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Red Moon: Revolution: Chapter 22

Director Brennan sat with her forehead firmly clasped in her hands, her thumbs rubbing her temples. Work had been excruciating the past few days. The team was sent off to Cairo and were slowly rooting out Shaab's forces there.

It had started well. Vasili came in, disguised as tourists along with several other werewolves and some of her agents. They got in unnoticed and went to the German and Russian Embassy to try and find out where Shaab was hiding. Intelligence showed that he had put men in those specific offices to try and keep track of any of Brennan's or Peter's people who would come after then.

Despite her best efforts to keep their travels secret, Shaab knew they were coming and set up ambushes in both of the embassies.

Two bombs later, made to look like a terrorist attack, and three injured agents later, Brennan was swamped in paperwork and had been getting phone calls all day.

Vasili and the rest of the people that went with him needed a safe place to hide out while the whole situation calmed down. Both Egyptian, Russian and German military units were called in. The city was on high alert, but not as bad as Seattle since the recent Arab Spring several years ago had caused an increase in terrorism.

No one had claimed responsibility for the attack, but western media was already pointing fingers at a number of Islamist extremist groups that were known to be active in the country. That made it easier to keep attention away from Vasili, but not easy enough.

It was two days of constant, round the clock work, but she had managed to get Vasili and the rest of his people to safety on the outskirts of the city where they would continue to look for Shaab, but they were beginning to believe that while Shaab's men were active in Cairo after a run in with a lone Inquisition agent that they had captured. He didn't know where Shaab was, which hinted that he wasn't in the city since any Inquisition agent would know if their boss was in the same city as them.

For the time being, Brennan was going to have them stay put. She didn't want anymore event occurring until the city calmed down and they could go in and try and kidnap a more informative agent to interrogate.

Now the day was over, or the work day. It had just become morning and the morning rush was picking up. From her office, she could hear the traffic slowly picking up.

She closed her eyes. It had been a long night, keeping in touch with people in other time zones.

She was ready to go home when a knock came at the door.

"Knock knock." Henrik rapped his knuckle on the door and stepped in with a smile on his face that quickly faded when he saw the bags under hers. "You've looked better."

"Not recently." She spared him a smile. "So much work and so little time to do it." She opened the large drawer of his desk and swept papers into it. She didn't need them to distract her while she was talking to Henrik. "What brings you here?"

Henrik wasn't in the suit that he had been in several days ago when he had made his first visit and promised to help her find the culprit to the bombing. He was in a pair of shorts with too many pockets and hiking shoes that hinted that he was heading out of the city to the countryside later.

"I..." He raised up a folder. "Have a lead." While he was there on business, he would have preferred pleasure. Seeing Brennan again had stirred old feelings from so many years ago and it had put a lot of things on his mind. His palms were sweaty when Brennan took it, but didn't open it. Instead, she set it down and gave Henrik her attention.

"That was fast." She did want to open the folder, tear it open and pour over its contents and discover who exactly was responsible for the outrage, but the day was young, technically.

"I pushed my people hard." Henrik sat down and adjusted the front of his shirt to stop it from wrinkling. It was an old pet peeve of his, he hated wrinkles, so much so that most of his clothes were on hangars. "They didn't like it, but it paid off."

"I sure hope so." Brennan fingered the corner of the folder, imagining the contents. It wasn't that thick of a folder and she could see the shiny white surface of a photo with a time and date printed on the bottom. It was a photo from a traffic camera. "I've only just gotten this place up and running. Your help is invaluable, there would have been no way I would have been able to do this with all of my work."

"I can see." He saw the bags under her eyes, large dark sacks that hung just below her eyes like little parasites that sucked away her renowned vigor. "I should get going so you can get some sleep." He moved to get up.

Brennan shot forward, too hasty for her own liking. "Wait." They stared at each other. Both thought about how they should have outgrown these awkward moments years ago. She could recall the first time Henrik had asked her out.

He had approached her shortly after class on some random Thursday. He was 16, she was 17, only three months separated them. The school house was emptying, teenagers were pouring out, eager to get home and he caught up to her next to the wall.

"Sarah." He called out. It was a time when she still went by her given first name, when she was just Sarah to everyone, when she didn't care about politics and spying. At the time, she aspired to be an actor, to perform on Broadway after her father had brought her posters from a business trip he had gone on. She had wanted to go, but she had school.

"Hmm?" She turned around, her hands on the straps of her bag that held her textbooks. "Oh, Hi Henrik." He stopped just shy of her and leaned forward and gasped to catch his breath. He had never been one to be that athletic. He wasn't overweight, but he could still lose a few pounds.

He stood back up, already shifting his weight from one foot to the other. She didn't notice, he had been acting strange for some time now and his antics just melded into the background. "You doing anything..." He licked his lips and looked at the wall for a moment, eyes focusing on the graffiti that covered it for miles. "You doing anything this Friday, uhh, tomorrow?"

"Well." She knew what he was doing. He could never hide his intentions, no matter how he hard he tried. He had trouble keeping eye contact, got sweaty palms, everything that could physically go wrong short of peeing himself did go wrong. "I have piano lessons, afternoon lessons in history, my dad is having some people over..." She listed one bogus activity after another and watched all hope leave his face. "But." his head shot up. "I think I have time for something after school." With that she turned around and walked back home.

Henrik stood there for nearly half an hour before he actually cried. In the shadow of the Berlin Wall, no one saw him cry.

"You cried!" Brennan laughed. "You actually cried." She slapped her knee and Henrik nodded, holding onto a cup of coffee that she had one of her people bring in for them.

"Yes, I cried." He admitted it. "I danced a little as well." He was reddening a little at the tips of his ears, he blamed the bit of scotch he poured into his cup of coffee.

"And I'm only learning about this now." She knew a lot of things about Henrik, but this was entirely new to her. She was almost mad the this was kept from her for so long.

"I've mostly forgotten about it until now." He chuckled. He was relaxed now with his leg kicked up over the other. "Which brings up a question."

"Well." She grinned. "I've got this meeting with some people."

"Come one." He said and she couldn't keep a straight face.

"OK, yeah." She gave in. "Uhmm. I actually don't know when I am free though." She dug into her drawers and pulled out a notebook planner. She flipped through the pages, a little overwhelmed at how little time she allowed for herself. The Alpha, Peter, was right, she did need to get our more.

Henrik held onto his warm mug tightly. Here he was, a old, middle aged man, asking a woman out on a date, it made him feel young again. After so long, he could fix things again, even his children, all grown up had pushed him to do this. They along with his late wife had known about this old relationship. It had put some strain, but he had loved his wife legitimately, but he would also love the woman he left behind as well.

"Coffee next Saturday?" She miraculously found an empty spot in her schedule and was already penning it in.

"Sounds good." He wiggled in his seat. It was now official, nothing was more official than having Sarah Brennan writing it down in pen. Even in school, she kept a tight grip on her time, something she learned from her father.

They talked for a few more minutes. He told her about how his children, all three of them had pushed him to come here. According to him, they watched too much American television. "So much drama and weird love triangles." He shuddered. He preferred a good murder mystery, something that required him to think.

"It was nice. Very nice." She hugged him when it was finally time for him to go. She didn't want to let go. When he was there, suddenly she didn't feel tired any more, she didn't feel like there was a war going on, everything became less urgent.

"It was." They let go of their embrace and suddenly he was gone. He slipped out of the door and left her this time. She didn't cry though, she wasn't the crying type. Instead, she felt a little weak at the knees and slowly wandered back to her desk where the folder that he had left stared at her.

It emitted a gravity that pulled her in. She was almost afraid to open it now. All those good feelings she had, she knew that they would go away once she opened it.

She stared at the light tan folder for several minutes. Her schedule for the day was already ruined. Henrik had barged in and scrambled her entire day, not that she minded, it let her waste more time by just looking at the folder.

"Now or never." She finally sighed and with a quick flip of her wrist she opened it. A few photos scattered across her desk and she picked up the closest one.

It was a series of frame by frame shots of a street. She recognized it, it was a street that was two blocks away from the bunker. The supply trucks often took this road to avoid heavier traffic.

There were lots of cars. The supply truck had called in about heavy traffic before arriving and at one point pulled of to the side when the engine had overheated. They were in an older vehicle and it had been on its last legs. This was what the photos were covering.

One driver had the hood up and was working on the engine while the other went to the back to check on the cargo. The man, in a blue jumpsuit opened the back up and climbed in. For some time, nothing happened and then he got out without closing it up. He went to the front and began to talk to the other person by the engine.

Several more seconds of frames passed by and then a figure came into view. She stopped when a new figure came into view. It was a woman.

The woman held onto a small package, the same package that showed up in footage taken from surviving tapes inside the bunker. They had went over everything and it was that package that stood out time and time again, now this woman was crawling into the truck and managed to slip away before the drivers closed up the truck and went back onto the road

Brennan was about to set down the photos when she noticed that there were more. They were close ups of the figure in question and Brennan nearly dropped it. She knew who it was, she had just seen her. It was Sergei's wife.