If it had not been for my daughter, my 'backup,' I would have just shouted "Screw You!" and gone down fighting.That, my friend, is life in the covert ...usiness. It' so very easy to die - and just as difficult to stay alive.For Rebacca, my twenty-two year old daughter, I suppose the choice was pretty easy. She had been pulled into the murky world of post-Cold War espionage by accident, a ploy that had backfired on her abductors who had figured that they could use her to get to her mother -. "I will now retreat for eighteen years." While the white outlines of theghostly figure vanished, I could hear another sentence of the deepvoice. "Hopefully I hope that they won't skip another two thousand ortwelve hundred thousand years... Need me, these fools..."With a 'clink', the bronze chain materialized out of the smoke and felllifelessly to the ground. The cross Mom added was now separated from thechain. I sat on my knees on the sidewalk, prodding it. Nothing happened."I wish I had a. One nite at a party I ran into her, we were both drinking and we ended up in a hotel room, we fucked the nite away and went out a couple of times after that. But I broke it off because I didn't feel right about doing that to my friend. Some how he found out we had been seeing each other and asked me if I was fucking her. I told him no! and that we were just friends and assured him that she was in good hands. I think she told him the truth and he made it a point to get even with me. The fact. He sounds like someone to get to know. Do you know how to contact him?" Shaitan asked me.I stared at him. Was he actually trying to broker a deal to be put into contact with Svedra?"Actually, I only know how to reach him via a gate in Vostich's castle," I replied."Ah, well. I had to at least ask. Have you tried this wine, yet? It is imported from a land far from here, but is worth the transport," Shaitan said, extolling the virtue of the wine he was pouring for me.So I drank a bit, and.