I own nothing. words in Italics are in Russian. This story starts 2 years after the end of Skeleton Key.

Eva Corps sighed off her desk and walked to the elevator. Cursing the out of order notice on the door, she climbed the stairs and headed outside into the freezing Moscow winter.

The ride on the Metro gave her a chance to think, the one thing she was desperate not to do. Reaching st. Barrikadnaya, she climbed up and head to her apartment.

The shower warmed her; through it did nothing to help her nerves.

"Is it wrong," she asked, of an empty room, stepping out the hot water dripping off her, "that I dreaded this day less when I had a legitimate reason for refusing?"

She shook her head, drying her hair and began to get dressed. "Ilya is a great guy, who adores me. He's smart, he's a great agent, there's nothing wrong with him. Except," she moved over to her dressing table and gazed down at a photo in the golden frame. It showed a blonde haired man, with blue eyes and his arm around her. What surprised most was that Eva Corps, known to friend and foe as the Vixen, was holding a baby.

"I loved you, Ian," she said, stroking the man's face. "Why did you have to leave me?"

She closed her eyes and forced the tears down. No more of that. What's done cannot be undone. It was just today. The anniversary.

She sat down and began to apply her makeup.

Ilya Dubromovitch Skorzorski, once known to the Kermin as Volk, sat in the restaurant. He sat in a private room at the back, once reserved for the KGB to talk with defecting agents. Now it was hardly ever used.

He had first met the woman he was waiting for here, nearly 20 years ago, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had known right away that she wasn't a defector, but he had kept meeting with, enchanted by the red hair that gave her her codename, Vixen.

A lot had changed since their first meeting, but still both kept coming here, once a month to this restaurant that had somehow survived both Communism and its fall. They drank fruit juice, and once a year he proposed to her and once a year, she turned him down.

In a world like theirs, the certainties provided by this were comforting.

He looked up, automatically as the door opened and Vladimir, who like the restaurant was a survivor, admitted Vixen. Volk got to his feet.

"Would you please," he began, but Vixen cut him off.

"Don't Volk." Her voice was half begging. "Don't ask me to marry you!"
There was a pause.

"I was simply going to ask Vladimir to bring us vodka." Volk said, without a change in his tone. "I am well aware of what today is."

Vixen sank down into her seat, blinking back the tears.

"I'm sorry." She said her voice heavy with sorrow and defeat. "It's just..."
"Today is the anniversary." Volk said, gently reaching across the table and taking her hand. "I know. My country created Sarov. So I do not ask."
"I just keep wondering," Vixen admitted, "whether if I'd fought harder, if I'd been more honest with Ian, whether he's be alive."

Volk grasped her hands tightly.

"Were you not the one who told me it is fruitless to ponder on what might have been?" he said gently.

She nodded. "I know it's pointless, I just couldn't bear to watch him become like me. John was my partner, I should protected his son!"
"How?" Volk demanded. "You know, we both do, what happens to children with both parents in the service. And" he continued, "even if you had persuaded Ian to give him up, he might have come to it any way. Many wish to serve their country, we both know that."
"Yeah." Vixen broke off as Vladimir entered with the vodka. After he had poured out a shot for each of them and left the bottle behind, she continued. "But he'd have been 18, 19, even 20. Not a 14 year old Kid!"

Volk tightened his grip on her hands. "We will find. We will find General Alexie Sarov."
"yeah, I don't doubt that." Vixen sighed deeply. "But he'll stand trial for the murder of President Kiriyenko and theft of a nuclear weapon." Her green eyes met his. "He'll never hang for the murder of Alex Rider."

Volk had insisted on taking her home. She wasn't drunk, not even tipsy, but he knew her well enough to know that if she was drinking, there was something badly wrong.

The last time she had drunk vodka with him, Ian had just died.

Once she was in side, he drove back through the gathering dusk to Lubyanka. The thought of returning to his empty apartment, made him feel sick.

He stepped up, nodding to the desk clerk and climbed into the elevator, taking it to the 6th floor. His desk was at the end of the corridor, and his subordinate, Yury, was standing by it. He jumped at his superior's entrance.

"No. No. There is nothing wrong." He reassured him. "I merely wished to catch up on some paperwork."

Yury nodded nervously, and added a file to the pile.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"An explosion sir. Out in Siberia."
"Chechnya?" he asked without much interest, picking up the file.

"The experts say no, sir. Could be al-Qaeda."

Volk smiled, waving him away. Yury had an obsession with al-Qaeda.

He opened the file.

As Yary had said, it was fairly simple. The house had been destroyed in the explosion. The owner, Alexei Voras, was viewed as an eccentric billionaire, who had moved there to raise his son.

Voras was still being sort, but his son had been injured in the blast and was in hospital.

Beneath pages of reports detailing the explosive type (again Yary was right, definitely not Chechnya) there was a photo of Voras's 16 year old son. Volk gazed down at him.

"Мой бог" he muttered. "The bastard's being laughing at us."

TBC