<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="floatright">(http://i.imgur.com/EvdL7E6.jpg)</div><strong>Who:</strong> Viktor Grekov (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=233968.msg11513440#msg11513440)<br/><strong>Where:</strong> London, England, Brompton Road Underground Station<br/><strong>Thread Summary:</strong> <br/><strong>Tags:</strong> Anasztaizia Szarka<br/><hr/><br/>For six days they had been subsisting on paper wrapped fish and chips, boiled peanuts, salted crackers, and cans of spinach, warmed by candle, that were eaten between bottles of vodka or gin or whatever else they had brought up to them.  Their bland rations were packaged with the day's paper and a week's supply of cigarettes, which the men smoked up end to end from day break to sun down and sun down to day break again.  There were two groups of them, six all together, posted in attic apartments on either side of her hotel, and as much as they attempted to launder their clothes in the tiny bathing rooms available to them, the men had inevitably degenerated into a state of dishevelment reminiscent of the trenches.<br/><br/>"Leave the window open..." He'd say, striking a match against door frame and lighting the cigarette perched at the corner of his mouth.<br/><br/>It was too much of a risk to simply be in the hotel with her.  Certain that any kind of unnecessary contact would tip her off to their plans, Viktor had deigned to conduct this operation using the most precautionary and as such, tedious measures possible.  It was demanding and by the sixth day, becoming untenable.  <br/><br/>The hired men involved were a crack team, assembled on the fly from available associates in London.  Communist supporters or labor organizers, they were ideologues than soldiers, but Viktor did not expect Ms. Szarka to give them much resistance.  <br/><br/>Aside from Viktor there was only one other Soviet agent with them.  A man by the name of Mikhail Kurylenko, Russian expatriate cum English engineer, and recruited agent of the NKVD by Soviet headhunters out of the London consulate.  The other men were either Englishmen or Irish, though more so the later.  Viktor let them beat him terribly at cards, and he also paid them incredibly well.  Yet, even he knew that unless they acted soon that there was no guarantee that he could hold them beyond week's end.<br/><br/><div align="center">***</div><br/>"She is on the move," advised one of sentries, an Irishman by the name of Patrick O'Donald, hard nosed and a pugilist, his family was amongst the many that fled during the famine.  Although economically stranded in London, he was by no measure a British loyalist, and yet, unable to participate in the more direct independence fight in Ireland, he instead turned to sedition and crime in London.  Those qualities made him an easy target for the communist party, which found fertile ground in all the many malcontents and unfocused young men scattered everywhere in the working class.<br/><br/>Viktor took the binoculars from Mr. O'Donald and watched Ms. Szarka walk away from the safe zone where abduction would be impossible for them.  This was going to be their only chance he knew.  <strong>"Signal the others,"</strong> Viktor gave a nod the third man in his group, a man by the name of Joseph Atwater, an unemployed factory worker and drunk.<br/><br/>Mr. Atwater removed a flashlight from his gear and shone it out of the window at the other watching post.  It did not take long for the other group to respond in kind.  Mr. Atwater turned back to Viktor, who was pouring over a map of the city, with his finger tracing the route that Ms. Szarka appeared to be taking.<br/><br/>"Can't see her no more, she gone down Brompton." reported O'Donald.<br/><br/><strong>"Okay, then we rendezvous at the bottom of Brompton before Williams Bridge."</strong>  Viktor said to Atwater, who nodded in affirmative before morse-coding the message across the distance to the others.  There would be a vehicle waiting and beyond that a ship to ferry Ms. Szarka out of London via France and then ultimately Petrograd, Russia.<br/><br/><strong>"We leave now.  Stay and confirm and join us on Brompton"</strong> He said to Atwater before giving a jerk of his head to O'Donald.  Viktor holstered a pistol into his side harness while O'Donald tucked a billy club into his trousers and dropped a vial of chloroform into his coat pocket.  This should be easy as shooting wolves on the tundra.<br/><br/>When they were outside, Viktor and O'Donald quickly cut through the alley to make up lost distance between them and Anasztaizia.  But when they neared the abandoned Underground station, Viktor signaled O'Donald to stop.  The pair obscured themselves around an alley corner, and watched obliquely as Ana unlocked the barricade.<br/><br/><strong>"Stay back,"</strong> Viktor instructed O'Donald, <strong>"wait for Atwater and then come in after me."</strong><br/><br/>Into the dark station, Viktor would follow Ana.</div>