"And we're here why, again, exactly?" Rachel looked at the grimy city scene around her, sighed, and wrinkled her nose at the smell. Must be a paper mill somewhere nearby, she thought. Behind Rachel and her friend Mandy, the taxi that had dropped them off groaned away into the light afternoon traffic, belching smoke.

Mandy gave her tall, beautiful friend an exasperated smile. "You were with me when I bought the tickets. I told you I always wanted to see one of those ex-Soviet countries. And the tickets were so cheap!"

Rachel looked up and down the street dispiritedly. So this was Irkhetnia. A country Rachel could barely remember hearing of, and could never have placed on a map. And this was Metrovia, the capital city, Irkhetnia's largest, most modern city, no doubt. None of the architecture looked as if it dated after 1900, with the exception of an area of forbidding-looking Soviet-style multistory apartment blocks visible about a half-mile distant. "Ask yourself why it was so cheap. How many visitors do you think they get here? See any besides us? Any tour busses of Americans in shorts and Hawaiian shirts with cameras strung around their necks? We're probably the first American tourists who've ever seen this city."

"Well, so they'll be eager to be nice to us, right? They can't start to grow economically without some money from outside. That's why citizens from the EU and USA can come here without a visa." All they'd had to do was show their American passports at the Irkhetnian government ticket office at the Berlin airport, and again as they passed through the arrival gate after leaving the plane. "And our money will go a long way. I hear these countries go nuts over dollars."

"If they even know what a dollar is. Good thing you had the address of the hotel written down for the cab driver. In Cyrillic letters. We haven't met anybody since we got off the plane who speaks English!" In Germany, especially in the cities, they had always been able to rely on someone around them knowing English. Rachel had anticipated the same thing here.

Mandy could tell her friend was getting more irritated by the minute. "Rachel, let's just go into the hotel and check in. We're both tired. I didn't realize the flight would be that long."

Rachel sighed again. "Okay. At least I guess we can't get back to Berlin today."

"Uhh, no, that's kind of out. Look, could you just humor me? Let's stay a couple of days, and see what it's like. Then we'll fly right back to Germany and go on with the rest of the trip. We'll hit all the Berlin night clubs when we get back. Deal?" She bit her lip, and raised her eyebrows, giving Rachel a please-just-do-it-for-me-this-one-time look.

Rachel couldn't help smiling at the lost-puppy face Mandy was showing. "Okay. We'll check in, and look around town a little. Couple of days." Rachel disliked missing out on even that much of their vacation in Germany. They'd planned the trip for months. There was no way to stretch the trip out any longer at the end -- they were cutting it close to the start of fall semester classes at the university as it was. They needed to get back to start their junior year.

Mandy grinned, moving for a moment as if she were going to hug Rachel before stopping herself. She knew Rachel didn't like that kind of thing.

Rachel spun slowly, taking in all the dreary details of the room. "Uhhh, there's no bathroom."

Mandy bit her lip. "There's probably one down the hall. Shall we go look...?"

Rachel shook her head. "Later. Kind of a small bed."

Mandy looked at it with dismay. She colored slightly at the idea of sharing it with Rachel. Their hotel rooms in Germany had had separate beds. "I could sleep on the floor."

Rachel shook her head. "Don't be silly. I'll do that. You're paying for all this." It would never occur to either of them to suggest sleeping in the same bed. The embarrassment of sharing such a tiny, intimate bed with another woman would prevent them sleeping at all.

Rachel sighed. The hotel clerk had been their latest language barrier. He seemed nice, and willing to help, but was at a loss to know how to respond to two young women chattering in an alien tongue. He barely seemed to notice Mandy, his eyes glued in awe to Rachel's face, when they weren't wandering down to her cleavage. After several minutes of confusion, Mandy had pointed to herself and said her name, slowly. The clerk, on sudden inspiration, looked under a pile of papers and found some sort of memo that evidently related to their pre-arranged visit. Mandy, remembering the advertised cost of the room, pulled two five dollar bills out of the wallet in her purse and held them uncertainly in front of the clerk. The light in his eyes confirmed his eagerness for dollars. He took the bills, handed them a key, and pointed to the stairs, smiling, giving Rachel one last, yearning look as the girls turned away. Upstairs, they had found a room matching the number on the key.

"I'm going to call my dad, let him know I'm in Irkhetnia," rolling her eyes as she pronounced the name. She pulled out her cell phone, but quickly discovered she couldn't get a signal. Damned cheap network, she thought. It must not cover this part of the planet. "Shit. I don't know why I didn't think of this. I should have called before we left Germany." Spotting an old-fashioned rotary phone on the bedside table, Rachel crossed to the bed and picked up the receiver. The odd buzzing in the earpiece seemed likely to be the local equivalent of a dial tone. She dialed the international code for the U.S., but there didn't seem to be any appropriate response. She depressed the switchhook and dialed 0. She was encouraged by the clicking and the voice at the other end saying a brisk "Da?" until she recognized the voice to be the desk clerk's. Sighing, she tentatively said, "Phone America?" thinking he might understand her goal. The long "Uhhhh..." at the other end told her otherwise. She gritted her teeth and hung up.

Dinner was obtained from a peddler with a pushcart, around the corner from the hotel: several pieces of fruit and two very fatty-looking sausages. A bottle of wine from a hole-in-the-wall store completed the meal -- it looked as though the establishment was there purely so workers could grab a bottle on the way from their dreary jobs to their dreary homes. Rachel used her ability to charm merchants across the language barrier, a silent process involving spreading out bills, each party to the transaction pointing at particular sets of bills to establish the price and the counteroffer. Rachel managed to leave them with slight frowns and resigned gestures, spending about half the amount the merchants had originally wanted. Female beauty is an international language.

Rachel got to her feet as they finished eating. "I'm going to go see if I can find that toilet. Coming?"

Mandy shook her head and stretched out on the bed. "Tell me where it is when you get back."

After about ten minutes, Rachel returned, with a grimace. "It's at the end of the hall." She waved vaguely. "Last door on the left. You squat and pee through a hole in the floor." She shook her head. "Whole place reeks, of course. I don't know how people live like this. I know, I know, two days. If I have to spend any longer, I swear I'll freak."

Mandy looked pained. "I know. I'm sorry. I just... couldn't come here by myself. You understand? I'll try to make it up to you, really."

Unexpectedly, Rachel smiled. "Don't fret. I'm a big girl, I can handle it. Anyway, I could have said no. Say, let's see if this town has any night life. You game?"

"What if some guy wants to... pick one of us up?"

Rachel knew immediately which of the two of them Mandy was referring to. Rachel always attracted male attention whether she wanted to or not. Six feet tall barefoot, taller than most of the men seeking her notice, with striking features, long legs, flowing blonde hair and full breasts, Rachel was often assumed to be a model. Mandy couldn't be considered ugly, but with her much shorter stature, mousy brown hair, her nose just a little too long, her face just a little too wide, her mouth just a little too small with lips just a little too thin, her breasts a little too small, she was at a severe disadvantage when she was with Rachel.

Rachel shook her head. "Don't worry. I'll head them off. You don't need to be trying to fend for yourself here while I go have fun. Or... I'm sorry, I didn't mean some guy wouldn't want you. You want a playmate tonight?" She hoped Mandy could find someone nice. Rachel didn't think Mandy had ever had a boyfriend. Or sex. Mandy compounded her lack of sparkle by being shy.

Mandy gaped at her. "Go off with a guy and not know where I am or how to tell him No? I don't even know that word in this language. No, just stay with me, okay?"

Rachel picked up her purse. "Okay, just a few drinks and listen to the music. Wait till we get back to Germany for hanky-panky." She laughed and headed out the door, Mandy hurrying to follow.

About two blocks from the hotel they heard strains of music coming from below street level. Following the sound down a set of steps, they came into an establishment with all the earmarks of a nightclub: tables surrounded by chairs, about half of them occupied, a bar along the side of the room, a small stage at the front where a bearded man was picking listlessly at a guitar, and, from about table level to ceiling, a continuous haze of cigarette smoke. Rachel walked straight up to the bar, Mandy following in her wake. Rachel turned to Mandy. "What do you think, a little wine?"

"If we can get it, sure."

Rachel turned back to the bartender. Her eyes locked with his to determine his reaction, she said experimentally, "Vino?" She smiled at herself, wondering how likely it was that the man would speak, of all languages, Latin.

Evidently that was close enough to the right word in his language. He reached under the counter for a bottle while sweeping two glasses off a shelf behind him, all of this neatly done in one motion. He poured for each of them, and said something that most likely was an announcement of the price. Rachel, at twenty, would have been asked for some proof of age at any bar in the U.S. Here, it didn't seem to matter.

Rachel pulled her wallet from her purse, and went through the haggling procedure again. The sale completed, she raised her glass as if examining the underside of her drink for rat droppings. The bartender glared at her and moved down the bar to serve another customer.

They sipped their wine, Mandy making a face at its oily taste, but shrugging and deciding it wasn't so bad she couldn't finish it. Rachel sat with her back to the bar, surveying the room, comparing the guitarist unfavorably with most of the amateurs who tried out their skills at off-campus clubs back home.

Rachel could see the eyes of most of the men turning towards her. Of course, most men's gazes seemed instantly to fix at about breast level. Rachel usually left enough buttons undone to show what was there.

She looked to her left as a man approached. About mid-thirties, wearing a wilted white shirt and stained tie, oily hair slicked back, a mustache and three-day beard growth. He said something that Rachel found, of course, unintelligible in a literal sense, though the gist of it was clear, especially accompanied by the up-and-down drift of his eyes along her body. Deciding immediately that, even if she hadn't made that promise to Mandy, she wasn't detecting the presence of a soul-mate, Rachel smiled benignly, raised her wine glass as if she were going to toast him with it, reached out with her other hand and dipped the end of his tie in the wine. The man froze, his smile turning instantly to a scowl. With clenched hands, he backed off and turned away, muttering something as unintelligible as his first suggestion, the meaning equally clear.

"Rachel! How can you just... do that? You don't know what he might have done to you. Did you see his face after you did that?"

Rachel grinned at her. "You've just got to know guys in bars. They know if they make a scene, everybody will know the girl snubbed him. Better to slink away and hope nobody notices."

Mandy shook her head slowly. "Well, if you say so."

Rachel looked down in her wineglass and wrinkled her nose. "I guess I'm done with my wine, anyway. Want another?"

Mandy looked around the room, frowning. "Weren't there a lot more people than this when we came in?"

Rachel followed her friend's gaze. The place did seem to be emptying out. She looked at her watch. "I set my watch by what they said local time would be, before we left Berlin. I've got 8:45. Has my watch stopped?"

Mandy confirmed the time. "I checked about the time zone too. I'm pretty sure that's right."

Rachel shrugged. "Maybe there's some big soccer game. Want to see if there's more life somewhere else?"

Mandy gestured nervously. "We could just go back to the hotel."

"One more place, then we'll go back." She shoved her glass away and headed for the door, Mandy again hurrying to keep up.

Rachel took a few strides further down the street, and stopped so abruptly Mandy ran into her back. "Wonder what's up down there?"

Towards the end of the block, an official-looking car had screeched around the corner and come to a stop adjacent to a group of four men, and several uniformed officers had jumped out. It would have been impossible at this distance to overhear the conversation even if it had been in English, but there was a great deal of shouting from the uniformed men, and nervous gesturing and fumbling for papers in pockets by the pedestrians.

Mandy seemed to shrink behind her taller friend, watching the commotion from around Rachel's arm. "R-Rachel, I don't think we should be out here. I think there might be some kind of curfew."

Rachel hesitated. Her natural inclination was to get closer and find out more clearly what the situation was, but she couldn't deny Mandy might be right. "I don't mind calling it a night."

Rachel groaned as she felt Mandy tapping her shoulder, from the bed above her. Rachel had managed to fall asleep curled up on a Turkish rug on the floor, and her muscles felt cramped. She didn't relish going through the falling asleep process again and resented being dragged out of her sought-for slumber. She growled irritably in response to Mandy's whispered "Rachel, you awake?"

"What is it?"

"I can't sleep."

"Guess that makes two of us now." Rachel immediately felt guilty. Mandy was easily wounded, and Rachel liked her too well to want to hurt her. She tried to make her voice more neutral. "What's up?"

"I'm... scared. I can't go through with it."

Rachel finally sat up to look at her, in the periodic light from a blinking sign outside the window, her brows wrinkled in puzzlement. "Can't go through with what?"

"With... what I came here for."

Rachel wrapped her arms around her knees, and said slowly, "Are you telling me there was something more than just seeing sights?" To her astonishment, she suddenly realized Mandy was crying.

Between sniffles, Mandy choked out, "It just sounded so easy when Sergei asked me to do it..."

Rachel blinked. "Sergei? That Russian grad student you act like you've got a crush on?"

Mandy sighed. "He's not Russian. He's from Irkhetnia. He's here now, in Metrovia, for the summer -- it's where he grew up. He... well, when I mentioned to some of the girls in the library I was thinking of going to Germany during the summer, he was sitting nearby, and it's like he really noticed me for the first time. He asked me out for coffee, and I was so excited. We went out, and he asked all about the trip, and where I'd go and what I wanted to see, and how long I'd be in Germany, and... well, then he asked me if I'd be willing to take a little side trip. To Irkhetnia. I don't think I'd even heard of it before that. I thought he was Russian too.

"Anyway, he got real serious, and he said I could do something really important for his country, and for mine too, for the U.S."

Rachel shook her head, her jaw hanging open. "So what is it we're here for? Like a spy mission or something?"

Mandy shook her head vehemently. "Oh no, nothing like that. At least, not really. Tomorrow I'm supposed to wear my bright red blouse, and walk up the street towards the U.S. embassy. A girl will recognize me by my blouse and she'll slip something into my purse as I walk by, and then I'm supposed to go into the embassy and give it to a certain person there. They'll fly it out in a diplomatic pouch, you know, those can't be searched, and it will be really valuable information about Irkhetnia for the U.S. government. Something bad the government here does, that the U.S. should know about. And that's all I have to do. Then we can leave and go back to Germany. But..." She shivered. "I've been laying here awake thinking about it. I can't do it, I just can't!"

Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, trying to convince herself she was really hearing this. "Didn't you say Sergei is here? Why isn't he the one who's meeting you?"

"He thinks they might be watching him. The girl I'm supposed to meet, well, walk past, he says they couldn't possibly suspect her. It's totally safe, he promised!"

"Tell me something. Did you and he work out this whole plan before you asked me on the trip, or after?"

Mandy bit her lip, not wanting to meet Rachel's eyes. "Umm... before."

"Is it... did you somehow want me here because of this?"

Mandy nodded her head forlornly. "I'm so sorry, Rachel. I really do like being with you. I could never have made myself go into those Berlin clubs without you there. You just have this... well, you can do anything! I thought I'd feel more confident if you were along. I felt like I could do... this whole thing, if you were here."

Rachel rubbed her eyes. "This doesn't make sense. It sounds like Sergei must be in some sort of anti-government underground movement. Why can't these people do whatever it is themselves? Pass along the information they have to the U.S. government. Why do they need an American to come here and do it for them?"

Mandy shook her head. "They can't get the information out themselves. The government watches all the travelers so closely, they open the mail, they tap the phones. I mean, if you thought they were thorough searching our stuff at the airport when we came in, wait till you see what they do when we leave! And the police would never let an Irkhetnian citizen anywhere near the U.S. embassy without questioning him and searching him." She shrugged helplessly. "This is the only thing Sergei could think of that would work. Once I'd get within sight of the embassy, they wouldn't search me if I showed my passport -- it'd make some big diplomatic incident if they hassled an American citizen. The government here has been trying to be so friendly to the U.S., you know, to get all that foreign aid and military help."

"So... you're supposed to pass on some big secret, something Irkhetnia doesn't want the U.S. to know? What is it, do you know?"

Mandy frowned. "Sergei told me a little. It's something about drugs. The U.S. government already suspects, or some people in it do, anyway, that a lot of the illegal drugs entering the U.S. come from here. They don't know that it's run from the very top, though. I mean, the president of the country is in charge of it! I think I'm supposed to pass on some documents that prove that, and give a lot of the details of how it works, who's involved, besides the president, where the money goes -- that sort of thing."

Rachel couldn't shake the feeling of unreality. "If the U.S. found out... if they had proof... they'd blow the government here out of the water, I guess. Like they did in Panama. But..." She shook her head hard, trying again to clear it. "Mandy, what made you want to get mixed up in this? I mean, this is really going to crazy lengths to impress a guy you barely know."

Mandy shook her head. "It wasn't that. I mean, that's not the main thing. My brother..." Her tears started seeping again. "I never told you about this. My older brother Bryan died of a drug overdose. It... well, of course the drugs probably didn't come from here, or I don't know that they did, anyway. But it doesn't matter. I HATE that there are people doing what this country is doing. People like that killed Bryan! I want to get them!!" Her eyes blazed.

Rachel blinked. "Okay, okay. Well, with that motivation, I guess you should be able to manage it."

Mandy started crying harder. "I can't! I have to do it, I want to do it, but I can't! Every time I think about it, now that I'm here, now that it's so close... I just get so shaky! I know me, Rachel! When that girl puts the stuff in my purse, I'll just freak! Or I'll wait till I get right up to the embassy, and I'll look so guilty the police will know something's wrong. Rachel, could..." She moved her jaw as if to continue speaking, but no sound came out.

Rachel looked straight into Mandy's eyes. "You want me to do it?"

Intense relief spread across Mandy's features. "Would you? Please? Please??"

Rachel bit her lip, thinking. "I guess the worst that could happen... look, is there anything in these documents that would give away Sergei's identity? Or the girl here? Or anybody else you wouldn't want to see in trouble?"

Mandy shook her head uncertainly. "I don't think so... no, there shouldn't be. It's not about that."

"Let's see then -- if I got caught... well, as an American citizen, the worst they'd do to me is deport me. You too, of course. It'd cut our Germany trip short. You okay with that?"

Mandy sighed deeply. "Rachel, see, I knew you'd be calm about it! I wish I could be like that. So will you do it?" Her eyes pleaded with Rachel's. That lost puppy look again.

Rachel smiled. "If I can fit in that blouse. It's going to be tight on me, so I'll get some attention. But what the hell, I'm used to that."

Mandy started crying again, with relief this time. "Thank you so much! SO much!!"

Rachel lay back on the floor, feeling amused and a little excited. This should be kind of fun. "See if you can get some sleep now. Let me get some, anyway."

"Sure, Rachel. Thanks again." Mandy lay back in the bed, with a very relieved smile.

Rachel walked briskly down the street, in the direction of the U.S. embassy, which lay at the end of the street. Her heart was pounding with excitement. This is so cool, she thought, it's like I'm in a movie, one of those spy thrillers.

Of course, she thought, I'm attracting a little more notice than I should, if I were a spy. Mandy's bright red blouse hugged Rachel's curves tightly, slightly flattening her breasts but making up for it by outlining the exact shape of her waist. She had barely managed to get the thing buttoned, not even bothering with the top two buttons, so it showed more cleavage than it would have on a woman it was designed to fit. Rachel ignored the male heads turning towards her as if drawn by some magnetic property of the blouse -- yes, she thought, smiling, that must be it.

She forced herself to keep looking straight ahead, though every muscle in her body wanted to turn to watch the retreating back of the woman she'd just bumped into. Rachel hadn't really noticed the woman as they had approached each other, except to dimly register a figure whose face was shadowed by a shawl. The woman seemed to veer into her as Rachel had moved aside to pass her, the collision stopping the momentum of both of them. Each had automatically reached out a hand to steady the other, muttering apologies in their respective languages, when Rachel felt a sudden tug at the purse on her arm, and realized the woman had slipped something into it. She caught a momentary glimpse of the woman's face, and saw in surprise it was not an old woman but a girl, looking younger than Rachel, probably seventeen or eighteen. An instant later the girl was gone, walking on past Rachel, who shrugged and moved on, stifling a smile.

The man with binoculars nudged his partner. "We've got contact, Alexei."

His partner, startled, put down his sandwich and picked up his mobile phone. "Who?"

The binocular man pointed. "Woman in the shawl. Bumped into our red babe. I saw her put an envelope in the red babe's purse. A little amateurish. And red babe's not looking back. Just pretending nothing happened. That was the exchange."

Alexei spoke into his phone, giving a description of the shawled woman. To the binocular man, he said, "Pick up the red lady now, Yevgeny?"

Yevgeny shook his head. "Not yet. Wait till the shawl lady is out of sight. We don't want her to know the deal went bad. Tell Squad Three: follow shawl lady, and she'll lead us back to where she came from. Oh -- I want Squad Two to secure the hotel room. Pick up the other girl there." He thought a moment more. "And tell Three to see if we can get a photograph of the shawl lady's face. High resolution, if possible. Do not stop her. Tell them that twice. If she slips away somehow, we can use face recognition on the computer, see if she's already in the database of suspected underground members."

Alexei nodded, relayed the instructions into the phone, then sat back and relaxed. "What was it you said put them onto this woman, the one in red? Why'd they put a bug on her in the first place?"

Yevgeny continued watching through the binoculars. "I heard that a ticket clerk at the Berlin airport got suspicious when these two girls just walked up and bought round-trip tickets, for cash. I don't know, I guess the combination of American girls, in Berlin, traveling alone, no reservations, paying cash. Like they'd just taken it into their heads that minute to fly to Irkhetnia. College age, like most of the rebels. Just all struck him a little odd -- luckily for us. Anyway, he alerted the Security Ministry, and local customs stuck transmitters in their bags when they entered. Bug heard them talking about their plans in their hotel room last night. I hope they give the ticket clerk a commendation."

The woman in the red blouse had continued on as the sidewalk crowds thinned out around her -- as one drew closer to the USA embassy, fewer locals felt comfortable being there, police presence being heavier. Yevgeny put his binoculars in his bag and stood, his knees cracking. He signaled to two other men, and they joined him and Alexei, all of them piling into the police van.

Marya had just stuffed the shawl into her dresser drawer when her mother looked in from the bedroom door, clearly irritated. "Marya, where were you? I looked everywhere for you. You're supposed to be getting ready to come with me to the luncheon."

The girl sighed. "I was just out and about, Mom."

Yelena gritted her teeth. "None of the staff knew where you were. I've told you not to slip out without the bodyguards."

Marya retorted quickly, "You do!"

Yelena glared at her. "I can take care of myself. You know I worry about you, out there by yourself."

Marya rolled her eyes. "Mom, I'm eighteen. I can take care of myself too."

Yelena sighed. "Yeah, right. The age where you know everything there is to know." Her glare softened, and she looked straight in her daughter's eyes. "Marya, for me. Just stop. Whatever it is you're doing out there, it's got to be something your father wouldn't like, or you wouldn't be so secretive about it."

Marya's eyes flashed. "Well, we've all got our secrets."

Yelena's face flushed, and she made a warding gesture with her hands. She hated the way Marya had been pulling away from her in the last few months. They'd always had a good mother/daughter relationship until recently. She knew they were still close enough that Marya wouldn't spill Yelena's secret, but a year ago Marya wouldn't have thrown it in her face like that. Marya had surely misinterpreted the nature of her mother's connection with Colonel Blasinski, but Yelena still couldn't afford for it to be out in the open.

Yelena gave up. "Anyway, we're leaving for the luncheon in thirty minutes."

Marya gave her a sweet smile. "I'll be ready, Mummy."