Chapter 21

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"I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

-Jane Austen

"It's raining cats and dogs out there," Lucas said as he slipped his jacket over his shoulders and turned away from the window just as Alexa emerged from the bedroom. She was dressed in a black shirt, jeans and boots. As Lucas watched her, the knot in the pit of his belly tightened at the memory of how she had kept him company in the shower just half an hour earlier.

He exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath the entire time as he watched her. He sighed. He was tired, his body yearning for sleep but he knew the day was far from over. He still had to get them both back to the Grid for Liam, and to debrief Harry about what had happened on the ship.

He wanted to know what had happened to Nadia, and the man who had held her, remembering how he had dragged the poor girl behind him behind the warehouse. He was distracting me from Alexa, he thought.

Alexa was looking for something atop one of the shelves just above her head, standing on tiptoes as her hand scanned the items. Lucas saw a matryoshka doll flanked by a set of buddhas and a Ganesha statue. Trinkets, he thought.

"We need to get back to the Grid, Alexa," he said as she grabbed hold of the matryoshka doll a little too quickly and pocketed it, her back towards him. Lucas frowned.

"I need to brush my teeth first," she said as she made her way to the bathroom and closed the door behind her, almost slamming it in her haste.

Alexa locked the door behind her, bringing her ear against the door. She could hear him walking away, and a few seconds later, the sound of the microwave turning on. He was warming something up, she thought as she opened her palm.

The matryoshka, a Russian nesting doll, was old, probably an antique when she'd first received it. It was intricately painted and featured a Russian matron with rosy cheeks and a cupid smile, wearing a sarafan, the traditional Russian long, trapeze-shaped pinafore. It separated from top to bottom at the torso, each outer doll revealing another smaller doll inside, ending with the smallest one, usually lathed from one piece of wood and didn't separate.

Alexa twisted the top of the first doll, revealing the second smaller one beneath. She worked fast, looking at the door and making sure that Lucas was still warming up whatever it was he was making. Probably tea, she thought. She heard the beep of the microwave timer.

The doll originally had consisted of eight dolls but Alexa had discarded the last three to make room for something else. Something that had already cost the lives of four people that she knew. As she got to the last doll, a piece of roughly whittled wood with hastily drawn lines to depict it as a swaddled baby with dots for eyes and a cupid mouth, she paused. It did not match the intricately carved dolls which had long concealed its treasure for nine years.

She felt the rough cuts along its surface, not matching the rest of the dolls she'd just opened and exhaled nervously, her mind taking her back to a different place and time. She had whittled the wood herself, she thought, forming the shape of something that, unpainted, resembled a peanut in its shell. And like a nut shell that contained its treasure inside, she'd carved out just enough room for the thumb drive to fit into.

She remembered how it had clicked in place, snug enough in its hiding spot, a few dabs of wood glue and a few painted lines along its surface finally sealing its secret within. Mikhael had taught her where to hide things in the human body and outside of it, and she'd used the knowledge well when it came to something that was just a piece of wood.

This one, she knew, was a huge risk. Anyone could pick it up, but she'd had nowhere else to hide it. At the time that she had whittled it, she knew Arkady was on his way to kill her and the three other girls who had been with Oskar.

When she first awoke after being shot, she remembered hearing Mikhael and an older woman talking in the room. Alexa had kept her eyes shut, ignoring the pain in her throat from the feeding tube that had kept her nourished for almost two weeks. She knew she wasn't in a hospital but a small room with only the barest of furnishings. Medical equipment that appeared dated surrounded her but no matter how old they were, she realized that they had kept her alive.

From listening to them that morning, she learned that she'd been asleep for two weeks, as the woman preferred to describe her state, and that the fever had finally abated. She heard them talk about the search for the hard drive and that it had not been found, not even in the hiding places that Mikhael had taught her.

It took Alexa a few more days to finally remember what she had done - the whittling of the wood just days before, and its hasty painted strokes, remembering how she'd replaced the original baby matryoshka doll with the one she had created.

It was the one gift that Mikhael had given her when she first met him in Paris at the outdoor market, when she ran into him while she had been with her friends. He'd simply stared at her then and together with her friends, they had laughed at him but she was flattered. When he saw her admiring a shop with Russian trinkets, he purchased the most expensive matryoshka doll he could find among his inventory, the same one he'd noticed her inquiring about.

It was the only thing she had managed to keep with her through her whole ordeal after Mikhael kidnapped her on orders of Arkady, and she suspected that Mikhael had intended it that way. It had been his gift to her before they both ended up in hell.

He had never suspected that it would contain the one thing he had been searching for the entire time, even after he himself handed it to Alexa as she got into the van that would take her to Demodovo airport and then home. Yet for some reason, Mikhael did know, Alexa thought. He knew because he gave her the activation phrase telling her that it was time to hand it over to British security services.

It was time to let it go.

Alexa opened the medicine cabinet and took a nail file from the shelf. She pressed the tip of the knife on a painted button on the front of the doll, turning the metal so that it poked into the wood.

Outside, she realized that it was deathly quiet. "Shit," she breathed, quickly working on finding the seam in the wood, the one she herself had made.

Suddenly Lucas was banging on the door. "Open the door, Alex," he demanded. When she didn't answer, he pounded on the door again.

Alexa twisted the nail file one more time, wedging it into the crack that had formed the first time she'd pushed the tip through the painted button. Her hands shook as she managed to finally crack the wood. But just as the baby matryoshka finally yielded its treasure, the door burst open and Lucas rushed towards her, grabbing her hands and dragging her to the living room. This time, Alexa did not fight him as Lucas pried her hands open.

The plastic case contained the computer thumb drive, just as she had last seen it nine years earlier. Lucas broke open the plastic case and the thumb drive dropped onto his palm.

"Is this what Mikhael was talking about on the ship? 'Because they wished to see too far before them, backward they look, and backward make their way,'" Lucas demanded. "Is this what it's all about, Alex? The bomb, the sniper," he looked at the flat around him. "Even this flat you've got under the name Dimitri Ilyakov, the name I used when I found you in Moscow nine years ago? Is it because of this?"

He brought the thumb drive in front of her.

Alexa stared at him. She grabbed the thumb drive from his hand but Lucas pulled his arm away, grabbing her arm with another as she winced in pain.

"Is it because of this drive?" He demanded again. He pulled Alexa close to him, his mouth against her ear. "What is in here that's worth killing for?"

"Secrets are always worth killing for, Lucas," she said. "But I can't tell you. I don't want you involved." Too many people had died for that names inside that thumb drive, she wanted to tell him. Not you, too.

"Involved? I've been involved with you ever since I met you nine years ago," Lucas said angrily. "It's too late to keep me out of this now." He slipped the drive inside his jeans pocket and pulled out his phone, turning it on.

"No!" Alexa cried out, reaching for his phone as Lucas drew his hand away from her. "They'll know where we are. I can't risk them finding this."

"And how would they know that?" Lucas asked as he waited for his phone to power up.

"There are moles everywhere, Lucas, and they're after whatever is inside that drive," she said, watching as the phone screen turned on. "They're in MI5 and 6, and I bet the Grid is tracking you through that phone. That's why you didn't turn it on, isn't it when you first found me here? You didn't want them to know where this flat was either. The moment Harry knows where you are, the mole will, too."

"And how do you know there's a mole within MI5?" Lucas asked.

"Turn it off, Lucas, please," she said, hoping the powering up hadn't given anyone else listening enough time to track them. "I promise I'll tell you."

Lucas sighed and pressed a button to turn the phone off, shaking his head as he did so. "I knew you were a sleeper the moment I saw you with Mikhael on that ship today. Now you tell me who the traitor really is, Alex. Mikhael works for Arkady, which means that you work for him, too."

Alexa shook her head as she pulled herself away from him. "I would never work for that scum, Arkady, even if my life depended on it, Lucas," she said, pausing before she delivered her next line.

"Mikhael Lubienko is MI6."

Lucas took a deep intake of breath as he heard her words. He let go of her arm and took a step back. Suddenly the last words Mikhael had said to him on the ship came back to him. Leave her alone, he had said, with no trace of the Russian accent Lucas had heard just minutes earlier.

"And you, Alex?" Lucas asked. "What does that make you? How long have you been working for MI6?"

"I'm just a pawn in this game, Lucas. We all are."

>>><<<

Outside, the rain had slowed down and a light fog fell upon the city. The time was passing them by, Lucas thought, and Liam was still at the Grid waiting for them. They had to get back, but he couldn't get himself to leave just yet. Not until she told him everything that he needed to know.

"The thumb drive contains names of moles throughout United Kingdom," Alexa said. "It was given to me Oskar Millivic."

"The Ferret," Lucas whispered. "He was found dead a month before I found you. He was able to penetrate high up within the Kremlin before he was found out after a drunken outburst at - " Lucas paused, staring at Alexa, the realization hitting him.

"It was you. You were Oskar's contact that night," he whispered. "But I heard that the contact was killed shortly after he was terminated."

"And so I was," Alexa said. "But I don't know exactly what happened and I wasn't able to hand what Oskar gave me over to Mikhael. And for nine years I hadn't been able to hand it over to him or to anyone else because I didn't know who I could trust here at home," she continued. "I knew I was being watched the moment I got back, everything was bugged, even the house to this day."

"I couldn't even trust Harry with it. I only knew that the phrase that you heard Mikhael said on the ship - it's about two seers, a father and a daughter, who are cursed to look forever backwards as they walk the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno -"

"That was your activation phrase," Lucas said.

She nodded.

She bit her lip and began pacing back and forth. "I didn't even know what I was, Lucas. I didn't know what happened to me in Moscow. Mikhael said I was shot in the head, on orders by Arkady. When I came back to London, I tried to write everything down in a diary - everything that happened to me from the time I left for Paris, but there was nothing. It was like the slate was swept completely clean. I knew things happened, bad things, but I could not remember a single one. That is, until today."

"The memories came back," Lucas whispered.

Alexa sighed, shaking her head as she fought back the visions that flitted in and out of her memory. "And they're still coming back. Horrible things."

Lucas remembered the scars on her back, hidden by the large tattoo of the Hindu goddess Kali. He touched her arm, feeling her body stiffen against him. "Maybe it was best that you didn't remember them then, Alex."

"Before today, my only memories of Moscow began just three weeks before you came to find me. I remember waking up and not able to tell Mikhael what he wanted to know. And when Mikhael couldn't get the answers he wanted from me, he had me work the club floor as punishment the night I met you. He thought humiliating me would jog my memory," she said bitterly. "After all, it wouldn't have been anything that was new to me."

"But it was, wasn't it?" Lucas asked. "Because you couldn't remember anything else that you'd done before that."

Alexa nodded. She remembered how Lucas had become that beacon that she'd held onto, a hope that she'd long abandoned. "I was no longer of any use to anyone. Not to MI6."

Lucas frowned. If Mikhael was MI6, why did Harry send Lucas to search for Alexa? Lucas knew that both departments often worked together, but to have a deep cover MI6 operative turning an eighteen-year old girl into an asset when he could have easily sent her home baffled Lucas.

Then he remembered Mikhael's file and the photograph of him with a woman and a baby. Instead of sending her back to London, did Mikhael keep her because she reminded her of Oksana? It was the only explanation Lucas could think of. She was eighteen years old then, Lucas thought. The bastard.

He remembered how she had looked when he first saw her in that seedy club. She looked so broken then. She had trembled when he touched her. Lucas remembered the scars and the missing teeth. He remembered the hollow eyes. Most of all he remembered how Mikhael had stood there by the door and ordered them to do as he wanted, simply because he liked "to watch."

Lucas shut his eyes and fought hard to control his temper as the emotions came rushing at him. He'd been searching for Alexa for weeks in Moscow, going from one club to another to find her. Everyone he talked to said she was dead, that she was among the girls found dead, their bodies floating in the river.

But then he received a note, dropped off at the hotel desk. It told him where to go, where to find the "English princess".

"Did he know who I was?" Lucas asked. "Did Mikhael know I was MI5 when I found you?"

Before Alexa could answer, the intercom phone rang, shattering the tension that had built up between them as they sifted through the past they had shared briefly together.

Alexa turned to face the wall just behind the front door and glanced at the faces appearing on the video screen intercom. She cursed under her breath, and ran towards the living room where she'd last seen her gun. The intercom phone kept on ringing.

Two men peered into the camera before looking around them, as if checking to make sure they were alone, the light of the outside lobby illuminating their faces from above. Lucas watched their lips move on the screen. Russian, he thought. They're speaking in Russian.

"What did I tell you about turning on your phone?" Alexa said as she inserted the clip back into the pistol hand grip and pushed it all the way in till she heard a click. Lucas raised an eyebrow as he watched her release the safety and cock the pistol. "I warned you about the mole in the British security services and now they're here."

"Starting to nag already? Quite early in the relationship, don't you think?" Lucas said as he unlocked the door. On the intercom screen, one of the men suddenly aimed his gun at the front door lock and fired.

"Shit," he said. "Is there another way out of here?"

Alexa ran towards the far end of the flat and opened the door that led to a dimly corridor. "Not all units have this door, but it'll take us to the back stairs," she said as Lucas followed right behind her. "It's how I got in."

Suddenly the building's power went out and within seconds the building generator kicked in. They heard shouts followed by screams but Lucas and Alexa didn't stop. They hurried down the steps, their footsteps echoing in the stairway.

In the distance, they could hear the sound of gunshots. Someone shot the locks off Alexa's front door. "Hurry," Lucas shouted as they made their way down the stairs, Alexa right behind him.

Just as they cleared the third floor, the door to the second floor suddenly burst open and a man stepped through the doorway, his gun aimed at them. As he fired, Lucas drew back, his arm protectively pulling Alexa right behind him. Pieces of wall material showered against their faces, the shots echoing within the narrow stairwell.

Lucas fired three rounds at him. The man crumpled to the ground just as a door opened on the floor above them and Lucas and Alexa continued down the stairs as shots rung out, shell casings clattering to the floor as a hail of bullets trailed their wake.

They had to make it to the exit, Lucas thought, hearing the footsteps echoing behind them. As Lucas opened the door and peered out, Alexa fired a few rounds towards the stairs, giving Lucas enough time to make sure no one was waiting outside.

The back alley was deserted. A fog had descended upon the cobblestones and Lucas pulled Alexa behind him as they made their way with their backs against the wall.

As Lucas pulled Alexa behind a row of cars parked behind the building, the door flung open and the second man emerged. Lucas shot him before he could raise his gun at them but at the same time, another man appeared from the corner behind them, and began shooting.

Bullets hit the car behind them, showering Alexa and Lucas with shards of tiny pieces of glass.

"Run!" Lucas ordered but Alexa wasn't listening. She was breathing hard, her vision narrowing in the darkness, focusing on the third man as he made his way behind a dumpster alongside the far wall. She was suddenly tired and fed up, the rage rising from the depths of her chest as she raised her gun and began shooting two, three, four rounds at him, the gun hot against her hands.

The man disappeared behind the dumpster but did not get up.

Lucas pulled Alexa back behind the car, car alarms blaring all around them, both his hands gripping hard against her shoulders as he looked at her. It would be moments before Alexa would hear what he was saying, before she'd realize that a few seconds earlier, she had found herself back in Moscow and she could smell the earth beneath her head once again, see the dead eyes of Irina staring back at her.

"It's okay, Alex," Lucas was saying. "It's alright."

He pulled her against him, ignoring people who had emerged from the buildings around them, some of them threatening to call the police although he knew many of them already had. Car alarms began to shut off and Lucas was grateful for the momentary silence.

A kill squad, he thought. Someone had sent a kill squad after them.

Still holding her tightly against him, Lucas dialed the Grid. Connie answered on the first ring.

"Lucas, this is Connie. Where

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