xp_logs | Operation: зимний солдат

Backdated to May 15th. Marie-Ange and Wanda meet with Colonel Alexi Vazhin, and bargain for information on the rumors of the Winter Soldier.

The plain office, off of an anonymous hallway inside the Lubyanka, belied the power wielded by the man who occupied it - Colonel Alexei Nikolayevich Vazhin, GRU. The man was alternately a thorn in the side or useful source of information to X-Force, and often both at the same time.

Marie-Ange shared a glance with Wanda before entering the office that the equally anonymous functionary had led them to. For the first time in several years she felt very very young. Vazhin usually met with Remy, who had decades of experience. Or Pete, or Betsy, same. Not Wanda, and not her. Her unusual case of the nerves did not show, at least she hoped, and she could not discern any nervousness in Wanda's expression, but then, Marie-Ange was certain Wanda could look calm in the face of nearly anything.

Colonel Vazhin was sitting at his desk, looking like he hadn't moved since the last time they had met him in his office. He looked up as they entered, and treated them both to a slight smile. "Devushka Colbert, Devushka Maximoff. I wasn't aware you were in Moscow." It was a blatant lie, considering that his secretary had buzzed an all clear before they had even walked through the front doors. "Can I order you both some tea? Coffee?"

"Tea would be a kindness, thank you," Wanda responded, a slight smile of her own as she and Marie-Ange took seats across from Vazhin. "Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Colonel, it is most appreciated. I know you are a busy man and I can promise that we will attempt to not take too much of your time." She gave him a slight smile of her own. "Or waste it." Buried deep within her lay the seeds of tension. Nothing but calm confidence, though, radiated from her as Wanda relaxed back into her seat. They were there to do a job, to get information. But she knew a part of her waited with slight anxiety - what would he want in return? That was generally how it worked and she knew better than to expect it to go any other way.

Vazhin spoke into his office phone for a moment and leaned back. "Well, if this isn't a social call-" The absurdness of the statement earned another smile. "What can I do for you? I admit I'm surprised that the call came from you, and not Yelizaveta or LeBeau."

Marie-Ange took a folder from her bag and opened it to a photograph from her bag of a destroyed radio broadcast tower. The tower was older, the metal faintly marked with rust, but the destruction was not from disuse. The steel was twisted and scorched and bent. "One of our people was using this tower to send us coded messages, and it was destroyed." And this alone would not have been nearly enough to get them in the door, much less any information. "Normally we would have just blamed your mafiya, but our surface questioning dug up something we thought you might like to know." She took a report - in Russian - from the papers and pushed it across the desk to Vazhin. "Semtex from before it was tagged? Your Army trying to blame urban legends?"

"Conducting operations in Russia? Manya-Anne, I thought we had a better relationship than that." He took the report, reading it carefully. After a long moment, he shrugged. "The Soviet government hid caches of weapons and explosives like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter. There are thousands of lost depots and disused bunkers around the country, and when one gets discovered, a collection of firearms and bombs from the 50s finds its way into the black market."

Marie-Ange flipped pages in the folder. "You know very well we have had a man in Eastern Europe for some time. There were no operations in your country, but the former Soviet bloc, it has secrets, no?" She nodded at his explanation. "And yet, your army is blaming an urban legend. You know my people, we cannot resist that kind of rumor, not when so many others have had legs... or arms... or meat computer parts... of their own."

"The Russian Army is hardly made up of scholars. I have heard many things blamed on ghosts and rumours." His eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses. "Unless you have a reason to believe them, of course. Vanda?"

"I was younger when I first heard the story of the Winter Soldier," she replied softly, watching him carefully for a reaction she knew wouldn't come. "The older men drunk on cheap vodka, convinced the shadows were going to kill them. I thought them foolish, drunk, old. But I think I was the foolish one - certainly a drunk one at the time. With the destruction of the station and the investigation into it, we unearthed a lot of rumors and half-stories and I cannot help but remember the fear those men showed me. Ghosts will frighten a man but not terrify him into his cups - what can you tell us about this Winter Soldier?"

"I am afraid I lack your interest in this. You have showed me a burnt tower and some old ordanence and you immediate jump is to a rumour from the heights of the Cold War, when our Army spoke of American assassins sneaking through the borders, and the idea that the shape of the Chinaman's eyes would give us an advantage if we invaded at night. No, Vanda, I cannot tell you anything about this Winter Soldier." Vazhin said finally, a touch of admonishment in his voice.

Marie-Ange's expression went flat. Maybe Betsy or Remy could coax information out of Vazhin, but they had time and experience on their side. Neither she nor Wanda had either of those together. "Colonel, I am sorry to be rude, but someone is tracking down our people, and at the moment we are following every lead. I have contacts who are going missing and the only connection is that every single one of them either paid off the mafiya or is a 'respectable businessperson in the Russian market'". She pushed the entire file folder across the desk. "All Russian or Eastern European. Many with former KGB ties. I hear a rumor, I follow it. If it is nothing, it is our time wasted, not yours."

Vazhin smiled. "Ah. I see something has happened to LeBeau and Yelizaveta. Because this offer, I could not have gotten from either of them with anything less than torture." Burning an entire regional network was an extreme offer, but time was on Vazhin's side, not theirs, and the old wolf had decades of experience on them both. "If that is the case, you are right to do this. In a position of weakness, the greatest asset you can gain is time, which this rather one-sided deal has earned you."

He reached for his phone and spoke quickly into it. "Natasha will escourt your people to an archive facility. It is officially the main archive for the Ministry of Finance, which makes it perhaps the most boring collection of reports you can possibly imagine. It also makes it a useful hiding place for more... sensitive files. Including WINTER SOLDIER. Yes, it existed, although it never should have. Major General Karpov was given far too much latitude, even for the recipient of a Hero of the Soviet Union medal, and the program name alone should have been enough to remove him. Ah, Natasha. Please, take my guests down to the archives. To the Directorate X files. There won't be much there, I'm afraid, but you are welcome to try."

Well. This was only going to become more painful but Vazhin was correct in that they were in an extreme position of weakness. Stretched anymore thin and they could snap - which was one of the reasons this meeting had turned out the way it had. Wanda stood up, saying wryly, "Thank you, Colonel, for your time today. I am sure it has been most ... educational."

After Vazhin decides to give X-Force some access to the Directorate X files, Romanova escorts Amanda and Sarah down to the archives. A desperate attempt on Amanda's part results in a very disturbing piece of information.

Even though the name of the organization had changed several times over the century or so since its headquarters had been seized from the All-Russia Insurance Company during the Revolution, the Lubyanka had remained constant. A sprawling edifice that had overtaken several surrounding backstreet buildings over the years, it had been host to the interrogations of untold numbers, and gave its secrets up only grudgingly.

"We get to come to the nicest places," Amanda murmured to Sarah as their escort led them through yet another military grey corridor. "Next time, I'm asking for Jubes' tropical beach run."

Sarah snorted. "Yeah, but then somebody starts shooting at you and ruins your tan. Work has a way of making any trip unpleasant."

"True. This is what we get for not listening to the careers counsellor in school. Oh wait, Pete was the careers counsellor. Never mind."

"Considering how seriously you seem to take this, I have always wondered just how Wisdom trained you. Perhaps with flash cards and simple pictures or hand gestures." The Russian woman said dryly, angling through the stacks. "Perhaps there were even treats involved for correct responses, like hitting the pellet button enough times. Ah, here we are. The Directorate X files."

Amanda raised an eyebrow at the name. "Directorate X? What was that about taking things seriously? Should I call you Scully?"

Sarah snorted. "We learned very quickly to have a sense of humor about our jobs, or turn to heavy drinking. And given that even with my mutation heavy drinking can make it difficult to shoot someone in the head if they ambush you, I chose to have a sense of humor."

"Interesting. I suppose it explains how LeBeau got himself taken." Natasha opened the locks on the filing cabinets. "You have-" She checked her watch. "Exactly one hour to read and record as much as you wish. After that, the files go back under lock and key. Or you get to start a war with Russian internal security. Wouldn't that be fun?" She concluded.

"Oh, a real barrel of laughs." Amanda moved to open the first drawer. "About as much fun as going through musty old files..." She pulled out a manilla folder, yellowed with age and looked through the contents. "...that have more black lines than actual text. Whee."

"I think that's the abridged version," Sarah muttered, peering over Amanda's shoulder. She grabbed another folder from the cabinet, and opened it to the first page. It looked nearly identical. She motioned to the black lines on the page. "Are they all like this?"

"Soviet security protocols from the time called for extensive redacting of sensitive materials." Natasha made herself comfortable on an old folding chair at the end of the aisle. "I have watched a researcher attempt to eat his own elbow out of frustration with them. He experienced considerable success before the guards reached him." She said idly.

"Joy," Amanda muttered dryly. "All right, Sarah, you take that cabinet, I'll take this one and we'll see how much actual information we can get out of this."

Sarah sighed heavily, and opened up the second cabinet. "I knew I should have picked "How to Read Black Lines" as an elective in college."

***

Amanda glanced at her watch and grimaced. Ten minutes of their hour left and it felt like they had been here forever - she was starting to have sympathy for Elbow Eating Bloke, that was for sure. At least the black lines cut down on the reading, even if they cut back on the actual useful information they had access to.

"Time's nearly up," she told Sarah. "What have you got?"

Sarah pointed to a folder she had opened up on the table. "Well, I've got a name of a guy who was trying to make the perfect weapon. Vasily Karpov. He was developing a double agent who could take us down from the inside."

"It wouldn't surprise me to find out he was involved in the whole Mastermold thing, too," Amanda said. "So, Karpov's trying to create the perfect secret weapon, an agent loyal to the cause but impossible to tell from the real thing. Pure American as Mom and apple pie and the Brady Bunch. Looks like he had a bunch of failures, but there's this report here." She picked up some heavily blacked-out sheets of paper. "Project 'Winter Soldier'." Looks like he got somewhere with it. Too bad there's not a lot you can read here apart from the punctuation."

"I've got records here of some of the subjects, but all the names are blacked out." Sarah pointed to another paper, adding, "One of them was a captured CIA agent. That seems like a prime suspect for what we're looking for." Rubbing her forehead to ease the tension gathering there, she added, "Don't you have some sort of magic bit that will make this readable? See the different layers, or lift the black lines or something?"

The witch considered the suggestion. "I hadn't really thought about using it like that," she confessed, looking a little sheepish. "But you might have something. And I've got just as much power here as in New York - more, really, since it's fairly old, even if it's a bit on the scattered side."

"Before you start practicing things on those documents, remember that they still are Russian state secrets. What is the American term? Ah, yes, you break it and you've bought it." Natasha said, not looking up from her phone. The woman had simply settled in, turned on a Russian pirated version of 'Angry Birds' and had offered only the occasional chuckle to the last hour. Laying the report down in front of her on a clear patch of table, Amanda placed her hands flat on either side and closed her eyes. She knew what she wanted - even Moscow did its share of graffiti-removal, if only from the prominent structures. Washing off the graffiti without damaging the brickwork underneath, that was the analogy she was after, combined with an old spell of revelation, meant to uncover what was hidden. Easy, right?

Moscow's energy thrummed through her and she shivered a little at the sensation, before raising one hand and holding it above the pages. Little by little, patches of the black marker used to blot out the words lifted off the pages, revealing the typed words. Grinning slightly to herself as she mouthed the words of the spell, Amanda pushed more, trying for more. The paper fluttered then began to shred, ink and fragments of paper joining the black marker hovering under Amanda's outstretched hand.

Sarah cleared her throat, hoping to bring the witch's attention back to the room. "Amanda, it's shredding. You might want to stop now before they accuse us of destroying documents and and our names end up on a redacted report in one of these cabinets."

"Crap!" Amanda cut the spell, a small cloud of atomised ink and marker and paper falling to coat the report in a layer of dust. She carefully blew the debris off, bending over the pages to avoid causing more damage by touching them. "It looks like I got something here," she said, squinting at the corner. "The agent they grabbed... there's a name." She paused, looking stunned. "Well, I'll be buggered with a lamp post," she said.

Sarah stared at the page for a moment, disbelieving. "Isn't that--- it is! That son of a bitch!"

"The Winter Soldier, the one they succeeded with..." Amanda met Sarah's eyes. "It says here they were called 'BARNES'."