"Everything is sex
Except sex
Which is power
Now ask yourself
Who's screwing you?"
- Janelle Monae
It started off like every other beginning of the Winter Soldier: a chair with straps, the hole that the pain left in his head when it went away, and three words.
"Ready to comply."
The guard's eyes flickered up to him for a moment before returning to the brown folder in his hands. "Excellent. We have an extraction for you, soldier, but I am afraid that it is not your usual... environment." The guard laughed at himself, looked to his only company to see if he had done the same, and frowned as he remembered that emotional responses were not what the soldier was crafted for. "It will require you entering the Western world," he continued, his cheeks reddening a little. "Italy, in fact. Naples."
The soldier stared at the unopened file they had handed him. He had not yet been told to read it.
"It's a special request, soldier. All the way from the Kremlin. Emilia Ivanovna, more commonly known as Mimi. Her father is... influential, and cares deeply for his daughter. He pulled some strings to get us involved, since nobody else wanted to go near her with a ten foot pole, much less in Italy. Take a look."
"Kidnap?" asked the soldier, opening the file. There was a picture of a dumpy girl with lacy clothes and a ribbon in her hair, staring vacantly at a point somewhere beyond the camera, and a printed list of specs and attributes.
"Runaway," said his officer. At the bottom of the page, in smudged handwritten ink, was the word 'spoiled'. "She has been 'travelling', as her father puts it, for the last six months. No doubt she would have continued to travel, but she has been fraternising with what we suspect to be American agents, and we do not know how much she knows. Use appropriate force, soldier. No damage, or her father will riot. She will not be compliant. She is used to getting her own way."
The soldier did not care about this. Having committed the information to memory, he stood up and handed the file back to his officer. "Scalphunters?"
"No, merely collectors of information. She is quite safe with the Americans - at least, as safe as one can be with creatures of corruption such as those - but she is a risk to national security. Deep shadow, soldier. It must look as if she chose to disappear of her own accord. You will be dropped off in Berlin. Bring her back to the frat point, please. We will handle the rest. Confirm, please."
"Extraction brief confirmed." The dumpy girl sat in the centre of the white space inside his head. "Target: Emilia Ivanovna. Window: forty-eight. Shadow, no visible effects. Leeway?"
"Leeway permitted."
"Specification confirmed. Brief complete."
"Excellent. Well, soldier, I will see you and Miss Ivanovna in two days."
%
New memories were like a scab that the soldier could not resist picking at. He kept returning to what he knew of Emilia Ivanovna, not because he was struggling to remember, but because it was the only thing he had in his head to return to. It wasn't even like they were current - he had gone to Naples, found an empty room, and tracked the three American sleeper agents and their companion to Venice all in the last twelve hours, meaning that however good the KGB intel was, the Americans were better. Not better than him, though. It would take a lot more than a sudden change of city to achieve that.
The canals were an issue for movement here, but the buildings were high and close, their shadows lengthy. The soldier ran, determined not to be left behind again, and zeroed in on a small but decadent hotel on the banks of one of the city's main water channels. Then he waited, in the darkness of the docks where his arm did not shine.
The tallest American was the first to leave, his arm around a slender figure. The soldier's eyes narrowed, but when he heard the Italian accent in the woman's voice he relaxed again, since Ivanovna, according to her file, had no knowledge of the language. That was one out, and it was already midnight... that was about as empty as he was going to get.
The building to the left of the hotel was an overcrowded residential one. The soldier walked in without gaining a second glance and, once he reached the highest floor, approached the most poorly-kept front door. With his hand of gleaming metal, he grasped the doorknob and, with skilled fingers, gave it a sharp yank; the bolt snapped and it swung open an inch. He pulled the semi-automatic from its holster between his shoulder blades and walked silently through the tiny apartment, listening to the sounds of snoring coming from the bedroom. The window latch unclasped with a soft click and he pushed the yellowed glass outwards, the swing windows unfamiliar to the man used to the uniform architecture of the Soviet Union. There was a jump of about eight feet between him and the flower-heavy balcony opposite - he pushed himself off of the window with one foot and made the leap with ease, landing on the balls of his feet and with bent knees to soften the sound of the impact. American music came from the suite below, along with laughter and the tinkling of glasses. Female laughter.
The soldier reholstered his gun and dropped down onto the balcony beneath. To their credit, the Americans' reactions were instant: one of them pushed what must have been Ivanovna into the bedroom and locked the door while the other pulled a silenced pistol from the iced champagne bucket and fired twice at him straight through the window. The soldier, who had been expecting this, threw up his left arm to protect his face and twisted his upper body, the bullets going straight past him on either side.
This was going to be almost too easy.
He kicked the fractured glass and it fell in a sparkling shower. He used the temporary cover to step inside and to the left, giving him a beat of confusion to grab a vase and throw it at the agent's head. It caught him square in the face, and the man fell to his knees.
"You... bastard!" he managed to say. "That was genuine Ming Dyna-"
The soldier kicked him in the face and the man flipped backwards, landing unconscious on his back. At that point the other American charged out of the room with a flintlock - the soldier caught the bullet in his metal hand, grabbed the barrel with the other and pushed, cracking the butt of the gun into the man's forehead. He staggered backwards and the soldier drove him into the wall with a punch to the solar plexus, winding him and most likely shattering his ribcage, and as the agent gagged on blood from his lungs the soldier grabbed a pen from the pot on the nearby bureau, a fancy gold-tipped fountain pen to be precise, and plunged it into the man's eye. Then he turned around, picked up the silenced pistol, and shot the first agent in the chest.
The bedroom door wasn't even locked, and the soldier kicked it open with the pistol extended in front of him. His target was a spoiled girl who most likely had led a rather pampered and sheltered life, so if he could creep up on her before she started screaming then -
"Holy shit!"
There was a woman lounging on the bed, smoking a flavoured cigarette and looking at him with some, although less than the usual amount of, alarm. She was dressed like an American in gaudy nylon and plastic, her form was thin and her hair was peroxide blonde, and for one moment the soldier almost doubted that he had the right girl.
Woman.
No, not a girl at all. This was definitely a woman.
"Ivanovna," he said, his voice slightly muffled by his mask. The room smelled like tobacco, French perfume, and strawberries. It was setting him on edge.
The woman took a drag on her cigarette, leaving a red lipstick stain on the filter, and looked him up and down. "Who?"
He tried again. "Emilia."
"Oh, I prefer Mimi. Has Daddy sent you?" she asked, swinging her legs off of the bed. "He does worry so. He sent the German Ambassador when I was in Cologne. But you don't look very much like a politician," she continued, sauntering up to him and narrowing her eyes. "I'm sure I recognise you from somewhere."
"No," said the soldier. This… wasn't how targets were supposed to act. She wasn't running, for a start. He almost wished she was. It would make it easier.
"Well, in any case, I'm not going back," Ivanovna said flatly. "And you can't make me."
It struck the soldier that this was almost laughably incorrect. "Two minutes," he told her. He needed to clean up.
"Oh, did you kill Jimmy and George?" Ivanovna asked with faint upset. "That was unnecessary. They were dreadfully nice, you know."
"They were trying to obtain Soviet secrets," the soldier replied. Would it be feasible that they had fought over the girl? Yes, she was pretty enough - leave one body to look like he had lost the duel for her hand, and drop the other, the one with a pen in his eye, in the canal.
Splash.
Water was good for removing traces; it held no footsteps, no scent trails. Ice froze and preserved, but water was the soldier's best friend.
Ivanovna folded her arms as he created a crime scene. "I said, I'm not going back. The food's awful, there's no fashion, and I like it here. So there. I'm not letting Daddy tell me what to do anymore. It's not fair!" Her voice had risen throughout the sentence, and by the last word it had hit the definite inflection of whining.
Having now spent a minute in Ivanovna's company, the tale that the two men had fought out of love for her was now far less believable, but he had started with it and would finish with it. "You get one bag," he told her.
"Aren't you listening to me?"
"No. I'll knock you out if I have to."
"You wouldn't dare!" Ivanovna declared, and faltered under the look he gave her. "My father is -"
"Nikolai Ivanov. He sent me to bring you home. And don't think you can kill me," he added as Ivanovna's greenish-gray eyes wandered to the other gun. "Your boyfriends couldn't."
"They weren't my boyfriends," Ivanovna sniffed. "And they weren't trying to get state secrets out of me, and they most certainly were not American."
The soldier hesitated in dragging the other body across the floor by its ankle. "What?"
"They were German. That accent was awful, couldn't you tell? The men in the flicks do it better. No, I picked them up in Paris. They know something about... something."
"And your father will be fascinated -"
"No, he damn well won't!" Ivanovna cut across him, her cheeks flushing beneath their rouge powder. "Why would he listen to me? But you need to, this instant! I think they were Nazis!"
The soldier stared at her. It hadn't said anything on the file about her having delusions.
"They don't like us lot," Ivanovna explained, "and they were pretending to be American because they thought that would make me like them. But they don't dress like proper Americans, they're too neat. And Americans sleep with you before they start trying to find out about state secrets! These fools didn't even show an interest! I am telling you, Mr - what is your name, anyway?"
The soldier went back to body-dragging. "Don't have one."
"Oh, don't be silly. Everyone has a name. I shall have to give you one if you don't tell me yours - and I'm sure I recognise you beneath all that mask and make-up. Where did you grow up?"
"I didn't."
"Well, that's no answer worth giving."
The soldier surveyed the mess of a room with a professional pride, then returned his attention to Ivanovna. "Can you climb out the window?"
"I'm a popular woman with a strict father, sir. Of course I can climb out of the bloody window - what was that?!"
"Shh!" The soldier grabbed her arm and dragged her out onto the balcony, shoving her against the wall on one side and pressing his back against the other. This way, they would not be seen unless someone was actually on the balcony, facing inside.
The door opened. "Shit," said a voice, "fucking shit."
Ivanovna's eyes widened. "German," she mouthed at him, "he speaks German. Told you so."
"What is it, Ernst? What happened -" a woman began, and cut herself off with a scream. "Someone killed him!"
"Yeah," said the German man, "Hans, the stupid bastard. Fighting over the commie slut. Probably ran off together once the damage was done. It's been a long time coming... Shit."
"I never liked her, Ernst. I told you she was a bad sort, I told you she wasn't worth the risk! What if she had found out about the codes?"
"Well, she didn't, so shut your pretty mouth, Heidi. And you're supposed to be Italian, remember?"
"And you American! What do we do now?"
"Try and get to London with half the manpower, that's what. We'll need to meet Klein back in Paris first, though - do you still remember the codes?"
"Yes. You?"
"Of course I do. Jesus Christ. Klein's never met us before, he doesn't even know what we look like... Hans running off shouldn't cause too much of a problem, and our boy won't tell Ivanovna who we are, not now they've eloped. Pack up, we need to go before the maid finds this shit."
Codes. The soldier doubted they were to open a safe. These days, talk of codes only meant one thing...
The door of the suite slammed shut and Ivanovna darted over to him. "See?! You didn't believe me, but I was right! I told you they were -"
"Shut up," the soldier ordered her, and wished they had given him a radio. It would have sacrificed his untrackability, but at least he could have contacted the officer about this development. As it was... he doubted they were going to make the rendezvous point.
They didn't like it when he had to make plans more complicated which person he was to shoot first. But the soldier reckoned they would rather those codes did not make it to London - at least, not without them knowing about it. He would follow the Germans, as he had done countless times before when an unforeseen circumstance cropped up, intercept them and get the intel out of them before eliminating them, then return back with the information and wait to be put back into cryo. Nothing to worry about.
Except, that was, for the platinum blonde stood in front of him.
"They're nuclear codes," said Mimi, "aren't they? For the British bombs. Sounds rather like a revenge plan, to me. Some people just can't get past the war."
"Not everyone got as good a deal out of it as your father," said the soldier shortly, and hesitated. Where had that come from? What justification did he have for saying that? It didn't help him complete the mission, and it certainly wouldn't make Ivanovna more likely to obey him. It was pointless.
The soldier pressed a hand to his forehead. Focus, he told himself. Think straight.
"So we follow them?" Ivanovna asked, who didn't seem to have taken the slight against her father personally.
The soldier opened his mouth beneath his mask to say that no, he would follow them and she would stay here, and then remembered his primary objective. Returning with nuclear codes was all very well and good, but if he didn't have Mimi then hell knew what Mr Ivanov would do. Whatever else happened, he had to complete his primary objective. That was the rule, as innate a piece of knowledge to him as how to walk or talk.
"Can you shoot?" he asked her.
"Daddy taught me with his derringer. And I know where to kick, too. Right in the -"
"You do as I say, you don't argue, you don't leave my sight. The moment you disobey I knock you out and stick you in a car boot until I'm done. Confirm?"
Mimi's face lit up. "Oh, yes! I've always wanted to be a spy!"
"I'm not a spy," he said.
"Well, what are you?"
He didn't answer.
A/N this is a Civilian File that got out of control, and was born out of my love for cold war spy thrillers (everything from Le Carre to The Man From UNCLE), and procrastinating revision back when I had exams. It's all been written on my phone, in 5-20 minute bursts, and is neither planned nor even forethought about in any way. In essence, this is going to be a great, sprawling mess of a story, going all across Europe. It will be bloody. It will have sex (properly. I won't do what I normally do and conveniently end the paragraph before the down and dirty happens, I promise). It will be poorly written. It will probably never be finished. It is SEEING THE ELEPHANT, AVAILABLE NOW ON AN INTERNET-ACCESSING DEVICE NEAR YOU.
Mimi's surname is from the Crime and Punishment character, and "seeing the elephant" is an old anachronism which means going off and seeing the world and suffering kind of a lot along the way. The more you know.
