Catching Up With The Communists
I am taking a momentary break from running back and forth between jobs (9am meeting! Run to other job for the lunch shift! Run to other job for the closing shift! Now sleep! Repeat from the top!) to give you this chapter.
Scars! Historical references! A rather quick pace since we have a lot to get through!
14- Portraits
Olivia's stomach hammered the inside of her ribcage. She wiggled one foot, then the other, trying to let out the itch that permeated her bones.
She pressed the bag of ice against her face a little harder, then slacked off the pressure as the cold started to burn. Her face felt like tenderized meat.
“Do you have any portraits in your home?” Max asked, from behind his great spartan desk.
Of all things to talk about!
“Yes,” Olivia replied.
She wondered if Max purposely made the chairs in his office uncomfortable, of just didn't care that visitors had to sit in those miserable straight-back things.
“Whose portrait might that be?” Max steepled his fingers and smiled.
Olivia's reflection in his mask consisted mostly of the ice pack. When she'd woken up on the floor of the bathroom in the Hotel Sainte Catherine, the pain in her head and side had been negligible. After a panicked search of the room, she had wandered back to the bathroom, caught a look at her swollen, plum-colored features, and finally felt the aches settling in.
Hours later, it was only getting worse. The way things were going with Max, it wasn't likely to get much better.
“Empress Theodora of Byzantium,” she said. Her face hurt when it stretched.
“Fascinating, that they didn't rape you,” Max pursed his lips in thought, “They must have been pressed for time. What a lucky little thing you are.”
She glared at him.
“Oh, don't be cross! Theodora, what an interesting choice. I, in my private room,” he gestured with a flippant hand to a door that could conceal a large closet or a washroom, “I have a portrait of Citizen Robespierre. While your choice of historical figure shows your reverence for beauty, equality, and underhanded tactics, I strive to embody Robespierre's, ehm, ruthless virtue and efficient purity of Revolution.”
“Fascinating. Can we get back to the part where a bunch of fucking fascists beat the hell out of me and captured your best agent?”
“Oh dear, dear, dear,” Max made a little tsk with his tongue, “But the previous discussion was so, ahem, revealing, was it not?”
“God fucking dam it, Max,” Olivia jumped out of her miserable chair and took the icepack down to glare at him.
She'd already sobbed until her eyes felt like a desert, but suddenly the tears made themselves present.
“I swear to you, I only met him out of curiosity. Ego, maybe, so I could turn him down.”
“That cannot come naturally to one so... ahem... free as yourself?”
If her face didn't radiate with pain, she would have made an unpleasant expression. As it was, she put the ice back on her face and said,
“Not your business. I don't fuck your agents, including Khilkov-”
“Add in Jean and myself, and we have ourselves a trio of.. shall we say untouchables?” said Max, his head at a quizzical angle, like a bird peering upward.
His fingers picked up a staccato beat across his papers. A good sign that he was in a murderous fury.
“You have to do something! Saboteur betrayed us, Khilkov wasn't betraying you, he just got carried away and wanted... well, you know.”
“No, I don't suppose I do.”
Olivia sighed, blinked away the urge to cry. Max didn't know what other men wanted. He'd probably spent childhood enjoying arithmetic and then gotten his adolescent jollies torturing animals, all the better to spend his adult life mind-fucking everyone with insatiable vigor.
Max drummed his fingers, moved his head like a predatory bird some more and said,
“Were I so able, I would have Thibault's liver on a- shall we say proverbial? -platter. Yes, this will all fall on his head.”
“Thibault? The handler who got us in contact with Saboteur? Is that your biggest worry?” her voice rose in pitch into an unattractively high range.
Then she deflated and sank back into the spartan chair. The blue of the Caribbean called to her, with its hints of fruit and salt on the air. Maybe this was finally the break, she thought. Another miserable ending to a once-glorious liason, and in the wake of disaster... maybe she could finally go home. She remembered their house by the sea outside Bavaro, that existed only in slivers of her memory, before the long years in grey, stuffy England. And then, her first glimpse of a Caribbean bay from the ship's bow, El Mago's wrinkled hand on her shoulder. Her last memory of the sea and the sun and the rustling palms, on another ship with another man. In the New World, the sun was brilliant, the shoes optional, the food always fresh. She missed the feeling of sweat on her arms, the wash of water and fine sand between her toes. The colors so rich no artists could capture them. The Caribbean was home, a way that Paris never could be.
“Now then,” Max slapped the top of the desk and stood, “I want your solemn oath that you won't ever seek the company of our... ahem, dare I say charming? No, that won't do. The intimidating Inspector. Khilkov again.”
Max's knuckles were white, and the area around his lips. So she promised.
“Oh, joyous day, Faulkner approaches.”
A moment later, Olivia heard Faulkner's little footsteps outside. She pressed the ice against her face again as the other agent appeared. Faulkner slid into Max's office quietly, eyes a little wider than normal, as if looking around the sanctuary of something great and hallowed.
Which the office was, of course.
“No word from Thibault's people,” Faulkner said, sinking into the chair next to Olivia.
He stared at Max, and Max stared back like a mirrored sphinx. Someone would have to talk next, but with the hammers of pain resounding in Olivia's head, she wasn't about to make idle chatter.
Faulkner broke first,
“Sir, I was just thinking, this might be some sort of retribution. For what we did to Emanuel. And his agents.”
“Divine justice? What a quaint idea! I had no idea there was a... shall we say divine? Power which could punish us. No, I rather think that Thibault was betrayed by Saboteur as well, hmm?”
“So then-”
“Let me finish, my dear Mr. Faulkner,” Max began a slow pacing.
He had a military precision to his walk. Olivia found the pace of his immaculate shoes comforting.
“Thibault also benefited from Emanuel's removal,” said Max, like a burst.
He resumed the pacing and staring straight ahead.
“If you'd like, sir, I can go,” said Faulkner, rising a little.
“Sit,” said Max. Faulkner sat.
Max wheeled to stare at them,
“The Party leaders must be made to understand that this was Thibault's blunder. We thereby raise ourselves in their estimation.”
Olivia wondered if Max meant all of them, or if he had taken up the royal We.
Max wheeled toward them and froze, in a poise of alert elegance.
The phone rang. Max picked it up and merely cleared his throat.
“Yes, naturally,” he said, then, “Must I remind you what an inconvenience this is?... Oh, I have barely gotten started.... Two hours, then.”
He hung up. Olivia took the ice away again, and caught a glimpse of her purpled face in Max's mask.
“I am not overfond of the telephone,” said Max.
“Was that the Party?” asked Faulkner.
“No, no,” Max gave them a smile that was more of a snarl, “It seems Mr. Khilkov has escaped his captors. We are to fetch him at the train depot in Compiegne at our earliest convenience.”
Oliva grabbed her bag.
“Apparently... ahem... he's been riding the rails like a vagrant. Shall we?”
He motioned with a sweep of his arm toward the door. Olivia trotted out as fast as her miserably sore body would take her. Faulkner drove, with Olivia in front and Max in the back seat.
They reached the train yard two hours later, with the horizon tinted like fire behind the abandoned boxcars. Olivia's ice had long ago turned into a useless sack of water and she sat with her face burning and ringing with pain, searching the dim mass of traincars for Valentin.
And then, a thick voice with an underlayer of rough gravel came from next to her window,
“Well if it isn't the fucking cavalry.”
Max threw the door open and Valentin collapsed into the car, smelling like sweat, dirt, and cheap gin. His clothes fit all wrong, and seemed to have once belonged to a farm laborer.
Max edged farther against his car window.
“Ah, the veritable barnyard is with you, I see,” he said, and simpered.
“Give me your fuckin flask,” Valentin stuck his hand between the front seats.
Faulkner recoiled, dug out his trusty flask of whiskey, and stuck in in Valentin's palm.
Khilkov took a long drink and stared at Olivia. He attempted a laugh, then,
“What's a woman like you doing in a place like this?”
“Picking up washed-up old Russians, apparently,” she told him, keeping the smashed side of her face away from him.
Not that he was in a spectacular condition. A thick growth of salt-and-pepper stubble overtook the lower half of his face. His eyes lay at the center of dark circles, his nose was bruised and swollen, and his hair looked like a thatch of weeds.
Olivia's stomach twisted, pinching below her ribs. She wanted to grab him and hold him nestle her head under his chin. Once he'd bathed, of course. Too bad Max put a damper on any such possibility.
“Mr. Khilkov,” he said, swiveling his masked head, “The instant we arrive in Paris, you must dictate a full report. We have already had to close the supperclub, I need to know how far the damage reaches, hmmm?”
“They didn't fuckin break me,” said Valentin, “Stuck skewers in my hands and feet, but that just takes some antiseptic. Someone give me a cigarette.”
Faulkner supplied that too, and Valentin sucked in the first drag so hard his lungs rebelled. He coughed painfully for a minute, while Max covered his mouth and giggled. When Valentin got his breath back, and a few successful gulps of smoke, he said,
“Dante has scars on his wrist.”
The unspoken awe hung in the air as they left the trainyard and skirted the town of Compiegne. Finally Valentin went on,
“I'll save in for my report. Vile fuckin English.”
“Oh, don't keep us in suspense, my dear Khilkov,” Max's fingers edged along the window, a gesture that was almost nervous, almost unsettled.
“Not like these,” Valentin pulled up his sleeve, showing the jagged scars crossing his forearm, “Like punctures, like a dog or wolf or some toothy animal try to get him. I'd know the bastard on sight, disguise or no fucking disguise.”
Max kept his unblinking, narrow gaze pinned to Valentin's arm and said,
“Must I remind you? This is far from the first time your.... carnal desires have caused you injury.”
“I got this from the fucking Germans!” Valentin brandished his scarred arm, then turned back to his flask.
“And if you hadn't wanted to be in bed with that woman, you wouldn't have taken a bullet for her,” Max bared his teeth for a second, something only Valentin saw.
“I'm not a fucking mastermind like your royal fucking majesty,” he shot back, “I show up when they tell me to show up, I kill who they tell me to kill. They tell me to get this agent across the border, I get her across the border. You tell me to work with this unpalatable bastard named Sabotuer, to make friendly with him and so on-”
Max cut him off with a high laugh, the motion making Valentin's reflection distend across his mask like a deformed snake.
“Well, it's good to have you back, Sir,” said Faulkner, now speeding toward Paris, “That Sabouteur did a real number on us. And Thibault, I guess.”
“He's as good as dead already,” Olivia said, then fell back into silence.
The countryside was calming, like a quilt of green shades that wrapped her senses in something-that-wasn't-Valentin. She would see him later, after she put some makeup on. After he gave his report to Max and washed whatever wounds the capitalist skewers had given him and shaved his sandpaper beard. He would be halfway through his bottle of vodka by then, and she could rub his shoulders and watch every crease in his face as he grimaced and scowled. Then she could tell him what an infernal fucking moron he was and make him hold ice against her miserably wrecked face.
For now, she would just stay quiet.
Another minute of awkward silence slipped by, until Max cleared his throat. Even Faulkner looked toward him, in a quick glance away from the road.
Max placed a finger along the side of his mouth, a gesture that should have been comic.
“Oh dear,” he said, “The- shall we say mysterious?- Saboteur and Miss Ozanne have returned to England. Dare we pursue them? Or will the task of destroying Thibault prove to much for us.”
“Stay tuned to find out,” Valentin muttered.
But there was no suspense, in the long run. Max always had his way. It was just a matter of how many bodies hit the floor in the process.
Also, for everyone who wants Valentin to die already, I have a video for you. It's perfect!
SABOTEUR VS. VALENTIN KHILKOV
Scars! Historical references! A rather quick pace since we have a lot to get through!
14- Portraits
Olivia's stomach hammered the inside of her ribcage. She wiggled one foot, then the other, trying to let out the itch that permeated her bones.
She pressed the bag of ice against her face a little harder, then slacked off the pressure as the cold started to burn. Her face felt like tenderized meat.
“Do you have any portraits in your home?” Max asked, from behind his great spartan desk.
Of all things to talk about!
“Yes,” Olivia replied.
She wondered if Max purposely made the chairs in his office uncomfortable, of just didn't care that visitors had to sit in those miserable straight-back things.
“Whose portrait might that be?” Max steepled his fingers and smiled.
Olivia's reflection in his mask consisted mostly of the ice pack. When she'd woken up on the floor of the bathroom in the Hotel Sainte Catherine, the pain in her head and side had been negligible. After a panicked search of the room, she had wandered back to the bathroom, caught a look at her swollen, plum-colored features, and finally felt the aches settling in.
Hours later, it was only getting worse. The way things were going with Max, it wasn't likely to get much better.
“Empress Theodora of Byzantium,” she said. Her face hurt when it stretched.
“Fascinating, that they didn't rape you,” Max pursed his lips in thought, “They must have been pressed for time. What a lucky little thing you are.”
She glared at him.
“Oh, don't be cross! Theodora, what an interesting choice. I, in my private room,” he gestured with a flippant hand to a door that could conceal a large closet or a washroom, “I have a portrait of Citizen Robespierre. While your choice of historical figure shows your reverence for beauty, equality, and underhanded tactics, I strive to embody Robespierre's, ehm, ruthless virtue and efficient purity of Revolution.”
“Fascinating. Can we get back to the part where a bunch of fucking fascists beat the hell out of me and captured your best agent?”
“Oh dear, dear, dear,” Max made a little tsk with his tongue, “But the previous discussion was so, ahem, revealing, was it not?”
“God fucking dam it, Max,” Olivia jumped out of her miserable chair and took the icepack down to glare at him.
She'd already sobbed until her eyes felt like a desert, but suddenly the tears made themselves present.
“I swear to you, I only met him out of curiosity. Ego, maybe, so I could turn him down.”
“That cannot come naturally to one so... ahem... free as yourself?”
If her face didn't radiate with pain, she would have made an unpleasant expression. As it was, she put the ice back on her face and said,
“Not your business. I don't fuck your agents, including Khilkov-”
“Add in Jean and myself, and we have ourselves a trio of.. shall we say untouchables?” said Max, his head at a quizzical angle, like a bird peering upward.
His fingers picked up a staccato beat across his papers. A good sign that he was in a murderous fury.
“You have to do something! Saboteur betrayed us, Khilkov wasn't betraying you, he just got carried away and wanted... well, you know.”
“No, I don't suppose I do.”
Olivia sighed, blinked away the urge to cry. Max didn't know what other men wanted. He'd probably spent childhood enjoying arithmetic and then gotten his adolescent jollies torturing animals, all the better to spend his adult life mind-fucking everyone with insatiable vigor.
Max drummed his fingers, moved his head like a predatory bird some more and said,
“Were I so able, I would have Thibault's liver on a- shall we say proverbial? -platter. Yes, this will all fall on his head.”
“Thibault? The handler who got us in contact with Saboteur? Is that your biggest worry?” her voice rose in pitch into an unattractively high range.
Then she deflated and sank back into the spartan chair. The blue of the Caribbean called to her, with its hints of fruit and salt on the air. Maybe this was finally the break, she thought. Another miserable ending to a once-glorious liason, and in the wake of disaster... maybe she could finally go home. She remembered their house by the sea outside Bavaro, that existed only in slivers of her memory, before the long years in grey, stuffy England. And then, her first glimpse of a Caribbean bay from the ship's bow, El Mago's wrinkled hand on her shoulder. Her last memory of the sea and the sun and the rustling palms, on another ship with another man. In the New World, the sun was brilliant, the shoes optional, the food always fresh. She missed the feeling of sweat on her arms, the wash of water and fine sand between her toes. The colors so rich no artists could capture them. The Caribbean was home, a way that Paris never could be.
“Now then,” Max slapped the top of the desk and stood, “I want your solemn oath that you won't ever seek the company of our... ahem, dare I say charming? No, that won't do. The intimidating Inspector. Khilkov again.”
Max's knuckles were white, and the area around his lips. So she promised.
“Oh, joyous day, Faulkner approaches.”
A moment later, Olivia heard Faulkner's little footsteps outside. She pressed the ice against her face again as the other agent appeared. Faulkner slid into Max's office quietly, eyes a little wider than normal, as if looking around the sanctuary of something great and hallowed.
Which the office was, of course.
“No word from Thibault's people,” Faulkner said, sinking into the chair next to Olivia.
He stared at Max, and Max stared back like a mirrored sphinx. Someone would have to talk next, but with the hammers of pain resounding in Olivia's head, she wasn't about to make idle chatter.
Faulkner broke first,
“Sir, I was just thinking, this might be some sort of retribution. For what we did to Emanuel. And his agents.”
“Divine justice? What a quaint idea! I had no idea there was a... shall we say divine? Power which could punish us. No, I rather think that Thibault was betrayed by Saboteur as well, hmm?”
“So then-”
“Let me finish, my dear Mr. Faulkner,” Max began a slow pacing.
He had a military precision to his walk. Olivia found the pace of his immaculate shoes comforting.
“Thibault also benefited from Emanuel's removal,” said Max, like a burst.
He resumed the pacing and staring straight ahead.
“If you'd like, sir, I can go,” said Faulkner, rising a little.
“Sit,” said Max. Faulkner sat.
Max wheeled to stare at them,
“The Party leaders must be made to understand that this was Thibault's blunder. We thereby raise ourselves in their estimation.”
Olivia wondered if Max meant all of them, or if he had taken up the royal We.
Max wheeled toward them and froze, in a poise of alert elegance.
The phone rang. Max picked it up and merely cleared his throat.
“Yes, naturally,” he said, then, “Must I remind you what an inconvenience this is?... Oh, I have barely gotten started.... Two hours, then.”
He hung up. Olivia took the ice away again, and caught a glimpse of her purpled face in Max's mask.
“I am not overfond of the telephone,” said Max.
“Was that the Party?” asked Faulkner.
“No, no,” Max gave them a smile that was more of a snarl, “It seems Mr. Khilkov has escaped his captors. We are to fetch him at the train depot in Compiegne at our earliest convenience.”
Oliva grabbed her bag.
“Apparently... ahem... he's been riding the rails like a vagrant. Shall we?”
He motioned with a sweep of his arm toward the door. Olivia trotted out as fast as her miserably sore body would take her. Faulkner drove, with Olivia in front and Max in the back seat.
They reached the train yard two hours later, with the horizon tinted like fire behind the abandoned boxcars. Olivia's ice had long ago turned into a useless sack of water and she sat with her face burning and ringing with pain, searching the dim mass of traincars for Valentin.
And then, a thick voice with an underlayer of rough gravel came from next to her window,
“Well if it isn't the fucking cavalry.”
Max threw the door open and Valentin collapsed into the car, smelling like sweat, dirt, and cheap gin. His clothes fit all wrong, and seemed to have once belonged to a farm laborer.
Max edged farther against his car window.
“Ah, the veritable barnyard is with you, I see,” he said, and simpered.
“Give me your fuckin flask,” Valentin stuck his hand between the front seats.
Faulkner recoiled, dug out his trusty flask of whiskey, and stuck in in Valentin's palm.
Khilkov took a long drink and stared at Olivia. He attempted a laugh, then,
“What's a woman like you doing in a place like this?”
“Picking up washed-up old Russians, apparently,” she told him, keeping the smashed side of her face away from him.
Not that he was in a spectacular condition. A thick growth of salt-and-pepper stubble overtook the lower half of his face. His eyes lay at the center of dark circles, his nose was bruised and swollen, and his hair looked like a thatch of weeds.
Olivia's stomach twisted, pinching below her ribs. She wanted to grab him and hold him nestle her head under his chin. Once he'd bathed, of course. Too bad Max put a damper on any such possibility.
“Mr. Khilkov,” he said, swiveling his masked head, “The instant we arrive in Paris, you must dictate a full report. We have already had to close the supperclub, I need to know how far the damage reaches, hmmm?”
“They didn't fuckin break me,” said Valentin, “Stuck skewers in my hands and feet, but that just takes some antiseptic. Someone give me a cigarette.”
Faulkner supplied that too, and Valentin sucked in the first drag so hard his lungs rebelled. He coughed painfully for a minute, while Max covered his mouth and giggled. When Valentin got his breath back, and a few successful gulps of smoke, he said,
“Dante has scars on his wrist.”
The unspoken awe hung in the air as they left the trainyard and skirted the town of Compiegne. Finally Valentin went on,
“I'll save in for my report. Vile fuckin English.”
“Oh, don't keep us in suspense, my dear Khilkov,” Max's fingers edged along the window, a gesture that was almost nervous, almost unsettled.
“Not like these,” Valentin pulled up his sleeve, showing the jagged scars crossing his forearm, “Like punctures, like a dog or wolf or some toothy animal try to get him. I'd know the bastard on sight, disguise or no fucking disguise.”
Max kept his unblinking, narrow gaze pinned to Valentin's arm and said,
“Must I remind you? This is far from the first time your.... carnal desires have caused you injury.”
“I got this from the fucking Germans!” Valentin brandished his scarred arm, then turned back to his flask.
“And if you hadn't wanted to be in bed with that woman, you wouldn't have taken a bullet for her,” Max bared his teeth for a second, something only Valentin saw.
“I'm not a fucking mastermind like your royal fucking majesty,” he shot back, “I show up when they tell me to show up, I kill who they tell me to kill. They tell me to get this agent across the border, I get her across the border. You tell me to work with this unpalatable bastard named Sabotuer, to make friendly with him and so on-”
Max cut him off with a high laugh, the motion making Valentin's reflection distend across his mask like a deformed snake.
“Well, it's good to have you back, Sir,” said Faulkner, now speeding toward Paris, “That Sabouteur did a real number on us. And Thibault, I guess.”
“He's as good as dead already,” Olivia said, then fell back into silence.
The countryside was calming, like a quilt of green shades that wrapped her senses in something-that-wasn't-Valentin. She would see him later, after she put some makeup on. After he gave his report to Max and washed whatever wounds the capitalist skewers had given him and shaved his sandpaper beard. He would be halfway through his bottle of vodka by then, and she could rub his shoulders and watch every crease in his face as he grimaced and scowled. Then she could tell him what an infernal fucking moron he was and make him hold ice against her miserably wrecked face.
For now, she would just stay quiet.
Another minute of awkward silence slipped by, until Max cleared his throat. Even Faulkner looked toward him, in a quick glance away from the road.
Max placed a finger along the side of his mouth, a gesture that should have been comic.
“Oh dear,” he said, “The- shall we say mysterious?- Saboteur and Miss Ozanne have returned to England. Dare we pursue them? Or will the task of destroying Thibault prove to much for us.”
“Stay tuned to find out,” Valentin muttered.
But there was no suspense, in the long run. Max always had his way. It was just a matter of how many bodies hit the floor in the process.
Also, for everyone who wants Valentin to die already, I have a video for you. It's perfect!
SABOTEUR VS. VALENTIN KHILKOV