Where The Fuck Is My Dagger? said the man in the cloak Day!

Leonid Brasche was a Moscow plumber for most of his 20's and 30's. His position called for him to wear a cloak to protect his clothing from sewage should a clogged drain suddenly expel its contents without warning. And he liked to carry a dagger on his person at all times, firstly because it was handy for scraping congealed grime from the inside of drain pipes, and second, because when Leonid was 12 his father was murdered by a man to whom he'd lent some money. Stabbed he was, in the throat, out on the crowded Sunday street right in front of Leonid. His father had just bought bread and cream for that night's dinner. The food was on the ground in the snow. Dark dark blood surged from his father's neck into the white. The bread grew soggy with blood. Leonid stayed by his father until his breathing stopped. Then he ran home to fetch his mother. Not long after, dreams of revenge made him buy himself a second-hand dagger and carry it on his person at all times. He still has the same dagger.

When Brasche entered the spy game, he kept the old cloak because he saw no need to start spending just because he'd gotten a slight boost in pay. Plus, the cloak was helpful for spending nights in shadow. And though he had no real practical use for the dagger (he carried a gun, and he had no clogged pipes to deal with) he continued to keep it somewhere in his pockets. But Brasche was a forgetful man, often making himself late rummaging under seat cushions and into the bottom of desk drawers to locate the misplaced dagger. And many in the office would hear him bellow out his frustration with a "Where the fuck is my fucking dagger godammit!" Heads would turn and they'd see the man in the cloak behind his glass office walls tossing pillows in the air and lifting up chairs before eventually sliding his hand into one last unchecked pocket and retrieving the dagger with a shake of the head. This happened so often that when Brasche showed up to work in the morning, more than one person would shout out a jovial "Eh, cloak n' dagger! How they hangin'?"

And thus the words "cloak and dagger" would forever call to mind the world of international super-spies.

Happy Where The Fuck Is My Dagger? said the man in the cloak Day!