Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Sixty-Five: History Repeats Itself

Natasha was erroneously benign, Clint concluded. She had run some not-so-errant errands that were nothing to do with employment. His mission didn't entail a sequestered walk along the secluded banks of the Danube, whilst engrossed in a book. Alongside her in her flapping beige trenchcoat, were the dull and murky depths of the river, rippling, and rollicking and spraying onto the banks in gusts of wind. The body of water seemed alive at such proximity, roaring as it rushed by, and ripping the town in two.

"I think it's on Stalingrad," Clint denoted, trying to make gawking through a pair of binoculars look surreptitious. "What the hell has Stalingrad got to do with anything?" Clint relayed the information, unable to decrypt her enigmatic behaviours that seemed to lead her all over the city.

Natasha was rapaciously reading through the book, rapidly turning the pages as she consumed the information compiled on the history of what she'd known as Volgograd. She'd been starved of outside influences for so long; everything that entered the Red Room was falsified, classified, and desensitised. At the base, she could never be certain that the sources she consumed had any foundation in the truth; the truth was reserved for the deserving.

What was the truth anyway? What did it matter? Surely any version of a story you put your faith in is the truth? Your truth? Or did the truth remain the truth regardless of you regarded as the truth?

Natasha couldn't fill her head with those dissonances, conflicting ideologies about aligning her mind with her duty, and wanting to strip every layer of propaganda, proselytization, and prejudice from her brain.

The fact remained that the truth had been concealed from her, and a decade had been stolen from her since she'd last checked the date; slipped through her fingers like grains in an hourglass.

Her lithe fingers tracing line after line of foreign script, she flipped the fluttering page to reach the gaping gap between the last page of the book and the cover that closed around it. The hardback made a satisfying clap as she slammed it shut. She closed it with closure, and wanting to dispose of her dissenting materials, she threw the book into the river as if trying to skim a stone on the sea.

She'd done much the same with the newspaper earlier on, dumping it in a flaming bin that herberts huddled around in their hovel. It had stoked the hungry fire, pages crackling as the flames engulfed them, a burp-like black plumage rising as the ink combusted, and the pages and curled in. The paper diminished to dust before riding the smoke upwards.

The pages of her book waved their goodbye in the wind, fanning out, before flopping on the river. Hardly a ripple was made amongst the tumultuous tide, and the book bobbed amongst the rest of the detritus that had gathered at the edges of the frothing river, before the opaque waters swallowed the parchment and ink down, and dragged it into the stomach of the churning river.

"She tossed it in!" Clint cried, incredulous, and tailed her back into the town; over the chain bridge and strolling by the parliament with its terracotta tiles and ivory spires that seemed the spear the clouds on their tips.

But finally, she rendezvoused. If it hadn't been for his eyesight like that of a bird of prey, he would've missed the exchange; the tip of the hat of a passerby and the swapping of a manila file that matched her raincoat. Not a word was exchanged, but the transmission of information was done flawlessly.

Her job was to get the sensitive information back to her sub-standard hotel room, with its grotty bathroom with tarnished taps, and the single bed with its starchy bedspread and itchy synthetic blanket. It was still a step up from the facility, but she almost missed the metronome perfect dripping that accompanied her in her quarters. And instead of her pillowcase smelling of sweat and smuggled vodka, it smelt like cheap detergent.