Red Operation

XXX: Trigger

Thirty: Trigger

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Mikhail had left Stephen's building to go straight back to his. He had a general idea of how to get there based on where he was, even if he was not the biggest connoisseur of Washington D.C. out there.

He knew where the river was and he knew which side of it he lived, so he figured he would be good. As he walked back home, he thought of his next steps. Ideally, he would travel to New York City to give the files to Alexander, as mailing them would be too risky and he highly doubted Sasha would bother coming all the way down to D.C. just to grab them. If for some reason, Sasha did say he would, Mikhail would offer himself to come to deliver them. He needed to get away from D.C and let things cool down there for another spy to then come and take his place.

There was no possible way he would be able to come back to that city, at least not to work at the Pentagon, which was the very reason he even went there in the first place. The security was too strong and the risks too high, not to mention his relationship with Stephen, which was a ticking bomb.

He had one thing going for him: the nature of their relationship. Stephen could not possibly come up with new files, so he would be fired for losing them; and he could not tell on Mikhail either, not without confessing the whole truth about them, which, upon revealed, would also get him fired.

Either way, Mikhail was fine. He had come up with the perfect plan, the only one in which he would have no trouble whatsoever.

The main reason why he wanted to leave Washington was that he could not stand the fact of being in the same city where Stephen lived. He loved him; not because he wanted to, but because he simply did and these sorts of things were uncontrollable. The only variable he had not counted into his plan was his feelings.

His initial plan was to use Stephen, but falling in love with him was never part of it; he merely wanted information on where Montgomery stored the most important documents. Falling in love with him just happened because there was no way it couldn't have, given the person he fell in love with was Stephen: one of the best people he had ever met.

Stephen was handsome, kind, polite, loving, and had the one thing that Mikhail admired the most about someone: he was loyal. But so was Mikhail, which is what lead him to steal those files and find himself in utter misery, even though he had just achieved what no spy had before and completed what was likely the most important mission ever performed for the Soviet government: infiltrate American security and steal information about an upcoming attack.

Mission completed, he concluded, going upstairs to his apartment. Time to move on.

He opened the door and fed his cat, who was meowing for food, as usual. After that, he pulled out the board from behind his couch. He pinned the Red Operation files on it, in a privileged blank spot he'd left especially for it.

He smirked at the board, the proud product of a month of relentless work. He walked over to the telephone and dialled Sasha's number, waiting for it to connect.

"Who is there?" Sasha said on the other side.

"Oliver Maine," he said. "I got the files."

"No shit..." What would usually be a mockery, came out in the most serious way possible. "Goddamn it, Misha! When? How!?"

"Listen, Sasha, I will tell you all the details later, but I think I need to get out of this city for a while. Do you think I could come to New York? I can deliver the files to you in person."

"I was coming down to get them myself, but sure. Why do you need to leave the city, though? You didn't do anything stupid, did you?"

"Not in the way you think, but these people at the Pentagon are smart; they put two and two together and raised security. I didn't even show up there today."