She asked a question instead. “Who are you?”
Ustinov stared down at the blonde woman and felt… conflicted. The rush of power he had felt as he had forced her into submission — never mind that she wouldn’t have posed a real threat to him and his training anyway — had manifested in a wave of lust and desire. He knew that he could indulge it without compromising the mission more than it had already been compromised, but he refused to give in to that desire. His father…
Ossetia checked out Hazel’s part of the building quickly. If she’d had friends staying, if they had fled the building as soon as they heard the struggle, they would have had to assume that their base was compromised. Ustinov allowed himself a moment of pure relief when his partner reported that everything seemed fine; Edinburgh was a strange mixture of chaos and stillness, as if a storm was about to break. They’d seen thousands of people trying to get out of the city; only a handful of people had been trying to come into the area. Anyone would think that they thought that there was something to be scared about.
“It’s clear,” he reported. He looked down at Hazel; it didn’t take a mind reader to know what he was thinking. FSB soldiers got some special perks that ordinary soldiers didn’t get, starting with first access to the brothels that the rear units would set up in their path. “Sir…”
Ustinov shook his head. “No,” he said, in Russian. Plenty of English men and women would know that ‘nyet’ was Russian for ‘no’ — perhaps Hazel would recognise that he had spared her from a fate worse than death. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear; he hadn’t even answered her question. She was probably wondering what they were going to do to her.
He switched back to Hazel and spoke in English. “Are you all right?”
Ossetia spoke before she could answer, in Russian. “Sir, we do not have time to spend coddling her,” he snapped. “Use her and eliminate her, or just…”
“Silence,” Ustinov said. He turned to Hazel. “Are you all right?”
“I'm pregnant,” Hazel said. Her voice was broken, sore; he’d pressed at her throat to prevent her from screaming and it had now damaged her throat. It would recover, eventually, but for the next few hours it would be hard for her to talk. It took a second for the impact of her statement to crash down on him; pregnant! “I missed my period and I wondered and I went to the nurse and she told me and… oh god, what are you going to do to me?”
Her voice broke off somewhere between a sniff and a sob. Ustinov stared down at her, his mind churning; his own conception was the product of a rape. His mother, who had raised him despite the disapproval of almost all of her family, had been caught up in the middle of a terrorist action — the occupation of a building in Moscow. She had been blonde herself, and beautiful then; one of the terrorists had raped her several times and then saved her life when the Spetsnaz launched their attack to liberate the building. She had named him after her father, who had been shot in the head several times by the man who would later marry her; the Spetsnaz Captain who had brought the young Ustinov up as his own. His stepfather, who had gone on to be one of the planners for the occupation, had told him that if he went into the occupation corps, he would be doing the same as had happened to his mother… and Ustinov had been determined to avoid such a fate.
Ossetia looked up at him. “Sir, with all due respect, she is a security risk,” he said. “One scream at the wrong moment and we will be caught before we can carry out any more attacks.”
Ustinov winced. The plan had been for them to lie low for a week, get a handle on the situation, and then either carry out further attacks designed to incite chaos or find a way out of the city and then the country. He knew, now, that Control had launched more attacks than even he had guessed… and the hints from his stepfather of something really big being about to happen came back into his mind. What had happened… and what would happen?
Ossetia was waiting for him to make a decision. Ustinov cursed under his breath; the British would be quite within their rights to shoot the pair of them if they caught them, and while Ustinov didn’t fear death, he did want it to mean something if — when — they died. He was right… and yet, he didn’t want to kill Hazel if it could be avoided. If he could keep her alive without compromising the mission, he would do so, even if Ossetia disagreed.
“I need to talk to you,” he said, to Hazel. “We don’t want to kill you, but we will if we have to, so we need you to listen.”
He paused. How much did he dare tell her? “We’re Russian soldiers,” he said, shortly. “We were sent here by our superiors to fight a guerrilla war against your people. We don’t intend to remain here — in this building — much longer, but while we do, you present a serious risk to us, understand?”
She nodded fearfully. Ustinov felt for her. Feelings were dangerous on a mission, his trainers had warned him, but he could no more abandon them without obvious danger than he could cut off his own penis. She was a pretty woman, and she was pregnant; it was that, more than anything else, that drove his decision.
“We’re going to have to keep you secure here for a week,” he said. Her eyes went wide. “We can’t risk having you running around unsecured, so we will put you in the basement, but we will take care of you. In exchange, we want you to remain quiet and not draw attention to yourself; once that is done, we’ll free you before we leave. Do you understand?”
Hazel had new tears in her eyes. She was about to start an ordeal… but she would survive it, unlike either of the two Russians if they were caught. They’d managed one strike because the British hadn’t expected it; now, they’d be lucky if every place that was worth hitting didn’t have an armed guard. They would pick their targets carefully, but it would be difficult and dangerous.
She nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Please… do what you like to me, but please don’t hurt my baby!”
“I don’t see how we can hurt her without hurting her baby,” Ossetia muttered, in Russian. “Sir, are you sure…”
“Yes,” Ustinov said shortly. “I want you to check the radio again; I want to know what the party line is on all that’s happened.”
He picked Hazel up, ignoring the fear in her eyes and the feel of her body pressed against his, and gently placed her on the sofa. The radio they’d bought had a battery and an automatic scanning system; they had already picked up broadcasts calling every policeman, fireman, medical worker and soldier back to duty, the latter told to report to police stations if they couldn’t report to their barracks. The transmissions had been low-powered; he had wondered if that meant something to the British, or if some transmitters had just been destroyed.
“I have something,” Ossetia said, exploring the civilian bands. Ustinov had spent nearly ten minutes ensuring that he had everything worked out, while Hazel’s fearful eyes had watched him as if he was about to rip her jeans off and take her on the couch. “It’s a transmission on the emergency frequency.”
He saw Hazel’s eyes flicker with interest. “Let’s hear it,” he said. “I want to know what the British have to say about what’s happened.”
“Citizens of Britain, this is an emergency announcement,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Please stand-by for a message from Charles Langford, the current head of government. Please listen to the message and inform others of its contents. Please listen on this frequency, every hour on the hour, for updates.”