Hot Rain in the Arctic Circle

✿ This article was featured in Issue #1 of the Atlantic Bulletin

Tzipora had been ejected from the operations room once the guys arrived. She knew what was going down, anyway. No specifics. But you didn’t bring in uniformed soldiers for regular business. National Intelligence liked to work with their own people.

Five days prior, Baron hailed an EB/NI company car and it pulled up beside him. The electric passenger window slid down. Baron nodded at the passenger.

“Everything’s in here. There’s more if you need it. I’d appreciate a call, I’m in my office all next week, okay?” He passed over a white postage envelope. “Take care.”

The British man opened the letter and read it twice as the car approached the Vekllei World Jetport.

JULES WYNN IS YOUR 3RD MAN. “JEREMY” APPEARS IN ARCHIVES 2046 — ALMOST CERTAINLY WYNN. NEARLY 20 YEARS. NOTES TO USSR THRU CYPHER CLERK (UNKNOWN). RECALLED TO MOSCOW — GREAT SUSPICION OF HIM FROM CONTROLLER DOWSETT-CLARK (OXFORD). THIS IS GOOD INFO FROM PARIS ASSET. WYNN WILL DIE IN RUSSIA. GET HIM AND ANOTHER RING SURFACES. CIA KNOWS WHERE BUT NOT WHO. DO US BOTH A FAVOUR.

Tzipora went for a walk to clear her head. She had a lot going on in her life — though she was sure it seemed small compared to whatever was going on in the operations room.

It began to rain an hour into the walk. She’d left her umbrella with the rest of her things in Baron’s office. That was okay. She didn’t mind the shower, anyway — it was mid-summer, and the rain was warm. What a novelty that was, at 60 degrees north. This was weather from the sunny Azores, pulled north by the wind currents over the Atlantic. Within minutes her skirt was heavy and her camisole was showing at the shoulders. She blinked heavy streams of water out of her eyes.

She passed the soldiers on their way out as she returned to AB/NI reception. A friendly receptionist had cloaked her in a towel by the time Baron had found her.

“Did you have a good meeting?” She asked.

“Sure,” and characteristically, he considered that a satisfactory answer. He pulled the towel off her head. “You’re completely soaked.”

“It doesn’t matter. Are you with those guys? About that other guy?”

“Watch it,” he said. “Keep that talk past security. But I’m going to fly out tomorrow. I’ll be back in the evening.”

“No cooking for me, then. Where are you going? Or can’t you say?”

“England.”

“Oh,” Tzipora said, forming a gun with her fingers. “Like James Bond.”

Her life was a nexus of various global ambitions, it seemed — imagined only through the dreamy lens of a teen-ager too small for the world’s problems.