Mama watches her protege leave with curious eyes, before Olena exits, passing Uranus and Bagration in the hall as they head in for their own debrief. Both men meet her eyes - one with triumph, the other envy, but they pass by without a word. Olena figures it's the last she'll hear from them until they have another mission together.
Wearing a coat over an inauspicious trouser/sweater combo, Olena heads out into Lubyanka Square, rushing over to descend into the metro station.
After a few false starts, she crams herself into a car packed with workers hurriedly returning from their lunch breaks. After a circuitous walk around central Moscow, she finds herself outside the Vaganova Academy.
She heads inside, getting waved past reception and heading into the backrooms. She opens up her locker, stripping down before donning her leotard, placing the Andropov documents in her gym bag. Olena has been dancing since girlhood - at one point the state actually had her on a list of perspective Bolshoi applicants, but of course they'd eventually decided she could be better used elsewhere. That her CIA contact was a dancing instructor was apparently just a happy coincidence - it provided an easy excuse for the two of them to meet without Olena having to suspiciously escape the eyes of Soviet surveillance. Hell, Mama had even
encouraged Olena to retake the hobby - it was a good way to keep her footwork strong.
The door to the studio creaks open, and she looks at her contact across the floor as she does her stretches.
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Ingrid Hauser, East German. A former Bolshoi dancer and a committed socialist who'd brought honor to the state with her skill until her career was cut short by injury. How the hell she went from that to an apparently decently high ranking officer in the CIA is a mystery, but Olena supposes it'll have to wait. She gazes at the other woman as she crosses the floor. Ingrid's face is kindly, her expressions delicate, demeanour soft where Mama's are hard. But something in the eyes makes Olena feel that neither woman is to be fucked with lightly.
"Lena, just in time." Ingrid calls out from across the room, smiling. "Come, I'm just finishing my stretches."