Never in her wildest dreams growing up would Sabina Zeman ever have thought that her brother would become a spy. He was too much of a nerd! She loved her brother, he had always protected her and he was brave and resilient in his own way, but he was never going to fit into the archetypal image of a secret agent.
Their parents had died in a car accident when she was in her teens and Pavel was in his early twenties. Her father had been a trade unionist, her mother had been a teacher and both parents had instilled in their children a sense of morality and civic duty not only to their country, but also to their fellow men and women. Those had been dark days for both of them, but cometh the hour, cometh the man; Pavel had taken control of the situation and built a life for them both. They were a team, them against the world.
Then the spy, the Fisherman, had come along with all his conspiracies. He had inserted himself into their lives and seduced them both in different ways. Hers was physical, Pavel’s was existential. It had been a whirlwind culminating in Pavel becoming an intelligence source, locked away on a secret island and her, effectively, in exile in Berlin. Pavel the spy! Even now it made her smile.
But she had built a life for herself here in Berlin. Her mysterious benefactors had awarded her a grant that enabled her to study her passion for art at the university, her brother had found her an amazing apartment in Schoneberg, she had friends, she had a calling, and she had a reason to get up in the morning. All she had to do was remain vigilant for her brother and pass on the vital messages when he sent them.
For a young Czech woman studying and living a life in Berlin, it was paradise. The city was raw and vibrant, not ashamed or debilitated by its past; in fact, it was the complete opposite. It had culture and history and nightlife and an edginess to it that appealed to Sabina’s personality. She embraced Berlin.
Sabina had met Emile, a young Congolese medical student in his final year, at the beginning of her first term. It had begun as a friendship, then as companionship, before finally it had morphed into a love affair. Well… maybe not love, perhaps it was more affection, but, no, not love. Regardless of whether it was love or affection, it became immaterial because when Emile had to return back home, Sabina discovered that she was pregnant with their child. She had enough secrets to carry in her life so, really, what was one more? So she never wrote or contacted Emile and he never knew about their child together.
Sabina had discovered a new role for herself. She was no longer just a sister, her brother’s access agent, a student – she would now become a mother. Motherhood she embraced fully. Marco was an easy child to love, and it fitted the image she had of herself as a strong, independent, single parent.
She made it through to her second year of university, managed to juggle her education and being a parent. She even began working in a café that stood in the shadow of the St. Nikolai-Kirche, the oldest church in Berlin, as a barista again (partly for extra money, but mainly as a social outlet) and despite having to stand her ground against the Bavarian assistant manager’s wandering hands in the first few weeks (a slap across his hands and a promise that she would tell his girlfriend quickly ended that little episode), she became a familiar, bubbly and much-liked member of staff with both the regular customers and the tourists alike.
Then there was Kurt. Kurt, by contrast to Emile or her previous lovers, was selfish, arrogant, unreliable and spoilt and he had hooked Sabina in the first few hours of meeting her. They had met at a rock bar and he had been drunk and made a nuisance of himself to her and her friends. Whatever she had seen in him, it had taken almost instantly. Perhaps it was because he was just the antithesis of Emile or even the American spy ‘Alex’, perhaps she just needed a distraction, or perhaps she just needed a break from the loneliness and isolation that comes with being a single parent juggling education, work and motherhood. Whatever it was, he embedded himself quickly.
Then there came the arguments and the fighting.
It started with money missing from her purse, then Kurt coming in drunk at three in the morning every other night, smelling of booze, cheap perfume and the stain of lipstick on his neck. The final straw was when he had lashed out at her one night, striking her across the face and splitting her lip in front of Marco, who had been playing on the rug.
She’d felt her father’s anger, the same anger at injustice that her papa was known for, rise within her and she had punched him back, knocking him to the floor before kicking his ass out of the apartment door and down the stairs. Then she had gone back inside, calmed Marco down, had a shower and cried for the next thirty minutes.
Once he had gone, there was a sense of freedom back in her life, almost like a fog had been lifted and she could see clearly for the first time in months. She could breathe again. Oh, he had been trying to insert himself into her life again and again for the past year, quite often turning up stoned or drunk late at night, waking everyone up, or trying to ‘borrow’ cash to pay for his weed and at times he had worn her down and occasionally she would let him sleep on the couch, but never in her bed. That ship had sailed.
After that, life had returned to relative normality and she was content, in a routine, she felt in balance. But in the background, hiding like a grim reaper, was the secret she kept, the covert life she had been manipulated into and which came back to haunt her with the arrival of the email from her brother and the line about ‘how was Aunt Marta’.
It was the thing that she dreaded and also the one thing that she knew she had to face for this thing to be finally over. And if it meant that she had to jump through the Fisherman’s hoops one final time and play grown-up spy games so that her brother could be back with her and out of harm’s way, well then, that was a small to pay. Wasn’t it?
“Mama, a man is here.”
The little boy was dressed in denim dungarees and a yellow t-shirt. His skin was the colour of coffee and his hair was a deep brown with flashes of blonde at the tips. In one hand he held a wooden car with a wheel missing, in the other a well-used and much loved pacifier.
Tom Lyth stood at the door to Sabina’s apartment and smiled down at the little boy. “Guten Arbend, Marco,” he said.
From down the hallway, he heard feet moving and Sabina came towards them both. “Come in,” she said. “I’ve just given him lunch so he’ll be having a nap soon. We can talk more then.”
Marco grabbed Lyth’s hand and led him into the living room to show him his toys. While Lyth was playing with Marco, Sabina went and made coffee for them both. Her hands were shaking, but she wasn’t sure if it was because he was here in real life again or because she would have to set foot into the reality of espionage once more. By the time the coffee was made and she had returned to the lounge, Marco was asleep.
“One minute he was playing, the next he just crashed,” said Lyth, with a smile on his face.
Sabina nodded. “He does that, he powers through and then he just runs out of steam and sleeps. It’s funny to watch. Have your coffee and I’ll put him in his bed. He’ll be out for hours, so we can talk then.”
When she returned, he had finished his coffee and his hands were clasped in front of him. Now he was no longer the man who had played happily with her little boy. Now he was cold, business-like and operational. It was like a switch was flipped and he had transformed into someone else. The Fisherman began by bringing her up to speed on the events of the past few weeks and how things would change for Pavel, herself and little Marco over the coming weeks.
She nodded, taking it all in; another new city, another new university… somewhere… uprooting everyone again for their safety. Finally, she steeled herself. “Okay, what would I have to do?”
“First you would have to leave Marco for a few days. I can arrange for someone to look after him. A very trusted and qualified lady who we use, her name is Margery. She looks like a middle-aged housewife, but she is a fully qualified child care specialist as well as being a trained bodyguard. Marco will love her.”
“And then?”
“We give you tickets to Vienna. You are there for a day, perhaps one night also, but no more than that. We want you to be yourself, exactly like we talked about it all those years ago. Your face is the recognition code. If your brother sees you, he will know that his message has been received by us, that we understand and that you are the signal that we are getting him out.”
“Why can’t you or one of your people do this?” she asked reasonably. Spies, she had discovered, had a tendency to live to a different set of rules than everyone else and sometimes things that seemed obvious to normal people were anathema for intelligence operatives.
Lyth shrugged. “You know why. We could have been compromised, but with you, he knows that he can trust you completely.”
Sabina nodded. “Okay, okay…”
“You go in disguise; wig, dress, you’ll look like a business executive meeting a client. You go to his hotel, wait in the foyer area from mid-morning onwards, grab a coffee and read a magazine. His appointment is at one in the afternoon, so he’ll come down from his room around twelve-fifteen with his bodyguard and they will probably take a taxi to their appointment. You make sure that he sees you. Your face is the message and the message says that it is safe and everything is in play. It’s a very short window and we will probably only get one chance at this.”
“And then?”
“Then that’s it. You go to the bar, grab a drink, relax and then wait for your train out of Vienna. We’ll have someone watching your back, one of our protectors just in case something goes wrong. Don’t look for them because you won’t see them, but they will be there,” said Lyth.
Sabina frowned. It sounded easy enough, but something was troubling her. “What happens to Pavel after you get him out? What happens to all of us?”
Lyth leaned forward to press his point. Better to be honest straight off than telling them falsehoods in the middle of the operation. “You won’t see him straight away. We want you back in Berlin like everything is normal. At this stage, the less you know the better. We want Trillium to think that he has been kidnapped rather than he has defected. It buys us time to get you all out.”
Welcome to the life of a spy, she thought, where the hardest thing to do is to sit on your hands and pretend that everything is normal. Already, she could feel a knot of anxiety growing in her stomach.
“And you are sure you are ready for this?” he said, handing her an envelope that contained train tickets, false ID and cash for her part of the operation.
The truth was she just didn’t know. On the face of it, the task sounded simple, and it was. Walk through a hotel lobby and be recognised by your own brother. What could be easier? But it was the idea of dipping a toe back into the Fisherman’s world that truly terrified her. There was nothing exciting or glamorous about it. It scared her half to death, the games these men played and no amount of justification on their part that it was for the greater good of humanity would help ease that tension for her.
In the end, it came back to one thing; Pavel. Sabina just wanted her brother back safe and with his family.
“I have to be, if I am to bring my brother home,” she said.