Sometimes camouflage means lying in shit.
We use a burned-out apartment across from Mariana's place as a lookout. It wasn't shell damage. Worse: murder, suicide, maybe accident. The couple here hit hard times, Mariana said. Got mixed up with dilery and shysters. Pimped out the girl. She disappeared. Then the place went up with him in it. Could've passed out with something burning, or someone might've poured benzin through the door.
“Sweep's clear. Signal's good. You ready yet, dorogaya?” I hear Olezha ready the rifle.
This place smells of chemical ash, even without its windows. The floor's like solidified lava that crunches under full weight. They took the bed. The body was burned into it.
“How do I look, detka? Does this make my zadnitsa look fat?” I ask, stepping from the carbonised coffin of a bedroom into the melted lounge, in my disguise.
“Not just a fat zadnitsa. Mr. Krivoshapka's a total zadnitsa—you look ideal'no.” He's prone by the window, among charred, void-black detritus. My solo overwatch, hidden under bits of cardboard. “Go get your Committee pension.”
I nod and head to the door. The place is so black it sucks the night in. I mutter vechnaya pamyat for the dead I never knew, whose resting place we haunt.
I shuffle out of Krivoshapka's block, across the dark street, to Mariana's place. Her signal—the picture turned on her windowsill—means she's waiting, ready. I knock lightly on her first floor door.
Her whispered challenge, “Is that you, starik?”
“Krivoshapka is your oldest friend,” is the correct response.
I always hug her like the first time when she hung on, so I keep it up. It’s a proxy chance to hug my babushka, even though they're nothing alike. A secret moment of therapy. After, I get straight into my one-minute routine. Behind the lounge radiator there's our surveillance snoop. I check its diagnostics and anti-tamper, change its batteries, then swap storage cards. Old music I don't recognise plays loud enough for a deaf pensioner but too loud for easy surveillance.
There's always biskvit and chai. I never touch them; protocol dictates it. She remains committed to the theatre of Krivoshapka's visits. Her apartment is unusual in its uncluttered, cool neutrality. Most of her generation pile themselves into fortresses of junk and badly patterned late-Soviet decay.
In the dark bedroom, I spark two cigarettes. Her mahogany-stained furniture is old but immaculate. Bed linen is modern, plain. Only the photographs admit sentiment. The rest of her lives in a rented lock-up—carefully packed with surgical foresight. That’s the tell: she hides what can be used.
We catch up in whispers.
“How’ve you been?”
“Fine enough. It’s harder to stay quiet while these bastards do worse and worse. They leave me alone because of Marko and what I let him believe.”
I nod.
“Are the vnuchki enjoying school?”
“Yes, very much. They’re up-to-date with homework. Good results.” She’s still getting our payments, funnelled to the right places.
At seventy-eight Mariana plays the game better than most. She’s one of our best sources. She passes a note in pencil: an administration building deeper in the city gets odd visits from a white farm van. Three times in eight days, always after hours. Mariana’s Eyes can’t see what the van does inside the courtyard. I memorize the times.
The next note says militias and paramilitaries have been pouring in from the north and west. Their confidence is swelling, fuelled by external support. Marko’s in the region and visited twice. She burns the notes in the ashtray.
Marko's not just a grunt but someone with deeper ties. Even so, his day-to-day isn't anything to be proud of. He’s not stupid but he's too self-absorbed to suspect Mariana's past or her true loyalties. Lucky for us. He's foolish enough to brag to his babushka about “the cause”.
Her eyes flicker with a silent plea for something in return, but she knows the rules haven’t changed. It’s a one-way street, same as always. I soften my tone.
“Thank you for your humanity, your bravery. You and your Eyes are diamonds in this dirt. Your work will outlive us.”
Her eyes glisten, but they often do at her age. She leans back, her voice sharp.
“Beware, Krivoshapka. You’re a guest here. No need for overkill or patronising.”
Her words sting like a blade.
“I meant it,” I say. “I’m sorry I can’t give more.”
“You’re too young to mean those words,” she snaps, “and not experienced enough to know that about yourself. I'd mark you down for that mistake.”
Humility’s my only way out, but her test is impossible.
“Forgive me, please. The sentiment was genuine, even if it sounds contrived. We all take risks for the same end.”
I rest my hands gently on her shoulders, picturing my own babushka in this grim, miserable place. Leaving her here, knowing worse is coming, unsettles me for a moment. She catches the twitch in my mouth, the way I swallow my unease.
“If you betray our house-moving, you’ll have another stain on your soul, and you’ll run out of years to clean it before you’re judged. Don’t forget that. This place will be unliveable in a month. You need to take us. They won’t let us leave. You know it.”
I don’t know who her Eyes are. Extraction will fix that. Most of her family live outside our sectors so they're unlikely to be involved.
“How many?” I ask.
She holds up four fingers, then four more with a wave of her hand to signal maybes, then six, lowering her hand to indicate “small.” That’s a lot of vnuchki.
I meet her gaze as I imagine her lock-up and all of her sentiments burning. Maybe her remaining family will one day be told where to look for their inheritance.
“Anything else?”
“We’ve seen enough to know our value. A pension bonus before we next see you.” She traces “25” on her lap. She's shrewd to ask for $25,000 each now, as a last grasp while they all have tradeable value. The money’s not mine, it doesn’t matter to me. I’ll pass on her request like always. I'm not a financial negotiator, only the bag man.
Her test is done. I haven’t passed, but I haven’t failed either. That’s the point. Sticking to one-way protocol is how I avoid failing. How I tread that line reveals something about myself. I can live with being called “prone to overkill” or “patronising.” She doesn’t know my real flaws.
I leave with both of us content. That's success. I head down the stairs. Thirty seconds after her door closes, I sneak back up to finish my task.
The door onto the roof is heavily padlocked with three pieces of garbage we can beat in seconds. Beside it is a large service cupboard holding some utility controls and tools. It stores our secret weapon, a V2, as we jokingly refer to it.
I take the flat, extra thick cardboard box from where it leans inside the space. I turn it inside out so the side painted in the roof's colour presents, reform it and bind the marine Velcro down its edge. I pull the sizeable box over me, then edge out the door in a squat. I'm disguised and insulated from thermal optics by cardboard that sandwiches infrared cloak material. MANPAD missile units and roof-mounted air defence batteries are growing as more supplies come in. They have IR, thermal and night sights, so just walking over the roof is a total nyet, hence the V2.
They all laughed when I told them how we’d make it, but then they all realised it was perfect physics. I only need about seven minutes for this pick up. The box is good for at least ten minutes at maximum temperature contrast. It's nowhere near that.
On the roof, I sweep with the scope through the box's grip flaps to clear the scene so I can move across the roof, into open view. The forecast teases snow in the coming weeks but the ground hasn't fully frozen yet. It'll take another month. In the dark, the glimmer of the roof's coating of frost is just visible. I haul in breaths—deep, cold—to calm myself then move slowly in my ridiculous disguise over the frost to the northwest corner. I suck up that vinegar, paint and glue smell of the cardboard. Fresh wind buffets me and runs in through the flaps
I'm right at the edge of the roof, six storeys up. The box keeps that reality out of my vision. I reach down, out of the box and feel to retrieve the storage card from our snoop's roof-mounted IMSI catcher. It sucks in cell phone data from devices that connect. It gives us a detailed Signals Intelligence picture for the sector at the human level.
The hiss of the air suddenly notches up to a kind of high frequency roar of wind. The V2 moves, pushing into my back. A spike of jolting fear causes me to instantly lean back and plant my weight into the roof as I kneel. There's a hint of whistling around me, like someone expressing a close call. I relax, feeling planted and in control. I look down. The side of the box is beyond the edge of the roof; my view out of the bottom looks straight down onto the cars parked on the opposite side of the street, twenty-five metres below.
Airborne eats fear. Fear is not reality.
I remember an airborne landing that ended in a crunch instead of a grunt and a roll. I chose to forget most of my recovery.
I slowly draw back a metre, easing my psyche toward baseline. I set up a specialised camera with the multiscope in the V2, lens through a flap hole, and get pissed off when my legs start to shake. Silently chuckling at myself and the excessive glamour of the job helps it pass. Then I film 360 degrees of the horizon through the multiscope's visible, IR and thermal modes, arc-by-arc. Home uses it to look for changes: any kind of sat dish, standout antenna or differences.
One day, I'll proudly tell Mishka my story: the glory of the cardboard box! How we defeated the most sophisticated vision systems! I imagine the look on his face: childish wonder giving way to confused disappointment. My soundless mirth returns and breaks out into a low, persistent laugh. Home will hear me on the video. I imagine the analysts working it out:
“What's with the laughing? Was he seeing something?”
“Are you kidding? On a roof, in winter, in a fucking cardboard box. All that Spetsnaz training and he ends up doing Metal Gear Solid shit. I'd be laughing too.”
That makes my sniggering feed on itself so much I'm shaking the camera. Four years without being detected. Discipline, humility, sore legs. Not luck. Until now, when I'm discovered because of self-deprecating humour spiralling off my own bizarre situation. More extreme consequences come to mind as I picture my own detection.
“How'd we find this Putinska shval?”
“We heard a cardboard box laughing at us from the opposite roof. It was this Moskal’ska hnyda! In a fuckin’ box! Vin okhuyevshyi!”
The thought of being shot in a readymade cardboard coffin or tortured by the SBU evaporates my mania. Visions of telling Mishka stories about our glorious V2 escapades bleed out.
When I'm done, I go quicker back to the door, stash the V2, lock up, and shuffle back across the road to dump Krivoshapka's outfit and extract. If they improved the drones like we told them, this task would be obsolete.
“You took a bit longer than expected,” Ol says as he breaks down the rifle. “Everything alright? I was nearly coming for ya.”
“Yeah, fine.” I'm smirking. He's already got the wrong idea. “I had a laughing fit at how much glory there is in being in the V2 at 9 o’ clock at night. I was in a loop. Laughing at myself, shaking the fuckin’ camera.”
The rifle goes back into a hole in the burnt partition wall.
“I saw you jiggling, wondered what you were doing…” He mimes jerking off while peering through a hole.
As we drive back to the hide, Ol checks data from Mariana's snoop. Stasik drives casual, makes tail-break turns and slowdowns while I exercise my counter-surveillance skills.
Man Machine, superhuman being
We're working for the plan
“Corroboration. Loads of new signals. A hundred to four hundred per day.” Ol says. “Static snapshots show heavy signal traffic heading east in groups. New signals flowing through. More activity at that admin building.”
“She’s still a diamond,” says Stasik.
“Never let us down, OpSec's mint.” Ol has always had a soft spot for her. “She's been supplying since it kicked off. Proper sleeper.”
“She's still got an edge—enough to put me on the spot tonight,” I say. “I was a bit… over earnest, but I got through it. We’re gonna be busy. I can feel it.”
“This is way too big a data set for us to work with. Need Home analysis and signal filtration,” says Ol.
“Build queries for Home to run. You're too good for all that, honey,” I say. We're hunters, not nerds.
“I know, Daddy. Already on it.”
I'm scanning the signals around us, using pursuit mode to spot anything showing tail behaviour. No reds yet. Some ambers are building up.
“So babushka put you on the spot?” says Stasik. “Not surprised. She’s got balls. If Marko doesn't know she's a Jew, no one does. She's headed straight for the Library if she slips up. Or we do.” Stasik says.
“Yeah, and that's why we don't slack off, ever.”
I’m staring at the snoop.
Fists clench.
“No pizdá makes books out of us. We’ll… fucking… destroy them.”
That burning feeling of us going into the basement after clearing blocks out…
“Hey, Danya-sha,” Olezha's arm snakes around from behind and jolts me in embrace. “Vozvrashchaysya, come back…”
I suck in breath, drop the window and the biting, freezing air feels warm on my face as I lean to drive off the sweat. My brothers know. They understand. They were there. Bratishki moi.
“That… fucking… basement.” I let it out into the sharp, icy wind—a faltering sigh, the childish gasp that comes with tears. I growl at myself as I wipe the basement off my face. Until the next time it comes. I close the window to a crack and light up to move past my little episode. I'm not the only one with this feature, so I don't need to feel ashamed in this company. It's just fucking annoying and inconvenient to be haunted by ghosts you can't control.
“So serious, Danochka!” Stasik's smile is the crack in his stone mask. “Here's one for your mood…” He taps a track. Ultravox kicks in with the staccato synth, then the snare and guitar note.
The highway lights drift past, moving shadows across the dashboard in half time. That fraught, eighties apocalyptic vocal pines for a life gone by. I think ahead, anticipating the line about loving to a favourite song.
“We’re the rope,” I say, invoking the mantra. “We're her rope too, even if she is ruthless.” I worry they’re losing their objectivity. “She's an asset until she's not. Stop kissing babushka's zadnitsa. She just landed us a ton of work.”
There's a hierarchy and I still give orders, despite the schoolboy and gallows humour. There’s no reason to feel good about an asset until we deliver them an ending. If luck and circumstances align, it might be the end Mariana hopes for. Her fate is a question of orders, circumstances and things we don't control.
Stasik starts up his fist-clenching 80s power dance that sways at half beat. The pit of my stomach says he might regret this song choice.
Stasik smiles and nods in recognition of our reality, swaying with his fist at his temple, smile giving way to a pained, intense expression to match the minor key of eighties apocalypse vocals.
“Chill out, Danochka,” says Spiker as he leans forwards and rubs my shoulder. “I'll cook tonight. You listen to some tunes, write a poem, plan something. Maybe have a wank.”
“Da, da. Two wanks!” Stasik confirms my prescription with a grin. I laugh and hammer the dashboard to complete the theatre.
“I'll park the car. I wanna check the vans and start thinking about the extraction.” I say.
“That's what I love about you, Danochka,” says Ol, shaking his head. “You're great at taking advice. ‘Relax’ says the doctor. ‘Yep, OK! I'm just gonna do some work,’ he says.”
“Read between the lines, dummy,” says Stasik. “He's a furgónny drochíla.” He mimes jerking onto the steering wheel. “Question is, does he do it in the front or in the back of the van?” Ol's laugh sets off Stasik, who sets us all going.
This could go on forever but reality must step in. I can't pick up a permanent nickname of “van wanker”. I have to pull rank. I swallow my laughter and get my breath. I tap into the song's minor key.
“If she's pushing us for a run, she's pushing Home too. It'll be last minute unless we’re ahead of the curve.”
I turn back to look Olezha dead in the eyes, Spiker looks towards me.
“She said fourteen.”
I turn.
“Six malyshi.” That goes straight in Stasik's ear, through the synth line. “This is gonna be High. Performance. Shit.”
Gravity takes hold of faces. Thoughts mute laughter. Olezha pulls back to hide his hazel eyes in shadow. Both Stasik's fists grip the wheel. Spiker turns away but I see his jaw clench. Their capitulation to the driving beat of the snare drum is acceptance of my order: Ready.
“Furgónny drochíla,” whispers Stasik.
I feel my mask harden. We're not civilians, turisty, or diletanty. We’ll be ready. Out here, we answer only to ourselves until someone stronger makes us answer to them. That is the test we prepare for, though we do not seek it.
excellent