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Atomic Angels
Chapter 5
By Jed Jones



Plot: The plot here is woven between suspense, broken English, exaggerations,and perhaps a lot of lies. Are these people interested in being discovered because of their beauty and would love Jude to photograph them? Fine. All the political ramifications on top of that seemed somewhat confusing so far.

characters: Oxana and Jude are in character. Raisa is a spy for the opposition to the corrupt government? Katya is also a prostitute but had an internet model job before it was shut down.

Style and Voice: 3rd person limited Jude's pov

Referencing:okay for the story.

Scene/Setting: cold, snow, secrecy, spies, corruption, secret police, etc. It seems like it's Russia in 1975.

Grammar:see line edits for some suggestion. Basically not bad.

Just my personal opinion: This chapter overwhelmed me especially the 2nd half. "Our pursuers are corrupt police. Bounty hunters after extortion money. Aren't they?" That made sense. but what about "the powers", the secrecy, the spy, the secret police, the world order hanging in the balance? Like I said maybe you are biting off too much too fast or maybe it's just me wanting less secrecy, more clarity. Perhaps the next couple of chapters will explain a lot of this. Overall I think you've got an exciting story going here.

My comments and suggestions are in RED. Blue is to highlight something from you.

(Note: I’m making suggestions and telling you my honest opinion---but I’m no expert.
Take what you like and trash the rest. Linggy)

Jude's spine chilled Cliche? got something else? "There's a Lada. is Shadowing us. Is it them?"

Oxana wound the passenger window open Do you wind a window open in England? We roll the window down. and looked outside. "It is black Lada. It is Raisa." She glanced back at him, beaming from ear to ear.

He peered across at Raisa's car. She raised her arm out of the window, above the roof, stabbing the air ahead with her index finger. Picking up speed, the Lada passed the truck them, then cruised in front.

As Oxana shut the window, an electronic xylophone played five notes he recognised. Had her father the Red Army captain had trained her to draw a gun as fast as she whipped her phone from her pocket and pressed it against her ear? She turned to him. "Raisa wants to speak to you."

"What does she want? I don't get enough practice driving on ice to do it one-handed." Oxana shuffled towards him along the passenger seat and thrust the phone against his ear. "Ow. Hello?"

"Can you drive faster?" The commanding tone of Raisa's voice expected a yes.

"Only if you can tell me what the road ahead's ahead is like," said Jude. "Does it turn into Swiss cheese again?"Assuming he's street smart with talking to foreigners whose English isn't that good. I don't think he'd expect her to understand that some swiss cheese has holes.

"No," said Raisa. "Unless there is a new hole. The ones behind you have been there for years."

New hole? Jude eased his foot off the gas pedal. Odessa was full of holes. "You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were the secret police."

"Sorry," said Raisa, "But I needed to catch you up. Calling Oxana again would have slowed me down. I would have taken her from you if you were further back. Follow her directions. Now the militsia are searching for your truck. Six more cars. Do not delay. Good luck."

How did she know? Oxana withdrew placed back, inserted, put the phone to her pocket as the Lada sped away and disappeared into the distance ahead.

The tacho read eleven miles since they set out when she guided him into a road that wound its way through a forest. Behind a narrow pavement on the right, a wall imposed itself and stretched beyond the beam of the truck's headlights. Set in a gap in the wall ahead, there towered an iron gate.

"Go slow," said his passenger. "Drive in there. Gate, it is opening."

He edged the truck between two gateposts. The headlights caught a stocky man in a uniform like the one the cyclist wore, but this guy stood to attention and greeted them with a salute.

The narrow drive led into an industrial park, past the sawmill of which Oxana had spoken. Three Alsatian-like dogs barked at them and slunk away from their path. He swerved the truck round corners of masonry and scattered rubble, following his passenger's directions. A welter of snow claimed the roof of Raisa's parked car.

A pile of concrete slabs blocked the drive, forcing him to stop the truck and summon the strength to wrench up the handbrake, level with the seats. He shot Oxana a glance. Her face reflected his smile of relief with a beam of rapturous glee. A high five never felt more in order as they smacked palms.

Jude bowed his head, looking his clothes up and down. "I'm sorry I'm dressed so rough for the occasion. Our hosts will probably give me fifty kopeks for a cup of tea."

"Oh, Mister Jude. Please take this. Katya, she wants to see it." Shuffling to her feet, Oxana reached up to the sun visor and eased the photo of Zoe from behind the clips.

He pushed why push it? can't he just put it in his pocket? the picture in his pocket, climbed out of the truck into the blizzard, then scanned the area. Security lights flickered on, illuminating his surroundings. Dark windows stared over the truck's roof from the brick terrace he had parked alongside.

Three vague figures approached them from the darkness at the far end of the sawmill across the drive. They emerged into a dim shaft of light, walking abreast along a passage bordering the wall of a workshop at their left. Logs and planks lay stacked in huge piles along the other side of the alley. The glint of a bunch of keys caught his eye. They jangled from the belt of the uniformed guy who had welcomed the truck at the gate.

Oxana ran to Jude and grabbed his arm. She led him out of the weather and under the shelter of a sheet of corrugated iron that roofed the alley. The smell of freshly-sawn wood recalled the inside of a garden shed on a summer afternoon. "It is Raisa - she is tall one. And Boris - he is guard, fat one. And Katya."

The hosts drew closer. Raisa's ushanka ? missed the ceiling by a whisker. They halted a few paces from Jude. The spy stepped forward. Oxana tightened her grip on his arm and nestled the side of her head against it.

A classic raincoat hemmed Raisa's calves and flattered her height. He'd have taken her and her stunning looks, and porcelain complexion. for twenty-three if Oxana hadn't told him she was ten years older. The spy's stare pierced him. "Oxana, can you spare your man for a minute? I want to kiss him. So you are Mister Jude?"

Oxana released him.

Raisa rested her gloved hands on his shoulders and bowed her head to kiss him on the cheek. Locks of her dark hair tickled his nose. "I am so thrilled to meet you. You are my hero."

Her eyes narrowed and penetrated his as though she took the measure of him. She dressed like a spy I didn't think spies had typical clothing? and unnerved him like a shrink. "Thank you for protecting our special lady. But your truck is still being hunted, no comma by bandits dressed in police uniforms. A disgrace to their badge."

She stepped to his side. Katya swerved from her path, avoiding a collision of her head with Raisa's chest. Twin light bulbs caught Jude's eye as the spy ducked beneath them. They shivered shimmied on the ends of their cords as the storm rattled the roof.

Raisa peered behind him to the entrance of the alley. "I think we need another thirty minutes of snowfall to cover your tracks. Then, at least one danger will pass."

Jude turned. His gaze followed the spy's into the weather. "I'm still trying to work out what our danger is, and how I managed to get myself into it with you." Why are you repeating the word spy? I'd go with her name after mentioning it once.

Raisa sank her hands into her coat pockets. "You met a troubled child of the street. And you chose to help her, taking an unknown risk upon yourself. Instead of passing by on the other side."

"And now we're both in the same mess instead of just one of us." The eyes around Jude fixed on him as though his audience hung on his words, whether it understood them or not. This sentence sounds odd. "Why is Oxana terrified of the secret police? And too frightened to explain what the hell is going on? Will it spell the end of civilisation as we know it if someone tells me?"

"Actually, it just might." His choice of words etched a wry smile on Raisa's lips, but she did not sound amused. "Remember where you stand, Mister Jude. In the Borderland. Sandwiched between the new menace in the East and the complicit, complacent West. What happens here will shape the future history of Europe, and the power balance of the world. Sounds over the top. Should we believe that the future of the world is practically balancing on his and their shoulders. Will you keep our secrets when agents of the enemy capture you and extract your teeth one by one?"

What possessed him to sign the haulage contract? Such a lucrative deal should have screamed high risk at him. There had to be a catch. Darkness descended on his truck and the building beyond, as the security lights faded out, leaving only a pale beam cast across the drive by the bulbs above his head.

Raisa's gaze softened as though she read his the terror in his face. "There is much it is best for you not to know, but I will brief you as fully as I can. They are literally secret police. Not the official ones. The two I was following officially do not exist."

Yawns broke through his attempts to suppress his tiredness. "And unofficially?"

"They are deadly. They don't even have licence to kill. They don't need one. You know whom they serve. Do not mention his name. Not everybody here is in the Circle, no comma of people in our full confidence." Raisa turned to Boris and addressed him in Russian.

"Da. Kanyeshna." The guard stepped before Jude, sporting a broad, moustachioed smile, and squeezed his hand. "Zdravstwicha, Gaspadin Jude. Sorry I speak small English. I will speak to Vitaly. If you need -" he joined his hands in the praying position and tilted the side of his head against them - "You can stay here." He unhooked two keys from his belt and planted them in Raisa's palm.

"Boris is going to cook our dinner," said Raisa. "You are our guest of honour, Mister Jude. We will afford you the best Ukrainian hospitality we can muster."

With a tilt of the beak of his cap Boris turned and departed, disappearing round the far corner of the workshop.

Raisa dropped the keys into a hip pocket in her raincoat. "There is a large unit here you can convert into a studio. At a reasonable price. It would make Vitaly a very happy boss."

"Studio?"

She seemed to think he was already in the market for one. Her eyes expanded with a look of surprise at his surprise.

"Hello, Mister Jude." Katya caught his gaze with dark eyes full of seductive menace, and a smile wicked enough to melt the snow. Smooth, pale cheeks, the gap between her front teeth, and her thin lips, unadorned, betrayed a schoolgirl dressed as a high-class hooker. Her fur coat would grace any window in Oxford Street. "Oxana, may I kiss him, also?"

"On face only, not mouth."

Without seeking his permission, perhaps taking it for granted, Katya stepped up on tiptoe and submerged her lips into his cheek. "Ai! You must cut the hair from your face." Fine strands of her blonde fringe, protruding beneath her hood, ruffled in the breeze. "So, you are the photographer? Of the famous models?"

"Famous?" Jude cast Oxana a surprised glance.

Raisa caught his eye and read his face. "And that's what Katya told me."

Oxana looked sheepish.

"Well, I've dabbled." Why did those words just escape his lips? Perhaps his tiredness inclined him against the emotional challenge of embarrassing one girl and disappointing the other. But, why should they care whether he was a rank amateur or Britain's answer to Hugh Heffner?

"Please may I see a photo, Mister Jude?" said Katya. "One that Oxana told about?"

He plucked from his pocket the picture of Zoe and passed it to Katya, who held it close to her eye. "Oh, Mister Jude. Naughty, naughty. She is very pretty."

Raisa stepped behind her and peered over her shoulder. "You have skill with a camera, Mister Jude. I also take photographs - of things less pretty. Evidence of political persecution by the authorities of this country."

Katya lifted her eyes to meet Jude's. "My father, he is photographer. We had the photographic shop, and house. Until they came with diggers and broke it."

Raisa's hands soothed Katya's shoulders as she addressed Jude over the kid hooker's hooded head. "They razed it to the ground. He organised the campaign of the wrong candidates at the local elections. Then Katya worked as an Internet model. Until the studio closed down two weeks ago. The job paid ten times the minimum wage. Her family could afford to rent a new apartment."

"My father, he did a same thing as Raisa. He made the photos of evidence against the Powers. And Oxana also. She - mmmph."

"Katya!" Raisa's gloved hand clamped the girl's mouth. The spy looked like she'd seen a ghost. "Mister Jude, you will forget what you just heard." She withdrew her hand.

Jude gazed in awe at the child breadwinner, who seemed to reveal nothing remarkable. What made Oxana's photos different from Katya's father's? And Raisa's? A gagging offence? "Forget what?"

A smile formed in the corner of Raisa's lips. "Precisely."

She strode one pace to a door in the workshop wall. Withdrawing a key from her pocket she unlocked the door and pulled it open. "Come in here and relax. Now, where is the switch?" Reaching inside the doorway, she felt along the wall at her neck level, then clicked the lights on.

"And take some medicine. You look exhausted." Without looking at Jude, Raisa stepped inside.

"Medicine?"

He followed her into the workshop, then through a doorway on the left, leading Oxana and Katya into an office dominated by a pine desk, clear of clutter. Raisa strode across the room to the window. She turned a screw at the base of a radiator with fat panels rising from a pipe wide enough to roll a tennis ball inside.

"Very special Ukrainian medicine. It cures everything. Please sit down. This room should heat in a few minutes." Taking her seat on a swivel chair behind the desk, Raisa motioned the others on to a black sofa. A tear in the leather exposed a strip of yellow foam underneath. Muffled howls of the wind raging outside accompanied a chill draught through cracked frames of the window facing the alley.

Raisa shuffled herself and her seat round to the wall. She grabbed a bottle and plastic box in each hand,no comma from a cabinet, turned back, and plonked them on the desk. "Courtesy of the boss."

"Vodka," said Katya, as she and Oxana sat down either side of him.

Raisa glanced across the table at their faces. "Whenever we can, we should speak English in front of our brave British guest." She fetched two thimble-sized glasses and two cans of cola from the cabinet, lobbing a can into the hands of each girl.

"Brave?"

"As you put it yourself, we are in this mess together. And you came through perils to get here," said Raisa, amid the click and fizz of the cans opening.

"But you refuse to share your secrets." Jude's new comrades secured his bravery by keeping him ignorant of their danger. Some unfinished business lay between Oxana and Stoichkov. She evaded his thugs in the secret police. He wanted her. Why? She took photos Raisa classified as top secret. Did she have something on the oligarch? "I see you prefer me to take unknown risks. As you put it yourself."

"I would prefer you to have peace, love and happiness. And such a fate may also lie perilously closer than you can yet see." She switched her gaze to Oxana and back to him. "I wish to learn more from the two of you. What made you so sure of each other so soon?"

A good question now, having helped Oxana escape from the truck park and found himself in a fine pickle.

Raisa peeled the lid off the plastic container. "Dried apricot. You must eat a slice before you drink."

He leaned forward, reaching to the desk to take one.

"And what are those twin bruises on your neck? Either side of your Adam's apple?" She filled the glasses. "They look like a bite from a vampire."

Oxana caught his glance as he chewed the fruit. Should one of them tell the story - his discovery of her prowess in martial arts? Spilling the beans would make him a cry baby, telling on a little girl for hitting him. It served him right, anyway. He should have stopped tickling her instead of getting carried away with joy at the tears of laughter in her face. "Oh, these. I didn't know they showed. Just a silly accident."

The spy narrowed her eyes as they peered into his, making his lie feel transparent. "You are a noble fool for trusting a street kid. Others would have lured you to a robbing and beating."

Oxana had led him into a trap of a different kind.

"Do you know how to drink vodka?" Lifting the miniature glass to her lips, Raisa downed the whole measure in a flash, then stepped beside the desk to hand him his.

Katya tapped his shoulder. "You must do it right. I show you. Stand up."

"Eh?" He rose to his feet.

She lifted his arm up, folding it across his chest, and balanced the glass on his elbow. "You must drink from here."

Inching his elbow to his mouth, he drank as Raisa had shown him.

Raisa beamed him a broad smile. "This is how men drink vodka in the presence of women. To show their respect."

The dose shot to his head like a bolt of fire, warming him, as the gathering heat in the room soothed his cheeks. "It works. Suddenly I feel more alive."

The spy poured him and herself another. "You may drink with your hand this time."

He obliged. "Cheers. I don't get many chances to drink alcohol. I just hope no-one has to pick me up from the floor before the night is over."

Emboldened with Dutch courage, he resolved to confront Oxana with an issue he had dodged earlier. "Why did you spin me as a proper photographer to the others?"

"Spin?" A frown of perplexity wrote itself how about: crept or if its fast you could say flashed across the girl's forehead.

Raisa necked her drink. "To bring us here, to meet you. But your standard is high if the picture you showed us is typical of your work."

"I'm flattered. But I thought we came here to hide from your enemies?"

"We have now. Each of us could have taken cover in a different place," said Raisa. "Oxana didn't need to go anywhere with you in your truck, to flee the secret police. She waited for the sound of wheels and engines in her hiding place beneath the truck park, before you met her. She could easily have returned there, to safety."

Beneath the truck park?

"I don't have confirmation that they were looking for her, but that is my guess. They want her, of course. You know this already - her second indiscretion this evening." Raisa shot Oxana a frown. "Besides her failure to keep her head down, and covered, on her way here."

"So we didn't need to come here at all?" said Jude.

"You did now," said Raisa. "Being hunted on the way was not part of the plan. But, you are in the best place, now that you both need to hide, and so does your truck."

He reached forward and plonked his empty glass on the desk. "You and Katya came here to discuss this child modelling project?"

They nodded.

"Couldn't that have waited?"

"Not now," said Raisa. "The project and your pursuit are connected."

"How?" Jude scratched his head. "Our pursuers are corrupt police. Bounty hunters after extortion money. Aren't they?"

"Yes and no. You are not their bounty. I am convinced it is Oxana they want. Everything points to it. And the connection with modelling has become more crucial since you met her." Raisa shot Oxana a glance, then looked him in the eye. "You have walked into her life at the best - and worst - possible time. Oxana has not been actively hunted for five months. She has lowered her guard. Ignored my warnings."

A swirling gale whistled through cracks in the window frames, searching for gaps in their hideout's defences.

Raisa cleared her throat. "Yuri - Katya's drunken father - has lashed out at Stoichkov. Threatened him. On the Internet. Wanted him to feel the fear for a change. A luxury none of us can afford." By the look of dismay on the other two faces, they, too, heard this news for the first time. "Yuri's message has betrayed Oxana."

Katya rubbed her eyes. Her body trembled. "Secret police were horrible. They searched our apartment. And made the big mess. He is upset -"

"I know. Spare me the excuses. They make no difference." By all accounts, the guy deserved sympathy. Did Raisa need to be so callous? "Your father is a liability. I am cutting him out of our confidence. We still depend on the enemy never suspecting he sent the message, and knows about Oxana."

She caught Jude's eye. "At least he had the sense to post his message on the forum of Ukrainska Pravda. The news web-site is sympathetic with the opposition. And the human-rights movement. On request from my colleague, the editor removed the post. Minutes after it appeared."

The spy switched her gaze to Oxana. "But we must assume the enemy has also read it, and linked it to you. And hunts you as we speak."

She turned back to Jude. "Yuri taunted Stoichkov for being outsmarted by a little girl. If only it were true, and not premature. Her day is yet to come. Now the enemy has been alerted that she is still alive and poses a threat to him."

Oxana sank her head in her hands. "No. Please, no." She glared up at Raisa, seething.

The spy rose from her seat and strode to the front of the desk, before the sofa. She stooped and laid a hand on Oxana's shoulder. "Shoot the messenger as much as you wish. But it was never safe for you to work as a street hooker. Still less, desirable. The risk now is far too high. Especially, stay away from the truck park where you met Mister Jude. The guard cannot be trusted."

Oxana swiped Raisa's hand away, sprang to her feet and flung her can into the far corner of the wall by the window. She stepped before Katya, arms raised at her sides, green eyes flaming, baring her teeth and making herself look bigger. "Your father, he is such stupid. Now, every kopek which he spends on vodka, he must give to me."

Katya reached down and produced a bank note from the inside of her boot. Fifty hryvnia. "Take it. This money was for him."

"No. Now you are stupid. I told, he must pay, not you." Oxana shook her fists either side of her as her face flushed with rage. "Give this to your babushka. She is bone and skin. Make her eat. I cannot stop work. What shall we eat? Tarakani?"

Raisa spoke as Jude opened his mouth to request a translation. "Cockroaches. Silence. Both of you. There is no point in fighting each other. Oxana, do not forget the reason you brought us all here. Now you must finish the job. Persuade Mister Jude to take care of you."

The spy anticipated his next question. "This is why we need the modelling project. So that Oxana and the other kids can sleep here again. In beds, between sheets, this time. If money comes in and Vitaly receives rent."

Raisa's intrusive eyes pierced Jude's again - the stare of the shrink, not the spy. "Will you hear and consider our proposition? I think I am beginning to understand what makes the two of you click. A certain nobility about you which you both possess."

Oxana's plans included the people she cared about. Her mentally-ill sister needed a decent home. How many others from her family of twenty-eight would join her? Modelling again would take Katya off the streets, too.

Raisa squeezed his shoulder, cocking an eye to Oxana as she addressed him. "It is true that her family of street kids will suffer greater hardship, as things stand. Now, her country needs someone to support her and keep her safe. In hiding. Until her time comes. Will you help her?"