Special Episode: May, 1961
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
I still remember the day that my father’s friend from work came by the house to speak with me. The day that set me on the path to becoming an agent.
A visit from him wasn’t abnormal. He came by every now and then, but not for me. He came to check on my mom. He’d been doing that ever since we got the death notice. When he did, my mom would wipe away the tears and reapply her makeup. Put away whichever of my dad’s medals she’d been crying over that day. Tell his work friend in her watery, shaking voice that we were doing very well, thank you for asking, just missing Lawrence, of course… And he’d always nod, smiling, perfectly understanding.
The day he came for me, he was the same. Smiling, relaxed, friendly.
“Your father served his country with exceptional bravery, Leyla,” he said to me. “Would you like to do the same?”
I said yes, and a few weeks later, Mags came back to the house to collect me for training.
My answer to his question was, in some ways, a lie.
Some agents sign up because they believe devoutly in the cause. I was never one of those agents. I didn’t particularly care about serving my country. What I cared about was escaping the life I could see laid out before me, which I could already feel beginning to strangle me. My mother’s life, centered in every conceivable way around a man. I couldn’t think of anything less suited to me.
When Mags offered me a ticket out - a path to a different kind of life - I seized it and never looked back.
That I turned out to be good at this job was a happy coincidence. Or maybe Mags had a feeling that I would be. I was suspicious of him, and during one of his visits to check on my mom, I pinched his wallet, seeking more information on him. He didn’t seem angry when he found out. Impressed, more than anything. Maybe that’s when the idea came to him.
This job has put me in near-fatal danger more times than I can count, but it also saved me. I have never had regrets about choosing this line of work.
And yet. All of a sudden.
“What’s the endgame?” I’d asked Mags, during our last phone call. “I know you want the kid brought in, but what do you want with Rose?”
“That’s not your concern, Leyla. You’re there to act as a conduit of information, that’s it.”
I suddenly felt like I was going to cry, of all things. Not that I came close to letting it show in my voice.
“Don’t you think I’d be more useful someplace red-hot, Mags? This is a waste of my skills. Take me off of this job. Bring me back to the Eastern Bloc.”
“We need you where you are.”
“Why the hell did you pick me for this job? Extracted me, flew me all the way back to the States, when I was already-”
“Because,” Mags interrupted, “Command wanted a female agent.”
“Why?”
“Because if there’s a seduction element at play in the mind-control hypnosis shit that this woman can do, it won’t work on you.”
I very nearly burst out laughing at that. For an agency with ‘intelligence’ right in the name, the people calling the shots often miss what’s right in front of their faces.
My phone call with Mags made it clear that there’s no getting out of the Port Sitka job until it’s done. I’ve confirmed the existence of the green-eyed woman, and now Command wants answers.
No one is interested in my theory that Rose is not, in fact, an enemy agent. That she must be something else entirely. I’m convinced with my whole heart that I’m right about this, but no one will listen to me.
“Are you okay, Mol?”
Rose’s question draws me out of my thoughts. Her stunning green eyes are lingering on my face, on the worried exhaustion that must be obvious there.
“Oh - yes, darling.” I smile at her, then glance down at myself. “Why, do I look terrible?”
“No,” Rose answers, immediately and emphatically.
I adjust my slacks, my bangles jingling. I’ve left a few buttons on my blouse undone, so I can take in more sunlight. My hair is loose, and getting swept up in the ocean breeze. I’m lightly sprinkled with droplets from the clouds overhead. Rose and I both are.
It’s been a drizzly week, spring showers sweeping over Port Sitka every other day. The ridged coastline and its towering Sitka spruces look beautiful, glittering green wrapped in a white veil of mist. Even now, a gentle rain is falling into the sea.
Rose and I are sitting together on the wooden boardwalk that fronts the beach. Talking, just the two of us. An activity I’ve come to love. I could stay here and do this for hours.
I would happily do it unasked, but it’s all part of the job.
Command wants information on how Rose’s power works. What exactly she can do, and why. I’ve come no closer to finding answers to those questions, and for that, I’m grateful. I’ve been trying to slow down the course of this investigation everywhere I can see an opening.
I’m sending information to Command in the smallest, barest form possible, leaving out the depths of details I’ve gathered. Acting as if drop points were compromised so I could delay sending back intelligence. Trying to make it seem like I barely know Rose, that winning her friendship is a highly delicate operation.
As if it hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world.
I can only hope that Rose never brings up her abilities, never tells me anything about it. All I know about it so far is what Mags told me about the agents who came back to base with their memories of Port Sitka gone, how they all inexplicably refused the job. That’s it. And I’d like to keep it that way.
I want to know more, of course. I’m burning with curiosity. But I don’t want Rose to tell me anything, because then I’ll have to tell them, and - I don’t want to do anything to hurt her. That’s the last thing I want. I have an overwhelmingly powerful urge to do the opposite. To protect her from anything that might do her harm. To stay by her side and keep her safe.
Charlie, too. I’ve become very fond of him. He’s a soft-hearted little one, and while he’s easily moved to tears, afraid of his own shadow, often too scared to speak - Rose tells me that he’s braver than I know.
It’s increasingly difficult for me to look at either of them without a huge, horrible surge of guilt.
“You look beautiful,” Rose insists, as if I’ve gone quiet because I’m unconvinced of that. “You always look so beautiful, so-” She stops abruptly, clears her throat. “I’m only saying that you look - unhappy. I don’t usually see you like that.”
She doesn’t usually see me like that because she makes me happier than anyone else I’ve ever met.
I place a reassuring little touch on Rose’s chin with the pad of my index finger. She blinks, then smiles at me.
I look at her, knowing that everything I feel about her is naked in my eyes. Sometimes I can’t seem to help it.
Rose looks back at me, and - leans into my finger. Such a tiny movement that it’s almost imperceptible, but it sets my heart to racing.
Rose opens her mouth to say something.
But then she closes it again and turns to face the ocean, her eyebrows knitting together, a troubled look coming over her face. She closes her eyes, tips her head slightly to the side.
I give her a moment, but I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m concerned.
“Rose?” I say softly. “Darling? Are you-?”
I startle and draw back as she abruptly surges to her feet.
“I - I have to go, Molly.” She’s speaking with her face turned away from me, won’t let me see her eyes. “I just realized that I’m - really late for something-”
“What? Rose, wait-”
I get up too, completely bewildered. I try to take Rose’s face in my hands, but she practically goes scrambling backwards out of them. She keeps her eyes squeezed tightly shut until she turns away from me again.
“I’ll - I’ll explain later!”
And she takes off, sprinting for the main street behind the boardwalk. She didn’t even pick up her shoes. They’re sitting beside me on the wooden platform.
I watch her go, alarm bells ringing in my head. That look I saw on her face - that’s not the expression of someone running late for something. Not even if that something is very important.
She was terrified.
I’m torn, unsure of what to do. I swing around and stare out at the water, my heart hammering.
I give myself three seconds to think. Then I set off, sprinting to my beachside cottage, where I left my pistol.
I hope that I won’t have to use it. But I have no idea what I’m walking into, and I’d rather be prepared.
I stop by the mirror in the entryway. I tuck my weapon into my waistband and let my loose blouse down over it, making sure that it’s covered. I touch up my crimson lipstick - my version of war paint - and race out of the cottage.
I find myself grateful for the persistent drizzle and showers of the last few days. Rose left deep footprints in the sandy mud. A far less experienced tracker than me could easily follow her.
I hesitate, conflicted. I don’t want to draw attention to myself by sprinting through town the way that she just did. To a field agent, that’s potential death. But - Rose could be in danger.
I think of the terrified look on her face.
I run.
The wind whips through my hair, my bracelets jangling, my bare feet pounding the ground. People cast puzzled looks my way as I go, but I ignore them. I only have one thought on my mind, and that thought is Rose.
I weave through Port Sitka, following the footprints until they end on a random street far away from the beach, where sand no longer coats the road. I stop there, panting, afraid that I’ve lost her - then spot a tiny tear of fabric, snagged on the outreaching branch of a tree on the corner.
I pluck it, confirm that it came from Rose’s dress, and take the turn. Running again, desperately hoping that she didn’t get into a car, that no one took her for some reason, that I’m not too late.
I’ve made lightning-fast molds of the signet rings Stasi officials use to wax-seal their safes. I’ve snuck people in and out of embassy compounds while under live surveillance. I’ve responded to crisis calls, rescued agents and sources who were blown. I’ve taken photos of documents and schematics on a Minox camera only seconds before someone came to collect them.
But I have never been as scared as I am right now, knowing that Rose might be in danger.
I stop in the middle of the road and do a slow turn on the spot. I’m on a quiet, residential boulevard. Candy-colored houses in beachy style, as is everything in Port Sitka.
No one is out and about. The sidewalks are empty. There’s no one I can even ask about Rose, if they saw her run past.
My eyes snag on one of the houses. I zero in on it, trying to wrap my mind around what’s amiss - then realize that the door is very slightly cracked open. Not shut.
I pin all my hopes on that door and run for that house.
I shove the door all the way open and sprint inside, gasping for breath. Then I freeze as I hear a repeated thud from upstairs, the sound of someone pounding on a door.
“Open up!” Rose is shouting like her life depends on it, her voice shattered apart with panic. “Open up, open up!”
I sprint up the stairs, my heart in terror of what I might find at the top.
Rose is there in the hallway, her legs spattered with sand. She’s slamming her fists against a closed door, tears streaming down her cheeks, tumbling over the raised line of her scar.
“Open up!” she sobs, kicking at the door with her bare foot. “Please-!”
“Rose!” I shout, and she whips around to face me.
“Molly!” she cries, still pounding her fist on the door. “I have to get it open, there’s no time - seconds, only seconds!”
I come rushing forward to take a better look at the door. It looks expensive and solid. Not possible to kick it down.
“Rose - who’s in there?”
“I don’t know,” Rose sobs, slapping the door with her open palm. “Just please, please!”
I make a decision, as I often have to do, in the split of a second.
I pull out my pistol, flip off the safety lock.
“Out of the way, love,” I tell Rose, but it’s like she can’t hear me. She goes on attacking the door, so I hook one arm around her, lift her out of the way, and set her aside.
“Whoever’s in there, get down!” I shout through the door, then aim my pistol.
I fire one shot. Splinters of wood explode out from the place of impact. It’s not enough to damage the lock, but it’s enough to damage the door, so that the lock is only loosely attached to it.
I back up and give the door a forceful, well-placed kick. It crashes open, slams into the wall behind it.
Rose was frozen, rigid with shock - but now she pushes right past me, and I follow her into a white-tiled bathroom.
We stop to look around. Rose gasps, her eyes on the bathtub.
There’s a bottle of gin on the ground, next to an empty crystal glass. And in the tub is a woman, under the water - unmoving.
Rose rushes forward, thrusts her arms into the water. She drags the woman upright, and I drop my pistol, seize the woman’s feet. Together, we pull her out of the tub and onto the bathmat.
For a moment, the woman is very still. Then she coughs up a mouthful of water, retching and gasping, and rolls onto her side.
Rose falls back and sits down hard on the floor, taking long, heaving breaths.
The woman sits up, dazed. She looks up at me and Rose, her eyes unfocused. I reach up and wrench her bathrobe down from a hook, toss it to her. She covers herself up, shivering, and I use her distraction to recover my pistol.
“What - what happened?” she gasps, in a voice slurred with alcohol.
I can see the progression of events. It begins with the gin. Ends with a brief, accidental nap in the bath, one that nearly became eternal slumber.
But neither of us answers her question.
Rose is staring at the weapon in my hand.
I’m staring at the pale green light swirling and sparkling and glowing in her eyes.
Numb, in shock, I get to my feet. I offer Rose my free hand. She accepts, lets me pull her upright.
“Wait,” cries the woman on the floor, wiping the water out of her eyes. “Who are you? What-?”
I don’t hear the rest of her question, because Rose has pulled me out of the room. She heads for the stairs, pulling me with her.
We’re gone before the woman can so much as open her eyes again. But she already heard our voices, saw our faces.
“Don’t worry,” Rose says quietly, her eyes swirling with that pale green color. “She won’t remember.”
I can’t think of a single thing to say in answer to that, so I remain silent as I follow her back into the open air.
~~~~
Rose is trembling.
I weave my fingers through hers. I hold her hand tightly, the whole walk back to my little rented cottage. We have to take the long way, abandoned back roads. I don’t want us to be seen. Still, I never let go of her fingers, not once.
I start to bring Rose inside the cottage, but she stops on the front step and sits down. I leave her there, slip briefly inside. I extract my pistol from my waistband and set it on the little table in the entryway.
Rose’s brilliant green eyes - now restored to their usual, heartstopping color - flick to it, and linger there.
I step back out, sit down slowly next to Rose. We put our feet in the soft white sand, let the wind and drizzle blow gently against our faces.
We sit in silence for a very long time, looking out at the empty beach.
The rainy sunset has the sky in thick bands of pink, yellow, blue, and indigo, all in their palest possible shades. The horizon is blurred with mist, the ocean and the sky fading into each other. My windows are open, and the pale golden light has the transparent curtains illuminated. They ripple and flow behind us in the slow, salty breeze.
My head is spinning. I don’t know what to think about what just happened.
I don’t know what she thinks about what just happened. Her expression is utterly, completely blank.
I haltingly reach out, put a hand on Rose’s knee.
“Darling,” I begin, and she turns to face me.
My sentence falters to a stop.
The view I have of her kicks everything else out of my head. The tawny beach grass, the sand dunes glowing with the sunset, the Sitka spruces in the distance behind her - I hardly see any of it. I only see Rose.
Her soft bunches of brunette curls, unpinned by all the running, brushing against her cheek in the wind. The white line of her scar. Her lashes, still wet with tears.
Her lips, bruised up from the way she chews on them when she’s anxious. They’re a very pale shade of peach, a color stolen right from the sunset.
Her eyes, that shade of green I’ve never seen before. But it’s the emotion swimming in them that knocks the breath out of my lungs. Those eyes are jaw-dropping, and they’re staring right into mine.
I realize suddenly that Rose looks like she’s about to start crying again.
“I didn’t know what you would say, now that you’ve seen.” Her voice is so thin that I can barely hear her. “And the first - the first thing you say is darling.”
She lets out a trembling, shaky laugh, hugging her knees.
It’s the strangest thing, how every other thought has been whited out for me. How every piece of my training, every shred of my resistance falls apart before her timid, tear-filled eyes.
I’m hit with a breathless sense of complete connection. As if where I stop, she begins, someplace in between us. There is nothing to separate us. I am enveloped in her. I exist completely in the tear rolling down her cheek. In the fading sunlight on her eyelashes. In the grains of sand clinging to her fingers. In the curl of brunette hair that’s blown over her mouth.
I reach out and smooth that strand back, tuck it behind Rose’s ear. My eyes linger on her lips a moment too long, and I know that she’s aware of it. That despite my best efforts, she knows exactly what I want.
She freezes, staring at me. Something moves behind her green eyes.
Then she tips towards me, brings her face to mine.
I take in a sharp breath, and Rose stops, our mouths so close that we’re trading back and forth inhales and exhales.
“I - I’ve been keeping things from you,” I admit, freely and instantly, shocking myself.
“I know,” Rose murmurs. “I’ve… been keeping things from you, too.”
“I know,” I answer, wishing that I didn’t.
Rose bites her lip.
“It doesn’t matter,” she blurts out.
I don’t want to say this, but - “It does matter.”
“Yes.” Rose blinks rapidly, although she doesn’t draw away. “But - can it not matter, just for - just for one minute, I just want one minute with you where we don’t have to-”
I’ve already lost the battle against myself. I close the little remaining distance between us. I kiss her.
Rose’s hands fly up to tangle in my long, loose hair. She kisses me back, and it’s like she completely let go of that nervousness, that anxiety and fear, that need to be small that always holds her back. She kisses me with her full self, and I -
I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve been with women all over the world, but this - this shatters the patterns of my history. This is everything.
It leaps past my previous scale of sensation and springs directly into the infinite.
Showers of messages go spilling through my every nerve, every fiber of my being. They overtake me from inside out and outside in. They’re all saying the same thing, and I understand what they’re telling me in both my body and my soul.
Only when we break apart do I realize that I’m holding Rose’s jaw in both hands, one of my thumbs pressed against her scar. Her arms have closed around me, pulled me closer to her. Her tears have fallen onto my cheeks, and her soft mouth is darkened with my lipstick.
We both hold still, shell-shocked and out of breath. I want to say something to Rose, but my heart has ascended to someplace it’s never been before, and I don’t know the language here.
“What are we going to do?” Rose finally stammers.
And suddenly I’m crying, too, because I don’t know. All I know is that this is a breach of protocol there’s no recovering from.
And I know I would do it a million times over, if it meant one more kiss from her.
“Molly,” Rose whispers.
“No, not - not Molly. Leyla.”
Rose blinks, tips her head to the side. “Leyla?”
I nod, swallowing, hopeless.
“Leyla,” Rose murmurs.
I’ve just given up my real name. She didn’t find out somehow. I told her.
For a split second, I wonder if this is part of her power, the same method she used to unravel the agents who came before me.
But I know that it wasn’t. I willingly gave this up from my own heart, and I know that. Because Rose’s eyes aren’t filled with that strange, pale green light I saw before. They’re clear, her color, hers alone. Stunning, unique - simply Rose.
Hearing my actual name in her voice is too much for me to bear. I lean forward and kiss her again, and our one minute where nothing else matters becomes much more than that. She tightens her arms around me, her warm breath against my face.
I carry her inside and kick the door closed, without breaking my mouth away from hers, without looking back.
There is no going back. But I wouldn’t, even if I could.
I’ve defected. My only loyalties now lay with Rose, and by extension, with Charlie.
My only advantage is that nobody knows. Everything else is working against me. But I don’t care.
No matter what it takes, I will find a way to keep them both safe.
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