Part 2: Return Period
"The recurrence interval, or return period, is the average time span between earthquake occurrences on a fault or in a source zone."
In the end, James witnessed the incident because of pure chance and a full bladder. Bootcamp had - finally, after two weeks that had been miserably cold even for the instructors - ended the day before, and, after a long, smelly bus ride, the cherub agents had gotten out of Siberia and to St. Petersburg's airport, where they were set to take off for home in less than an hour.
James had needed the loo, and three of the trainees - of the newly-minted agents, rather, still giddy from being granted their gray t-shirts and still green enough to grin any time someone called them that - had needed it, too, and Kazakov had agreed to stay behind with them while Smoke and the other cherub agent helping out went ahead to get the others settled on the plane.
Rank had its privileges, even among underaged spies in foreign airports, so James was the first one to finish, wash his hands, and leave the restroom. He was scanning the crowd for Kazakov when he saw her.
The woman talking to Kazakov was old, the tight bun of hair on the back of her head entirely silver, and her face was badly scarred. And Kazakov was afraid of her; he edged back as she pressed forward into his personal space. He stepped closer, trying to make out their conversation.
"-and a chance to avenge your poor baby brother," the woman said as she leaned in until she and Kazakov were practically nose to nose. Kazakov stiffened.
"I know who killed my brother," he snarled; James had never seen his face so angry. "Go. Now."
"Well, I won't wait up for you," the woman said, touching Kazakov's shoulder. He flinched. "Give my regards to your darling children, Cossack." With that, she turned on her heel and disappeared into the crowd like smoke. Kazakov stared after her; after a minute, James walked over to him.
"Who was that?" he asked.
"No one you would know," Kazakov replied. "When we get back to campus, I need to speak with the Chairwoman." With that, Kazakov straightened and, after a moment, he looked back to normal - well, as normal as he ever was. Soon enough, the new cherub agents finished, and Kazakov herded them to the plane, keeping them in his line of sight until the cabin doors closed, and any lingering questions about the woman vanished in favor of a nap and heated seats.
Kazakov went to Zara's office early in the afternoon the day after the new gray shirts had been safely delivered to a flock of their friends. She gestured for him to take a seat and offered him a cup of tea, which he declined.
"So I heard there was an incident at the airport on your way back," Zara said as she stirred her own cup.
"I ran into… an old acquaintance," Kazakov said haltingly. "One I had thought to be dead, and a good riddance. A woman named Anastasia Furan."
"Furan," Zara said. "Wouldn't happen to be related to Piotr Furan, would she?" Kazakov's eyebrows shot up.
"His sister," he replied cautiously. "Why do you know that name?"
"He's H.O.P.E.'s security director," Zara said in a tone that would sound casual to anyone who did not know her. "Or was, rather, before…" Zara waved the hand not holding her tea around to indicate whatever went down in Brazil last month. "How do you know him?"
"He and his sister ran a… a program," he began carefully, and Zara nodded.
"He's mentioned it to Chloe on a few occasions," she said. "Claimed it to be a tough-love military school. I'm guessing that's inaccurate?" Kazakov laughed, the sound hollow and verging on a cry.
"You could call it that, I suppose. They took kids off the streets - pickpockets and petty thieves, a few gang members, all desperate but no one particularly dangerous - and trained them to be…" Kazakov stumbled because that had never been quite clear. They were trained to be ruthless, yes - they were made to be rootless, yes - but he had never learned the purpose of that training if there had been one.
"Child soldiers," Zara guessed, and Kazakov nodded because that was close enough. "And you and your brother were among these children?"
"Brothers," Kazakov corrected. "Me and Olek and Tolya."
"Tolya," Zara repeated. "Anatoly Kazakov?" Kazakov opened his mouth to speak and then promptly shut it and nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"He's been dead for decades now," Kazakov said quietly. "Longer than he was alive before I even met you. Though he was older than he was in that photo - about Talya's age. They were friends, even, before… they'd tried to escape with another boy, Dmitri, and they got caught and Anastasia shot Dmitri and she - she dumped him like trash, like he was nothing more than a training dummy, and Talya and Tolya were put into isolation."
"And only one of them came out."
"And only one came out." Red-handed and wild-eyed and by the skin of her teeth. "Olek and I escaped a few months later."
"And joined the Russian army?"
"Yes. We gave fake names at a recruiting station and figured the Furans couldn't find us after a year had passed without a sign of them. And the Glasshouse was destroyed by the time I got the courage to go back." Kazakov winced. "I thought they were dead. That there was nothing left but memories and a crumbling castle."
"Are you worried about her coming after CHERUB?" Zara shifted forward into the posture she typically took when receiving a mission report.
"Yes. After the agents specifically."
"How did she typically take children?"
"She'd pick a suitable target - typically one at a time, or a close group, though I don't know how she found them - and confront them at their home base. Said to come with her or she'd kill them. Most went, I think."
"And no one would miss them because they were street kids." Zara frowned, a distant look in her eyes.
"Exactly."
"I'll warn the mission staff and agents, especially the ones working with gangs. If she typically goes after low-risk targets, most of our agents won't be appealing - too old, and with people who'd look for them - but if this is a grudge match…" Zara shrugged. "I'll get the agents emergency trackers; we have to assume she's taking forensic countermeasures, so phones wouldn't be enough. Step up security around basic training and wilderness exercises, too; a large group is higher risk, but it also has a higher reward, and they're expected to be out of contact for longer. I want you to comb through juvenile records for the past few years - it's likely she would start with lower risk targets, and you'd know victimology better than anyone else. Ask around, see if any of the handlers might've run across them without noticing. Pike might know some people. Anything else?" Kazakov shook his head. "Thank you for telling me this. Dismissed."
Kazakov did not quite run out of Zara's office, but it was a close thing.
Being under the influence of Animus was like treading water in a black ocean at night, the waters swirling around Raven indistinguishable from the dark sky above, no sign of land or rescue as she struggled to keep her head above the waves.
"Damn kids." The voice echoed inside her head, impossible to locate and not quite real enough to hold onto. "Ugh, it's like Camp Reagan all over again."
"Damn Kazakov," a second voice said. Raven frowned; the name was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it…
"Damn kids," the first voice hissed, and realization hit her like a ton of bricks.
Tolya. Anatoly Kazakov, the news had called him, and she had thought nothing of it at the time - it was a reasonably common surname, perhaps even the one Tolya had been born with rather than one assigned to him after the fact - other than that he'd been absurdly young in the photo they'd used, years younger than when they had met, so young that she'd barely recognized him.
It's a coincidence, she told herself as her heart stuttered in her chest. Olek and his brother - his remaining brother - were gone long before the Glasshouse fell, she reminded herself. The Glasshouse is gone, she told herself, and we didn't see any signs Piotr was trying to resurrect it. The kids could be his, she thought to herself, military brats who made trouble for the guards at Camp Reagan. Nothing more.
It's just a coincidence. It has to be.
Later - once she was back in control of her body and Overlord was destroyed and the students were safe and silently grieving - Raven went through H.I.V.E.'s records. They kept tabs on the world's assorted militaries and spy organizations, as any self-respecting secret organization ought to, and a search for Camp Reagan led to reports of an exercise almost two years prior where the opposing side had been led by a man named Yosyp Kazakov.
When she found a picture of the man - Olek decades dead, estranged spouse, one child, working for the British in a capacity no one can put their finger on - her first thought was, Cossack. He'd grown old in the intervening years - there was gray in his hair and frown lines on his face - but the eyes - sharp and cold and blue like Tolya's - were the same. (She tried not to think of the last time she had seen those eyes staring blankly at her, at the body at her feet.)
Her second thought, a scant second after the first, was shit.
Raven walked back to her quarters and drew out her swords; evidently, it was time for a reunion.
Kazakov's research had borne fruit, of a sort: two dozen children, between the ages of ten and fifteen, who had disappeared from the United Kingdom and never been reported missing or found, dead or alive. The majority had been in the foster system when they had disappeared. Nine were involved in gangs, from lowly runners up to lieutenants; six were pickpockets and petty thieves; four were running scams or ransomware attacks; one had a national security alert attached to her name; and four had seemingly nothing amiss in their record at all, and would have not come across Kazakov's radar if their school registrations hadn't traced back to shell accounts.
(It was the next to last that struck his attention; Laura Brand, now sixteen, from Garelochhead, Scotland. Parents Mary and Andrew Brand, both IT technicians, both utterly unremarkable except for the sheer number of bullying reports in Laura's primary school files and the fact their daughter had evidently hacked into the nuclear warning system shortly before transferring to a school that didn't exist and vanishing off the face of the Earth a few weeks shy of her thirteenth birthday.
Young. Skilled for her age - for any age, really. Isolated, first from her peers and now from her family. Intensely vulnerable.
Kazakov bought train tickets and started to pack.)
Echelon had been destroyed, its files upon files of surveillance replaced by the message There always has to be a choice, but what Kazakov needed wouldn't have been in it; he needed school records and juvenile records and records of transport, particularly in private planes and helicopters, for specific dates (and, likely, for foreign countries). Satellite imaging might prove useful, once his parameters had been sufficiently narrowed, but that could be acquired elsewhere.
Then, on a midnight train north, Kazakov found an unexpected source of information - and ran out of choices to make.
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Laura is from Garelochhead because it's the closest town to HMNB Clyde, aka where Britain keeps its nukes. Felt fitting.