Disclaimer: James Bond is the creation of Ian Fleming. The characters in the story are the property of Ian Fleming and the filming companies that produce Bond Films (United Artists, MGM, Eon). No copyright infringement intended. No profit is gained by this work.

Warnings: swear words

A/N: This was a belated birthday gift for Daya in 2004. I made a few changes to it recently but those are very slight.

Secrets of the Past

By Iolana Khenemet
Inspired by the film Goldeneye

James asked, "How did the MI-6 screening miss
that your parents were Lienz Cossacks?"

"Once again your faith is misplaced.
They knew," Alec replied.

A flirt with danger awaited Alec. The chance to dance with death should have thrilled him but this time he did not feel challenged. Instead his palms were slick with perspiration. He rubbed them dry on his pair of black trousers and grabbed a new pair of gloves. Cold sweat trickled down his spine. The wind blew stronger on building-tops than below, and he shivered in the chill of the winter night.

Tonight there would be no safety net, no one to rely on. If he fucked this up, if he was caught, he would pay for it in blood. His mouth was suddenly as dry as gun powder, and he swallowed several times. There was still time to call this off, to leave and just forget about it. After all, this was not a mission. No one knew Alec Trevelyan was here, no one would ever find out he had been here at all. It would be so easy to simply walk away, go home or share a pint of ale with colleagues, to go on pretending he was fine…

No. Alec knew he would return here again and again. Haunted by the secrets of his past and desiring answers to the questions he did not dare to ask aloud, he would return.

He looked at the familiar building of Universal Exports which was across the street. The building he knew so well was the only place left to look for those answers. But although that was part of the reason he had joined MI-6 so many years ago, he had not dared to search for the truth there so far. Now he felt he had run out of options. The uncertainty was killing him slowly, and his nightmares occurred with increased frequency. Alec had searched everywhere else. History books had provided no clues, his caretakers at the orphanage had only offered lies or ignored his questions, and he had learned early in his youth not to ask at all.

Although Alec did not remember much of the fateful night, it still was too much – or too little, depending on the angle from which one looked at it. "Why?" he whispered, recalling his mother's scream, the sound of the gunshot, the hot blood on his face. But the stars above were indifferent to human tragedy, and the waters of the Thames continued to swish against the pier without answering.

He dreaded the answers but even more so he was afraid to die without knowing who he was or why his father had pulled the trigger. And for an agent who held a licence to kill, death was a constant threat hanging over his head. Life could be over any time.

Live or die. One way or the other, he wanted the uncertainties to stop. He was tired of playing the game without playing by his own rules.

Alec counted to ten - in English, Russian, German, French, Czech, even Korean and Chinese, waiting for his breathing to calm. Then he yanked his night vision optics in place and went over his equipment one last time to check whether everything was in place. The Chinese imitations were almost indistinguishable from the originals. He allowed himself an ironic smile. Should he lose any of it, MI-6 might at least think it was an outsider if he was lucky.

Trevelyan checked his watch.

It was time to go.

Carefully, Alec took aim. When his watch beeped, he fired. The wire with the triangular hook flew out of his gun and hit the wall of MI-6 headquarters exactly the moment when the detectors went off. The instant the wire hooked, Alec fastened the necessary devices, took hold of the handle and pushed himself off the roof. He slid along the wire and covered the distance within seconds. He stopped his ride with his feet hitting the wall and prayed that no one had heard him.

Then, with one quick movement, he eased the cover from the vent shaft and crawled inside. Alec put the cover back in place as best as he could and made his way through the thin duct. He had only seconds left before the detectors would be back online. With all possible speed and care, he wormed his way into the building. When he reached the end of the duct, he quickly checked for possible trouble before he leapt into the dark room.

Alec exhaled sharply. He had made it! Not a moment too soon, he realised when he checked his watch. Five seconds later he would have triggered the alarms.

Glancing at the now closed vent shaft again, he chuckled softly. The security hole existed only at two days a year, when the computer program ran an update. He had needed five years to find out about it, and he would bet only a double-0 agent could be fast enough to use it.

Carefully he made his way through the dark corridors, evaded cameras, detectors and security guards. As silent as a cat he slipped into an empty office, which was set slightly apart from the other rooms.

With routine, he wired the computer to the innovative Japanese device that would allow him to bypass the highest security levels of MI-6. Then he powered the computer up.

enter identification

Alec entered a capital m.

enter password

His finger lingered over the 'enter' key. One touch and he would know whether fate or luck was on his side tonight. The device would automatically search and provide the password to the user if he entered a blank the first time he tried - at least in theory. He hesitated, realising his hand was trembling. He gave himself a mental shake to regain his usual level of professionalism. The tremble stopped.

Alec Trevelyan hit the key. For a moment the screen went grey, flickered and returned to its normal function.

enter identification

The letter M appeared on the screen.

enter password

A huge grin spread over Alec's face and scratched at the fabric of his mask. He had won the jackpot. One by one, white letters appeared on the black screen and formed the word ShakeSpearE. Alec confirmed.

enter search criteria

His eyes closed briefly, before he typed:

00 branch, personnel, Alec Trevelyan, full dossier

He stared at the words and pressed the button. There was no turning back now.

searching

5 matches found

Disk already in place to record the files, he entered the 'save all' command. Then Alec opened the dossiers, curious but also apprehensive of what he might find. Was he Cornish as his surname suggested? Had his father simply been crazy when he accused England of betrayal? Unfortunately the files contained nothing of interest.

new search, 00 branch, personnel, 006, full dossier

7 matches found

Alec inserted a new floppy disk and copied those as well, before conducting another search.

new search, 006, include all folders and subfolders

18 matches found

He raised one eyebrow at the number of documents. Good that he had brought along a lot of disks. While downloading, he started to glance over his files. Soon his eagerness turned to frustration. He found reports on his health profile, psychological assessments, mission debriefings and other pieces he was not interested in. More than halfway through the pile, he realised he should probably search elsewhere.

search files, access level 11 and 12

The level 12 was reserved for M's eyes only, 11 for his direct subordinates.

1150 files in database

He groaned. Why could things not be simple at times? Frustrated he entered the 'list' command and glanced over the names of the documents. With a feeling of satisfaction he recognised what had to be Sir Miles' files about the 00 agents. They were code-named, but Alec recalled M had once mentioned the Phoenix when he thought Alec and James had already left the room. Alec knew the code referred to 001.

He selected all of the files for the double-0 agents. There were twelve of them and all of them had an animal code-name. For good measure, he also copied files about his colleagues, about cases he was not briefed on, files about agents gone MIA and random files to cover up his tracks in case someone noticed the breach of security despite his efforts.

So which of the twelve files was his? The Hawk was James', so Alec opened the Monkey, the Unicorn, the Lion and finally, under the name of the Serpent, he found his own dossier. His heartbeat increased when he saw all the little extra information entered in the file. He swallowed, opened the part that read: childhood information, and froze. The information he had searched for all of his life was there.

First name: Alec

Surname: Trevelyan

Real name: Aleksej ?

Place of birth: unknown

Nationality: British; parents are assumed to have been Soviets of Cossack ethnic background. See: Lienz.

Parents: Nicolaj and Raissa, surname unknown

His hands clutched the armrests of the chair upon reading these words. With his heart thumbing almost painful in his chest, he sat there in a stupor and stared at the letters that made no sense at all.

And then comprehension hit him like a sledgehammer. His fucking name was not his own. This country was not his motherland. Nothing he had ever believed in was true. He belonged to the enemy, to communist Russia. His hopes and dreams were worthless.

He re-read the information but the words stayed the same. Shaking his head in denial, he opened other parts of his file until he stumbled over a sentence that made his blood run cold.

"Should the agent ever become aware of his ancestry, he is to be marked as a target-to-be-eliminated instantly."

He gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw hurt and continued to stare at the screen. Shaking in rage and breathing heavily, he uttered in Russian, "You'll pay." He reached for another disk and knocked over the lamp on the desk.

The noise was overly loud in the quiet of the deserted building.

Cursing, he turned off the monitor and hastily removed everything conspicuous from sight.

Streaks of light filtered through the doorway when someone, most likely a security guard, switched on the lights in the corridor. Footsteps approached, and Alec slipped behind a cupboard full of folders just before the door handle turned, and a guard stepped in and flipped on the lights.

Alec's pistol dug into his palm from the enraged grip he had on it. Calm down, Alec, calm down. He knew that shooting the master's dog would not achieve anything.

For what felt like eternity, the guard looked around. Then the man hit the light switch and closed the door again, unaware of how close he had come to dying.

Alec slumped against the metal frame of the cupboard, slid down to sit on the floor and welcomed the coldness that seeped into his body. A moment later he shivered, realising that his covered-operation's clothes were drenched in sweat. He did not care. Right now, he wanted to rip apart the bureau, shoot everyone in the building and nuke the whole place in the morning. His fists clenched and unclenched. Leaving that man alive had almost been too much for his self-control, and he could do none of the things he wanted to do right now.

After a while, he realised a vibration at his wrist. Uncomprehending, he looked at the red digits displayed on his watch.

Then he cursed and got to his feet. He had only minutes left before he had to get out of there.

His movements and actions came automatically from years of practice as he secured the disks, removed his tracks with another device, unplugged the Japanese password decoder, and jumped into the vent shaft the moment the detectors went offline again.

Five minutes later he was back on the roof of the building he had started from with no real memory of how he had left MI-6 headquarters. He stared over the gap at the building. Tomorrow he would have to go there and pretend nothing had changed. Right now, Alec did not even know how to refrain from blowing the building to pieces by morning light.

He tore his gaze away from it and disappeared into the night.

fin-