The Last Romanov (Under Editing)

Artturi Häyhä

               

Ambassador Simo Virtanen sat on the edge of his bed, waiting. He'd spent much of the day denying accusation upon accusation from that Czarina, accusations that were, of course, all true. She was a smart one, he had to give her that. Much smarter than he'd thought she'd be. He'd have to be much more careful about the way he conducted his... business in St. Petersburg.  And with Sasha on him so much, as enjoyable as his company was, he wasn't able to do things the way he'd been planning.  Every plan he had for his time in that den of lions had been turned on its head: he'd have to change it all, make sure that he and his associates in St. Petersburg didn't get caught.

And that was going to start that night.

It wasn't long after that that there was a knock on his door.

Virtanen looked up at him as a soldier poked his head into the door. It wasn't Sasha, that time: he must've gone home for the night, wherever that was. Instead, it was one of those Czech kids that ran around the Winter Palace like chickens with their heads cut off.

"Sir, there's a Mister Artturi Häyhä here to see you," the soldier said. "He says you know him."

Of course, he did: he was one of the people Virtanen had in St. Petersburg to keep an eye on what the Russian government was doing.

"Send him in," Virtanen said with a nod. "Would you mind getting some drinks for the two of us? A nice wine would do just fine."

"I'll send a servant immediately, sir: I'm not allowed to leave this door until someone comes and relieves me," the soldier said as he opened the door a little wider, allowing Artturi Häyhä into the room.

Artturi Häyhä was, as always, looking a little ragged. He had on some slacks, a long coat, a scarf, and some boots, all of which looked like they'd seen better days. The slacks and the coat were both paper thin, and the coat had patches by both of the pockets; the scarf was fraying at the ends and didn't look like it had been washed in years; his shoes looked like an angry cat had gotten to them; and don't even get him started with that ridiculous bag over his shoulder: at that point, he was pretty sure that there were more patches than actual bag on that stupid thing. And that damned hair: when was the last time he'd gotten a haircut? He knew women that had shorter hair than him, and he'd seen better maintained hair from men that had just spent weeks in a trench. And for the love of all that was holy, when was the last time he had a shower? And please tell him that that mechanical arm of his had been cleaned at some point since 1918, because that's what it looked like. The man looked like he'd just stepped out of a sewer for the first time in ten years, but Virtanen was used to it. Sadly.

Obviously, though, the staff of the Winter Palace weren't used to it: that poor guard kept staring at them, trying figure out how the ambassador could possibly know an apparent vagrant well enough to be comfortable with him coming into his rooms.

"He's an old war friend of mine," Virtanen explained as Artturi looked around at the room, apparently impressed. And rightly so: it was one of the few fixed-up rooms in the palace, but they'd fixed things up very, very well. He'd only seen pictures of the way the Winter Palace looked before the revolution, but that particular room looked just as things used to around there. "Though, to be honest, I think he might have looked a little better back in the trench."

"I think you did, too," Artturi shot back. He looked back at Virtanen's stomach. Well, his gut. "You look like you went and ate half the German army."

That little bastard! He knew full well that his little... weight problem was off limits: kind of like Artturi's problem of thinking that closed down metro stations made for excellent apartments.