Answering God's Call - Chapter 6

Dragged and betrayed by someone, perhaps someone close, their parents were taken to a labor camp and eventually died of illness, her fiancé Igor who was betrayed and killed in a similar way, yesterday’s ally becoming today’s enemy, and the war that continued in one form or another along with its aftermath….

God does not exist.

Since He does not exist, there is nothing to believe in.

“Good to hear you don’t believe.”

“Out of all professions, why a nun of all things? No, do we even need a cover identity?”

“Easter is coming up, so it won’t be strange for a priest and a nun to go around busily here and there with baskets of eggs. Unless you suddenly start firing a gun, who would suspect clergy?”

“…?”

What priest, and what egg basket? When Tatyana questioned with her eyes, Svetlana pointed at the document in her hand.

“Check the last page.”

She could’ve just told me. It didn’t feel right. Driven by an indescribable instinct, her hand hurriedly flipped to the last page. The moment she opened it, her gaze was caught by a photograph and the codename beside it. After staring for a moment, Tatyana lifted her head blankly.

“What is this?”

“….”

“Why is this person…?”

“I only found out recently as well.”

“So?”

“Given the nature of the matter, they told you to move together.”

Tatyana couldn’t easily continue speaking, but judging by how Svetlana avoided her gaze, she seemed just as unsettled. At that evasive reaction, Tatyana’s brows knit sharply, her lips twitching.

This photo, this man, this face.

Dazzling platinum hair, deep blue eyes, a cold expression….

The face of the colleague she would soon be working with was painfully familiar. Of course it was. Late autumn two years ago, the man Tatyana had targeted to steal the agent list before her defection. The man she had put to sleep with a sleeping pill in whiskey and stripped of everything like a petty thief.

After checking the man’s photo and the profile written below it again, Tatyana shook her head as if this couldn’t be real.

“H-How did this—”

“You know how it works. Just like most Military Intelligence agents don’t know I’m cooperating with Lytton because they operate in a cell structure, this is a similar case. He maintained his cover identity for quite a long time during the Balder War.”

“So right now… you’re telling me the man I screwed over by stealing the list was, from the start, a Lytton operative, not Dochen, and I have to work with him? You’re telling me now that our operations collided?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“You said it was an easy job.”

“The job is easy. The person is the problem.”

“Are you serious. You’re actually saying that right now….”

“You’ve got quite a foul mouth. You know that?”

“Should I?”

After going over the mission she had to carry out with the man once more, Tatyana tilted back her stiff neck.

The mission itself, as Svetlana said, wasn’t difficult. Track the whereabouts of a Vandenberg branch employee of Military Intelligence who had disappeared, and confirm whether classified information had been leaked. It really wasn’t difficult….

The problem is the person. This is a disaster.

This is a complete disaster. Should’ve just killed him back then?

Tatyana chewed over that vicious regret.

When she stepped off the passenger ship, she had thought the warm sunlight and the fresh green leaves that had deepened quite a bit looked beautiful, like spring.

She had felt something new, thinking that she had survived and there were days like this where she could enjoy such a sight, even if only for a moment.

She had felt a strange hope, thinking she would finally be able to obtain information about the Cherkubo camp….

Right now, only a single face fills her mind, and she feels nothing at all toward the spring scenery slipping past outside the car window.

Damn it. What am I supposed to do now? Lowering her eyes slightly in frustration, Tatyana checked the man’s photo and current cover identity and wrinkled the bridge of her nose.

But why is this man an exorcist priest?

And with that face, a priest? That’s irreverent.

***

Southwestern Lytton, Vandenberg.

After the weekend morning mass ended at the church away from the center of the city, the doxology recited in unison echoed through the hall.

The congregants, leaving one by one with bright expressions, gathered in small groups to talk about what they would eat for lunch and their remaining weekend plans, continuing conversations they hadn’t finished.

At that moment, a man in a black priest’s cassock walked past the congregants enjoying the spring with long strides. He gave a light nod of greeting to those who recognized him and then, with practiced hands, tidied the places the congregants had vacated and gathered the offering boxes stacked like a tower.

Entering a quiet office, he overturned the offering boxes onto a wide table, and various bills and coins inside clattered out. As the priest unfolded, one by one, the crumpled bills that children who had come with devout parents seemed to have put in, a piece of red paper folded once or twice dropped with a soft tap onto the pile of money.

The young priest with a bored expression, Ruslan, checked the code inside the red paper that only he and the sender could recognize. It was a summons from the branch chief for the first time in nearly half a year.

If he was going to make it to the meeting time written in the note, there was no time to dawdle, but Ruslan, as if he had seen nothing, didn’t hurry the hands that continued sorting the remaining offerings.

Let them wait or not.

***

Arriving at a café far from Vandenberg’s third checkpoint, Ruslan spotted a middle-aged man reading a newspaper in a corner.

After scanning the people seated nearby and the surroundings as naturally as breathing, Ruslan strode straight toward the man waiting for him. The man glanced at Ruslan, who sat down across from him without greeting, and asked casually as if they had met just yesterday.

“Is your watch broken?”

“Let’s say it is.”

“Espresso?”

“I’ll hear the business and leave.”

“How stiff.”

Damian Hawkins, the Vandenberg branch chief of Lytton’s Military Intelligence, clicked his tongue at the attitude he was getting from a subordinate. He folded the newspaper he had been reading and handed it to Ruslan.

“What is this?”

“What do you think? Work.”

That’s not what I meant. Lifting the newspaper slightly with the tip of his index finger, Ruslan lowered his gaze as if checking the contents.

“If it’s work, I already did it today.”

Once a week, sometimes twice, checking and passing along the notes that informants left in the offering box. That had been the only task given to Ruslan for the past year.

It was a pointed remark, but Hawkins, long used to this kind of exchange, only snorted as if Ruslan were speaking for his benefit. He pushed the newspaper closer to Ruslan and ordered another espresso, clicking his tongue as if to say don’t be ridiculous.

“How long are you going to keep playing the abused exorcist priest?”

“What say does someone demoted to a courier even have?”

“Still holding a grudge. Is it my fault you got demoted?”

At the valid point, Ruslan had nothing to say and leaned back against the worn rattan chair. Yeah, who else would I blame? It’s all on me. Even though he had said he wouldn’t drink, he changed his mind as easily as flipping his palm and ordered coffee, letting out a faint, mocking laugh. He wanted to blame even the ache in his stomach on the coffee.

When the waiter who had taken the order left, Damian continued his remaining lecture.

“I sent you to retrieve a single list, and yet—”

“Stop right there. I’ve heard it enough to grow calluses in my ears.”

“Peel them off and listen to the rest.”

“….”

“I came to give you a chance, so fix your expression.”

At the word chance, Ruslan unfolded the newspaper the rest of the way with a half-suspicious look. As he flipped through the documents tucked between the pages like flyers one by one, his eyes remained indifferent.

“As you can see, two employees from the Vandenberg branch have disappeared in succession.”

He first checked the basic personal details including the photos and names of the two missing Military Intelligence employees, while Damian trailed off oddly at the end of his sentence.

“We believe they took a list of Lubyanka political prisoners who wish to defect, and we have to recover it before it falls into Lubyanka’s hands. First….”

So the international military tribunal is set to open before the end of the year at the latest. Looks like they want to make money off Lubyanka political prisoners. As if he could guess what Military Intelligence wanted, Ruslan asked flatly. Recovering leaked classified information before it falls into someone else’s hands forever is a given—

“Two. Should I bring them back alive?”

“Decide on site. After confirming their whereabouts and the extent of the leak, make recovering it without contamination your top priority, whatever it is. It’s about time you take off that cassock. Don’t you think?”

“Sounds good.”

As long as it wasn’t picking colored paper out of an offering box, he could do anything. Satisfied with the obedient answer, Damian raised his hand as if ordering coffee.

“I’ll give you ten days. That should be plenty for you two.”

“…You two?”

Ruslan lifted a brow and asked back shortly. At that moment, a presence drew close behind him as if it had been waiting, and his senses sharpened all at once. It wasn’t that he had let his guard down, nor had he eased his attention.

The fact that he had allowed an unknown person to approach without noticing made him irritated, and Ruslan turned his head just enough to identify the other.

Who exactly is included in ‘you two’—