All language subtitles for [cinemacoon.site]La flor [2018] [2.3] [Английские субтитры] [55 Гб]

Episode III
(Act III)

IN BRUSSELS

What happened?

Schneider...

What happened?

What do you know?

Everything, I think.

They don't have him.

They don't have him yet.
The professor is safe, but...

They don't have him, Casterman.

No.

That was your job, Casterman.

The professor...
That was what we had agreed.

What went wrong?

What is it that went wrong?

Here we go. Pay attention.

We are doing everything wrong,
It's too early.

We will mess it all up.

There it is. That's the van.

Here we come. Stay alert.

Did you see him?

Yes...

- Did you see him or not?
- I think I did.

You think? Did you, or didn't you?

I don't know... I thought I saw him.
You went by too fast.

What do you mean too fast?
Did you see him or not?

Was he there or not?

I don't know.

I thought I saw the girl alone,
but maybe there was someone else.

What do you mean "maybe"?

Did you see him or not?

The only thing you had to do
was to tell if he was there or not.

The only thing you had to do.

I don't know.
I think it was just the girl...

You went by too fast...

What are you doing?

I'm going back. Can't you see?

What are you doing?

What are you doing?

What am I doing?

I'm doing your job.

Have you lost your mind?
They told us not to go back!

They told us not to go back
under any circumstances!

You will screw it all up!

You've already screwed it all up.

You just had to say
if he was there or not.

That was all we had to do.

I won't go back without knowing
if he was there or not.

I will not look like an idiot.

They told us not to go back.
"Whatever happens, don't go back."

I can't believe it.

They told us "whatever happens,
don't go back." I can't believe it.

My God. This is a mistake.

Tell me, Casterman. What went wrong?

I don't know.

I need the professor, Casterman.

The professor is safe.
I can assure you that...

I will send my man.

I will send my man, Casterman.

I'm really sorry.

Schneider.

That's all. Please,
don't let your women intervene.

Good bye.

Tell Kurt to get ready.

Hello?

IN SOUTH AMERICA

It's fine. Don't worry...

I told you not to worry.

We won't go...
We won't go...

We will stay here until you tell us...
Right here...

Yes, I promise.

We're leaving. Now.

Where?

To work.

Come on, we have little time.

Something unexpected has come up.

Hurry up!

Are you okay, Fox?

Yes.

Are you sure you are okay?

Yes. I'm fine...

Hurry up, then.

THREE HOURS BEFORE

THEY COME

TO KILL THEM

You don't sleep?

I'm asking why you don't sleep.

You don't sleep?

And why are they after you so badly?

What have you done?

Why are they after you?

Are you one of the good guys
or the bad ones?

I mean, why are they after you.

Why are they after you?

And are you married?

If you have a wife.

Is she pretty?

Is she pretty?

Me? If I am married?

No, my friend...

Me, married?

No, no, no...

THE ASSASSINS

He was scrawny, tall and silent,

and he always seemed quiet,

and he was always attentive.

When she saw his photo in the file,
she thought he was attractive.

One of the girls in Personnel
told him:

Think of James Bond.
A sort of James Bond.

But it wasn't true,
he was not like James Bond.

James Bond attracted attention
everywhere he went,

on the contrary,
he liked being invisible.

He was a subtle, even elegant person

and she never heard him
raise his voice,

or curse, or insult anyone.

James Bond speeded around
in sports cars

and did skiing and drove motorboats.

He could do all those things too,
but always as an obligation.

He would've never thought
of running a race

with a girl in the Monte Carlo bends,
for example.

In everything he did he was sober,

and it was always clear that for him
all that nonsense was just work.

James Bond was all the time
drinking his famous Martinis,

or popping open bottles
of French champagne,

or stuff like that.
He, on the contrary,

had been seen having
a drink only a few times,

and when he drank,
he always stopped in time,

never continued.

The same with women. Nothing.

He was shy and distant, almost a monk.

He was a tad melancholic,
and it always seemed like

he was thinking of something else,
reflecting,

and if there was something
you could not say about Bond,

was that he was a thinker.

In all the time they shared,
only at the end could she see

that in fact
he was a loving and sweet guy,

and that he was not a holy man,

or a robot remotely controlled
by some NASA expert.

When she discovered it, it was late,
there was nothing that could be done,

and her head had a price
in half of the countries in Europe,

and he was dead.

In that time,
the world was divided in two,

and the two sides claimed to be right,

and said that if they won,
everything would be better,

and everyone
would be happier and freer.

And both sides had their assassins.

They had fallen in with the good ones.

The famous "Free World";
the decent half of the world.

They both killed Communists
so that people in the old Europe

could keep wearing blue jeans
and Mickey Mouse t-shirts,

so that they could keep seeing
naked women in the Playboy magazine,

so they could go dancing to discos
and chew bubble-gum

and, above all, so that some
could become millionaires

selling cigarettes, or tyres, or soap,
or screws.

They both killed people for that.

That was, in the end,
their free world.

But none of them thought about that,
and neither should we,

because this is not the time
to discuss politics

but a love story
between two assassins.

One of those stories
in which two colleagues,

or two friends spend
all their time together,

and the whole world thinks
they are in love, but them.

That sort of story,
but with assassins.

That sort of story where you see
the two of them and think:

Sooner or later
they will end up together.

Sooner or later, they will realize.

But time goes by, and life goes on,
and they act like nothing happened,

and little by little,
without noticing,

they start drifting apart,

and it's getting too late,
and suddenly they lose it,

and maybe, later in time one of them
starts thinking and realizes,

or maybe not even that
and the matter is lost,

inevitably,
as if it had never existed,

and the world turns the page,
and on to something else.

That, but with assassins.

The first time they worked together
was in Bulgaria, in 1975 or 1976.

The 301 was Amanda and he was Angel.

The job was to get rid
of a Lebanese banker

who financed some sort
of nationalist movement.

The first scene is in an airport,

and there will be many more
in airports.

Never big airports,
crammed with agents,

with people watching and informing.

Always minor airports,
in small cities,

where nobody cares too much
about anything.

In one of those provincial airports,

they saw each other
for the first time.

She arrived first
and went to wait for him.

She had never seen a picture of him,
or anything.

"There's no need," they told her.

"He will be wearing a raincoat,
you'll recognize him."

Aeroflot announces the arrival of its
flight 222 from Sarajevo through door 3.

Aeroflot announces the arrival of its
flight 222 from Sarajevo through door 3.

VOLGOGRAD PRAVDA

IN THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU
AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE USSR

They were supposed
to be a couple of newlyweds,

and he was an international
insurance broker,

or something of the sort.

They spent the whole day
all lovey-dovey,

kissing, touring around

until the spies got bored
of following them.

They went to see the Black Sea,
they went to the history museum,

to the Revolution museum,

visited the antique shops
and the old market.

They spent a long while looking
at the street musicians

at the Cathedral's entrance

and they took a picture
with the gypsy organ player

and his monkey,

who gave him a lucky card
and a flower for her.

When the sun set, a horse carriage
took them to the hotel

where they had booked their rooms.

The concierge told them
the rooms were not ready,

that they could wait downstairs

and that the hotel would gladly
take care of their luggage

while they finished cleaning them.

They did as told,

and while the spies
searched their suitcases,

they got drunk with cheap champagne
in the dining hall,

where they had prepared
a warm welcome for them.

They stayed there
until past midnight,

sharing secrets, short poems,

risqué verses
and intimate confessions.

When they noticed the spies
were more tired than them,

they went upstairs.

BRIDAL SUITES

DO NOT DISTURB
RECENTLY MARRIED

I'm wiped...

I want to take a shower.

Are you coming?

No, honey... I'm too tired...

JULIUS CAESAR
HOTEL

I really needed this.

It will be good for you, love.

I can't believe that this very morning

I was in that filthy office
in Istanbul

and that now I'm here with you.

Yes, love... We have a whole
long week for ourselves.

Did you check
our reservations in Varna?

I asked Pavel to do it.

He told me not to worry.

I don't trust Pavel.

He thinks he does everything right,
and he does everything wrong.

But, honey,
he said everything was right.

301 played along for several minutes.

When the comedy was about to end,
he came back.

They looked at each other.

Everything had gone smoothly.

I'm wiped... I need to lie down...

He threw himself onto the bed
and fell asleep on the spot.

She couldn't sleep a wink.

She just lied there, still,

watching him sleep
as if nothing had happened.

The following morning,
they left the room,

he took her to a little harbor
where her contact was waiting,

kissed her on the cheek
and disappeared.

From that day on,
they always worked together.

Once or twice a year, not more,
three times at the most.

In 1978 they killed
a communist diplomat in Stockholm.

In 1980, in the Alps,

they blew up the vehicle
of a couple from the ETA.

In 1981 they strangled
another one in Budapest.

That same year, in Kiev,
they shot an English man in the head

because he had defected,
or was about to defect,

or someone thought
was about to defect.

It was always the same number:
the happy newlywed couple.

The provincial airport,
the cuddling, the hotel room.

301 kept getting her name changed,
but he was always "Angel".

Neither of them clearly remembered
how many people they had killed.

There were many,
and all of them different,

so that they became muddled

like the women
in the memory of a Don Juan.

They knew each other by heart,

and sometimes one uttered
what the other was about to say,

using the same words.

They didn't allow themselves
to be affectionate,

and neither of them thought
there could be something between them.

There simply was no space for that.

It was something
confined to that first night.

Those were the rules:

romance during the day,
nothing during the night.

She had understood that
from the very first moment,

from the first kiss,
and even from the first airport.

The man beside her was no Casanova.

He was rather an accountant,
a clerical worker.

Land, kiss, kill and go back home.

Once, at the beginning,

she thought,
"does he find me attractive?

"Does he have blood in his veins,
this damn android?"

But right away,
she thought "Watch it, girl.

"Get that nonsense out of your head.

"You are not sixteen anymore,
and this is a dangerous game.

"So, you'd better roll over
and start counting sheep."

With time, those questions vanished,

and she often fell asleep before he did.

Actually, they fell asleep together,

like little siblings

or like two old people.

But there was a year, 1980 or '81,
when everything changed.

She arrived several days ahead,

and there was no one
waiting for her at the airport.

She spent several days by herself,
gathering intel.

This was not Eastern Europe either,
it was in the tropics,

in an old French colony
in the Caribbean.

And when her partner finally arrived,

it was not Angel,

it was Mac the Knife.

Mac the Knife was a star.

He was German or French,
from Alsace or Lorraine, who knows.

He was one of the most famous
assassins in the world.

Haughty, arrogant, full of himself.

He had an unparalleled reputation.

Extremely expensive.

And he was also a famous heartbreaker

of whom it was said had slept
with presidents' wives

and no less than five queens.

He was a legend.

The girls in Personnel
pined for him like teenagers.

And were it
not classified information,

they would have kept a picture of him
on their desks,

as if he were Julio Iglesias.

And now they had assigned him to her.

She was the envy of all the girls.

She had been assigned Mac the Knife.

The script
was different too this time.

There were no newlyweds.

They had to kill a man named Bobó,

an African revolutionary
who prided himself

on killing more blacks than Mobuto
and more Europeans than Amin.

301 was a journalist
from France Press.

Bobó had seen her at a party
and had wanted to meet her.

They had arranged
an interview at the embassy

where Bobó had been granted asylum.

And he was anxiously expecting her,
all perfumed up,

wearing his best dress suit.

That night they slept together,
and of course Mac the Knife,

offered a performance
for the annals of history.

But the following morning,

301 looked at that stupid blond

with whom she had had sex for hours

and found him repulsive.

She thought, "What am I doing here?

"I don't want to be here.

"I don't want to be with this clown.

"I wish the earth would swallow him,

"I wish the Russians would kidnap him
and take him to the Moscow Circus,

"to caper with the acrobats
and the dancing bears.

"I want to get out of here.
I just want to get out of here."

That's what she thought.

But what she didn't think,
or didn't dare to think was:

"I don't want to be here.
I want to be with him.

"I want to be with Angel.

"Where are you, you apathetic sissy?
Why have you ditched me?

"We were supposed to be a duo.

"What is this superhero
they have sent in your place?

"Where are you?
I want to see you, partner.

"I miss you."

The next time was awkward.

When she got to the airport,
she was wondering:

"Who's gonna come? Will he come?"

When she saw him, she felt
like smiling at him and hugging him

but she didn't.

Everything was different,
from the get-go.

They didn't have to pretend
being husband and wife.

This time they were colleagues,
they didn't sleep together.

So they spent the whole day together,
waiting, pretending

to be two decent
well-thinking Europeans.

She noticed there was something off
about him,

something was happening to him.

He was nervous, made jokes,
couldn't look her in the eye.

At one point,
she would even have sworn he blushed.

Something,
something imperceptible had changed.

"Is it possible that he also...?"

she thought,
but stopped herself there,

as if before a door.

The night was almost unbearable.
They barely spoke.

She wanted to tell him something,
to do something, anything,

but she remained silent once again.

They went to sleep,
each to their room,

and once again,
she couldn't sleep a wink.

Once again, after all those years.

The next day they did the job.

They had to kill a Palestinian,

some kind of Islamic leader
who was now all the rage in Europe

and who the magazines
compared to Che Guevara

due to his young, sexy style.

They were now pretending
to be journalists.

Journalists working for Life,
or Paris Match,

or something of the sort.

During that time
they did those things.

Guerrilla leaders
liked being on the magazine covers,

with great headlines,

talking and ranting
about the Western world.

She watched Angel and thought,

"He's nervous.
He's thinking about something else."

But she soon stopped herself.

"Stop it, you silly girl.

"If you don't focus, you'll end up
floating in the Dead Sea."

One hour later, they killed the guy
with a bullet to the head,

And end of the story.

I'll be right back.

I'll be right back.

End of the story.

She saw him hide the body,

spray it with some kind of flammable
liquid and get back to the jeep.

He then stood there for a while, still,

and finally turned towards her
and waved at her.

She waved back at him.

He raised his hand,
and though he couldn't see her,

she smiled. She smiled at him.

Then she turned her back on him
and started to walk.

She walked for an hour
across the desert

until an army helicopter picked her up
and took her to a base in Israel.

Then a plane to Istanbul,
a week in Istanbul,

and another plane to Paris.

They never saw each other again.

From then on,
everything became clearer.

She smelled it
from the very beginning.

She waited several months
before showing her face.

After all, the business
with the sexy Palestinian

had been something very big,

something the newspapers from all
over the world had talked about,

and in fact, they kept putting bombs
in coffee shops to avenge his death.

So she thought of it as a holiday.

She read magazines,
studied English, practiced aerobics.

She went to a museum once.

But when a year later
she still hadn't heard from them,

she knew it was all over.

She didn't quite know what to do.

All of a sudden, she was a free woman.

Free and unemployed.

What does an international assassin
do when she is out of work?

Most surely, she doesn't do anything.
Where does she begin?

Even so, little by little,
she rearranged her life.

She had quite a lot of money,
she could do whatever she wanted.

She could buy a house in Portugal,
or in Greece, or in the Dolomites,

or a sail boat,
or an Alfa Romeo sports car,

or travel to Nepal and wash away
her sins in a Lama monastery.

But she didn't do any of that.

She didn't do anything at all.

She just stayed home,
waiting for something.

Until one day something happened.

One day, the phone rang.
A number no one had.

Not even the people
from her previous job,

not even the Personnel girls.

A voice, maybe a man, maybe a woman,
said some words to her.

Those words meant a place and a time
in the outskirts of the city.

And when she got there,
she received another call,

and then they gave her another place
and another date.

There is a children's game
that consists in exactly this,

you all must surely know it.

It's called treasure hunt.

Well, she kept playing treasure hunt
for several days,

going from one place to another,
from one phone to another,

following the indications like a fool.

Until the hunt came to an end.

The last place was too romantic,

of a romanticism
that was almost tacky.

The ideal place for a date
in a 19th century novel.

She thought it was a joke he was
playing on her, and laughed a bit,

but then she stopped laughing
because she found a letter.

It was a letter from him, handwritten,

and at that moment,
she, who had killed dozens of people,

who had strangled people,
who had stabbed people in cold blood,

who had poisoned people,

who had shot people
in the head at point blank range,

felt a knot in her stomach
and thought that she was scared

and that she could not read it
and that she could not go on.

The letter was addressed to her,
had her name, her real name,

that name she hadn't heard
since school

and that nobody
in her previous job knew,

least of all him.

And what followed was a love letter.

That is, it didn't say things

like "I love you", or "I've always
loved you, I'll always love you"

or "I now see you were
the love of my life",

or anything of the sort.

Nothing like that, but the person
who had written the letter

had thought about her
like nobody else,

and had watched her like nobody else,

and knew her like nobody else
had known her until that moment.

In that letter was her.

Not like an adventuress, or a heroine,

nor driving across the desert
with a turban wrapping her hair,

nor jumping from a moving train,

nor letting bullets whistle
above her head impassively,

nor hanging from a rope
over a precipice, nor skydiving,

nor walking across a marsh,
soiled with sweat and mud.

She was there getting dressed
with her back modestly turned to him,

in hundreds of different hotels,

all identical, all equally sad.

Getting dressed with her back
turned to him, or wearing pajamas,

or freshly bathed.

And she was there in airports,
waiting for him,

in hundreds of airports strewn
across the world.

Waiting for him, standing, lonely,
nailed there like a little girl.

She was there having fun,
cracking jokes,

funny jokes she didn't remember
having said,

or being moved by something,

by a dawn in the mountains,
or over the ocean,

being moved
without telling him anything,

or stroking a dog, and a lot of things
she did without noticing,

things a woman who looked like her
did, a woman who apparently was her.

And in that letter was him, too.

Him beside her, always watching her,

silently watching, watching her walk
and watching her sleep

and watching her talk.

And he was there without her too,
thinking about her,

remembering her in the endless months
they didn't see each other,

speeding in some car,

or swimming in the sea,
or visiting a distant country

to see if he could get a little bit
of her back,

to see if that whole wide
and fascinating world

could give her back a little,

and if something of her turned up
in one of those places.

And she read the whole letter,
and read it again,

and thought about destroying it,
but in the end she kept it,

and spent a whole week
without talking to anyone,

and she felt like crying,
and in the end, she cried.

He was always there, she thought.

Much more than me.
Much more than anyone.

And only three weeks later,
or a month,

she realized
the letter was a farewell,

or rather, a testament,
or rather, a warning.

That he was saying goodbye
and he was also saying "Watch out!"

That the people from the previous job
knew everything,

knew that letter by heart
even before he wrote it.

That like that,
they were both useless to them.

That he was going to get killed,
or had already been killed,

and that she would get killed as well.

Always by my side, partner,
she thought.

Always with me.

She thought she would have liked
to kiss him, at least once.

She made a couple of phone calls,
she got a Swiss passport,

or Swedish, and disappeared.

Good morning.
My name is Casterman.

And you are...?

Don't worry...
There's no need. I apologize.

Casterman had a hard time finding her.

When she finally turned up,
they talked for a long while.

They talked business, made small talk,
until they reached an agreement.

After a while she had
the nerve to ask.

"What about him?"
She asked, almost with fear.

"How is he?"

Casterman, though cold-blooded
and short-tempered,

didn't know what to answer.

Finally, he looked at her with all
the tenderness he was capable of.

Don't worry about him",
he told her. "He's doing well".

IN SOUTH AMERICA

TO KILL THEM

THEY COME TO KILL THEM

SOME MINUTES BEFORE
THEY COME TO KILL THEM

Come on... Up...

It's good.

Turn off the radio.

Do you know what it says there?

In that light?

In that lamp.

Do you know what it says?

"The night sun".

Isn't that funny?

"The night sun".

It reminds me of something
and I don't know what...

To the "iron horse".

And what's that?

The car?

The train...

And the submarine?

The iron fish...

And the plane,

the iron bird...

That's enough.

And the iron arrow?

The SA 18!

And the bomb?

Do you know what the bomb would be?

I said it's enough...

Then there's the "iron lady".

And the "iron curtain".

The plane?
Already?

Shut up!

Stay here...

THE MOLE

First, there's the land.

That before anything else:
the white, infinite plains,

semi-deserted miles and miles,
spreading like a sea or like a galaxy,

boundless, hopeless, like an abyss.

Miles and miles
where there's nothing, or nearly:

where there are no men, or nearly.

Sometimes, in the distance,
some light, some house,

some chemical plant,

some barn, some windmill.

Even worse, even lonelier.

And that goes on for hundreds
of thousands of miles,

for almost one third of the world.

Before anything else:
that sad and filthy expanse of land.

The sad and filthy
factories in Moscow,

the sad and filthy farms in Ukraine,

the sad and filthy Urals.

Sad and filthy are the Volga lowlands
and the lonely Caspian, and the Altai,

appearing in the distance
as if they were towers.

And then,
like an infinite cry, Siberia,

distant like a wolf's howl,

distant even if you are there,
distant and lonely,

like those scary hermits
who live in caves.

Siberia, spreading out like
a disease across the whole continent,

through miles and miles,
through a third of the world,

spreading so much that there
are mountains in the south

and frozen seas in the north,

and you think that they are there
to stop it,

to curb so much filth and sadness.

Siberia, white as ghosts
are white,

white as the paper
on which a will is written,

or a death sentence;
white as a blind man's eyes;

white as a dead man's skin;

white as a skeleton
abandoned for centuries;

white as the snow that falls

and kills what little
is left of spring;

white as a wedding dress
forgotten inside a closet;

white as the marble of a pagan temple
to which no one will ever return;

white as the glass of milk

someone uses
to poison a beautiful woman;

white as the gravestone of a man
powerful and unjust;

white as the moon reflected
in the eyes of a wolf

that howls with hunger
and despair and sadness.

Before anything else, that.
In one corner of the ring, that.

Then there's her.
In the other corner of the ring.

She was Agent 50.

That meant she was one of the fifteen
most important people

in the Party's Intelligence;

one of the thirty most powerful
spies in the world.

Her life actually resembled that
of a regular clerk.

She had her office, stark and grey,
on the fifth floor of the "Centre",

which was the name
they gave in Moscow

to the organization
that gathered snitches,

spies and assassins.

Except for one or two weeks
every year,

her life was always the same.

She would arrive, sit at her desk,

her secretary would bring her tea
and the first reports.

- Excuse me, comrade...
- You may come in...

Well, let's see what we've got today...

- Vienna.
- Here.

- Kiev.
- Here.

- Belgrade.
- Sixth floor.

- Prague.
- Here.

- Stockholm.
- Tenth.

- Stockholm.
- First.

- Rio de Janeiro.
- Seventh.

- Bucharest.
- Twelfth.

She read. "Agent 741,
destination Angola Embassy,

reports bank transactions."

She ordered: "To the 4th floor."

She read: "Agent 112, in Bern,

reports having gathered
important information

and requests
safe communication channel."

She decided: "Second floor."

That was all.

Four-hundred and fifty men lived
under her control,

hidden, scattered across the world,

living under fake names
and telling lies,

not knowing their luck
was decided on that desk in Moscow.

That was the game.

They called it "Networks"
and the fun was

that no one knew
very well what they were doing.

Each one did a part.
Poisoned someone,

took a picture, took a package,
stole some documents.

But nobody ever wholly understood

what each of those single
acts was for.

A hundred years earlier,
Karl Marx had talked

about that and had said
all that was very wrong.

It doesn't matter.
Karl Marx could be Karl Marx,

but he knew nothing about espionage.

Espionage, or following orders,

or doing as told without
asking questions.

In contrast, her army of robots
understood it very clearly.

Someone gave the orders.

She gave the orders.

If she made a mistake,
if she said "Third floor"

instead of "Fifth floor",
they were dead.

"There's your Cold War there,"
thought Casterman.

"A war fought by bureaucrats,
receptionists,

file clerks, translators.

A war fought by writers.

That's where everything's decided.

That's where it's decided
if someone wins or loses".

She knew it well.

She knew that was her war

and that she was
a soldier in that war.

She had military training,
she had Colonel rank,

she had been in the field
in Afghanistan and Lapland:

fuck all that.

It wasn't a boy scouts war
they were fighting.

Her place was that desk,
that secretary,

that routine:
Fourth floor, third floor.

She was a guard, a sentinel:
her battlefield was the whole world

and she just had to ensure
that nothing went off course;

that everything was fine.

Let others jump with parachutes
or steal microfilms.

I, from this little room,
will put up a fight."

Comrade,

I think you should see this.

Until one day everything went rotten.

- A lot are arriving.
- A lot, really...

She arrived, as always,

the secretary brought her everything,
as always,

but instead of the routine reports,

she read something else.

What she read, what she saw was
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

being humiliated,

turned into the laughingstock
of all the spies in the world;

she saw, in a matter of seconds,

how the whole
counter-espionage strategy sunk,

shattered, spinning down
the Western world toilet,

amidst hideous and triumphant laughs.

In less than an hour,
forty reports came in,

all confidential, all very serious.

Murdered agents, spoiled networks,
aborted missions, missing documents.

What had happened?

How come the voodoo curse
was sticking its pins all at once,

in one single blow?

It was a disaster, a masterstroke:

THE USA EMBASSY

those weren't
the lesser agents speaking.

It was the elite,
the cream of the crop in the Service,

scared like little children.

The moles from Washington, Paris,
London, United Nations,

Geneva were writing.

They were no longer
the usual laconic reports;

they were requests for help,

desperate cries
in the middle of a collapse.

The collapse:

that's how that day was called
in the annals of the Moscow centre.

The day of the collapse,
the day everything went to hell,

the day the party was over for us;
the day we lost the war.

Those were the days
of the Minsk Protocol.

That was the order that suddenly
began to appear in every embassy,

in every Russian House of Culture,

in every Franco-Soviet
or German-Soviet

or British-Soviet cooperation office.

And in every other spy nest
all over the world.

Minsk Protocol.
And that meant it was over.

Disappear Don't leave any trace.
Set everything on fire.

Leave everything you are doing.

Nothing matters anymore.
We are all dead.

Minsk Protocol. Minsk Protocol.

Sorry, comrade.
Minsk Protocol.

What do I do?

What do I do?
What floor do I send them to?

Comrade. May I leave?

The following scene
takes place a month,

month and a half after the Collapse.

The place:
the office of Admiral Ratnikov,

the major authority
in counter-intelligence

within the Supreme Soviet.

Agent 50 is waiting.

She knows the Collapse
has caused the worst crisis

within the highest echelons
in the party

since the cotton scandal
in the mid seventies.

She knows many have gone
to the other side,

and that this meeting
might be her death sentence.

Ratnikov has not arrived yet;
he keeps her waiting.

Only his Admiral cap and coat
can be seen on a nearby armchair.

The office looks fancy,

different to all the offices
in the regime,

no picture of Lenin,
no picture of Gagarin,

no picture of Molotov,
no picture of Breznev,

and on the desk there are
no French pens, or Swiss watches,

or English tobacco.

Just some bust of some Russian naval
hero: Makarov, or some other one.

And a picture of Ratnikov himself,

in sailor clothes
as if he were a crewman

in the Potemkin Battleship.

That's all;
that and that immense Neptune behind,

as if saying: the owner of this desk
is a sea man, a man of action,

someone who knows danger
and who has seen death in the eye.

He is not a shitty clerk like you,
be careful.

Agent 50 knows it.

Agent 50 is more impatient
than scared, but she is a bit scared.

Finally, Ratnikov appears.

At first, he is kind.

He calls her by her name,
which he mysteriously knows.

He asks her not to call him Admiral,
or Comrade

but to call him by his name.

"Call me Raiko," he tells her.

Ratnikov is Estonian;
he is one of the first Estonians

to reach an important position
in the Presidium,

and he seems to want to show
that he is a simple guy,

that he still is a friendly
good-natured man from the Baltic,

that Moscow hasn't changed him.

They make small talk for a while,
about his family,

his sail boat outings with his family.

"He is torturing me", she thinks.

"He knows he is going to kill me
and talks to me about sailing.

Sadistic dwarf."

After a while, nonchalantly,
he broaches the subject.

"Well," he tells her,

"you know this matter
has given us quite a few headaches."

Agent 50 is shivering inside.

Well... You know this matter
has given us quite a few headaches...

In the Navy, we have an expression,
you know?

"Start the day with clams on the keel."
Do you get it?

Well, it's a bit confusing to explain,

but let me assure
it guarantees quite a headache,

a day of the most annoying job
you could ever imagine.

Well, I think that from that day
onwards, every morning,

we start the day with clams
on the keel.

Well... We also have another
saying in the Navy.

"Too many feathers
for the poor albatross."

Do you understand?

Too many feathers, comrade,

so that, sooner or later, something
like this was bound to happen.

We have nearly a thousand
men out there, in the field.

We cannot know them all, right?

We cannot be sure that one of them
wasn't lying to us from the very start.

There are too many evil minds
at work at the same time.

"Too many feathers
for the poor albatross!"

It is only then
that Agent 50 discovers

where the other one is going.
Ratnikov, sly as a fox, notices it.

I can see you understand me.

Well, yes...

Everything seems to indicate that
some wolf has slipped into our flock.

That he has been among us
and that he has finally bitten us,

while we were sleeping.

At some point you need to sleep.

We all need to sleep at some point.
Isn't that right, Colonel?

Two hours later,

Agent 50 stepped out into the street,
into the cold fall weather.

She had gone in around noon
and it was already getting dark.

Nights were getting longer,

and a couple of days before
it had already started to snow.

But she thought not of the snow,
or of the cold, or of the nights.

She thought about just one thing.
One word. One name. Boris.

Tell me something, Colonel.

Does the name Podgorov
mean anything to you?

Andrei Stepanovich Podgorov?

Boris, maybe?

Of course,
it's such a common name, right?

ASSIGNMENT

Very well... Let me see...
Andrei Stepanovich Podgorov.

Captain of the tenth Airborne Corps.

Graduated in military intelligence
at the Grozny training centre

in '81 and my, oh my!

Recruited for active service
at the Centre, in Minsk,

on March 2nd, 1982.

By yourself, Colonel.

Assigned name: Boris.

We cannot remember them all,
can we?

So that was it. Some Boris fellow,

someone nobody
had ever seemed to notice,

had crept into the Centre
like a ghost,

like a silent reptile,
and no one had suspected him.

He had been there, invisible,
for three years,

accessing all the information
right under their noses,

quiet, sleeping, waiting.

Boris!

She had not seen him more than once,
of which time she could recall nothing.

A tall, blond fellow,
Ratnikov had told her.

You talked for some half an hour
at a train station.

That was all.

It's all very clear here,
this is your signature, Colonel.

"That was all," she thought.
"There were hundreds like him;

hundreds of tall blond fellows
at train stations."

In those days, her life consisted
of meetings with those types

at stations,
so that they became spies.

Which one of them was Boris?

Which one of all those blonds
was the one

who had stuck a dagger in the back
of the Cause of the People?

"That, Colonel, is for you
to find out," Ratnikov had said.

"Yes, Colonel.
We want you to find him."

But... Admiral...

We want you to find Boris.

It would be good for us
to ask him some questions.

You have seen him.

Nobody else but you appears
to have seen him.

We have been looking for him
for a month, and nothing.

I'm sorry, Colonel.

We don't have many options.

- Do we have any kind of...?
- Yes.

We are certain he has not left.
He is still here.

Here in Moscow?

Here in Russia.

Then the fantastic part
of this story begins.

She, who until then was a bureaucrat,
has been ordered to find a man,

hidden in some corner
of an infinite territory.

She walks a few feet in the afternoon
that is already turning into evening.

"Where do I begin?"
She asks herself. "This way? That way?"

And she knows that,
wherever she looks,

she has 8 million miles ahead;

more than
three hundred million people.

Only one of them is Boris.

At first, the thing still makes sense.

She is still an agent
on a secret mission.

She does things
in an orderly and logical fashion.

She produces a list of people,
of contacts,

and decides to interview them
one by one.

For months, she travels
from one place to another,

from Leningrad to Vladivostok,

from the dirty piers in Odessa
to the ports in the north.

She is a detective.

Someone going from house to house

finding out, sniffing around,
asking questions.

She works restlessly,
not missing a day.

But a few months later
her list of suspects is exhausted,

and she still has nothing.

Nobody has seen Boris.

Nobody knows who he is
or has heard of him.

She moves on.

She prepares another list
and continues travelling.

She travels
to more remote places each time.

She travels to the Caucasus, to Baku,

she visits the lost towns
in Ossetia and Bessarabia.

She travels through mountains,
windy and rocky roads,

almost medieval villages

the Revolution
does not seem to have reached.

And Boris is nowhere to be found.

When she runs out of names,
she makes a new list,

with even more unlikely people,
even more faraway.

Deep down, she knows that those names
are becoming less important,

and that what really matters
is to keep looking.

After eight or nine months of search,
she starts with the trains.

Agent 50, the girl who, years later,

would become Agent 50
had learned at school

that the network of railway lines
in the Soviet Union was so vast

that if you placed one track
after the other,

you could circle the earth five times.

The truth is that when she has
no more cities to check,

Agent 50 starts
to look for the mole on trains,

and little by little,
trains become her life.

Maybe she thinks:

"If the only time
I saw him was at a train station,

perhaps that's where I will find him."

But maybe she doesn't think that,

and she just gets on the first train
on a hunch,

or because
someone tells her something,

or just because. Just because,

and she doesn't suspect
that that railway landscape

will quickly become her life.

And the first year goes by,

and then another one,
and another one, and her manhunt

becomes more and more unreal.

The mole is somewhere;

he's still there, and she knows it,

and chasing him up

across the endless steppes
is all she has left,

as if nothing
from before had ever existed.

Nothing from before:
just the Soviet landscape

stretching out endlessly
across the train window.

The snow, the frozen rivers,

the little wooden houses
as in Bruegel the Elder's paintings.

The housing complexes
sleeping motionless

as if they were mean hibernating bears
who shouldn't be bothered.

The stations at night, empty,

spots you only see
for a couple of seconds,

between waking up
and falling back asleep,

and which get mixed with dreams.

And the factories, the chimneys,
and the nuclear power plants,

and the smoke, always in the distance,
like a ghost.

What are those years like?

What does she think about
all that time?

Sometimes she thinks of Boris.

She thinks
"Does he know I'm looking for him?

Does he know there is nothing else
but him in my life,

and this succession of fields
and deserts

and trees bare like splinters?"

In time, those train cars,

that cabin and that window
become her house.

They become her refuge.

As if the whole train
was a provincial hotel,

and she was there hiding, waiting,

looking through the window,
safe from everything.

Until one day, the train stops
at a random station and, distracted,

she will look through the window
expecting the usual landscape:

the snow-covered platforms,
the conductors,

the passengers about to get on.

What she ignores is that one of those
waiting for the train is Boris,

and that when she sees him,
she will recognize him

as if she had seen him a week ago.

The scene takes place
in a lonely station,

whose name we ignore
and which barely matters

and which not even Agent 50,

if she's still alive, must remember.

The only thing that matters
is that at that station,

the Mole is waiting for her.

At first, she does nothing.

She sits still for miles and miles,
unable to move.

At some point, Boris stands up,

opens the door to her cabin,
looks at her in the eye

and sits in front of her.

Enter.

Boris' look is not threatening.

It's rather kind,
as if they were old friends,

or old lovers who meet again
after a very long time.

Boris, without any formality,
called her by her name.

"How are you, Nastasja Alexandrovna?"
he says.

"You have been looking for me
all this time, isn't that right?

Well, here I am. Here you have me."

I'm the one you're looking for.
You hate me? I don't think so.

I don't think you have any feelings
towards me anymore.

But let me tell you something
just in case.

You don't need to hate me.

You don't need that, Natalia.

D'you know why?

'Cause even if you don't believe me,
we're the same.

Identical.

We don't exist anymore.

Neither of us.

We don't exist anymore.

And there's something else:

none of this exists any longer.

Neither the Cold War
nor the reason you fight for

or the nation you've given
your life to.

Everything will disappear, Natalia.

So fast you won't believe it
when it happens.

They have won.

Before you know it,

the world will be covered
in their posters and their noises.

Everyone will dance to their songs
and eat their food.

D'you know what?

They'll be happy.

They won't feel pain,
humiliation or sorrow.

They won't miss us, Natalia.

They'll forget about us.

And not in one hundred years,
or fifty, or ten...

but tomorrow.

By tomorrow we'll have disappeared.

Nobody will remember

that we fought them for the world
for an entire century,

that peasants and workers
fought them as equals

with their own weapons.

With their own weapons.

That for a century, the flag
that waved over half the world

wasn't that of an imperial house,
or an eagle, or some swords,

but a sickle and a hammer...

from the factories and farm lands.

We could have won, Natalia.

We were so close.
But we lost.

And no one will
ever think of us again.

Get off the train.

Your trip is pointless.

Game's over.

Soon after, a month or even less,

Agent 50 leaves the Soviet Union
and never comes back.

Somewhere in the world, at some point

that is now pointless to say,
Casterman appears.

IN SOUTH AMERICA

AT THE PRECISE MOMENT

THEY COME TO KILL THEM

IN BRUSSELS

Hello.

Casterman, my man is in position.
He's coming in in a couple of seconds.

You are the customer, Schneider.
The customer is always right.

Your women are not there, are they?

- No.
- Are we sure about that, Casterman?

There's something worrying me,
Casterman.

Something in your group of women
worries me.

There is one of them.
One of them, Casterman.

She is a little mystery,
isn't that so?

I don't know what you're
talking about, Schneider.

Well, there aren't many options,
are there, my friend?

The Polish girl and the girl
from the Tropic we know quite well.

And our poor Bárbara...
Well, we will miss her here.

I am really sorry, Schneider.

I don't mean them, Casterman.

I mean the other one,

the Blonde.

Fox.

Fox.

Fox, yes...

Well, she's new in this business,
right, Casterman?

Well... She has done other jobs.

Not like this one, Casterman.

Not killing other agents.
Not doing the dirty work.

She has been involved
in difficult operations.

What you call "dirty work".

Not as dirty as this, Casterman.

Maybe not as much...

What do we know about her, Casterman?

She was born in a military base,
in Pakistan, in the sixties.

Her father was an F-15 pilot.

Her mother, a Muslim,
converted to Christianity.

She was raised on the base.

She piloted her first Bell
at the age of 12.

At age 13 she was trained
in Afghanistan to pilot the enemy MIGs.

She was the first woman ever
to pilot an MIG, and the youngest.

Among soviet pilots, she was
some sort of a myth, a girl that...!

And what about '75?

What about '75?

February 10,1975.

The Chinook incident, Casterman.

What about it?

It was her, right?

It's unknown.

It was her, Casterman.
She disobeyed the orders.

She fired against her own men.

She's a traitor...
A traitor!

It was never proved it was her.

What is she doing there, Casterman?
Why her?

She is a good pilot.
We needed someone who could fly.

We needed...

This is insane, Casterman.

I'm sorry.

There wasn't much time.
We needed to find a pilot.

It was a mistake, Casterman.

A mistake.

I am really sorry.

In any case, they are not there,
are they?

They will not interfere.

No.

Nobody will interfere
with my man's job, right?

No.

Not them, not anyone.

I hope so, Casterman.

I hope so.

There's that idiot.

He will ruin it all.

He doesn't know who he's messing with.

What do we do?

Leave him.

Let the other women take care of him.

I'd say it even works to our favour.

Very well. This is what we'll do.

Listen to me carefully.

Schneider's man will strike any time now.

That's when we split in two.

Understood?

Lena and I will go through the front.

When they have finished
with Schneider's man, we open fire.

They won't see it coming.
Is it clear, Lena?

It's clear, Ma'am...

Meanwhile, Bethania and Fox
will circle the airfield from the back.

Bethania will take
care of the scientist.

Fox will finish them off from behind.

They won't see it coming, I assure you.

Is it clear?

Crystal clear.

Fox?

What's wrong, Fox?
Have you understood the plan or not?

I won't do it, Ma'am.

What the hell are you
talking about, Fox?

I will not do it. I will not kill
those women from behind.

What the hell is wrong wtih you, Fox?
Are you crazy?

No, Ma'am. I'm not crazy.
Those women are brave.

And Fox does not consent
to the crime of murdering

four brave ones that way.