Albedo Castle

When they first met, Richard seemed an empty shell to her, she never knew he was a spy – but saw that he was pretending – skillfully, so well that no one would ever figure it out … But she felt that he was lying. He looked at her with his beautiful blue eyes, he followed her everywhere, not imposing, but offering – and giving help – in solving the problem … The problem that he himself created – so she would run into his arms, seeking protection.

The Circus considered the writer Stella Fracta dangerous – because of the popularity of her book about alchemy – and the popularization of the secrets of the Poets’ society. The Circus will never understand that there are no secrets – there’s only the level of engagement in the Great Work, the level of understanding and trust – in oneself and all the symbols that guide the alchemist towards his purpose over his lifetime.

MI6 is too rational to believe that nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo – are not just words and a magic recipe, they’re obvious keys and a process that describes any task.

When Richard’s world began to crumble – without asking for his permission – he suddenly understood. He stopped being a doll with broad shoulders, a taut ass and dry abs – but without a soul; he could no more unsee what he saw.

He simply understood that he never knew himself – and when the time came to choose, he had nothing to choose from. He suddenly understood that he was robbed – when they took his self, but gave him dozens of other biographies in exchange – and they were never enough anyway.

There will never be enough wardrobe sets – even the most exquisite ones – if he’s never been in his own skin – and doesn’t know his own reflection.

Richard remembered that he is someone, besides his undercover personas and missions, only when he fell in love. Alexandra herself had no idea she would fall in love – just a year ago she lay next to him like this and was waiting when this weirdo would finally leave – because Richard North was perfect and right in every way, but reeked of emptiness.

He revealed himself – she barely had to try. She just allowed him to get involved in her game, in her adventure, to see the world through her eyes – and in the end got an MI6 agent hook, line, and sinker.

She began to love him when he stopped pretending and hiding behind masks. When he admitted that he understands nothing – and asked her to help. When he shed his artificial guises and came naked, slightly frightened of his own nakedness, confused for want of habit – without prompts and safety nets.

He’s been to hell – more than once. He’s become a Poet – and watched everything crumble around him, everything he clung onto, everything that comprised his reality, be taken from him … He passed the first step of the Great Work – nigredo – and now it’s up to him to build his new reality anew, an alchemist’s reality, his albedo castle.

Richard is impatient … He’s used to everything turning out the first time. He’s used to people falling for his disarming smile and sweet appearance, he still, out of habit, makes kitty eyes and shakes his butt when he wants something. It didn’t work on Alexandra … She sometimes wondered whether it was the reason for his infatuation, attachment, obsession – when she simply didn’t notice him, didn’t fall for his tricks, didn’t react the way he expected.

It doesn’t matter. They have a lot in common – more than just compatible traumas that forge strong connections. She has a terrible temper – and not the calmest of lives … He has a circus leash on his neck, that’s no longer a jangling chain, it no longer digs into his neck with spikes and no longer strangles, but still doesn’t let him stray far.

He won’t shed the leash – because it’s not just his job, but his craft, that he excels at like no one else.

He can be anybody – that is his becoming. He creates worlds – through himself, lives in artificial reality, pulling others into it – like a real Poet.

Alexandra watched his long lashes tremble, his chest rise and fall under the corner of the blanket she covered him with when he fell asleep.

Now, the world under the name Richard North was in danger – and whatever it was, she would find it. Whether to destroy it or not was up to Richard.

6. The World

[Japan, Tokyo, Chuo City]

Richard woke up when the sun was down. He was alone in the hotel room, covered with a blanket, the lights of Tokyo glittered outside from the height of the skyscraper. Pain shot through his side at an awkward movement, he was wincing as he sat upright on the bed.

Next to him, on the empty half of the bed, lay a tarot card. The World – from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, with a half-naked woman in the center, surrounded by four characters: a youth, a bird of prey, a lion, and a bull.

Alexandra had left him a message – and is most likely walking around the evening city or having dinner somewhere … Richard wouldn’t mind a meal himself, he couldn’t remember the last time he ate, on the plane he couldn’t eat a morsel.

He would know the approaching footsteps from a thousand, when the door of the room opened he was still sitting on the bed, with a card in his hand and the corner of the blanket on his hips.

There was a container in Alexandra’s hands.

“Soup?” she declared right from the threshold.

Richard wanted to smile, but grew even more pensive and simply nodded.

“We’ll brainstorm later,” she went on. “You’ll tell me who these people are.”

“I can tell you now,” Richard replied. “About everyone except the lion.”

Instead of soup, Alexandra handed him the water bottle from the bedside drawer. Richard put the card on the bed and began to guzzle. She stopped him halfway through the bottle.

He was looking up into her eyes, sitting on the bed, he didn’t close the bottle.

“That’s you in the center,” he started. “The man in the menagerie is me.”

“I think it’s the opposite,” Alexandra chuckled. “At the very least, because you’re naked, at most – because you’re the main character of the story.”

Richard frowned, vertical lines on his nose bridge deepened even more.

“Possibly.”

“What are you doing?”

“Dancing.”

He remembered that the less he thought about it, the more accurate the interpretation would be.

“With two wands.”

“I have two of something – for balance,” Richard said. “Two of something.”

The dialogue sounded strange, but they understood each other perfectly well. Richard smiled weakly.

“The eagle, hawk, falcon, whatever the hell it is – the Circus …” he mused. “Because Falcon is chief of the Circus.”

Wordplay, symbolically meaningful surnames – and coincidences.

“The bull is Rote Stier.”

“Interesting,” Alexandra said as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

Richard drank water again, she didn’t take her eyes off him until he finished the bottle.

His full bladder was already making its presence felt, but he stubbornly refused to get up from the bed, unwilling to leave the conversation halfway through.

“What’s left is to figure out who the lion is.”

“What is a lion to you?”

She always asked that way, as if she knew the answer – and he, like an indolent student, was slow on the mark. She never gave him a ready solution – she made him think on his own, search for answers in his own system of symbols.

“The proud king of beasts, self-centered,” Richard recounted, “he surrounds himself with material benefits, chasing renown. Someone from the elite.”

He had no ideas about who it might be … Throughout various missions, he was always surrounded by the rich and the power-hungry, spoiled hypocrites who he had to pretend to be friends with. He was presented to them at the negotiation table, planted in their bed – so he would find out their secrets and draw closer to the control room.

He had too many enemies from the past. The one intending to spook him, threatening him with exposure, could be anybody.

“You said he called you by name.”

“The man in Rote Stier attire was a mercenary, he said what he was told to say. He was faceless, and it’s impossible to trace it back to the client through him.”

“He called you Richard North.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. On one hand, it could be one of your acquaintances,” Richard smirked, Alexandra maintained a neutral expression. “Someone who saw us together – while we were together: at your events, on the street, in Moscow, in London.”

“On the other hand,” she continued his line of thought, “someone could have seen you in the news and on social media, an old acquaintance could have seen you – and recognized you. That’s why he called you Richard North, with the public name – and not something else.”

“Fair.”

Richard sighed, ahead of him lay remembering all the lions – which were many. Lions, lionesses … Alexandra knew almost all of them – indirectly, through reading his dossier – that he gave to her when he travelled to Dante’s Hell – left it on the threshold, like hope. He didn’t fill her in on the details of the mission with the Rote Stier racing team – but she knew that he had spent these months working as a mechanic, travelling from one city to another across Formula One facilities.

“He said I was a dead man. This could be important, too.”

It was Alexandra’s turn to sigh.

“What does a dead man mean?”

He looked up at her – before that, he was looking at her hands with long white nails, folded on her knees.

“That he’s going to kill me. Or wishes for my death or—”

“That Richard North doesn’t exist,” they said in unison.

“It means that he is threatening to expose me,” Richard winced. “He knows I’m undercover.”

“But you have several covers.”

“And he learned the one that’s known to many – and he definitely recognized me by my face.”

“But why in Singapore specifically?”

“No idea,” he huffed, throwing the blanket aside and preparing to get up. “Maybe it’s a coincidence. Both days, I was racking my brain for what the connection between the Bulls and the Poets could be, but I can’t come up with anything except a personal vendetta. There’s nothing tying Richard Bateman and Richard North – except myself.”

He opted to think in categories of his job, he was still hiding behind the masks of his covers. He was just Richard – and yet, wanted to be Richard North more than anyone else – because Richard North was with Alexandra, Richard North was a Poet and an alchemist.

Richard silently got up and went to the bathroom. On the marble surface of the sink’s sides, there were dressing supplies prepared, he turned the water on, looked through the wooden horizontal blinds of the full wall window that separated the bathroom from the room. Alexandra sat on the bed, deep in thought, holding the empty bottle in her hands.

He showered and treated the wound himself; when he left the bathroom, Alexandra was standing next to the panoramic window, in the same pose as in the morning, the night lights of Tokyo were flickering and shimmering in the distance.

Richard approached her from behind, touching the back of her head with his chin.

“Tomorrow’s free practice,” he said. “I did want to watch at least one Grand Prix as a spectator – but not at this cost.”

He was smiling, she could hear it in his voice.

“Formula One is completely different behind the scenes,” Alexandra affirmed.

“It’s an entire world. They’re a real team. And they’re as mad as we are.”

She once jokingly called the Rote Stier racing team alchemists … Richard saw it for himself.

In just a few years, British rookies under an Austrian license, associated exclusively with an energy drink, had become world champions7– assembled an incredible team of enthusiasts and professionals. Rote Stier performed aerobatics – a good example of investments in technologies that provided circuses for the masses, bread – to all the participants of the enormous alchemical pot.

The drivers are always in the spotlight – their entire lives are made into a show. Their task was to demonstrate how dreams become reality, and that nothing is impossible – but they, as Richard understood, don’t mind. Max has reflexes of a cat that catches flies at the speed of light, Sergio has everything under control, as if he can see the future, and Daniel is always brimming with positivity, he has an endless supply of energy …

Richard also didn’t realize right away that Formula One is a showbiz with stars of its own. Engineering and design achievements broke their own records with every race, setting the trends and benchmarks for the rest of the automotive industry – and the entire world was watching, with bated breath, the inconceivable implementation of human design, endurance, and bravery.

The majority of the viewers don’t understand even a small part of the action – but they’re swept up in the wave of the drive, Formula One is a cult that people wanted to be a part of and stay in.

The drivers are rock stars, but there’s a whole team behind them – each member playing a vital role, irreplaceable during the season. They all work together, setting up pit boxes around the clock, delivering sets of tyres, spare engines, gearboxes, composites and fuel, assembling cargo containers around the clock, for them to then be shipped overseas for race weekends, they fine-tune the race car configuration nightly if they can avoid curfew … On the pit wall and in front of board monitors is a real spaceflight mission control center, every second counts, and every detail, every inch, and every movement matter during the pit stop.

Three people are involved in changing a single wheel: the one placing it, equipped with protective gloves – because the tyre is preheated out of the cover; the gunner, in bright yellow gloves, to give a visual signal about the end of the procedure by raising his hand; the one taking the wheel off – and tossing it aside, preferably not at a colleague – because it’s also scorching hot. The world record for the shortest pit stop was set by the team of a race car driven by Max four years ago.

The names of the mechanics and engineers aren’t released to the public, but the star drivers and the names of the Bulls on the pit wall are on everyone’s lips.

Each of the sixteen race weekends, Richard had been the tyre carrier on the left rear wheel. This Sunday, he’ll be substituted.

Phil, the chief mechanic, conducts the orchestra in the box, he’s always near the car and always on standby, aware of the action. Adrian and Rob, genius designers, are often in the box, but sometimes run away to the pit wall to catch their breath or avoid the congestion of mechanics, race engineers, and drivers. During the races, only those working directly with the race car are by its side – and everyone is wearing headphones, communicating via radio, typically within their own crew.

Dario Fisher is in charge of the headphone stand, radios and microphones, the transmitters in the drivers’ helmets, ensures uninterrupted communication. Right now, he’s on the Suzuka track paddock, likely having signed every headset on the stand and reminded everyone to put the equipment back at the end of the day – to avoid confusion tomorrow.

Chicken soup – the real European one – had already gone cold, but Richard ate heartily. Almost immediately afterward he grew drowsy, he resisted as much as he could, but in vain – and soon he fell asleep, his nose buried in the pillow, hoping that the next day he would no longer be a vegetable and would finally handle everything.

He never got around to unpacking his things, his dead phone lay on the bedside drawer next to the documents, time seemed to stop – because the chess game had already begun, and the opponent awaited his move.

For some reason, Richard was confident that the opponent – the very lion – acts by the rules of the genre and plays chess. It was important to understand what the next move should be.

7. Remote Control

[Germany, Berlin, Tiergarten]

“Tomorrow, go to the tailor and readjust the suit,” Rose said quietly.

She was curving her lips into a radiant smile as she touched Richard’s stomach with an outstretched finger and approached closely – so he would lean toward her face.

The top button was, indeed, out of place, the jacket hung loosely, he only today realized how much weight he lost lately – at least a stone. It was difficult to find a broad-shouldered athlete standing at over six feet clothes that wouldn’t be too wide in the waist or too short in the sleeves, and there was no time to order a new custom suit.

The same problem was with jeans and dress pants.

“Alright,” Richard replied, imitating her intonation, pretending to flirt, trying to catch her gaze. “As you say, dear.”

Rose and Richard Weiss, married diplomats, had been invited to a party hosted by Germany’s largest car manufacturer group in the building of the Corporate Representative Office for Federal Affairs on Potsdamer Platz. During the official part the guests maintained their dignity, smiled dazzlingly, handed out compliments and thanks, playing the usual social game. However, within a few hours, some of them, dressed in formal attire, will be high as a kite, ordering another private dance at one of the nightclubs, ties and wedding rings will dissolve into thin air as if by a magic trick.

A similar adventure lay ahead of Richard – as it did before his colleagues of the German Federal Foreign Office, whose habit was to party extensively and into oblivion. Rose will go home after the party – as a faithful and righteous wife, waiting until morning for her carousing husband.

No, he really did make a mistake with the suit. He hoped that this blasted button wouldn’t make a hash of the whole job …

“Rose, what a welcome surprise!”

The figure of the stranger, seemingly coming out of nowhere – though in reality, Richard and Rose had merely been pretending to be engrossed in cooing at each other – approached and had no intention of leaving.

“Moritz!” Rose exclaimed in joyful astonishment. “Glad to see you!”

She usually only displayed emotions for the public, she was a good actress – and Moritz Baer’s presence was not unexpected. It was for him that they came here … But he didn’t have to know that.

“Richard, this is Moritz Baer,” Rose went on. “The one who—”

“Who got into a fistfight with a stuffed bear on television,” Baer interrupted her with a laugh. “Yes, that’s me.”

He extended his hand, Richard shook it.

“No, not that one,” Rose replied. “Moritz, this is Richard, my husband.”

“How do you do, Richard.”

“Just fine, came to jack a car.”

He motioned his chin at the convertible in the center of the room, adorned with balloons and surrounded by models in racing suits.

“Excellent idea,” Baer chuckled. “Rose, I’ve always valued your business acumen. How do you feel about discussing work – even at this magnificent feast of life?”

Rose let go of Richard’s elbow, squinted pensively, crow’s feet surrounded her green eyes.

“More than likely it won’t be work,” Richard said in a whisper, but so that Baer would hear. “I don’t mind.”

Of course, he didn’t mind – that’s what they were working for! Then again, Baer is not as simple as he seems. A famous benefactor, the co-founder of a German pharmaceutical corporation who recently appeared on TV in a funny talk show storyline, he merely wore a mask of an outgoing softy.

“Sorry, Richard,” said Rose with a smile.

This meant her consent – and soon she and Baer moved to the row of snacks along the wall; Richard, meanwhile, wearing a bore expression, went in the opposite direction, circling the column, pretending to be captivated by the show in the middle of the room.

“… remote control. Turning on the headlights or preheating the interior is the most you can do! The car won’t budge without a passenger. Then again, it’s useful for managing an entire fleet, the monitoring panel will display the fuel consumption, the charge level, the run, all sensor data.”

“God, why do you need all that?”

“I was curious. They provide access to a car’s entrails – it’s a massive security hole if someone with all thumbs gets in. A true treasure trove of detective ideas!”

“Good thing I write historical plays …”

The young woman with rosé champagne hair pulled back into a ponytail and a young dark-haired man with a goatee stood at the drinks table, they were speaking English and paid no mind to Richard, who was stodging a canapé with tuna and capers in his hand. He reached for a glass behind their backs, the woman didn’t even turn her head toward him.

“Alright,” the man said. “Back to the sinners. That one, bowtie, fancy shoes …”

“Memorized three wine names, tells everyone he loves motorcycles – but knows jack shit about them.”

The man pursed his plump lips and hemmed.

“And his underwear, what color is it?”

“Red, Christopher. Of course, it’s red,” the woman chuckled. “That’s why he takes his pants off, to show them – not what’s inside.”

Richard chewed in silence, puzzled at their strange games. Were they guessing who is who at the feast of life? Fabian Jäger from the Department of Culture and Communication at the Federal Foreign Office, was, indeed, a show-off – and his underwear was indeed red.

At least when Richard was watching him do lines from the coffee table with his pants halfway off.

But she could simply be his acquaintance – not insightful.

“Oh, and that blonde – with the bear,” the man pointed his empty glass to the couple next to a sprawling, obviously artificial ficus tree in the far corner of the sparkling hall.

The woman sighed.

“Peppermints and unscented deodorant,” she drawled. “And she sticks a vibro butt plug up her husband’s ass, clicks the remote.”

“You think?”

“I’m sure!”

They laughed, Richard involuntarily shook his head. The man named Christopher finally turned to him, noticing his reaction.

“You know her?” he asked, in German.

He didn’t even bother to hide they were discussing the guests … Rose’s chapstick was, indeed, sweet and mint.

“No,” he smiled, answering in German, too. “And you?”

“We almost do!” the man replied. “Remotely!”

Remotely, with a remote, like with the remote-controlled car …

“And him?”

Richard meant Moritz Baer who stood next to Rose.

“Him – also ‘almost,’” Christopher said, his companion didn’t react. “And he’s no philanthropist.”

“Why?”

Much was said about Moritz Baer – but he had an exceptionally positive reputation.

“He’s a narcissist,” said the woman with pink hair. “An empty cardboard box.”

“Can you really tell who’s a narcissist, just like that?” Richard said, baffled.

For the first time, she looked at him, he was a head taller; she had dark eyes, he had blue ones.

“You can,” she said curtly.

Then she deprived him of her interest, turning her gaze back to Rose and Baer.

Christopher threw up his hands ironically in mock regret.

“Here, everybody’s a narcissist,” he said.

“No, not everybody,” disagreed the woman.

“Right, well, us, for example, we’re not narcissists …”

“She’s not a narcissist.”

“Right, the strict teacher, a perfectionist, probably a nag and incapable of love.”

Richard was curious. Rose was, indeed, a strict teacher and a perfectionist, though she didn’t stick a butt plug into him. Whether Rose was capable of love, Richard didn’t know.

“My favorite color and size,” said the woman. Then she added, “Just kidding.”

“You’ll hit her up?”

“I’m not a serial killer anymore, Christopher, no more married couples.”

“No such thing as a former serial killer.”

“I’m on an indefinite vacation.”

Richard failed to notice when he had stopped chewing his canapé, he hadn’t even finished the champagne … He, due to his profession, took everything literally – and they were merely joking.

“And what does her husband look like?” he asked.

All three of them were looking at Rose, Rose was already wrapping up the conversation with Baer, he hugged her by the shoulder clad in a beige suit, a friendly gesture – he was whispering something in her ear. Rose didn’t pull her head – with an impeccably neat blonde bob – away, even though she disliked the invasion of her personal space.

Rose always tried to keep her distance.

The woman with the pink ponytail smirked.

“Some narcissist in a suit, six feet tall,” she turned to Richard again, looking up at his handsome, clean-shaven face, narrow nose, thin lips. “Or even taller. With blue eyes and a taut ass.”