What to do about Katrina, Ep. I, Act I, sc. 42-44
The following takes place between 7 am and 8 am (UTC), on Day Three...
Welcome to Katrina…!
Especially for those who have just joined us. As with my usual little blurb, you have the following start options. We are something like 60k words into the serial by now, so I won’t blame you if you opt not to start at the beginning, either with My Intro, there, or The Prelude & Scene 1, there.
There are about 50k words between that and the first Intermission, which provides a pretty good resume of the story so far. So you can jump in there. This is followed by scene 37, so you’d be able to catch up pretty quickly. If you are joining us for the first time I would strongly recommend you choose that option, as the pace definitely quickens and gets quite exciting and intriguing from scene 37 onwards. Otherwise you may find it a little difficult to know exactly what’s going on.
Anyhow, that’s that. For the Previously on Katrina, which was Scene 41, you can click there. In that scene, the last one from Day Two since Katrina’s unceremonious materialisation in this - to her - dystopian parallel world - we met two new characters for the first time, Katyusha and Jonas. Curiously, Katyusha seems to have come from the safehouse in which Katrina has been ensconced on the orders of MI6’s man in Paris, Peter, who is a shifty fellow if ever there was one.
In the following scenes, in the early morning of Day Three, various characters are about to wake up, including another one you haven’t previously met, although his name has been dropped a few times. That name being Guy Melville, who is a fairly senior officer in MI6’s counterintelligence section back in London, who will become very perturbed indeed when he finally gets the chance to study Katrina’s file more closely…
Fans of le Carré will be sure to love this bit…
And here is Louie Fuller to get you in the mood.
Katrina was the first to rise with the dawn, strangely refreshed and energised. She slipped out before her two chaperones had begun stirring and took herself for a twenty-minute jog. As much to get her geographical bearings as much as anything else. She made a conscious point of memorising any CCTV blank spots for future reference. There was a suitable one some two blocks up, around a gentle curve. Of course, if one had even thought to ask her at this stage whether she had any intentions of conducting clandestine meetings she would, naturally, have believably denied it. She didn’t, after all, exactly know anyone with whom to conduct such meetings now, did she?
Her chaperones, however, had finally stirred when she let herself back in. To allay any suspicions, she decided to volunteer the information. If she had been up to something, after all, she’d have kept quiet about it – such is the cognitive dissonance approach that usually has the desired psychological effect on the habitually suspicious.
Also known as the classic double-bluff.
After showering, with her customary short burst of cold at the finish, followed by a little yoga, she made them all scrambled eggs on toast and steaming arabica for breakfast.
Malcolm would be arriving around nine for the first of what, she knew, would be an extended series of many a long interview.
She had a life well-lived to get through yet, after all.
In the meantime, Tom from MI5, grumpily, and not a little groggily, took himself down to the Gare de l’Est as ordered. One of the commuters from the CCTV, the adult human female, was there, although the gentleman wasn’t. Tom was polite enough about it, as was she. She couldn’t help him, unfortunately. Didn’t remember the girl. The still CCTV image Tom showed her on his phone didn’t jog her memory either. She could only offer him non-committals. ‘Possibly’; ‘maybe’; ‘not sure’; ‘it was just another day’; ‘as you can see from the photograph I’m absorbed in my phone’.
Either she was an exceptional actress or she was telling the truth, Tom concluded. Much like Katrina. ‘May I take some contact details in case we need to talk to you again?’ resulted in zero objections from the woman. He had a suspicion Peter would be sure to make him do a thorough check.
He wished he had something better to do. Counterespionage, as it turned out (if that’s indeed what is going on here), was not remotely as interesting as all those spy stories had led him to believe. Maybe that was the real reason his father decided to quit the field for a comfortable life back in green and pleasant Sussex. He would have to ask him next time he called.
He had one last, foolish prod of the wall behind and the floor beneath the chair Katrina had appeared on, but nothing would give, before, no less grumpily, returning to the Embassy for another long and grey working day.
His spirits did not change when Audrey strolled in not long after he’d got himself settled. Part of him wasn’t surprised at himself for that. Even less so when she told him she’d like to continue having some time to herself for an undisclosed, indeterminate period, ‘to mull things over’ (she’d learned that word recently and liked the sound of it), so she wouldn’t be going out with him for a while.
Observing Tom’s unengaged response effectively told her the decision she had, at least semi-consciously, already settled on making would, in the end, clearly be the right one. The opposite of love is not hate, after all, but indifference.
Did she cry about it? No, not really, if you’d have asked her. Well, that was it, then. A measure of life in less than a minute.
Il faut être l’absurde, naturellement.
After a night of uneasy dreams, prompting an early awakening, Guy Cecil Milton Melville who, somewhat understandably, suffered terribly at prep school, with no reprieve forthcoming at Marlborough, pressed firmly on the buzzer at a certain mews apartment in the vicinity of Waterloo, approximately one kilometre from the imposing turquoise and gold ziggurat on Albert Embankment overlooking the Thames which he called The Office, but which his charming Cheltenham Lady wife insisted on calling The Circus.
Or, when in a particular mood, Babylon.
It was, after all, she would often frivolously remind him, once the location of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
He was, as always, perfunctorily waved through by Security into the back room from whence, down a single flight of stairs to the basement, he proceeded through a heavy steel door into the very long and very straight corridor which exited at the other end beneath one corner of that ziggurat.
Again Security paid him little heed other than a polite Good Morning, Sir, which had always irritated him, their vapid cheeriness serving only to emphasise the suspicion of his being unimportant or inconsequential in their eyes in, as if by intentional contrast, hardly ever having his satchel X-rayed, let alone frisked, as if Guy Melville, they presumed, would never smuggle a damn thing out of The Office being far too English to consider defection.
Or perhaps the word was unimaginative, his inner critic would sometimes suggest. Timid was another.
Mercifully, the lift did not force him to wait too long. English gentlemen, after all, do not appreciate waiting. Even if they never would complain about it.
Approximately two minutes later his mood improved, on entering his own little satrapy in the Counterintelligence section to discover himself to be the first man there. He switched on a few lights and strolled through to his office door, swiped his little keycard, perched himself behind his desk and switched on his workstation.
He ignored his inbox and went straight for the kill.
If it wasn’t for his good wife, he would’ve made something of a serious study of that file the previous evening. But she had made it abundantly clear even within the first year of their marriage that absences from dinner parties would not be tolerated, national security be damned, especially when it involved the Primrose Hill set. And they were to live nowhere else but Hampstead.
And yes, of course he was too timid to point out the utility of this sort of information being rather more helpful before the engagement party.
There were times, inside his secret mind, when he did not call this place The Office. Rather, he called it Second Home.
And here was an excuse for Paris.
Even if it was winter.
And even if it was Peter Torre sitting in the Chief Resident’s chair. Their man in Paris.
Well, he smirked inwardly, perhaps because it was Peter. It would be a delicious excuse to throw a spanner in the man’s chassis.
This time, he did not cursorily scan the file, he studied it, line by line.
Meyer, Katrina Meyer. No such person. Parallel world. Dismissed with a second smirk. Thirty-one years older. That would make her almost six years older than he, and that simply wouldn’t do. No, as far as Guy would be concerned, she was the same age as his first daughter. The one who was already dangerously attracted to a strange young man from GCHQ of whom he most assuredly did not approve. He had, in his defence, at least proffered a half-hearted show of persuading Helen to send her to Roedean rather than Cheltenham, on that very anxiety. But no, Hellie wouldn’t have it. Cheltenham, she insisted. Cheltenham. You’ll have no excuses not to visit her.
At least there was a racecourse, cried his inner spirit of consolation.
Initial Psych Report; Malcolm Gladwish. Don’t know him, Guy huffed. Still, if he had the clearance, for now at least he would assume he was qualified. Believes that she believes it and isn’t acting.
Guy huffed again and recorded a mental note to double-check this Gladwish’s credentials and Record of Service.
Still, let’s assume he knows his stuff and she really does believe it. Logically, then, this means mind control and brainwashing and hypnotism and MKULTRA and all manner of unspeakable implications the consequences and repercussions of which should, quite frankly, never reach the desk of the Intelligence and Security Committee, let alone the Foreign Secretary or the PM. It is a vortex of conspiracy and it would swamp and drown his entire section.
Alexander Mikhailovitch Voronin.
Guy leaned back in his leather swivel chair and, for the first time that morning, grinned.
As if he’d solved the mystery in a flash, simply by coming into work early and pondering.
This girl isn’t a spy. She’s just a poor unfortunate victim of Russian mind control experimentation sent directly into our den to tell us, in no uncertain terms, this is what we are capable of producing. Look at her, isn’t she beautiful? Doesn’t she speak oh so perfect mid-Sussex English, with a hint of Crawleyan Common to her when she chooses? Or is it Croydon? Well, what with her insufferably alternating pop culture references with apologies she could as happily take tea with the Queen as scream obscenities at West Ham fans even in the Lion’s Den.
And if we can produce her, how many more must we have? And for how long have we been doing this? How many Sleepers do we already have in position? And what are they planning?
And could you possibly ever hope to locate them, Mister Bond?
Sixty-two seconds for one hundred metres freestyle. Apparently that is a very promising time. Question: where did she learn to swim? Who taught her? Apparently she can swim a perfect butterfly.
Good question, Peter. Duly noted. Moscow, presumably.
DNA sample taken. Results expected within 48 hours.
Instinctively, or perhaps out of some subliminal conditioning of which he was unaware, he glanced at his watch.
07:47. It would be 08:47 in Paris.
He reached for his office phone and was about to key in the Switchboard for an external connection but then hesitated, hovering his paw over the thing.
Then back to the screen.
No, best come fully armed. Then he would call.
But he was definitely coming. Sasha Voronin and Peter Torre.
As if on some instinct, he called up Voronin’s file and hyperlinked to the Gittinger personality assessment score. IFA. Compensated.
And then again, instinct or inspirational flash of memory, Peter’s G-PAS. IFA, equally compensated.
Guy called Security and instructed them to acquire tickets for the Eurostar.
Yes, this afternoon.
And sequester six of your best men.
Yes, of course they should be armed.
And prep the interrogation site.
Do I expect trouble? What do you think?
He let the telephone veritably plonk down on the table.
And leaned back, grinning.
Until, only a few moments later, glancing again at his own phone, the smile dissipated as he thought of Helen and a feeble excuse for absence.
She had, after all, he recalled wistfully, always loved Paris…
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It may require MK-Ultra to rescue Guy's marriage but missing out on a trip to Paris is not a deal-breaker.