Duke snorted before wiping a hand over his face to hide a smile. “You love me, and you know it, Campbell.”
“Yeah, well, you annoy the fuck out of me, Marlow,” added Striker McCracken from behind the partition nearest to Duke, somehow managing to have a thicker brogue than Gram. The two were teammates and, if Rurik had to guess, he’d say they were best friends as well. One was rarely found without the other.
“Hey, Boris,” said Duke with a half-grin, never taking his eyes from Rurik. “Heard it was your birthday. Figured it was time you had a proper celebration.”
Was it?
Rurik had to think harder on it because he’d stopped keeping track over a century ago. As he thought about the date, he tensed and the sparkler fizzled out, leaving a small bit of black smoke rising toward one of the overhead air vents.
It was his birthday.
How in the hell had the American known that? Had he pulled Rurik’s file? And why would he ever want to celebrate anything with Rurik? It wasn’t like Duke was known for being overly warm or thoughtful; if he’d gone to this extreme, he had a reason. Knowing Duke, that reason was to finally rid himself of Rurik once and for all.
“How old are you now, Boris?” asked Duke, mocking Rurik’s accent.
“I don’t sound like that and my name is not Boris,” said Rurik with a rather loud grunt.
Duke looked to be fighting another laugh. “So you claim. We all know you were tight with the KGB. Who the hell knows what your real name is? Could be Boris, for all we know.”
“And yours could be Dickwad,” returned Rurik.
“Who’s to say it isn’t?” asked another of the operatives, earning the man a sideways glance from Duke.
The man went back to typing what was no doubt a report.
Looking at the pie on his desk, Rurik arched a brow. “Did you poison it?”
Boomer approached, laughing boisterously. He patted Rurik’s back. “He wanted to. That’s why Corbin insisted on handling the apple pies.”
Pies, as in there was more than one?
Corbin Jones was as British as could be, almost a poster child for the stiff-upper-lip mentality. He spoke the Queen’s English and was only missing holding a Union Jack flag to really drive home just how British he was. As a lion-shifter, he was a very capable operative and stronger than his often-reserved personality hinted at. It was rare that he joined in the antics of the men who served under him.
Rurik glanced at Boomer, who was a member of Duke’s team of operatives—Team Five. “Your captain had a hand in this?”
“Dude, be thankful he did. Duke would have so poisoned you. Hell, I even saw him on the internet looking up what foods bears can’t have, and we all know what a luddite Duke is,” added Boomer with another chuckle as he walked toward his team’s area. “As it stands, the pie is safe to eat. Not only that, but Corbin arranged for more pies to be sent over. The break room is full of them. Happy birthday, Rurik.”
Gram eased closer. “We managed to talk Duke out of red and blue glitter. He wanted to dump it all over yer desk and rig something to explode, covering you in even more of it. That would have been Asshole of the Week worthy. So you know, I wasnae opposed to this idea.”
“Thanks,” said Rurik snidely.
One of the halls off the bullpen area was dedicated to awards. There were legitimate ones for valor and so forth, but then there was the not-so-legit one the men awarded each other. Asshole of the Week kept up morale and often gave the men something to work toward together. The goal being to either create a scenario that left a fellow op in a hilarious predicament or catch one in the act of doing so naturally.
Rurik had won his fair share of them since joining the Russian Division of PSI and then moving to the American office. As far as divisions went, Russia was considered one of the newer ones, despite being in existence since the fall of the Soviet Union.
PSI had had a foothold in most countries for an exceptionally long time. But Russia had always proved somewhat elusive. No surprise that they’d had issues getting in the door—there was a time that Russians had issues getting out. His mother country wasn’t exactly known for welcoming outsiders with open arms. And they were no stranger to secret police forces.
He could still recall the start of Okhrana back in the days of Tsar Nicholas II. Rurik had been young for a supernatural during that time, and he’d already had his dreams of following in his father’s footsteps as far as science went dashed. His country wanted him trained to be a weapon and his country wasn’t one to take no for an answer.
That was how Rurik had first been pulled into the secret police. Over the years the secret police had morphed and changed a number of times before becoming the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). It was no real stretch for him, moving over to PSI. Though changing the side that he served had been a leap. One that he still wasn’t entirely comfortable with, but it was what it was.
It didn’t help that the American media liked to make his country out to be the villain in every story. While the Cold War may be over, certain prejudices were hard to dispel. Americans needed someone to rally against and to stand in direct opposition of. Russia had won that title. Were they guilty of everything they were accused of? No. Were they guilty of at least some of it? Probably. Then again, America was no saint. It had its fair share of skeletons in the closet as well.
Every country had dirt on its hands, sometimes coated in the blood of others or its own. To think otherwise was naïve and foolish. Rurik had been alive too long to be either.
He’d seen
