Six years ago
She looks a lot like me, Neva thought as she watched her target through a pair of binoculars. Talia Bukowski was her name. She was similar in age to Neva; around 20 years old. The girl was tall, slender and strong, a well-trained operative and Neva, never one to take the easy hit, decided she wouldn’t just kill her at a distance, she would get closer and learn more about her intended victim.
She wondered what the girl had done. Curiosity kills. Neva had been a full-time assassin for over three years and she’d never questioned her orders. But she looked into Talia’s past and discovered no scandal. She’d been a model student, recruited by the FSB in her early teens, and as a result was given the best education. Neva became somewhat fascinated with her. Like herself, Talia had excelled in everything she put her mind to. So why did she deserve to die?
Against her orders from the Network, Neva followed Talia for several days. Talia was a creature of habit and Neva soon learned her routines. On the fourth day, Talia left the Kremlin as usual and made her way west into the Alexander Garden. Not learning anything further of interest, Neva had decided she’d finish Talia that day.
She followed the girl, snapping pictures, and behaving like a tourist, until she saw someone approach, stopping Talia in the centre of the park.
Neva recognized the man. He’d been pointed out to her once and she knew he was a senior figure in the FSB. A general with a certain reputation as a sexual predator. Something most of the female operatives who worked in the Kremlin were forced to tolerate.
Neva heard the heated argument between the two but could not make out what was said. She saw Talia tearing herself free from the man’s brutal grasp and the rage on the general’s face.
Neva made a decision then that she wouldn’t kill Talia until she’d talked to her after all. She didn’t understand why she wanted to do this, and it was against protocol. But she didn’t like the general, and she suspected he was behind the call to retire this talented girl. It was something of a waste in Neva’s eyes.
When the general stormed away, Neva left the distraught Talia in the park and headed off to the girl’s home.
Talia’s apartment was in a dilapidated building not far from the Moskva River, which ran south of the Kremlin. Neva broke in. She walked through the place, noting the sparse furnishings and abject poverty that Talia lived in. In the kitchen she saw a pan half filled with water on the cold stove. Talia couldn’t even afford a kettle. Why was an agent working at the Kremlin so deprived? It didn’t make sense.
She searched the apartment looking for evidence of others who lived there. But there were only signs of Talia, which made Neva’s presence less complicated because she wasn’t likely to be disturbed.
When Talia arrived home, Neva slipped into the bedroom unseen and took her Glock from her pocket, screwed on the silencer and waited.
Talia opened the door. She came into the room and began to remove her jacket.
Neva closed the door, blocking Talia’s exit and only then did the FSB agent realize that she wasn’t alone.
Talia swallowed and looked at Neva steadily.
‘He told me someone would finish me,’ she said in Russian.
‘I have been hired to kill you, yes. But I don’t know why,’ Neva said back to the girl in perfect Russian.
‘He wants me. I said, “no”. He didn’t appreciate that. I suppose you will kill me now?’ Talia said.
‘Not today,’ Neva said. ‘But sometime soon.’
On the roof of a building 800 yards from the Kremlin walls, Neva was ready. As she looked down the Schmidt and Bender telescopic sight attached to the AX308 sniper weapon, she focused on the main staff exit where Talia would be leaving from.
Right on time Talia exited. She paused in the doorway and lit a cigarette, before strolling away. A short time earlier, Neva had used a Kestrel weather meter and ballistic calculator to estimate the movement of wind. She knew she was in range and her target was hers for the taking. A red dot appeared on Talia’s chest as the laser rangefinder centred on its target. Then Neva fired two shots in rapid succession. The bullets plummeted into Talia’s chest; blood blossomed on the front of her white blouse and Talia slumped to the ground. Blood bubbled on her lips and she gasped for breath. Around her screams for help took up. A tourist ran to her side, and called an ambulance from their mobile phone, babbling in German.
On the rooftop, Neva removed a 4mm hex key from the cheekpiece of the gun, then she loosened the screw on the Quickloc barrel release. The barrel came away and Neva stowed it in a holdall. Next, she folded the stock right over the bolt handle, reducing the weapon by a further ten inches. She placed all the parts into the bag.
While an ambulance collected Talia’s body, Neva disposed of the holdall down the building’s garbage shoot, before exiting and walking away to the next street to collect her car: a racing-green Mini Cooper. It had GB stickers and a British licence plate and screamed ‘tourist’. Neva opened the door, climbed inside and started the engine. She pulled away from the kerb and drove out of Moscow.
On the outskirts of the city was an abandoned warehouse. The huge delivery doors were wide open and Neva drove the Mini inside and parked. She sat in the car until a short time later an ambulance arrived. The vehicle approached in silence: no siren to draw attention to its location.
‘Your life doesn’t need to be the end,’ Neva had said a few days earlier. She held Talia’s eyes with her own and lowered the gun.
Talia had looked at her, her eyes shining with unshed tears; she didn’t dare hope for clemency. She’d disobeyed her superior, she knew what would happen. She should have just slept with the pig. But something inside Talia refused to bend. She’d done everything anyone ever asked, but she couldn’t tolerate the general. Neva wondered if she would have done the same in this woman’s position. But then, no one would ever dare put her in a corner that way. And Neva’s superiors were interested in her talent for death, not her sexual prowess. No, she would never experience this, she wouldn’t allow it.
‘I’m no executioner for a pervert,’ Neva said. ‘And I have need of a body double.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Talia.
‘We are around the same height and build. We could be made to look the same if you changed your hair,’ Neva explained. ‘And from time to time, I will need to be in two places at once.’
Talia shook her head, confused by the offer as she tried to understand what Neva wanted from her.
‘You want me to be… you?’ she said.
‘Sometimes. Yes.’
‘But how? They will want to see me dead,’ Talia said.
‘And they will,’ Neva said.
Neva got out of the car and opened the back doors. Talia was sitting up. The white blouse she was wearing was covered in red, but Talia was unharmed. She wiped away the smear of faux blood from her lips.
Neva held out a bag for Talia. The girl took it and looked inside. There was a change of clothing, a sweater and a pair of jeans – very westernized – for her to change into. Neva talked to the ambulance driver and paramedic while Talia removed her stained clothing.
Once she was dressed, Talia climbed out of the back of the ambulance and joined Neva.
‘The general will want to see my dead body.’
‘And he’ll see one,’ Neva said.
She handed over a briefcase to the ambulance driver. A white van drove into the warehouse and pulled up beside the ambulance. Two men got out of the van, and opened the back. They pulled a body from it and transferred it into the ambulance.
A woman, the same height and build as Talia, with two gunshots in her chest, precisely where Talia had ‘appeared’ to be shot.
‘You killed someone to save me?’ Talia said.
‘This is a prostitute who died last night of an overdose,’ Neva explained. ‘The body wasn’t logged into the mortuary thanks to my friends here who were on the lookout for a suitable replacement for you. Come with me.’
They got into the Mini as the ambulance drove away. The ambulance driver switched on the siren again as he left.
Neva followed at a safe distance. Then parked up near the hospital car park. From a holdall in the back seat, Neva pulled out a wig and handed it to Talia.
‘Put this on,’ she said.
Talia took the wig and stuffed her own hair up into it until the wig lay neatly on her head, and looked natural.
A short time later, Neva received a text.
‘It’s time,’ she said glancing at the screen.
They both got out of the car and walked around the back of the hospital. There, a mortuary attendant met them at a back door. He hurried them both inside and led them down a long empty corridor.
In the mortuary, the dead body of the prostitute was being stowed in one of the fridges by the ambulance driver and paramedic that Talia had already met.
‘Strip,’ said Neva. ‘Just the top half.’
Talia looked confused.
‘Don’t worry, they’ve seen it all before,’ Neva said.
She told Talia to lie on the mortuary trolley and then Neva covered her up to her shoulders with a white sheet. She spent some time applying make-up to Talia’s face.
‘Be still, I have to take a photo. This is our proof.’
Neva took a photograph with her phone.
‘Get dressed,’ she said to Talia.
Talia got up and dressed again. She put the wig back on so that she wouldn’t be recognized leaving the hospital.
‘Look,’ said Neva.
She held out the phone showing her the photo. Talia’s face had been made pale, and she looked newly dead.
‘You better wash that off now,’ Neva told her. She held out a packet of face wipes which Talia took, and proceeded to use.
When she looked normal again, Neva and Talia left the mortuary the same way they entered. The mortuary assistant followed and locked the door behind them.
Back in the car, Neva sent her photograph to her source.
Payment sent, came the reply.
‘It’s done,’ Neva said. ‘You’re officially dead.’
Talia looked at her, the enormity of her new freedom dawned on her. She could go anywhere. Do anything. No more Kremlin rules. No more ownership of her mind and body. She could be herself at last.
‘But. Where do I go?’ she said.
‘I’ve taken care of that,’ Neva told her. ‘This time tomorrow you’ll have a new passport and we’ll be flying out of here.’
‘Where to?’
‘Switzerland first. There you’ll be near me, so that I can… train you.’
Talia let this sink in. Yes. She’d agreed to be Neva sometimes and this was a small price to pay for her liberty, but what did this all really mean? Talia didn’t know, but she didn’t fear it either.
‘Why did you help me?’ Talia asked.
Neva had turned the car away from the hospital. She kept her eyes on the road. A plan was forming in the back of her mind. She didn’t know why she needed Talia herself at that point. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions Neva had made, at a time when she’d been used to always taking orders. If the Network found out what she’d done, she’d be retired. Talia was, therefore, dangerous to her. But Neva didn’t concern herself with thoughts of their anger. She’d been unafraid, unfeeling, unbroken. What she was doing was somehow logical. She didn’t like how they constantly monitored her life anyway and it would be convenient to be off the grid sometimes when they didn’t know about it.
She hadn’t seen this as a rebellion, though on some level she had always known it was. But there had been something about Talia that had inspired Neva to save her instead of destroying her. She reminded Neva, perhaps, of herself. Controlled and moderated always by others, and if she couldn’t yet see the need to escape that, she could at least give Talia some autonomy.
Deep down Neva’s saving of Talia hadn’t been all that altruistic: one day she may have need for a corpse body double herself and it would be convenient to know where to find one. The next day, Neva and Talia (now renamed Janine Beaujolais) flew from Moscow to Switzerland.
Neva set Janine up in her first apartment and began paying her a retainer. Her only job was to learn to be Neva.
‘How did you manage all of this?’ Janine asked.
‘Money. You can get anything you want if you can pay for it,’ Neva explained.
‘Who are you?’ Janine said.
‘They call me Neva.’