"Paige" (inspired by the FX tv series "The Americans")

[Alice2015]

"Paige"

(inspired by the FX tv series "The Americans")

CLOSED​

(OOC: Our story is set in 2024, not the mid-1980s as was the FX TV series which serves as the RP's inspiration. We are using many of the canon characters and situations, including characters such as the Jennings Family and FBI Agent Stan Beeman, as well as the flight of the Jennings Family from the US in the series finale, the abandonment of Henry, and more; other situations or facts will be altered, such as the Russian Federation being the US's nemesis as opposed to the now-defunct Soviet Union, the war with Ukraine being a focus as opposed to the nuclear weapons treaties of the 80's, and more.

If you are unfamiliar with the TV series, don't worry about it: we intend to write this in such a way that a reader who has never seen the program can still understand and enjoy this.)

Wearing the disguise matching the passport currently in her pocket, Paige wandered slowly after having stepped off the train that had been taking her from the United States to Canada. Her parents -- also in disguise -- were still on that train; sitting separately, they'd each shown shock in their faces when they'd seen their daughter on the platform.

The three of them had been fleeing an FBI Counter-Intelligence Department manhunt after they'd been identified as members of Directorate S, the most sophisticated and top secret of Russia's infiltration services. Paige's parents, Philip and Elizabeth -- their Russian birth names had been Mikhail Andreiovich Petrov and Nadezhda Borisovna Popova -- had been trained since their teens to look, sound, and act like typical Americans. In 2001, shortly before the 9-11 attacks in New York City, they'd been inserted into the US, and after three years of getting settled in, began working at having their first child to better fit into typical American life.

Paige was born in 2005, and for the first 16 years of her life she had no idea who and what her parents were. But her curiosity, mixed with her parents' strange goings-on at all hours of the day, led to her suspecting Philip and Elizabeth of being up to something. They were under pressure from the Center -- the Russian organization under which they worked -- to recruit Paige as a Second Generation Illegal, someone who's birth in the United States could hold up to the scrutiny of an FBI investigation.

Philip and Elizabeth confessed to Paige their true identities and reasons for having come to America. They hadn't done it for the Center's benefit but for that of their family; the constant lies and deceptions were tearing them apart. They didn't tell Paige the whole truth, though. They spoke of the peaceful activities in which they participated -- the gathering of intelligence and other missions meant to bring peace and balance between Russia and the United States -- but they didn't mention the more violent aspects of their jobs, which had included kidnappings, murders, outright assassinations, and more.

(Continued in next post.)

 

[Alice2015]

When they'd learned that the FBI knew who they were and were coming to get them, Philip and Elizabeth knew they had to leave, slipping away in disguise under fake passports to Canada, from which they would then escape back to Russia. Taking Paige from the only place she'd ever called home was hard for them.

Even harder, though, was leaving their second child behind. Henry, then 15 years old and both going to school and residing at St. Edwards Academy in New Hampshire, was totally ignorant of his parents' espionage activities on Russia's behalf and his sister's recent recruitment into those activities both. Even as his three family members fled, he was only then being told of their illegal activities by the person who had become his closest friend in the world, Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent, Stan Beeman; by total coincidence, Stan and his family -- now broken up by divorce -- had moved into the house directly across the street years earlier, and over time Henry and Stan had become the most unlikely of friends, even while Stan was chasing after the Illegals who would ultimately turn out to be Henry's own parents and, in the end, his sister, too.

As she turned to give the departing train one last look, just before it crossed over the border into Canada, Paige was torn about how to proceed from here. She loved her parents and had been becoming increasingly interested in the work they did, but she'd known that they were still keeping secrets from her, and she simply couldn't live with the continuing lies.

Henry was another issue entirely, one that was tearing her apart even more so that seeing her parents disappear northward, almost surely for the rest of her life. Paige was now wanted by the FBI as much as were Philip and Elizabeth, which meant she couldn't simply go to him to continue their lives together. But she knew she couldn't simply abandon him either. She needed him to know that he was still loved, that he hadn't simply been abandoned, and that he would be okay in the days and years to come.

.....................
​

Paige used the car in which her parents had brought them north, combined with walking and city transit, to get back to Washington DC. She obviously couldn't return to the family home in Falls Church, Virginia; the FBI -- including Stan Beeman -- were already tearing through it, looking for clues.

Instead, she went to the safe house at which she, her mother, and Claudia would meet. Claudia had been Philip and Elizabeth's Directorate S handler and contact to the Center. She'd also been the key person in Paige's indoctrination into the family business.

Ironically, Claudia and Elizabeth had recently found themselves on opposite sides of a Directorate S operation that had the potential of leading to World War III. Paige didn't know the details of that conflict as of yet, but she would in time, and she would find herself returning to the family business once again.

 

[HumanBean]

Stan Beeman and Henry Jennings

(For our readers, as Alice2015 said in her "seeking writers" thread, here, our story is set in 2024, not the mid-1980s, so what I write below is a combination of canon story and original story. Just roll with it.)


Stan pressed the button on the visor, causing the garage door to rise before him. Pulling inside and then lowering the door, he looked to the passenger side of the car and said with a solemn tone, "It's better this way. If no one sees you here."

Henry didn't respond. He only sat there, staring forward. He hadn't spoken a dozen words since leaving St. Edwards. Stan had driven his own car to Ronald Reagan Washington International, parked in short term, flown to New Hampshire, then rented a car to visit Henry at his boarding school. The two of them had repeated the trip in reverse.

Stan hadn't yet gotten official permission to keep Henry in his care. The teen's custody wasn't exactly the priority at the moment. Catching his parents and sister was. Of course, Stan had caught the three of them already. He'd anticipated Philip and Elizabeth going to Paige's apartment to retrieve her for extraction, and without alerting his superiors, Stan had been waiting in the parking garage when they came for their car.

He hadn't been able to arrest them, though. Arresting the man who'd become his best friend had turned out to be harder than Stan had expected when Philip revealed three very different but very important things to him.

The first was that a faction within Directorate S (a bunch of fucking Russians, Philip had called them) was trying to get rid of Russian President Vladimir Putin and replace him with an even more hardline leader who would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to bring victory to the war in Ukraine.

The second was that he and Elizabeth couldn't take Henry with them. "Stan, I have to abandon my son. He can't come with us, because I got caught. I finally got caught. And here we are."

"You have to take care of Henry," Paige had told Stan.

"He loves you, Stan," Philip had continued. "Tell him the truth."

The third bit of information would leave Stan questioning his life even more so than the first two had. Speaking of Stan's new live-in girlfriend, Philip had said, "I don't know how to say this, but I think there's a chance Renee might be one of us. I'm not sure."

So now, here Stan was, getting out of his car in the privacy of his garage so that his fellow FBI agents across the road ripping through the Jennings home wouldn't see him returning with the son of the Illegals they were searching for, while his girlfriend, also possibly a Russian spy, was coming to him, throwing her arms around him, and reassuring him that all would be okay.

 

[Alice2015]

Renee:

Hearing the garage door rising and Stan's car entering the garage, Renee dried her hands at the sink and went out to meet him. She was incredibly shocked to see Henry Jennings sitting in the passenger seat but offered a smile as she neared her lover's side of the car. Hugging Stan, Renee whispered, "What's he doing here?"

The two of them had been living together for several months by now, and during that time Renee had seen every possible emotion from the man, from the deep ecstasy of the two of them making passionate love to the deep despair of learning that his former and then-retired boss, Frank Gaad, had been killed in Thailand by the FSB as they unsuccessfully attempted to recruit him.

Even though Stan had told her that his neighbors were the very Illegals after whom he'd been chasing for years, Renee didn't know that Philip had warned Stan that she herself might be an Illegal.

Of course, she had no reason to think that his investigation into the Jennings and Directorate S as a whole had anything to do with her. After all, she wasn't an Illegal ... was she?

"What's happening?" Renee asked in whisper, looking over Stan's shoulder toward the teen who was now exiting the car. "Did you catch them...? Is that why Henry's here with you? Talk to me, Stan."

 

[HumanBean]

Stan Beeman:

(Note: I forgot that in the TV series, Stan and Renee got married, as evidenced by the fact that they were wearing wedding rings in the last episode. I'm just pointing this out because we have previously referred to Renee as Stan's live-in lover, etc.)

<<<< >>>>
​

Stan didn't immediately answer Renee's questions. He was still overwhelmed by all that had happened in the last two days. He didn't want to believe Philip's claim that his newlywed wife was an Illegal. It was simply unimaginable. But then, Stan would never have imagined that Philip and Elizabeth were Russian spies either.

Feeling Renee's arms wrap around him, comforting him, he did his best to join the embrace. He failed, initially. Knowing that she might sense his hesitation, he tightened his arms around her.

"They got away," he said after Henry had gone into the house. "But, we'll catch them. We were watching Henry, just in case they tried to pick him up. They didn't. I, um--"

He thought a second before finishing, "I told Henry. All of it. He didn't take it well. Not surprising, really."

Stan turned Renee for the door, telling her, "I have to go back to the office, but maybe some dinner first. I'm sure Henry could eat."

<<<< >>>>​

Henry:

Shock didn't even begin to describe what Henry was feeling. His parents were Russian spies? Impossible. His sister, too? No way. He'd spent the time during the drives and flight to examine the past, though. He began to see his parents' peculiarities in a different light. All the late nights. All the supposed emergencies. That one Thanksgiving spent at the Beemans', not his own family's home. The time his mother had suddenly disappeared for almost a month to care for Aunt Helen, a woman he'd never heard of until then.

Stan had told him he could use Matthew's room. Entering the house, he went directly upstairs to it. He closed the door behind him, found a chair near the window, and plopped down into it. The view, ironically, was his own house across the road. Parked in the driveway and along the curb were a dozen vehicles that didn't belong to his neighbors. Most of them were black SUVs with blacked out windows. The FBI, like Stan.

Stan, he thought to himself. Henry was amazed that he hadn't picked up on his parents' real career. After all, he'd lived with the couple all his life. But Stan? Stan was an FBI. No, more than that, he was a Counterintelligence Agent. Until just the last year or so, it had been Stan's job to catch spies, specifically Russian spies.

A knock on the door was followed by an invitation to come down for food. "No thanks. I'm not hungry."

It was a lie, of course, but Henry wasn't in the mood for company or conversation.

 

[Alice2015]

Paige:

Despite the presence of a comfortable bed in the warm, dry safehouse, Paige had chosen to sleep in the back seat of the car in a parking lot kitty corner to the building. She awoke cold and shivering at dawn, and sitting up discovered almost immediately that she'd made the right choice.

Standing on the corner between her parking space and the apartment, a man was casually smoking a cigarette and looking at his smart phone. It was obvious to Paige, though, that he really had no interest in either of the objects in his hands. As she was studying him, a drapery in the safehouse moved. A couple of minutes later, a man emerged from the building, joined the smoking man, chatted a moment, then departed -- but not before gesturing to yet a third man who was parked in an older model minivan parked nearby.

Paige couldn't know whether the men were FBI or Directorate S. What she did know was that the safehouse was blown. She waited for the two men on foot to load up in a second car and leave, then slipped into her own front seat, backed out of sight, and left the lot in a casual, unhurried manner.

Two days later:

As the man opened, then closed his apartment door and headed for the kitchen, he nearly leapt out of his shoes at the sight of a stranger sitting at his dining room table. "Who the fuck?!?"

"I'm looking for a first edition of Don Quixote," Paige began, adding, "by Michael de Cervantes."

The man stared in silence for a moment, then corrected, "Don Quixote is by Miguel de Cervantes ... Michael's brother."

Content that the greeting codes had been satisfied, Paige said, "I need a full set of new papers: driver's license, passport, credit and debit cards ... library pass if you don't mind. I like the library."

The man set his pack and cell phone aside, went to the kitchen to turn on the gas beneath a tea pot, and turned to study Paige for another long moment. "How good are we talking? I mean--"

"The best," Paige interrupted. "There can be no question about their legitimacy."

The man again spent a long moment simply eying Paige before saying, "Won't be cheap. The new holograms and--"

He went silent when Paige dropped a rubber band wrapped bundle of bills on the kitchen table. "Ten thousand."

"Well, that's a good start," the man began hesitantly. When Paige dropped another bundle near the first one, the man smiled. "It'll take a while. I can't fake this stuff anymore. Has to be original blanks, at least for the IDs."

"How long?" Paige asked.

The man thought a moment, then answered, "Five ... six days. Where do I get a hold of you when they're ready?"

Paige looked over her shoulder to the couch; she'd already been through the man's apartment and finding fresh bedding in a hallway closet, had stacked a set of them in his living room. He laughed, then -- realizing that she was serious -- asked, "You're not kidding, are you?"

"I have nowhere else to go until you have this done for me," she told him. "So ... no, I'm not kidding."

 

[HumanBean]

Nick:

It had been almost three years since one of them had come to Nick for fake documents. He would have preferred never to see any of them again. The last ones of them had been a couple, likely married or at least pretending to be. He couldn't know that the names they'd been using were Philip and Elizabeth Jennings or that they were the parents of the woman sitting in his apartment now.

They hadn't wanted fake papers, though. They'd wanted 100% legitimate documents for the fake names they'd provided Nick. Anyone outside the business of document forgery wouldn't have understood that real docs were so much harder to get than fakes.

Nick had had to use three different contacts to get everything. What he couldn't have known was that one of these contacts had recently been arrested by the FBI and was now a snitch for them. The Feds had busted Nick but hadn't had enough to charge and convict him. But it had taken Nick more than a year to recover and return to his most profitable work.

He laughed at her offer of ten grand, saying, "Well, that's a good start." The second batch of hundred dollar bills was enough for Nick to rethink his hesitance to see them again. He told her it would take a while, to which she essentially invited herself to live in his apartment until the documents had come in.

"I have nowhere else to go until you have this done for me," she told Nick. "So ... no, I'm not kidding."

He looked her up and down, trying but failing to be inconspicuous about it. Nick had had uglier women spend the night in his bed. It wasn't something he bragged about, obviously. But at least he'd known them. Some for months, some for days, some for just a few hours, though that didn't happen often. But at least he'd known them before the decision was made for them to stay overnight. Still, if he was going to have an overnight female guest, this cute thing was the one Rick would have invited.

"So, what do I call you," he asked.

 

[Alice2015]

Paige with Nick:

Paige could see the reluctance to deal with her in Nick's eyes. She just assumed it was because he didn't know her; she couldn't know that her parents had caused him so much hardship when they'd come to him for fake documents three years earlier.

Paige answered Nick's question about her identity with a simple, "Mary." She could see the less that satisfied look in his face and added, "Smith. Mary Smith. That's the name I want on my new papers. Mary Sue Smith. I will need an address in Brooklyn. That's the one in New York, not the ones in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, or Indiana."

Again, Paige saw the expression on the man's face. She smiled, explaining, "I was a bit of a geography trivia nut growing up. My family and I..."

She went quiet suddenly, her mind exploding with thoughts about her family and what they'd just gone through. She didn't finish her thought, instead asking with a serious tone, "Is there going to be a problem with me staying here with you. I mean, any girlfriends going to walk in at 3am after their shift at the local bar and wonder why there's another woman sleeping on your couch?"

Paige listened to his answer, then said, "I'm going to use your bathroom. I need a shower."

She didn't wait for permission but instead simply made her way to the nearby door, passed through it, closed it, and stripped. As she did, she looked around for anything that might raise red flags. He'd said he wasn't dating anyone, and yet she found a second toothbrush and -- after a deeper search -- a lady's style razor in the garbage can. Neither of them appeared to have been used anytime recently, though, so perhaps his answer he should have answered that he didn't have a girlfriend anymore, rather than right now.

The shower was just what Paige needed, and -- possibly taxing his electric bill a bit -- she stayed under the flow until she'd emptied the water heater of its hot contents. Turning the water off and stepping out to dry off, she listened at the door for any signs that during her soak, she might have been betrayed.

 

[HumanBean]

"Mary," the stranger in NIck's apartment answered. "Smith."

"Mary Smith," he mumbled to himself. To her, he said louder, "I can see you as a Mary, but Smith?" He wanted to suggest a different surname. But he understood her reason for that one. It was the most common last name in the US. Matched with Mary, one of the most common given names, well, that was a very good idea.

When she asked for a Brooklyn (New York) address, Nick found himself relieved. Maybe that meant that he wouldn't be seeing her again. It wasn't as though he didn't like looking at her. He simply didn't want to do business with her and her people if he could avoid it.

She asked about girlfriends. "No. No girlfriend." He almost quipped about maybe having a boyfriend instead but didn't. "No one's showing up in the middle of the night. Or the middle of the day. Usually, I mean." He was referring to her, obviously.

"I'm going to use your bathroom," she informed him. "I need a shower."

Nick's eyes fell instinctively to her body. In his mind, he could imagine her naked under the flowing water. Hands roamed up and down, all around. Soap lathering her curves. Fingers slipping down there. He finally managed to say, "Yeah, sure, no problem."

Nick stood there a while as he listened to her doing her thing. It had been a long time since he'd had a girlfriend, so he didn't even remember the extra toothbrush. He didn't even think about the razor in the trash. Maybe if he emptied it periodically, rather than when it was finally overflowing its bag.

He began to feel awkward just standing there. Moving to the kitchen, he put on a teapot and prepared the French press with dark roast. Moving back to the bathroom door, Nick knocked. "I'm making coffee. Interested?"

Back at the kitchen, he made two big mugs and moved them and the quart of milk to the kitchen table. Crunching on Goldfish, Nick waited for his guest to finish. His mind was racing with thoughts of Mary. Some of them were about her need for forged papers. Others, as he rearranged his erect penis in his jeans, most definitely were not.

 

[Alice2015]

(OOC: The image of Paige below is a bit out of context, yet I somehow feel ya'll won't mind. God, she looks good.)

Paige would have leapt out of her shoes at the sound of her host asking if she wanted coffee had she been wearing shoes. He asked, "Interested?"

"Yes, please," she said through the door. "Cream ... and a little bit of sugar. Thanks."

Once dry, she was about to don her clothes when she noticed clean laundry stacked on a shelf. Poking through it, she found a tee shirt, pair of boxers, and soft, comfy, cotton gym shorts. She donned them and -- finding the tee very large on her small frame -- tied it in a knot below her right breast. The effect was that the cotton fabric clung tightly to her bosom, emphasizing her ever-pert nipples.

Paige took one last look at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw, even without makeup and her hair finger-combed. She headed outside to the kitchen table, finding Connor looking at her with the same appreciation. She tried to suppress a smile but failed. She knew she was attractive ... beautiful ... sexy. Her 5'3", 106-pound petite figure, with its smallish but firm B-cup breasts, ever-pert nipples, and long, athletic legs had been drawing significant attention from boys -- from girls, even -- since she'd begun filling out in her early teens. Now at almost 20, she was the woman she likely always would be, unlikely to change much in appearance as the years passed if she was anything like her mother. Even after 20 years and two children, Elizabeth Jennings had only become more beautiful, more desirable, and sexier than she'd been at Paige's current age. Elizabeth had put on a mere 6 extra pounds over her years of marriage and childbirth. She still looked incredible and, during her duties as a Russian agent, had often used her body in pursuit of success in her missions for the Center.

Plopping down in a kitchen chair across from him, Paige sipped carefully at the steaming coffee while studying Nick. After a moment, she asked, "How did you get into this business ... forging documents?"

 

[HumanBean]

Nick was midway through sucking down a gulp of coffee when Paige exited the bathroom and entered his fantasies. He couldn't help but drink in her wonderful curves. And fuck, those nipples! Did she realize how sexy that look was? She had to, didn't she? Was she teasing him? Or was she oblivious to the effect she had on men?

"How did you get into this business," she asked, adding, "forging documents?"

"I flunked art my junior year in high school," he told her. "I got caught printing fake ballots for the Homecoming Queen election. I wanted Malorie Kingston to win, 'cause she said if she did, she'd have sex with me. She did win, but I was a bit overeager and printed more ballots than we had students in the entire school. She was eliminated and suspended for two weeks and told on me. I was kicked out of art class and suspended for two months."

Nick sipped at his coffee again before going on. "All of a sudden, students from every class and even other schools were coming to me for all sorts of fake shit. You name it, I made it. By the time I graduated, I had almost twenty grand hidden inside hollowed out books on my bedroom bookcase."

Another sip. "After that, I made some friends at the DMV, City Hall, the County Offices. Everywhere. They got me blank documents or even completed ones with fake info. Driver's licenses, passports, credit cards, security passes."

Nick realized that he was beginning to brag and went silent. He didn't typically open up to strangers like this. In fact, he never had. Why now? Well, that was pretty obvious, just as were Paige's nipples. His mood turned a bit solemn when he continued.

"Then, three years ago, a man and woman came to visit me and told me they liked Don Quixote." He paused for her to realize that he was talking about her people. "I got busted after I used a guy snitching to the Feds. Just about went to prison. Not local jail. Prison! "

Nick popped up out of his chair. He had to quickly turn away from Paige to hide the bulge in his crotch. "I was going to make some lunch. I have, well, just about everything. I'm kind of a foodie." He began opening cupboards wide. They were packed with packaged foods. He opened the fridge. It was filled with a variety of drinks of all types. The vegetable crispers appeared full as well.

"What looks good?" he asked.

 

[Alice2015]

"I flunked art my junior year in high school," Nick replied to Paige's question about how he'd gotten into forgery.

He told her his tale, which made her smile with delight. She could understand his original driving force: lust. Teenage boys, she thought. They're so easy to manipulate.

When he spoke about a man and woman who liked Don Quixote, Paige's stomach rolled with anxiety. Without actual evidence, she knew immediately that he was speaking of her parents. "Just about went to prison. Not local jail. Prison!"

She wasn't about to admit a connection to the pair and only responded, "I'm sorry to hear about that."

When Nick popped up out of his chair, Paige's gaze dropped to his groin -- not intentionally, only incidentally -- and she caught sight of the impressive bulge there before he had a chance to hide it. Again, she was delighted, and as he made his way toward the kitchen, she thought, Once a teenage boy, always a teenage boy.

He showed her a virtual grocery store of food items, asking, "What looks good?"

"Honestly," she responded, standing from her chair, "I need to sleep."

Paige could have scarfed down a full meal of anything he was ready to prepare, but she hadn't slept in over 48 hours; her parents had retrieved her from her apartment to escape from the FBI -- from Stan Beeman -- the night before last; she'd jumped off the train at the US-Canada border the next afternoon; she'd sat in the window of the safe house all last night, watching for either American law enforcement or the Center's goons; and now here she was, in a strange man's house, waiting for illegal documents while she tried to figure out her next step.

Without further conversation, Paige went to the couch, took a minute to spread the bedding she'd already retrieved even before his return to his own apartment, laid down ... and in less than a minute had essentially passed out.

 

[HumanBean]

When he mentioned the previous Don Quixote fans, Paige said, "I'm sorry to hear about that."

Nick searched her face for some sign that she knew the couple personally. There simply wasn't anything there. Either she didn't know them, or she was simply very good at hiding that she did. Either way, he wasn't about to confront her about it. His business was built upon privacy and privilege, not unlike that of a psychiatrist or lawyer.

"Honestly, I need to sleep," she told him, heading for the couch.

Nick was tempted to offer his bed to her. He didn't. That was a bit too forward he figured. Plus, he was still suffering an expansion in his crotch that he was having to hide behind a dish towel dangling inconspicuously in front of him. "Of course. I'll, um, I'll just..."

He had no idea what he wanted to say. The only thing his mind could focus on was watching Paige prepare a bed on his couch. Would she slip out of those gym shorts? His gym shorts! Would she be wearing sexy girly panties underneath? Or had she found one of his pairs of boxers, too. He knew girls liked their lover's boxers. His last girlfriend had. Oh, that had been so, so long ago, he thought to himself.

She laid down, pulled the sheet and blanket over her, and was out. Dead to the world. Nick was still standing in the kitchen, hiding his hardon. How had she found blessed sleep so easily? He looked about himself, wondering what was next for him. He snatched a box of crackers from the cupboard and quietly shut all of the open doors. Taking the half filled quart of milk from the fridge and shutting that door, too, he headed quietly for his bedroom.

He pulled up a spy thriller on his tablet, listening on his ear buds. His mind ran wild with thoughts of the beautiful young thing in the next room. Maybe she was a spy. Maybe she was a fugitive. Maybe she was both! He couldn't know how right he was. He tried to stop thinking about her, failing miserably. Finally, setting the tablet aside, he yanked one out and slipped into his own unconsciousness, imagining her laying naked with him.

 

[Alice2015]

Paige was awoken by Nick's noisy neighbors, likely as they were stumbling in after a local watering hole's last call. She found Nick still in his bed, looking peaceful. She smiled, wondering whether his deeply restful state was the result of masturbation to images of her straddling her lap. She may have only been 19 years old, but she knew men.

Dressing again in her own clothes, she wrote Nick a note, leaving it on the kitchen table: Back soon in four days. Please have my things ready. Please don't speak of me to others. After eating some leftovers and stuffing some snack foods in her purse to be kept in her car for convenience food, she slipped out quietly and took a drive across town for her next unscheduled meeting.

........................
​

Just a bit past 9am, Paige entered a corner coffee shop, ordered a latte, and dropped into a corner booth with a clear view of both entrances; she was wearing a stocking cap and dark sunglasses which might have looked suspicious if it weren't December 2nd and the morning sun wasn't shining brightly.

Almost an hour had passed when a man entering to get his own cup of caffeine stopped short at the sight of her. He continued onward to order his coffee, waited for its completion, then sat at the adjacent table such that they were back-to-back. Paige said in almost a whisper, "I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

She knew what his answer would be, of course. After he responded, Paige told him, "I need to speak to someone I can trust. Any ideas?"

 

[HumanBean]

His Directorate S name was Connor James. He'd come to the US just 6 years ago. His time in America had been turbulent from the start. Several times, he'd very nearly been caught by the FBI, CIA, or some other Federal agency with a 3 letter acronym. And yet each time, he had gotten away without blowing his cover or having a detailed description distributed.

His wife hadn't been so lucky, though. Kristi had been here less than a year when she'd been critically shot during an attempt to kidnap a GRU defector for exfiltration back to Russia.

She'd fled and become trapped on the roof of a parking garage. She knew she was heading for a black site prison for interrogation. Instead of surrender, she raced their untraceable, 1980s-era pre-airbags car at the concrete wall at the fastest speed she could attain in that distance.

She'd been hoping to burst through the hood-high wall and fall six stories to the road below. She was confident it would both kill her and mess her up beyond identification. The barrier held firm, though.

As a back up, though, she'd put 14 rounds from her Beretta 92FS pistol through the back floorboard. Several of th rounds punctured the gas tank. The road flare she'd pulled from under the driver's seat and lit did the rest. When she hit the wall, gas spewed every where. The car exploded, burning her to a charred crisp. All the Feds had to work with to ID her were her teeth. It did them no good, though. Kristi had never seen an American dentist.

The Center had considered recalling Connor. He was too valuable, though, and his cover had not been compromised. They had also considered sending his a new wife. Years later, though, he was still single.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?" Paige asked softly.

"I would have thought you'd split," Connor said, his volume also low. "The Center is looking for you. The Feds are looking for you."

"I need to speak to someone I can trust," she told him. "Any ideas?"

"Directorate S?" he asked. He considered the question. "Maybe. I'm still trying to figure out who's on who's side in this mess."

He went quiet when a couple sat in a nearby booth. He tapped and swiped at his phone to look busy. It was almost 30 minutes before the pair got up and left.

"I think my handler is part of the anti-Putin faction," he finally whispered. "I don't know if I can trust him with this."

Connor was speaking of the effort by a group of Directorate S and Army Generals to replace Putin. They wanted an even more hardline leader who would use tactical nukes against Ukraine. It was a prelude to a potential invasion of the USSR's former Eastern Bloc nations.

They also had their eyes on some of the Middle East oil producing countries. And Turkey, too. Russia had long wanted control of the Dardanelles and the passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Most of these nations were now members of NATO and/or the European Union. Such an attack would certainly lead to war with NATO and, more importantly, the United States. But then, that was exactly what the anti-Putin faction wanted.

Russia had secretly designed and built a new anti-ballistic missile system. The Generals were confident it could disable or destroy up to 95% of the nukes fired at it by the US or NATO. There was confidence that Russia would survive relatively intact. The US and Western Europe, if they joined the fray would be wiped off the face of the Earth.

"Where and when can I contact you again?" Connor asked. Paige responded. He casually stood to leave, looked her over with a smirk, and told her, "You're looking better every time I see you. If I didn't know that your mother could break my neck with her little pinky..."

 

[Alice2015]

Paige had met Connor James through her parents, of course. Like Connor, Elizabeth and Philip were Directorate S Illegals who'd been trained in Russia and snuck into the United States with false papers and back histories. The trio had worked together on multiple occasions over their nearly 20 years in America. Paige had met him during a complex operation designed to feed false information about a Russian weapons system to an American scientist who was a triple agent: an American pretending to be working for Russia while actually passing information to his superiors in the US.

Paige, of course, had been born here. Her parents had never wanted their children to know what they did, let alone follow in their footsteps. The Center, however, had had other plans; they'd begun pressuring Illegals to fess up to their teenage children, who -- as native-born citizens -- could pass security background checks that their parents likely couldn't.

In the end, of course, it had been Paige's suspicion of her parents' lifestyles that had resulted in them telling her the truth. After that and little by little, she'd become more and more involved in the family business. When the Jennings worked with other Illegals, Paige had always been identified a just a sympathetic follower of the cause. But with Connor James, the truth had been necessary, resulting in the man being the only other person in the world to know of Paige's involvement other than Elizabeth and Philip's handler.

On a long stakeout, after learning the truth about Paige, Connor had told her about his wife and the tragedy that had led to her death. Paige had been shocked to the point of tears, although she kept her head turned in the dark car in which they were sitting so as not to let him see her cry. She couldn't imagine what it must be like for Connor to be so all alone, a Russian spy living in America with no one to whom he could honestly speak about his life, his day, his job ... anything truly important.

Paige had been so emotionally affected by his story that -- unknown to her parents -- she'd begun communicating with him in secret, sometimes inconspicuously meeting for coffee or to watch a motion picture in a dark, crowded theater. She'd even contemplated getting intimate with him at times; he was a very good-looking man, with a fun personality, and at midway between her age and her parents' ages, he was neither too old nor too young to be a suitable boyfriend.

But circumstances had prevented Paige and Connor from hooking up, and now each of them was simply trying to stay alive at a time when neither of them knew who they could or could not trust. Maybe it would happen now, who could know.

Paige was disappointed to hear that Connor didn't know whether or not he could trust his own handler. He asked when and where they could meet next, to which Paige said, "I have new papers in the works ... through a source I trust. Once I have them, I find you. We can't use the Call Center, of course."

The Call Center, in its various forms, had been the communications hub for the Illegals dating back to the early 1960s. During Paige's involvement, two successive Illegals had operated the local Call Center, George and Joan. Horrifically, both had been brutally murdered by an American SEAL, Andrew Larrick, who Elizabeth and Philip -- and before them Emmett and Leann Connors, also Illegals -- had been blackmailing for information about US operations in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

A third Call Center -- which had been in reserve for just such failures -- had been up and running within hours of the last one being disabled. But Paige couldn't trust it because there was no way to know whether or not it was under the control of the good Directorate S faction or the bad one.

She could see in Connor's face that he was questioning her ability to simply find him. Paige smiled and said with confidence, "I think I know you well enough to figure out where to find you. I found you this morning, didn't I?"

When he stood to leave, he commented on how good she looked and about how he was fearful of making a move on Paige because of her scary mother.

"She's gone," Paige said, adding, "Her and my dad. They're gone."

She knew that Connor would want more information on the topic but would probably not ask out of the unspoken rule of need to know. But Paige wanted to share this information with him and continued, "The three of us were leaving the country this morning, but I ... I couldn't leave. My brother is still here, and he doesn't -- didn't -- know anything about what the three of us did ... about my parents' backgrounds."

She took a moment to think about the encounter in her apartment building's parking garage with FBI Agent Beeman, during which the three Jennings essentially begged Stan to take care of Henry. "I can't see him ... but ... I'm going to keep an eye on him, nevertheless. Someone has to."

Then, remembering why Connor had made the comment about her mother in the first place, she smiled playfully and said with a suggestive tone, "So ... now you no longer have to fear that my mother will break your neck for doing something wrong to or with me." Then, with a soft chuckle, Paige said, "You only have to worry about me breaking your neck for doing something wrong to ... or with me."

Paige said again that she'd find him when she needed him, and Connor headed out the door. Paige waited a few minutes, ordered a coffee to go, and headed out into the streets as well.

 

[HumanBean]

"She's gone," Paige told Connor, speaking of her mother. "Her and my dad. They're gone."

He'd suspected that that was the case, obviously. He'd actually expected that Paige and Henry would have disappeared as well. The danger here was simply too great for them. Their choices were assassination by the Center or, at the least, capture and exfiltration to Russia, or capture by the FBI, followed by imprisonment for the eldest three Jennings and a life of madness and mayhem for the youngest.

"My brother is still here," Paige told Connor, "And he doesn't -- didn't -- know anything about what the three of us did ... about my parents' backgrounds."

Connor understood what Paige felt about her brother. When he'd left Russia, he'd left behind three younger siblings. He'd known at the time that he would never see them again. He got letters from them via the Center. He'd asked to arrange the occasional video chat with them, but his contact had nixed that idea. They didn't want even his relatives knowing what he looked like today. He had pictures of his brothers and sister, but they hadn't had one of him since he'd been 15 years old.

As she got up and left, Connor was left with the distinct feeling that if he wanted to get more personally involved with Paige, that she might very well be inclined to go along with his efforts. They weren't supposed to be showing each other any undue attention during this meeting. But he couldn't help but ogle her fine ass as she headed out the door. Not unlike another man who'd knocked one out last night to fantasies about being with Paige, Connor would doing the same tonight when he got back to his own apartment.

<<<< >>>>​

The following day, Nick picked was signaled to a dead drop. He performed his normal counter-surveillance meandering to ensure he wasn't being followed and retrieved the dead drop message. At the garage where he kept his spy shit, he deciphered the message. It wasn't good news.

 

[Alice2015]

After her impromptu meeting with Conner, Paige went for a walk, a drive, and metro bus ride, and a second walk; using what her mother -- and, to a lesser degree, her father -- had taught her about avoiding surveillance, she determined that no one was on her before heading to one of the garages her parents had kept for vehicles, disguises, and more. Elizabeth and Philip had had four of these locations, each with its own car, but Paige had only been privy to just this one.

Paige had learned a lot about her parents after they'd departed for Canada from what she'd found in this one secret location. Elizabeth and Philip had sworn to her that their work had been non-violent information gathering only. Yet after spending a couple of hours scouring the place, she'd located a secret compartment that contained four handguns, two sound suppressors, bottles and vials of liquids she could only assume were not for peaceful information gathering, and the syringes Paige correctly assumed were used to administer them.

Her feelings about her parents and the way they'd treated her over the past few years -- both before and after telling her that they were Russian spies -- had been steadily getting more hostile. But finding these things truly made her hate them even further. She couldn't help but think that if they hadn't run, she might have turned them in herself to see them rot in prison.

She wouldn't have, though; she knew that. Her certainty was based on one thing ... or one person: Henry. Her brother had had nothing to do with the family business, and -- Paige hoped -- he wouldn't be punished in any way. She was certain that Stan Beeman would protect Henry. They'd told Stan before they slipped out of the city that her brother had been totally ignorant of that in which the three of them had been involved.

Pulling the second car available to her out of the garage, lowering the door, and setting the security, Paige headed for Falls Church, Virginia. She knew she shouldn't be doing this, but she just had to check on Henry. She drove past Stan's house, hoping for just a look at her little brother from behind the wheel. She saw nothing on that side of the road.

Across the street at the home where she'd previously lived, though, she saw plenty. Most of the FBI vehicles had departed the scene by now, but there were still two black SUVs and a pair of evidence retrieval and processing vans crowding the driveway. Paige didn't slow the car, instead just driving by as if passing through to another house down the road. She got out of Falls Church without hesitation.

Later, parking the car again and switching out the plates, Paige wandered about DC for a few hours before finding a seat in the coffee shop kitty-corner to her forger's apartment. She didn't expect any surveillance with regard to her and her parents, of course, but Nick was a criminal, and Paige wouldn't have been surprised to find him and/or his place being watched for purposes related to his career.

After a couple of hours of coffee and pretending to be working on her phone, she crossed to his building, took the elevator to his floor, and knocked on the door; she knew he was home as she'd seen him in the window. Smiling and holding a paper sack up before her, she asked, "Scone?"

 

[HumanBean]

Nick checked an app on his phone to find an image of Paige standing at his door. The camera was hidden inside the fire extinguisher at the end of the hallway. There was another one in the exit sign at the other end of the passageway, too. It perked his cock a bit just to know that she was back. He answered the door to find her lifting a bag before her. "Scone?"

He smiled and stepped aside. "Love one." As she entered, he did what Connor had earlier in the day: scoped out Paige's ass. He'd seen it wrapped by a pair of his boxers this morning. He wanted to see it without a layer of cotton concealing it, of course. He asked as he headed for the kitchen, "Milk?"

After a visit to the fridge, he sat with her at the kitchen table. "Papers are in the works. I'll have the credit cards tomorrow. ID day after that. The passport's gonna be an issue. Might take ten, twelve days. Nothing I can do about that. The new ones, well, I can't even begin to describe the security measures for those. They're impossible to forge, so I have a guy in the Department making you a real one. With fake info, of course."

He sipped at his milk. "There's sort of a problem, though. He wants ten grand for it. That's four times what I paid to get each of the ones I gave your..."

Nick stopped. He was about to reference the previous Don Quixote fans. He didn't know what their relationship to Paige was. He ventured a guess, finishing, "...parents?"

He didn't know whether or not Paige would either confirm or deny the statement. It didn't really matter. Business-wise, he didn't care. But he had personal interests regarding the beautiful woman sitting across from him. He wanted to know her better before he made an attempt to fuck her.

 

[Alice2015]

"Milk?"

"No thank you," Paige responded politely to the offer. "Beer in a bottle, though, if you've got one. Dark. Craft?"

She didn't say so, but Paige was implying that she didn't want what her father used to call piss water, any one of many American brewed beers that were popular around BBQ pits and football game tailgaters because they were a cheap buzz.

Nick brought her a bottle of just what she wanted, then told her the good news ... and the bad news. "He wants ten grand for it. That's four times what I paid to get each of the ones I gave your ... parents?"

Paige knew Nick was fishing for information about her, but she would have been disappointed if he hadn't tried. It was an important feature of human nature to know as much as you could about those with whom you had dealings, whether personal or professional.

She lifted the beer to her lips, took a long but slight draw on it, then -- ignoring the probe -- said, "Tell him five grand ... and I promise to bring him more business at his desired price in the near future."

Paige looked around the room casually but purposefully. If Nick had been under surveillance or working with law enforcement, and they had taken an interest in his new client -- possibly even knowing who she truly was -- there might have been subtle changes to his decor indicating the placement of bugs or cameras. She didn't see anything, though, that wasn't really a guarantee of anything.

She did notice that her bedding was still on the couch. Nick had apparently been expecting her to return for another night's sleep at his place. Paige looked back to him again, thinking that she might have caught him with his eyes set not on her face but on her bosom...? It would have pleased her if he had been ogling her; it meant that he was interested in keeping their relationship moving ahead, which meant he wasn't going to turn her over ... not yet.

"Dollar a point...?" she asked cryptically. When Nick gave her a confused expression, Paige nodded her head toward the cribbage board on the bookcase. "My parents taught me how to play. I have to confess, I'm pretty good. Just saying. I don't want you to think I'm taking advantage of you."

If they didn't play the cards and peg game, Paige would find something else to keep them busy. Nick's entertainment center was expansive, with tape players, DVD players, and multiple game consoles. "I bet when you were growing up that being sent to your room wasn't much of a punishment."

 

[HumanBean]

It didn't go unnoticed by Nick that Paige passed on responding to his implication regarding her parents. He let it go, though.

"Tell him five grand," she did say about the cost of the passport. "And I promise to bring him more business at his desired price in the near future."

He considered it a moment. "I can only try."

He studied Paige as she scanned his apartment. It didn't occur to him that she was looking for signs of surveillance. He'd never dealt with that kind of issue before. If the authorities bugged or wired his place, Nick likely wouldn't have seen evidence of it.

She tempted him with a game of cribbage with stakes. Nick smiled. Cribbage was his game. It was all about math, patterns, and reading your opponent. "Dollar a point? Sure. I'll take your money."

He retrieved the board and cards and brought them back to the table. Paige was checking out his entertainment system. "I bet when you were growing up that being sent to your room wasn't much of a punishment."

"Well, to be honest, I didn't have stuff like this growing up," Nick said. "I grew up poor. Not starving and eating out a garbage can poor. Just without all the electronics and toys and Christmas trees so deep in presents that it took you three hours to open them all."

He set up the game, they cut for deal, and started playing. Paige was good. She understood the strategy. Still, Nick beat her five straight games by between 3 and 8 points each time. He offered her an out, but she turned it down. "You owe me 28 bucks so far."

He started dealing, saying, "Okay, it's your funeral."

 

[Alice2015]

"I can only try," Nick said regarding the attempt he would make to get Paige's fake passport for half what his contact wanted.

It wasn't as if Paige was being cheap. She'd already given Nick half of the cold, hard cash to which she had access. She had money in her college fund, as well as in a separate savings account; and she had access to a dozen credit and debit cards, most of them associated to fake IDs she could use if carded.

The problem was that some of them were known to the Center and others had been taken out in Paige's real name prior to her learning about her parents' true identities, nationalities, and career. It was risky to use any of them, making them only applicable to absolute emergencies.

When Nick talked about his childhood, specifically the lack of expendable income brought in by his parents, Paige couldn't help but think back to her later teen years. When her father quit the Family Business to become only a travel agent, things had been going well financially for the Jennings family. Then, hard times fell upon Dupont Circle Travel. Discount travel services -- most of them online companies with no or little brick and mortar overhead -- had been siphoning away business since before the turn of the century, and now in 2024, they controlled more than 95% of travel agency business in the US.

After learning of her parents' true careers and the importance of what they did for their country, Paige had never understood why the Center didn't support their Illegals financially. Sure, the Jennings got seed money for bribes, cover necessities, surveillance equipment, and other operational expenses. But the Jennings family had always been fully responsible for the cost of their own lives. When Philip Jennings was forced to lay off half his staff in 2023, Paige -- like her father -- had wondered just how important their country found them to be after all.

"You owe me 28 bucks so far," Nick warned after Paige had lost five straight games to him at a dollar a point. He offered to call an end to the slaughter, but she'd gestured him to shuffle up and deal, leading him to tell her playfully, "Okay, it's your funeral."

"We've played five?" she asked, already knowing the answer to the question. "Let's make it best out of 11 and up the bet as well. Two bucks a point. The champion makes the other a hot fudge sundae." She smiled, confessing, "I checked your freezer earlier before I left for ice and saw Neapolitan ice cream ... and chocolate syrup in the cupboard. I would have to win all six games to take the crown and be served the sundae."

Nick agreed to her new terms, probably feeling as though he was stealing candy from a baby. He wasn't. Paige took the first of the six games by 18 points, the second by 15, and the third by 21. The fourth and fifth games were both skunks -- she won by 31 and 34 -- and, as they'd decided back before their very first game -- skunks paid double.

The sixth game, though, Paige got nasty hand and nasty hand and ended up losing by 4. "The championship goes to you, sir. Congratulations. I guess I'm making sundaes." She nodded looked to the score sheet, asking, "What's the final score."

Nick tallied up the last six games and added them to the first five: 206.

"That's wrong," she said, tapping a finger on the paper and correcting, "202."

She smiled wide as she stood, asking, "Where do you keep the ice cream scoop?"

 

[HumanBean]

Nick tallied the score: 206. He mumbled, "Ah, man, you hustled me." Paige corrected his math. Nick said sarcastically, "Oh, well, that makes all the difference."

When she asked where he kept the ice cream scoop, Nick just laughed. "In my family, we call it a big spoon."

He told her that he'd make the sundaes, saying, "After that slaughter, I should." He headed for the kitchen. Casually, he remarked, "I met your parents. I would never have thought they were cribbage hustlers. Texas Hold'em maybe. Not cribbage."

Nick was still trying to learn whether or not the two Don Quixote fans had been this one's parents. Curiosity killed the cat, he reminded himself as he made the desserts. Returning with the bowls, he headed over to the couch to get more comfortable.

"How about a movie," he offered, "or I have most of the latest, hit games on most of the consoles."

 

[Alice2015]

Once again, Paige only smiled at Nick's attempts to learn more about her family. It probably wouldn't have hurt anything for her to have acknowledged that his previous clients had, in fact, been her parents. But she'd been taught the need for keeping your secrets secret, obviously; hell, for over a decade and a half, she hadn't known that her parents were Russian spies.

Nick delivered the ice cream -- a huge bowl of three flavors topped with syrup, nuts, and whipped cream from a can -- and asked, "How about a movie, or I have most of the latest, hit games on most of the consoles."

"Sure, why not?" she said, joining him on the couch.

She relocated the folded bedding she'd used the night before, as well as her jacket, to the middle of the couch to make any attempt to close the distance between them a bit more conspicuous; Paige liked Nick, thought he was handsome, and wouldn't have minded getting intimate with him -- perhaps even sleeping with him -- but they still had a few days before her fake papers came in and she didn't want anything personal between them getting in the way of that.

They watched a couple of episodes of yet another one of the Star Wars franchise's many Jedi television series found on Disney+ before Paige's eyes began closing on her. She eventually popped up, delivered her empty ice cream bowl, and returned, saying, "I think you're in my bed."

.............................
​

The next morning, after putting on a pot of coffee and eating a cold breakfast, Paige was once again out the door before Nick woke up. She had things to do and people to see.

 

[HumanBean]

Nick:

"I think you're in my bed," Paige said when the second episode ended.

Nick wanted so badly to tell her that she could sleep in his, with him. But, like Paige, he knew the timing was not right. She was only here because she had nowhere else to go while she waited for the papers he was arranging. He stood, saying, "Of course. Sorry. It's late."

​

The next morning, he came out to find himself once again alone. Paige had left another vague note saying she'd be back. He drank some of the coffee she'd made and ate from the same box of cold cereal she'd left out. He headed for the shower and, again, knocked one out to a fantasy of doing her against the shower wall.

He sent some emails through rerouted servers to hide their origin. Next came phone calls from a $35 dollar burner that he then destroyed in the microwave. The smell of burned plastic and electronics forced him to open the windows for a couple of hours. After that, he headed out onto the streets to begin picking up the first bits of Paige's new identity

<<<< >>>>
​

Connor:

Once again as he went about his daily life, the Illegal looked up to find Paige awaiting him. He didn't know how she just showed up like she did. He'd never imagined that she knew him that well. Ensuring that it was safe, he joined her at the outdoor cafe table. He gestured for the waitress, asking for a black coffee and a refill of Paige's mug.

"I've been ordered to look for you, find you, detain you, and if necessary, kill you," Connor told Paige in the simplest terms. He added, "Your parents, too, obviously. But since they're in Canada or maybe even already off the continent, I guess I don't have to worry much about that, do I?"

The waitress arrived, then departed. Connor sipped from his mug. He glanced casually around for eavesdroppers. "The people your parents were trying to stop are gaining ground from what I've been able to uncover. Not that that's much, I mean. You know these people. They keep their cards close to the vest."

He paused for passers-by. "There's a man, a Russian ... Oleg Burov. He was at the Rezidentura a couple of years ago. KGB. Not Center. But he did some work with them. Maybe even with your parents. He was arrested by the FBI a couple of weeks ago. Maybe less. I don't have much on him yet, but it's looking like maybe he might have been working against the Faction."

He used the "F" word to describe the people who were trying to overthrow Putin and put an even more hardline leader in charge of their homeland. "If he wasn't here on a diplomatic visa, he's fucked. They'll throw him in a hole someplace until they can trade him for one of those American journalists or vacationing Marines who our government falsely accused of spying. Or maybe not falsely. Who knows?"

He took a moment to think and drink. Then, ogling Paige a few seconds, he smiled. "So, where are you staying? I mean, if you need a place to lay your head at night." His smiled widened even further. "I mean, your mother's not here anymore to break my neck. And if I promised to be a good boy, maybe you wouldn't break it? Or, maybe, if I promised not to be a good boy..."

He let the thought and his smile finish the statement for him. He'd wanted to fuck Paige from the first moment he'd met her two years earlier. He, like Nick, had rubbed one out this morning to the fantasy of being naked with the beauty. Since seeing her the previous day at yet another coffee shop, he's imagined that her desperate situation might drive her to his apartment and to his bed.