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elementof_riskIrina Derevko wasn't exactly my stepmother, or my godmother, for that matter. In point of fact, I am fairly certain she had no legal claim to me at all, though she managed to convince my school she did. Perhaps she had my father's permission; perhaps she knew my mother; perhaps she told them she was my mother. I never asked.
I was ten the Christmas they called me to the headmaster's office. As usual, I was prepared to stay at school over the holidays. I wasn't the only one. There were always a few of us, scions of wealthy households that wanted nothing to do with us until we came of age. Some staff members were well paid to stay behind, make sure we were fed, make sure we didn't burn the place down, but for the most part we spent the holidays playing hide and seek through the school or sledding outside and pretending that we didn't care that we were unwanted by our own families.
But that year, just as everyone else was leaving, there she was. She looked at me like she knew me with eyes that seemed to see into my soul and read every thought. I stared back, and she seemed to like that. The headmaster told me I would be going with her for the holidays, and to mind my manners. She waited in his office while I went and packed the things I'd need over break, curious and confused. She didn't actually speak to me until we were well away from the school, in the back of her large car. Then, all she told me was to call her Irina, and that we were going to Galway. The rest of it was questions. What did I like to do, what was I studying, what was my best subject, did I enjoy any athletic pursuits? She switched back and forth from English to Russian, challenging my memory of the mother tongue that I hadn't spoken in five years. She seemed to find my mastery of it lamentable, and I remember that she wouldn't let me speak English when we were alone for the entire holiday. She insisted it was important I be fluent in both, and when I went back to school, I found French and Spanish both had been added to my schedule, apparently at her insistence. Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese followed later, as did Arabic at university.
I never spent another holiday at the school. Every break, she arrived, sweeping me away to Ireland. To call them breaks might be a bit kind, though she let me enough time to play, to be a child, I suppose. But there were always lessons. Fencing, archery, target practice with various guns. The summer I was sixteen was spent learning to disarm most of the common forms of detonators for various bombs. She said I had an aptitude, a natural gift.
At first, I just wanted to please her, to make sure she'd come back the next break, but the lessons were all interesting and it wasn't long before I was going through them for my own pleasure. She made games out of surveillance and eavesdropping, and we practiced dead drops regularly in town until I could manage it without even her spotting me. It didn't take me long before I fully realized what she was training me for. She was a Russian living in Ireland in a highly secure compound that looked like a country estate. It wasn't hard to figure out she was a spy. She told me bedtime stories of Rambaldi, talking about endgames before I was twelve, and others about the things she had done for the KGB, and I drank them all up the way some boys did stories of knights and dragons.
She was a mother bereft of both her daughters, and I was a child who had never known a mother and barely remembered his father. I realized later she must have known my father's interest in Rambaldi. A diplomat's son, trained from childhood in the fine arts of espionage, more loyal to her than anyone else...I was quite the prize, I suppose. The secrets my father knew were secrets she wanted, and I was perfectly positioned to get them for her, though by the time I had the chance, she was presumed dead, and I thought I was truly alone.
There are those that would say she was evil for the things she did, the life she pulled me into. My first kill was on her orders, when I was barely eighteen. She sent me off to university with a proud smile right after, taking the gun from my hand, kissing my cheek and telling me to mind my language studies. But she changed my life. She gave me a purpose, an occupation I am well suited for, and the skills to be successful at it. More than that, she was there, when no one else was. She was far more fairy godmother than anything evil, and for all my loyalties are flexible, she was one person I never gave up.
I don't miss her obsession and the things it drove her to, including her death. But I do miss her.
I was ten the Christmas they called me to the headmaster's office. As usual, I was prepared to stay at school over the holidays. I wasn't the only one. There were always a few of us, scions of wealthy households that wanted nothing to do with us until we came of age. Some staff members were well paid to stay behind, make sure we were fed, make sure we didn't burn the place down, but for the most part we spent the holidays playing hide and seek through the school or sledding outside and pretending that we didn't care that we were unwanted by our own families.
But that year, just as everyone else was leaving, there she was. She looked at me like she knew me with eyes that seemed to see into my soul and read every thought. I stared back, and she seemed to like that. The headmaster told me I would be going with her for the holidays, and to mind my manners. She waited in his office while I went and packed the things I'd need over break, curious and confused. She didn't actually speak to me until we were well away from the school, in the back of her large car. Then, all she told me was to call her Irina, and that we were going to Galway. The rest of it was questions. What did I like to do, what was I studying, what was my best subject, did I enjoy any athletic pursuits? She switched back and forth from English to Russian, challenging my memory of the mother tongue that I hadn't spoken in five years. She seemed to find my mastery of it lamentable, and I remember that she wouldn't let me speak English when we were alone for the entire holiday. She insisted it was important I be fluent in both, and when I went back to school, I found French and Spanish both had been added to my schedule, apparently at her insistence. Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese followed later, as did Arabic at university.
I never spent another holiday at the school. Every break, she arrived, sweeping me away to Ireland. To call them breaks might be a bit kind, though she let me enough time to play, to be a child, I suppose. But there were always lessons. Fencing, archery, target practice with various guns. The summer I was sixteen was spent learning to disarm most of the common forms of detonators for various bombs. She said I had an aptitude, a natural gift.
At first, I just wanted to please her, to make sure she'd come back the next break, but the lessons were all interesting and it wasn't long before I was going through them for my own pleasure. She made games out of surveillance and eavesdropping, and we practiced dead drops regularly in town until I could manage it without even her spotting me. It didn't take me long before I fully realized what she was training me for. She was a Russian living in Ireland in a highly secure compound that looked like a country estate. It wasn't hard to figure out she was a spy. She told me bedtime stories of Rambaldi, talking about endgames before I was twelve, and others about the things she had done for the KGB, and I drank them all up the way some boys did stories of knights and dragons.
She was a mother bereft of both her daughters, and I was a child who had never known a mother and barely remembered his father. I realized later she must have known my father's interest in Rambaldi. A diplomat's son, trained from childhood in the fine arts of espionage, more loyal to her than anyone else...I was quite the prize, I suppose. The secrets my father knew were secrets she wanted, and I was perfectly positioned to get them for her, though by the time I had the chance, she was presumed dead, and I thought I was truly alone.
There are those that would say she was evil for the things she did, the life she pulled me into. My first kill was on her orders, when I was barely eighteen. She sent me off to university with a proud smile right after, taking the gun from my hand, kissing my cheek and telling me to mind my language studies. But she changed my life. She gave me a purpose, an occupation I am well suited for, and the skills to be successful at it. More than that, she was there, when no one else was. She was far more fairy godmother than anything evil, and for all my loyalties are flexible, she was one person I never gave up.
I don't miss her obsession and the things it drove her to, including her death. But I do miss her.
