The Freelancers

Fuck, sex tapes were the worst.

Tyler Dewar squirmed in his seat as his highly trained $50,000-a-year-educated ears astutely picked up every slurping sound and groan. Think about ice water. Cold, cold, freezing bite dancing up his skin. Trembling and shivers sending the tight throbbing away.

He cursed under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Think unsexy thoughts. This couldn't be happening at work.

The man on video unbuttoned his shirt slowly, a funny after thought considering his pants were already down around his ankles. The fabric slid open, his sculpted chest rising and falling with each pant and moan.

Tyler was supposed to be translating. The donkey-like "E-ah E-ah" calls of the man repeating over and over again until Tyler's long scribble of Yes! Yes! Yes! fell off the page. He was too hard to think straight. This hot and bothered he was incapable of paying attention to plosive retroflex consonants as he should. He wasn't even sure if he should be translating moans. ‘Yes' was a word technically, but did anyone want a transcribe of Kazakh dirty talk?

Peeking over his shoulder at the open side of his cubicle he wondered if he could get one off before someone walked by. His racing heart pumped blood down below his waist even faster. Masturbating at work would get him fired basically anywhere else. At the CIA, though, it just might get him his own office.

His fingers moved up and down over his fly, even that slight contact, even from his own hand, sent a buzz of excitement through him. He imagined what the air conditioned office air would feel like on his exposed skin. How his fist would tighten and his own pre-cum would serve as lubrication--

"Dewar!"

A face appeared over the edge of his cubicle. Fumbling with his earphones he managed to make enough noise to cover his heavy lust filled breaths and look like a complete idiot in the process.

"Yeah," he gasped, tried to force a smile, crossed his legs and pulled his chair closer to his desk. His coworker-- a case worker, a real CIA agent-- raised an eyebrow before handing over a file folder.

"You can translate this shit right?"

"Uhhh...' He fumbled with the file, fingers fluttering through the pages as various scraps slid out and drifted to the floor. "Depends what language ‘this shit' is in."

"I dunno. That garbage they speak when they're not speaking Arabic or Russian."

Tyler glanced over the documents, relaxing as he recognized the familiar weaving of borrowed Slavic terms through Persian grammar. Hundreds of intercepted text messages and emails, the archaic structures provided confusing clues as to their origins.

"Theses are from Tajikistan?" he asked without looking up.

"Yes sure, one of those ‘stans."

"Then, probably."

His coworker nodded. "Good." A statement which preceded a near avalanche of similar files down onto his desk. Tyler could only blink as he was pat on the head and left to it, pornographic images frozen on surveillance video.

The case worker walked back to his desk and his early retirement plans. Tyler sat up enough to scan the floor: the tufts of hair peeking out from each dull cubicle, each belonging to a different downtrodden, dead-end bureaucrat. Most of these people would never leave the country on assignment. Their spy games consisted of pushing paper around the country to hundreds of offices filled with other riskless spies and their support staff.

With the KGB disassembled and the Soviet Union dead, the CIA had no one to play with. America's real enemies didn't play by the nice rules. They didn't roughly escort foreign agents to the border when they discovered them: they shot them, tortured them, cut off their heads or imprisoned them for decades in concentration camp like conditions. As a result the CIA was gradually becoming less and less hands on; risk adverse to the point of jumping at its own shadow.

The handful of agents left who did resort to traditional intelligence gathering usually did so by not bothering to tell headquarters until after the fact. One mistake, even a small bureaucratic one, even the inconsequential ones, and they were sentenced to a life time in the cubicles.

Tyler glanced at the frozen screen of the blurry blow job one final time before he turned it off and shoved the DVD back into a growing pile of files. Nothing killed a boner like paperwork.

Dmitry Tomlin loved Washington.

He loved everything about it. He loved its four seasons. He loved the buildings, the political bustle of it. He loved the dining options and the complete lack of tycoons and wannabe aristocrats. The rich, he found, preferred to live in prettier more opulent cities and let long trails of money cast their influence from afar. That made his life easier. It removed unnecessary people who did not understand the nature of his day job and often mixed it up with some James Bond type fantasy.

Best thing about Washington? The Civilization, the bureaucracy, the feeling that if he really needed to he could just shoot someone in the head and prance back to the embassy where there was no extradition treaty between the US and Russia. Whoops, too bad suckers. That's foreign service for you.

He hadn't, as of yet, taken advantage of that little perk, but he was feeling more and more like he might every time FBI Special Agent David Stein included his work email at the embassy on a vast email chain letter forward.

Dmitry took a sip of his coffee and stared at the security footage over his subordinate-- Alexander Sanshin-- shoulder. On the screen was a teenage boy, or what appeared to be a teenager boy anyway, standing where he shouldn't be just waiting around for something.

He could be any one of the million and a half English teachers that applied for visas to go labor for rich oil companies in Siberia. Why any fat, happy, American college kid would want to live in one of the most polluted cities in the world and freeze his ass off with nothing to do and no one to talk to Dmitry would never understand.

But since Sanshin had the camera fixed on him, obviously he wasn't an English teacher.

"Who is he?"

"CIA."

"Cute." Dmitry snorted. "Who is he really?"

"CIA." Sanshin's eyes glittered along with his big toothy smile. Toothy save for the front one he had gotten knocked out during an assignment in Latvia that he refused to have fixed. They never talked about the details, but judging from situation Dmitry always figured Sanshin had done something stupid. He always seemed extra proud of his stupid decisions.

"He's not CIA, he's barely out of kindergarten."

"That's what his credentials say." Sanshin held them up and waved them under Dmitry's nose until he snatched them out of his hand.

Tyler Dewar, CIA.

Sanshin stared at the ceiling with a huge grin on his face as his chair spun him around. "He asked for you," he said somewhere between the third and four rotation. "He asked for you specifically."

"You mean he asked to see the Security Attache?"

"No I mean he came up to the window and I said 'I want to see Dmitry Tomlin' ... you know he asked for you specifically specifically."

Dmitry turned his attention back to the boy on the security camera. God, was the CIA really recruiting so young now? There's no way this could be legitimate, he didn't look like he even shaved. If only they had recruitment policies like this during the Cold War, everything would have been completely different.

"So what does he want?" Dmitry finally asked.

Sanshin shrugged and spun his chair around again. "He said he has some information for you."

The older Russian scoffed. "Do they think we're stupid? The CIA has information for us? Where's Sasha?"

"He went to get something to eat, I think."

Dmitry slammed his hands down on the cushy office chair and brought Sanshin's play to a stop.

"Get Sasha back here."

"Why?" Sanshin asked.

"Just do it."

It was a few minutes before Alexander "Sasha" Asimov poked his head in. The look he was wearing revealed nothing of his former career as a sniper in the Russian army. He seemed much more comfortable staying out in the hallway, away from Tomlin's scrutiny.

"Sasha," Tomlin did not look at him. It would be better to keep him focused. "Go out there and see what this Dewar wants. Go be Dmitry Tomlin for me."

Sasha's eyes widened just slightly. "Me?"

"Yes."

"You want me to pretend I'm you?"

"Yes," Dmitry said again.

"Uh..." Sasha took a minute to stare at the security camera feed. The baby faced intelligence officer on the screen fidgeted as he sat in some of the most ungodly uncomfortable chairs on the planet. He looked harmless, but even still Sasha had to force himself to agree. "Okay."

The door had barely closed before Sanshin started up again.

"Why can't you just go and be Dmitry Tomlin?"

"Because Alexander Sergeyevich, I want to see how much he knows. If he doesn't know my face, why give him that information for free when strategically we are better off holding it back?"

"Ah-haaaa," the younger, slightly spastic FSB officer clucked, rocking his seat more aggressively as Sasha's long legs and narrow hips stepped into the frame. His interest was intensified by the mute movement of lips. The hum of the monitor and the squeaking of Sanshin's chair with each excited swing irritated Dmitry's eardrums.

"You're making me seasick."

He did not obey without a huff of annoyance, but once the image of Sasha Asimov shaking the supposed CIA agent's hand flickered silently across the screen, all was forgotten. Sanshin leaned towards the display as if he could make out the sounds coming from cameras with no microphones. As if he could tell what was going on through sheer will and telepathy.

"Mr Dewar?"

Sasha Asimov hated these sort of tasks. He was not good at these things. He did not really understand what Tomlin wanted him to do, but any task in English was sure to be a nuisance. He was not especially good with people, not especially good at conning them, and not especially good with predicting their next moves.

He was especially good with a Savage 10FCP McMillan rifle, but that didn't seem relevant in this case.

Mr. Dewar was built top heavy with broad shoulders and narrow hips. His arms had enough definition to suggest a gym membership, his legs long and carved. As Asimov ran his glance down he noted how nicely shaped the American's backside was before he could control himself.

This was definitely not the appropriate time for that.

"Mr. Tomlin?" Dewar said slowly, his eyes examining every inch of Asimov from top to bottom. Sasha recognized that look, the sense that something was not quite right. It was then that he remembered that he and Dmitry were almost two decades apart in age and that if Tyler Dewar had the brains to look up Dmitry's service record prior to coming he would easily see right through the ruse.

True, Sasha didn't have the youngest face for his age anyway, but when he stood around like an awkward teenager the discrepancy became obvious.

"Yes," he gritted his teeth and said it anyway, even though he really didn't want to. He wanted to yell at this kid, tell him to get the hell out of the embassy and not waste their time. But Dmitry wanted to know and that was more important than his own comfort.

Dewar looked around nervously. "Is there somewhere private we can talk?"

Great. FML, Sasha thought sulkily before indicating down the hall.

The room he took him to was technically an interrogation room. It looked like an interrogation room. It smelled like an interrogation room. It had furniture and two way mirrors that might as well have been ordered out of the Interrogating Design section of the Ikea catalogue. Sasha had always assumed these things were universal world-wide, but if Dewar noticed he didn't comment on it.

"So what is it?" Sasha snapped.

The severity with which he said this made Dewar sit in the first metal chair available with a barely contained jump. Then annoyance started to seep in and he leaned back with a complete different attitude. No longer an awkward looking kid, his manner shifted to some tough/cocky/confident concoction.

Sasha found it brattish and irritating.

"I have some information."

Intellectually Sasha knew he should smooth things over, gain Tyler Dewar's trust and pump him for as much as possible. But mostly he just wanted to get this over with and get back to his actual job. "And what is it?" he asked, back teeth cutting into the words to keep him from hissing them.

"I need to know that I can trust you to handle this information discretely."

To this Sasha didn't know what to say. His first instinct was to laugh at the notion that Russia's ultra super secretive intelligence organization couldn't keep a freaking secret. But the FSB-- and to a greater degree the KGB before it-- secrecy was tempered by a brazen indelicate streak. Breaches seemed to come up at the oddest times and nuke decades of quality spying.

His second instinct was to just blindly promise whatever he needed to get what Dmitry wanted him to get, but he felt odd about insincerity. He was quickly discovering that while the mind numbing bureaucracy of a desk job was more or less the same regardless of the division, he didn't like this cloak and dagger stuff of the FSB. He liked shooting. He felt comfortable with having a target and hitting it.

"Sure," he forced himself to say.

"Sure?" Dewar echoed.

"Yes? What is it already?"

"I tell you I have classified information that I need you to handle discreetly and you say 'Sure'?"

What did he want? An oath in blood?

"You came here to tell me," Sasha replied testily. "So tell it."

"I need to know that you understand the position I'm in here." Dewar's hand was a fist, Sasha couldn't stop looking at it. Whatever this information was, at the very least he believed it to be very important.

When Sasha came back he tried not to look too disappointed. He also tried not to look Dmitry in the eye, or cave into Sanshin's immediate and overly aggressive badgering.

"Well, what did he say? What did he say? Is he really CIA?"

Sasha shrugged. "He won't tell me."

"What do you mean he won't tell you?"

"I mean..." And then he had to say it because it was easier than regurgitating the whole frustrating non-conversation that basically consisted of Sasha saying "TELL ME!" and Dewar yelling "NO!" right back. "He won't tell me. I think he knows I'm not Dmitry Tomlin."

Even saying the name made his tongue feel like it was burning.

"We could torture him," Sanshin helpfully suggested. "I'm sure Dima has some old KGB persuasion devices back in his closet with his cheap disco suits."

Dmitry "Dima" Tomlin uncrossed his arms with a sigh and a massive eye roll. "I have never in my life owned a disco suit, cheap or otherwise."

"Sure thing Dad."

From the twitch of Dmitry's expression, Sasha decided he better shove the conversation back on track before his superior throttled his colleague. "I think he's legit."

"Do you?"

"Well, I think he could be legit. And if so shouldn't we talk to him? It's not without precedent."

"Hm." The purr in Dmitry's voice vibrated between amused and curious. His reaction was so ambivalent that Sasha felt himself giving in to uncharacteristic chatter.

"Everyone knows you're FSB. There'd be almost no risk--"

"If I go in myself?"

Sasha nodded.

Dmitry remembered the old days of spying. The days at the height of the Cold War where there were whole divisions devoted to spying on other spies. Days when it seemed more information was traded in who was ferrying information to whom than actual military or political secrets.

The game had changed. They still spied on each other, but the real bad guys were stateless. The business of watching the CIA was more like eyeing the competition than targeting a sworn enemy.

Dmitry tossed Tyler's credentials at him flippantly, the leather wallet-like case landing on the metal table with a hard splat and sliding to a stop right in front of the startled American.

"You realize you're committing treason here."

Dmitry did not ask it like a question, despite waiting for an answer while standing behind Tyler. The door closed silently behind him. The lights in the room flickered, one of the fluorescent blocks going out, plunging half the room into shadows.

The American twisted around to see over his shoulder and frowned. "Who are you?"

"Dmitry Tomlin."

Tyler Dewar did not look surprised, but his eyes followed Dmitry suspiciously. He had seen through Sasha, Dmitry realized, but probably on a hunch, not because he knew who he was or anything about him. He was still examining Dmitry for something that might indicate he too was a fake.

"So who was that other guy then?" Tyler asked.

"That's immaterial." Dmitry waved dismissively, pulling up a stiff metal chair to the stiff metal table and folding his hands under his chin. His stare was hard, cold, unimpressed by Tyler's little deductions and seemingly random bits of knowledge. The hum in his voice intensified the effect of the glare, making it all seem more snide, more insultingly cruel. "Impersonating a federal officer is also a crime you know..."

"I'm not impersonating anyone."

"I don't believe you."

"You think I faked my credentials?"

The appalled, incredulous slur from Tyler made him more convincing to Dmitry. He was either the stupidest fraud he'd ever seen or legitimate and terribly naïve as to what could be easily bought with the right number of zeros in a wire transfer.

"I've seen more complicated things faked, and the only way we have of checking is calling around for confirmation."

Tyler paled, his fingers scrapping tensely against the bowed metal surface of the table.

"And that brings us back to the aforementioned treason issue."

"I didn't fake my credentials."

"You're too young to be a case officer."

"I'm-- not a field agent."

No doubt he had some mantra of name-rank-serial number drumming in his head right now. But that prescription only holds when you're taken prisoner; if you're the dumb ass who invites himself in it's a different situation entirely. Tyler folded his hand innocently on his lap as he shifted his weight back and forth in his seat.

What was United States intelligence coming to when their agents could be pressured with a cold look and a disapproving tone of voice?

"An office worker then? A bureaucrat?" He watched the America sink as he loomed over him. A row of blunt black eyelashes hide his expressive brown eyes from further scrutiny, but Dmitry could feel the hairs standing straight against his fingers when they brushed the back of Tyler's neck. "At your age you probably work in a low level division with barely any classified information and no access to anything we don't already know."

"I'm not, uh, that either."

His skin was warm and soft just under his ear. The fact that these touches intimidated Tyler made them all the more effective.

"Then?"

"I'm--" He hesitated again, his youth keeping him from schooling his expression to hide calculated deceptions. He was transparent like a piece of glass. Dmitry wondered why Sasha had any trouble getting him to spill everything in his head out on the table. All it took was a look from Dmitry and Dewar finally settled on the truth. "I'm a translator."

Now that did sound conceivable. Translators were always in demand at all ages and if he spoke the right languages the CIA would ignore all his childish ineptitudes. He could have extremely high security clearance.

"I see," Dmitry said. He did not pull away from Tyler suddenly, but with a curtness that must have burned the younger man. Deliberately dismissive, Dmitry took his seat at the table, knowing that the regret of having revealed something he shouldn't have would do the rest of the work for him. "What languages? Russian?"

Dewar shook his head. "Turkic and Persian based. Mostly Kazakh and various dialects of Farsi."

"Pashto? Dari?"

The American didn't hide his surprise. "Yes."

Dmitry understood, he was one of the little grunts working if not in then certainly on Afghanistan. That black hole Russia had been sucked into that the Americans had taunted and condemned them for, only to then immediately fall into themselves. It would be amusing if it wasn't so sad.

"So then what's so important that you would risk treason to pass it on?"

Tyler flinched at the word ‘treason'. When he looked down at his shoes his fluffed and gelled brown hair hid his face, but experience helped Dmitry imagine what he was thinking. Like so many young idealists he made his decisions based the ethical principals instilled in him through Hollywood movies. Treason? It wasn't treason if his intentions were good. It wasn't treason if there were innocents to be saved.

Still very much an innocent himself, the young Tyler Dewar might make the perfect asset if they could confirm he wasn't a double agent.

The American looked up with desperate eyes. His lips parted-- pink with edges of white where the delicate skin had dried and was beginning to crack. He swallowed and Dmitry felt as if he could see the thoughts running back and forth between his ear telling him this was the moment he had come he for.

He split it out all at once, all the grace and dignity completely abandoned. "For the last four months or so there's been a lot of talk about drugs coming into Russia from the Kazakhstan border."

Dmitry picked at his nails and shrugged. "Afghan war lords have been running heroin into the country for decades. We can't possibly catch them all and no one is really all that interested in trying."

"It's not heroin," Dewar replied awkwardly.

Dewar's many rehearsals of this conversation were obvious. He had thought about this for a long time before getting up the nerve to come over here. He had looked up Dmitry's name, thought about all the ways he would lay the information calmly and confidently on the table. Imagined the warm praise and thanks he would be showered with in return.

"No?" Dmitry made eye contact for only a moment, severe and earnest brown eyes begging him to take this seriously. But take what seriously? Drug trafficking through their former satellites wasn't exactly what he'd call 'intelligence' by any stretch of the imagination. Everybody knew about it. "Cocaine then?"

"Counterfeit pharmaceuticals."

Dmitry felt his chair rock as he straightened up. That was it? That was what American youth were willing to betray their country for?

"You want us to stamp out a generic drug ring?" He took pleasure in the younger man's squirms under his scrutiny.

There was a defensive babble of horrific sounding details: black market, contamination, mafia involvement, deaths of innocents. All the little check boxes appeared to be checked.

Dewar reached into his bag and pulled out a plain manila folder filled with papers, which he then went through with the quick precision of a man obsessed.

"I've been tracking it for a while, there's a huge criminal enterprise selling fake prescription drugs in Russia. They seem to have some sort of outpost in Belarus to move people--"

"People?"

"Mostly women, some young men."

"In Belarus?"

"It's an easier path to Western Europe with a huge market in forged documents. They came out of the Belarus and then through various paths eventually into Austria, Germany especially, the Czech Republic too. The talk on the ground is just horrible. Just--"

Dmitry raised his hand and the sound fell completely out of Tyler's mouth. He sat obediently, his hands falling back into his lap as Dmitry examined the papers below him with a look that seethed boredom. They were all in some shit steppe language with sloppy scribbled notations in English in the margin, but there was quite an impressive collection of intelligence here.

Problem was Dmitry knew right away it wasn't American intelligence.

It was the collection sites and methods and gave it away. It was hard to imagine American agents conducting such thorough surveillance practically under the nose of the Russian empire. Dmitry even recognized a few names that the FSB had recruited.

Either their sources were double-dipping, or Tyler Dewar files were in fact large collections of Russian intelligence that had found its way into American hands.

"--And you are bringing this to me, why?"

Tyler sputtered, then stared at the floor and shrugged his shoulders. "I thought--"

"That we would take care of it with a little polonium 210 perhaps?"

Dewar nodded. Even though it was clear hyperbole, he nodded anyway. His disappointment was thick and heavy, Dmitry could almost smell it on him. Working his way around to Tyler's side, the Russian leaned back against the table and stared down at him. The almost flirtatious break in protocol startled Tyler enough to produce a particularly doe-y expression, confused and a little flushed as Dmitry ran his thumb over his lower lip.

At the touch Tyler Dewar froze and-- recognizing for the first time that this was an interrogation tactic-- he forced himself to relax. The combination made his body sway roughly and his expression tighten as he forgot to breathe.

"You've been biting your lip," Dmitry noted, his own thoughts calculating thousands of likely conclusions: definitely not an operative, but was he a dangle? Was he a double agent the CIA were sending their way to feed them false information and disrupt their own intelligence process? He had yet to say the magic words. He had yet to ask for money in exchange for this information. Foreign agents offering intel out of the goodness of their own heart was the first red flag, but his elevated anxiety levels seemed like the product of an overactive imagination more than an act. Dmitry had confronted dangles before. They tended to be confident, smug, generous and preachy with the ideology they had adopted for their assignment. The good ones were convincingly bitter, faked drinking and gambling problems. They never turned down an opportunity to rant about the evils of American capitalism at length.

He had yet to encounter one that had been instructed to behave as if he sequester himself in a sad apartment full of paperbacks and video games. And he'd never seen one bait the hook with information so significant and yet feign ignorance of that significance.

He was interesting: all rich browns, youthful shapes and-- there was no better description-- porn star lips. Under the old KGB they had used attractive undercover agents to entrap and blackmail information out of diplomats and government employees, but if that's what this was a young, nimble boy was a strange choice for such an operation.

What did the CIA have scribbled down in their file on him?

He let his fingers linger on those lips, enjoying the sadistic thrill of watching Tyler's body behave as if it was strapped down. Dmitry allowed himself to indulge in fleeting thoughts about what those lips might be able to do before he looked up at the small, unassuming video camera faithfully recording.

Pity.

Conclusions about Tyler Dewar's legitimacy were going to take more than one meeting. So when Dmitry had finished delighting in the translator's awkward indecision he dispatched him with a pat on the head. The next moves had to be carefully planned: they had to confirm the origins of Tyler's intel without ruffling any political feathers in Moscow, they had to confirm Tyler Dewar's identity, his access to such intelligence and test him without arousing the suspicions of his colleagues.

It was more than they were charged to do at the embassy, but for many months there had been suspicion of a leak somewhere within Russian intelligence. Here was confirmation. The opportunity to work on something useful for a while was too tempting.

That was until he opened the door to their office and got hit in the face with a paper triangle projectile.

There they were, Sanshin and Sasha, playing table football with documents marked for shredding.

A glare sent them scrambling back to their stations and, presumably, their work. Dmitry wondered if people still defected anymore and what it would take to lure some competent agents to his command.

"Have these faxed to FPS border security." He handed Tyler's folder to Sanshin with a grunt. "Immediately."

"Okay, sure." And yet Sanshin didn't stand but slowly thumbed through the contents of the manila file. "This is from the CIA?"

The distressing thing, Dmitry realized, was not Sanshin and Sasha's ass-hattery but the fact that he had actually become so accustomed to the ass-hattery he no longer cared whether Sanshin spent fifteen minutes gawking over confidential material rather than doing what he had been instructed to.

The young Russian agent flinched and passed something out of the folder to Sasha. Dmitry noticed there was no faxing involved in this yet, which made him rub his eyes with the heels of both hands to keep him from tearing his hair out.

"What?" Dmitry snarled. "What is it? And why is it so impossible for you to do what you're told without digressions?"

"But Dima there are pictur--"

"Fax." He snapped his fingers and pointed towards the door. "Now."

Sanshin opened his mouth to say something, but another glare from Dmitry and he abruptly changed his mind and skittered out. The sound of his footsteps had barely faded when Dmitry turned to his other minion.

"Sasha,"

The sniper snapped to attention, swallowing nervously before angling his chin up and glancing over at his boss. Unlike his partner in crime, Sasha Asimov was not so blase about issues of rank and hierarchy. It was disturbing to think how Alex Sanshin's loose cannon ways might be corroding those values.

"This Dewar, I want you to handle him."

"Sorry?"

"I'm making you his handler. As useless and uninteresting as his material was this time, we can't ignore that a CIA employee just willingly handed over documents from his agency. I want you to evaluate him and recruit him."

"Recruit him? Me?"

"Why not?"

"Sir, he doesn't trust me."

"Trust takes time. And the fact that you were unable to convince him of a simple lie means he probably thinks he's smarter than you. Don't ask him directly for intelligence at first: just listen, pay attention, collect little details. Assuming he's not a dangle, he's already committed an act of espionage. He will dig his own grave, all he needs is for you to hold the shovel."

Sasha glanced back down at his papers.

"Sasha."

"How should I approach him, Sir?"

"I'm sure you'll find an excuse."

"Oh baby yeah..."

Tyler Dewar had no idea what it was about breasts. Squeezing fatty lumps of tissue practically anywhere else on a woman's body wouldn't exactly be erotic, but there was something about the two perfect smooth deposits that drove him crazy. Perhaps it was their round shape and healthy firmness, or just understanding how sensitive they were, how it was a touch that could not be missed. He loved fondling them, pushing them together and staring at the channel of cleavage, watching them shape-shift from droplets to round mounds to free hanging slapping flesh as they changed positions. He loved the feeling of the skin around the nipple tightening as his tongue worked over it and the little bumps of goose pimple flesh against each kiss.

He loved boobs.

The beings they were attached too ... not so much.

Armaghan meant "gift" in Farsi, but it always made Tyler think ‘Armageddon'. He supposed given the circumstances-- the war torn country in which they had met and Tyler had dutifully, chivalrously smuggled her out of-- it was fitting.

Armaghan had dark, short hair, the stubbly beginnings of a beard prickling the smooth round curves of her jaw and upper lip...

And those two wonderful breasts.

"Don't get rid of them," he said.

She tried to shove the chuckle that escaped under the bed least he hear it. But failing that she mustered up a smile and promised him: "I'll have the surgeon preserve them and put them in a little jar for you."

Tyler frowned. He supposed a bit of humorlessness around certain topics was an unfortunate side effect of their lingering relationship.

"I don't mind the penis, but keep the breasts. They're not that big, no bra and men's tailored shirt you won't even be able to tell they're there."

Another polite smile, he was losing this argument for sure.

"Won't you miss them? Won't you miss this?" He ran his thumb over one hardened numb, grinning as her teeth touched her lower lip to keep bubbling groans inside.

"I want to feel complete."

And he knew he shouldn't argue that, that this was an untouchable topic, but he wanted to say that he wished he had titties. That as a man he thought that would be awesome.

At least Tyler Dewar had the brains to realized that was a stupid thing to say.

Instead he moved kisses down her breast bone and belly, pausing philosophically at her navel long enough to say "you are complete ... to me." and licking along side the wild trail of dark hair. The overgrown pubes hid the surgical scars and created a wonderful illusion of legitimacy around the man-made organs that lay behind her legs. Aesthetically it was a work of art, although it was not fully sensitive and looked more coyly curious when erect than deeply aroused. Still he lavished it with attention, especially at the base where endrogynous zones still remained.

"Tyler..." she breathed, hand working into his hair, nudging him down. He could fit her in his mouth easily and enjoyed doing it as an unconventional display of devotion, even if the experience was incomplete as a sexual act.

He pulled away as he heard the sound of her opening the bedside drawer and rummaging quickly through it. It was a quick exchange: a condom and a tube of lube pressed into his hand with a hard slap. He fumbled like a virgin for the first few moments, but once properly sheathed it was like second nature.

Secretly Tyler was happy that insurance would not cover the removal of her breasts. It meant while she saved he got to watch them bounce up and down, trembling as she arched back through waves of pleasure. It meant that her transformation was incomplete. He didn't know what his girlfriend becoming a man meant for him and he tried not to think about it, but he suspected that Armaghan the he would want a fresh start.

With that all of what they were would be swept away.

The menu for the night was Chinese. Egg rolls and little thermoses of soup.

"What are we going to do when he comes home?" Sasha asked curiously.

"Tie him up, throw him in the trunk and threaten to cut off his ears if he doesn't tell us everything he knows, what else?" Sanshin answered.

"Ha ha. Funny."

"Not kidding," Then in direct contradiction he added: "I don't know, maybe we'll just ask."

He had tried to forget what he had seen in that file. He had tried to convince himself that the issue was being handled by authorities back in Russia with smooth, effective justice that would fill him with nationalistic pride if he could only witness it.

But Alexander Sanshin was a realist. Maybe even a cynic. In any case, he knew it was far more likely that the villains sketched out in Tyler's documents got nothing more than a speeding ticket as they blew passed border control on their way to ill-gotten gains.

He had to know what the CIA was doing with this information.

"And he'll just tell us, just because?"

"He told Dmitry didn't he?"

Sasha chewed sulkily on his egg roll as they sat on a quiet residential street. Tyler Dewar's home across from them was dark and presumably empty, with its pretty little patio and neat barely used furniture.

"What if he's already at home and asleep or something?"

"Sasha, it's 9:30."

Honestly, Sanshin was surprised that Sasha had agreed to come along. He was expecting much more resistance, more worrying about what Dmitry would say, more obsessing about protocol.

"So?"

"So, who goes to bed before 9:30?"

The sun had set hours ago and it was now fully dark, street lamps' flickering orange light highlighting the general shapes of the neighborhood. Nevertheless there were still people on the street; nice looking people, calm and relaxed, some walking home, some chatting casually on their porches with bottles of wine.

Sasha shrugged. "You don't know. Or he could have been sent somewhere on business."

"Or he could be working late and just on his way home now."

An older balding man with wire framed glasses was walking his tiny dog. He was trying not to stare at them, but their black car-- not a suburban car by any stretch of the imagination, but rather like one of those cars you see in long diplomatic convoys flaked by police motorcycles-- stood out like bloody amputated thumbs.

Sasha sank lower in his seat as the little dog sniffed the fire hydrant they were parked in front of and the older man tried to peer through the tinted windows to see how many people were in the car. The sharp noise made when Sanshin slammed his hand down on the horn caused the man and his dog jump back and skitter away.

It also attracted the attention of just about everyone else in the neighborhood.

"Smooth," Sasha noted sarcastically.

"He'll be home soon, don't worry. Then we won't have to have all these nosy people checking us out."

"Or he could have a girlfriend that he's having sex with right now and he won't be back at all tonight."

Sanshin frowned. "Or he could be out with friends and just around the corner at some bar."

"Or he could be dead."

"Why would he be dead?" Sanshin asked.

"I dunno. It happens, especially to people who irritate Dmitry Tomlin."

"Oh pfffttt. Dima is a puppy, what are you talking about?"

Sanshin couldn't believe anyone took the ghost stories about Dmitry's shady early career seriously after they met him in person. The man was too happy in his routine and paperwork to have tasted real spy games.

"How long are we going to sit out here?" Sasha asked.

"Midnight, fine, if he's not home by midnight we'll give up for tonight."

"Eleven."

"What?"

"Let's give up at eleven because at twelve there's this show on TV—"

Sanshin shot him a look, hard and a touch annoyed at having his fun spoiled by Sasha's resistance to the DVR/TiVo revolution. "You are the worst spy ever."

"Says the clandestine services officer who almost set off the car alarm during his stakeout."

"I did not!"

"Would have."

"It was just the horn!"

Sasha opened his mouth to snap something back-- a compliant about his stomach full of greasy Chinese fod, his cramping legs or the lameness of this unpaid overtime-- when something caught his attention.

Gray car, right make, right model, license plat--

"Look, there he is!" Sanshin gasped.

"Finally!"

Sanshin opened the car door and stepped out. He stood, watching the unimpressive gray sedan pull into the driveway, the engine quieted, the lights went out, the car door opened.

He was taller than Sanshin remembered. And thicker. He was wearing a normal business suit which he looked ridiculous in. It made him seem even younger and he was about as comfortable in it as a walrus in formal dining dress.

Tyler turned, saw him and stopped. His hand held the door carefully as he stared. Sanshin realized that he was looking quite expectantly, quite intently at someone who had no reason to know who he was. Not unless the security cameras at the embassy were two-way now.

It was at that moment that Sasha got out of the car. Tyler paled, then looked like he might try to run away, before slowly nodding and heading inside.

Sanshin looked at Sasha and shrugged. Then they followed.

"They're still talking?"

"They're still talking."

"So nothing's been done about this?"

"There was some chatter last week that I just got today about some arrests, raids, but nobody sounds very concerned about it."

Sanshin frowned and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the information in front of him. The other Russian was rarely without an immediate solution or suggestion, so Sasha wasn't sure how to interpret the retrospective break. Counterfeit prescription drugs, when Sasha saw the pictures he thought for sure it was terrorism, biowarfare, genocide, but this was difficult to understand.

"Who does this for a living? Making and selling something like this?"

"I don't know exactly," Tyler admitted. "But I'm taking leave to go find out."

"Find out?" Sanshin repeated, the words sounded hollow and uncharacteristically timid.

"I have some contacts in Romanian that can guide me through Eastern Europe's criminal world, I'm going to see if we can trace these activities back to a source."

Sanshin nodded.

"You two should come with me."

Sasha jerked to attention, not so much at the offer but at the look in his friend's eyes when the offer was extended. "Alex, no" he said.

But anyone could see the fiery, righteous part of Sanshin welding him to this cause. This hopeless cause that had nothing to do with them or their work or their assignment.

"No," he said again, stronger this time. "Dmitry will kill us."

"He doesn't have to know."

"Listen to yourself. He doesn't have to know? What, that we're in the Belarus? We'd have to apply to enter the Belarus."

"Not if we go in as tourists." Sanshin looked at him, serious and set in his ways. He had decided already.

The first thing Dmitry noticed Monday morning was the embassy officer who was not where he belonged. Instead of being posted on guard duty, their fresh off the boat most junior officer was sitting at Sasha's desk rather unhappily going through Sasha's unending mountain of paperwork.

Paperwork was paperwork, the only reason Dmitry had given it to Sasha in the first place was because Sasha's seriousness maximized Sanshin's productivity.

It wasn't that Sanshin wasn't committed to his job. It was just that while he had some tolerance for the necessary boring elements of his employment, he much preferred to play the difference maker in some important task. And so he slacked and fooled around when not stimulated by appropriate levelness of spyness. Sasha, by contrast, had a greater appreciation for both the responsibilities of that change maker role and the horrible things might do working those important jobs. He was shyer because big attention begot big risks, but he was not necessarily without ambition.

"Where's Sasha?" Dmitry asked.

"On vacation." the junior officer answered. Were he not overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work he was covering he probably would have saluted. Even though Dmitry was not a rank or position that got saluted.

"And Sanshin?"

"Also on vacation."

"At the same time?"

The solider shrugged. "Sanshin said something about Cancun? or Miami? I forget."

"Together?"

"Well you know them."

He did. He also knew policy on scheduling vacations, and that he had placed a file full of questionable intel leaked to the Americans in their hands.

If Sanshin was going to Cancun he would have been talking his head off about it for weeks in advance, especially if he was going with Sasha. He would have teased the other Russian for days ('What swimsuit are you bringing?', 'Just don't wear anything too tight because that scares off the girls here!', 'Do you want to scuba?', 'You might be eaten by a shark', 'Sasha do you think it's good to shave before tanning, or does it not matter?')

And yet they were not here, so clearly they went somewhere.

Dmitry picked up his desk phone and stabbed out a number from his rolodex. The poor newbie twisted anxiously over forms he didn't seem to understand as he waited for his call to connect.

"Stein," chirped a voice almost before Dmitry heard the line pick up.

"David, it's Dmitry."

"Oh hey Toms, if you're calling to arrange payment for what you owe in poker losses you can just bring the money on Wednesday night. Texas Hold 'em, nothing fancy this week, you in?"

Another thing Dmitry loved about Washington: such interesting networking opportunities. In Russia, you did not socialize with members of other agencies, not other Russian agencies and CERTAINLY not other foreign agencies. It just was not done. You gave a polite head nod if you were at the same party and then pretended they didn't exist.

In Washington he played poker once a week with various special agents at the FBI and a guy he suspected might be MI-6.

"Yes, I'll be there. I have to win my salary back."

"Bring more money this time, I'm getting sick of fronting you."

America had such cheerful law enforcement. It was distressing really.

"David," Dmitry began. "There is another matter--"

"No you can't have your car back. I won it fair and square."

"No Da--"

"I took the diplomat plates off it, like you said. You can have those back I guess, but I don't want to hear any--"

"David!"

A pause on the other end. "What?"

"It's not about the car." Dmitry eyed the junior officer again. He seemed completely oblivious to what was going on, his English probably still lacking. But Dmitry lowered his voice discreetly anyway. "Two embassy employees seem to have taken vacation time without following the proper procedure. I'd like to know if they've left the country already and if so out of what port?"

A longer, more uncomfortable pause. "You've lost two Russian agents?"

"Did I say that?"

"No but--"

"Then I didn't say that."

"I'm not supposed to do favors for FSB, Dmitry."

"You're not doing a favor for FSB, they're employees of the embassy, nothing more. Office workers. You're doing a favor for the embassy. Besides the Cold War is over. We're allies now."

David Stein was many things-- funny, seemingly innocent trouble maker, more happy-go-lucky than anyone in the terrorism unit had any right to be-- but stupid was not one of them. Obviously he knew that anyone under Dmitry's direction was either FSB, or tied strongly enough to FSB work for the distinction to be academic. And certainly the FBI doing an under the table favor for FSB would raise a few eyebrows around town. So it was all hinged on Dmitry's considerable charm and charisma.

Which was hard to get just right over the phone.

"Just the exit info right? That's all. I can make a phone call to my friend in Customs and Immigration for you, but that's it Toms. I mean it."

And yet somehow, he hadn't lost his touch. Nice to know that years behind a boring desk hadn't completely taken him out of the game.

"That's all I'm asking you to do."

"Fine. Give me their names and I'll call you back in twenty minutes."

After Dmitry hung up the phone he found himself looming over the frazzled Russian patrol guard as he sorted through what the motherland saw fit to require in triplicate for every visitor, guest, and tourist to come through her borders.

"When did you talk to Sanshin?" he asked curiously.

"Ahhh..." the young man squirmed and tried to focus dutifully on what he was doing, but already Dmitry could see a few mistakes in his sorting and scoring. "Last night."

"Late last night or early last night?"

"Ummm... I'm not sure, I don't remember. Late I guess?"

Dmitry hmmmed and tried to appear untroubled. "And how long did he say he would be on vacation?"

"Two weeks. He said he and Sasha had the time coming because they worked Christmas."

If you could call taking shots of vodka and bending the plastic branches of the embassy Christmas tree around until it resembled Boris Yeltsin "working" then, yeah ... sure.

It was less than twenty minutes before the phone rang again. Dmitry kept himself from calculating the odds of that indicating good news or bad, opting to just pick up the phone without any expectations.

"Yes David?"

"Yeah, they went through a checkpoint this morning, but not to Cancun. They both came through the land border at Niagara."

Niagara?

"So they're in Canada now?"

"Supposedly heading up to Toronto."

"Why on Earth would they go to Toronto?"

"Maybe they want to see the Hockey Hall of Fame?"

Dmitry snorted at the thought. "Not likely. Thank you David, you've been a big help."

"No problem ... oh and Toms?"

"Yes?"

"If it turns out, hypothetically speaking I mean, that your two missing agents have gone rogue or something. You will let us know right? I would hate to think of rogue FSB agents hopping back and forth over the border on our diplomatic visas."

"Of course David."

The Czech embassy in Romania isn't really very embassy like really. It's a run down corner apartment building that probably used to be the townhouse of some aristocrat back when Romanian had those.

The only thing that identified it as an embassy at all was the Czech flag flying in front of it. That was also, not coincidentally, the only part of it well kept-- bright red, blue, and perfect pristine white fluttering off a building that looked like it had recently been bombed out.

Tyler Dewar knew a little about this embassy: for example, other than the ambassador and a number of local staff people-- including a janitor-- the embassy had only two employees. if not for Romania's role in the Czech Republic's growing immigration problems they might not even have that many.

He knew the names of those employees and the names of the some of the front office staff. He also knew coming by when the visa application office was closed was his best shot at finding what he needed.

There were no guards. Not even ornamental looking ones. They buzzed him through without question.

In the front office sat a thin blond man with a big accommodating smile plastered all over his face, Petr Novak. His name made Tyler double and triple check his intel before committing to his plan. It was the Czech equivalent of listing someone's name as "John Smith", almost hilariously generic. It screamed alias to him, but if it was he couldn't find any evidence of the unreasonably cheerful Czech's true identity.

Novak had some fancy title that hide the reality that he was the ambassador's personal assistant under a layer of diplomatic pomp. Which made what he was doing-- sitting behind the desk, pushing a log in book in front of Tyler, a little odd.

No one else seemed to be around.

"I wasn't aware that the First Secretary did jobs like this," he commented as he bent down to sign the book. That he knew who he was talking to did not go unnoticed. Novak grinned as he tried to place Tyler in an ever growing inventory of people met at insufferably stupid diplomatic events.

"The receptionist is at lunch."

"And you're covering. Nice."

Tyler handed off his passport for Novak's inspection, taking the opportunity to discretely look around the small front office for any hint of what he came for. If he understood the situation correctly it would be somewhere off to the side, not an ideal place but a serviceable one. It would be discreet but at the same time a slightly ridiculous hiding place.

"So," Petr concluded, snapping the booklet closed and handing it back. "You're an American citizen. And what can we do for you? You're here to apply for a work visa?"

"No," Tyler replied carefully, nodding his head towards a narrow forgotten door off to the side. That had to be it. It was the only place that seemed even remotely possible. "I need to borrow one of your employees."

Petr Novak stared blankly at Tyler, followed his gaze over to the supply closet, then stared at that for a long moment. Sudden stiffness wound around Tyler's throat as he wondered if he had miscalculated. Did the Czech understand what he meant? This wasn't the ideal situation-- playing wink-wink-nudge-nudge with a foreign diplomat-- but he didn't see any other way to fetch what he needed.

"We only have two employees here now." Novak nodded, a knowing smile appearing suddenly on his face.

The Czech moved silently towards the door and gestured for Tyler to follow him. "Counting myself of course. So unless you want to borrow the ambassador I'm afraid that is quite impossible."

"Hmm..." Tyler hummed, digging around in his bag and pulling out a blue canister with a plastic blow horn top. Novak did not hide his glee and nodded approvingly. It was an air horn, the type small boats use to sign each other. "That is a problem."

"You could maybe borrow our janitor if you want, he's pretty useless."

He should not have said it, but the grinning Czech couldn't help himself. The comment slipped out as Tyler placed the air horn against the wall and just before he pressed the button, sending an earsplitting sound cutting through the room and vibrating into the wall. Then there was a thump like crumbling plaster, like the whole wall had collapsed, before Petr Novak opened the closet door and a body fell out.

A cursing, squirming, hands clutching his ears, earphones hanging around his neck like a collar, body.

"Hi Yuri," Tyler said cheerfully. "You really should have returned the messages I left you. We could have picked a better meeting place."

Yuri Gechel did not respond except to growl in the general direction of voices. Voices muffled by a painful ringing in his ears. He wiggled on the floor like a helpless earthworm while Tyler stepped over his body and followed Novak back to the desk.

"So, I'll need to borrow him for a while."

"He's not ours really, obviously you know already he's a spy."

"Yes, but more importantly you knew."

Novak shrugged. "Czechs are not as stupid as everyone seems to think. Of course we knew, nothing in his background checked out and his Romanian was suspicious."

So much of espionage was built on a presumption of laziness and incompetence rather than real and planned deceit.

Yuri was still cursing and twitching on the floor, his pretty hazel eyes tightly shut and his hands clutched in his matted brown hair.

"But then," Petr began. "Why would anyone want to spy on the Czech Republic embassy out here I don't know. So we just let him crawl through the air shaft every day and figured we would see what happened."

"And now you may never know. Sorry."

Novak shrugged. "This was more fun."

Traffic in Bucharest was deadly. Jams were known to lock cars into bumper to bumper parking lots for hours on end. Roads were in horrible, decaying conditions with kerbs crumbling and pot holes gobbling up the asphalt. So Tyler drove fast and turned sharply at the slightest hint of trouble.

"Oh come on, don't be mad at me."

Tyler's attempts at making nice were falling on deaf ears. That had he recklessly contributed to the deafness of those ears was beside the point, scowling and the silent treatment were not befitting an asset for hire of Yuri's caliber.

"I didn't have any choice,"

"You broke my cover," the operative finally snapped.

"It was already broken," Tyler protested. "Everyone knew! I just ... exploited that."

"Jeopardizing a full operation--"

"Yuri, you're not listening to me. I told you, everyone knew already. Whatever it is you're looking to get out of the Czechs you would never get that way. Jesus why didn't you just plant a bug or something?"

"That's classified."

"Don't be like this. I need your help."

Yuri snorted, crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the window as Tyler drove through the city like a lunatic. "I don't do contract work for the CIA anymore."

"No more freelancing?"

"No."

"It's not the CIA asking."

From the skeptical glare he received Tyler realized he had to explain. "This is personal. Something no one seems to care about that I can't overlook."

Yuri didn't attempt to hide his surprise, but it loosened him up and his annoyance at Tyler's immature stunts seemed to drift away.

"I need your help. And I'm the one asking, the CIA doesn't know about this operation."

He turned back to the spiraling scenery as Tyler cut another hard turn, slid their tin can rental car through three lanes of traffic and rode the gas pedal all the way into a traffic circle. Yuri Gechel had all the characteristics you would imagine from a life long intelligence mercenary: stoic, secretive, and alarmingly pragmatic. He was not known for wet work, but he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty either. When necessity required he spill blood, he was detached and philosophical. Never eager. He was satisfied and comfortable with 'need to know' barriers and maintained a strange Chinese Wall relationship with conflicting masters. For intelligence organizations sniffing around in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in need of a guide, Yuri Gechel was a gem. Tyler didn't believe him for a second when he said he was done contracting. So today he worked for the Ukrainian Secret Service, tomorrow it would be someone else.

"What?" Tyler finally asked. "What's wrong?"

"Do you know what you're doing?"

Tyler frowned and stared at the road in front of them. "You think I'm out of my league here."

"I think the CIA prefers their talent be theirs exclusively, and I think there are not very many nice places to live after you make yourself an enemy of the United States."

"Pffttt. You're being melodramatic. I'm not planning to assassinate the President. I'm a private citizen traveling legally in Europe to investigate something. I'm a journalist if anything."

The silence formed its own damning arguments. Arguments Tyler answered by dropping a freeze frame of blow job hooker's grizzly death in Yuri's lap. The mercenary's reaction was tempered-- he barely blinked while any normal person would have recoiled in horror-- but the moment of careful study that followed gave him away. Tyler knew immediately that he would do it.

"Come on I just need you to help me in Belarus. For old time's sake."

He flashed Yuri a smile that was at once an apology for past mistake and a flirtatious promise to correct them, but the contractor didn't look up at him.

"What?" Tyler pressed.

"I didn't think you'd ever come back into the field," Yuri replied. "Not after the last time. Not after Ashgabat."