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CHAPTER 1: NATASHA
Part 1
ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF ODESSA,
UKRAINE
NEAR THE BLACK SEA
Natasha Romanoff hated pierogies—but more than that, she hated lies.
Lying she was fine with. Lying was a necessity, a tool of her tradecraft. It was being lied to that she hated, even if it was how she had been raised.
Everything Ivan used to say was a lie.
Ivan Somodorov, Ivan the Strange. She hadn’t thought about him in a long time, not until tonight.
Years.
And right now, as Natasha clung to the side of a rusting Ukrainian warehouse on the edge of a waterlogged industrial dock, even the moon looked like just another one of Ivan’s lies.
Welcome home, Natashka.
It was the dumpling moon that brought it all back now.
She climbed higher as she remembered the words, but even Natasha Romanoff, newly minted agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., former daughter of Mother Russia, couldn’t escape Ivan Somodorov. Not any more than she could escape the snipers positioned on every neighboring rooftop or the barbed wire on the perimeter fence.
“See that moon?” Ivan had said when she was younger. “See that pale pierogi, hanging so low and heavy in the sky it wants to fall back into the boiling pot of salted water on your baba’s stove?” Natasha had nodded, though as an orphan of the war she remembered little about her baba—or for that matter, even her parents. “With a moon like that, your targets can see you as easily as you see them. Not a good night for hunting, or a clean kill. Not a good night for disappearing.”
It was Ivan she remembered.
Ivan who had taught her how to shoot a Russian sniper rifle and to never use anything but a German pistol, preferably an HK or a Glock—no matter how you felt about the Germans. How to change out the barrel and action of an assault weapon in seconds and to modify her trigger so it broke like glass. How to cover her tracks, how to hide from the SVR and the FSB and the FSO—all the legitimate organizations that the KGB had become when it was the KGB no more. Those were her bosses’ bosses, the groups they worked for but never with. The groups they vowed to follow, but who disavowed them. The groups with the names that could be mentioned in the headlines of the Gazeta, unlike her own.
Unlike the Red Room. Unlike Ivan’s crew and, in particular, his favorites, Devushki Ivana. Ivan’s girls.
Natasha took a breath and swung, springing through the moonlit night from side to side, making her way farther up the corrugated wall of the decaying warehouse. The rough metal siding bit into her palms. It was a miracle that she was still hanging on.
A miracle and years of training.
Natasha closed her eyes and tightened her grip. Truthfully, she didn’t need her adhesive suit.
Even if I wanted to let go, I haven’t been trained for that.
“I will teach you more than how to kill,” Ivan had said. “I will make you into the weapon itself. You will become as automatic and unfeeling as a Kalashnikov, but twice as dangerous. Only then will I teach you how to take a life— how and when and where.”
“And why?” Natasha had asked.
She had been young, then, or she would have known better. Child Natasha had been all eyes and shadows and angles. Alone and defenseless, half the time she felt like a thrashing rabbit caught in a winter trap.
He had laughed outright. “Not why, my Natashka. Never why. Why is for guitar players and Americans.” Then he’d smiled. “We all have a time to die, and when it’s mine, when they send you to sink a bullet into my head, just make sure not to do it on a pierogi moon.” She’d nodded, but she couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “That’s all I ask. A clean kill. A soldier’s death. Do not shame me.”
It was his favorite line. He’d said it maybe a thousand times.
And now, as Natasha stared up at the boiled-dumpling moon, she decided it was the one she’d repeat back to him tonight. When she finally killed him, just as he’d predicted she would.
He’s not a martyr, she reminded herself. We aren’t saints. When we die, nobody mourns. That’s the only way this ends, for all of us.
Even if there were a hundred fat moons in the sky tonight, Natasha refused to feel any shame or any sorrow for Ivan Somodorov. She didn’t want to feel anything at all, not for anyone, but least of all for him.
Because he felt nothing for you.
哈哈哈这个口音太棒啦
绝了
这本书在哪买呢?英文原著
青橙英语阅读 回复 @阳光照进心窝小伍: 发不出去那个平台的名字,试试海外购书的网站哈
主讲老师是谁呀
青橙英语阅读 回复 @18601011186: Papa Rabbit哦 专辑简介里有详细介绍~
太赞了。
第一天打卡~
青橙英语阅读 回复 @多来点小鱼干: 加油加油,第二天也记得打卡!
打卡
英语兔读的吧
主播这带俄罗斯口音英语真是绝了,爱了爱了
青橙英语阅读 回复 @火炎焱燚3827: hhh模仿的很到位了