yin: A Mara Story

[nathskywalker]

Author: Nathalia
Rating: PG-13
Challenge:
Buttered Popcorn #06 - tightrope
Flavor of the Day #248 - yin (a principle in Chinese philosophy associated with negative, dark, and feminine attributes)
Milk Chocolate #19 - detachment
Extras / Toppings: brownie, hot fudge, malt (bingo: remember to act sad + best con in town + long time, no see + let me in + all and nothing), malt (Trick or Treat: Bassair: bullet in the brainpan - squish!)
Word Count: 5,004
Story: Misfits
Summary: Mara deals with agents trying to defect and takes care of some personal business that might also involve defecting.
Notes: This should shed some light on Mara’s past. I knew the FotD was Mara right away but I didn’t know that it would take this route or that it would be this long.



She moved for the first time in almost an hour when she saw the door of the apartment open. In fact, she heard it long before she saw it but she had enough time to prepare while the owner of the penthouse had been out.

After gaining access to the high end, modern apartment building which had involved breaking into one of the apartments on one of the lower levels and then making her way up here so that the guards by the entry wouldn’t see and possibly remember her. Breaking and entering was easy enough for someone who had started picking locks as soon as she had enough motoric fine skills to do so. She had familiarized herself with the apartment and turned off the pathetic alarm system and then, before she had settled down on the dinner table, she had gone through the entire apartment and hidden weapons that might be used against her.

The man who entered wasn’t as Mara had expected him. Usually, it was scientists who tried to defect, hoping they would be rewarded for their research and the information they had to offer but Gerasim Petrovich was an exception. He was in his early forties and had a receding hairline but that was all he had in common with Mara’s recent targets. He wasn’t adipose in figure; instead, he had a lean frame and probably no fat at all on his body. He was all bones and skin and walked a little hunched over, making him look like a dangerous and very hungry animal when he spotted the stranger in his apartment.

“Good evening, Mr. Petrovich,” Mara greeted the scientist, getting up and slowly approaching him, but still keeping enough distance between them. “A mutual friend sends me to try and as you might expect, he is not happy with the recent developments.”

This one would fight back. Mara had already known before she had seen him, simply by all the things he had in the apartment, the weapons. He was going to fight her in hopes of getting to keep his freedom. His whole stance said it. She wouldn’t be able to reason with this man -- not that that was her job.

“It’s a lucky coincidence that I managed to find you before you could share any of the information you have on us. It would be a real pity if I had found you after it was already too late,” she continued.

She didn’t talk for her own sake but to see how Petrovich would react, to stall a little so she could assess the man a little better. And it was extremely rude to hurt someone without letting them know why first. That was why Mara disliked killing people in their sleep and why she hadn’t shot Petrovich immediately after he had come in. It wasn’t as satisfactory.

“You’re Sergey Ivanov’s child,” Petrovich remarked when Mara was close enough to him. “He sent you, didn’t he? Let others do his dirty work, that’s always been his motto, I just hadn’t realized that his daughter was nothing more than a tool to him, too.”

“I serve our government. I'm not some man’s tool,” Mara corrected him.

“Your father performed a nice brainwash on you, made you think all this from your earliest childhood on. Don’t you see how rotten our system is, that it’s more dead than alive and that a few men profit from the unwashed masses’ poverty?”

She ignored his words, knowing that this was the main reason for people to defect. She had heard them so often that all those speeches did was bore her. She could have given one herself, she knew all the arguments everyone always gave.

“I’m not in the mood to listen to all of that, Mr. Petrovich. If you’ll excuse me, I think I need to get going. I still have another appointment tonight.”

She pulled out her gun that was concealed by the black trench coat she was wearing and didn’t hesitate for a second, aimed it at Petrovich’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The man fell back off his feet and Mara hid her gun again, as always glad for her silencer. She had to take a long step over Petrovich to get to the door and then she knelt down next to the corpse and checked his pulse that had already stopped beating.

It was a pity, really, to have to kill this one but she couldn’t risk whatever he knew to get out. She was sure she would have gotten along with him if they had met under other circumstances. His sense of justice might be a bit misplaced but he was one of the few men she had ever met who had openly voiced their opinion about her father instead of kissing his ass.

Most people were afraid of Sergey Ivanov, but Gerasim Petrovich hadn’t been one of them. And neither was Mara.



***

Her next appointment that gladly wasn’t all that far away, only a few blocks and she could easily handle that by foot, walking through the always busy streets of the metropolis, a stranger in a city full of strangers. She had volunteered to go after Gerasim Petrovich so she would have a good alibi for this appointment. There was no need for anyone back home to know what she was up to, that she had her own agenda.

Since she was already running a little late, there was no time for a change of clothes but she reckoned that that wouldn’t be that great of a problem. In her black high heel leather boots the had tucked her boots into, her black turtleneck and trench coat, she was dressed appropriately for a lot of things. It was one of the reasons she was such a big fan of black: it was fitting for almost any situation.

The receptionist at the entrance had to make a phone call to make sure that Mara did indeed have an appointment with the boss and after that, she was sent up into the fourteenth floor. The office building was mostly empty at this late hour, most people had already gone home, but apparently some people had to stay all night long.

When the door of the elevator opened, revealing a marble hallway to her, a woman in a business suit was already waiting for her.

“You must be Ms. Alastair,” the blonde smiled at her and Mara nodded. She wasn’t foolish enough to use her real name for personal matters. That would make it too easy for others to find out what she was up to.

She was led into an office she had been in a few times before. It hadn’t changed at all, the walls were still lined with bookshelves and a large mahagony desk was at the center of the room so that by daylight, the guest would be blinded by the sun, something Mara knew had been done on purpose. She had experienced it herself the first two times she had been here. It was nothing but a way to make guests feel uncomfortable, a gesture Mara found amusing.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Ms. Alastair!” The man in the office welcomed her enthusiastically.

“Thank you for seeing me at such a late hour, Mr. Bishop, I do appreciate it very much.”

Mara heard the secretary shut the door behind herself, leaving them alone and immediately, Bishop’s fake smile faded from his face.

Ahmik Bishop was an influential businessman who could control whatever he wanted. He had a Midas Touch and knew when to do buy, when to sell, what to do. He was a master at it and when Mara had first met the thin, wiry man with intense blue eyes and a full head of hair that had once been brown but was now slowly going gray. He was well-dressed in what Mara assumed was a tailor-made suit.

“It’s been quite a while since we last met, Ms. Ivanov,” Bishop said now, addressing her by her real name.

She had put a lot of trust into her because she knew that he would get her what she wanted and the price she would pay for it was forgettable. She knew he could be using her but she had decided that she needed to take that leap of faith, hope that he wasn’t setting her up. Not that Bishop was the type for that kind of stuff. Granted, not everything he did was completely legal but never before had he gotten in touch with any agent of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service -- at least not that Mara could tell after the extensive research she had done on the man.

“I don’t want to look conspicuous. I told you from the very start that this would take its time. I had to gather information, plan everything carefully and work just as hard as ever to make sure that nobody would become suspicious. This is a lot harder than the business espionage you have people conduct on your behalf, Mr. Bishop,” Mara pointed out, sitting down on the wooden chair across from Bishop.

It wasn’t the most comfortable chair she had ever sat in but Mara imagined that that was all part of Bishop’s self-fashioning. He didn’t want the people who sat across from him to feel comfortable. That was why he had them seated on hard, wooden chairs and let the sun shine in their faces, blinding them, making it hard for them to even see the man they were talking to.

“I’m hoping that I won’t have to outsource my business espionage for much longer.” Bishop winked at her. “From the messages you’ve sent me and the way you’re talking, it sounds like you are finally ready to end your days with the SVR.”

“I have been ready to do that for a long time now,” Mara corrected him and it was such a relief to finally be able to openly say those words. It was hard to say how long she had been ready to become a traitor because the first few years, she had pushed that thought into the background, not wanting to think about it, telling herself that she couldn’t let her personal issues get in the way of her job but the final straw had been broken at least four years ago. “It was all just a matter of setting it all up, finding someone who will offer me protection and give me what I want so that I can tie up all the loose ends and walk away.”

“May I offer you a drink?” Bishop gestured towards the liquor cabinet set into one of the bookshelves and Mara shook her head.

“I don’t drink while talking business though I wouldn’t mind a glass of water.”



Bishop got up and produced a bottle of still water from a bridge that was completely hidden from view. He set it down on the table between the two of them, then handed Mara a glass and kept one for himself.

“I appreciate your dedication and strong work ethics. I think we’ll work together very well once you have severed your ties with the SVR.”

He filled both glasses and raised his. Mara followed suit and clinked her glass to his even though she knew that he had told her once before that toasting was only done with alcohol. Right now, she was more than willing to ignore that rule of etiquette and so was Bishop.

“To a good partnership,” she toasted and Bishop nodded in agreement before they both took their first sips.

“I have to say, you are one of the more unusual people I have met. You are apolitical as you have assured me several times, so why is it that you feel the need to betray your country and defect?”

It honestly annoyed her that everyone thought the only real reason to betray something was that you didn’t believe in the system. Mara didn’t care about the system and she had Bishop know that a long time ago, making it clear to him that she would only become a turncoat and follow his plan if he stuck to his part of the agreement that she was very specific about. She wasn’t an idealist and therefore she wasn’t cheap. She didn’t care about politics, all she cared about what getting what she wanted and Bishop had understood that.

“It’s not about betraying my country. It’s about freeing myself from a bad influence on my life. I don’t want to be used. I want to be my own person and make decisions for myself. I appreciate my training very much and I enjoy my job but there is one variable wrong in that equation and that needs to be taken care of before I’m willing to defect. I have told you before and I will tell you again: I need safe passage back to Moscow and I need to get there without anyone knowing. No officials, everything has to be off the books. I need to take a gun and I need a car. Once I’ve taken care of my unfinished business, I am more than willing to meet with the officials, supply all the information on the SVR I have and then I’m all yours. I will sign that working contract you showed me and work for you for six years, do all the dirty work you need me to do but only if my demands are met.”

“You’ve told me that before.”

“I feel the need to reiterate so that I can then ask when you’ll have everything ready so I can go back to Moscow,” Mara smiled deviously.

The thought of being so close to what she had been dreaming about for so long now was invigorating. It was so close now that if she reached out, she’d be almost able to touch it. When Bishop had approached her about wanting her as his right hand, told her that he would get the officials to accept that she was defecting if she cooperated, she had thought it was a joke but she had soon found out that Bishop did not joke. Over the past two and a half years she had set up all the pieces like dominoes, one behind the other, forming a pattern and she was so close to tipping the first domino over now, to set everything into motion.

“How much time do you need to prepare?” Bishop asked and Mara could tell that he could get her on a plane anytime she asked him to.

He had been very good about not asking what it was Mara needed to get taken care of that meant so much to her and she had no intention of telling him. It was one of the reasons she had decided to trust him, because for her it was important that he didn’t insist on knowing everything about her. She wanted to keep some things to herself and this was one of them. This was her business and nobody else was to get involved.

“I can go any time. I was trained to not need time to prepare, to go wherever I’m told even if I get a call in the middle of the night telling me to get on a plane in an hour. I have everything I need on me. She pointed to her simple black bag. “I have everything I need right here with me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Bishop picked up the phone and started dialling.

Mara didn’t pay much attention to the ensuing conversation which wasn’t anything like her but she was too busy thinking. This was really going to happen, she would be able to fulfill her greatest desire and she would never tell anyone about it, but she didn’t need others to know to feel like she had accomplished something amazing. She usually didn’t allow herself to fantasize about it but now she let her guard down for a few minutes.



***

Bishop had arranged for a flight six hours later, at two o’clock and had driven Mara to the plane herself, giving her instructions on how this would work, that there would be a car right next to the landing strip and that she should use that to get to Moscow and do whatever she needed to be taken care of and then return to the plane to come back to New York.

Mara didn’t ask how he had set everything up so quickly. She was used to it from the SVR but the SVR was a lot more than one man who had managed to find a pilot who was willing to do the job without asking questions. She had known that under Bishop, her job description wouldn’t change all that much but never had she expected it to stay so similar to her espionage work. She knew that she was going to enjoy working with Bishop -- this was all the confirmation she needed.

She took some capsules of St. John’s wort extract, the only medication she allowed herself while on the job. It was herbal, didn’t have any side effects and it calmed her down, allowing her to sleep through the flight, something she would not have been able to otherwise, too excited and tense about the things to come.



***

She arrived at the apartment she hadn’t been in in so long without anyone noticing her. She had put on a wool hat and pushed her distinctive red hair under it so that nobody would be able to identify her by it.

The apartment was in a brick house like there were so many in this quarter of Moscow, and considering how much the resident earned, it was furnished spartanically just like Mara remembered it. Not much had changed as she noticed when she walked from one room to the next. There were no pictures in the apartment which wasn’t a big surprise. This man had never been a people’s person; all he cared about was work. It was all he knew, the one thing he lived for. Maybe he was lucky that Mara would kill him today before he got too old to keep working, before he had the chance to retire because she couldn’t imagine a man like him ever retiring and playing chess with other old men all day long instead of giving orders and making unethical decisions.

She looked for the box he had always claimed he had put each and everyone of her letters and drawings over the years in when she had been young but she couldn’t find it and she should have known that the box had never existed, that he had probably thrown the letters she had written him as a child, both from her mother’s place and later from the ballet school, away without even bothering to open them. It wasn’t like he had had a child because he wanted to be a good father but because he felt that his genes combined with those of a talented woman would provide exemplary offspring, perfect for him to use in his line of work.

There had been times when Mara had been proud of the fact that she was trained for something bigger since before she could walk but as she had grown older, she had started to realize that she was nothing but a commodity, a tool as Gerasim Petrovich had said. But not a tool of a totalitarian regime like him. She had been a tool of a man so obsessed with work that he had simply assumed that it was also the center of everyone else’s lives.

She couldn’t claim to have much beside her profession that she cared about but she knew that she would never have done what Sergey Ivanov had, conceived a child to make it the perfect asset, the perfect spy that he could manipulate even better because every child wants to do mommy and daddy proud.

She knew he would be home in exactly twenty minutes. Sergey Ivanov had fashioned his daily life in a similar way as philosopher Immanuel Kant and was obsessive about punctuality and rituals. He would wake up at 5.20 every morning and follow an extremely rigid routine that involved leaving Yasenevo at exactly quarter past seven to have dinner -- always at the same restaurant. Dinner would last exactly an hour and then he would walk home which took him ten minutes. Mara couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t followed this schedule that was so ingrained in her brain.

The old clock on the wall was showing five minutes to eight thirty when Sergey Ivanov entered his residency. Mara observed him, hidden behind a counter. When she saw Sergey Ivanov, a very spindly man with legs so thin that sometimes it was hard to imagine that they could carry his weight, she couldn’t believe how much he had aged since she had last seen him only a few months ago.

His hair, once blond, was now white and there wasn’t all that much of it left. He had a bald spot at the back of his head and he looked even thinner than last time which she had always assumed was impossible but he also looked like he had lost some height though that might not be the case, maybe Mara was just seeing it wrong. There were age spots on his delicate hands with the inhumanly long fingers though at least it looked like he had gotten treatment for his tendinitis.

He closed the door and just afterwards he started to cough a hacking cough like Mara had never heard it before, certainly not in her father who had always lived such a healthy life and was never sick. It was when he started coughing blood that she got a little bit alarmed. He was bending over, holding a blood-stained towel to his face and his fit wouldn’t subside.

It would have been so easy to kill him like this, to just pull her gun out and shoot him while he was helpless, fighting for air, but Mara couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wanted to talk to Sergey before she put an end to all of this, wanted him to understand what it was she was doing, that he had died at his daughter’s hands, at the hands of his greatest success.

“Father,” she said when he had regained control over his body and he stood up straight immediately upon hearing her voice, let the towel fall to the floor.

“Mariya, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere, on a mission?”

Work, that was all he cared about. Mara smiled at his predictability.

“I should be in New York tracking down Gerasim Petrovich but I got done earlier than expected and I thought I’d take advantage of my free time to visit you. We rarely get the chance to talk these days.”

She took her father by the arm and led him to the couch and he took a seat. Mara perched on the small coffee table across from him.

“You have lung cancer, don’t you?”

She didn’t know how she had deduced it but all of a sudden it made sense for him to have all this medication in the bathroom and to cough blood. It was so much like him not to tell her or anyone else, try to hide it so he wouldn’t be perceived as weak.

“Everyone has to die of something.” He tried to sound cheerful but it sounded creepy instead, like someone who had never laughed in his life faking laughter.

“Oh don’t worry, father, lung cancer won’t kill you,” Mara said softly, reaching out to touch his cheek. She smiled at his confused expression. “You don’t really think I would allow for anyone else to kill you, do you? That’s my job. I’ve been waiting too long to let someone else do it.”

Sergey Ivanov’s eyes widened in shock and he scrambled for a weapon but Mara had removed the gun he had hidden in the couch before he had arrived. The smile didn’t leave her face as she pulled her own gun out.

“I never meant anything to you and you used me my entire life. It’s time for that to end.” She spoke in a calm voice. “I’m not your puppet, not your perfect creation that you can shape however you want to.”

“You would never kill me,” Sergey boomed and for the first time, he really reminded Mara of the man he had been for most of her life.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“They’ll find out. Your life will be over, Mariya, you stupid bitch. Don’t you see that I only wanted what’s best for you?”

Mara didn’t answer, there was nothing she had to say to that. Instead, she trained her gun at him but not his forehead. This wouldn’t be an instant kill. She wanted him to suffer.

She contemplated where to shoot him for a second, then aimed the gun at his chest but not so that the bullets would hit his heart.

She pulled the trigger.

Once, twice, three times.

When she left, he wasn’t dead yet.



***

The talks with the officials were easy. She was assigned to a special subdivision of the NSA that was referred to as Cerberus. She had dealt with Cerberus before but in a very different capacity and most of the times it had involved firearms. Now, all she had to do was sit in an interrogation room and answer a multitude of questions.

Sometimes she hesitated, reminding herself that these were secrets she had been trained to keep to herself even under torture. What was she doing giving them away like this? When it happened, she would shake her head, astonished at her misplaced loyalty, and continue, trying to give more details to make up for what she had thought.

She was in the middle of a conversation with Robert Abedi, the agent responsible for her case, a large African-American man with a smooth, mellifluous voice that Mara loved listening to when a blond man came into the room. He didn’t pay any attention to Mara and walked right over to Robert, whispering something in his ear.

“Holy shit, are you serious?” Abedi asked, apparently somewhat shocked by whatever he had just been told.

Mara grabbed the armrests of her chair, trying to make the nervousness in her dissipate. There was only one explanation for why this man would interrupt an important session: If he knew something concerning Mara, if he had found some information that was vital and might change the entire scenario. She didn’t know what that might be but she knew that there was always the possibility. Maybe they had somehow found out about her last trip to Russia, the one she had kept from Abedi?

“There’s a obituary in pretty much every newspaper in the country and we have had agents working in Yasenevo confirm it.”

Yasenevo, the name of the SVR’s headquarters. Mara tensed up even more. There was only one thing they could be talking about. She had been in Yasenevo less than seventy-two hours ago and the effects of her last visit sure warranted an obituary. But how had anyone been able to figure out it was her? She had been so careful and she knew Yasenevo so well, knew where all the security cameras were, knew all the security codes, everything. How could anyone have figured it out? They didn’t even know that she had defected!

“Ms. Ivanov, I know this will probably come as a shock,” Abedi said in his mellow voice, “but Sergey Ivanov, your father whom you have told us so much about this and last session has been found murdered at his apartment near Yasenevo. We have very conclusive evidence that this is no hoax.”

Of course Sergey Ivanov was dead. That wasn’t any news to her.

“Do you know who did it?” Her voice sounded breathless as if she had just run ten miles.

“There hasn’t been any indication so far but media speculations indicate that Mossad may have been involved. Apparently, they have long been criticizing the way Ivanov runs things and I guess they wanted retribution for one thing or another. We probably won’t ever find out,” the blond man who was a lot better informed told Mara.

She felt relief wash over her. She had no idea why Mossad would want to kill her father but if Cerberus and the rest of the world wanted to believe that, then she was more than okay with it. It meant that suspicion wouldn’t fall on her.

She felt that she was smiling, just a bit, and quickly reminded herself that this was not how she was supposed to act upon receiving news about her father’s death. She sunk her head and forced a grimace on her face, then started to sob softly.

Her father was dead and she had killed him. She had gotten the revenge she had always dreamt of. She had freed herself from SVR’s influence and even more importantly, her father’s influence. She was a blank slate, no longer a spy. Well, at least that would be the case for a short period of time.

She felt the tears coming. Big, salty tears ran down her cheeks and she knew what it looked like to the outside world. She was mourning her father’s death. The truth was that those were tears of joy.