“Good job,” Max praises me for my sleepy but correct response. “Put on your jacket so you don’t actually catch a cold. It’s always windy and damp here. And don’t do anything on your own. Just watch and learn. This is your first field training…”
“Oh, here we go again,” I say, finally waking up. “Can you talk about anything other than how experienced and in charge you are, and how I don’t know anything, can’t do anything, and am basically a forgetful dimwit who can’t remember a simple cover story or briefing, even after a hundred tries?”
“That was an order, Shorty. The briefing was before that. Feel the difference. This could take half an hour, or it could get complicated. We don’t know yet, but we’ll find out. This isn’t some test you can pass by sweet-talking me. Anything could happen.”
“Oh, Maxie, what could possibly happen here, other than a week with no bed and no tests to pass?” I ask pitifully.
Max lets out a heavy sigh and pulls me close to his warm, post-workout body.
“Shorty, you don’t get it. You’re still new to the agency. The General wants to ramp things up and raise the stakes. For some reason, he hasn’t been promoted since that last operation. And he’s not about to let this case slip through his fingers.”
“Well, fine. We’ve got a little vacation lined up. Why are you trying to scare me?”
“He’s got a nose for trouble, Shorty. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have pulled me out of lectures. The General doesn’t want outsiders involved, so no one else can swoop in and take over this juicy gig.”
“You’d never guess he’s superstitious. He seems like the typical military meathead straight out of a joke.”
“That’s exactly what he is. You don’t climb the ranks in the agency any other way. A meathead, sure, but with a sixth sense. If this were something simple and easy, he’d have come himself—riding in on a white horse, showing everyone he’s not just sitting behind a desk, proving he can take down the enemy with his bare hands. And if it were something totally boring, he’d just order the local informants to put the forgetful guy on a train with an escort and bring him in.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Didn’t want to ruin your mood, Lina.”
Max breathes over my hair, like he can’t get enough of me. A week apart feels like forever. My heart clenches too.
“You’ll see plenty of crazy stuff soon enough, Shorty. At least you got some rest for now. Someday, we’ll take a real vacation and drive a truck across Europe. I’ll show you all the cool spots. You can load up the truck with souvenirs and anything you like. We’ll bring back the Eiffel Tower in the truck, set it up on the lawn in front of the house. It’ll look awesome,” he tries to joke.
“Nice idea,” I smile back, so he doesn’t worry.
That’s how we roll into our destination—a little village where the bus to the district center only runs twice a day.
I snuggle up to my dinosaur of a man. He wraps one arm around me while gripping the steering wheel tight with the other.
The car glides to a stop. He steps out to scope the area where we’ll be working, while I change into a new velour tracksuit, a baseball cap, and ankle boots with a small heel and big rhinestones meant to look like a scatter of diamonds.
We nearly got into a fight over these boots because they’re basically murder weapons, not to mention totally tacky.
I spent half a day learning to walk in them. It’s one thing on parquet flooring, another on asphalt.
But I managed somehow. Though running in them like the girls around me do? No way, I’m not risking it.
Max is in sweats and an old leather jacket, no cap. His hair has grown out, and the short cut completely hides the cool tattoo on his head. He looks big but clumsy, a bit shorter than he is, hunching his shoulders masterfully.
Yet somehow, he doesn’t come off as a thug. Instead, he looks like a mid-tier farmer on the rise, someone who won’t miss a chance to make a buck, who’d choke a competitor over a penny but wouldn’t choke himself.
In these clothes, you can’t see his toned body. He doesn’t look tall, seems a bit chubby, not athletic at all—just some regular guy who only cares about his market stall and isn’t prone to fights or sticking his nose into other people’s business.
Max pulls me in tight, and for the last time this week, I melt into the calm and happiness that’s become so familiar lately.
Now, for at least seven days, we’re practically strangers.
According to the cover story, I’m his niece, the sickly, dimwitted daughter of his deadbeat sister. He’s my uncle who couldn’t care less about me.
I’m supposed to be overly friendly due to my dumb nature and bad upbringing, always prying into personal stuff and sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. In other words, I’ll be collecting gossip, rumors, and slip-ups from the villagers—stuff Max can’t be seen doing given his status.
Max, meanwhile, is supposedly busy buying bulk late-season produce for his store. He’s got no time for the locals and their boring lives, far removed from his business.
It’s a bit of a trap for me. I’m actually an introvert. I don’t like strangers and couldn’t care less about their personal drama. But my job now doesn’t care about that. And neither do I, for that matter.
Max and I stand there hugging a little longer, while no one’s watching.
I breathe in his familiar scent, warm and musky, since he hasn’t had a chance to shower yet. Morning workouts are sacred to him.
He buries his nose behind my ear and sighs like we’re parting forever.
But there’s nothing we can do.
We step half a pace apart. And that feels like a huge distance. We haven’t been this far from each other in a long time, maybe a month.
The wind instantly feels three times colder, sneaking under my bomber jacket like I’m wearing nothing at all.
My dinosaur pulls a warm scarf from his pocket and orders me to at least wrap up my throat and hurry along. It shouldn’t be as cold between the houses. We start walking.
He’s in front, shielding me from the wind with his broad back. I’m behind, trying not to fall behind long-legged Max in my rhinestone heels.
We find our target at the fourth house from the bus stop.
A tall young man with a military bearing, overgrown hair, and a vacant stare is scattering grain to some domestic birds from the porch.
From pictures in children’s books, I recognize chickens and some other birds that look like a mix of turkeys, ducks, and geese. Sorry, I’m a city kid. I’m not exactly an expert on poultry.
Max confidently opens the gate and asks the guy if there’s a place to rent for a week—his niece needs to breathe the sea air, and he’s here to buy produce. As he speaks, he makes a peculiar gesture with the fingers of his left hand and rubs his left eye.
The guy glances distractedly at these exercises in our agency’s secret sign language, then silently turns his back to us, steps through the half-open door, and calls out to someone in a voice that sounds like a foghorn on a steamboat.
“You here? Come out, some folks want to rent a room.”
Rent. That’s how he says it. Not “lease” like Max or most people would. His pronunciation is precise.
He reminds me of a straight-A student at the chalkboard who can’t answer a simple question and is dying of shame in front of himself, the whole class, and the stunned, disappointed teacher.
And here comes his strict teacher, stepping onto the porch.
Through the door rolls out a little pea of a woman—tiny but full of energy. She’s a frail old lady, so thin a gust of wind could scatter her, with a surprisingly sharp gaze in her faded eyes that must’ve once been blue.
“So, you want to rent a room?” The old lady sizes us up with a withering look. She’s clearly thinking something’s off. Or maybe she’s thinking exactly what’s true—we are a couple. And if it’s that obvious, our cover’s already blown.
“Two rooms, if you’ve got ‘em. One’s fine too, but I’d rather not. I don’t like being disturbed while I work, or hearing snoring at night. My niece snores. She’s got asthma, breathing issues. Or just one room, and a cot somewhere for the niece. Far from your son. Her mom told me to keep an eye on her. She’s too nosy and curious about stuff she shouldn’t be.”
Max gives me a stern look, furrowing his brows to make sure everyone’s convinced—I’m a pain in his neck, but what can you do? Family’s family.
The old lady wrinkles her nose skeptically and names her price. Max haggles skillfully, clearly enjoying it. You can tell he’s good at this and does it every day.
A bird of some unknown breed waddles up to me and pecks at a rhinestone on my boot. The stench from the coop—or maybe not the coop—is awful. Through the slats, a pink snout pokes out, followed by an eye that looks like the old lady’s, only brighter and cheekier. The unknown creature lets out a mocking grunt.
If this is the so-called sea air doctors rave about, I’d rather sit in Grandpa’s office where the windows practically open onto the highway. If you’re not careful opening them, the smell from the road is still way better. Say what you will, it just is.
“Could you call her off, or is it a him?” I ask the old lady, glancing at the “son.” He gives me a gentle smile. The old lady nearly taps her temple in disbelief.
“City folks, I swear,” she mutters, clearly looking down on me. “Just tell it to shoo.”
She goes back to her lively bargaining with Max over the two rooms.
“Shoo,” I say obediently.
The bird looks at me with one eye, tilts its head to the other side, and looks with the other eye—completely unimpressed. Then it takes aim and pecks off another rhinestone, swallowing it with visible satisfaction.
I take a step back.
The cheeky critter mirrors me, stepping forward like we’re partners in some weird dance.
The old lady darts down from the porch, picks up a clump of dirt, and nails the bird with it. The creature hops back a couple of steps and pretends nothing happened.
I point out the damage to Max with my finger. He says we should rip off a matching rhinestone from the other boot to even it out, then goes back to haggling enthusiastically, demanding a discount for the ruined footwear.
“What kind of animal is this?” I ask the “son,” playing the role of a chatty airhead.
“Indo-ducks, that’s what they call ‘em around here. They’re always hungry ‘cause they grow fast. Raised for meat,” he adds, as if I’m especially slow.
I guess it’s not super obvious that I know villages don’t keep flocks of birds as pets.
I nod agreeably and flash a fawning smile, just in case. The “son” doesn’t strike me as dumb. He radiates strength, even aggression. Yet he seems almost ashamed of it.
“Indo-ducks”—he’s clearly quoting someone. He’s not the type to say “duck” if he’d heard or remembered the word before.
He’s definitely not dumb, even if he supposedly remembers nothing. The agency doesn’t keep idiots on payroll.
“They eat anything they see. And they can kinda fly, though not well. One flew up to a windowsill yesterday and pecked at some of the owner’s jewelry. So they wrung its neck right away, butchered it, and pulled the jewelry out of its throat. We’ve got borscht today. Pretty tasty.”
He speaks with a mix of local dialect and his own usual tone. And like a robot—no inflection.
Also, he said the jewelry was the “owner’s.” So he knows he’s not her son. Does the old lady know that? She didn’t object when Max called this big guy her son.
“Well, they’re not gonna butcher the one that pecked at my stones, obviously,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “But now I can’t even tell which one did it. Man, the smell around here.”
He nods, not asking what “smell” I mean, says it’s time to clean the pigsty, and walks off.
Man, the posture on this guy. Cleaning a pigsty with that kind of swagger—that’s real heroism.
Meanwhile, Max has already struck a deal for a batch of these birds, which should reach the right weight in a week, just in time for us to head back.
***
“Good morning, Lyubov Markivna,” Burry greets a stunning beauty of Eastern descent with a cheerful, slightly cocky tone as she opens the gate to a nice little house in a neighborhood of equally nice little Kyiv homes.
Wow, what a woman! Where Burry grew up, in Troyeshchyna, you’d never find such flawless, pampered girls.
Around this cozy neighborhood, the hustle and bustle of the big city rages, but here it’s golden autumn and quiet.
Even Sweetheart, always quick with a word, doesn’t break the silence. He’s staring at this living embodiment of every teenage boy’s dream, like she stepped right out of the special inserts in men’s magazines or off posters of perfect women.
The only difference is she’s not in a bikini but a light trench coat over—Sweetheart hopes—bare skin. It’s his teenage fetish, at least until he catches a glimpse of her long, perfectly toned legs in the coat’s slit, clad in elegant heels.
And then he stops thinking altogether. He just feels an indescribable high from the realization that dreams sometimes come true.
“They should’ve called you about us,” Sweetheart manages to choke out, his voice a little hoarse.
Lyubov Markivna nearly melts into a land of eternal bliss at the sound of that voice. It’s the kind of voice a god of sex might have, if such a thing exists.
“What a shame,” she thinks, blushing at her own indecent thoughts. “These two boys are forever lost to girls. But they’re in love—it’s so romantic! I wonder how it all works for them?”
Our girl is getting new experiences and learning to interact with nature. Max is running the operation. The missing agency employee is alive and seemingly healthy, but he’s lost his memory. Or at least, he’s pretending to.
It doesn’t seem like anything complicated. Field training should be a breeze.
Except there’s a suspicious stench in the air.
Friends, add the book to your library if you’re curious to find out what happens next with our unstoppable duo and the assignment in Kyiv. Who exactly is this Donna Rosa?
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