Vladimir Makarov
Ultranationalist Terrorist Cell
Siberia – Shared Ultranationalist Safehouse
Yuri was the one who summoned Makarov, not Anatoly. "I hope I didn't interrupt you," he said as Makarov entered with a sour expression on his face. There was no doubt that he was with his favorite, Anya, and from Anatoly's reluctance to call him.
"You didn't unless it's really important," Makarov answered gruffly. Coitus interruptus was not a good thing to undergo at all. "What did you find?"
His friend only sighed. "Actually, you should ask me who found me," he answered. "I was sent this envelope by a strange elderly man before I came here. He didn't tell me who he was, but it was extremely clear to him that I know you. He told me to give it to you no matter the cost."
Makarov shifted his gaze onto the envelope that Yuri had pushed into the negative space between them, and eyed it rather suspiciously. It looked like it contained a whole stack of paper, and when he opened it, out poured every single piece of paper. Its contents seemed to be the files of a soldier, an American soldier. To be exact, those files were of a US Army Ranger. He made a gesture, signaling that all except Yuri had to leave his office immediately.
"Maria… Allen," he read the name that appeared on the first page on the files after his men had put it together again. "Callsign: Anya, graduate of a top university, and transferred to the Task Force 141 in 2013." The Task Force 141… it was the faction that they had met in Malaysia. He had seen the patches on their uniform, it was a hybrid symbol, married with many elements from the symbols of the various military factions that its combatants come from. A skull hovering above a winged sword, surrounded by laurel leaves. He knew the winged sword; it was the primary image of the British SAS, half of the team, Bravo Six, that killed the Zakhaev family. "We were right all along, our Anya is a spy."
He could see that Yuri's mouth literally went agape when he said those last words. Yuri did not believe them at all. "You knew?" he asked Makarov. "You knew that, and you asked me to follow her every move for so long?"
Makarov only chuckled. It stunned Yuri, even after the man had known him for years. Only Anya knew that expression, and he knew that she was the first one who realized that there was a certain method to how he worked. She never did put it across to him, but he knew that she knew, from how she acted, how she carried herself. She never asked any questions, she just did whatever she was asked to. Her only problem was, he gathered, that she was unable to find that exact method.
"In any case, our dear girl is most likely aware that she's being followed," he answered, still reading her files. Every single operation that she was in was there, and from there, he knew that the way he saw her, it was actually the truth of her. Every thought of her he had in his mind, it was true. "Anya has never made any mistake, hasn't she?" On the contrary, it was this very reason that aroused Makarov's suspicions in the first place. She was a perfect soldier, not the mindless goons he had as combatants, highly-trained for the sole purpose of combat. She fought because she wanted to, not because others said that she must.
Yuri was oblivious by that time. "Do you know how many of our men died because of her actions?" he asked Makarov. "How can you be so calm?"
"Much must be sacrificed in our great cause," Makarov defended. "Besides, we have taken the lives of many of her brothers as well. We are even." It was blatantly obvious from the look on Yuri's face that he did not believe that Makarov would even say such words to him, however, Yuri did not have Makarov's intellect, and he could not follow his old friend's thought processes as well. Makarov could fathom how and why Anya had given up her advances on him very, very early on. "Now do you know why Anya took that bullet for me?" If it was not the fact that she wanted Makarov to trust her, Yuri did not know why else. "She wanted all of you, not me, to fall for her. Anya knows that she cannot get anything from me, which explains why she used people like Alexi, Viktor and Anatoly instead to get her information. She doesn't even need to guess."
Yuri was in disbelief, and to recover from the shock caused by whatever Makarov uttered, he took a seat. There were many things that he discovered that he knew that he could not handle. He suspected that Anya was a spy, he really did, but throughout his time following her, he began to realize that she was less than what she first seemed to be… Secondly, Makarov was acting as if nothing had happened after the fact that Anya was a spy was sent across so plainly, that someone from her side actually wanted him to know this; it set of some signals that he was not personally comfortable to confront at that moment regarding Makarov.
"So, what do we do next?" It was Yuri's last question, and Makarov answered it just as simply.
"We wait," he uttered. "Whoever betrayed her to us obviously had access to her files, so they must be her superiors. Imagine, Yuri, an American commander that wishes to betray his or her country. There's no doubt that they are clearly interested in what we are doing. My only concern now is how our Anya would react to this; she would be utterly devastated when she knows what has transpired. We must hope, for her sake, that she does not give herself away when that happens."
(Three Weeks Later)
Maria "Anya" Allen A.K.A. Ultranationalist Codename "Anya"
Task Force 141 / Ultranationalist Terrorist Cell
Makarov's Apartment – Moscow
It was ironic that the two of them were watching a BBC special on him, the crimes that he had committed, how he had gone from a Red Army soldier to the international terrorist he was now. "One would expect the MI6 to just drop in on your doorstep now," she joked to him.
"They can try," he replied. He looked at the wall-clock, which pointed a few more minutes to 10 o'clock at night. It was time for him to leave. He had told her that he was meeting a very important friend, and she suspected that it was Yuri, who she had a gut instinct that was the one who was watching her all the while. "I have to leave now, my dear," he told her, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead before he rose from the sofa. When they were alone, she was not his agent, but in her words, his paramour. It was a romantic notion, of course, yet nothing more than a fantasy. She was there because in the very least, he was having sex with her, and it benefited her because his subordinates, his men, were more willing to divulge whatever they had to her, as much as they could in fact, without giving away what they had done (because it was well known that Makarov had made all his operatives swear in secrecy not to reveal whatever they knew to anyone).
She smiled as she closed the door for him. She had no chance at all to follow him as she was being followed, and sighed, knowing that without Makarov's men around her, she could not prod and pry who he was meeting. Besides, she never ever managed to ask anything from them regarding Yuri, whom she suspected he was meeting. Personally, she had never even met him before.
Left with nothing to do, she decided to sit at her own table in her room to write down anything she had discovered, as she did every night. From the doorway, she walked towards her room, only to realize that the door to Makarov's study was ajar. She knew that there were no cameras in that room, but around it, so she did not enter it at all. But, as if it was a trick from Mother Nature, there was a gust of wind that blew from the open window and the stack of papers nearest to the window were scattered across the floor, some even floated somehow to the living-room.
There was nothing more innocent than stopping to help another to picked up some fallen pieces of paper, and she decided to go into his study. Turning the lights on, she crouched down to pick the pieces of paper up. But what she saw on them shocked her to no end, so much so that she dropped the piece of paper and received a slight paper cut.
On that white piece of paper was the emblem of the 141. How did Makarov come by this? Was she discovered? At that moment in time, she could barely breathe, and if Makarov returned at any time… she knew that she would be done for. She had never; ever let slip that she was not what she had painted herself to be… Not in the duration that she was there.
After the fact that she was already compromised sank in her mind, she knew that appearances must still be kept, however, not without a fight. No matter how much she did not want to believe that she may be compromised, or even worse, betrayed, she still needed this stack of papers as evidence. With her camera-phone, she took pictures of the mess, and uncovered a few pages that made up her biographical data.
Finally, she discovered the page that chilled her blood the most. It was a note from Shepherd with his signature, indicating that he would meet Makarov to discuss their future plans in Moscow at on that very day, at 10 p.m. This note, along with the stack of paper, was sent three weeks ago.
Makarov had never trusted her with anything important, other than translation and planning. Even the plans that she had come up with him, they could be changed; she was not his only strategist. She did not understand how or why Shepherd betrayed her, but she knew that if she was betrayed, not only the United States of America was in trouble, but the other NATO nations as well.
In the following weeks to come, Makarov would be undertaking his latest operation right there in Moscow. It was yet to take shape, but he had already indicated to her that if she had played her part well enough, she would have his full trust… Now that she knew that she was already compromised, she did not know how Makarov would act around her in the coming days.
She could be killed at any moment, and the thought of that scared her…
Yuri
Ultranationalist Terrorist Cell
Moskva River-bank, Moscow
He was there to accompany Makarov from afar, acting as his friend's bodyguard in the shadows during his meeting with the man who revealed Anya's identity as an American agent. In fact, it was the same man who gave him Anya's files in the first place. Makarov said that he was an American general, and there was little that they could do to verify the truth to that claim at that moment. They would have to go with the fact that the man was able to reproduce Anya's records and deliver them means that he was definitely one of the upper echelons of the NATO militaries.
"Lovely night, isn't it?" the old man asked Makarov the moment they saw each other. "I wonder how many people can actually sleep if they knew what transpired against their own backs…"
Makarov was one that did not like to beat around the bush as well. "You're Lieutenant-General Shepherd, aren't you?" he asked the man, who nodded. "I knew that you wouldn't trust any other person to come negotiate anything with me."
Shepherd… it was a name Yuri had heard of before, somewhere in the back of his mind. Why was that name so damned familiar?
"After all," Makarov continued, "when one is so desperate that he places his best female combatant right next to you, you will realize that the information that she feeds back is secondary to her purpose of being here."
Those words literally enlightened Yuri as to why Anya was still alive. It seemed to him that Makarov realized that when Anya's identity had been revealed. Or even earlier, when he had hypothetically asked Makarov what would happen if Anya was a spy almost a year ago. Makarov had told him that she would have other uses to their forces, but what were they?
"So you knew that she was a spy long before I sent you the package?" Shepherd inquired further.
"If Dimitri had a beautiful protégé, I would have bedded her even before he introduced her to me," Makarov replied sarcastically. "Everything about her was artificial when she first came to us. Her decorum, her actions… She might have fooled my men, but not me. Her success rate is, of course, unquestionable, which cements the fact that no idiot would send a bumbling fool to act as a spy at all. Most importantly, Anya is the greatest actress I have ever known, even for her own good." It was said that the greatest actors are able to portray every single emotion with only a mask, but Makarov knew that the very best of them were those who used their own faces as masks. The expressions on their face revealed nothing of what they truly felt inside.
Yuri looked at the patterns on Shepherd's face, and knew that the general was getting more and more uneasy as Makarov droned on. "Well, let's get on to business then. Do you know why I'm here?" he asked. It was a question that Yuri was not able to find an answer for, because in his eyes, it was already unfathomable that Shepherd would even contact Makarov.
"You wish to start a war between the United States and Russia," Makarov answered. "No doubt that you have already pieced together the fragments of my plans that Anya has given to you."
Shepherd nodded. "You bought that airbase in Kazakhstan because at precisely 0800 hours GMT, a US military satellite will be directly above it in orbit, and you'll shoot it down. There, you'll be far enough from the US, but near enough from Russia. You'll want to recover the ACS module from the satellite so that you can attack US soil when our eyes are closed, but the US is not the main target, isn't it? It's Europe."
Makarov nodded. "Europe has to be stabilized before Russia expands further," he explained. "Soon, we will bring other parts of the world into our command. However, what is your motive against the United States, what grudge do you have against your own country?"
"Let's just say that we both want to see our countries stronger than they ever were," Shepherd divulged, but said nothing more. "Just make sure that you reveal Anya as an American in your latest attack on Moscow, and we'll both get what we want. You'll be rewarded handsomely."
"Money is not an objective at all," Makarov expressed. From the look on his face, Yuri knew that Makarov understood the meaning of his words, although Yuri himself did not.
Shepherd said nothing else and tipped his hat towards Makarov before he walked away into the shadows. "What was that about?" Yuri asked Makarov after the old man was out of earshot.
"We now are in a very precarious predicament," Makarov sighed. "This man will stop at nothing to have us silenced when his goals are reached. We will have to kill him before he kills us…"
Yuri's eyes widened. How could Makarov even see that coming? How was Makarov still so calm in the first place? More and more questions were pounded into his mind, and the more they continued to do so, the more clueless he became.
"Yuri, you asked me why I've kept Anya alive for so long," his friend said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Soon, you will see why it is important to have her on our side as well."