The Rezident finished reading a message and looked at one of his co-workers, still holding the paper in his hand.
"For archive?" the man asked but immediately corrected himself when he saw the Rezident's look. "Um.. I mean for shredding."
The Rezident shook his head and took a match out of the box, lit it up and neared it to the document.
"The situation is serious. Dire I'm afraid. We have to execute plan K."
"Doesn't that mean even more danger?"
"We have to do everything to protect our illegals' identity. This is a chance."
"Can't we just kill the woman? I mean not we, but our illegals."
"Out of question," the Rezident said resolutely. "Too valuable, too exposed. Would cause problems then solve it."
Philip came with a decoded message from the basement.
"I'm so angry, Philip. One woman, one miserable, nosy woman and she's endangering all of us. And we are not even allowed to kill her."
"These orders are very clear about it," Phillip said and handed the strip of paper to Elizabeth.
"You asked me to come, Arkady Ivanovich," a lower-ranked clerk at the Russian embassy said.
"You've been here only for a few month, the Americans know nothing about you … just in case. You'll be asked to go into a certain bank, tomorrow, exactly at 1:55 p.m. There are phone machines in the hall. You'll go to the phone that is nearest to the main area and will call this number. Then you'll carefully lie the phone on the desk. You can't hang up the phone. Make sure that it's not conspicuous that the receiver is just freely laying there. You will leave at 1:59 p.m. at the latest. At any case and I repeat at any case you cannot be in the building at 2:00 p.m. Understood, Maxim Nikolaevich?"
"Understood, Rezident."
The Rezident nodded carefully. "Oleg Igorevich will brief you fully."
The Rezident poured himself a glass of vodka. "Risky," he mumbled. "But we have to know and know immediately. The identity of our assets … has to be preserved."
After two days, Elizabeth decided: "We have enough information, the surveillance went well, there really is nothing unusual. Just a suburban bank branch. And that woman behind one of the counters sitting there as if it was a throne." Elizabeth finished and angrily stabbed the meat she was cooking for dinner.
"Ok, I'll prepare the ammo and a gun. We haven't used the blood bag but should be ok," Philip added.
"I'll handle the blood bag alright. Just aim precisely so that I can almost die in front of the bitch's eyes," Elizabeth replied.
x-x-x
„Do you have everything?" Elizabeth asked.
„I'll just need a gun, a bag for the money and a mask." Philip pointed to his pocket. "Everything is here. Let's go. The kids are staying at the Beemans' this night, so we can play this out until the end."
Philip zipped up his black leather jacket and started the car.
x-x-x
1:55 p.m.
Maxim Nikolaevich entered the bank.
Elizabeth entered the bank. She took a form from a table in the hall and with a pen in her hand moved closer to the counters. She made sure the woman, a bank employee, noticed her. Then she sat down in the chair aside to fill in the form.
Maxim Nikolaevich dialled the phone number he was given.
x-x-x
1:57 p.m.
In front of the bank, Philip pulled a black ski mask out of his pocket.
The Rezident picked up the phone in a phone booth many miles away from the embassy.
x-x-x
1:58 p.m.
Maxim Nikolaevich left the bank. In the entrance he passed by a tall man clad in all black.
He reflexively checked his watch. "Too early," he thought. "The illegal is here too early. Every minute is important."
x-x-x
1:59 p.m.
A man with a gun entered the main lobby and shouted: "Give me all the money you have, otherwise you all die."
x-x-x
2:00 p.m.
Philip entered the bank.
x-x-x
People in the bank yelled, screamed, gasped, bent down, looked away, held their bags tighter.
x-x-x
The robber looked around. The clerks sat behind their desk, unmoving, as if they were cut out of wood.
"I said ALL THE MONEY!" the man in black shouted. He was pointing around with his gun wildly and then he pulled the trigger.
x-x-x
The blood quite literally erupted from her arm. "Well, the fake blood bag is working and is definitely destroyed," Elizabeth thought for a moment, jumped from her seat holding her arm, but then she only felt pain, so much pain-
Someone caught her mid fall.
"Philip?" she asked weakly. The man was wearing a denim jacket and hold her gently. People around them were shouting even more.
x-x-x
"I have to put pressure on the arm," the man in denim jacket mumbled. He took a piece of black clothes from his pocket, tore it apart and bandaged Elizabeth's arm tightly.
"Too much yelling, but seems to be going according to the plan," the Rezident pondered, still holding the receiver, trying to hear as many sounds and words from the bank lobby as possible.
The clerks finally snapped out of their shock. The two women filled the robber's bag with bundles of banknotes strapped together.
"She's bleeding so much, oh my god, she's dying," the man cried.
The robber grabbed the bag and run towards the entrance door and out of the bank.
One of the customers ran to the phones. "I'll call the police and the ambulance."
The man in the denim jacket picked Elizabeth up. "This woman is bleeding too much. I'm afraid I can't wait any longer. I'll take her to the hospital by my car."
"But the police…" another customer protested weakly.
"Don't worry, I'll get in touch with them, but she's really…" he gestured towards Elizabeth's arm. The whole sleeve of her blouse was wet and coloured in dark red. Red drops were constantly falling on the man's shoes.
"This wasn't planned. They were just supposed to return to the bank and say she died. This yelling about dying… But he's faking it. He has to be faking it, right?! What on earth is going on," the Rezident kept muttering in the phone booth to no one.
He'd pay some thousands of roubles to be able to also see what was happening in the bank instead of being dependent only on some muffled sounds coming from the hall in the bank, from a forgotten receiver that someone hadn't hung up.
And indeed, he missed a lot. He missed Philip noticing a very suspicious person entering the bank at 1:58 p.m. and putting a black ski mask on. He missed Philip deciding in a blink of an eye and turning his jacket inside out. And as planned, at 2:00 p.m., entering the bank, but contrary to the plan, wearing a denim jacket and intent on only playing a customer, instead of a bank robber. Clearly, their plan about him shooting Elizabeth failed.
The Rezident grimaced. Clearly, they'll have to deal with the annoying bank woman later.
Somehow.
Philip ran to his car. They parked two block away from the bank. He gently lowered Elizabeth onto the passenger seat and then sat down behind the wheel.
"Elizabeth. Elizabeth, it's safe now. Please talk to me. How bad is it?"
"He shot me," Elizabeth replied with her eyes still closed. "I can't believe some idiotic bank robber chose to rob the bank a minute before we executed the plan," she laughed bitterly and grabbed her right arm.
"I saw him just before I entered the bank. A bank robber at first sight. I turned the jacket inside out and wanted to just watch. Two men in all black clothing wouldn't be ideal… Could cause us problems."
"He shot me in the arm for real. The blood bag's destroyed. The majority of the blood is fake."
"The majority…"
"Well, there's certainly a bullet in my biceps," Elizabeth said in a low voice, gritting her teeth.
"Safehouse 3 is the nearest," Philip decided. "We have to see the real extent of the bleeding," he explained needlessly.
"Yeah," Elizabeth nodded, bent her head backwards and leant on the headrest.
"Was good thinking, with the jacket," Elizabeth mumbled while Philip was driving.
Suddenly, Philip gasped. "It was a coincidence, right? You don't think that this was some thought-through plan… That they know about us?"
"If someone was really suspecting us, they'd already be after us now," Elizabeth replied but sat straighter in the seat and kept checking the rear window. "No tails."
Philip turned to the bumpy road that led to their safehouse. Elizabeth gulped and pressed her left hand on her right arm even more tightly.
Philip looked around, Elizabeth got out of the car a bit slower and Philip put his arm around her waist.
x-x-x
After some careful probing and prodding Philip whispered. "I should be able to get it out. It's not that deep. We'll just use loads of disinfection and can begin. I can give you some advil and will numb the arm with lidocaine, but that's all I can do about the pain," he said and lightly touched Elizabeth's face.
"We are not doing it for the first time," she replied in a harsher tone than intended. Philip knew that she was gathering courage exactly as he was. One of them for enduring the pain, the other one for inevitably inflicting more of it.
Elizabeth grabbed Philip hands with her left hand. "Just get it out quickly," she whispered.
x-x-x
At the time Philip was finishing the last stitch, they were both panting hard.
`"Rest. We gotta play this till the end."
Elizabeth nodded. "Police officer?" she asked to be sure.
"Yeah. In the end, it doesn't matter if it was me shooting or the real bank robber," Philip pondered.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
"Of course I don't mean it like this, Elizabeth. … But you have to admit that everything that happened followed our plan K. There was a robbery and you were shot in front of the subject's eyes. There was blood and I exaggerated the extent of your injury as I was supposed to. The only thing remaining is to return to the woman and pose as a police officer, ask a few more routine questions, inform her that the injured customer aka you died and yeah… maybe carefully tread about the real bank robbery. Make sure that indeed in was a coincidence."
Elizabeth nodded.
"I'll pick you up in two and a half hours. Try to get some sleep. Here's a glass of water and some more advil in case you need it," Philip said and left her.
"And now madame, I'm really sorry to inform you that the injured woman died in the hospital. Not even the man who took her there before the ambulance arrived saved her. So any hint you can give us about the bank robber will be very helpful," Philip said, making sure it sounded like a standard memorized speech of the police.
"Oh my goodness. I can't believe it. I met the customer before. Would you believe it that for a moment I thought she wasn't who she said she was. Such a silly thought. I even told this to my husband and he was all about background check and so. Ah, poor thing."
Philip made a few notes into his pocket notebook. "Well, thank you for your time. Good night." He said and raised his arm slightly as if he was saluting.
Elizabeth carefully turned over on her left side on the cot they had in the safehouse. She made sure her right arm was always elevated and tried to sleep, at least for an hour or a few minutes.
It seemed to her that she'd just fell asleep when she heard the sequence of knocks – their signal. She slowly got up and opened the door. She asked silently with her eyes.
"All good," Philip informed her. "Let's go home. Now we have to think about what we'll say to the kids. You shouldn't do anything with your right arm for a few weeks…"
"Well, my spike heel snapped at work and I fell, absolutely out of control, on the copy machine. These things have incredibly sharp edges. I would have never believed it before. There was so much blood. You had to take me to the hospital and they even put some stitches on it. I'll probably have a nasty bruise as well."
"I'm glad you are feeling better," Philip said when they were already in the car on their way home.
"I haven't told you so," Elizabeth gave him a look.
"First, you are making up elaborate fairy tales for our kids, just like Scheherazade, and are again ready to oppose me, argue over everything I say," Philip smiled slightly.
"Not everything," Elizabeth said, leant towards Philip and put a light kiss on his cheek.
"Plan K successfully executed," the Rezident read aloud and, again, lit a match and set the decoded message on fire.