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desktop and other, more important matters of his workday.
Petrovina found a small scrap of paper in the back of her personnel file. A
pink Post-it note with an address.
She took the bus-back then she could only afford public transportation-as far
as it would go, then walked the rest of the way. She found the building in an
out-of-the-way corner of a bustling Moscow district. It was an impossibly huge
slab of concrete that occupied an entire city block.
As she drove her Thunderbird up to the building this day, she thought of
herself nineteen months ago. This day she had the top down on her car. Her
tousled mane of glorious hair blew wild in the cold, its raven hue matching
the twinkling cunning of her coal black eyes.
Back then she was a timid mouse, hair pulled back into a sensible ponytail.
When she was ushered through the gate back then, she didn't know what to
think. It felt as if she were walking inside a prison.
But that was ages ago. Another lifetime. A different Petrovina Bulganin.
She stopped the Thunderbird at the gate. Her pass card got her through. She
waved to the woman at the security window as she drove into the first-floor
garage.
There were a few other cars inside. Not very many for a building this size.
The size of the building did strike Petrovina as odd. There never seemed to be
very many people there. On that first day more than a year and a half earlier,
she had not asked why so large a building was needed for so small a staff. She
was too busy absorbing new information.
On that day she had been ushered into a basement office. A honey-blond-haired
woman of about forty sat waiting patiently behind a small desk. The woman's
name, Petrovina learned, was Anna Chutesov. She was director of an agency so
secret that few outside a tight circle knew of its existence.
"We are called the Institute," Director Chutesov had explained. "I act as an
adviser to our president. But I am understaffed." She seemed puzzled at the
admission. As if she had worked there for many years, never having noticed
that she was, alone in the drafty concrete building. "There have been a few
instances during my tenure here where simple advising has not been sufficient.
But I have no field agents. That has changed. I have recently gotten
permission and funding to increase Institute staff."
"So I am to be transferred from the SVR?" Petrovina asked, confused. She was a
nervous little thing back then. So timid, so fearful. The big building was
cold. She hugged herself for warmth.
"You have already been transferred," Director Chutesov had said blandly. "You
work for the Institute now. For me. Give me your personnel file."
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Petrovina still held the manila folder she had been given back at Pavel
Zatsyrko's office. Her clenching hand had made a wet imprint on the light
cardboard. She gave the file to Director Anna Chutesov.
The Institute head opened the file and began feeding it piece by piece through
the shredder beside her desk. The confetti curls of Petrovina Bulganin's life
whirred out the far end.
"You are dead to the SVR," Director Chutesov said. "They have expunged your
files. You never worked for them. Nor do you work for me. At least as far as
the world knows." She offered a mirthless smile. "Welcome to the world of
espionage, Agent Dvah."
In Russian, dvah was two; adeen was one. Bewildered, Petrovina asked if
Director Chutesov was Agent Adeen.
"No," Director Chutesov had replied. "And never ask that question again."
Petrovina thought there was some sort of dreadful mistake. She was not a spy.
Even when she began her training, she expressed doubts to all her
instructors.
No one listened to her protests. Eventually, as the months wore on, she
stopped protesting, due mainly to the fact that the training began to draw out
elements of her personality that she had not even known existed.
Marksmanship and limited martial-arts training weren't a problem. Petrovina
had taken several self-defense courses while at the SVR. A single girl in
Moscow couldn't be too careful. She had a good eye with weapons and had always
had an athletic bent. So said her SVR file.
But as her skills increased, so, too, did her coldness. A veneer of icy
confidence slowly emerged from the shell of the timid little language expert.
By the end, Petrovina was the ugly duckling that became the beautiful, deadly
swan.
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