14th July 2022, 22:14

Written by JP Lindsley

Lviv, February

Names changed. WHEN THE American and British fighters came to our news bunker office, I gave the guy who was born in Mexico some of that tequila Serhii had brought from Guadalajara. Not only was this rare stuff, only available in Jalisco but alcohol sales were illegal in Lviv, so this was rare stuff, which is why I thought it fitting to give to three warriors who had just been in the trenches outside of Kyiv.

“These are just notes about freedom. I wish you had the time to read them.” —Swedish band Act II

The Mexican, who was also American, was so f*****g happy. Taking the tequila, he looked around at the scene, the thick stone walls, the laptops, the coffee mugs, the icon of The Dude on a parchment made from an American Afghanistan uniform, and said, 'holy sh*t, this is the resistance, like in a movie.’

Lviv

With the drinks, they told us stories. The Mexican, a Marine, who'd seen battle in Afghanistan, said the trench fighting outside of Kyiv was like nothing he'd ever seen, but rather more like what he'd read in stories of World War I. And of the courage of the Ukrainians: "I've only encountered that in Hemingway."

Over tequila, he told me how after five days of fighting, the Ukrainian officials seemingly suspected there was a mole in the foreign unit fighting alongside the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian-Georgian unit, so suddenly they were ordered away from the front lines back to Lviv. Through a mutual friend, the mysterious Mr. R, they’d heard about us, and I agreed to house them until they found their next mission. Our place became the main meeting place. More and more people began showing up. Spy Andrii was there, and Turk, the smart medicine guy who bought quality equipment, but talked a lot. He talked a lot so I didn’t trust him at first, but he did get things done and knew how to deliver stuff.

Usually I’d only sleep 4-9am. I came down to the news bunker one morning. Moneypenny, with her usual wry laugh, and hint of suspicion, asked if I knew about the big meeting happening in our news-bunker. I did not. Suddenly lots of guys, maybe a dozen or more, many in army fatigues, most of them foreigners, streamed into our news-bunker. So I sat in the meeting in the news-bunker, the resistance HQ, to find out. One bearded guy took command of the meting but he was kind of a mess. He dropped his laptop, maybe broke it, and tried to play it off cool but something seemed a farce. He kept going on , talking about lord knows what, I don't know how I could even recount it. When he started to write on the flipboard, I interjected, asked what our objective was.

Everyone had a different objective. I wanted to disassociate. I stepped over to the shadows, when the Mexican and company came in. Then two Ukrainians and two Brits left, went talking upstairs, outside, for a smoke. I left with them to see if I could make sense of this. “Who the f**k brought that guy” I asked, referring to the talker. “He is called the Checker.” “I don’t like him.” “He tries to make it seem like he’s with, you know, the Agency. “ “Yea there’s a lot of that sh*t going around Lviv.” “The Checker he always tells you, hey let’s meet at such and such place and then an hour before, he changes the time, to something earlier and in a different and spot and then usually two minutes before he changes the location again. I think this is just to confuse people."

Who the hell invited him? Later, at the café I found out. “Hey who the f**k invited that Checker dude, and why was he leading that meeting?” “I did, or rather my friend Serhii Ivanovich, who once worked with Mossad,” said Spy Andrii.

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