D-Zero Meson Oscillation, 3/10
Part III, smoke and mirrors
The truth is Katrina didn’t feel easy in the slightest about giving away the identity of one of her closest comrades. But by now it was true that Sarah would’ve been inactive for several years. And the immunity would be welcome, alongside the feeling of revenge and justice she’d feel in finally being able to tell the enemy how she’d outwitted them for so many years. She imagined Sarah would be close to despair by now at the thought of never really achieving anything in the grand scheme of things, never fulfilling that idealistic dream of winning the war and making the world a better place, the motivation she’d carried with her since she was Katrina’s age.
And by now, she guessed Sarah would be settling down to enjoy her retirement in peace and tranquillity in her late mother’s beautiful cottage in the lovely and sleepy Oxfordshire countryside, whiling away her autumn years in gardening and Parish council meetings and walks with the dogs. And secretly writing her memoirs when no one was watching. Perhaps she would have strange dreams from time to time, about another world in which she knew a girl called Katrina who renewed her hope that they could win at a time when she was ready to give despair the victory.
And she would smile for Katrina’s little intervention, her immunity and confession. Because in the end, every spy wants that chance, to finally get to tell the enemy how they deceived them for an entire forty years.
Also, Katrina knew she wasn’t really betraying her. After all, she knew exactly how the KGB operated. Sarah wouldn’t have been foolish enough to recruit Russian spies into MI6 by herself – that would be too obvious and risky. No, she would simply tell Moscow who all the other talent spotters were and let them be the unwitting recruiters, the scapegoats. Whilst passing on the names of her own recruits at the same time. Sure, she could give away one or two names, innocent but believable identities she’d deliberately included in her own shortlists. MI6, after all, would only ever have her word for it that she’d provided every detail. And torture, in this case, would not be an option.
She would make her confession with a brimming inner smile that just occasionally broke through the surface. The final emotional relief. A victory of sorts.
But still, Katrina couldn’t help feeling regret about the whole thing. A wave of nostalgia came over her, the end of a lost era.
In this world, without her, the enemy had won.
The other name Katrina provided proved a dead end. No records. Presumably she didn’t exist in this world, suggested Tom from MI5, just as Katrina said.
Katrina smiled on the inside herself. Of course that person didn’t exist. She made it up, obviously.
As for her beloved Anna, she was still not certain she didn’t exist in this world. So no need to mention her, just yet.
If you were watching closely, approximately 3 hours and 12 minutes earlier you may have noticed a CCTV camera at Gare de l’Est imaging Katrina brushing past a sharp-suited French businessman gazing up at the departures board with a concerned look on his face, before hurrying to catch his connection. He would not discover his missing wallet until the train was several minutes out.
A second CCTV camera would then record the girl enter a branch of Presse and purchase a copy of Libération, The New York Times, The London Times, Die Welt and Pravda, then watch her leave in the direction of a little station café. You would be forgiven for not paying much attention to her in there, although that would be something of a mistake on your part. You would need to study the recording in more detail a second time. Watch the young man at an adjacent table, fiddling with his smartphone. A minute or so later he places it on the table by his right arm. Katrina quickly gathers her papers, gets up and walks past him, obscuring the view from the camera. The young man appears briefly distracted by something he must have heard to his left, because he doesn’t seem to notice the girl at all. Or that the smartphone isn’t there anymore until she has left the café and turned towards the station exit.
You would perhaps need the sharp eyes of a detective to track Katrina’s movements once she’s left the station. A little trawling through a sequence of CCTV cameras, however, would almost certainly prove a rewarding little exercise.
And perhaps if you were also aware that Katrina was a seasoned spy you might consider it somewhat odd that she appears to take no steps whatsoever to hide her movements from you. After all, she could’ve utilised any number of the CCTV blank spots in Paris and completely disappeared from view.
Believe me, if she were minded so to do, she could ensure that you never saw her again.
Tom from MI5 had never really had recourse to analyse CCTV footage during his short career. None of these things occurred to him when he later reviewed the video, at least at first.
He didn’t notice that Katrina did, as it happens, perhaps through this misdirection, hide a few things from view. Although a camera recorded her entering another café, where she sat down to enjoy some breakfast and learn about this parallel world, there was no CCTV inside for him, or anyone else to spy on her. What she looked up on that somebody else’s smartphone was her business. She was, naturally, acutely aware of the metadata algorithms employed by various intelligence services, continuously collecting and analysing everybody’s Internet search histories in association with every phone call and email and any first or second degree connection they ever had with any other human being. And Katrina knew her time was limited before the algorithm registered a report of that specific missing phone and started cross-referencing and localising.
Typing in ‘Sarah Bishop, Oxfordshire, MI6’ or ‘Anna Marten, socialist journalist and KGB spy codename MACMILLAN’ was clearly not an option. So she would have to find a roundabout way of seeing if they existed in this world and if so, where they were, what they were doing and whether the other side knew about them.
Finding out that either Anna didn’t exist in this world or had lived a very different life proved to be easier than she thought. There was no record of someone by that name on the website of The New Statesman, the journal she used to write for. Nor was she included in the list of alumni for Girton College, Cambridge, her alma mater.
Katrina sat back in her chair and thought about the problem for a moment. Think from their point of view. They will know you are a spy and guess you want to look up your former comrades, they will trace the use of the phone to you. In which case, looking up spy stuff on the Internet would only be expected. It would be strange if you didn’t.
So Katrina typed in ‘Mitrokhin archive’ in Russian into the search engine. A few clicks later and she found what she was looking for. A contents list in Russian, including codenames. She scrolled down to the letter ‘M’ and sighed. MACMILLAN wasn’t there. So either Anna didn’t exist, or she had a different codename. Or in this world, KGB archivist Vassily Mitrokhin, who defected to Britain in 1992 along with 25,000 handwritten notes copied from the KGB registry, was never given that particular barium meal.
Next letter codenames. NIMZO. Not there. They never got Sarah either.
Katrina put the phone down, allowed herself a little smile, then decided to treat herself to something a little stronger than coffee.
She had a few more things to check, people she used to know, people she used to love. People who either didn’t exist in this world, or never knew there ever was a girl called Katrina who loved them once. There would be no point in disturbing them here, in this world. Best let them alone, let them keep on living in their own way.
And the more Katrina learned about this new world, from the papers and the Internet, the sadder she became. The differences were simple to discern, the forks in the timeline where her world got better, and your world got sicker.
It didn’t take very long for Katrina to decide on a course of action. It wasn’t, as it happens, that she really had much of a choice. Granted, adopting some new identity, slipping back into Britain wouldn’t be difficult for someone with her talents, but then what? Eventually they would discover she had no past in this world. No cover story would suffice in this day and age. And with the kind of government they had in Britain now, that hostile environment would treat her just like any other immigrant. She would be deported. Where to? Anywhere, the British Home Office wouldn’t care. Perhaps she would be taken into custody by the intelligence services, be unable to provide any verifiable answers, and to protect herself from the inevitable torture or permanent incarceration she would have to use lethal force to escape.
No, better not to put herself through any of that. Better just be honest. Tell them everything from the beginning.
And hope they find it in themselves to let her have a new life.
She had already come to understand that she would not be going back to her own world anytime soon. For the rest of her life. A life sentence. That this is not some short-lived adventure. Not just a dream. She’d done the pinch test. Not a dream. Katrina knew she would not open her eyes again one morning to see her beloved Anna sleeping next to her, breathing gently and warmly with love. She would never again hear the morning sounds of her children on the landing outside their bedroom arguing about who gets to use the bathroom first.
Katrina understood why. All those questionable things she’d done. If she was honest, she knew it would happen one day. She dreaded it. And yet, as she always had done, she accepted her fate with the greatest of faith.
So she closed her eyes and forced herself not to cry. She made her decision. She paid her bill, left a tip on the table alongside the newspapers, then strolled idly back to the station, where she handed in the wallet and the phone to lost property, having been careful to erase the search history and wipe off her fingerprints, before wandering down to the metro.
The British Embassy it would have to be, then.
She sighed as the subway train shrieked into the station, and wondered what kind of people MI5 recruited these days, in this different place.
“Thanks. Talk to you later.” Tom put his phone back down. “I assume you don’t have anywhere to stay?”
“You know if you assume you make an ass out of you and me?”
He burst out laughing. “Very funny.”
Katrina smiled back. “You assume correct. I’m homeless and stateless. I have no money and no documentation.”
“Well, we can at least help you with the homelessness bit, at least to begin with. The Consulate has standard procedures for providing temporary accommodation in situations like this.”
Katrina raised an eyebrow and smirked. “This kind of thing happen regularly, then?”
“British citizens who’ve lost their passports and money etc., yes. Surprisingly frequently. Especially on European matchdays. We have arrangements with a few hotels.”
“The grotty ones, I assume?”
“So who’s assuming now, eh? Actually they’re not bad, three stars. Or were you hoping for some penthouse suite at the Hilton?”
“Believe it or not that’s the kind of place I would’ve been expected to stay if I was in Paris in my world.”
“The KGB must’ve paid you exceptionally well, then?”
“Actually they never paid me a penny. I reinvented myself as an actress after I -,” Katrina stopped herself. “Maybe I’ll tell you all about it later. Not now. But I am grateful and three stars would be fine. Thank you, Tom.”
“Pleasure. And yes, I would love to hear all about it later, once we’ve got you settled in. As long as I can rely on you not to run away from me or anything?”
“I have nowhere to go, Tom. Seriously. And if you want to take my fingerprints and DNA and check them against your records that’s fine too.”
He nodded. “We should also take a photograph for facial recognition.”
“Sure. And you’ll want to check missing persons databases too, obviously. See if anyone claims me as their wayward daughter, perhaps.”
Tom laughed. “Obviously you’re saying that’s not going to happen.”
“Actually,” Katrina mused, “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few chancers did try and claim me as their own. The DNA would soon disprove it though.”
Then Tom sighed sadly. “You do really believe you’re from a parallel world? This isn’t just memory loss or something like that?”
Katrina returned a serious, rational glance. “I’m sure it’s not just memory loss or disassociation or something like that. But if you wish I will gladly submit myself to a psychological assessment, if you can arrange that?”
“Erm,” Tom looked thoughtful, “actually, that may be possible. I’ll look into it. You really wouldn’t mind?”
“I really wouldn’t mind, no.”
“Not even if it turns out that, well, you are someone who really exists in this world? And you have a family who are worried about you?”
Katrina paused, glanced down sadly, then looked back up at him with her big brown eyes and said, “You know, Tom, if it turns out that I really am someone real in this world with a real family who love me then I would be more happy and relieved and joyful than you could possibly imagine…”
I love that we got a snippet into Katrina’s personal life back home with Anna! But I’m devastated for her loss. If I suddenly appeared in a parallel dimension without my wife, I’d completely fall apart.