EPILOGUE
A few months later:
"Right, Captain, that should do." Sweating Anna was still grimacing, and breathing heavily. She wiped her dirty brow into her sleeve once she got the shoulder plastered and bandaged. "Only a flesh-wound, so a few good stitches asap, some days rest and then careful use, and in a few weeks you're as good as new. You know the drill."
"Thank you, comrade Ashton. Are you unharmed yourself? You look pale."
She gave a quick smile. "Don't worry Captain, it's only that I'm not in my full form. But you were, and thank goodness for that. You did extremely well." She patted the other shoulder of the officer and gingerly heaved herself on her feet and saw the two other Soviet delegates approach. Her face darkened. "And you, tovaritsh," her finger pointed at Belkin, "next time when a security-man of that quality tells you to get down, you GET DOWN!" She turned away muttering "Waste of good craftsmen, to use them on blockheads..." The first ambulance arrived at the yard and Anna went out to meet it, missing the whole variety of faces tried to be kept in check.
"Controller, you'd better keep also that woman in control." Hissing Ralston came to life beside the Scot.
"Och, really?" He turned and spoke very quietly. "Funny enough, I found her today a lot more useful than your bloody idiot who either had forgotten to check the blueprints or then had not understood what was drawn there. If it wasn't for her, and for the young Russian, we'd all be pickering outside the pearly gates about who takes the longest fall, courtesy of the ever correct MI6." He went out, leaving Ralston stare after him.
Grim-looking Major Smirnov approached him right after he stepped out of the front door. "Controller, it is my duty to inform you that tovaritsh Belkin protests for the disrespectful and insolent behaviour we just witnessed." He sighed. "And please let me compliment you for such effective and skillful staff." There was a slight smile on the KGB-officer's face. "Kaka'a zhenshina..."
The Controller smiled too and replied to the major's salute. What a woman. Aye. His gaze searched for Anna and he caught her sitting on a bumper of an ambulance, following the commotion around her and checking and re-loading her gun, bathing in the last rays of the evening sun in her smudged clothes, her golden pony-tail fluttering in the wind. A picture of serene confidence and tired ease, only a moment ago a snarling panther crouched between them and the enemy, ready to fight. And oh lord the way she had fought.
He looked at her with a mixture of pride and pain. As if she felt being watched she looked up, searching for his gaze, and once she found it, tilting her head in her familiar questioning way, without grudge, without irritation over the events of the day before the meeting. And without disdain. Simply wanting to know if things were all right again, if she could return to be only a civilian, a trainer, and giving him a tired smile once he nodded at her.
That's my bairn. That's my bonnie bairn.
THE END ?