Sofiya looked like her regular self when she entered the flat on Marieberg. Gone were the wig, the tight-fitting dress, and the over-the-top makeup. She was Sofiya again, a young girl from Moscow who’d made one too many wrong choices in her life. When her eyes settled on the suitcases that waited in the corner of the living room, she wondered if she hadn’t just made another one. Same time tomorrow, she would be in Russia, getting ready to marry a man she hardly knew. Her eyes welled up on their own accord, and she had a hard time stopping them from overflowing.
“Sofiya?”
The sound of her name drew her out of her thoughts, and she turned to face Petrov. He’d just come out of the kitchen, and he was looking at her with a curious expression and a touch of concern. She must have looked worse than she thought, she realised.
“I’m fine,” she said with a shrug. “Long day.”
“I’d ask what you’ve been up to, but I doubt I’d get a straight answer,” he said, leaning against the corridor wall.
“Honesty isn’t really part of the job description, is it?”
That got a smirk out of the man. “No, it isn’t. Everything is set for this weekend. We can go over the plan one more time if you’d like.”
Sofiya shook her head as she walked past him. Right now, all she wanted was a hot shower and some sleep. Her fingers were dirty again, and it wasn’t the kind of red stain that could be washed up, even though she knew she’d try anyway.
Why did Serov have to kill that man? she wondered. Murder would no doubt put their covert operation under an official spotlight. There’d be a police investigation, complete with a forensic swipe of the room. Both Soviet operatives had been careful to wipe all their prints, but in their haste to get out, they might have missed something. And all of that for what? Sofiya thought, bitterly. She didn’t even know what it was they’d stolen, or from whom. Goes to show how much value her own government placed in her. She was nothing but a pawn in their schemes; only good enough to be pushed around to suit their needs—a puppet on Directorate K’s strings. It had to stop, or she would go mad.
“Sofiya?” Petrov called out after her retreating form.
“Don’t worry,” she said, hand on the door handle to her bedroom. “I know what is expected of me; I won’t disappoint.”
Later that night, as she lay in her bed for what she knew was going to be her last night in Stockholm, she wasn’t sure what to feel. She’d enjoyed her time in the Swedish capital and had come to like the meandering town, with all its islands and bridges. She’d come to miss it, she knew. And she could only hope wherever she ended up staying next would be half as nice.
There were so many uncertainties on the horizon that it felt as though her future could be decided with the toss of a coin. And which way it would land was anyone’s guess. The only silver lining in her dire situation was the safe bet that she wouldn’t go down alone.
Sofiya hadn’t chosen a redhead wig for no reason, and she hadn’t booked the room in Alexeïeva’s name just for fun. For the entirety of the mission, she had made sure none of the cameras ever captured her face. That way, she had ensured that the police would have nothing more to go on than the pixelated image of a bosomy redhead and witness’s accounts that she was Russian.
While Sofiya wasn’t sure how careful Serov had been in cleaning the bedroom, she knew she’d been thorough with cleaning the bathroom of her prints and strands of synthetic red hair that had been stripped off the wig during the fight. Actually, she was dead certain she left that bathroom spotless—save for the passed-out bodyguard near the sink and the two red hairs she’d dropped behind her on her way out. Two very real human hairs that she’d plucked from Alexeïeva’s desk chair when she visited her office.
Yes, it may take the police a day or two to follow that lead to the finish line, but Sofiya was sure they would get to her nemesis eventually. And diplomatic immunity or not, if they decided to dig deeper into that dragon of a woman’s life and look at her bank records with a fine-tooth comb, well, it was anyone’s guess what they would find.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 11, 1986.
The Dormition Cathedral was the most sacred of the Russian Orthodox churches and stood on the Cathedral Square in the Kremlin of Moscow. Built between 1475 and 1479 by the Italian architect Aristotele Fioravanti di Rodolfo, the building combined Russia’s Byzantine heritage with the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance. With its five tall golden domes covered in gilded copper sheets and its carved limestone exterior, the Cathedral could be seen from miles away.
The interior was as decorated as the richly painted arches of the exteriors, with frescoes as far as the eye could see, on the walls, on the ceilings—the largest one was an image of Christ Pantocrator on the interior of the main dome. Above the altar, the apse was devoted to an image of Mary, Mother of God, standing in a pose that seemed to bless the worshippers.
Sofiya felt small as she walked down the central aisle with a lit candle in her hand. She wore an ivory dress with an embroidered corset and a large gown that touched the ground around her. A thin veil, pinned to the corset around her neck, draped her bare shoulders and fell behind her like a cape. As she locked gazes with the portrait of Mary, Sofiya forced herself not to think of what was really happening within this Cathedral. So much of this venchanie was a farce; it was hard not to laugh.
The svideteli—the witnesses—were people she had never even met before today. The man, Gregor, was a distant cousin of Petrov, and the woman, Mila, was apparently a friend of his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in years. As far as Sofiya could tell, each of them thought this was for real and couldn’t believe their luck to be the best man and maid of honour of someone from the Nomenklatura—furthermore, at a wedding that took place in the Kremlin.
The betrothal had been a quick affair. Both bride and groom had been blessed by the attending priest at the Cathedral’s entrance, and the blessed rings had been placed on their fingers between two prayers. The second part of the ceremony, the crowning, was about to begin, and Sofiya wasn’t sure how to feel. A part of her felt like a lamb being led to slaughter, while another couldn’t wait to reach out and grab the freedom that was finally in sight.
For Sofiya, the guests in attendance were little more than blurry faces. Aside from her family in the first row, the rest were strangers. For the most part, they were distant contacts of Petrov that had been invited for the form more than out of any real interest. She hadn’t been introduced to her soon-to-be mother-in-law, though she knew she was in attendance. “We don’t get along,” was all the diplomat had said on the matter, and Sofiya had had no choice but to take it in her stride.
In the centre of the church, the couple professed that they were marrying of their own free will and that they had not promised themselves to another. An ektenia and several longer prayers later, the priest placed a crown on the head of the bride and another one on the head of the groom. An ektenia and several prayers later, the procession began, and the married couple soon found themselves with the priest’s epitrachelion tied around their joined hands.
For better or worse, their fate was sealed.