<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="floatright">(http://i.imgur.com/Pc5z3M2.jpg)</div><strong>Who:</strong> Viktor Grekov (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=233968.msg11513440#msg11513440)<br/><strong>Where:</strong> Inside the Linbergh Estate - Singapore<br/><strong>Thread Summary:</strong> tl;dr just blah blah entrance.  will get to actually responding to folks in a short follow up.<br/><strong>Tags:</strong> Open<br/><hr/><br/>Mrs. Win Min Tully (http://i2.listal.com/image/2763101/600full-win-min-than.jpg), or Emilia as she is often known amongst the Rangoon parlors of British Colonial Burma, was a precocious child born to Constantine Taylor, of the Empire Airfreight company, and Ang Su Taylor, a socialite and daughter of a prominent colonial administrator.  Win Min Taylor was never the son that her father wanted, nor was she, as the only child, the expected heir to her father's business.  It was not to say that she was loathed by her family, but Win Min, born with a silver spoon in her mouth and never wanting for anything in her life, still came to despise her father for denying her the one true thing that she felt entitled to.  <br/><br/>In 1932, Win Min became engaged to William Tully, an English business associate of her father.  It was an arrangement that had more to do with her father's legacy than with Win Min's happiness, because the senior Mr. Taylor gladly embraced his future son-in-law and was prepared to bequeath the business to that man.  For Win Min this meant that her father placed greater trust in a stranger over his own flesh-and-blood, and that proved to be the final straw.<br/><br/>Unbeknownst to her family and long before her engagement, Win Min had been involved in a private affair with the young lawyer of Mr. William Tully.  Thomas Larkin, esquire was a secret member of the Comintern (Communist International), amongst other things, but had fallen out of favor in some London circles for his less radical views.  Forced to field his career in distant Indochina, Mr. Larkin ultimately met Win Min through an unwitting Mr. Tully.  Impassioned and handsome, Mr. Larkin quickly won the heart of Win Min Taylor.  <br/><br/>It had not taken long for Mr. Larkin to recruit Win Min to his private cause as Win Min, disillusioned with a rigid society that cast her as second rate, was already highly susceptible to the egalitarian ideals of the communist movement.  Moreover, Mr. Larkin who was awash in the increasing sterility of the modern world, invited Win Min to embrace her distant Burmese heritage, which he as a Londoner long exoticised.  <br/><br/>There really was no reason why the politburo would have any interest in Thomas Larkin or Win Min Taylor except for the fact that Empire Airfreight made rapid deliveries between ports in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca, which comprised the strategic byway for all non-Soviet oil transported to Japan.  Knowing British and French control over the South East was eroding, and also needing a palatable success after the disastrous bid in China, the politburo had dispatched sedition agents into the region.  However, these agents were hampered by great distances and primitive infrastructure, and planners reasoned that clandestine efforts would be greatly accelerated if they had access to air transport.<br/><br/>Contacted by the Soviets, Win Min and Thomas Larkin agreed to assist in the People's Cause.  The plan was very simple, which was what Viktor preferred.  Win Min married William Tully that following Spring at a well attended ceremony in Rangoon.  Shortly after, the senior Mr. Taylor officially willed his controlling shares in Empire Airfreight Incorporated to Mr. Larkin.  At which point, Mr. Larkin, esquire, advised his client, Mr. Tully to create a provisional will placing his new wife as sole inheritor.  <br/><br/>As one would imagine, the senior Mr. Taylor met a sudden and unexpected end when he boarded a sabotaged aircraft for Hong Kong.  Then not long after, Mr. Tully was murdered by Mr. Larkin under encouragement by Soviet agents, surely under the impression that the crime would be covered up his supposed Soviet supporters.  Win Min, however, had since discovered her real volition through the help of her NKVD contact, Viktor Grekov, who offered not only a more interesting lover, but also the promise of absolute control over what she had always expected to have.  Playing the victim of an insane man's obsession, Win Min sold her former lover, Mr. Larkin up the river and then with a heavy heart, ascended to the helm of her father's enterprise.<br/><br/><div align="center">***</div><br/>A wealthy magnate of the region, Mrs. Win Min Tully often received invitations to rarefied social gatherings throughout the British Orient, and as a partial patron of Sir Peter Ramsay's excavations in Burma, it would have been rude of her not to attend the famed archeologist's private exhibition.  Besides, Empire Airfreight had provided much of the transportation, gratis, for the intrepid explorer.  <br/><br/>Preferring that Mrs. Win Min Tully believe he was attending this event at her behest, Viktor Grekov had arrived in Singapore one day prior aboard the Black Sea tanker, Usury.  Of course, Viktor had only boarded the Usury in Indonesia after arriving by plane from other matters in Europe, but details were beside the point.  It was better that Mrs. Tully remained uncertain what Viktor's actual associations were with the USSR. <br/><br/>Here at the British port, Viktor maintained an identity as Ukrainian oil trader and a business associate of Mrs. Win Min Tully.  Since his arrival, the pair had spent the day and the prior evening entirely closed off from the world, hidden on a private estate in the woodland hills of Yishun, not an hours drive from the city.<br/><br/>When finally emerging from their woodland retreat, they had been driven to the Lindberg estate reasonably early and perhaps with Mrs. Tully's expectation that they depart early as well.  Viktor, however, had other plans.  <br/><br/>His quiet gaze swept the manicured grounds around the rotunda, while black sedans continued to arrive in slow by steady synchrony, their tires crushing the raked pea gravel beneath as chauffeurs hastened to open doors for their provincial lords and ladies adorned in black tie or silken, oriental evening gowns.  From afar, Viktor took note of the shadowy shape of Mr. Ramírez, loping just beyond the sharp headlights of the approaching cars or the more pleasing glow cast by the numerous lanterns.   <br/><br/>"Mr. Grekov?" asked the estate footman, offering a platter of champaign even before they had entered the manor itself.  The colonies were uninhibited by decorum, or so he was told.<br/><br/>"Thank you," he answered, plucking a fluted glass from the tray and meeting it in cheers with Mrs. Tully.  <br/><br/>She was dressed tonight in a cheongsam of midday ivory, embroidered with peonies of obsidian black that drifted over her Junoesque body like cloud work burned into a sun flashed eye.  In respects to her Burmese heritage, distantly royal no doubt, she kept her hair long but gathered in a luscious, bun behind her neck and her crown coifed in a wavy style suggestive of the Los Angeles starlets. <br/><br/>Viktor gave her his arm, and together they entered the manor.  He was dressed in black tie, a bourgeois affection that had disappeared from his motherland not long after the Revolution.  The tailored fabric fitted him well, distracting from the brutish thickness of his form by accentuating the broad cut of his shoulders and long taper of his trousers.  His lapels were classic, but lined in a midnight black silk.  Despite the formality, he dispensed with a bowtie for a straight black tie and likewise felt just as comfortable in an impeccably pressed, white dress shirt.  They were choices undoubtedly chosen for him by Mrs. Tully, who paid far more attention to Hollywood couture than did Mr. Viktor Grekov.  <br/><br/>Tonight he was her New York gangster, if only just a poor facsimile.  Still the man bore an interesting set of scars over he eye, fashionably subtle as if he had asked the German soldier, decades ago, to cut him just so for future posterity.  More to the point, Mr. Victor Grekov did not entirely fit the role as an oil trader, there was clearly something far too intimidating about his persona, adversarial and not at all diplomatic as would a businessman require.  But then again, it was impolite to ask about the War.</div>