Author: euopsgreta

The 2nd book in the Greta Steiner EUOPS series is now available on Amazon. You can purchase the kindle here.

The paperback is available here.

Greta had taken her own sweet time getting back to the base in Wales and when she arrived they had told her to go to her quarters and that she should report to Lady Julia the head of Special Activities Section when she was called.  Julia was Lady Julia Robertson the Duchess of Montgeave and Viscountess Rhayader.  She was a retired MI6 assassin who looked after the training of certain parts of special activities, specifically training assassins.  Lady Julia was a member of the English Royal Security Oversight Committee and besides training EUOPS killers she was in charge of security at the EUPOS Welsh safe house village base.  Lady Julia was a registered nurse and expert in extracting information from people who would rather not talk.  She was also the designated successor for Lady Victoria Elaine Covington operational code name Blossom the head of the whole EUOPS operation.  Greta carried her equipment pack and small bag to her quarters and sorted and put things away and then sat down and waited.

Greta had spent the night in an upscale seaside hotel to the west of the training base by herself.  Not with the young touring American doctorial student she had picked up in Liverpool.  Jeff had been standing at the dock holding a roadmap and looking puzzled when she noticed him.  He was in his twenties and tall and blond and had the thousand dollar teeth that people from America buy their kids.  She had walked over and asked if she could help since he looked lost.  And he had explained he actually was lost.  He wanted to go to Farndon but he couldn’t find it on his map of Wales.  Greta explained that he was right since it was in England right across the river Dee.  Jeff had rolled his eyes and Greta had laughed and offered to help him find some books and maps. He had been driving his own camper van and she had used her phone to find a store that had hiking and trekking gear.  Greta loaded her pack in the back of the van and they had gone to the store. 

Greta helped Jim purchase a village registry and some ordinance and trail maps because of her training courses in map reading and orienteering at the training school.  Greta bought some shorts and tee shirts and underwear and socks and a few toiletry items and a small backpack to keep them in while Jim looked at dehydrated food.  When they left Jim had offered to buy her lunch and she had accepted.  They had gone to a pleasant pub and had chatted while they ate.  Jim had explained he was knocking around for a week or two before he went back to the states and wanted to see some country before he left.  He was driving south to Cardiff to return the van and take a train to London in a week or so. Greta had explained she was on a walking tour between sessions at school and was headed south.  She had offered to be his guide if she could be dropped of in Cardiff the next week.  Jim had been overjoyed and they had headed south to Farndon.  Greta had asked to stop at a pharmacy for some allergy tablets and she had jumped out and run in and bought some tablets and a package of twelve condoms.

When they arrived in Farndon Jeff had stopped at an inn and asked about a camping space for the van.  The innkeeper had said there weren’t any locally but he had one room available and they could park the van at the inn if they took the room.  Jeff booked the room and came back and explained to Greta that he had rented a room for her and he would sleep in the van.  Of course it hadn’t worked out that way.

By the time that they arrived in Cardiff Greta had given Jeff a totally false mailing address and phone number.  He had let her out at the bus station and she had ducked into a cab and then jumped out at a red light and taken a hop on hop off tourist bus to an outdoor market. She had thumbed a ride with a delivery van up the coast to where she spent the night in a luxury hotel.  In the morning she had showered and dressed in a pair of cargo pants a tee shirt and an outdoor multi pocket vest with hiking boots then paid her bill using her personal credit card.  She had packed her small backpack and her larger equipment pack and then taken them gone and set on the terrace and ordered breakfast.  She was just finishing the last of a buttered scone with orange marmalade when a policeman walked up to her and demanded identification. 

Greta smiled and stood up and stuck a small silenced automatic pistol in his stomach and said, “I’m done playing games constable.  Pick up my equipment pack and carry it to the car.  You and your partner are giving me a ride to the base or I will make a big scene right here in front of all the guests by blowing your guts out.”

The flabbergasted policeman had picked up the pack and Greta had followed him to the car and then ordered his partner out and hand cuffed him and ordered him in the back seat.  Then she had handcuffed the other policeman to the steering wheel and ordered him to drive to the base where Greta had used her identification to have them admitted.  The gate guard had asked Greta for the handcuff keys and then detailed a car to take her to her quarters.

Finally two guards had come to the door and ordered her to follow them.  They had walked to Julia’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come”, said a voice and Greta opened the door and walked in.

Julia was sitting at her desk and Blossom was standing and looking out the window. 

Blossom turned and glared at Greta and said, “What in hell are you playing at?  I should put you in prison and throw away the key.  How dare you treat the police like you did you broke several serious laws and I will need to patch it up.”

“An interesting choice but hardly likely,” said Greta, “When I rolled over on that bloody tank I finally realized what you all were up to and so I graduated.  I will not do any more bloody training exercises dressed in a clown suit with a kick me sign.  As for the police that you so casually called to come get me thank you for providing me with a ride but I am tired of strip searches and providing the boys with peep shows.  Also you will have Julia smooth things over if anything gets smoothed since you have never done anything like that in your life.  Now like I said I graduated and then took a vacation and a leisurely drive south while I decided what to do.  Now I’m here and as I said I self graduated.”

“Well I think she has things figured out, Blossom,” said Julia with a laugh.

“I’m leaving you with Julia but I will be keeping an eye on you young lady,” said Blossom.

Blossom walked to the interior door in Julia’s office and went out.

Greta turned to Julia and Julia smiled.

“Well you have been coming along fairly rapidly,” said Julia, “It usually take the trainees a bit longer to figure out what is going on but I must admit you did it with more flair than most.”

“And enjoyed every minute of it,” said Greta, “I assume that Jeff is an instructor in the honey girl training?  He is very good in bed and quite nice and thoughtful too.  I had a very good time but he really isn’t good in the field.  He doesn’t have the background for his characters down and has rough spots in his presentation.  He really isn’t very believable.  But then thanks for sending him even though it was obvious what he was.  I was able to relax on the way back and not worry about my company.”

Julia looked at Greta then said, “Well, we will want a written report and evaluation on him.  Now we will need to get you papers and equipment.  You are going to be assigned to Syria and will be reporting to the Southern Area Supervisor, Mark Saint Martin.  He has a Russian problem.  

Greta rolled over on her back and looked up at the sky.  It was clear blue, cloudless, bright and a pleasant looking morning.  She on the other hand was hot, tired, no exhausted, sweaty, dirty, hungry and had to pee.  And she had just missed the shot.  The radio linked target vest had not registered the laser beam because she hadn’t pulled the trigger.

Greta was lying on the flat roof of a water tank in the Birmingham rail yard and her target was entering a cab with his head below the roof of the car.  The shot had been a long but not impossible shot but the lack of crowd control at the exit door had made identification, aiming, and shooting impossible.  Greta had been lying on top of the water tank most of the night waiting for a shot at someone that was supposed to be a high level foreign spy and she had just missed the shot.  The whole exercise was stupid and poorly planned.  She was frustrated and wasn’t going to put up with any more crap. 

Suddenly there was the sound of a siren and Greta hung her head and swore.  It would be the local police arriving since someone would have just noticed a woman on the tank and like a good citizen called them.  They would arrest her and take her to the station and process her and throw her in a cell and not contact EUOPS until the next morning after they had examined and checked and finally stamped signed initialed and filed her national security training situation exercise permit.  Meanwhile she might have to endure a strip search, or a nude ice cold shower with lots of witty chatting as the male officers blundered into the woman’s processing unit, strictly by mistake, and the female officers scolded them for fifteen minutes while Greta stood there naked.  She would freeze her butt since they would only allow her a coverall and no blankets and probably no sleep.  Finally someone would collect her and Julia and the training team would debrief her and ask her what went wrong and how could it be avoided and what had she learned and then she could run and do exercises and practice marksmanship for two weeks before they sent her to shoot someone in Trafalgar Square at noon disguised as a female Father Christmas.  Well no more.  They had been studying escape and evasion for the last six months and it was time for some practical practice.

Greta folded her rifle and packed it and her rangefinder scope in their padded case and put them in her pack.  She folded her tarp and wrapped it around her brace bag and stowed them in the pack. Then she looked for anything physical that might connect her with the tank.  She took a pressurized metal sprayer full of bleach out of the pack and methodically sprayed the top of the tank to destroy all the DNA traces.  She sprayed the area where she had kept watch two times to make sure and then pulled on a balaclava to hide her face and sterile plastic operating room booties and heavy rubber gloves to prevent any contamination and tied a light rope to her backpack and around the top rung of the ladder and left it near the edge of the tank.  Then she stood in the center of the tank out of sight.

The siren of the police car stopped as the car pulled up at the bottom of the tank and the engine died.  There were two slams as the occupants got out.

A harsh male voice yelled, “All right missy, get your ass down here right now.”

Greta walked about half way to the ladder and answered, “No way, copper come and get me if you’re man enough.”

There was a silence.  The trainees were instructed to comply with all orders from the local police and to present their identification and training permit immediately.  Greta knew that she had been turned in by EUOPS when no shot had been made and the police had all ready been notified there was a training exercise in the area.

“Don’t make me climb the ladder sweetheart or I will personally tan your ass when we get you back to the station,” said the voice, “and I’m more man than you can handle so if I come up I will hold you down and handcuff you and then do a thorough weapons search and body cavity probe.  Now get the hell down here!”

“Screw you copper,” said Greta.

There was a silence again and then some hurried discussion and finally someone started up the metal access ladder.  Greta knelt and put one hand on the ladder it was one person.  She nodded her head and then took three steps back from the top of the ladder and waited.

A large pair of hands appeared on the top crossbar of the ladder and then a large shaved head appeared.  A huge man over six feet tall and well muscled with only the start of what would probably be an impressive beer gut by the time he made sergeant stood up and carefully stepped off of the ladder.

“All right miss smart ass,” said the policeman, “Get that blouse off I want to make sure you don’t have a gun in there with your tits and I am going to have search everywhere.”

Greta kicked him in one knee and he stumbled on the edge of the tank and fell forward to save himself. Then she swept off his mirrored sunglasses and sprayed his face full of the bleach solution.  When he hit the tank she reached down and grabbed his handcuffs and cuffed his hands behind his back.  Then she hit him in the side of the head with a small sap and then put a loop of cord around his legs and tied them so he couldn’t squirm around and fall off the tank when he regained consciousness.  She pulled on a new pair of leather shooting gloves over the heavy rubber gloves and walked to the ladder. She swung over the edge and walked down to the third rung.  Greta stepped off the rung and put her boots on the front of the half inch steel ladder side bars and cupped the back of the side bars with her hands then she pulled her pack off and screamed while slid down the ladder.

Just before she hit the ground she leaned back and applied pressure with her boot soles while she pulled against the back of the risers with her gloved hands.  She timed it so that she was almost stopped when she reached the ground but she pitched over backwards at the base of the ladder and lay still.  The other policeman had watched as she apparently lost her footing and fell.  He ran over and yelled for his partner then he knelt and reached for Greta.  He felt for a pulse in her neck and she hit him with the sap as he leaned back and concentrated.  Then she handcuffed him to the bottom ladder rung.  She checked that he was unconscious but all right and then stood up and walked to where her backpack was dangling four or five feet off the ground and untied it.  She shook the rope that was tied in a circle around the upper rung of the ladder and through the pack straps and pulled it down and stowed it and her gloves and booties in the pack along with her balaclava.  Then she tied her hair in a ponytail and put on a ball cap with her hair hanging out the back, put on sunglasses and unfolded a collapsible hiking stick and shouldered her pack.

Greta looked at the police car.  It was fairly well out of sight so she would just leave it.  She looked at the station and decided she could make it across the yard to the station on the pedestrian walk before she really need to pee bad enough to have an accident.  She glanced at her watch and decided that she would take the train to Manchester that left in twenty minutes and get off there and then hitchhike back to Liverpool and catch a bus back to the training station in Wales and screw them all.  She was done trying to do stupid stuff they set up just to please them.  If she was going to kill people she would do it her way.

When she got back to England from Russia and the cycle trip two days later, she reported in and had been shown into the office of the head of Courier Services.  The head of Courier Services had looked at her and asked what had happened on the ferry.  She reported what had happened and he nodded and then told her to report to Special Activities Section since they wanted to debrief her.  He gave her an internal base pass and a name and office number.  Greta had gone to the elevators and looked for one that went down.  None of the elevators showed anything below the lobby and she had finally asked the man at the information desk about going down.  She had showed him her pass and he had escorted her to an elevator and depressed the call button.  When the elevator arrived he had motioned Greta in and closed the door then inserted a key in the control panel and punched the down button three times.  The elevator had started down and traveled for a while.  Finally, it stopped and the door opened into a tiled room with a door in the end wall at right angles to the elevator.  The man motioned her out and she stepped out of the elevator while he remained in it.

“Excuse me but how do I call the elevator to go back up?” asked Greta.

“They will do it for you if they decide you should go up,” said the man as the door slid shut.

After the elevator door closed the door in the sidewall of the lobby opened and she walked through it into a small room with another door at the other end and a full body scanner in the middle.  The door closed behind her and a voice on a speaker asked her who she was and what she wanted.  Greta explained about being told to come down to Special Section to be debriefed on a recent mission.  She was asked to put anything in her pockets or any jewelry or weapons and her shoes in one of a stack of plastic tubs that were on a table and slide it into a compartment that had opened in the wall and then to walk into the scanner and be checked.  She emptied her pockets took off her shoes and put everything in one of the tubs and slid it into the compartment and a sliding door closed.  Then she walked into the scanner and was cleared. 

The door out opened and the speaker voice said. “Pick up your shoes and stuff.  Are you the new recruit?”

Greta shrugged and walked down the hall and located the door she was looking for and knocked.  A soft female voice told her to come in and she opened the door.

An older lady was setting behind a desk.  She looked at Greta and smiled and stood up and walked around the desk and indicated a pair of comfortable chairs setting in one corner of the room facing the windows.  There was a table in front of the chairs with a tray with a tea service and cups and some fresh muffins.  She led Greta to the chairs and sat down in one and indicated the other one to Greta.

Greta sat down and looked at the lady who looked back at her.  The lady was probably sixty, thought Greta.  She definitely completely filled the space she occupied from one side to the other.  She had never been a great beauty but she was still striking and had presence and character that just screamed class. She had naturally grey hair with strands and traces of her original auburn still visible in it.  Her eyes were hazel and currently a pale yellow green and could probably appear any color from chestnut to grass green depending on her mood.  She was dressed in a casual suit of heather tweed that had obviously been made for her since it fit perfectly.  Her shoes were comfortable soft black leather low heel countrywoman’s walking shoes also custom made.  She had on a wedding ring but no engagement ring and a single strand of pearls.

She smiled and said, “Would you like some tea, dear?  I need to talk to you about what happened on the ferry.  I know you are probably bothered since according to your contact you actually are the one that disposed of both of the Russians.  It was very heroic of you and probably saved both your own life your and contacts life since they would have killed you.  I’m sorry it happened.  We didn’t expect anything to happen since you are only a courier and still quite young. “

Greta saw that the woman was studying her as she was studying the woman.  She really didn’t know how to respond since it had been obvious that the Russians were going to isolate her and her contact and shoot them and dump them over the side of the boat.  The only reason that Greta and her contact had been able to act first was because the Russians wanted to see what they would exchange so they could confiscate it.  She supposed that her contact could have acted first since he had been willing to dump bodies and clean up blood, but he hadn’t, so obviously it was up to her, even if she wasn’t a full agent.

Greta looked at the woman and made up her mind, “Yes I would like some tea with two sugars.  As far as the Russians, things just happen.  They needed to go and so I did it even if my contact was the agent and I am just a courier.  As far as how I am, I feel fine.”

The woman poured tea for both of them and added two spoons of sugar to Greta’s tea and one sugar and cream to hers.   Greta started sipping her tea and selected one of the muffins to nibble. The lady took a sip of tea and she got up and picked up her phone and punched a speed dial.

“Blossom,” said the lady, “could you come into my office for a minute?  I think we have a kindred spirit.”

The lady walked back to her chair and resumed drinking her tea while Greta finished her muffin and wiped her hands on a napkin.  A few moments later an interior door into the office opened and Lady Victoria Elaine Covington the Dowager Duchess of Camenshire, Permanent Assistant Minister for Economics and Policy on European Union Activities, the English delegate to the EUPOS Control Committee who was currently elected as chairman of the committee, and her big boss, walked in and looked appraisingly at Greta.

Greta had started working as a EUOPS courier and carrying things from place to place when she was eighteen.  She had completed several missions in and out of Russia posing as a schoolgirl and a tourist when she had been sent to contact an agent on the ferry from Stockholm to Saint Petersburg and give him a coded list of agents to contact.  He would give her information from his network.   She had boarded the ferry with her bicycle and backpack in Stockholm as a member of a cycle club and gone to the main lounge with the other members to talk and read until that evening.

She had a photograph of the agent she was contacting and a countersign to make sure of his identity so there would be no slip-ups.  He was supposed to contact her in the lounge and ask if she played chess.  Although Greta did play chess she was to refuse and suggest that they play cards. Then she was to take a deck of cards out of her book bag and they would play several hands. Finally, Greta would excuse herself to go to the restroom and lay the cards on the table. When she returned, the contact would have picked up the cards and substituted another deck. They would play several more hands and then the agent would invite her for a drink and then excuse himself and go to the bar after finding out Greta was too young to drink. Greta would put the deck of cards from the contact in her bag and go to the lounge to read and doze for the rest of the trip.

It was near sunset when the agent had approached Greta and suggested a game of chess then set up a board without asking, taken white, and opened.  Greta had looked at the contact and it was the right man.  Then he had used the verbal countersign and she had responded. After several moves, he had excused himself to go to the restroom and a man had followed him. Greta had waited until he returned and then said she thought she would get a tea while he considered his move and had walked to the snack bar. The same man had followed her. She had stopped in the restroom on the way back and written a question mark on a piece of toilet paper then returned to her seat.

Greta put the toilet paper in the contact’s lap and he had leaned forward over the board and leaned his chin on his hands.  He locked his fingers together under his nose with his thumbs on his chin covering his mouth and whispered.

“Two FSU agents.”

Greta nodded and they finished the game.

“Well, you won,” said Greta, “Buy me a drink to apologize?”

The contact had smiled and Greta had picked up her book bag and led the way to the veranda bar at the rear of the ferry.  The contact ordered two drinks and Greta smiled and motioned to the outdoor lounge area.  She walked out of the rear door and turned to the side of the ship and a quite deserted area on the walking track and her contact followed.  Greta motioned him to the wall and when one of the FSU agents came around the corner she hit him in the throat with the edge of a book bound with fabric covered aluminum covers that weighed about three pounds.  The blow collapsed the agent’s windpipe and he fought for breath and staggered back and reached for a pistol.  Greta hit him again in the temple and he collapsed on the deck.  Greta picked up his pistol and put it in her bag.

“Throw him over the side,” ordered Greta. “There are no windows below us.  Just enclosed car decks.  I’ll go get the other one.”

Greta’s contact wrestled the inert man to the rail and threw him over.  Greta walked back into the bar and ordered another drink then she asked if the outside music could be turned on.  The bartender switched on the music and outside lights since it was past sunset and mixed Greta her drink.  Then she walked out again and turned the corner then crouched down.  The other FSU agent turned the corner with his pistol out and yelled hands up Greta raised her hands and put the pistol against the agents stomach and shot upward three times in rapid succession and pulled her hand away before she got any blood on her.  The pressure of the gun against his stomach and the music from the speakers had effectively muffled the shots.  She threw the gun over the side followed by the agents gun and then helped her contact heave the agents body over the rail.

They went in and exchanged decks of cards and the contact went to a mid ship bar and Greta finished a rather mediocre novel and then dozed until the boat arrived in port.  When they arrived Greta had changed into jeans and a cycle club tee shirt and a scarf and joined the group of cyclists that were going to visit the Hermitage and ridden off with them while her contact stayed on the ferry, which was Swedish territory, and booked a return cabin since he didn’t think returning to Russia was a good idea.

After her family immigrated, Greta was enrolled in a special school for police and bureaucrats’ children where her mother had joined the staff.  At the school it was discovered that Greta had a special gift for languages.  She already spoke and read German and Russian.  Her family had spoken Russian at home in Germany to stay in practice for when they were recalled to Moscow and her mother taught her to read and write Russian so she could immediately enter school.  Greta had learned to read and write German on the playground and in her kindergarten.  At the Russian school in Saint Petersburg she had learned to speak, read, and write English and French.  She had gone through school in an accelerated liberal arts course and when she was sixteen she had graduated and then started attending the polytechnic school.  Greta had discovered her great passion there.  She had learned to fly both fixed wing planes and helicopters in less than a year and started working at the flight center in exchange for advanced commercial flying lessons.  When she wasn’t eating, sleeping, or studying she was flying.

One day she left for work early to finish a complicated navigation assignment that needed to be completed that day.  She had been reviewing some of her papers on fuel calculations after breakfast and when she sat down on the trolley she discovered that she had the papers but had been so preoccupied that she forgot her lunch and brief case with the rest of her assignment. At the next stop, she jumped off the trolley and ran back toward her parents’ apartment that was six or seven blocks back up the street. When she got a block away from her parent’s apartment, she saw cars with red lights blocking the street and an ambulance. She stopped and asked one of the people standing on the sidewalk what had happened.

“I don’t know. Suddenly, all these cars showed up and the police ran in,” said the man. “I heard that one of the neighbors said someone was shooting.”

Greta started to move toward the police line when she saw her father’s cousin walking toward her. He made push back motions at the crowd with his hands and then ducked under the police tape and took her arm and kept walking.  When they were a block away he pulled her to a transit station bench and sat down.

“What’s going on, Uncle Rolf? Where are Momma and Daddy?” asked Greta.

“There is no easy way to say this, Greta. They are dead.  Your father started shooting and they killed them. Thank God I saw you. They probably have people waiting at your work. Your father and I both worked for both sides long ago and the wrong people finally found out about him. I am going to give you some money. Take a taxi to the airport. Do you have your papers?” 

Greta nodded and he handed her an envelope.

“Give me your papers and I will try to confuse things.  Here, take this. It is all the cash I have and there are some new identity papers in there too. I’ll call and there will be a ticket to Berlin at the Aeroflot counter under a name that matches the papers. You are Greta Steiner now, a German student.  Speak only German until you get to Berlin. A blond-haired woman with a red carnation in her hands will meet you in Berlin. She will rush up and call you Nina and give you a hug and the flower. Go with her, they will keep you safe.”

She had boarded the plane in a state of shock and the woman had met her when they landed. Greta went with the woman and they trained her in what they did, and she had spied and betrayed and murdered and fornicated and lied for them. And they had been her family and they had kept her safe.

So where do we begin? Well, at the beginning, of course.

Greta Steiner was born Alexandra Maria Fedorova in 1985 in Berlin, Germany.  She is the daughter of Colonel Yuri Alexis Fedorova and his wife Angelina Tatiana Fedorova.  She has an older sister Charlotte Angelina Fedorova born in 1983.

Her father was a colonel in the Stasi, the East German Secret Police, and her family lived in a pleasant apartment block with a number of other officers and their families. The building had a park, a childcare center, and a kindergarten where her mother worked as a teacher. She had started accompanying her mother to work when she was two and had become an old hand at the playground by the time she was four. Since her father was a senior secret police officer, she was deferred to and spoiled, although not as much as some of the other officer’s children.

In 1989, when Greta was four, the Stasi was at the peak of its power and employed hundreds of thousands of people, both openly and covertly, but the solidarity of the Soviet Block was splintering and during the summer of 1989 Hungary and Czechoslovakia had both opened their borders and thousands of East Germans had fled to the west. The Stasi had looked to the government for leadership but the politicians had debated and dithered and decided nothing.  In November crowds of people had swarmed onto the Berlin wall from both sides and started ripping it down.  Greta’s mother and father had talked quietly about this and the increasing violence against members of the Stasi’s employees and the start of official denunciations of individual members of the force itself.  Finally, her father had said they would need to go somewhere, or he would need to find some other way to save them since the citizens were starting to rebel and demand blood for previous Stasi abuses.

About a week after the wall came down, Greta’s mother had sent her home early from the childcare center since she had a cough.  Greta was curled up in the big chair under a blanket napping when her father came home early. He had taken a bottle of vodka out of the cupboard and poured a water glass full and then gone out on the balcony and looked across the city and started sipping. Finally, he threw down the rest of the glass of vodka in one swallow and took off his great coat and put it on a chair then unbuckled his revolver and dropped it on the balcony. He scooted a chair up to the railing and stepped up on it.

Greta ran to the patio door and yelled the first thing that came into her head, “Daddy, you need to put up your gun. Momma will be angry if you leave it lying around. I’m cold and sick and mommy sent me home early. Will you give me a cuddle and some tea, please?”

Her father had looked down at her and then out at the city, which was getting wilder and more dangerous every day as the old society crumbled. Then, he stepped down off the chair and retrieved his pistol and picked her up.

“You are right, Princess. “I need to put my gun away, probably for good. Now, let’s go and sit in the big chair and I will make you tea with honey and you can sit on my lap under a blanket and I will read to you about the frog in the deep well and how he got out. How would you like to move? I think I can get a job in Russia on the police force in St. Petersburg. I have a cousin there that is a captain in the civil police. If a frog can get out of a well, a colonel should be able to get out of a very sticky situation.”

The next day her father had come home with travel permits and Russian papers for all of them that his cousin the captain in the Saint Petersburg police had supplied. They had packed and moved to Russia and her father had joined the civil police as a detective.

So who is Greta Steiner?

Greta Steiner is one of the young women that features prominently in teenage boys daydreams, and let’s be honest, older men’s desires.  She is five feet six and a half inches tall and weighs one hundred and twenty two pounds.  She has creamy skin, generous breasts, a small waist and long shapely legs.  Her arms are beautiful and slim and she has small hands with long delicate fingers.  If you caught her with her shoes off, her feet are regular, slim, and dainty with perfect toes and scarlet painted nails.  Her gently curling raven black hair falls to the middle of her back and she has a heart shaped face with generous lips and slightly almond shaped deep blue eyes with long lashes.  Her face shows just a trace of sun but her complexion is clear and smooth and her face unlined. She looks like she in her mid twenties but still a long way from the dreaded thirty.  Her smile is infrequent, but when you are favored it is brilliant and beautiful.

Greta is popular with both sexes.  She likes good food, good wine, good conversation and good friends.  She also likes dancing and skiing and is very accomplished at both of them.  She is naturally athletic and moves gracefully, smoothly, and always with perfect balance and confidence. Her friends say they have never seen her trip, knock over a drink, step off a curb awkwardly or try to push a door the wrong direction.  She doesn’t appear to work at being what she is any more than a cat works at being totally in command and beautiful.  As a mater of fact, she has often been compared to a cat, poised, graceful, completely in control of the situation and her surroundings, and totally at ease with herself and the world.

Greta doesn’t have any close family of her own and considers EUOPS to be her only family.  She is on good terms with most of the other people in EUOPS in her particular line of work and only slightly peeved with her supervisor and the management.  She makes a very good salary and doesn’t spend much on outside expenses except for plane rent since she loves to fly.  She is compassionate and supports charitable organizations of all kinds.  She donates to organizations that feed the hungry, care for old people, and help displaced persons, refugees, and orphans.  She is an active feminist and politically liberal.  She buys season tickets to theater and musical groups and donates for their support although her work schedule makes it hard to attend. 

She is in as near to perfect physical condition as an individually supervised training and conditioning regime can maintain her, and the raw material was good quality to start with.  She does not like getting up in the morning to run, having daily workout sessions with her trainer, and an enforced and supervised diet, although she tolerates all of the bother because of her job.  So what kind of a job has a hectic schedule and requires exceptional physical conditioning and intense mental control and total dedication?  Killing people, of course.  Her job is to remove inconvenient people including important people in international positions of power and she is obviously very good at what she does since she is still alive.

Greta is beautiful, caring, intelligent, socially involved, and loyal to her friends.  She is also a stone cold killer.  She has no emotional involvement in her work and does not personally identify with the people she kills.  As far as she is concerned she could be doing the washing or reading the paper instead of murdering people who still want to live.  The people that she shoots, blows up, knifes, forces off the road, or kills with an overdose of narcotics or poison are not real.  As far as she is concerned they are just inconvenient or in the way of some activity or outcome EUOPS wants.

Her emotional and philological councilor has talked to others in the group of doctors that try to keep the EUOPS assassins semi sane and field ready during their normally very brief careers and said he wished he could do a case study report on her since she is one of a kind as far as he knows and she is totally unbelievable and unique.

“I swear to God she could poison the whole staff and all the children at the Cairo Sisters of Charity and Grace Pediatric Hospital and then go home and have a good supper and a full nights sleep,” said her psychiatric councilor, “Then she could get up in the morning and write a support check to an orphanage with absolutely no conflicting emotions or regrets.  She has absolutely no empathy with her victims, none.  They are no more real than photographs, maybe even less as far as she is concerned.  I wish to God I could actually work with her and find out what goes on behind that beautiful face.  Something horrible must have happened to make her what she is.  What is it that allows her to turn a person into a nonentity she doesn’t recognize as human?  I’m glad I’m not her friend and that we have no nonprofessional contact.  She is as dangerous as a snake under your pillow because you never know when she will decide you aren’t a person anymore.”

Greta Steiner, a EUOPS, assassin is promoted from a field position to a senior operatives position and assigned Dove Abraham a nineteen year old Mossad ex-assassin as an assistant. They are told to form a team and steal all of the Syrian gold reserves. Other than being a very determined young woman Greta has absolutely no experience in this type of an operation. The chairman of the EUOPS operating committee takes her aside and tells her that the task is impossible but to go and make a valiant effort and then fail. It becomes apparent that there is a political battle going on in the European Union and other countries about stealing the Syrian gold and that someone is trying desperately to cover up something. When it looks like Great and her team will succeed in stealing some gold they are labeled rogue and kill on sight by EUOPS. Meanwhile someone is making deliberate leaks to the Syrians to compromise the mission and make Greta and her team everyone’s target. To further complicate the situation Greta and Dove realize they are falling in love.

A vintage postcard from Thebes in the Valley of the Kings.

From personal collection of J. Merry.