"Every chess master was once a beginner."
- Irving Chernev

The tracking device was hidden beneath the dead man's coat lapel, sewn between the layers of muslim that served to give the expensive coat its elegant shape beneath the outer layers of the softest merino wool. Since arriving in London weeks earlier, the Russian had availed himself of the best tailoring Saville Row had to offer, following recommendations from the man he called Sergei Fenix, a man he had grown to admire, though begrudgingly, through the nine years he had known him.

But now the man lay cold and dead in a shallow grave in the middle of a deserted lot flanked by factory chimneys, shot in the heart by Harry Pearce, head of Section D. His coat was ruined now, all that money wasted.

How Arkady Kachimov had allowed himself to be fooled by a minor player such as Lucas North was beyond anything Sergei could comprehend. The ruse had been so trivial, so minor, yet as Sergei listened to the recording of Arkady's conversation with Lucas the previous day - recorded by the listening device the tailor had sewn into Arkady's coat - Lucas had appealed to Arkady's need for safety and security.

After all, Arkady had only recently earned the position as chief FSB resident in London just a few weeks earlier, and Lucas North had been his ticket, releasing the MI5 operative after eight years' imprisonment as part of a spy swap.

No one wants to be fed to the wolves during a fall-out, Sergei thought as his men dragged Arkady's body onto a plastic tarp. If Arkady hadn't fallen for Lucas' ruse, Russia would have made its first statement to the United Kingdom that it was a force to be reckoned with in the worldwide race for nuclear energy. The Alexei Leonov, a Russian submarine that yesterday had been lurking in British waters with the mission of tapping a major communications network cable and disabling it, would have been key to that bold move. It would have paralyzed the country.

Instead, Arkady had put all his bets on Lucas and foiled the cyber-attack that had taken months to plan by giving up the valuable codes that disabled the submarine, rendering it useless in the water. It was a major embarrassment for the Kremlin. All that work gone in a blink of an eye.

And now, Arkady was gone as well.

Sergei sighed. Just as well.

If Harry Pearce hadn't pulled that trigger, Sergei would have done it himself. He would have done it a long time ago, but it had not been the place nor the time then.

One of the men looked at him and Sergei nodded curtly, a signal that told him to continue with the task at hand. The man poured caustic acid over Arkady's face and hands, burning off every trace of Arkady's identity, that of being FSB's man in London, recently installed, and now, quite recently deceased.

"The cub must not teach the wolf," Sergei whispered under his breath, the words spoken in fluent Russian as he watched Arkady's face melt in front of him. It was a Russian saying that Arkady should have known by heart.

"You taught me that, Arkady. And now here you lie, dead and betrayed by your own little cub, Lucas."

He turned away, the smell of burning flesh wafting towards his nostrils. Lucas North taught you the lesson you should have taught him, old man.

Sergei Fenix had once been in Lucas' place a long time ago - the cub - though he was much older than Lucas, old enough to be Lucas' father. In his match against Arkady, Sergei had been the one on his knees, begging for another life to be spared so he could take its place, while Arkady was the man to stand over him and laugh at him, turning his back on him and his pleas.

Sergei's jaw tightened at the memory, though he knew that everything had happened for a reason. That had been nine years ago, the first time he'd met Arkady and known him to be one of the most ruthless men Sergei had ever met. Cruel, sadistic and utterly without morals behind the easy smile and friendly eyes, the man thought himself the wolf among the unsuspecting sheep.

But that man was gone now and as Sergei watched the men wrap up Arkady's body in the tarp and push it back into its shallow grave, a sense of relief washed over him. They hurriedly refilled the grave with wet soil as the rain began to strengthen.

Sergei, safe beneath a black umbrella, strode towards the idling Range Rover and got inside. He inhaled deeply, smelling the faint stench of industrial chemicals in the air, mingling with the smell of rain and freshly dug earth, before shutting the door.

So this was the smell of England now, he thought. Traitors, murderers, and spies everywhere. No one was what they ever seemed.

Once upon a time, Sergei had been a member of the British upper class and proud of it. During those days, he'd been known under a different name, the one he was born with and the one he carried till the end. Born of a noble heritage that spanned generations, earning him automatic entry into any school of his parents' choice - and his - and those of the oldest gentlemen's clubs in London, he had to admit that he'd lived a good life and for that he was grateful.

He served his country for over twenty-five years, working up the ranks in the Foreign Office, with posts that took him to Russia, Argentina and back to England. For two years, he'd been Ambassador to the Ukraine and after that, when he decided to stay closer to home, he maintained the position as governor for the Commission of Nuclear Energy. It was a position he'd keep till his death.

Unlike most men whose deaths are often unplanned and inconvenient for the ones left behind, Sergei's death as an Englishman had been meticulously carried through till the very end.

He died at his home, a process that was attended by his doctor who had, for almost a year, supervised a stringent diet that made Sergei appear emaciated to everyone around him, supposedly due to cancer, signing all the appropriate forms as his 'death' took place. There was also Fred Mortense, his attorney, who filled out all the necessary forms ensuring his heirs lived a good life after he was gone.

In his place, the body of a vagrant who had fallen and hit his head just a few blocks from Vauxhall Cross that morning, made its way to the mortuary for the immediate cremation.

Within the afternoon of that day, what was left of him was an urn bearing someone else's ashes. And while his heirs mourned, a memorial set for him that was quite well attended and covered by the media, Sergei found himself on board a shipping vessel en route to Russia, Arkady by his side ensuring he wouldn't change his mind. And next to Arkady, were two other men assigned to watch over him.

For two years, he worked hard to prove himself - that having him instead of someone else was to Russia's best interest in its pursuit for nuclear energy power. He was a much bigger prize than the one they had originally sought out. Four years later, he'd earned his way to earning the trust of people high up in the Russian government, and found himself more powerful than the man who had in the beginning threatened to destroy him.

In the deadly game between Sergei and Arkady - the wolf and the cub - Sergei had finally become the wolf.

And now Arkady was dead and buried.

Both men finished their grim task and got into the Range Rover. Fred turned to look at Sergei from the front passenger seat. His graying hair remained dry beneath the hat that he wore and he removed it, shaking the water down onto the car floor.

"How long ago did the squad receive the order?" Sergei asked.

"Two hours ago," Fred replied. It was now eight thirty. "They should be en route. But communication has been sparse, if any. It appears that they don't know where the girl is, but they know where Mikhael is."

"Then that should be their first target then," Sergei said. "Any ideas where she might be?"

"We lost her at Purfleet when she ran and she's not at Trevor Square," Fred replied. "And she's not at the Grid either. We don't have much time."

"How many were sent?"

"Four for her and two for Mikhael," Fred replied as he pulled out his phone, reading something on the screen. "He underwent surgery an hour ago so he should be easy"

Sergei nodded and gazed out the window, watching the rain lash out against the glass. A kill squad, he thought. God help them.

>>><<<

Mikhael was tired. The pain killers had finally begun to take effect and all he wanted to to do was close his eyes and get some rest. But even after Mikhael had gone through how he'd been tasked with the job of kidnapping Alexa in Paris and bringing her to Russia, turning her into a MI6 asset, and how, in some twisted way reminiscent of victims suffering from Stockholm syndrome, she'd trusted him enough to let him shoot her in the head, Harry still wanted the answers to the questions that hung over both of them from the very beginning.

Where did the Sugar Horse names come from? Who had compromised the operation? How many assets had already been eliminated?

It wasn't as if Harry did not care for Alexa - for he did, quite dearly. But she was home in England and he'd kept watch over her for over nine years since, treating her like she was his own daughter. He understood that she was probably in possession of Sugar Horse assets, but his main concern now was to learn how she had come about it, and who had handed the names over in exchange for Alexa's return?

For the answers to those questions, Mikhael had had to bring himself back to the moments when Alexa trusted him enough to begin telling him the intimate details of her life, the memories suddenly rushing towards him like an oncoming train and Mikhael found himself gripping the handrails of his hospital bed as he forced the feeling to pass him by, though they left him visibly shaken.

She had been close to dying when she had finally opened up to him, even after he'd shot her in the head. Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, Voltaire once said. And as Mikhael heaved a sigh, he looked at Harry, knowing that the man was not about to leave till he would receive the answers to his questions.

Just as well, Mikhael thought, wondering whether word about Anatoly's failure to terminate his targets at the ferry terminal that afternoon had reached whoever had ordered the hit. It could have been Arkady, he thought, and if it was, he knew there were more where they came from.

You might as well hear it from someone, Harry, Mikhael thought as he watched the man sit down on the chair in front of him. None of us may live to see tomorrow alive.

>>><<<

Since she'd been abducted five months earlier, Alexa had never been one to open up about her life. Opening up about anything remotely associated with who she was meant leaving herself vulnerable to everything and anything.

There were no such things as friends among the women who shared the same fate as her, who would disappear one day never to be seen again, sent to some other place, maybe a club, maybe someone's home, Alexa never really knew. Instead, they would talk about the weather, dresses they would wear that day, or tricks they'd learned to please the men.

There was never talk about dreams, or their pasts, or even their futures. In this new world that had become her only reality, there were no such things. There was only survival.

When Mikhael pulled the trigger that one night as Arkady watched, Alexa knew then how important it had been not to harbor any dreams or hopes of escape. She had nothing left to lose, not even a single hope that one day, she'd make it out alive.

The bullet tore through the left side of Alexa's head, a deep graze that ran across the temporal bone of her skull. And though the bullet had not penetrated through the bone, the impact generated enough trauma inside her brain, as well as blood that pooled beneath her head. She would not emerge from her trauma-induced coma for almost two weeks.

When she awoke, Alexa could barely speak. And when she finally regained the power to do so, she recalled nothing of what had happened to her just before the shooting all the way back to a few years before her abduction in Paris. It was as if her slate had been swept clean, and she had no recollection of the torture that she had endured, the humiliation, and the the beatings. She also had no recollection of receiving anything from Oskar the Ferret.

One week later, she began to talk about the very things she had never told anyone. She began to talk about herself.

Mikhael remembered it vividly. Alexa had relapsed into a fever, the sutures on her scalp having gotten infected and Mikhael had found himself almost risking that one call to the head office asking for help - an emergency evacuation of a British national - despite the high-alert situation they had found themselves in.

Four people were dead, including the MI6 mole, Oskar the Ferret, leaving MI6 operatives at a standstill until everything calmed down.

And the Russians were nervous. Tiresias had been compromised.

The Kremlin was doing some housekeeping, and Mikhael knew that no call could be made without the Kremlin knowing.

Mikhael holed himself up in one of his safe houses and kept an old woman to help him as he kept watch over her for two straight days till her fever finally abated. And throughout that time, she had talked, mostly through her delirium.

It was during the worst of her fever when she began talking about her mother.

Minerva George had been killed for information that she had stolen from a high-ranking MI6 official with whom she had been having an affair with when Alexa was about ten years old. She would be eighteen by the time she realized what had been going on.

Minerva's lover was one of three men who organized a top secret operation called Sugar Horse. How Alexa had known this was simple.

Her mother told her.

She had been her mother's confidante. Minerva didn't care if she was telling her secrets to a ten year-old child who could have passed them to someone else. Her mother knew her daughter well. She knew her secrets were safe.

Minerva had been on her way to drop off the Sugar Horse documents to her handler when the accident happened. A drunk driver hit their car head-on, killing Minerva instantly and sending Alexa flying through the window of the car, landing a few feet away with broken ribs and a broken leg. By the time emergency services had arrived, a fire had broken out from the petrol.

Nathaniel had been in Geneva for a meeting at the time and returned home just in time to plan his wife's funeral and sit by his daughter's bedside as she recovered from the accident. Too busy handling the affairs of the country, Nathaniel had had no idea where Minerva had been going or who she was seeing. He had no knowledge that his beloved wife was a traitor.

When the house was broken into and torn apart on the day of Minerva's funeral, Alexa knew exactly what the thieves were looking for. The Sugar Horse documents were never found, whether at the accident site, on Minerva's body, or in the house where the George family lived in Trevor Square. She assumed that the documents had burned in the car fire.

Eight years later, two weeks before her trip to Paris with her friends, Alexa found the documents hidden inside the doll she had had with her during her accident, dried blood still encrusted within the doll's joints. The names had been stored inside a thumb drive, in an encrypted file.

That evening, she logged onto her computer and typed in the words "sugar horse" in the search engine, including two names that she had seen first the moment she had managed to open the file. She would have no idea that all communication at the Trevor Square residence was being monitored by the Russians.

"She was only eighteen years old," Mikhael said. "She was just too naive then."

Two days later the two Sugar Horse assets were found dead, both shot, and Nathaniel's home was broken into once more, the entire house torn apart though the names still eluded the men who sought them.

"Why do you say that?" Harry asked. "Why do you believe that they didn't find the thumb drive?"

"Because they wouldn't have ordered me to kidnap her when she was Paris," Mikhael replied. "She was kidnapped for Sugar Horse, Harry. They tortured her the moment we arrived in Moscow. They wanted to know where the thumb drive was."

"And did she tell them?" Perspiration gathered on Harry's brow.

Mikhael sighed. "I don't know. I wasn't there for those sessions. They wanted the Sugar Horse names as ransom for her return."

There were too many questions to ask, so much to learn and he knew he was running out of time. "Did Alexa tell you how Minerva acquired the names, Mikhael? Who compromised my operation and who handed the file as ransom when she was in Russia?"

"Your operation never got compromised, Harry, because she destroyed the file before Arkady got to it," Mikhael said, pulling the hospital dinner tray in front of him to take a sip of water. "That was when she offered to work for me as an asset, to get secrets for me from the men who'd come into the club. She knew she couldn't return home. Arkady would never have let her, after what she had done."

Suddenly the room turned pitch black and screams filled the air outside. The door flung wide open and Harry heard the sound of footsteps running across the floor. He got up from his chair as fast as he could just as he felt Ros' strong arms grab him, pushing him onto the floor where he landed on his side.

The loud bang of shots fired in the hallway filled the air. The sparks of light flashing from the muzzle of Ros' gun as she fired in the direction of the door gave Harry glimpses of a woman, her hair tied in a bun behind her, wearing a white doctor's coat. In the woman's hand was a gun with a silencer attached to its muzzle, directed at Mikhael and Harry yelled his name.

As much as Harry loathed what Mikhael had done to Alexa in Russia, keeping her as an asset, a honey trap, instead of sending her back to London, Harry needed information. He needed it badly.

Mikhael kicked the side table towards the door as hard as he could. The pain in his leg shot through his hip and he shouted in pain just as the side table careened against the woman, her arm flinging upwards as Ros' aim proved true, hitting her in the chest twice.

The smell of gunpowder hung in the air as silence descended in the room about them. The emergency generator finally kicked in, its gentle hum seeming to vibrate throughout the room as Harry picked himself up off the floor and ran towards the bed where Mikhael lay on his side, his back towards Harry.

The darkness had only lasted barely a minute, he thought. Yet it had felt like an eternity.

By the door, the woman lay on the linoleum floor, her blood pooling beneath her. In the far end of the corridor, two more shots rang out and more screams. The MI6 operative assigned to stand guard at Mikhael's door limped towards them as Ros ran out of the room and trained her gun at him, her senses on high alert.

Friend or foe? Ros was no longer sure.

The man raised his gun in one hand and his MI6 badge in the other.

"It's me, Myers," he gasped and as the gun he held in hand clattered to the floor, Ros saw the spot of blood on his side, spreading across his white shirt beneath the coat he wore. "I got the one by the power room," he said, grimacing in pain.

Just minutes earlier, they had stood side by side joking about the number of successful kills under their record, though even Ros knew that the numbers they'd spoken out were not true. They were merely killing time.

His name was Eddie.

Eddie stumbled towards her, finally falling to his knees as Ros screamed for the frozen staff of nurses at the station to do something - to help and not just stand there. And as if the curses she peppered her orders with finally broke through some trance they were under, the nurses sprang to life and they rushed around him with their carts and their medical paraphernalia, someone shouting orders for a gurney and other medical items Ros was unfamiliar with.

Inside the hospital room, Harry pulled Mikhael onto his back. Mikhael was gasping for breath, his eyes wide. His chest was wet, the hospital gown he wore soaked to the skin with blood that poured out of his torso where the bullet had pierced through the skin and punctured something major.

Mikhael was bleeding out and Harry cried in desperation for help, reaching for the call button designed to get someone in the room. He knew what death looked like, how the light in a man's eyes slowly faded as death drew near, gathering him to its embrace. Harry found himself holding onto Mikhael's hand tightly as Mikhael grunted in pain, gasping for breath that would not come as easily as it once did.

"There's something else you need to know," Mikhael gasped, drawing Harry closer, his voice growing faint with each passing second as the pain slowly began to recede. "Euripedes once said that 'to a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.' You have to keep her safe, Harry."

"Yes," Harry said. "I love Alexa like my own."

Mikhael shook his head. Blood seeped from the side of his mouth. "Not like her father, Harry. Not like Nathaniel. He will do anything to keep her safe. And I mean anything."

Harry frowned, his grip tightening around Mikhael's hands whose own grip had began to weaken, to slip away. "Nathaniel's dead. I buried him eight years ago, Mikhael. I'm the only one close enough to a father that Alexa will ever have."

This time, Mikhael laughed weakly as he shook his head. "You're wrong, Harry." He coughed and Harry looked away as blood sprayed across Mikhael's chest.

Medical personnel burst into the room, ordering Harry to step back, to move away. But Harry held onto Mikhael's hand tighter than ever.

"What are you saying, Mikhael?"

Mikhael muttered something and Harry strained forward to listen.

"Phoenix?" Harry asked. "What about the phoenix?"

This time the medical doctors pushed Harry away from Mikhael, a cart filled with instruments taking his place alongside the hospital bed. Harry pushed his way between them, not caring anymore. Mikhael was still talking, his voice fading away, drowned out by the medical terms being tossed around between the personnel.

"Nathaniel," Mikhael whispered just before the oxygen mask was shoved onto his face but he pushed it away, staring at Harry with wild eyes whose lights were slowly fading. His words had grown faint, more so with the oxygen mask now firmly placed over his mouth but his words were unmistakable.

And as Harry finally stepped back, allowing the doctors and the nurses to do whatever they could to the dying man, he wondered if what he heard then was true. Did he really hear what he thought he had just heard?

He's alive, Harry. Mikhael had said. Nathaniel George is alive.

_______________________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:   If you like this chapter, please consider giving it a vote.