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Ground Zero - Part I

A Tale from the Agent's Lounge

The Strategic Bombing Survey: "For convenience, the term 'ground zero' will be used to designate the point on the ground directly beneath the point of an atomic detonation."

Silver's Addendum: "Or, in some cases, the point directly above one."

The bar at the Foreign Operations eXecutive does not have an official name. On the budget it's listed simply as "canteen services". That makes it sound like a place where one can buy shoe polish and toothpaste, combs and claw clippers, cigarettes and snack food, none of which are sold there. But one can get wine, beer and hard liquor - much of it brought in by agents returning from missions abroad without the bother of customs and duties. So long as it is only sold and consumed on premises the Canada Customs and Borders folk don't mind. If real ninety percent alcohol Russian Vodka is to your taste then it is the place to go, but only if you work for F.O.X., or know someone who does.

But I digress.

Internally we refer to the bar as the Agent's Lounge because at one time the support and administrative staff had separate facilities and students weren't allowed to drink here until they passed the halfway mark of their training - they still aren't - but nowadays everyone else is welcome and the other bar has been shut down.

They have had relatively few bartenders over the years. The first was an agent crippled on the job, someone who could be trusted to keep the other agents' secrets. On the books he was still an agent, albeit a junior one. He lived in the attached dorm and worked seven nights a week, year in and year out until he reached mandatory retirement age. Then they created a canteen manager position and hired him back at a reduced salary while he collected his pension.

Being a unionized government agency they were forced to hare an assistant to work holidays, weekends and whenever the old fellow was on vacation. They took a failed student who was otherwise loyal and willing to work part time hours. He eventually inherited the head bartender job and one of the analysts in a position that was being cut became his backup while job sharing analytical work with another employee who wanted to spend more time with her kits.

The senior guy retired the same year that I was accepted as a student at the Academy. Shortly thereafter I was exposed as a second generation KGB sleeper agent. Rather than try me publicly or execute me summarily Silver, who was the senior agent at the time, decided to keep me on as the new part time bartender and occasional agent.

Why? Good question. I think it was because they felt that my loyalty to Mother Russia was only tenuous at best. My grandparents were active NKVD agents, my parents were sleeper agents trained at the American compound outside of Moscow. I was born in America but raised to believe that my destiny in life was to infiltrate the CIA or the FBI or the State Department, and to become the most senior double agent ever - a glorious ambition, an unobtainable pipe dream.

The cold war ended before I could get into any of them. I'm afraid that the American lifestyle was just a little too comfortable and the pleasures of pussy and drink dulled my ambitions. Then there were the troubles with the new Russian Federation, and the mass defection of former KGB agents to the tell-all book publishers ... there was no longer anyone to report to. I settled into a law practice and went through a few wives and a large number of martinis, expertly mixed by my paw. I was adrift, without real aim or purpose.

Then Putin came along and brought purpose back to the Russian people. His rise, and the fact that he had been a KGB agent on the front lines of the cold war when I was still going to Law School, gave me hope. Perhaps I could too could start again, revive my career as a spy and aid the rebuilding of Greater Russia! So I dusted off my tuxedo, oiled up my gun, cleaned the tubes and resistors on my dad's old KGB radio and started applying to the agencies again.

It looked pretty hopeless for a fox my age, but then I heard that F.O.X. was hiring on an affirmative action program that included older folk. Having been born and raised in the states my background legend was perfect. Once in I managed to contact the new Russian security service on the old radio but I got caught up in a sweep for another infiltrator whose transmissions had been intercepted.

I pretended to break down under interrogation and confessed that I was only there because I wanted to make my parents proud of me, and because the reputation of the martinis at the F.O.X. bar was beyond compare. Silver let me live and gave me a job that I could throw myself into, bartending, plus he let me tag along on minor missions as long as they did not bring me too close to Russia. No sense tempting me, eh?

No, he didn't fake my death or try to cover up my identity as a sleeper agent in any way, so now that I think of it, he probably let me live partly to piss you guys off. What better way to get under Putin's skin than to flaunt a pet KGB agent? His mistake, because now I'm here to tell you everything I know, everything I learned by keeping my old gray ears open while the agents and executives were talking.

Yes, I know that these stories are mostly old news. That is why I'm telling them to you. You can verify facts that only your agency and F.O.X. would know. I need you to know that what I tell you is the absolute truth, otherwise you will not believe me when I reveal what I know about the biggest threat that Russia has ever faced since the end of the Great War. A plot so dangerous, so insidious that it could only come from the sinister mind of Silver, a fox driven by a desire for revenge. You have heard of what he did to Colonel Sun of the Chinese MSS? Yes? Well he hates Putin and the KGB just as much, if not more.

So let me tell you a story that I did not overhear in the Agent's lounge. One that I learned when I was helping the Executive Secretary, Miss CC, transfer the most secret of the secret files to her temporary replacement. It occurred near the end of the cold war ...

* * * * *

November 1987

Auvert, had been a senior agent since his return from a mission in Murmansk. He had chosen the codename of Silver because of the silver highlights in his otherwise black fur, and because Aubergine was taken.

The mission had been a hard one, both emotionally and physically. He had been sent in to aid in the defection a pair of Soviet missile scientists, lemurs born in Madagascar but raised and educated in the cold northern regions of Russia. Silver had failed to bring them out, but managed to make it across Finland to the west with their newborn son and digital file containing all the missile secrets they were privy to. He had a new scar to show for it, a burnt patch of furless skin on the back of his left paw. He acquired a few new psychological scars too, but strangely enough they seemed to cauterize those that he already bore.

Before the mission to Murmansk Silver had been on a downward spiral of ennui and alcohol abuse. After the mission he took the opportunity to clean up while he healed up. He had avoided alcohol altogether for three months and after that drank only sparingly.

His rehabilitation assignment was to look into the possibility of a double agent in the F.O.X. organization. It was tedious work, checking reports from agents behind the iron curtain with lists of folk that were privy to the information being leaked. Complicating it was a number of disinformation campaigns being run by both sides. At first it was an interesting problem, separating the truth from the lies, but after six months boredom was beginning to creep in, and with it the temptation to duck out of the office for a lunchtime drink or three.

Silver realized the danger in taking up old habits. What he was lacking, he believed, was some social interaction, something to take his mind off work.

That was a problem in itself. Casual interaction with other agents and staff usually took place in the Agent's lounge, and he wanted to avoid social drinking. The dating scene in Ottawa was pretty much centred on the clubs across the river in Hull, where the bars were open until three a.m., so that wasn't much better. Besides, he did not have a lot in common with the female public servants that haunted those places looking for love or a reasonable short-term facsimile of it.

The senior agent that he had been having an on again - off again affair with, the seductive vixen Scarlet, had disappeared on an assignment somewhere in Europe and he missed her badly. The only other person he felt comfortable around was Tancred Williams, the Chief of Staff. He and the big golden fox had spent a number of nights in Williams' chateau in the Gatineau Hills playing backgammon and discussing world affairs while he healed up. But Williams, who had confessed that he was gay to Silver early on, was currently wooing a handsome young usher from the National Arts Centre and was not available after hours like before.

Still, Silver took every opportunity that he found to go see Williams in his office during working hours, which was helped by the number of times that he needed the Chief of Staff's permission to access sensitive files.

"Good morning, Marie." Silver hailed the secretary who guarded the Director's inner sanctum.

Mademoiselle Marie Chienne-Caniche, often referred to as Miss CC for short, stood up slowly, showing off the curvaceous but firm physique in her skin tight outfit. "I'll let Meester Williams know that you 'air here." She said with a thick French accent. She was a buxom party poodle with snow white fur but black ears. Rumour had it that she had another couple of black patches up under her extremely short skirt. The look she was giving Silver from beneath long silky eyelashes said that he could confirm that rumour if he wished. Silver was mildly interested but feelings for Scarlet still ruled his heart so he just nodded in thanks and leaned against the doorway wheelie she went to announce him.

"You may enter." Miss CC said when she reappeared a moment later. She remained standing in the doorway to Williams' office so Silver had to turn sideways to go in Between his broad solid chest and her much softer one there was barely enough room o squeeze past.

"I think that she likes you." Williams commented after Miss CC had closed the door.

"What's not to like?" Silver replied as he flopped into an antique padded chair opposite the Chief. "And speaking of love interests, how have you and your usher friend been, Tanner?" Silver was the only person in the Academy that was allowed to address the Chief of Staff by his nickname - Tanner - bestowed on him, he claimed, by his gym mates during his body building days cause his love of the sun had faded the red fur on his coat to a golden hue. Silver, who had seen an empty bottle of fur dye in the garbage at the chalet suspected otherwise.

"Oh, not too bad. We went out to see the new Bond movie the other night. "The Living Daylights. The one with the new actor in it."

"Any good?"

"He's not as buff as the first actor or as sexy as the second, but he does have a certain brooding attractiveness to him."

"I meant the movie."

"Oh, I didn't pay much attention the plot." Williams' eyes rolled up as he recalled how his date had surprised him with a buttery popcorn blow job in the darkened theatre. "I was ... distracted. But you know, they are getting terribly formulaic. You've see one, you've seen them all."

"Let me guess." Silver put a paw to his head as if he was receiving a message from the spirits. "Some insane Soviet General gets a hold of a nuclear device and tries to start World War Three with it." He lowered his paw. "Or something equally ridiculous."

A strange look came over Williams face. "Yesss, something equally ridiculous." Then the big golden fox turned his chair sideways to Silver and made a tent with his paws. "Tell me Silver, are you getting bored going through the files looking for a leak in our organization?"

Silver did not know how to take the question, so he answered truthfully. "A little, yes. I feel like I need something to take my mind off the search for a bit. Something that will clean out the cobwebs so I can go back at it with a clear eye. Why? Did you have something in mind?"

"It seems that I might." Williams leaned down and pulled a file from the safe under his desk. "Something so ridiculous that at first I didn't think that it was serious enough to be worthy of our attention." He tossed the file across the desk and Silver pinned it to the blotter with a claw just before it slid off the edge. He picked it up and began reading.

When he was done several minutes later Silver closed the file and regarded Williams with a face that would have made a championship poker player proud.

"So. Some insane Soviet General has gotten a hold of a nuclear device and is planning to set it off to start World War Three."

"Essentially, yes."

There was more to it than that, of course. The file had explained how the Soviets, unbeknownst to their Warsaw Pact partners, had buried a number of very large and powerful nuclear weapons underneath the main invasion corridors and planned to set them off should NATO launch a sneak attack. The result would be severe attrition of the NATO forces and a lot of irradiated territory - but not Soviet territory, just Polish territory and East German territory and Czech territory and Hungarian territory and the like. The loss of life in the buffer regions was considered worth it to protect the motherland, and who would be around to complain after?

The file, based on information gleaned from defectors and deep cover agents, revealed that the system of underground "Barrier Bombs" was secretly being dismantled under the orders of the new Secretary of the Communist Party - Mikhail Gorbachev. But there were hard-line factions in the Soviet Union opposed to Gorbachev's policies of Perestroika and Glasnost. One of their adherents, a fanatic Soviet General the Nuclear Forces named Sergi Timofeyev, had gotten wind of the plan and moved at least one of the bombs, resetting the codes that controlled it.

That in itself was not a problem; despite the Soviet's fears the West had no intention of invading and there was no way that General Timofeyev could smuggle the rather large and radioactive device across the heavily guarded borders of the Iron Curtain, not with both sides on the lookout for it. But Timofeyev had no intention of waiting for NATO to come to him.

NATO had been putting a lot of pressure on the Soviets to agree to a peace accord which would see a reduction of tensions and forces in the border states. This was supported by those states - openly in the West and through opposition groups in the totalitarian Warsaw Pact nations. US President Regan had gone as far as to visit the Berlin earlier in the year to demand: "Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Secret talks were already underway at that point aimed at reducing the nuclear forces in Europe. The information that Silver had helped to smuggle out of Murmansk had given the Allies a tremendous advantage and it looked like the Soviets were going to agree to a major reduction in Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles. The IRBM treaty was only the first in a series of actions that Gorbachev had already secretly agreed to in principle and its signing would effectively signal the end to the Cold War.

The initial agreement was due to be signed in early December, less than two weeks away. The suggested venue or the signing was a symbolic one - Humboldt University. Famous professors of Humboldt had included pacifists like Max Plank and Albert Einstein, but Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles had also been students there, making the location acceptable to the Communists that ran the Soviet Union.

"The Brothers Grimm went there too." Williams added, apropos of nothing. "The East Germans have kept up its high standards and it has a lot of connections with western universities; excellent recruiting grounds for the KGB as well as the Stasi."

Williams was referring to the USSR's state security as well as that of the German Democratic Republic, or GDR. Silver was well aware of the extraordinary level of cooperation between the two agencies. The head of the Stasi was a German brown bear named Erick Milke. A devout communist, he had fled the Nazis in the thirties and gone to work for the Soviet NKVD, the KGB's forerunner. He was a vicious killer who as head of the GDR state security had made the Stasi more feared than the Gestapo.

In the seventies Milke had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the then head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, giving the KGB equal status to the Stasi in the areas of western recruitment and technical intelligence collection. The thirty KGB agents in the Stasi liaison office had full access to the Headquarters compound. The hundreds of other KGB agents were free to operate without interference providing they left the GDR citizens alone - Milke had a special section for taking care of his fellow East Germans. His diligence had gotten him promoted to general and earned him a place on the ruling Politburo.

The only other Stasi officer of note as far as Silver was concerned was Marcus Wolfe, a grey wolf who served as head of the Stasi General Intelligence Administration. He was known as the 'creature without a face' because one person had ever managed to get a photograph of the elusive spy master. Silver could appreciate a fellow professional, no matter which side they were on.

He continued to read.

The West had been engaging in economic warfare and subtle sabotage in their resource sector that had brought the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to Its knees. The USSR badly needed the money it would save by putting an end to many of its expensive but inefficient missile programs. The initial treaty would see almost three thousand missiles taken out of commission, mostly on the Soviet side.

The peace dividend included savings through the reduction of conventional forces as well. As part of the agreements the Soviet forces in Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary would be disbanded along with a number of specialist units poised to back them up should the balloon go up one day. The ability to launch an attack, or even to defend against one in the forward area, would be severely curtailed as the Soviet army stood to release a million conscripts, a hundred thousand commissioned officers and hundreds of generals.

That bit had apparently been the last straw for General Timofeyev, whose command was one of those slated for disbandment. Even if he managed to avoid forced retirement the chances of becoming a Marshal of the Soviet Union in a reduced army were slim to none. But there is opportunity for promotion in war, especially if it resulted in his faction ousting the conciliatory Gorbachev. The last word from their moles in the Soviet High Command was that Timofeyev intended to set off the bomb in such a time and place so as to not only prevent the signing of the IRBM treaty but also to set off a war between the East and the West - a war that he fervently believed his side would win, despite the likelihood of casualties in the millions.

Where he had moved the bomb to, and how and when he intended to set it off was not known by either the West or the Soviets.

"So until it is found it is still a threat." Williams concluded.

"But if both sides know that the explosion is an act of provocation by a loose cannon couldn't they just say so and use it as an example of why they need to reduce the number of nuclear weapons floating around?"

"If either side s as stable as they portray themselves to be, maybe, but that is far from being the case. Gorbachev in particular is on very shaky ground and admitting that they lost a nuke would be the end for him. His enemies in the Politburo would spin any revelations from the West to look like disinformation prior to a sneak attack. Also, the hard-line leaders of the Warsaw Pact counties are being threatened from within and there is nothing like a war to distract the populace while you eliminate your opposition, especially if the bomb goes off where your opposition is strongest, like Gdansk in Poland. No, I'm afraid that if it goes off the forces on both sides will mobilize and there is very little anyone can do to stop them after that. After all, it's easier to ride a tsunami wave than to stand against one."

Silver was not quite sure whether either was possible but he shrugged and Williams continued with the briefing.

"The US has the lead," he told his newest senior agent, "but their resources are stretched. They assess that the bomb is somewhere along the border between the Warsaw Pact and NATO where its detonation could be blamed on both sides at once. They are doing a detailed radiation survey of all the places where both sides have military facilities right on the border or where towns have been divided by the Iron Curtain."

"Does that include Berlin?" Silver inquired.

"Not so far. Honaker and the rest of the hard-line GDR leadership are considered loyal to Timofeyev's faction and they American's don't believe that the general would put them at risk. In addition, Timofeyev himself is in Berlin and they don't think that he would want to get too close to the bomb, but I have my doubts about that. I've been studying his psychological profile and he is the type that leads from the front - always in the thick of things. I think that he would want to personally supervise the placement and remote control of the bomb. That means it must be close, if not in the city itself."

Williams pointed at Silver. "That is where you come in. You are familiar with Berlin and the surrounding area from your time serving under Agent Green, yet you are off the radar since being posted out a couple of years ago, enough for the personalities keeping an eye out for our folks to change. We can fit you out with a portable radiation detection device that can be worn under your jacket. The signal indicator is in a fake wristwatch. The tech guys will explain how it works. It will be tuned to only pick up the type of radiation that this model of nuke emits, so as to eliminate false positives from hospital equipment, radium on watches and compasses and other innocent sources of radiation. Go around the city and see if you can pick up anything. If you do get a signal try to verify it and narrow down the location. Once you do report in. The Americans have an expert on call, a Swedish scientist that the Soviets supposedly stole the detonator design from, that they think can defuse this model of nuke."

Williams took a business card from under his blotter and passed it to Silver, who studied it in order to memorize the information on it, knowing that he would not be able to take it on the mission. "Why is there an 'm-' in front of the number?" He asked the Chief of Staff.

"It stands for 'Mobile' - a mobile phone number. Sweden and the other Nordic countries have come up with a standard for two-way radio communications that can interface with the public telephone network. They have a series of transceiver towers and have developed a means for calls to be passed from one to another without being dropped. A 'cellular' system they call it. It's way ahead of anything we have in North America and the Soviets have copied it for their Altai radio telephone switching system. They have devices small enough to fit in your paw." Williams paused. "Don't you ever read the Technical Intelligence Bulletins we circulate?"

Silver looked away. "Sometimes."

"Read up on it." Williams demanded. "And quickly. We need you in there as soon as possible."

Silver reported to the Technical Branch to pick up the radiation detector. It was fairly simple to use. "Agent proof." The head technician joked. The sensor was distributed in a thick belt that went around the waist, under Silver's shirt like a hernia belt, which it was disguised to resemble. The controls were made to look like a wristwatch. When one pressed the stem that could be used to adjust the time the arm for the hours indicated the relative strength of the signal and the minute arm pointed in the direction of the source. When one released the stem they went back to showing the current time. Silver would look like an impatient fox constantly checking his watch when he was really homing in on the missing bomb.

While he was there he had them brief him on the new mobile phone technology. "It's a beautiful thing." The head of communications said dreamily. "Now you can make and receive calls anywhere ... well, anywhere where there is a tower. But imagine, no need for secretaries or message centres. Instant availability all the time!"

"Where's the fun in that?" Silver grumped, thinking of the busty party poodle that took Williams' messages and the peace of driving long distances without a means of contacting the office ... or of them contacting him.

Silver flew in from Zurich under the guise of a German speaking Swiss Business fox. Berlin was a city of more than a million souls that was divided in two by the wall the Soviets and East Germans built to stop the hemorrhaging of dissatisfied citizens. Silver had been there several times before as a junior agent, sometimes sneaking across to retrieve information, other times to escort a defector to the west and once to kill a Stasi assassin before he could kill one of their best sources. As the city was a hundred kilometres inside the Inner-German Border he arrived by air on a western airline to avoid a meeting with the Stasi at one of the ground crossing points and the chance of being arrested if his cover as blown. The opposition could do pretty much anything they wanted to a spy caught on the wrong side of the iron curtain, and the low point in any espionage agent's career was the slow walk across the Glienicke Bridge in exchange for some KGB operative that got sloppy somewhere in the west.

In order to maintain operational security, especially since they had not located the leak in F.O.X. yet, Silver had not notified the resident agent of his arrival, so there was no one there to meet him when he arrived. But that did not mean that his arrival went unnoticed.

The Stasi and the KGB were always watching the airports, but their undercover agents were generally identified early on and either arrested or tracked to determine their schedule and then worked around. The current crop of watchers had been rounded up the day before to allow Silver to enter unseen, but unfortunately his arrival coincided with that of junior Stasi agent who was infiltrating the western sector in order to determine why there was a sudden increase in activity among the radiation survey units. That in itself should not have been a problem, most western agents do not know the identities of their eastern counterparts and vise-versa, but this particular agent was unfortunately very familiar with Silver.

The agent, a female German shepherd named Heidi Schafer, had worked in the records section of the Stasi Administrative Division, in the group that maintained the files on western agents known to have operated in Germany, east or west. She had dreams of becoming a counter-Intelligence agent some day and had memorized every single file her group was responsible for in hopes of a transfer. Her feat did not impress the head of the CI unit but word off it reached the elusive Marcus Wolfe, who believed that such a skill and that level of dedication could be useful in an intelligence agent. Without knowing who her benefactor was Heidi found herself transferred to the spy school for a crash course before being assigned her current mission.

She suspected that this particular mission was one being done "off the books", one being run by the Intelligence Division without the knowledge of the Head of the Stasi. Rumour had it that the Russian Radiological Warfare units in the forward area had also been mobilized without notifying the hosting Warsaw Pact nations. It didn't take a genius to figure out that if both NATO and the Soviets were looking for something that was radioactive that there must be a loose nuclear weapon somewhere. Perhaps one side or the other had lost one in transit - it had happened before - and in such cases it was always a race to see which side would recover it first.

Word was that if a lost nuke was in Germany Wolfe wanted it found by his people first. Milke was too close to his former employers to be entirely trusted by the secretive spy master and was likely to give it over to the Russians without as much as taking a peek inside to see how it worked. Wolfe, on the other paw, would not mind having some leverage over the senior partner in their military-political pact.

Heidi was on the tall side of average for her breed at one hundred and seventy centimetres. Naturally athletic, her fifty-some kilos were nicely distributed, with an extra portion at the bust and bum that made her silhouette curvy from every angle. Combined with a pretty face, clear hazel eyes and ready smile she was a natural at attracting and retaining heterosexual male attention. She was a native German speaker with a local accent, and both her English and French were good. Most of her shortened training had concentrated on seduction techniques. With her new skills she should have no problem getting formation out of the NATO soldiers conducting the surveys.

Instead of trying to pass her off as a West Berliner returning from a visit to relatives in the east Heidi was first flown out to Cairo where she changed identity before flying to London. From there she took a British Airways flight to West Berlin claiming to be a university student returning home from abroad. The identification she was carrying was that of a real West Berliner who really was studying abroad, but one who had communist leanings. She had agreed to stay away from her homeland until given the all clear.

Heidi's intent, after successfully sneaking into West Berlin, was to locate the soldiers conducting the radiation surveys, follow them to where they were staying and try to get close to some of them for the purpose of eliciting information - to yiff the info out of them, in other words. But when he saw the tall silver fox in the line for foreigners something rang a bell inside her head.

It took her a while to figure out where she had seen the fox before but it finally clicked. There had been a shoot-out in Dresden a couple of years ago between the Stasi and some foreign operatives. According the agent in charge it was a complete coincidence, them all being in the same place at the same time, and as they had a mission to complete that had nothing to do with the foreigners they did not pursue them. Along the Stasi was one of the KGB agents assigned to recruit westerners at the local university - a squirrel named Putin. He had been wearing a lapel camera and managed to take a few pictures during the shooting. One of the images was of a broad shouldered silver fox with what could have been a scar above his left eye. It was a little out of focus and the resolution was poor, but it had been filed away in Heidi's section all the same and she had dutifully studied it and compared it to the information they had on unidentified agents.

She had made a tentative association between the fox in the picture and one of the Canadian agents known to be operating in West Germany. They had no name for him but the description matched. It was not known for how long the silver fox had been working for F.O.X. But it was believed that he was involved with the failed hit on a courier run where the KGB lost the agent known as the Preying Mantis and also in the death of the double agent Colonel Boxworthy.

Heidi continued to watch the fox as he advanced to the West German Customs and immigration desk. She manoeuvred herself to be at the next booth at the same time so she could overhear his exchange with the Border official. He presented himself as a Swiss citizen, explaining his slightly tainted German accent as having learned that language in school. After dealing with foreign agent files, including any audio tapes their agents had managed to collect, Heidi recognized the underlying accent as being English, but not British English, and not quite American English either, the vowels were too round, like those found in urban Canadian dialects.

After clearing customs she positioned herself to observe the fox as he made his way through the terminal. She noted that he was probably right-pawed because he was wearing his wrist watch on the left. He slung his checked bag across his back and carried the smaller carry-on in his left paw, leaving his right one free. When he walked his left arm swung back and forth just like a soldier marching would do, but his right arm stayed motionless by his side. He even used the left paw to open doors designed to open with the right, despite the awkwardness of holding a bag in the same paw.

Heidi had seen this sort of walk before. In espionage circles it was called the 'gunslinger's walk' because it matched that of the cowboys in the old Hollywood westerns when they were closing in for a shootout, with their right paw always beside their gun in case they had to draw suddenly. Highly trained assassins and field agents walked like that for the same reason - in case they had to draw and fire on the spur of the moment. According to the file on the Dresden shooting something about the foreigner's gait had made the East German agent in charge suspicious and Heidi felt the same way now, especially after the silver fox passed close enough for her to see his deadly cold blue-grey eyes. That confirmed it for her, she was certain that this was the same fox.

But what was he doing here? According to their files he had disappeared from Germany shortly after the Dresden incident, presumably reassigned elsewhere. After two years of inactivity his file had been closed. But now he was back, just as every known agent in the east and the west were out looking for something. And why did he keep checking his watch so often? Was he expecting someone to pick him up? If that was the case, why was heading for the public transport exit?

Heidi had to make a quick decision. The silver fox might have nothing to do with her mission to discover what the radiation surveys were all about but she was betting that he did - nothing else was going on to justify sending an agent familiar with the territory in under deep cover. She could report him, but not until her scheduled contact time because using the emergency contact protocol could lead to her exposure and this news was not important enough, not yet, and if she did take the time to report him she would lose him. She could follow him, but if it led to nothing important her mission would be deemed a failure and she would find herself back in the records division with no hope of ever getting out again.

As the fox got in line for a taxi Heidi made up her mind. She would have just enough time to find the car the Stasi agent in West Berlin had left in the parking lot for her and get in position before the fox got to the front of the line. She left him at the taxi stand and hurried out of the terminal.

She tailed him to his hotel and waited for him to reappear. She did not have to wait long. When he came out he was dressed much the same as before, in slacks and a blazer but without a tie. He set off on foot and she followed in the car, keeping him just in sight.

The fox did not report to any of the known safe houses or contact any of the known agents, as far as she could see. Instead he made for the edge of the city and got on a bus that followed the fence separating West Berlin from East Germany. She was glad that she had opted to keep the car as she would not have been able to get on and off the bus with him without raising suspicion, but on the other paw she would not know if he exchanged anything with another passenger while she was following along behind.

Heidi had the advantage because she had memorized all of the bus and subway routes in the western sector and knew where each stop where the fox might alight. She attempted to vary her pattern of driving by passing the bus and taking the lead sometimes, and riving on parallel roads when she could. Occasionally, when she was close enough, she could see the fox sitting in a seat by the window the fence side, staring out at the barrier and checking his watch frequently.

The silver fox did not leave the bus until it completed its circuit of the city, getting off at the same stop he had gotten on at. He immediately turned away from the fence to follow the concrete wall that separated the two halves of the city.

There was more to it than just a wall. First on the East Berlin side there was a cleared area where one would be greeted by screaming guards and warning shots. Then there was two wire fences, the inner one being higher, with dog run between them where the most vicious canine troopers would go for your throat with bayonets if they caught you. Then there was another cleared area, the "Dead Zone", where the border guards would shoot to kill. It was peppered with Czech "hedgehogs", concrete and steel anti-tank barriers, towers and lights. There could be mines also, anti-vehicle as well as anti-personnel, and in most places there were anti-vehicle tranches. Finally, there was the 3.6 meter-high concrete wall that the American President had recently called on the Soviet leader to tear down.

The fox was sticking close to the wall and Heidi did not think that she could follow in the car without being obvious so she parked it and set off after him on foot also. She was wearing a light jacket and a beret because it was a blustery day and she had also brought along a large purse that doubled as a backpack. Inside she had a sweater, a scarf, her sunglasses and a cap of a different colour so that she could alter her appearance slightly very now and then.

The fox was keeping his particular habit of glancing at his watch every minute or so as he toured the wall. She noticed that each time he did he would turn to face the wall first, as if expecting something to appear from the other side. Was there a mole on the other side about to toss a package containing valuable information to the Canadian agent, she wondered? Probably not, as one would have to get fairly close to the wall to toss anything over it and anyone caught in the zone between the fence and the wall would be shot on sight. Maybe one could risk it at night, in the dead ground between the towers, but it was still daylight. Maybe the fox was rehearsing some operation that required him to meet certain timings? That sounded more likely to Heidi, but it did not help her complete her mission.

Eventually the fox rolled the entire length of the wall from north to south, including all the twists and turns as it followed the line of occupation for the Soviets set back in nineteen forty-five. The only time that he varied his routine was when he was close to the centre of town, where the wall bulged out to surround the neighbourhood known as the "Mitte" because it used to be the centre of the city before it was divided. As he walked along this portion of the wall the fox looked at his watch much more frequently. He stopped every few metres, and each time he did he gazed at his watch while turning his body back and forth, like the radio locating trucks the Stasi used to track down illicit communications, she thought, the direction finders.

Was the fox trying to locate something on the other side, she asked herself? Could he be searching for the same thing the Americans and the Soviets were?

It was dark by the time he finished his tour of the wall and the fox headed back to his hotel. Heidi waited on the street, noting which room the lights came on in after he went up. Then she entered and asked if there were any rooms available, slipping a large denomination Deutschemark note to the clerk for the one beside the Canadian.

Taking a drinking glass from the bathroom to amplify the sound Heidi listened through the connecting wall, a low-tech solution but one that still worked. She heard him draw a bath and order a meal and some wine from room service for later. Tired from following him around all day Heidi did the same, keeping her ear to the wall in case he changed his mind and headed out again. But he must have been exhausted also as his room went silent soon after he put his tray out in the hallway for the night staff to retrieve. Heidi risked peering into his room from her balcony and saw that it was dark. After visiting the desk clerk and donating more money to his personal retirement fund he promised to wake her if there was any sign of the fox leaving. Heidi settled into the comfortable feather bed fully dressed, ready to go the instant she heard any movement in the next room.

Before she drifted off she reviewed everything that she had read about this particular agent. He had had several encounters with female Stasi and KGB officials over the years, beginning with a KGB assassin known as 'The Preying Mantis'. She had been a European mink who liked to seduce her targets before killing them sometime later. In 1980 She reported seducing two military couriers on separate nights just before a failed attempt to intercept a shipment of classified readiness reports. She had described one of the two as a silver fox, one hundred and eighty centimetres tall and ninety kilos of solid muscle. Although there were no survivors of the attack other than the westerners Heidi believed that that soldier was the spy she had been following all day.

As was her habit, the Preying Mantis had filed a preliminary report on the mission the day before she died. She included intimate details of her seductions because liked to titillate the female clerks in the KGB records section, and by extension those in the Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies the reports were forwarded to. Heidi and the other girls at the Stasi always looked forward to reading those reports; they were like the sexy romance books that had to be smuggled in from the west.

The KGB assassin had described the physique of the silver fox down to the tiniest details - the knife scar above his left eye, the chilling thrill of having his cold blue-grey eyes gliding over her body, the way his penis swelled until the veins stood out like thick snakes. She described the things they did together, and the amazing number of times they did them in a single night. Whatever it was they were eating on the other side of the wall the East German males needed to get some, Heidi remembered thinking at the time.

She found herself imagining what the enemy agent looked like, lying there in a bed similar to the one she was in, fast asleep, perhaps having an erotic dream. At first she saw him outlined by a single sheet, one arm across his broad chest and the other bent across the top of his pillow, but in her mind he flung that sheet aside so that his naked body was exposed to the warm air of the heated room.

Unbidden, one of her paws inched its way down to rest between her thighs.

She imagined that the fox had short fur that showed the creases and bulges of gladiator-sized muscles. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but the eight inch tube of heavy pink flesh she pictured across his thigh was straight from the reports. The Preying Mantis was not the last female to report on the size of that meat stick - or the Canadian's proficiency with it.

Her digits were rubbing the soft flesh of her groin through the thin material of her skin tight slacks. Heidi did not notice.

Since she imagined him in the midst of an erotic dream that pound of flesh began to inflate and rise up, hovering just above his abdomen. Who is he thinking of, she wondered? The golden mink that tried to kill him at a rest stop in West Germany or the saluki that gave him the scar on the back of his paw? Or perhaps one of the many waitresses or female night clerks he encountered and bedded on both sides of the wall. Or maybe, she postulated, he was thinking of a German shepherd that he might have glanced on the streets of Berlin today, a fit, curvy, hazel-eyed shepherd that he could not get out of his mind.

She finally realized what her paws were up to when they colluded to unfasten the buttons on her slacks and roll them halfway down her thighs. Her already damp panties soon followed.

In her mind's eye his erection grew until it as hard as steel and pointing straight up to the sky. She saw herself squatting above it, digits eagerly holding her dripping twat open as she lowered herself down onto that hot shaft. In both her imagination and in reality her digits worked madly on her clit as she felt the imaginary penis penetrate her.

Laying flat on her back with her hips cocked and her thighs spread as much as she could considering her half-masted slacks Heidi writhed and rocked back and forth as she stimulated herself to images of a gasping fox beneath her. She saw him raise a paw to tease her nipples roughly and one of hers moved up to fill in. She felt him tease the sensitive spot inside her love canal and willing digits dove inside to provide the real thing.

Images of her and the silver fox in various positions flashed through her mind. One second he was behind her, driving his cock deep inside her tail hole and the next he was above her with her ankles locked behind his head as he rubbed the head of his cock on her swollen clit. It felt suspiciously like the pad on her own thumb but she did not care. It was the heaving chest, the exposed fangs, the lashing tail and the glare of those intense eyes that were really doing it for her.

Her fantasy had come without a sound track but her ears picked up grunts and groans and whimpers and moans without recognizing them as coming from her. But they too helped spur her on until her insides shuddered and shook and a gush of hot fluid shot out around her busy digits. She had to bite her lip to keep from screaming, even though she imagined him doing the same on the other side of the thin wall from the intensity of his dream of her.

Just as the Preying Mantis had reported Heidi kept her digits going until she had suffered so many small after orgasms that they were becoming unbearably intense. Then she curled up in a ball and imagined how his powerful arms felt around her, comforting her for the few minutes it would take for his cock to regenerate and they began all over again.

"Oh, you bad boy." She whispered to herself. "Leave me alone to sleep. I have a big tomorrow. We both do."

She got up and went to the bathroom where she took a pee, rinsed herself off and changed her panties. Then dressed again she came back, lay a thick towel over the conspicuous wet spot and lay down again to try to get some rest.

She was fast asleep with a coy smile on her face in less than a minute.

In the next room Silver was in bed but he was not asleep, nor was he revelling in the joys of masturbation. What he was doing was going over the events of the day in his head and planning for the next day's activities.

The bus tour around the perimeter of West Berlin had produced no results; whenever he had pressed the stud on his watch the arms had gone to the neutral position of twelve o'clock. While checking at regular intervals he also kept an eye out for anyone tailing him. There was one vehicle that seemed to be showing up too often to be a coincidence but he was not able to get a good look at the driver from the side he had to sit on for the survey.

When he switched to walking along the famous wall he alternated activating the detector with checking for followers. The Stasi favoured teams of three and the KGB usually worked in groups of four but he saw nothing like either. There did seem to be a lot of lone female German shepherds about, but it was Germany, after all, and Silver had to admit that his eyes tended to pick out the shapely canine females more often than anything else. It was like how if one was considering buying a particular brand of car one noticed that model more often on the streets - and wondered how the ride felt.

It had been too long since he had last been laid, he concluded, reminding himself to seek out Agent Scarlet when this mission was done.

But Silver had some success with his radiation survey. Near the centre of town, where the Mitte was cut off by the wall he had picked up a weak signal. Using a tourist map he had walked around the bulge in the wall, drawing lines on it to match the direction the detector was indicating. It was far from being deadly accurate, but the result was a triangular area covering some of the landmarks along the Lindenstrasse on the East German side.

That seemed to make sense to him, given what he knew of the bomb and the general that stole it. Getting it into West Berlin would be almost impossible to do, but the patch where the signal had come from was almost dead centre the divided city, where it would do the most damage. But the signal had been very week. He needed more confirmation, but how could he do that when the suspected bomb was on the other side of the wall?

There were nine gates in the wall for locals to cross through to the other side. They were there so that folk with commercial interests or family on both sides could conduct their business or bring care packages to their relatives. It was much easier for West Berliner's to crossover and back than it was for East Berliners but they were still subject to close scrutiny by the Stasi who guarded the gates. Silver would never pass as a Berliner, and had never tried when he was stationed here.

One of the crossings was at the Friedrichstrasse subway station. Nearby, at ground level, was one of the three checkpoints that foreigners could use to enter East Berlin - the famous Checkpoint Charlie. Silver could try crossing there using his fake Swiss passport but foreigners were interrogated even more thoroughly than the locals and he would technically be on their territory already should they decide to arrest him as a spy. It was too risky, so when the resident agents needed to go to the other side they snuck in, usually paying the smugglers that brought luxury goods into the Soviet sector to use their tunnels.

The smugglers could only be trusted so far, however, and Silver did not want to expose himself to that risk until he was more certain he had found something. So how else could he survey the other side?

Then he remembered something from one of the times he and his superior, Agent Green, had crossed over with the smugglers. They had to wait for a while in the washroom of an abandoned subway station for their guide. At regular intervals they could hear subway cars roaring through the station without stopping.

"That's the trains on the U-6 subway line." Green had informed him. "It and the U-8 both cross under the wall and loop back to the west. When they built the wall the Soviets tried to block the lines running under their territory but eventually they were convinced to allow the trains through. But to keep defectors from hopping on a train they are not allowed to stop at these 'ghost stations', or anywhere else for that matter. When we leave with the guide we will have to do so between trains, because the Stasi and the KGB have someone on every train that transits their territory, just in case we try to pull a fast one on them. And if we get separated don't try to follow either line back; they have people stationed in the tunnels under the wall that will shot anyone walking to the west on sight."

Silver might not be able to walk the tunnels under the target area, but he could ride through them. He would set off early in the morning to blend into the rush hour crowds.

Heidi woke long before dawn and took up her station with one ear against the wall until she heard the foreign fox moving around in the adjoining room. Then she hurried downstairs to take a position in the hotel dining room where she could see the elevator as well as the stairwell. She took the opportunity to quaff down some strudel and breakfast sausage while she waited for him to appear. It was well that she did, as he hurried by without stopping to eat.

The silver fox made straight for the U-6 subway station just north of the wall around the Mitte and Heidi followed, rearranging her outfit whenever it was safe to do so. He took the southbound train, standing close to the doors and glancing at his watch every few seconds as if he was late for a job interview.

The train passed through the ghost stations underneath East Berlin without slowing down. He kept his eyes fixed on his watch for quite a while at Friedrichstrasse station, which would have given onto Lindenstrasse in the old days. It was where West German citizens were allowed to cross over to the east - if their papers were in order.

When they reached the first station on the other side he got off and crossed the platform to get right back on a train going in the opposite direction. Heidi had to hurry to keep up, but blessed the rush hour crowds that made it easier to hide. He repeated his behaviour with the watch, focusing on it at the same point on the return journey.

Heidi was expecting him to get off and head south again, but instead he stayed on the U-6 until it came to the station it shared with the U-8 line, where he switched to the other route. He rode south again, checking his watch at every ghost station but it was when the train passed under Lindenstrasse that he really paid attention to it. Whatever he was picking up seemed to be on the side facing West Berlin - back towards where the U-6 line was. She was prepared this time when he switched trains to ride back north and was not surprised when he got off at the first station after the wall and walked back to his hotel.

He has found something, she told herself, and it is located near Lindenstrasse between the two subway lines. She wondered what he would do now, report it and leave or investigate further? And what should she do, for that matter? Try to approach him and get him talking, continue to follow him or report what she knew so far? She suspected that she should do the latter, but saw no harm in following him back to the hotel first.

Silver had not exactly found what he wanted, but he was much closer than he was before. He had received a relatively strong signal to the east while passing under Lindenstrasse on the U-6 and a somewhat weaker one to the west while on the U-8. If it was indeed the missing bomb it would be somewhere between Friedrichstrasse station and the Spree River. He checked the map when he was back in his room. There were a number of important buildings the area, including the campus of the Humboldt University. Wait, he asked himself, wasn't that the proposed site for the signing of the missile treaty?

The signing would take place just less than a week from now. President Regan and Secretary Gorbachev were both expected to be there. Setting the bomb off then would maximise the potential for open war between the two superpowers.

Silver knew that he should report what he knew but he suspected that it was not quite enough. He could be simply picking up some radioactive material of a similar composition from the physics labs at the university, and even if it was the bomb, he had only a general idea of where it was. The zone of total destruction could be hundreds of metres in diameter; ground zero did not have to be directly under the meeting in order to vaporize the two leaders. There were likely to be any number of underground bunkers and tunnels left over from the war that the bomb could be hidden in.

His instructions were to leave the city immediately after reporting and to leave the rest to the Americans. But it would take time for the Americans to get their Swedish expert there and into the eastern half of the city. If they knew exactly where to go it would save them a lot of time searching. Silver decided to take one more night to confirm the presence of the bomb and pin down its exact location before reporting.

Now all he needed was a way into the old tunnels under the Mitte.

Back when he was a junior agent they had a system for contacting the smugglers that moved luxury and the occasional secret agent into the east. Silver had verified that it was still in use before he left. He made a series of calls to numbers where no one spoke when they picked up the line. Silver used certain words and phrases on the first few to establish who he worked for and that he needed access to the tunnels on the eastern side of the wall. On the forth call the creature on the other end replied with a codeword that indicated a certain underground rendezvous point and a time. Silver acknowledged the information and hung up. He looked at his watch, but just to verify the time in this case. He would have to hurry to get there.

On the other side of the wall Heidi frowned. The half of the conversation that she could hear sounded suspiciously like the sequence of codes the Stasi used to contact the smugglers when they needed to use the tunnels connecting the east and the west. She should know, filing and retrieving them was one of her jobs in the records section. If the fox was calling the smugglers he must be trying to get closer to whatever it was he was looking for.

She heard him leave in a rush but she did not follow. It would take him a while to meet up with the smugglers and negotiate passage so if he was headed for the tunnels under the Mitte she could intercept him on the other side. She grabbed her luggage and left without checking out. She retrieved the rental car and drove to the nearest subway station, abandoning the car there. Then she took the U-6 to the Friedrichstrasse station where she could transfer to the East Berlin subway.

When she presented her passport at the checkpoint she spoke a code phrase that identified her as a fellow Stasi officer. The guard dutifully called in his supervisor, who took Heidi to a private room and checked her verbal identification code against their records.

"And why are you making an unscheduled crossing?" He demanded.

"That is not your business." She replied, sounding more confident and forceful than she felt. "I am on special assignment under Deputy Director Wolfe's intelligence division."

Even though he felt that Wolfe's agents were re a royal pain in the ass the station supervisor let her pass, but after she left he picked up the phone and made a call. "I'd like to report some unusual activity at the Friedrichstrasse station." He said.

Ten metres below her and a little farther west Silver was making contact with the smugglers in the basement of a building beside the wall on the western side. They were a clannish gang of sewer rats and the faces did not change much, as even the Stasi and the KGB wanted access to the goods they could smuggle in - fine scotch and whiskies for their bosses, lingerie for their mistresses, chocolate for their wives, and even caviar from Russia that was reserved for export, which they ate from the navels of their mistresses. So Silver was not surprised when he recognized their leader, a grey rat known as Hans, and was in turn recognized.

"Hey, I thought you left us?" The leader of the smugglers said as he shook paws with Silver.

"Just back for a visit." Silver said as he passed over a thick wad of American dollars, the currency of choice on black markets everywhere.

The smuggler counted it quickly and slipped it inside his coat. "Where do you need to go?"

"The tunnels under the university and its vicinity." Silver said.

"No problem. Follow me."

Hans set off with Silver following behind. He pressed a brick on the eastern foundation and a section of the concrete slid aside to reveal a cavernous chamber. Two armed rats, probably nephews Silver supposed, were standing guard with soviet sub-machine guns on the other side.

"This is the basement of an old office building the Soviets tore down to build their wall." Hans explained. "My people took the contract to demolish it and fill in the sub basements but as you can guess we cut a few corners. Now we use it as a staging area for the goods going back and forth."

"What goods could possibly need smuggling to the west?" Silver asked, bemused.

"Soviet tank and aircraft parts, mostly. The CIA and MI-6 pay good money for them, especially from the newer models. But things like this too." Hans pulled a tarp off a large object, revealing it to be a boxy plastic bodied automobile.

"Looks like a Trabant, but there's something different about it." Silver noted.

The Trabant was recognised as one of the world's worst cars. It was notoriously slow, uncomfortable, noisy and dirty. It seated four uncomfortably, had a wheezy two-stroke, two-cylinder engine and a hard plastic body that cracked at the slightest impact. One in good condition could do a maximum of sixty kilometres per hour, on a straight downhill slope. Hopefully the brakes would work at the bottom. Silver could not fathom why anyone would want one, smuggled or not.

"This one is a Trabant Limousine." Hans said proudly. "It has a longer, stronger frame, extra cargo space, an improved suspension and a more powerful engine. Only a few have been built. We are sending this one to an American Comedian who collects cars, a racoon. I forget his name, big chin, big hair, often does the Tonight show when Johnny Carson is away. I love that show. Anyway, we smuggled an old Volkswagen Beetle in and made an even swap for this. The racoon will pay a hefty mark-up for it."

Silver shook his head and followed Hans, who had moved on to the other end of the secret warehouse. There were more guards at the other end.

Hans took a sheet of paper from the tray of a Xerox copier that was destined for the Stasi administration office and drew a crude map.

"Follow this sewer," he instructed, indicating a hole in the floor where a metal grate had been pulled aside, "for about three hundred metres. You'll come to the subway tunnel. Wait until a train goes by, count to sixty and go straight across to find the sewer on the opposite side. Follow it for one hundred metres then go up one level and turn north. That will put you in the old bomb shelter for the university. There is a door in the north-east corner leading to the university sub-basement. No one ever uses it any more. From there you can connect to all of the buildings on campus. If you need to get into the buildings across Lindenstrasse go back to the sewer, walk another sixty metres and take the tunnel that heads south and upwards. Don't go too far or you will be in the old sewer line that runs out to the Schonefeld Airport. The Russians use that tunnel to move equipment and personnel back and forth that they don't want the East Germans to know about, so don't get caught in there!"

Silver thanked the smuggler and took the map. He folded it carefully and placed it in an inside pocket where it would stay dry in the damp tunnels before heading off.

There was a train passing when he arrived at the subway tunnel so he hunkered down where the light of the passing cars would not reach him and counted to sixty as instructed. With his night vision intact he made his way into the subway tunnel. The sewer opposite the one he had just left was covered with a grill that was a little rusty. He had to put all his strength into pulling it away from the entrance. It was almost wide enough for him to enter when movement in the air alerted him to an oncoming train.

While the Germans were very meticulous about their subway schedule there were times when the trains became backed up. Today was one of them. The delay was caused by a young mother whose stroller wheel had become stuck between the train and the platform. It had taken a few minutes to sort out, and once the trains were moving again the dispatcher kept them the minimum distance apart for safety while speeding up the first train. Once it was back on schedule he would gradually increase the interval until every train was running on time again. Unfortunately for Silver that had not happened by the time he entered the tunnel.

The big fox had to wrench open the grill and squeeze in to the narrow space as the sound of the oncoming train grew louder. Once inside he could have run for the darkness but then the train would hit the open grill and that could bring unwanted inspectors and investigators into the tunnels. Instead, he turned and pulled on the rusty metal as the headlight of the train flooded the tunnel. He got the grill clear of the tracks a second before the train whizzed by, freezing in place in hopes that none of the undercover Stasi on board would see him behind it.

His night vision ruined, Silver counted his paces and stopped a hundred metres down the tunnel and waited for his sight to come back. That was why he didn't see the figure in black moving down the tunnel toward him, a creature who moved silently thanks to felt-soled shoes. When the next passing train filled the side tunnel with noise it struck, and everything went completely black for the Canadian agent.

* * * * *

I'm going to have stop hear and take a break. My throat is terribly dry and I haven't slept in over a day.

Yes I realize that this is not exactly a social interview. But I'm the one that has been living deep undercover in that Capitalist hell for all these years. Okay, so Russia is Capitalist now also, but it is still the motherland as far as I am concerned, and you have to admit that Putin is running the place just like Uncle Joe used to. You, ah, won't mention that last bit to him, will you?

Look, I'm not asking to go out and see the sights of Rio or anything. Just let me order some of the Barbeque they are famous for down here and a bottle of red wine to go with it. After a good rest and a shower I'll be ready to start again. Meanwhile you can verify if my story checks out so far.

Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere.