgive him this infraction. He will be ruined.

  Trammel’s warnings and whole passages from the NDAs they had signed rushed to the forefront of her thoughts.

  If we break the terms of this nondisclosure agreement, we can be brought up on charges in a closed, secret court and serve a prison term outside American jurisdiction?

  He may as well have read her mind. “It was worth it, Maggie. I would do it again.”

  And me? Would I risk everything for you? For our love?

  She found that she was uncertain. She already ached with loss, but would she give up her place with Marstead for Black? Could she? Was the exchange worth what it would cost?