Under The Banner ▪ Band Of Brothers

...the worst nightmare...

Silence greeted Sveta when she woke up. Her back hurt from the cot that had been placed in the cell, less comfortable than she'd grown used to since her return to Mourmelon-le-Grand. Her eyes stung. No matter how many times she tried to count the grooves in the grey ceiling, she lost track around a hundred. She couldn't focus. For days, she'd been trying to find out what had gotten her to this moment.

There had to be a spy in Mourmelon. There had to be. She didn't know much of what she'd been charged with other than a Gestapo agent captured and linked to the assassination of a British officer had named her under interrogation. Damning evidence, apparently. Damning enough to keep her in a cell, silent.

No one had been allowed in to see her, not yet. She knew Ron would've tried at least. A deep anger filled her chest as she thought about the silence in the courtyard from the others. But she pushed it away. What could they have done?

Fear replaced the anger. Unable to sit still, Sveta sat up. She a ran a hand through her loose hair, trying to comb out the knots in the brown mess. Beria was here, or someone related to him. There was no other explanation. And with that knowledge, everything began to fall into place. Or maybe it was just her paranoia.

The roses in Sink's office.

The roses in Aldbourne for her host family.

The roses and unfinished Russian note in Mourmelon.

What connected them? She tried to remember. She tried to find some thread that pointed towards a source. But she couldn't. She couldn't remember.

The only memories that came back were the ones from Russia, the dinner parties with the Stalin family and his associates. She remembered one in particular where Lana Stalina had been thirteen and sitting quietly in the garden. Sveta, eager to escape the lingering gazes of the media and the politicians, had found her there. She'd sat down, listening to the girl go on about the lessons her nanny Alexandra Bychokova had started her on. She'd seen her smiling.

Lana had only been six when her mother had shot herself. Vasily had taken it harder, her older brother turning to alcohol the same way Sveta had about a year after that party. But they hadn't known the truth, not like Sveta had, not until the war. They'd been told she'd died of illness. Sveta's mother knew otherwise. Veronika had explained it.

They only got together when they needed to keep up appearances. And so Sveta remembered finding herself in that garden, listening to Lana speak of her nanny and the men who cared for them. She never mentioned her father, not when she could avoid it. She remembered seeing movement out to her right.

She'd left Lana there, talking to herself and the friends she imagined. She'd gone past the garden wall into the flowers where Stalin had set up his tables and allowed photos. Carefully planned photos, of course. But few people were there at the time. She saw a couple of the ever present NKVD men by the exits.

And he was there, chatting with a reporter. Beria. She remembered his beady, dark eyes beneath the small round glasses, the quiet power he exuded. He spoke with authority to the reporter. Then he caught her eyes, and the frown became a bit of a smirk.

It hadn't taken long for Beria to invite her over. Svetlana Alexandrovna, the beautiful daughter of his partner Samsonov. Sveta, the girl who wore the finest dresses and kissed cheeks dutifully. As she'd had to do then. As she'd joined him, attention from the reporter on the woman known for her poise and smiles.

"Come on, Svetochka. Don't be shy," he'd said.

Svetochka. From her mother's mouth, Svetka and Svetochka had been safe. From her father, it had been tolerable. From Beria, it was laced with poison. After her mother's death, only he had kept up the name. Svetochka, the pawn. Svetochka, the traitor.

Sveta remembered the way she'd dipped her head and smiled. She'd greeted the reporter, said a few words about the way Stalin cared for her like no other. She'd felt Beria's hand on her back. As the reporter had moved away, spotting Stalin strolling past the NKVD officers, Sveta had moved out of his reach as calmly as possible.

"Do you like flowers, Svetochka?" he had asked. "Your mother was telling me about some roses you were growing this summer."

She'd just smiled, laughing a little. "I do. It's kind of you to ask."

She'd known it wasn't at the time. A hand on the back of a girl not yet seventeen, inquiring about roses as they stood next to a bush full of them, Beria practically drooling on her... That hadn't been kind.

She shook herself. She wasn't in Russia, she wasn't been interrogated by the eyes of an evil man, she was in Mourmelon. In a cage. She looked at the walls, dark but not as dark as Beria's eyes or soul. Anger surged through her again, anger at the way her father had known his intentions, cared enough to warn her against being alone with him, but not enough to get her out of Russia. Anger at the way her mother had shot herself in the head and left her alone to care for Zhanna. Zhanna had come to them just a few weeks after that party with Beria.

She'd never told Zhanna about Beria's obsession with her. She'd given her the same warnings Sveta had received: don't let yourself be alone with him, never go to his estate, never accept his flowers. She'd explained the horrors she'd heard whispered in corners and behind doorways. But not the obsession. Never the obsession.

And now, Beria had found a way to seal her fate. Conspiracy to commit espionage came with a steep penalty: a date with a firing squad. If she didn't get show by the Americans, they'd told her she would go back to Russia to meet Stalin's judgement. Betraying the allies to the Gestapo would earn her a trip to Siberia. Or, or Beria would get ahold of her.

Her stomach churned again as she sat back down from her pacing. There had to be a way out. There had to be a way to show Sink and the rest of the Brass that she'd been framed. She just had to put the pieces together. Solve the puzzle.

Something, someone connected the three roses. It had to. There had to be a pattern. She put her face in her hands again. There had to be a pattern. She knew Zhanna would do her best on the outside, and Ron too. Maybe even Dick and Nixon and Harry. But she had to do her part. She had put these pieces together. Beria had her in his sights, and she had to stop him. She had to fight him.

But if she couldn't put the pieces together, and couldn't convince the jury at the court-martial of her innocence, then she decided to ask for a firing squad. That would be easier. Better to die from American rifles, than from a single bullet fired from a Korovin pistol.