Answering God's Call - Chapter 21

Tatyana, who had taken over the sofa table, didn’t look bored in the slightest. Judging by how deeply focused she was, enough for her brow to faintly crease, it seemed she had no intention of lifting her head until she found a name she recognized.

Tracing along the names with the tip of her fountain pen, she spoke abruptly, “Father, did someone write passenger names on my face or something?”

“That would be nice.”

“That’s unfortunate. If you have time to be distracted, why don’t you pray to God or—…huh?”

With a short exclamation, Tatyana raised her hand in surprise. Without taking her eyes off the documents, she stood up and strode toward Ruslan.

“Father, look at this.”

“Let me ask just in case….”

“What?”

“Did you forget my name?”

“This guy had a good breakfast and is already spouting nonsense again.”

As if telling him to stop talking nonsense and look at this instead, Tatyana thrust the stack of papers at him. Inside the circle she had drawn with her fountain pen were two names. Ruslan’s eyes widened at the familiar names.

“…John Gilmore, Sarah Gilmore.”

“Samuel Gilmore’s parents. You know them, right?”

“I do, but this sounds like something straight out of a newspaper. I’ve never heard of corpses walking around alive.”

“Look. They passed through Checkpoint Two yesterday evening.”

Looking at the time written in the checkpoint log, it was shortly after Tatyana and Ruslan had secretly entered Rebecca West’s apartment and encountered the bomb.

“They moved in a hurry, enough to use the names of dead parents.”

“Checkpoint Two means….”

Muttering softly, Ruslan pushed the documents aside and spread out a map and a notebook in their place. It was a map of southwestern Lytton, including Vandenberg, and the neighboring countries along the border. Taking the fountain pen from Tatyana’s hand, he marked small circles and numbers on the map one by one.

After marking more than twenty circles across southwestern Lytton and its surroundings, he quickly began writing building names and brief notes in the notebook.

Sitting across from him, reading through the circles on the map and the addresses in the notebook one by one, Tatyana’s mouth slowly fell open. Not all of them, but several familiar addresses caught her eye.

“Father. This… don’t tell me….”

“Yes. They’re front businesses, safe houses, and key contact points used by Lubyanka agents operating in Lytton.”

Tatyana’s eyes widened at the confirmation that her guess was correct. Even as a former Lubyanka agent, she hadn’t known the locations of safe houses and businesses unless they were tied to operations she had personally handled. Yet Ruslan knew all of them. Some of them were places that hadn’t even been used for years.

“How do you remember all of this?”

“I told you. I used to be an operations officer.”

“Are you joking? Are all operations officers like this? Don’t be ridiculous.”

As the operations officer responsible for southwestern Lytton, it was only natural that he monitored and managed the activities of the agents under his jurisdiction. But this was on an entirely different level from simply knowing the address of Rebecca West, no, Natalia Makarov, who had been classified as low risk until yesterday.

It wasn’t as though he kept everything neatly organized in files, consulting them whenever necessary or committing only the most important locations to memory. He could recite even places that the agents themselves barely remembered, as effortlessly as though he were copying from a typewriter. That was an entirely different level altogether.

“This is no joke.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m just shocked. You said you had a good memory, but… this is incredible.”

Genuinely impressed, Tatyana clicked her tongue. Ruslan, who quietly watched her face filled with admiration, smiled as if this wasn’t the end of it.

“If you’re this surprised, that’s a problem.”

“…What? Why?”

“From the Balder War until two years ago, every Dochen agent planted or dispatched abroad, along with every one of their cover identities and front businesses, is stored in my head. As for the list of Lubyanka agents and front businesses you handed over after defecting, I only needed to see it once to remember it.”

“…Wait, wait, wait.”

Frowning, Tatyana waved her hand to cut him off. Snatching the map and notebook from Ruslan’s hands, she scanned them again in disbelief.

“I can barely believe you remember every one of these front businesses and safe houses, but you’re saying every Dochen agent and every cover identity is in your head? That’s practically Dochen’s entire intelligence network.”

“I told you. I’m smarter than most people.”

“How smart do you have to be to remember all of that?”

“…At the very least, anything I’ve seen, heard, or felt once, I don’t forget. I remember everything. Even after one year, five years, ten years, all of it.”

“…Seen, heard, or felt? You mean the people you’ve met in your life, the conversations you’ve had with them, all of that too?”

“Yes. I’ll probably remember this conversation today as well. For the rest of my life.”

“….”

Tatyana’s face went blank for a moment. As if she couldn’t be any more surprised.

She knew that he had passed through a university research institute in Dochen and had been embedded in the Federal Security Bureau for a long time. She couldn’t know the exact contents of the military secrets he had leaked during the Balder War, but if what Ruslan said was true, the conversations happening around him, the contents of meetings, trivial notes, who met whom, and so on… there would have been more than enough information to pass to Lytton.

If he wanted to, he could have easily handed over Dochen’s codebooks. On the other hand, it was strange that he hadn’t used that memory for profit until now.

Only then did Tatyana understand how he had been mentioned as the youngest operations officer and then the youngest candidate for branch chief. She was about to nod, then hesitated. With that kind of mind, becoming the youngest branch chief wouldn’t have been difficult at all, but….

How is this man even alive?

Not just Lytton’s Military Intelligence, but probably every country’s intelligence agency, they don’t want someone who could become a threat to them, even if they’re capable. They want someone appropriately smart and competent, not someone dangerous.

Whether it’s intelligence or physical ability.

She had seen it countless times since the training institute. Those who were too intelligent, or whose experimental results were too outstanding, completely stepping outside the bounds of being human, what kind of end they met.

Tatyana didn’t think this applied only to Lubyanka. Lubyanka was a dictatorship, but that didn’t mean Lytton would let someone like Ruslan, a living archive, exist freely. Then how. Could it be….

“Does Military Intelligence not know? Otherwise—”

“If those above knew, I’d have died long ago.”

“…So your incredible memory is a secret no one knows about?”

“That’s why I’m still alive.”

Frowning, Tatyana asked, “What the hell is wrong with you? Why didn’t you keep it a secret from me?”

Unable to hide her shock, Tatyana let out a curse. He had kept it secret his entire life, so why confess it now? And why to her, of all people. What kind of change of heart led to this?

“I’m not a priest.”

“I know. It would be a problem if you were.”

“If you know, then why are you treating this like a confession? This puts me in a difficult position too.”

“It’s not even a sin. What confession?”

As if asking whether he had said something he shouldn’t, he took the notebook back with a face that was completely shameless. Just moments ago, he had been charging ahead like a car with broken brakes. The way he now acted dignified on his own was so absurd it left her speechless.

Should I really just hit him once?

She wouldn’t even need to clench her fist. Just a light tap on that shoulder would do. Tatyana’s eyes hardened as she glared at Ruslan as if she might strike his shoulder at any moment.

“Your eyes are fierce. Why are you getting angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“You’re not smiling.”

“….”

What is there to smile about? She stared at him, wondering just how far that ridiculous nonsense of his would go, when Ruslan smiled faintly.

“Just because the priest is smiling doesn’t mean I have to smile too—”

“Isn’t it a good thing? You learned one of my secrets.”

“Who, me?”

As if asking why she was pretending not to know, Ruslan tilted his head. After filling the pages with a dense list of Lubyanka’s front businesses and safe houses until the ink finally ran dry, he calmly set the fountain pen down.

“I think it’s for the best. You’d be uneasy moving around with someone you unintentionally got demoted, wouldn’t you? And the fact that Branch Chief Hawkins doesn’t know what really happened because I kept my mouth shut would bother you too. So… that’s why.”

After roughly wiping the ink from his hands, he glanced at Tatyana.

“There’s no other meaning. I just gave you something so you wouldn’t worry too much about being stabbed in the back.”

“You were just talking about seducing me and stabbing me in the back, and now what is that supposed to—”

“That was a joke. So relax.”

“….”

Overcome with bewilderment, Tatyana pressed her parted lips together tightly. Her head spun, as if she had lost a great deal of blood. In reality, it had been Ruslan who bled yesterday, and she had only given him the amount necessary before he lost consciousness from excessive blood loss.

Protection, consideration, concern, and now reassurance.

Words that had never existed in her life for nearly over a decade surfaced one after another, throwing her into confusion. Words she had lived without even yesterday kept overturning everything whenever she faced this insane man.

If this keeps happening, it’s really going to be a problem.