Erik knew at once that the rendezvous had been compromised.
He could see his contact waiting at the designated table on the restaurant patio. The man was young and apparently inexperienced because he had yet to notice the tail who'd been following him for the past hour.
Erik walked by twice in forty-five minutes; both times the woman was still there.
To the agent's credit, she didn't look like the government type. For one thing, she was a woman and that in itself was unusual. She was pretty, with dark auburn hair pinned back underneath a fashionable hat. Her clothes were meant to give the impression of an upper-class wife, put together to be seen, but not practical for doing any sort of work. Dark glasses obscured her eyes, which were likely scanning the street rather than the menu, which she held open in front of her.
Despite the obvious care that had been put into her persona, Erik saw through it right away. Because he was better than they were. It was a shame that his contact wasn't.
Erik pulled a cigarette from his coat pocket and leaned against the telephone booth around the corner from the rendezvous. He didn't actually smoke as a habit, it was just a useful excuse to have when one needed to loiter or slip out of a room without arousing suspicion.
A couple young boys were poking at a stray cat in the alley beside him. The unfortunate animal was protesting feebly, backed up against a trashcan. It's yowls ground at the persistent headache that had been building behind Erik's eyes all morning. "Hey, you there!" he barked at the little rascals. One of them, a mangy redhead whose skin went pale under the combination of dirt and freckles that marred it, ran off down the street as soon as he caught sight of the intimidating stranger. His companion, a scrawny blond had a touch more guts and hung back.
"Me?" he asked boldly, fists clenched at his sides. This was a kid who knew how to fight. Erik looked at his tattered clothes, a kindred spirit then.
Erik nodded and waved the mite forward, "What's your name kid?"
"What's it to you?"
"Just wondering if you'd be interested in making a quick buck, but by your tone I'd say that you weren't."
This caught the kid's attention and he crept forward more eagerly, "Naw I din't say that! Whatcha want me to do then?"
"What's your name?"
"Alex."
"Okay Alex, all you have to do is take this," Erik ripped a page from the German bible in his hand, quickly scrawled the phone number of the booth in the margin and held it out for the boy to take, "And give it to the Spaniard at that Italian place across the street. He'll give you the dollar."
The blond's eyebrows shot up to his scabby hairline. A whole dollar was a lot for a simple delivery, but Erik had long since learned that overpayment was the simplest way to earn the loyalty of the world's lowlife.
"All right then give it here!" the boy snatched the page and trotted off around the corner. Erik followed more slowly, and turned onto the sidewalk just in time to see his contact hand the urchin a coin. He then got up and went inside, presumably to pay the bill. Erik slunk back to the alley, ignored the cat licking its wounds, and settled back to wait.
Just ten minutes later, the phone in the booth rang shrilly. Erik grabbed it out of the cradle before the second ring and hissed into the receiver, "Who are your mother and father?"
"We are the children of no humans," came the reply, in a soft, lightly accented voice.
"We are the children of the atom." They finished in unison.
"I need to see you!" the agent said hurriedly, he sounded hushed, probably was using a public phone as well where there was a risk of somebody walking in.
"Well you've wasted your chance. You were followed, and if I hadn't noticed everything could have been blown."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know! Can we set up another meeting?"
"Can you leave me a message some how?"
"It needs to be in person, this one's from the top."
"How top?"
"The very top."
Directly from Shaw then. Erik groaned internally. There was no avoiding it then. He hated taking risks like this but if he didn't take the message then Shaw would likely...
Erik refused to think of that. That was not an option. "Fine." he snapped into the phone, probably startling the man on the other end with the vicious tone, "But I'll come to you. Just...go about your day. Act natural, see a show or something, go back to your hotel. I'll come when I'm sure it's safe."
The man agreed. Of course he did, he had no choice. He'd be punished as well if the message didn't get passed along.
Erik finished his cigarette. He bought a newspaper and sat on a park bench for an hour so that the timing of he contact's departure and his own wouldn't be linked. The tail had left at the same time as the other man, but he couldn't be sure that they weren't still watching the restaurant. Damn Americans and their paranoia about spies.
At least they were so hung up of the soviets that they hardly ever suspected him. The people of America had been condotioned to fear the foreign agent, but the stock image of the bearded, vodka drinking KGB spy was so ingrained in their minds that the well-dressed, German man smoking in the park generally flew right under their radars.
Erik made the agent wait until nearly midnight to approach him. He hadn't been hard to find, Janos Quested, born in the south of Spain, recently arrived from the USSR, staying in the Plaza Hotel, room 617.
Locked doors and bared windows did nothing to deter Erik, and he was in the suite, ghosting up to the bed in the cover of the pitch-black room. It seemed that Quested had grown tired of waiting and dozed off. Bad form. He flicked the flashlight on, shone it into the sleeping face, covered the man's mouth with his hand and straddled the bed.
Quested woke with a yell and tried to buck him off. Erik held firm and called the metal bed frame to bend and coil around the man's flailing arms. "Be calm!" he hissed in his ear, "And tell me who are your Mother and Father."
He freed Quested's mouth so that he was able to reply properly. Once the formalities were exchanged, Erik demanded the message.
"Show me your face first!" Quested asked shakily, "If you are him, if you are truly...Magnus."
"Don't be a fool, just give the message!"
The man struggled against his bonds and the air in the room began to whirl around Erik's head, the drapes billowing in the miniature tempest. "Stop that!" Erik snarled, bringing his knife to hand and pressing it into the hollow at the base of the man's neck. He momentarily allowed the light to fall onto his face, "Satisfied?"
The man nodded mutely before launching into the aforementioned message. Apparently Shaw wanted Erik to go to DC to gather vital information pertaining to the government's upcoming missile plans, as well as some security protocols.
"You'll need to track movement of forces, number of units, technologies, notable commanders-"
"I know how to gather intelligence." Erik interrupted, "Don't tell me how to do a job that I've been doing for fifteen years." twelve years, but whatever, fifteen sounded better. Quested took the hint and shut up. Erik glared at him distastefully, hating him because he was one of Shaw's lackeys. Hypocritical sure, but Erik's situation was different, had to be different.
Except that it might not be. Janos Quested might very well have someone he loved being held by Shaw, held at gun barrel unless he perform to satisfaction. The man looked young, younger than Erik by at least five years. Surly too young to have a wife, but a girlfriend? A lover? Or a family member. The Spanish tended to have large families, maybe Shaw had an entire brood of dark, slender Questeds hidden away throughout his many safehouses.
The thought should have caused him to falter, should have made him hesitate with what he had to do next, but it didn't, and his knife slid across Quested's throat cleanly, with only a slight gurgle and widening of those glittering, dark eyes as the younger man died.
"You understand, don't you?" Erik whispered, "If he has even just one of yours you'd understand why I have to do this. I can't afford to take risks, and you did see my face."
The bathroom was directly off the bedroom, and Erik detoured there to throw up before slipping out into the night.