Chapter Text
1989.
It was an earlier morning.
The sun hasn’t risen yet. Even though the window was wide open, there was no loud chatter or car tires swooshing against the asphalt - the Moscow streets were still empty.
Except for the long, obscure, crackling boho lamp in the corner, the room wasn’t lit by anything. Oblonski liked to think it was better like this - when the lighting was dim. That way it was harder to see his facial features as clearly. For some reason it mattered.
As for the details he could gather about this place in the murky light, it was just as normal-looking as any other apartment in the USSR. The living room, where they currently were, wasn’t equipped with much furniture - a squeaky couch in shades of deep brown, a cupboard with glass slide-doors against the wall in front of it and a small tv on the commode against the same wall right next to this monstrosity. There was also, just as always, a carpet, hanging like an exquisite painting, right behind the couch. The parquet floor was naked and dirty. This and spiderwebs in the corners indicated that nobody had visited here for a long time.
Karamazov, with his face turned towards the darkness outside, looked just as collected as always, but Oblonski, observing him from the corner of the room, knew something was out of place. The smoldering end of a cigarette between his fingers was reflected as a bright reddish spot in the glass of an open window. The smoke was stirring lazily in the yellow lamp light, before seeping out into the night.
He couldn’t quite remember if Karamazov ever smoked, but his gut was telling him that this sight wasn’t right. He couldn’t help but switch his gaze to the agent’s silhouette, trying to understand why can’t he remember if his field partner had any bad habits or not. He knew it was none of his business, knew he shouldn't ever question anything, but since the beginning of this mission of theirs without exaggeration everything felt wrong, which made him doubt the smallest things.
The silence was soon enough gone, taking his thoughts away with it.
“So am I… Allowed an explanation after all?” The third person in the room spoke from the couch. It was the man, whose name Oblonski didn’t yet find out. This pale, sickly-looking guy with a thin moustache was a scientist of a kind - from Karamazov’s words he knew that much. Being a bit older and not having the moustache and the aftershave rash on his face, he would have resembled doctor Shulgin a whole lot.
“No,” Karamazov mumbled in response. “Zip the mitten, Gorelkin.”
Gorelkin. He definitely didn't know anyone by that name.
“Well, okay.” The man whispered, going back to rubbing the skin between his fingers.
“Such a shame I can't kill you.” Karamazov added after a pause. A quiet sigh escaped his lungs as he shook the ash off the cigarette tip. “Let me tell you one thing” - he turned around to meet the other’s gaze. Gorelkin started coughing when the smoke spread across the room. His chest was wheezing quietly - a strangely familiar sound that Oblonski forced himself to ignore - “you should be happy to get out of that place. Because I can tell you for a fact, you're not coming back.”
On the man’s face there was a surprise, shock even. Whatever response he was expecting, it definitely wasn’t this. A thought certainly flashed through his mind - ‘are they going to kill me?’
“What do you mean I’m… Not coming back?”
“I mean you’re never seeing those black-stained walls again, that’s what. Is there any other meaning to ‘you’re not coming back’ or what?” After eyeing Gorelkin, he chuckled with amusement. “Unclench your anus, you’re not dying. It’s not some subtle hint or me trying to keep you intrigued until the last minute. I’m not telling you because I can’t yet, not because I don’t want to. Although that, maybe, too.” He took one last drag and put the butt out on the windowsill, before throwing it outside, onto the wet pavement down below. The old deadbolt slid into place with a creek, when he shut the window. “Where I'm taking you, people with brains are treated somewhat better. And, fortunately for you, you're not stupid, so no more work in dirty moldy basements.”
“And where… Is that? Exactly? The place you’re taking me?” Gorelkin clutched his fists, slowly rubbing the thumbs on his knuckles.
“You'll find out.” Karamazov squinted, glancing at the clock stuck on the wall above the TV.
“So, since he” - Anton’s gaze met Oblonski's eyes, when he briefly looked into the corner of the room - “took me in a hurry and without any generals or colonels in sight, I'm guessing the relocation is not sanctioned by the State?”
The agent pouted, raising his eyebrows:
“Yeah, something like that. Depending on who we’re talking about. Not sanctioned by the USSR. Not by the whole of the official forces at least.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Gorelkin asked with a frown.
“You'll find out.”
He puffed through his nose with slight annoyance and took a breath in to ask something more, but didn't get to even start the question. The phone on one of the cupboard shelves rang loudly and the scientist flinched, as if from a gunshot.
“Jesus, finally.” Karamazov picked up the receiver. “Are we ready?... Got it. He’ll be there in twenty minutes.” The call ended with a quiet click as the agent put the receiver back down. “Soldier, you're in.”
With no hesitation, Oblonski walked out of the dark corner and headed for the door. He had already received his orders. He knew exactly what ‘you’re in’ meant.
“Where are you sending him to?” Gorelkin asked with slight concern. As Oblonski opened the outrance door, a dry response reached his ears:
“You'll find out later, if you’re lucky.”
As soon as he stepped outside the block building, the brisk autumn air hit his skin. He could feel the early coolness even through the mask. His head has been all over the place. Maybe this would sober him up.
The slight wind blew the hair into his face, but Oblonski didn’t pay much attention to it. He had learned to ignore it a long time ago. After all the years and years of his service, things that caused him physical discomfort have become minor. Easily unnoticed.
Oblonski was in plain sight for just a moment, before taking the path, where he was accompanied only by shadows. He would have known, if someone was following him, but, even if the tail had somehow gone unnoticed, he was moving so quickly and so quietly, squeezing through narrow alleys and taking sharp turns to streets that felt like abandoned even during daytime, nobody had a single chance of keeping up with his pace. Now he was nothing more than a fleeting shadow. An invisible silhouette, a glimpse of which, caught by anyone sane, would have been considered a figment of imagination. Moving through the emptiness of city streets, before reaching his destination and putting action to given orders, he was becoming one with the cold, wet pavement and rain on the rooftops. He melted into the darkness. He felt the city sleep and could count each of its quiet, measured breaths. It was during those moments of calm before the storm, when he felt his best. The most at peace, without anyone's eyes or hands all over him. Woven from shadow, silence and fear, here was where he could become one with his surroundings and vanish from existence while still keeping the pleasant ambiguous illusion of freedom, even if only for a flash.
When he reached the Okhotny Ryad subway station, it was still dark. The station would open in over forty minutes, so there wasn’t a single soul around, when he ran down the stairs underground from the street. His boots didn’t make any sound as he did so.
His equipment - besides the mask - was another thing he loved about this job. All of it was lightweight and yet, from the waist upwards - bulletproof. It had countless hidden and visible weaponry pockets, was fitted neatly onto his body, tailored exactly according to his measurements, and, of course, the soles of his boots were made from a material that allowed him to move not just quietly - silently. Frankly, he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard the sound of his own steps.
For a moment Oblonski thought about how weird all of it was again. The fact that he couldn’t remember a thing from the past if he tried to dig deeper and the fact that Karamazov took him to Moscow in a hurry to complete an, as he had overheard from his talk with the Gorelkin man, unsanctioned mission. That wheeze in Gorelkin’s lungs that definitely reminded him of something… Why was everything this out of order?
Know your place - he scolded himself. It wasn’t his part, to question his supervisors.
The station entrance was closed and the escalators weren’t working yet, but at the end of the stairs there was a man waiting for him. Judging by his outfit, it was a subway employee. He, clearly, had no idea what to expect, because his jaw dropped for a second, as soon as he took a better glimpse of his contact. The man straightened up and cleared his throat.
“Oblonski.” He nodded as a greeting, as if making sure he's seeing the right person. Oblonski nodded in response and the employee turned around, leading him through the entrance. “Let’s go.”
They went down the escalators and reached the platform. The lights were already lit, but it was empty and unsettlingly silent. The smell here reminded him of the place, where the KGB usually kept him, when he wasn't working. For some reason, it also brought a faint memory of the white endless tundra and someone's blood on the snow, but he shook it off, before he could think about it thoroughly.
“You take it from here. I didn't see you.” The man said, already turning to walk back up an escalator, but Oblonski stopped him, touching his shoulder. The muscles under his palm tightened. The employee turned around with a silent question in his eyes. He tapped on his wrist in a meaningful gesture - a place where the watch would be, if he wore one.
“What do you… Oh, the time?”
He nodded in response.
The man jerked up one of his sleeves and glanced at the wristwatch. “Four forty three. That's it?”
He nodded again, and then once more, in response to:
“I can fuck off then?”
Oblonski was left alone as the echo of the employee’s steps was dying out. His part in this was as simple as it gets - make a mess, as loud and bloody as possible, and be long gone by the moment it happens. Not his usual kind of job, but those were the orders this time.
He jumped down on the tracks, being careful not to touch the rails, and walked further into the tunnel. Then slipped his fingers into a hidden pocket under his vest, taking out one of the bombs that Karamazov had given him a while prior. It was a metal construction around the size of a tennis ball, with a little display on top of it. He hadn't ever seen anything like this before yesterday, but Karamazov had explained how to handle the mechanism.
In less than two seconds the ball was attached to one of the wet walls of the tunnel with a soft click. Oblonski pressed the sensor and the screen lit up with ‘10:00’. Spinning the little gear on its side made the number rise. The train that needed to be blown up would be at the platform by five forty and stand here for around two minutes, which meant that it would be passing this exact point at five forty two. That math left him with the exact countdown. After the number had reached ‘58:05’, Oblonski moved on to the next patch of the wall to do the same trick with the second charge. When all four of them were set on both sides of the tunnel, he walked over to every one, setting the timers off and came back to the platform to then get out to the surface.
Just like that, the job was done. Now he only had to find a way to pull his thoughts as far away from its purpose as possible.