Klara hesitated. She’d said things — angry things — in dorm rooms and in student forums. But this was different.
“I believe they’re serious about pretending,” she said. “Sweden talks like Greta. Spends like Exxon. We green-wash our missiles now.”
Irina gave a slow nod. “You see clearly, then. Most don’t, not at your age.”
Klara looked down at her tea. “Sometimes I feel like I’m being told to organize deck chairs on the Titanic,” she said quietly. “And if I say that out loud, I get uninvited from grant panels.”
“And what if,” Irina said, “there were ways to do more than just ‘organize chairs’?”
Klara glanced up. Irina’s voice was gentle — never forceful.
“Ways to right the ship?” Klara asked.
“To fix the berg hole in it,” Irina corrected. “To save the passengers.”
Irina leaned in slightly.
“We don’t need saboteurs, Klara. We need witnesses with access. Architects who’ve read the blueprints. You don’t need to shout. You need to see, and pass it along.”
Klara felt something stir in her — recognition… respect.
“I’m not a spy,” she said reflexively.
“No,” Irina replied. “You’re a scientist. An idealist. That’s much more useful.”
A young man nearby asked Irina a question in Russian, and she excused herself to answer. Klara sat in silence, watching the projector switch to a grainy photo of a US airfield carved into wetlands outside Constanța, Romania. Below it was a graphic of displaced stork migratory routes.
While she was watching the slideshow, someone placed a small handwritten card on the table beside Klara. “Field Ecology Exchange: Central Asia. Spring semester. Eurasian Avian Corridors Grant. Full stipend.”
It was an opportunity, an open door. Klara traced the paper’s edge with her fingertip.
She wouldn’t decide tonight. But she already knew which way the wind was blowing.
The birds always came just after sunrise — no matter how many times Klara Hedevig checked the tracking data the night before, it was never the GPS tags or the drones that gave them away first. It was always the horizon — the widening shimmer of wings catching heat against snowcapped ridgelines.
She raised her binoculars, following the ragged line of demoiselle cranes as they coasted low over the scrub, angling east along the same corridor as the pipelines below. Feathers and fossil fuels traced the same paths — her thesis was practically writing itself now.
Suddenly, there was a female voice behind her: calm, precise, low frequency. “You left your GPS enabled yesterday. That’s three times this month.”
Klara didn’t turn. “It was intentional. I needed to draw the motorbike off.”
Irina’s boots crunched closer. Klara glanced back. Irina wasn’t wearing a jacket today — just her long gray sweater-coat and sun-scorched trousers. She held no visible weapon, but Klara assumed she still carried the ceramic folder knife in her boot.
“And the rider?” Irina asked.
“Lost him in the open market. Took the service road, looped through the back of the tech bazaar. Dropped the burner in a clearance crate of Nokia chargers.”
Irina stepped beside her. “And if it wasn’t a drill?”
Klara didn’t answer immediately. The cranes were fading now, gliding out of visible range toward the eastern steppes.
“I wouldn’t have stopped at the market,” she said quietly. “I would have used the gravel spill near the depot to lay down the spare phone, cracked it open, stripped the battery, and left the SIM in the nearest drainage slit, then walked through the fuel corridor checkpoint wearing the survey jacket, not the field vest.”
Irina said nothing at first, then gave a small, approving nod. “Better.”
They stood in silence for a few moments more.
Then Irina offered a sealed envelope.
“Your assignment.”
Klara took it and slit it open with her thumbnail. Inside were a profile photo, two names, and a loosely redacted itinerary for a Czech-funded NGO biodiversity director visiting the Korgalzhyn Biosphere Reserve.
“Why him?” Klara asked.
“Because his satellite surveys don’t match his published resolutions,” Irina replied. “Because his last trip to Georgia involved a forty-eight-hour stop in Ankara with no listed conference. And because if he’s using species tagging as a cover for field ISR, we need to know which side he’s selling to.”
Klara tucked the envelope into her weathered field manual.
“I’ll add him to the marsh team rotation,” she said. “Ask about his tracking drone specs. Play the data ethics angle.”
“And his driver?” Irina asked.
“I’ll let him follow me,” Klara responded. “See if he gets greedy.”
Irina smiled faintly. “You’re learning,” she said.
“No,” Klara replied. “I already learned. I’m just refining.”
They turned to leave the overlook. Below them, the dry plain stretched toward a half-decommissioned KazTransOil relay station — a dot on her thesis map, a keyhole for SVR signals intelligence.
Klara knew she’d spend the afternoon cataloging crane banding data, updating her academic dashboard, and submitting her nightly upload to Lund University via a clean VPN pipe routed through Novosibirsk. She also knew she’d be testing a new encrypted messaging protocol passed to her two days ago by a contact posing as a bird-tagging intern from Tatarstan.
This was her new normal now: feathered migrants by day, electronic ghosts by night.
And she loved it.
Chapter Two:
Presidential Finding 32-33
The radiator clanked its familiar rhythm as National Security Advisor Jim Batista hunched over the DNI’s year-end assessment. Outside, snow fell steadily past his window, already accumulating three inches on the South Lawn. Twenty degrees and dropping — a proper D.C. winter.
He’d read the report twice already, but the numbers still seemed impossible. Russia’s GDP had grown forty-seven percent in three years. Unemployment was down from twenty-two percent to three. Infrastructure projects that would have taken decades were now completed in months. All thanks to those damned robots.
“The GR-3R ‘Drevnik’ units have revolutionized Russian industrial capacity,” the report stated in the bloodless prose of intelligence analysis. “Current estimates suggest 400,000 units operational across mining, construction, and manufacturing sectors. While these humanoid platforms demonstrate remarkable capability in civilian applications, assessment indicates they remain unsuitable for military deployment. Susceptibility to jamming, vulnerability to high-powered microwave systems, and limited autonomous decision-making restrict combat applications.”
Batista set the report aside, massaging his temples. At least that was something. Bad enough that Russia and China had formed the largest military alliance since the Warsaw Pact. If they’d managed to create an army of combat robots too…
A sharp knock interrupted his thoughts.
“Come in.”
Secretary of Defense Thomas “T. J.” Varnell entered, bringing a gust of cold air from the hallway. Snow still dusted his shoulders, a sign he’d likely come in via the West Wing basement instead of the covered entry his motorcade would typically use. If Batista had to guess, whatever Varnell’s reason for stopping over, he didn’t want it to show up in the official logs.