The road to Kurchatov...

The EIS team have arrived in Semipalatinsk, Eastern Kazakhstan, on route to liberate Albert Einstein from the walled city of Kurchatov. The team discovered that there was an enhanced individual within the local hospital and two of the team headed in to discover if the Russians were operating and enhanced project. They discovered a radiation scared baby, but as Mimi examined the child she collapsed to the floor crying uncontrollably. The EIS team consists of Alfie Baldrick, the one man rifle section; Mimi Dubois, maîtresse of skills; Madeline Forsyth, the living shadow; and Sven Hyse, the Norwegian shapeshifter.

Semipalatinsk, Eastern Kazakhstan, USSR, January 1950

As the nurse rushes into the corridor shouting for a doctor, Madeline slides as a shadow out from the dark corner of the room and over the the enhanced baby's cot. She can see that the child has physical deformities similar to those seen due to exposure to radiation. As she is looking, she notices that the child seems to be attempting to make hand signals at her. Due to the child's deformities and the lack of fine motor control that the baby demonstrates Madeline struggles to decipher what it is attempting to say, but she finally is able to interpret it as:

Help me!

Madeline is momentarily surprised, and then in hushed tones says:

Nod your head if you are Mimi!

A look of utter concentration descends across the baby's face and it manages a vague nod, at that point Madeline hears footsteps approaching along the corridor and so she slips beneath the baby Mimi's cot and hides. Madeline watches as the legs of the nurse and a man enter the room. The man kneels down next to the body of what was once Mimi and she can see that it is a doctor who produces a syringe and injects them with something. Within seconds the body of Mimi stops thrashing around and the whimpering subsides. The doctor searches through the bodies pockets and finds Mimi's false identification papers. At that point two more men enter the room, looking very much like orderlies, they lift Mimi's body into a wheelchair and as they are doing so Madeline takes the opportunity to slide from the bottom of the cot and onto the underside of the wheelchair in her shadowy form.

The orderlies take Mimi's body down to the ground floor and into an examination room where they move her to a bed and remove her clothing before restraining her. After a cursory examination the doctor says that he will have to inform the correct authorities as she was found within the restricted ward. He then leaves the room, leaving the nurse to watch over Mimi's body. After twenty minutes he returns with a pair of Soviet soldiers in tow, as he is entering the room Madeline overhears one of the soldiers asking the doctor what the woman's condition is, the doctor responds:

I have no idea. She was discovered in a locked room in the restricted ward having some kind of seizure. I have given her a large dose of morphine to calm her down but I can see no obvious reason for the seizure.

The doctor then hands the soldier Mimi's identification papers and the soldier nods and says:

We will take it from here. Clear the room!

The doctor quickly hustles out of the room, but the nurse lingers a moment before shaking her head and leaving. Leaving one soldier on guard the other follows the doctor and the nurse from the room. Madeline remains still beneath the wheelchair looking for her moment, but the guard seems very alert and so not wishing to leave Mimi's body she decides to wait and see what happens.

In another part of town, Sven and a mute Alfie are sat in a subdued bar working their way through a bottle of vodka. Sven is talking at Alfie in Russian, with the primary Baldrick not understanding a single word of it but nodding sagely all of the way through. When he is sure that there is no one within ear shot Alfie asks in a hushed whisper if they should check in on the other half of the team. Sven shakes his head and whispers back:

They know what they are doing. Drink up, let's get some sleep.

An hour after the soldier left the examination room he returns with two more soldiers. While one of them bundles up all of Mimi's belongings, the others manhandle her body into the wheelchair. They then wheel her out of the rear of the hospital to a waiting military vehicle, and transfer Mimi's body into the back of the vehicle. While they are busy doing this Madeline slips quietly from beneath the wheelchair and onto the underside of the truck. Two of the soldiers climb into the back of the vehicle with Mimi's body while the others climb into the cab and the truck pulls away.

Mimi slowly comes to consciousness, keeping her eyes closed she assess her surroundings and realises that she is within a moving vehicle and that she is restrained to a stretcher. She pushes out with her senses and can sense a single enhanced below her somewhere. Mimi opens her eyes and can see the two soldiers sat on the other side of the truck to her, one of the soldiers notices her open her eyes and shouts through to the soldiers in the front of the cab that the prisoner is awake. One of the soldiers in the cab shouts back in Russian:

We are an hour away. Just watch her closely.

Mimi takes the risk and attempts to flirt with the soldier and gain his confidence, but the soldier responds by smashing the butt of his gun into her ribs and shouts at her to shut her filthy mouth. Hearing all of this makes up Madeline's mind. She spends a few seconds summoning six shadows from the darkness beneath the truck and leads them into the inside of the vehicle. The seven shadows slip quietly and unnoticed into the back of the military ambulance and Madeline commands her shadowy army to attack the Russian soldiers. As they do she summons a patch of utter darkness blinding them to what is happening.

As soon as it goes black Mimi transforms into a shadow and slips from her bonds. The six shadows attack the soldiers and start to drain their strength, in utter panic one of the soldiers pulls the trigger on his Kalashnikov and sprays the truck with a wide spread of bullets, one of which hits Madeline but is shrugged off by her enhanced armour. The other bullets split the air above a shadowy Mimi and stitch across the partition between the rear of the ambulance and the cab. All hell breaks loose with the guards screaming and shooting and the shadows swiftly reducing them to quivering wrecks. The soldier pulls the trigger again on his AK-47 but the weapon jams. It is then that the military ambulance swerves off of the icy road and ploughs through a ditch before striking a large tree stump and ending up on its side.

The only sound breaking the silence is the drip of diesel and oil from the wrecked vehicle and then a groan from Mimi as she slides towards Madeline. The British agent turns solid and throws open the back of the ambulance to discover that they are in the middle of no where. She looks back at Mimi and notices the trickle of blood running down the French woman's forehead. She also spots the two soldiers unmoving on the floor of the truck and takes a moments to dismiss her shadowy assassins. Singling for Mimi to stay put, Madeline steps out of the back of the ambulance and heads towards the cab. She discovers one of the soldiers halfway through the windscreen and the other unconscious in the passenger seat. She moves to the passenger and searches him finding Mimi's fake identification papers as well as a security pass for the soldier and Mimi's clothes.

Ten minutes later Mimi is dressed and the pair have also put on a set of the soldiers clothing over the top of their own to stay warm in the freezing conditions. They strip the soldiers of their weapons and security passes and set out in the direction of Semipalatinsk. As they trudge through the snow, Mimi looks to Madeline and thanks her for saving her once again. Madeline just smiles at the petite French lady and pulls her fur coat up around her ears against the cold.

Just before six in the morning the pair stumble into their hotel room, frozen to the core, and pull themselves a hot bath to thaw out. They push a note written in Russian under Alfie and Sven's door and head for bed. Alfie wakes up and finds the note, but not being able to read it, he waits for Sven to wake before getting him to read it. Sven scans it and says:

They're fine.

He then screws it up and throws it in the bin. By midday the four agents have regrouped and relayed what happened the night before, they also agree that they are just going to attempt to drive to Kurchatov and see what happens. Madeline spends the afternoon adjusting the Russian uniforms so that they fit the Baldricks in case a disguise is required, and they hand him the guns taken from the crash site. Alfie inspects the guns and spots that one of the Kalashnikovs is jammed. His hands move in well practised motions while his face retains the look of a docile hound, Madeline and Mimi look on with a new found respect as it is poetry in motion as he clears the weapon. He looks up as if he had just tuned back into the real world and declares that the weapon is of good quality.

The following morning Alfie stashes the AK-47 under the trucks drivers seat, wrapped in a blanket, and climbs into the drivers seat and starts up the engine. They see no sign of the crash on their journey and push forwards for a couple of hours before pulling off of the road and attempting to hide the truck while Sven transforms into a snowy owl and flies west to scout out the walled city. On his journey he sees a couple of military trucks heading towards Semipalatinsk but he pays them no heed.

Madeline hears the sound of vehicles approaching along the road and warns the others, as they listen they hear the vehicles start to slow down and finally stop. Madeline and Mimi quickly transform into shadows and slip into the bunk area of the truck just as the hear the crunch of boots approaching the truck. At the last second, Mimi changes her mind and becomes solid again before jumping into Alfie's lap and landing an amorous kiss upon his grubby face. There is a bang on the door and someone shouts in Russian to see their identification papers. Alfie opens the truck door and hands the soldier their papers and while one soldier takes the papers and walks back towards his own truck, the others drag Alfie and Mimi from the vehicle and slam them into the side of the truck and start to search them.

The two soldiers take it in turns to roughly search Mimi, getting as much perverse joy from it as they can but finding nothing of interest. When Alfie looks over the other soldier smashes the butt of his gun into the small of Alfie's back driving him into the side of the truck. When they pat down Alfie they discover a knife and a pistol, and once again smash him in the back with the butts of their rifles. Madeline watches on as best she can from her hiding place within the truck and readies herself for action. The soldier that had returned to his truck returns with an officer and one of the searchers shows him the weapons and says:

This stinky bastard had these!

The officer looks both Alfie and Mimi up and down before saying:

There is a problem with your paperwork. You are not allowed to be here!

Mimi looks on demurely and tells the officer that they are part of a team engaged in carrying out a survey for the Ministry of Agriculture and Procurement, and that they had headed along the road to get some alone time away from their boss Dama Orloff. The officer considers this for a moment and then nods, waving for the soldier to hand back Alfie's weapons.

You should return to your Dama immediately. This area is strictly off limits.

The soldiers and the officer return to their trucks and begin to drive away slowly, Alfie pulls the teams truck back onto the road and follows them at a distance.

Sven glides through the air above the walled city of Kurchatov and gets the lay of the land. He can see that it does have a civilian population, but it also has a significantly larger military presence. He spots an airfield to one side and makes a mental note of the cargo plane stationed there. He then spies several newly constructed buildings and when he glides in for a closer look he can see a statue of what he can only describe as a very sciency object. He next moves on and gets an idea of the outlaying defences before heading back in the direction of the truck and the rest of his team.

He finds that the truck has gone and follows the tracks back onto the road towards Semipalatinsk. He eventually catches up to the truck which is moving very slowly and falling behind two military trucks that appear to be pulling away from them. He lands in the back of the truck and transforms back into himself before banging on the partition to let the others know that he is there. Eventually the military trucks pull away from them and Alfie turns their truck around and starts to drive back towards Kurchatov. By this time it is just before dusk and so Alfie switches places with Mimi, and using Madeline's borrowed dark vision and Alfie's borrowed ability to drive, the French lady drives on with the lights off into the darkness.

They pull the truck off of the road a mile away from the walled city and drive down track towards the frozen river. Mimi stops the truck as close to the river as she can and once the team have got all of their gear out she sticks it into gear and sends it out across the frozen surface. When it is fifteen foot from the shoreline the ice beneath it cracks and the truck is pitched into the frigid waters. Sven scots forwards and manages to lead the team to a large concrete storage building near to a jetty. Madeline picks the large padlock and they discover that it is a storage unit obviously connected to the summer business of the nearby jetty. The team lock themselves in and rest up thinking about infiltrating the walled city of Kurchatov.