The only good communist is a dead communist
In the monastery basement where gloom and dampness tangled into thick strands, a girl dressed in a tailored suit asked the question in a dry, emotionless voice.
She looked less young than simply childlike, with an innocent face that still carried the softness of youth.
Her long, loose platinum-blonde hair cascaded all the way to her waist, and her eyes—burning as if they had captured blazing flames—glowed even fiercer beneath her lowered gaze.
The incandescent bulb flickered for a moment. Even as the sole light source in the monastery basement wavered, the girl’s ruby eyes maintained their unwavering hue.
Before her sat an old man tied to a chair. He looked at least eighty… or perhaps over ninety?
It was hardly an appropriate scene for a girl who appeared to be no more than a teenager to be holding captive.
“…No answer, I see.”
The girl muttered in a disappointed tone. The sharp click of her dress shoes echoed dully across the medieval stone floor.
She knew exactly what kind of behavior was required when an adult dared to betray her expectations.
“Aaaaargh—!”
She knew it all too well—literally.
The old man’s scream, as if he were about to choke on his own breath, reverberated throughout the entire basement. The space that had once been filled with prayers praising God was instantly surrendered to shrieks.
From the old man’s forearms, shoulders, and back, countless dizzying patterns bloomed and faded repeatedly. The tattoo-like marks even emitted their own light.
The monastery basement, once lit only by a single incandescent bulb, was suddenly bathed in bioluminescence.
“I’m asking you. Was this a direct order from the Secretary-General?”
Both the old man’s screams and the girl’s repeated questions were being captured by camcorders. She had set them all up herself.
As if reflecting her desire to appreciate the agony from every possible angle, five camcorders in total were diligently recording the final desperate struggles of an old man whose days were clearly numbered.
The old man gasped for breath, his skin flaking away. The self-illuminating patterns had vanished without a trace, leaving only his raw, bare flesh.
He had undoubtedly felt pain equivalent to electric shock, yet the complete absence of any visible external wounds brought a faint, bitter smile to her lips.
He gathered the drool running down his chin and spat it violently onto the floor with a loud ptoo. The girl’s expression twisted instantly into one of contempt.
“Hah! The father was a traitor who tried to sell out his country, and the daughter is a sinister witch? Do you even know who you’re dealing with right now, Yerina Bronska?”
Even in this situation, he seemed to believe his authority would somehow save him.
The girl—Yerina Bronska—clicked her heels as she approached the old man. The contempt on her face smoothed back into an expressionless mask.
She then knelt, lowering herself to meet his eyes. Her ruby-red eyes, as if filled with liquid gemstones, bored into the frail, bound human before her.
What he felt in the next instant was a certain force shooting toward him from those unnaturally crimson eyes.
If the will to shatter someone into pieces could take physical form, this would be it.
Yet paradoxically, the old man’s heart softened instead. It was a truly mysterious gaze.
The girl then poured out her shaped words.
“I don’t think that’s something I should hear from a bastard who worshipped the motherland of ideology far too much, Kim Philby. A man who betrayed Her Majesty the Queen in such a manner sure talks a big game, doesn’t he?”
When she mentioned the legitimate monarch of the empire where the sun never sets—Elizabeth II—a hint of mockery crept into the girl’s tone.
The slight upward curl at the corner of her pale lips proved it.
Though she used endlessly respectful phrasing, her voice carried no trace of actual loyalty toward Her Majesty.
Kim Philby, a dyed-in-the-wool red who was utterly sincere about “selling out his country,” easily caught the subtle nuance in the girl’s tone.
As a former MI6 officer who, even after retiring from the front lines, was still respected by his juniors as an elder statesman—and who secretly received orders to spy for the motherland of ideology—it would have been harder for him not to notice.
Philby let out a hollow laugh before opening his mouth.
“That’s right! The Secretary-General personally ordered me to kill your father!”
“…Tsk.”
The girl clicked her tongue. She had wanted an answer, but deep down she had hoped it wouldn’t be the truth. And yet here it was.
“Your father held the title of Margrave of the Shadows, guarding the westernmost edge of the Federation from imperialism and capitalism. Yet he dared choose treason. Is he not a wicked man who deserved to die?”
The man who had risen to one of the most glorious positions in the British Empire, yet had thrown everything away for the motherland of ideology, continued to rant.
“The Secretary-General’s iron will was correct! After killing the father, now the daughter is running around talking about revenge! In that case, it would have been better to purge the entire family through guilt by association!”
Yerina Bronska, who had risen to her feet and begun looking down at the old man once more, turned sharply and walked away with light steps. She had heard enough.
A massive man who had been standing silently in the darkness beyond the reach of the incandescent light approached Yerina.
He wore a suit and possessed striking heterochromia, but there was something faintly East Asian about his features.
“There is no need for you to dirty your own hands, miss. If you give the order, I will finish him cleanly.”
Yerina sank heavily into the prepared folding chair.
It was a cheap metal chair that clashed sharply with the elegant atmosphere of the girl in her expensive suit. It was exactly the same model to which Kim Philby was bound.
“No, Pavel. I haven’t extracted all the information yet. I’ll be the one to finish him. I have to take revenge for my father myself.”
“…Understood.”
Yerina let out a faint sigh. She rested her arms on the chair’s rests, drumming her fingers, then repeatedly crossed and uncrossed her legs.
If the place where the girl sat had been a café in the City of London rather than the damp basement of a monastery in Southend-on-Sea, even refined gentlemen might have risked rudeness to strike up a conversation with her.
Of course, Yerina clearly wouldn’t have cared about such gazes. She would have remained seated in her chair, lost in her own thoughts, just as she was now.
For the old man Kim Philby, the current moment was rather welcome. He had no idea what strange thoughts the girl was entertaining, but at least for this instant, he was freed from the pain that left no wounds.
A moment later, Yerina asked,
“Kim Philby, do you know what the advantage of torture using magic is?”
No answer came. It was surely laced with contempt, telling her to babble on by herself.
Even if he didn’t think so, Yerina chose to interpret his silence that way. If he didn’t like it, he should have spoken up.
“It leaves no traces. Even if we dumped you in the Thames, your cause of death would remain undetermined.”
The girl’s one-sided chatter grew longer in proportion to the time she had spent in thought.
“Shall I put it the other way around? If there are traces resembling torture but the cause of death is unknown, it would almost certainly point to magic.”
“You probably know more about this country than I do, but I doubt there’s a single magician working for the Queen who wouldn’t recognize that fact.”
“And in this matter, I want it to fall under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police Service rather than the Ministry of Magic. Which means… I’d like to leave behind just a little evidence.”
“I wonder if you, Kim Philby, can endure both the pain of your nervous system burning away and the agony of your soul being gnawed at the same time?”
The girl gave an order to the man who had been standing silently nearby.
“Pavel.”
“Yes, miss.”
“You may begin with what we prepared.”
The moment Yerina’s command fell, Pavel dragged a metal cart out from the lightless darkness. On it lay tools considered ‘traditional’ by any standard.
It took less than a minute for the monastery basement to be filled once again with the screams of a dying old man. Between the shrieks came curses filled with pure malice.
“Yes, I once saw your father with my own eyes! I should have realized it back then!”
“He was the kind of man who, once he desired something, would do anything to obtain it! His daughter is no different!”
“At this rate, I should call you not a mere magician but a witch! If you expand your power any further, it will undoubtedly cause enormous disruption to the rituals and grand schemes of the Magisters!”
Yerina, who had been silently listening to the cursed words, asked in a soft, whispering voice.
“How will a man who is about to die convey that?”
“There is no need to deliver it myself. My death will be the most certain means of transmission…! You may be able to deceive the Imperial Ministry of Magic and the Metropolitan Police, but you will not be able to deceive Parliament…!”
“…”
Yerina thought to herself. This bastard had been speaking English the entire time, yet the single word “Parliament” had come out perfectly in Russian as Soviet.
Truly, an incorrigible red.
The electric shocks flowing through both body and soul gradually increased in speed.
The area and intensity of the dizzying patterns drawn on his skin only grew larger, and the needle on the voltmeter connected to the electrodes piercing his flesh tilted so far to the right that it seemed ready to snap.
“Miss, are you truly planning to kill him?”
Pavel asked. However, it was not a question meant to stop her. There was no option to defy the will of the organization’s leader.
It was simply a question carrying the meaning, “It seems we could still extract more information. Must we kill him right now?”
The girl answered demurely. Given her age, her response even seemed to carry a touch of innocent cheer.
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
With that quiet reply, Pavel turned the knob on the direct-current power supply atop the metal cart all the way clockwise.
In response, the voltmeter needle tilted even further to the far right, as if it could still move more. Though it was clearly a rigid needle, one could almost feel the tension straining within it.
As if sensing his end, the communist raised his head proudly even amid the electric current wrapping his body and soul.
What he roared was not a scream, but an echo carrying the language of the motherland of ideology.
“Вся власть Советам!”
The girl let out a short, hollow laugh.
All power to the Soviets. It was the very phrase that the bald revolutionary, whom the Kaiser had sent to Russia by train, had tirelessly proclaimed.
Yerina gave a silent order with her eyes. Pavel followed the instruction and cut the power to the electric shock device.
The magic that had been deeply embedded in his soul had already been dispelled, so the corpse of the British Empire’s homegrown red, still bound to the chair, simply slumped forward.
Yerina thought to herself: The only good communist is a dead communist.
“Still, this one held out quite a while, didn’t he?”
In truth, his endurance had far surpassed any record. Considering his age, it was even more astonishing.
Without realizing it, four British names rose in her mind. Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.
The so-called Cambridge Five—the communists Yerina had hunted before today.
They said that only emptiness remains after revenge. Unfortunately, Yerina did not agree with that statement.
Even though the fervent communist hunt she had carried out over the past month had finally come to an end, the lingering heat of ecstasy had yet to fade.
There was still a long way to go. Yerina was not soft enough to feel unnecessary emotions like emptiness so easily.
“Pavel, could you clean up this corpse? Once you’re done, wait for me in the vehicle.”
“What will you be doing in the meantime, miss…?”
Even if there was no option to defy her will, asking questions was still permitted.
As one of the subordinates serving Yerina, he needed to know what his superior was doing and where, so that it would not interfere with carrying out his duties.
“Just… taking a walk.”
Right after killing a man, taking a stroll while feeling the midnight sea breeze would probably be the best way to soothe a lonely heart.
Yet throughout her walk along the shore, the thoughts swirling around her had already been decided.
Perhaps the word that best described her was, indeed, witch.