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3
What The Bloody Hell Is Going On Here?
Mimi
"How'syourRussiancomingalong, Miss Wylde?" Jack asked.
We'd exited the MPCV under the fervent objections of Jessica Harding and now stood on the sidewalk just off Palace Square in St Petersburg. So many emotions were tumbling through my body, it was hard to hear the words, let alone decipher them.
My heart beat mercilessly inside my chest and my breaths were coming a little too quickly. I tried my best to hide my heightened state of excitement, but Jack was having trouble looking away from my chest, and I thought perhaps the rapid rise and fall of my breasts were distracting him.
I cleared my suddenly dry throat and said, "Ne tak khorosho." Which basically meant,Not so good. At least, I was pretty sure it did, anyway.
"Then I suggest I do all the talking and you act like a demure and silent 1950s wife."
I snorted at that which made his lips twitch slightly, and then he was looking at my boobs again and staring a little too intently.
"Nice dress," he muttered and valiantly forced his gaze elsewhere. We were still within observable distance of the Orion and Harding hadn't moved it to a different plane yet, so she could see and probably hear everything.
"Where to?" I asked, feeling her eagle eyes boring a hole into the space between my shoulder blades.
"Let me get my bearings," Jack said and moved off toward Palace Square as if he knew exactly where he was.
He probably did. Jack had been doing this for a long time now. I was sure he'd at some stage of his RATS career visited St Petersburg at least once. I knew his Russian was perfect, and I knew he could blend in here better than most modern-day spies. But none of that had me breathing any easier when Palace Square came into clearer focus.
But it wasn't the grandeur that made me tremble.
The buildings were enormous, curving around the massive square itself, dwarfing us. The neoclassical design was beautiful, the early morning sunlight glinting off the pale stone façade. There was the General Staff Building which until 1918 held the military staff of the Russian Forces. In my time, the 580m long, bow-shaped structure housed the headquarters of the Western Military District and the Hermitage Museum. And over there was the Winter Palace, not curved and not pale; a green and white with bright gold accents that left a visitor to the square awed at the power and wealth and might of Imperial Russia.
There was no denying that the location was spectacular, steeped in history and bigger than photos had ever led me to believe. But none of that left me trembling.
Before my parents visited the commune they planned to stay at for a year, they'd visited St Petersburg. They'd walked in this square. They'd stared up at the palace and imagined Catherine the Great behind one of the windows. They'd photographed the General Staff Building and marched across the paving stones in hurriedly taken goose steps. I knew this because the New Zealand Embassy had returned their possessions to Carrie and me after they'd informed us of their deaths.
No bodies had been found, of course. Washed away in the Neva River they suspected. The car they'd been driving was located beneath the surface but empty of my Mum and Dad. Their luggage, though, had been there. Mum's handbag. Dad's wallet. The photos they'd taken of Palace Square.
So, no. It wasn't the grandeur or the history or the excitement of being in Russia at last that had me trembling.
It was how close I was to my dead parents' last known location. And okay, it was 1958, not the 21st Century. And okay, duplicates of my parents were still alive and working for Sergei Ivanov. And okay, St Petersburg — or Leningrad in this time — had nothing to do with Lunik.
But none of that mattered because this was where my parents — my real parents — had last been seen.
I hadn't realised that Jack had surrounded me, pressing me up against a storefront just off the square itself. I couldn't make out what the store sold or what the name of the side street was, I just knew that Jack was shielding me from all of it. From the Winter Palace and the General Staff Building and memories and history; mine and Russia's.
"What aren't you telling me?" Jack murmured in my ear, his strong arms wrapped around my body; holding me together. "What have I missed?"
I shook my head, a lump in my throat making it difficult to speak aloud right then.
"Mimi," he tried. "Mouse. Talk to me. What's here?"
"Them," I whispered. "In the 21st Century. My parents."
He hugged me tighter for a moment, sighing above my head, ruffling my hair with his breath. Then he stepped back and stared down at me, a soft look on his face which belied his next words.
"You organised this, didn't you? You asked Malcolm to step aside, so you could come on this flight. Amanda helped you. You think they're here."
I said nothing. Jack knew me better than anyone in the 23rd Century. Better than my fake parents or fake Carrie. Better than anyone who knew me at all.
"It's not them," Jack whispered. "You know that. I know you know that, Mouse because you're one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. You know it's not them, but you're going to try to turn them all the same." The last was said as if to himself and not me.
