Natasha Romanoff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redintheledger) wrote2013-05-06 07:58 am
redintheledger) wrote2013-05-06 07:58 am
Entry tags:
OOM: 2011, Moscow, Russian Federation
Tanya's employment at Club Pravda runs for fifteen days.
Her target, Fjodorov, has a pattern for when he is in town. Different girls, different nights, but he turns up most of the nights, and always at the same time. Departures vary, but that is a lack of pattern that is actually useful.
The trick is getting him to stay in town. He comes for several enough nights for plans to be arranged, and then vanishes, talking on his phone. After a brief conference, it is decided that Romanoff should stay in place and observe while she waits Fjodorov out.
(They put in a time-limit, of course.)
There is plenty to observe. Along with the spoiled brats of billionaires are government officials and organised criminals, all mixing together and meeting, flirting, cutting deals. Tanya serves them all with a smile, and Romanoff reports those she sees while her team follow the camera in her headband. It's useful...but not useful enough to justify staying in place for much longer.
Fjodorov shows up on Wednesday night.
He makes plans for Thursday, and Romanoff takes a moment in Tanya's break to breath deeply in relief.
Thursday, she wakes up shaking. There are people on fire still dancing behind her eyes, and even as she's stumbling over to the bathroom, she knows exactly what triggered that nightmare.
Note to Romanova, don't turn up at fucking Milliways until this is over, she tells herself firmly, and deliberately shoves the issue of Rae and glowing and bodies and strange inter-dimensional bars out of her mind.
She has work to do.
Despite the way Romanoff woke up, the start of Thursday's shift is uneventful. By which she means that it has no more the normal irritations for a busy and popular club that only has humans as patrons.
Fjodorov is comfortable at his table, with bodyguards, a bevy of beautiful girls, and a mixture of friends, contacts, and potential business partners drifting to and fro. By 1:37am, there is a lull, and the man seems to just watching the people on the dance floor.
Her target, Fjodorov, has a pattern for when he is in town. Different girls, different nights, but he turns up most of the nights, and always at the same time. Departures vary, but that is a lack of pattern that is actually useful.
The trick is getting him to stay in town. He comes for several enough nights for plans to be arranged, and then vanishes, talking on his phone. After a brief conference, it is decided that Romanoff should stay in place and observe while she waits Fjodorov out.
(They put in a time-limit, of course.)
There is plenty to observe. Along with the spoiled brats of billionaires are government officials and organised criminals, all mixing together and meeting, flirting, cutting deals. Tanya serves them all with a smile, and Romanoff reports those she sees while her team follow the camera in her headband. It's useful...but not useful enough to justify staying in place for much longer.
Fjodorov shows up on Wednesday night.
He makes plans for Thursday, and Romanoff takes a moment in Tanya's break to breath deeply in relief.
Thursday, she wakes up shaking. There are people on fire still dancing behind her eyes, and even as she's stumbling over to the bathroom, she knows exactly what triggered that nightmare.
Note to Romanova, don't turn up at fucking Milliways until this is over, she tells herself firmly, and deliberately shoves the issue of Rae and glowing and bodies and strange inter-dimensional bars out of her mind.
She has work to do.
Despite the way Romanoff woke up, the start of Thursday's shift is uneventful. By which she means that it has no more the normal irritations for a busy and popular club that only has humans as patrons.
Fjodorov is comfortable at his table, with bodyguards, a bevy of beautiful girls, and a mixture of friends, contacts, and potential business partners drifting to and fro. By 1:37am, there is a lull, and the man seems to just watching the people on the dance floor.
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"Copy," she repeats, and makes her way through the crowd. At least the dancing lights make the blood-splatters look more like paint.
She crouches down, and pulls out what to anyone else would appear a backpack. "Got it." It fits her back snugly - of course, thank you, SHIELD, and she secures.
Then she jumps.
She really does love SHIELD's backpack gliders.
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"At the hotel yet?" he asks, when the whistling seems to stop, and gestures at his colleagues to help find her on the CCTV.
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"I'm going to do a little B&E, there are enough shops around here. Should find something so I don't look like Tanya."
Getting arrested in Moscow would jut be unbelievably embarrassing. No real threats of Siberia anymore, but Fury's wrath?
(And if any of the cops had any ties to Fjodorov...)
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Coulson checks the mapping on the widescreen while he waits for the geo-sat to triangulate. "There's a couple high-end fashion stores two blocks west of you. And a hiking place half a block north-east, if you want the other end of the scale."
He gestures for one of the interns to bring fresh coffee: he can already tell it's going to be a five-espresso kind of night.
"No Munich repeats."
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"Munich I didn't have someone sabotaging me."
This might be a bit 'why did everything get FUBARed in Munich, then', but she's dealt with that. The dancer in the club is far more pressing.
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"We're looking for your friend from the club, but we don't exactly have a comprehensive list of female wetworks experts. Any suggestions?"
He's staring intently at the single frame of her they managed to pull from Natasha's camera feed, but it's blurred and a 270-degree angle; he can already hear a distinctly hopeless note in the graphics team's buzz of chatter. "I don't have much to go on."
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Crossing the street in Moscow is always interesting, even at this hour, and she pauses as she does so.
"But she framed me, which is personal. I've...got no intel on that."
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"Okay. We need to get you out of Moscow before the PD can start making life awkward." He glances across at Transport, and sees Kojinsky give a reassuring thumbs-up. "We're setting up an extraction in Gorky Park, I'll have the exact co-ordinates with you in twenty minutes."
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It's the work of a moment to break into the store, disable the security, and grab a coat. It's the work of a few more to break into the safe and grab enough cash to get to the hotel.
A short taxi-ride later, and Alyona charms the night-receptionist into letting her her into her room.
"Back home, Control," Romanoff says, shrugging off the coat and stripping out of Tanya's uniform to pull on her catsuit.
[Back on the Helicarrier, Agent Koskinen suddenly frowns at the CCTV footage from the hotel roof. "Uh, Control?"]
Romanoff pins up her hair, and then starts with, "Control,do you have-"
The windows smash open as four armed and armoured operatives crash through the glass.
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The background noise - and what Kos has suddenly found on the CCTV - startles him briefly into first-name terms.
"Agent Romanoff, do you copy?"
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"Working, darling," she adds, and slams the lamp into the back of one of her attacks' heads.
After that is just heavy breathing, gasps and grunts and things falling, being thrown. Romanoff yelps, and it's followed by the solid thud of a body hitting the ground.
"That's just rude, boys," she mutters, slowly getting her breathing under control. "They're down, Control. And, what the fuck?"
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"We have no idea." He is making urgent hand gestures, which are mostly not expletives, at the support staff as they scramble to find out what the hell just happened and why the hell they knew nothing about it.
"Though I appreciate I've given you more reassuring information. Back-up from our new friend?"
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"Control, I think they're Eaglestar. And that's not cheap-"
A groan interrupts her, and she smoothly moves over to now-awake mercenary.
"Hi," Romanoff says brightly in English, accent firmly back to blandly American Newscaster. "Who's footing your bill, kid?"
He shook his head, and Romanoff smiles a little. She's in a hurry, and she's in a bad mood, and the kid is too confused to be worth subtlety.
"If you don't tell me, I'll start slicing the tendons in your fingers-"
"Wait! I don't, don't, I don't know her name," he blurts out.
"'Her'", she repeats.
"She said...if you were still alive....and one of us captured...you were supposed to contact her with a sim card each of us is carrying..."
Romanoff arches her eyebrows, but sure enough, in the pocket he points to, there is a sim card protected by a clear case.
"Okay, that checks out," she says, more for Coulson's benefit than the kid's. "A pleasure doing business with you. Move, and I'll break your neck," she adds, tone pleasant enough that he just nods. She slides a light jacket over her catsuit, grabs her back, and walks out the room.
The hell is she sticking around in a compromised position to talk to anyone.
"Moving out, Control."
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It has occurred to him that they may well have been comprehensively fucked regardless, but he prefers to save statements like that for situations in which they have better intel.
"What do you need?"
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"I'll go to the area anyway and wait. And then I might have a chat to our new friend."
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"I'll have co-ordinates with you in-" He glances up, and sees a gesture from Malik on Transport. "--Three."
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"Contact me in three."
It doesn't take her that long to reach Gorky Park, nor that long to get inside. Four hours after closing time, and the park is eerie with its silence. Fortunately, Romanoff has spent a lot of time walking through woods and public areas in the dark, and she heads to the bench the co-ordinates lead to.
Then, she slides the sim-card into her notepad, but before she can do anything, the chat screen opens.
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"Ha! I knew it," she says in Russian, her accent bland as a journalist's. "I knew they couldn't kill you."
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"Yet, you paid them to try anyway."
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The regret vanishes back into cheerfully reasonable.
"But I had to make sure your skills hadn't corroded since you joined the Girl Scouts."
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(God, she needs some sleep.)
"Have we...met before?" she settles on, after a pause. "I can't say I recognize you."
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"You can call me...How about 'Sofia'. That's as good a name as any. It's the city where I first saw you," 'Sofia' adds, as if speaking in confidence. "The infamous 'Black Widow'. And I resolved to live my life by your example..."
Her attention snaps sharp. "That was long before you defected to S.H.I.E.L.D."
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At least, her visible reaction.
"If you fancy yourself a 'fan' of mine, you have a funny way of showing it. Killing Fjodorov and framing me for his murder isn't going to win you any autographs."
Not the least because it was obnoxiously showy.
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"I was casing out the club for days – and imagine my surprise and joy when I saw you working there. Following you back to your hotel the other night, I had the best idea. One never wants to worship one's idol...so much as supplant them."
She tilts her head a little, still looking friendly. "Your trail of the misplaced Starktech has gone dead, thanks to me. But I know where it leads next. In the spirit of healthy competition, I'll tell you...As long as you level the playing field.
You come alone, without your chaperones in S.H.I.E.L.D."
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Underneath the calm, her mind is rapidly calculating options and weighing up risks.
"And what do you get if you 'win'?"
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The cheer slides into a tone that can only be described as a mixture of disappointed and sulky.
"I'm more deserving of it now, anyway, since you've gone soft."
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He sounds... tense, suddenly - at least by his standards, so to anyone else he would still sound almost serene. But not to her, because they know each other and he already knows what's going to happen next.
"Because if I am, I know what you're thinking, and the answer is 'don't'. There are better options and we're going to need you on this, Natasha -"
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"Let's talk business," she says finally, and takes off the choker with the microphone before sliding the ear-pieces out from her inner-canals.
Then she destroys them.
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The feedback makes him wince, but it's not pain that makes his fist hit the desk so hard two more agents' paperwork takes a tumble to the floor.
It's a split-second reaction; by the time the first agent has whirled to stare at him, he's perfectly neutral again.
(But the bland not-quite-smile's a little tight.)
"Cover the desk," he tells Koskinen, who knows better than to point out she's a grade too low for the job. "I need to go talk to Fury."
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His timing is excellent, stepping out of the shadows, coat blowing dramatically behind him. Several agents look up in surprise (and startled dismay).
"Come on. Let's take a walk."
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He knows better than to be surprised that Fury's there, but he wouldn't have objected to being allowed ten seconds to figure out how exactly he's going to explain this to the director.
"Yes sir."
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"How much should I be worrying, here? Is this a 'pick up an extra pack of TUMS' problem, or a 'call out the National Guard' problem?"
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"No National Guard," he says.
Yet.
"But I might need some time off-campus."
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He gives Coulson the eye. "I hope you're better at it than Romanoff is."
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"I'll take Lin and Isaacs. Sir."
Which is as good a 'please' as any.
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Just as dramatically as he entered, Fury sweeps off down the hallway. He pauses just before the corner.
"And Coulson? Bring my agent back. Preferably in mint condition."
Then, he's gone.
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