The Chameleon
According to Wikipedia
Chameleons or chamaeleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of Old World lizards with 200 species described as of June 2015.[1] The members of this family are best known for their distinct range of colors, being capable of shifting to different hues and degrees of brightness. The large number of species in the family exhibit considerable variability in their capacity to change color. For some, it is more of a shift of brightness (shades of brown); for others, a plethora of color-combinations (reds, yellows, greens, blues) can be seen.
I took the picture of the Chameleon on the Island of Madagascar in October 2006. Even at 8 frames per second, I was unable to catch the moment the grasshopper that it is aiming at was struck.
[Late Summer, Puerto Soller, Mallorca]
‘The Chameleon’s’ email pinged.
The sound of it woke him from an afternoon siesta. He looked out of the window at the bay of Puerto Soller that lay before him and mentally cursed whoever it was who had destroyed his slumber.
He wasn’t sweating thanks to the breeze that was coming off the sea and feeding through his clifftop home. The five weeks that had elapsed since his last job had been nice but for the past few days, he’d started to get itchy feet. It wasn’t that he needed the money but the lure of a different career was starting to take hold in his mind.
He got to his feet and stretched. These weeks of inactivity had taken a lot of the tone off of his muscles. He’d have to rectify that before he accepted a new contract or went looking for a new job…
"I'm getting a bit old for this," he muttered to himself as he walked across the tiled floor to his desk and his phone. He wasn't that old in terms of age but in his line of work, he was positively ancient. It was definitely a young person's game these days. What made it worse was that he was not impressed by the people he was competing for jobs with. In his estimate, they lacked the finesse and delicacy that he and the few of his age that were left, possessed. To him, the art of the assassin was to do the job and be long gone before the crime was discovered. Not many of the current ‘young guns’ were all that. Most adopted the method of blast away and hope that not too many bystanders get caught in the crossfire. He blamed Film and TV for that. Shoot lots and hope was not his style. He’d never used more than two bullets on any job. Less is more in his world. To him, it showed skill in the hunt. Like a skilled animal hunter, a single shot in the right place was the sign of someone cared for the welfare of the animal. If they had to die let it be as quick as possible.
He read the text of the email, or rather tried to read it. On the surface, it appeared to be nothing more than a load of gibberish. The first few characters of the gobbledegook told him that it was an encrypted message.
Swiftly, he selected the gibberish and opened another app. Then he pasted the text into it and pressed ‘decode’.
The gibberish disappeared and was replaced with a lot more of the same.
He smiled and put the phone down. Because the message was not encrypted with his public key, he could not read it until he received the keys from the sender.
The Email header gave him nothing useful. All the fields were easily spoofed if you knew how to do it and he certainly did. The email client that he used had a ‘plug-in’ that allowed him to do just that at will. It is hard to not open a mail that is supposed to come from a President, Prime Minister or your mother. Once opened, you could have put some real nasties in the payload. Luckily his system was firewalled off from the rest of his home network and his systems contained little personal data.
There was nothing more he could do until someone sent him the keys but he was not going to sit around doing nothing until that happened. Instead, he went down to the lower floor of the villa. That's where his gym was located. If there was a job coming then it was time for a workout followed by a swim across the bay to his favourite restaurant near where the Soller Tramway [1] terminated.
He spent the next hour working out. The session concluded with ten minutes of hammering his punchbag. Normally, that was a great stress reliever, but on that day, it failed miserably. The longer the session went on, the more pronounced feelings of impending doom he had felt since the arrival of the text grew and grew.
He knew that none of his usual contacts would have sent an encrypted email without sending the key by a back channel such as a text to his phone but there had been nothing.
He checked his phone when he returned from the restaurant. No new emails had been sent so he went to bed.
Just before 03:00, he woke up with an idea about the message.
As he switched on his bedside light, he muttered,
‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’
He sat on the edge of his bed and opened up his phone whereupon, he pasted the message into the app that encodes/decodes data and instead of applying his private key to the message, he applied the public key to it.
This time, instead of gibberish, a valid message appeared.
“Chameleon,
As you are no doubt well aware, I have your private key. I also have all your messages using this key pair. I don't need to tell you what that means. One call or email to the law in what is it now, nine different countries and you would be done for, big time.
You will do one last job for me then you can retire. Yes, I know about all your plans to stop working. Do this, your thirtieth job, for me and I will let you do just that. You really should not be so trusting of that phone of yours and with all your life on it, it was just too tempting not to clone when you were in Berlin last July.
I didn’t do it in person so don’t even try to recall who you met and where. An operative of mine did the job. Too bad that he met with an accident a few days later.
I own you Chameleon. I'll use that nickname because you have far too many aliases to count. Don't you ever get confused? No matter.
As I said, I own you. I know about your little bolt hole near Rouen and your pied-a-terre in Peterborough. Why did you choose that desolate place? Again, it does not matter unless you fail to do this job for me. Then those places along with your villa in Puerto Soller will be taken care of. They will be no more! Your Spanish home would make a great beacon when I set it alight!
I will send you another message 24 hours after this one with the details of the job.
If you try to run, I will find you. There is nothing about your life that I do not know and now control.
Wait for the next message Chameleon. I am watching you.
Uncle Vanya.”
He read the message several times without moving an inch. All his deepest fears were about to come true.
Part of the email was pure bluster. He changed his keys on a very regular basis. He'd changed to this particular key pair a little over six months before. That wonderful thing called hindsight was telling him that he’d let his defences slip in recent months.
In that time, he'd done just one job in Croatia and had not been anywhere near Berlin. Nevertheless, the threat was real. Someone who knew him had let this ‘Uncle Vanya’ have access to his encryption key. Only three people in the world had the private key. As far as he knew, none of them would have given it up voluntarily.
Dawn was starting to brighten the sky on the other side of the mountains before he moved. His first stop was in the kitchen and while some coffee was brewing, he looked at his security system. What he found was disturbing. Someone had broken into the villa some eight days previously when he’d gone into Palma for the day by train. They’d tried to cover their tracks but had missed an enhancement he’d made to the system more than a year before. It was pure luck that he spotted the discrepancy in the files that the security system recorded.
The intruder had been into every part of his home and left a whole heap of bugs, both audio and video. Then they’d tried to erase the video of their work but had missed the fact that every half hour, the latest file was archived to a cloud service. When he replayed the original, he saw the face of the intruder. He wasn’t even trying to hide his face. He knew the man or at least his face. He’d come across him in a case in Cannes a few years before. He knew someone who might be able to identify him. He’d give that person a visit later that day.
He sat back and drank some coffee. With bugs in every room, the sender of the message would more than likely by now know if he had decoded it. That was both good and bad.
Bad in that the ‘man’ using the name of a Chekov play, would send him the details of the job. Good in that he had close to nine hours before the message would be sent. He intended to make good use of that time.
One cup of coffee was all that he needed to get going. Then he got dressed and left the house as he normally would on this day of the week. It was market day in Soller so he would walk down the hill and take the tram from the stop outside the Hotel Esplendido, as if nothing untoward had happened.
The tram and its positively ancient tram vehicles were some of the things that attracted him to Soller in the first place. Until that day, he’d never regretted coming here but now, it had been defiled. He’d miss this particular bolt hole after it had been exposed so rudely by this man calling himself ‘Uncle Vanya’. Chekov was never his favourite playwright. Memories of performing ‘The Three Sisters’ at school were not fond ones. He’d been chosen to play the male lead ‘Andrei’ but had been replaced one hour before the performance by the drama teacher. It was not his finest hour. As he waited for the tram, he wondered if his new foe was someone from those dark times? His deliberations were cut short by the appearance of a load of American tourists coming down the steps of the hotel.
They barged past him and climbed onto the tram. Then they embarrassed themselves by not having any Euro coins. He’d hoped that by this late in the tourist year, Puerto Soller would be returning to its out of season, sleepy self by now.
‘Not yet but soon’, he said to himself.
He did his shopping at the market as normal. Anyone watching him would see no deviation from his normal behaviour. His final port of call before he’d normally catch the tram back to the port would be the barbershop. Today was no exception.
“Hola Miguel,” he called out when he entered the shop.
“Hola Senor.”
He smiled at the barber Miguel and went through to the rear of the shop. In the back room, Miguel’s mother ran a small business repairing and altering clothes. After a brief discussion with his mother, he went into a cubicle to change his clothes.
He took off every stitch of clothing and replaced it with some items that were handed to him by Miguel’s mother. Once he was fully dressed and wearing a pair of ill-fitting shoes, he exited the shop out the back door. He’d left his phone and wallet behind and only carried cash. If that man who called himself ‘Uncle Vanya’, was as good as he boasted then nothing of his was safe from carrying a tracker.
Miguel’s mother had given him the keys to her son’s old SEAT car. He was on a mission and did not want to be tracked by anyone. He got into the car and drove out of town on the road to Palma, the capital of Mallorca. He was heading for an industrial complex not that far from the airport.
As he drove up the mountain, he kept an eye out for any vehicles that might be following him. There were none so he relaxed for the time it took him to reach his destination as the SEAT was not exactly a speedy vehicle.
“Ola Mike!” he called out as he entered the premises.
A voice from the back of the store called out.
“Hello Sergei. Long time no see! I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Take your time Mike. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Too darn right you aren’t. I’m the best place on the island.”
“Mike… you are the only place on the island!” said Serge.
“So! I’m still the best supplier of clandestine electronics shop this side of Madrid…” came the voice from the back.
He smiled and shook his head.
Mike appeared in the front of the shop a few minutes later.
“This is a pleasant surprise Sergei. It has been a while since you graced my humble premises with your presence. What can I do for you on this fine day?”
Mike’s strong Mancunian accent came through even though he’d been living on the island for more than forty years.
“I need a bug zapper. Optical and audio.”
“Man, that is some serious shit. Off on a job?”
Mike thought that Sergei was a security consultant. Close enough but it allowed him to acquire bits of kit that joe public would never need.
Sergei shook his head.
“Unwelcome visitors at home.”
“Ouch! That is not good.”
He pulled out the photo of the man who’d planted the bugs and showed it to Mike.
“I know him from somewhere but I can’t place him.”
That was a lie. He knew very well where he’d seen the man before but he was not as far as he knew, on the island or hadn’t been until now.
Mike looked at the photo. The smile that was on his face disappeared in a flash.
“Stay right there. I’ll be right back.”
Mike went into the back room and returned with a laptop. He pulled up the front page of the Island’s English Language newspaper.
Both of them read the headlines. The photo in the bottom corner told them both a story that they didn’t need to be told out loud.
“Ronnie Roberts. I remember him now. Useless grifter. Last I heard of him, he tried it on a head of police in Gerona,” said Mike.
“I ran into him briefly a few years back in Cannes before the Gendarmerie National ran him out of town. He tried to nick the Mayor's Car from in front of the Conference Centre.”
“Now his body was found floating in Palma harbour a few days ago.”
“What have you gotten yourself into my friend?” asked Mike.
“The less you know the better. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
“And I’m the King of Siam. Whoever they are, they don’t leave loose ends behind. Just like someone else I know, eh?”
“True. Can you supply my needs?”
“I can but I’m not going to charge you for them and you were never here. If anyone asks, I had a break in, ok?”
The man smiled and nodded his head.
Mike disappeared into the back office for a few moments. He returned with two devices.
“Do I need to tell you how to use them?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Then good luck man. Someone nasty is on your case so take care and come and see me when it is all over.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence Mike. It is much appreciated.”
Sergei’s next destination was to purchase a new but second-hand phone and a new but second-hand laptop. Ever cautious, he used different shops on different sides of the island capital, Palma for his purchases. At a third shop, he bought two new SIM cards for the phone.
He wasn’t going to take any chances that the old laptop had been infected with malware and spyware. If he had time, he could take it to someone in Barcelona who could do a deep dive into it but given the circumstances, it was quicker and easier to start again.
A little over two hours after leaving Mike’s shop, he was back on the road to Soller, his mission away from home complete.
When Sergei arrived back at his villa, he didn’t go in the front door. Instead, he went directly to the basement and cut the power to the building. Then he physically disconnected the cable that provided him with his internet connection.
He breathed a sigh of relief but he didn’t stop for long. He tripped all the breakers before turning on the supply again. He stood still for a while and watched the electricity meter. It didn’t move. So far, so good. Using the cellar as a base, he powered up the audio and video sniffer devices and checked the place for bugs. There were none in the cellar which pleased him no end.
His next job was to sweep each room for cameras after powering up the supply to only the room being swept.
When that first sweep was done and the devices disabled, he powered up the whole house and swept it again. The last sweep uncovered two more audio devices embedded in the ceiling of the kitchen and his bedroom and one camera in the bathroom. No room had been free of at least one bug. As a precaution, he shut off all the circuits in the house with the idea of ‘not tempting fate’ if it could be avoided.
The table in the basement contained no less than ten cameras and eight audio bugs. Some of them had been hard to find but he was still not confident that he'd found them all. He doubted that the late Ronnie Roberts had the skills to do all the planting on his own. There had to have been more than one person involved. Ronnie was just the break-in artist and was as the report in the newspaper indicated, expendable.
The sophistication of the devices impressed him. That confirmed his initial impression, that the man he was up against was going to be a worthwhile opponent.
The gathering gloom told him that it was almost time for the next email from who? Perhaps, there would be something in it that would give away the identity of his new nemesis?
Before leaving the basement with the groceries that he’d purchased at the market in Soller, he switched on the kitchen power supply. At least he could prepare something to eat and drink before getting his next set of instructions.
As he fried off some chorizo, garlic and peppers for an omelette, he wondered what his last meal would be?
[to be continued]
[1] The Soller-Puerto Soller Tramway on the island of Mallorca
https://trendesoller.com/eng/routes/tram
[Authors Note]
This story is a little different from most of my work. Please bear with me on this as not a lot really happens rapidly for most of it but Chameleon’s don’t move very fast, do they? (apart from their tongue which moves faster than you can blink)
The next email from ‘Uncle Vanya’ arrived just after the sun had set for the day. Sergei had watched the light of the day ending from the west terrace of his home.
He loved this spot on the island because of the magnificent sunsets and equally beautiful sunrises over the mountains to the east. More often that he’d care to admit, he’d fallen asleep in that very spot as he pretended to watch the sunset.
Of all the places he'd stayed in or lived in, in his life, this was by a long way, the best one. The contrast to the squalid rat-infested damp tower block of his early years could not be more dramatic. He’d certainly miss this place, but now that his location had been compromised, it was likely that his days of escaping from the rat race to Puerto Soller, were numbered.
Sergei opened the email and saw that it was an encryption key. He guessed that it was the public key for his nemesis. It was perfectly clear that the man knew an awful lot about him. That was troubling in itself because he'd gone out of his way to remain as inconspicuous as possible ever since his first contract. He was sure that he’d taken every precaution possible to avoid attracting the attention of the law only for someone else to step up and mess up his life big time. He knew very well that with every job, the chance of him being arrested grew. With twenty-nine jobs under his belt, it looked like that his good run was now at an end.
He saved the key to a file on the new laptop and waited.
And waited.
He gave up waiting just before midnight and went to bed with an immense feeling of frustration. He was not used to not being in control of things.
Feeling ready to face the day, he opened up his old phone and the email app. Once he’d sorted through the usual spam and newsletters that he’d never signed up for, he found that there was no email from his nemesis.
Sergei sighed as he looked out at the world. Right there and then, he made a decision. He was not going to let this person whoever they might be dominate his life as they might think they were. He had things to do, places to go and people to see.
He went inside the house and sat at his desk. The new laptop and phone were exactly where he'd left them the night before. They needed setting up before he could ditch the old ones. That job would take him several hours. Only when that was done would he be ready to start his fight back.
While the laptop was booting into Windows, he went to his wall safe and opened it with a fingerprint. He’d had the device custom built for him by a techno-savvy safe maker in Dusseldorf not long after he’d bought the house in Puerto Soller. If someone tried to bypass the fingerprint or try more than two different fingers within a 24-hour period, the contents would in the best ‘Mission Impossible’ tradition self-destruct. The then state of the art fingerprint reader included an oximeter so that if someone cut his finger off it would not work and the self-destruct sequence would begin. There were some things in his life that he was pretty paranoid about. This was one of them.
The display on the inside of the door told him that the last time it had been opened was more than two weeks ago. That was good news. Whoever had installed the bugs in his home hadn’t managed to get inside the safe. Not that the safe was in plain view. It was located inside a cupboard in the basement which was full of junk by design. There was no sense in advertising the presence of such an item.
Back at his desk, Sergei signed into the laptop and spent the next hour removing as much of the crap that comes with a windows system as he could. Then he plugged in one of the USB sticks that he’d retrieved from his safe and copied some files. One of these was his custom encryption key generator. When he was back online, he would send his new public key to a select few trustworthy contacts. One of those, he’d be seeing in a few days if plan that he was roughing out in his mind was put into place.
Once the laptop was in a semi-usable state, he turned his attention to the phone. It was not the latest model but would do the job that he wanted from it. His final act was to create a new cloud storage account using the details of a one-time credit card from a different online service that he used. None of these accounts had any records on the old laptop or phone. The only place where things were recorded were in his mind and in his safe.
When he was satisfied that both of his new tools were usable, he broke for some lunch. The earlier breeze had died away so he took his plate out into the garden where he had a view down into the bay.
He chuckled as the same party of American tourists that he’d encountered the previous day on the tram to Soller, were being ushered onto a coach. He guessed that they were leaving because of the pile of luggage being loaded into the coach. Watching the tour guide struggle to round them up was like watching a sheepdog with sheep. One would always wander away to take another photo of the Hotel, the bay or a tram.
“If I ever get like that then I give the lord permission to strike me dead,” he muttered to himself.
While the tourists were a nice diversion, he was wondering why there had not been another email from his unknown nemesis.
“Life must go on,” he thought to himself as he returned to the house.
Mike would come out on top financially, but that didn’t bother him. In his line of work, you had to trust a few people with at least some of your business. He knew that Mike knew that if he ratted him out, then Mike would not be long for this world. Trust only goes so far and so far, his business with Mike had been very profitable for both parties and the old saying, ‘Money Talks’. It would take a lot of money or some life-threatening threats to get Mike to flip on Sergei.
Seeing the tourists leaving had convinced him that his earlier decision was the right one. He was going to leave the island ASAP and would keep moving while he worked out a way of fighting this mysterious person.
Dusk was almost upon him when his old phone beeped. He had mail!
The decoded message read,
"Well, Mr Chameleon or should I say, Sergei Labrov, you are indeed a resourceful person. I did not expect you to find all my devices as soon as you did. It does not matter now. I have a job for you.
I have watched you from afar for some considerable time. That enabled me to learn how you operate. I admire the care and patience with which you go about your business. That is why I chose you for this job plus the fact that you do not know who I am makes the game all the sweeter don't you think?
I am sure that you want to know what this job is. Well, let me delay that no further.
In one hour, I will send you another email with a photo and the details of your job. Do the job as I require and our paths will never cross again. Try to find me and you will regret it. All that lovely incriminating data that I siphoned from your laptop is my hold on you. As long as I die a natural death it will die with me. If not then the authorities in at least ten countries will get a nice gift-wrapped present from my associates. I am sure you understand my meaning.
As evidence of my powers, your place near the lovely city of Rouen will go up in flames at 21:00 local today. I could do the same to your other homes and even where you are now in Puerto Soller. I do have to congratulate you on choosing such a nice location. It would be a pity to reduce it to rubble. The Polish RPG-76 Komar does a very good job at demolishing buildings as you well know. That was contract number six, wasn’t it?
As the Americans love to say, stay tuned for the next instalment.
Oh, and the keys used in these emails will not be used after today.
Uncle Vanya.
“
He read the email several times. With each read, his anger grew. Was there nothing about him that he didn’t know?
Sergei thought back to the job where he’d used that particular weapon. The man was an arms dealer so what better way for him to exit this life than for one of his cache of weapons to malfunction just when he was demonstrating it to some very nasty people? It was a case of four birds with one stone. That was a very satisfying job and one for which he was well rewarded. It had put him on the map in certain circles. The ‘nasty people’ who were about to buy more than fifty RPG’s were a thorn in the backside of several national security services around the world. One had eventually connected Sergei to the incident. He’d received what amounted to a ‘get out of jail free’ card with certain conditions from that organisation.
He sighed. That was then. This was now and it was his life on the line.
After he'd calmed down, he thought back to the email. 'Uncle Vanya' had claimed to have syphoned off a lot of data. Being a careful sort of person, his old laptop never had a lot of incriminating data on it in the first place. The last thing he’d ever want was for him to be caught crossing a border with incriminating data on the machine. The same applied to his phone. The one that Uncle Vanya had supposedly bugged had been purchased in Madrid after his last contract. Once again, the word ‘bullshit’ came into Sergei’s mind. Uncle Vanya knew some things about Sergei but what he or she did know was just the tip of the iceberg.
He'd learned a few things from his drunk of a father. One of those was compartmentalisation. Sergei had done that with his life ever since he had left home.
But, just to be sure, he powered up the old laptop making sure that his internet connection was already disabled. The last thing he wanted was for some malware to phone home to ‘Uncle Vanya’ or download a bunch of illegal files such as child porn.
He made sure that the two internet browsers that he used were locked down tight and configured to purge all cookies and history whenever the browser was closed. After two hours of almost forensic examination of the device he found nothing that could incriminate him or that should not be there.
The more he thought about it, the more he concluded that the mystery man or woman was bluffing about the laptop data. Nothing that could implicate him was on the laptop. That was because he scrubbed it after every job.
There was a lot of data in existence that would incriminate him in seconds but that was right here at his home and was very safe and secure. He was sure that his intruders hadn’t found it because it wasn’t in the house.
He’d started keeping vital bits of data very separate from the laptop some years before because it was evidence that would incriminate several very powerful politicians around the world if it was released. He'd learned a long time ago that evidence was a two-edged sword.
Sergei used the time before the arrival of the next email to pack a bag. It was time to bug out… Well, he’d wait until first thing in the morning before leaving. Then he used the new laptop and phone to book passage on the late morning ferry to Barcelona. He'd read between the lines of the email and in his estimation, the job for this mysterious man was going to be in the UK. The language used in the emails indicated a native English speaker or at least someone who had lived in the UK for at least ten years. His first job was to get on-site wherever the job was without anyone and especially ‘Uncle Vanya’ knowing. That ruled out flying or the taking train from Barcelona. There were many ways of getting into the UK without attracting any attention. The big advantage was that none of them was detailed anywhere other than inside his mind.
When all his prep work was done, he poured a glass of an excellent wine and sat down. He was ready for the next email.
It arrived dead on schedule. Once he’d decoded the contents, Sergei managed a small smile. There was no commentary from the mysterious man. It was all detail, detail that confirmed his guess about the target being located in the UK.
The detail of the target troubled him from the outset. He, Sergei Labrov, might be an accomplished assassin but he had a set of standards that had worked for him for more years than he wanted to admit. He’d never accepted a contract where the target was a woman or anyone under the age of eighteen.
That simple fact stopped his train of thought dead. Under normal circumstances, he’d reject the contract and return the evaluation fee. He began to accept that this man or woman who had sent him the details was in control of the operation and not him for at least the time being. That was a new experience for Sergei and not one that he wanted to continue a moment longer than humanly possible.
The whole concept of eliminating a woman was just not something that he’d had to consider before. Now that he was faced with it, he really had no choice. Despite knowing that Uncle Vanya had lied about a few things, he was not someone to take chances on a job. He had to get his mind into the right mental state if he was going to come out the other end with a future.
This lack of control made Sergei more determined to get to the bottom of the contract. That was the only way he could see of getting out of this dilemma and then being able to start the new life that he’d been working towards since… since forever. If he came out of this in one piece then this job would definitely be his last and he could concentrate of being the person he had dreamed about as a child in between the beatings from a drunken father.
Sergei shut down his laptop and began to think, plan and scheme. He sat almost motionless with his eyes closed for more than three hours while he went over the numerous possibilities in his mind.
The first part was clear in his mind and had been since before the email about the ‘job’ had arrived. He had to get to the UK as discretely as possible once he reached the Spanish mainland. That could involve him calling in a few favours along the way, but he'd have to do it in such a way as not to put the people helping him in danger.
His modus operandi for all the jobs he’d done was to do it slowly and with care. This would be no different. As the mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ wanted him to do the job in his normal way, who was he to disagree. He would appear to do the job in his normal way but behind the scenes, he would be searching for his nemesis. They would have to be keeping tabs on him so… they would not be that far from the action.
With a clear plan for getting to the UK in his mind, he began to gather things together for his departure early in the morning. He refreshed the mental note not to forget to drop the box of goodies off at Mike's place on his way to the port. Sergei estimated that Mike could make around eight hundred Euros when he resold them on the black market. By dropping them off before Mike opened up, Mike could not reveal where he was going.
Next on the list was all the perishable food. He hated wasting food and he knew of a family who lived very close to the Barbers shop in Soller, who were living close to if not actually in poverty. He was sure that they would appreciate a donation of fresh food and some euros. He had his barber, Miguel, to thank for that tip-off when he’d left for a previous job.
There was by now, a sizeable pile of bags and boxes by the front door waiting to be loaded into his ancient SEAT car.
One huge drawback to living on an island the size of Mallorca was that there are only a few ways out of the place. Even worse, there was only one road into and out of Soller, plus the railway with one or at most two trains a day to Palma.
Trying to slip off the island unnoticed was a virtual non-starter unless he chartered a boat but the Spanish Navy were pretty hot on small boats who were often used by drug and people smugglers. Because ‘Uncle Vanya’ had told him that the job was in the UK, he wasn’t going to hide that part of his journey to the UK. Once he’d reached the Spanish mainland, his ability to blend into the background would be key to getting across the English Channel undetected.
His reason for getting into the UK in as quietly as possible, was that the more time he had observing the subject before ‘he’ found out that he was on the job, the better.
Just before 06:00 the next morning, Sergei drove his loaded car away from the only place he’d dare call home in the last six and a bit, years and for possibly for the last time. Puerto Soller had been good to him since he’d discovered the place while researching a victim. That particular contract had been completed some weeks later in Rome but he’d never forgotten the place and a few months later, he’d bought his home and became as local as he could apart from taking Spanish Nationality.
Soller was just starting to come alive for the day when he dropped off a box of groceries outside the Barbers shop. There was a note inside giving instructions for them plus €100. The family that lived nearby who had fallen on hard times would appreciate that donation.
Some people might have called that going soft but Sergei had always shown humanity in his work. He had been fastidious in avoiding ‘friendly fire’ casualties unlike many others who called themselves assasins.
The road out of Soller towards Palma goes over a mountain. At one of the many hairpin bends on the climb up, Sergei stopped his car and looked back over Soller towards the port. If he had some binoculars with him, he could probably see his home. If this was to be the last time he would see it, he wanted it to be memorable. It was. He could have dallied there for hours but time waits for no man, and he could not expect the ferry to the mainland to wait for him.
He logged onto a cloud account email system and sent two emails. The first was to the owner of a Garage in the border town of La Tour de Carol. The second was to a fisherman in Brittany. He was confident that this account had not been hacked by his unknown nemesis. Sergei only accessed this account from a non-default web browser that by default purged all cookies and web history when the browser was shut down. He'd set up a new VPN on the laptop so anyone tracing the email would see that it was coming from Denmark. Tomorrow, the trace would come back as coming from Greece. None of the account details were saved in the browser system, they were all retrieved from his memory.
When the emails had been sent, Sergei relaxed with a small glass of Rioja. All that remained was to head to the ferry and the seven-hour crossing to Barcelona.
Sergei found a place to sit at the back of the bar on the ferry and settled down with a good book. He was re-reading 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. He'd always been something of a stranger wherever he'd lived ever since he'd run away from home in Novosibirsk, Russia at the age of 10. His father was a drunken bully and often took his frustrations with post-Soviet Russia out on Sergei and his younger sister. He'd returned to Russia many times in the intervening years but only once to Novosibirsk when he repaid his father for all the beatings that he’d given his son all those years before. He always maintained that he became the person he was because of those terrible days as a child. The bears in the nearby mountains had a nice feed on his father who was still alive when they attacked him. It was in his mind poetic justice because that was the end that his father had promised him as a child just to scare him to death by promising to feed him to the bears.
The crossing went without issue and right on time, Sergei drove his SEAT off the ferry and began to concentrate on his immediate two tasks. His prime objective was to get out of Barcelona in the middle of the evening rush as quickly as possible and the second was to make sure that he wasn't being followed. The last thing he wanted was to put his next helper in danger.
Sergei was satisfied with the latter by the time he stopped for a brief meal in the small fishing village of Palamos just before ten that evening. Unless there was a tracking device that had been attached to his car since he’d scanned it that morning, he was free and clear for the time being at least.
From Palamos to the border town of La Tour de Carol was a two-hour drive. He arrived just before 01:00. Most of the inhabitants of the area were in their beds but there were lights at the local garage. As he came to a stop, the front door to the house next to the garage opened and a woman stepped out.
“Добрый вечер, дорогая сестра” (good evening dear sister) said, Sergei.
“Добрый вечер, брат дорогой. Это было слишком долго.” (good evening brother dear. It has been far too long) replied the woman.
Илиана, я пригласил тебя приехать в гости”, (Iliana, I did invite you to come over)
“ Я знаю, но Томас ненавидит лодки” (I know but Tomasz hates boats) said, Iliana.
“Я здесь сейчас, все готово?” (I am here now, is everything ready?)
Да, контейнер находится вокруг задней части мастерской “ (Yes, the container is around the back of the workshop), said Iliana.
Sergei nodded his head and drove his car to the back of the workshop. A shipping container was waiting for him with its doors open. He drove into it and switched off the engine. He sat a few seconds before taking a deep breath and getting out of the car taking his single bag with him. With the car inside the container, any tracking bugs would be rendered useless.
He closed the doors to the container and went to join his sister in the house.
Iliana and her husband Tomasz were waiting for him in the kitchen.
Tomasz gave Sergei a big hug before pouring him a glass of local wine.
“It has been a long time my friend, ваше здоровье (cheers).”
“It has Tomasz., ваше здоровье.”
“You look troubled. The tone of your email was not your usual happy self. You seemed to feel at home on Mallorca and now you are here. This is obviously not a social call so what gives?”
Sergei sat for a moment before saying,
“I am being blackmailed into a contract on a woman.”
A deathly cold silence fell over the room. Hits on women were strictly off-limits for both him and Tomasz.
“I’ve got your back if you need me,” said Tomasz.
Sergei nodded his head.
“Whatever happens, this is my last job. Iliana has the contact details of my lawyer in Madrid should things go pear shaped.”
“Is it that bad?” asked Tomasz.
“Worse. My home was invaded and bugged to hell and back.”
“That is not good,” said Iliana.
“It is why I’m here and need your help as I outlined in my email.”
Tomasz looked at his wife and smiled.
“I was a bit stumped at first but Iliana came to the rescue. A friend of hers who lives between here and Villefranche-de-Conflent on the ‘Yellow Train’[1] had a Nissan Van for sale. We went there early this afternoon, and did a deal. €1000 cash secured the deal. I gave it a check over and it will do what you want it to. It would take you to Novosibirsk in summer if you wanted it too although the front tyres will need changing after a couple of thousand kilometres if you are careful.”
“Thanks Tomasz, I only need it to get me to the channel on the ‘N’ roads,” replied Sergei.
“You really don’t want to be tracked, do you?”
Sergei shook his head.
“My current plan relies on me getting into the UK without going through an official border.”
“Rather you than me,” said Iliana.
“I’d rather be at my villa on Mallorca than crossing the channel in the Autumn on a small boat.”
Iliana laughed.
“What is it with you men and rough water?”
The trio laughed. Then they turned in for what remained of the night.
[to be continued]
[1] https://about-france.com/tourism/yellow-train-pyrenees.htm
After a reasonably early breakfast the next morning, Sergei and his brother-in-law, Tomasz moved the rest of his belongings from Sergei’s SEAT[1] into the Nissan van. Tomasz added a rolled-up mattress and sleeping bag once Sergei had explained that he’d likely be spending at least one night on the road.
Tomasz agreed with him when Sergei told him the outline of his route north. He gave Sergei an old but usable Michelin Road atlas of France.
“That will be a great help, thanks.”
Iliana had prepared some food for the journey.
“Take care brother dear. From what you said last night, nothing and no one is safe from this man. And, don’t drive for too long today. You need sleep like the rest of us.”
“I know, but this is nothing more than I’ve prepared for. That is one thing that we can thank our late father for. His insistence that we live the life of KGB operatives even though we were just children.”
“Yeah. Just like his father did to him and look how he turned out eh?”
“We got away and are different people now.”
“I am,” said Iliana.
“You aren’t all that different from him.”
“I don’t get drunk on illicit Vodka almost every night and take my anger out on my children.”
“Errr? You don’t have any children. You kill people for a living. Didn’t the KGB do that?”
“You know very well that I only take down the bad guys that the cops can’t or won’t due to being bribed to look the other way. Political assassinations are and always have been a no-go area for me unlike our father. He made so many enemies in the party doing Putin’s bidding before he became President and now Dictator for Life. That is all I’m going to say. I don’t want to mysteriously fall out of a window. Honestly, you would think that the FSB could at least use a little Polonium from time to time…”
The last part of what he said was meant as a joke but it fell flat.
Iliana smiled at her brother.
“I know that you are trying to do good but… it can’t last forever.”
“That’s why I’ve not accepted any contracts for the last few months. I’ve been thinking about retiring for some time. Since I bought my place on Mallorca… It has had an effect on me. I don’t know what that place has done to me but I’ve been less and less inclined to want another contract, then this happens.”
“That is fate trying to tell you something,” said Tomasz.
“Fate told me to quit what… three years ago. I did just that and we came down here from Paris and we aren’t going anywhere. This place might be in the back of beyond but we have grown to love it. Besides, you are going to be an uncle in the new year…”
Sergei was surprised by the revelation.
“We have been approved to adopt. Because of our backgrounds, we are getting a six-year-old girl from Ukraine. Her home was bombed out when Putin invaded the Donbas. She and her pregnant mother escaped to Poland and made their way to Metz where they were supposed to have a relative. They were not there and to make matters worse, the mother and baby died in childbirth.”
Sergei was so happy for his family.
“That makes it even more important for me to get through this last job. Then I can be her uncle.”
The status of uncle in their family was important. Those few words told them that Sergei was going to be extra careful on this job.
Tomasz nodded his head.
Iliana came to him and after a hug and a kiss on both cheeks, she whispered,
“When this is over, it is time to become the person you have hidden from everyone but me for so long.”
He knew exactly what she meant. Sergei had been dithering over this decision for a long time, but right now was not the time nor the place to make it.
Sergei bade Iliana and Tomasz goodbye and set off on his long journey to his departure point for England. He’d deliberately not mentioned his real destination to his relatives. What they didn’t know, they couldn’t tell… not that they’d tell anyone short of being tortured but his way had always been ‘the less other people know about your business, the less that they can talk about it’.
Sergei stopped a few kilometres south of Toulouse and after filling up the tank with Diesel, he put his PAYG phone from Majorca into flight mode. After a moment’s thought, he simply switched it off and put it in one of those bags that were to protect film from X-Ray machines at airports.
He didn’t want anyone tracking him by mapping pings off of cell towers. Sergei certainly did not want to make it easy for ‘Uncle Vanya’ to track him on his journey to the UK. While parked up, he took advantage of a nearby supermarket and bought a freshly baked baguette with extra seeds and grains.
Iliana was a great sister, but her choice of food for him to eat on the journey was not to his liking. He was not in Russia and had very much gone off pickled cabbage and cucumber. Her parting gift went into the wastebin at a rest area about 50km from Toulouse.
He would make do with a tin of tuna, that he’d brought from his home and the baguette for his lunch when he’d passed west of Limoges.
The long drive gave Sergei time to go through his extensive list of contacts in the UK that he held only in his mind. None of their information was in his old phone or laptop. For once, he thanked his brute of a father for drilling into him the art of memorising names and phone numbers. What is not written down can’t be used against you, or them if a case went wrong.
Sergei arrived in the port of Roscoff feeling quite a bit the worse for wear. Nearly two long days behind the wheel of a noisy old Nissan van was not his idea of fun. The small hole in the exhaust was a lot bigger. He had stopped near Nantes and bought a patching kit. That was for later.
He’d avoided all the Autoroutes once he was north of Toulouse. His progress had been very slow and steady. Many of the countless towns and villages implemented 20kph speed limits plus innumerable speed humps. The Nissan’s shock absorbers were in a bad state before the journey. By the time he reached Brittany, they were providing almost zero damping.
Several times, he compared it to the Lada that his father had been assigned by the party before the breakup of the USSR. It was almost new when he’d first ridden in it. The clapped-out Nissan offered about the same quality of ride.
The lights of the nearby ferry terminal were very tempting. It would be so easy to get on the overnight ferry to Plymouth and be done with it but that wasn’t his plan.
Sergei pulled into a field entrance just north of the ferry and used his new phone and laptop to connect to his cloud email accounts. Two messages were waiting for him. One was from the fisherman named Georges whom he would meet in a few hours. Georges had agreed to take him on his next trip for the sum of €2000. That was within Sergei’s price range.
The other was from a Cornish Fisherman name Brian Falconer who operated out of the port of Newlyn. He owed Sergei a favour, so that part of the journey would not cost him one Euro.
Brian and Georges knew each other and neither of them were strangers to a bit of smuggling. This time, he’d be the cargo but was hardly an illegal immigrant. He had a valid British passport, therefore, strictly speaking, no laws of any significance were being broken by them transporting him across the English Channel. One of George's crew would take his van on the ferry to Plymouth the next morning and be exchanged for Sergei somewhere in the Channel at a later date. Once Sergei was in Plymouth, he'd have his van to get to his next destination, the city of Reading, but once again, he was keeping that bit of information very close to his chest.
He used the time he had in hand to fix the exhaust. Even if her never drove the thing again, at least it would not poison the driver from the exhaust gasses that seeped into the interior.
“You are right my friend. It is too risky to attempt a transfer at sea with them blowing up like this. It looks like mid-channel for a rendezvous will be out of the question for nearly a week.”
“That is what the sea is like. One minute, she is your friend. The next, she is trying to kill you,” said Georges.
He looked at Sergei. They’d done business a few times over the previous decade and it had all been to both their advantage. Not this time.
“What will you do?” asked Georges.
“I’ll take the ferry tomorrow. I checked before I left the port earlier, and there is plenty of space on the morning sailing.”
“That will leave a footprint. Didn’t you want to be what you say in English, incognito.”
Sergei nodded.
“I did and I have one last trick up my sleeve on that front.”
Sergei stood up and put on his jacket. He regretted not bringing a winter coat with him from Mallorca.
Then he turned to Georges.
“Keep the money. Consider it a deposit for the next time I might need your services.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I am Georges. You answered my call for help and that is all I can ask for. I’ll make sure that our friend in Newlyn is compensated. I have to do my bits for the entente cordial don’t I?”
“Sergei, you are not like any Russian that I have ever met.”
“Georges, you know very well that I’ve been out of Russia for a lot longer than I was in it.”
“My friend, you are a different person from when we first met.”
Sergei smiled.
“I would hope so. I am a lot different from the dirty dishevelled boy that tried to stow away on your fishing boat all those years ago. But mainly thanks to you, I saw the error of my ways.”
Georges laughed.
“That is true, but I meant from the last time you visited us. Something in you has changed.”
“For the better I hope?”
“Oh yes, for the better. You seem more certain about things in your life.”
Sergei said his goodbyes and went to the Hotel near the port, where he was staying with lots on his mind. That was now two of his closest friends and relatives who had remarked on his recent change in mood, attitude or whatever. He knew exactly what they had been hinting at but was afraid to admit it to himself. Doing so could cloud his judgement in the execution of this already difficult case.
After clearing customs and immigration in Plymouth, Sergei drove down to Newlyn to see his friend Brian Falconer. They met in a Pub in Penzance where over a pint, old times were talked over and some euro banknotes changed hands before the two men disappeared into the night.
By keeping those two fishermen on his side, he knew that if the shit hit the proverbial fan in a big way, then, he’d have a way out of the UK that was well off the books… provided the weather wasn’t as bad as it was on the way over.
The town centre of Reading was in Sergei's opinion nothing more than a prime example of brutalist architecture from the 1960s and 1970s that had dated badly, no make that very badly. Just the walk from the car park to his hotel made him depressed. In many places, the steel reinforcing in concrete beams in the car park were corroding badly. It would not be long before the place would fall down if it wasn’t condemned first. He’d seen that before as a child when a 12 storey Stalin era housing project suddenly collapsed due to steel rot. Hundreds of people died in their beds. Seeing the rot again made him very depressed. Sergei decided to park somewhere else after that night. A car park on the other side of the river Thames proved to be the perfect spot.
Some of the old buildings that had been constructed in the local style did survive but they were dwarfed by modern monstrosities. He smiled when he saw the demolition teams hard at work pulling down a late 1960s/early 1970s shopping centre. That hadn’t lasted very well.
He’d cheered loudly when a few years before, he had found a video of his childhood home being blown up. That fine example of a ‘project’ had resisted the wrecking ball so it was ceremoniously blown up. In doing so, the authorities of Novosibirsk had destroyed once and for all the remains of his early life. It was amazing what the walls of a Khrushchev era ‘project’ could contain including the bones of his mother. Sergei had gotten his revenge some years later for the crime of his father strangling his mother to death after a whole day binging on illicit vodka. His father had wrapped her body up in plastic and sealed her into a wall of their bedroom. Then he’d gone about life as if nothing had happened. That was the day that Sergei knew what he was destined to do in life starting with his father.
Sergei spent a whole day wandering around the town just to get the lay of the land. He walked past the building where ‘she’ worked just one time. That just happened to be at lunchtime. He observed the workers heading into the town centre for their lunch. He wasn’t expecting to see his target but he was pleased then she appeared in a small group of women. It was then that he spotted two men acting more than a bit out of the ordinary. They followed her at a distance as they headed towards a bar on Friar Street. As it was a Friday, he assumed that they were going to the bar for a celebration of some sort.
These two people certainly knew each other. There was a series of nods and shaking of heads between them. They were on different sides of the street so it made sense. Sergei moved away and observed things from a distance. Then he changed his mind. The 'target' was going to be in the bar for at least an hour, so he took the opportunity to get some lunch. On his walk around the town, he had noticed a sandwich shop called 'Pierre's'. That's where he headed for and bought a Tuna and Sweetcorn Baguette and a bottle of water. Tuna seemed to be becoming a staple part of his diet.
Suitably armed with some food, he returned to the scene of the ‘action’. The two men were still there. One of them was on his phone, so Sergei took the opportunity to walk close to him in the hope of finding out at least what language he was using.
That grand plan failed as the man ended the call just before Sergei walked by him. He did pick up one bit of information and that the man was probably from Germany if the label on the inside of his jacket was anything to go by. A familiar bulge under their left arms told him that they were probably armed. Then as he went to put the paper bag that had held his lunch into the bin, he got a glimpse of a pearl handled Glock 19. That wasn’t good but at least he knew a bit more about the opposition.
Sergei found a bench near the old Town Hall/Museum and ate the baguette. All the time, he was watching the men out of the corner of his eye. They didn’t move or even try to blend in. That made Sergei sad but it told him a lot about the job that they were doing. As for Sergei, he hoped that he appeared to be just another worker who had escaped from an office cubicle for an hour to eat lunch. He knew that his clothing would not stand close scrutiny and resolved to buy something to wear that wasn’t so summery by the end of the day.
When he’d finished his lunch, Sergei returned to his hotel whereupon, he composed and sent an email to the mysterious man who’d made him travel almost a thousand miles just to watch two clowns at work.
“To my nemesis Uncle Vanya,
I am in Reading and have seen the two idiots that you have tailing ‘her’. They stand out like two sore thumbs. Get rid of them and let me do my job in my way and in my own time. If I see or hear of others doing the same (or worse) then I’m out of here and you can do your worst. As you claim to know everything about me, then you must know how I work and that is alone and in my own time, so why not let me do it eh? I can make this operation a success which is what you want isn’t it?
I will be waiting and watching. There had better be action and soon. If not, I will make a call to the Police and drop those two goons right in it. Going around with Glocks in shoulder holsters in the UK, is just silly. That’s a five-year minimum stretch. Got it?
Sergei.
“
After some further thought, he saved the message after deciding to watch and wait for another day. He was not someone who acted irrationally and he mentally scolded himself for even writing the email until he had more evidence. He didn’t know if the two goons were even part of ‘his’ operation. Sergei scolded himself for reacting in haste rather than in a planned and controlled way.
Sergei wandered down to the river Thames and walked from Reading Bridge to Caversham Bridge. It gave him time to think about the mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ and his promise to destroy his hideaway in Rouen. He had not heard of any incidents in the city so he checked the website of the local newspaper. There was no mention of any suspicious events other than a local man falling into the river and being rescued.
To Sergei, that was the first mistake that Uncle Vanya had made since he had embarked on this project to get Sergei to take out this young woman. If the roles had been reversed, Sergei would have had the place set on fire just to tell his target that he was serious about the contract. He always carried out his promises. It appears that this so called ‘Uncle Vanya’ did not.
[to be continued]
[1] SEAT : for those readers outside Europe, SEAT is the Spanish arm of Volkswagen.
The evidence he was searching for was right there in front of him when Sergei arrived in the middle of town the next morning. The same two leather jacketed men were loitering about close to the railway station as people arrived for work.
Sergei had seen the target take the train the previous evening, but had been too late to follow her after buying a ticket to Ascot only to find the train pulling away from the platform. He vowed to purchase a ticket the next morning to not make the same mistake again.
‘She’ had arrived in Reading on a train that had originated in London and headed directly for her place of work. Sergei held back at the station entrance and watched. Sure enough, the two men followed her with one on each side of the road. In the general stream of workers heading away from the station, they were next to invisible apart from their clothes. Their black leather jackets were a dead giveaway. Their styles were readily identifiable as originating from eastern Europe to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject.
After a suitable delay, Sergei followed the trio. His target didn’t look back or do anything to check her surroundings. That told him that she was more than likely blissfully unaware of the men that were tailing her.
The two men carried on walking after she turned off the street and into the office building where she worked. Sergei watched them while standing at a bus stop. He was doing nothing out of the ordinary as several others were waiting patiently for the next bus.
The men met up about 50 yards past the office where she worked. They had a brief discussion before heading off deeper into the centre of town. Sergei wanted to follow them but decided that getting the bus would make them less liable to see that they had a tail.
A bus arrived with the destination of High Wycombe on the front. He recognised one of the intermediate destinations, Henley upon Thames, so he boarded and purchased a single to the town. His plan was to return by train once rush hour was over.
Back at his hotel in the late morning, Sergei sent the message that he’d saved the previous day before returning to watch the watchers. It was getting close to the end of the working day and Sergei wanted to observe the target on her way home. Even at this early stage, this whole setup just didn’t feel right.
Sergei had been employed to take down a good number of very bad men over the years. These ranged from Drug Lords, People Traffickers and Mob bosses but here was a woman in her mid to late twenties with what seemed to be a perfectly normal job and an even more normal life. A question that had been rattling around in his mind for days now was uppermost in his thoughts. That question was simple. Why did someone want this woman dead? She was very much unaware of any threat to her life which kept his mind returning to the simple word 'Why?'.
That single word, led him to ask himself some other questions such as who wanted her killed, and what had she done to annoy that person so much that her life should be forfeited. It was just not right. The image of him being arrested for attempting to kill her was right there in his mind as was another simple word, ‘Trap’.
Sergei returned to the street and began observing the two watchers for a few minutes when an Estate Agents sign in a first floor Office Window drew his attention. Slowly an idea formed in his mind about a way forward. It was time to purchase another phone from one of the shops in the town. That way, it would be clean of any possible malware that could lead his nemesis to track him in even greater detail than they had been.
Getting a phone and a SIM card was easy thanks to his bolt hole in Peterborough and his being on the electoral roll in that city. With the new device activated, Sergei headed for a small patch of greenery called Forbury Gardens.
A quick search on his phone revealed that the agents were based in the nearby town of Wokingham although they had a Reading phone number. Wokingham was just ten minutes away on the train. If he could obtain a short-term let of residential property in the area as well as office space, then he would be all set to continue his quest. The office space would be a perfect cover for his operations.
The two watchers were still there, but now they were together and were arguing about something. One of them held his phone up as if to say, ‘you make the call’ or words to that effect. Neither of them was particularly happy with something which pleased Sergei. It appeared that his email had been received and acted upon.
The two men seemed to run out of things to say about something and they walked off towards the Railway Station. Sergei afforded himself a small smile.
To his surprise, she didn’t go into the station but joined a queue of about ten others who were waiting for a bus at a stop about 50 yards from the old entrance to the station.
A No 4 bus turned up less than a minute later so Sergei followed her onto the bus. That short wait was the reason for her urgency. She’d shown a season ticket or some sort of bus pass to the driver so he was no wiser about her ultimate destination. He purchased a ticket to the end of the route in Bracknell and followed her onto the top deck of the bus.
More people arrived and the bus was about 2/3rds full when it left. Unlike most other passengers, she wasn’t glued to her phone for the entire journey. Sergei played a game of Solitaire on his phone which, he’d returned to flight mode, but with one eye on his target. At every stop, he looked out of the window. It was clear to him that they were leaving the town and going into the suburbs. It was difficult to read the road signs due to the condensation on the inside of the windows and the approaching darkness outside.
There was a display at the front of the bus that told everyone where the next stop would be. When the words ‘Winnersh Crossroads’ came up on the display, several people including ‘her’ got up and went downstairs. Sergei was tempted to follow her but this was enough for the first day. He remained in his seat but was able to observe her crossing the road and going into a relatively small supermarket that occupied one corner of the crossroads. It seemed highly likely that this was her local store. This was all good background information for him.
A few minutes later, he realised that the bus was entering the town of Wokingham. He saw the offices of the Estate Agents that were handling the letting of the office that was for rent in Reading. That spurred him into action. He got off the bus and after collecting his thoughts, he went into the Agents even if it was after 5:00 pm on a Friday.
He took the train from the nearby station back to Reading, and his work for the day was done.
Sergei left his hotel a little after seven thirty that evening and headed towards a pub that also made their own pies. The name of the place, ‘Sweeny Todd’ had caught his eye when he was on his wanderings around the town earlier that day. He fancied a ‘Steak and Oyster Pie’ and a glass of beer. Just like in Mallorca, he preferred the simple food to the complicated and often overly fancy dishes that were served in many restaurants in the 21st century.
As he sampled the food and the excellent beer, his thoughts turned to the future. It was even clearer in his mind that whichever way this job turned out, the activities of ‘The Chameleon’ were soon going to be a thing of the past.
The leather jacketed men were more of a nuisance than anything else. If Uncle Vanya did as he wanted, they would be gone but he suspected that they would not be that far away from the action.
His mind went onto the subject. As far as he knew at that moment, ‘she’ was just a normal late twenty something who wasn’t married or engaged. At least, that was what the lack of rings on her fingers told him. He’d passed close by her as she waited to get into the pub with her work colleagues. She was wearing Opium. His nose told him that it was not the version that was available on the high street in the UK of That struck him rather strange but one that was only available from one shop in Paris. That meant it cost a lot more money than the normal version. He could thank a previous contract in the French capital for discovering that there were two versions of this very popular perfume.
Why would someone apparently so young and working in an office 9-to-5, wear such an expensive and rare perfume to work? That was a question that didn’t need answering right away but it was interesting to him. Then again, if ‘she’ was just a normal office worker perhaps a boyfriend had bought it for her. Then he dismissed that idea. It would take a really special friend to know about the perfume.
There was nothing in the details that Uncle Vanya had sent him about her background and what her job was. The mystery deepened.
It wasn’t until Sergei was preparing for bed that something else came into his mind.
When he’d visited the Estate Agents in Wokingham, it was very much a spur of the moment thing. In the activity of arranging to view two properties, he’d seen a few things that didn’t register at the time. The first was that on a shelf behind her desk were a number books of Chekov plays. Second, a notice on the window was publicising a forthcoming performance of ‘The Seagull’ at the local theatre.
No matter how hard Sergei tried, he could not recall if one of the volumes on the shelf was ‘Uncle Vanya’. That was filed away to be answered at a later date.
His last thought before drifting off to sleep was about the very delectable Ms Forrester. If he wasn’t in the middle of a fight for his life, he could imagine himself trying to have a relationship with her. She’d even laughed at his feeble jokes. While that was to be expected for an agent trying to make a deal, he could see that there was a lot about her character that was being crushed to death in such a job.
“That is nice to know.”
“But there is one check that I have to make and that is your proof of residency.”
Sergei smiled and produced his UK passport.
“I am on the electoral roll in Peterborough which should be good enough for you.”
The agent didn’t bat an eyelid as she took down the details.
“That will be fine but you should be aware that your passport expires in seven months.”
That surprised Sergei. He looked at the passport and smiled.
“Thanks for that. I’ll make sure that I get it renewed before I head back to sunnier climes.”
“Don’t forget to bring it to the office as I’ll need a copy for the records. We have to show that the renter has either residency or a valid work visa. Things are only going to get worse when we get around to leaving the EU,” she said with a distinct sadness in her voice.
“That vote was a bad more all around. If I ever meet the chinless wonder, Nigel Farage or Boris in a pub, I’ll gladly buy them a pint and pour it over their head.”
She laughed.
“I’m sure that there are a lot of people who would like to do the same.”
“In general, most people don’t like change being forced on them,” remarked Sergei.
“Yet… your job is to downsize businesses… Isn’t that a kind of forced change?”
“Downsizing is only part of my job. Most of it involves high level executive reorganisation which is a different kind of change and one that can take those concerned to a different level? Sometimes, using someone from outside the organisation can see things in the business that those at the coal face don’t see simply because they are too close. A few years ago, I looked at a business and all it needed for that company to start growing was the removal of one person from the workforce. Today, that company is worth six times what it was when I was engaged to do my thing. They also have more than double the number of employees than when I finished my work.”
“Touche!”
Sergei was growing to like this woman. She had a brain and a good wit.
As he watched her drive away, Sergei, wondered… ‘What if…’
He shook his head and tried to concentrate on the real job at hand.
[to be continued]
Sergei spent most of the rest of the day in his hotel room working on a variety of plans for resolving the problem he faced in that there was no way in hell, was he going to kill a young woman.
He was even more certain about that now that he had seen her in real life. A photograph is one thing but seeing her with her work friends convinced him that there had to be another solution to the problem. The saying, ‘there are two sides to every coin’ and a lot of stuff like that crossed his mind at least once an hour.
He was hampered by the fact that, so far, he had no idea who was behind this whole thing in the first place. Then there was the nagging thought that he had that the whole thing was a setup and he could very well be walking right into a trap.
Sergei worked long into the night going over all the contracts that he’d accepted as well as those he’d turned down in the hope of getting a clue about who was behind this. It was well after midnight before he sat back and looked at the list of seven names, the magnificent seven who could be his nemesis at the end of an encrypted email.
He went to bed having concluded that he needed to call in a few more favours and had sent off one email that would hopefully kick things off. For once, he was glad that he’d made a decision very early in his career to never take on a contract on a British subject. He had developed a soft spot for his adopted home as a teenager and knew that future, he would need a safe place to retire to, and also a place where he wasn’t wanted for any crimes. That decision alone made it impossible for him to carry out this mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’s’ wishes.
His last act that night was to send an email from his cloud account to one of those old friends. That friend was the one person he knew who could legally penetrate the wall of mystery that surrounded this case. As much as Sergei hated it, this was one time when he needed some help.
“Hello Sam. It is nice to see you again,” said Sergei as he sat down at the table.[1]
“Greetings Sergei. This is a surprise. Until I read your email, I thought you were in semi-retirement on Mallorca.”
Sergei smiled.
“I was hoping to make it permanent but as I said in my email, I’m being blackmailed into a job that I vowed a long time ago to never do. Firstly, because it is on a woman. Secondly, is that she is as far as I know, a British citizen and thirdly, it is to be done here. I’ve kept the promise I made to you when I got into this game and I have no intention of going back on it.”
“That is good to know because the last thing I would want to do is go after you for breaking our laws,” joked Sam, the head of a government department that does not officially exist.
‘Sam’ was not his real name but an alias that was adopted by the current head of that ghost department.
Sergei had helped the previous incarnation of Sam out in a tricky case, a few years before, and it was time for him to call in the favour. This ‘Sam’ had been deputy to the previous head of the department at the time. The favour had helped the department that does not exist take down a Serbian War Criminal who was working as an orderly in a retirement home in Pontefract, Yorkshire. That man went on trial at the Hague for his crimes and was sent to prison for life. It was the one contract that he’d accepted but had not delivered on. Sergei had returned the fee to the agent handling the deal after the arrest. When the man had been convicted and sentenced to life in jail, the full fee was paid to Sergei. He didn’t argue.
“I never imagined that you’d be on the wrong end of blackmail,” said Sam.
“Believe me Sam, it is not a nice feeling. I was well and truly hacked. My home, phone and computer. I guess I let my guard down a bit but whoever is behind this means business. The guy who broke into my home on Mallorca was found dead in Palma Harbour a couple of days later. That is not good, but it sends me a clear message. Your lot might know him, it was Ronnie Roberts. At one time, he was a low life enforcer for the Phillipson family.”
“I remember him. I’ll pass that the info about his passing onto to both ‘5’ and ‘6’.”
“I’m glad to be of some help.”
“It does help, but that does not explain the target that you have been given.”
Sergei handed over a printout of the email and photo that he’d received from his nemesis.
“On the surface of it, she looks like a pretty normal person. Why does this man want her dealt with is either personal, or it is a test to see just how far I would go? As you know, women are off limits for me. I’m divided about this whole thing. I don’t know if this is personal or is just a test that would lead to something more serious or is a big trap for me. Can you dig into her background a bit? Naturally, nothing overt or in any way that could tip the person behind all this off.”
“That’s what we do. As this is a threat to a British citizen then I’ll look into it without stepping on the toes of MI5.”
“Thanks. There is one other thing.”
Sam looked at Sergei with a smile on his face.
“There usually is.”
Sergei showed Sam photographs of the two men that he’d seen watching her the previous Friday.
“These two idiots didn’t even try to blend in so my guess is that they are expendable. I would not be surprised if they are tooled up. They need to be removed from the game. The bulges under their armpits got my interest. I saw a pearl handled Glock 19 in one of them. That means that they are a clear threat to everyone and not just me. Five years would do very nicely.”
He passed over a small slip of paper.
“This is the URL where those pictures are stored. They’ll be erased at midnight tonight.”
Sam nodded his head.
“I’ll get my team onto it as soon as I get back in town.”
“Thanks. The more information I can get on this person the better. I have my own suspicions about who it is but…”
“You are keeping that close to your chest?”
“Yeah. What you don’t know, you can’t accidentally let slip.”
Sam laughed.
“That’s your version of ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’. I do like it.”
Then he sighed.
“You have not lasted in the game for this length of time without being careful.”
Sam smiled.
“Sergei, you are almost paranoid about the care you take on your jobs. That’s why you are so good at it. If I even needed to hire a hitman who was not already on our books then you’d be at the top of the list and that is because you are both good and careful. I know for a fact that Interpol does not have a file on you, you are that good. Honestly, the evil that those you have removed from the game for all these years is incalculable. You have done humanity a service.”
“Thanks for the kind words, Sam, but I’m afraid that they won’t help very much given my current predicament. There is just too much that I don’t know for me to even think about doing the bidding of this ‘Uncle Vanya’ for some considerable time to come.”
“That’s good to know.”
Sam stood up and put on his coat.
“I’ll let you know anything as soon as we get it.”
“Thanks Sam. So far, there has been no pressure to carry out the operation, but my gut feeling is that it won’t last much longer.”
“Message understood.”
Sam moved away but stopped. He turned around and said,
“Be careful Sergei. This person whoever they are, are well organised even if they didn’t carry out their promise to destroy your French bolt-hole.”
Sergei nodded.
Sam left Sergei alone in the coffee shop.
Driving around the Reading area in a French-registered vehicle was hardly inconspicuous. It wasn’t ideal and getting another vehicle was on his list of things to do, but for the moment that could wait. Wokingham Railway Station was only a five-minute walk away from the house. Plus, he already had personal experience of the good bus service to Reading from the town. That fact alone took away any urgency to get another vehicle. Instead of standing out as a foreigner, he'd be just another commuter once he had obtained some clothes in one of the many shops in the town. That worked for him.
The house was more than adequate for his needs, so he agreed to rent it for three months. After returning to the Estate Agents offices in the town, he paid in full for both rentals and their deposits by bank transfer. When that was confirmed, he took possession of the keys to both properties from the very pleased agent, Ms Forester. He now had a base to work from.
Back in the van, Sergei headed for an industrial unit on the Slough Trading Estate. He had a contact there that would be able to supply him with the necessary security and surveillance equipment he'd need for the project. He'd already let his guard down once and had no intention of doing it again.
He stopped on the way to Slough, at a national tyre franchise and obtained a quote to get the shocks on the Nissan fixed. He decided to forego that for the time being. It wasn't that he could not afford it, but it would mean that the van was out of action for most of a day and while the case was still very fluid, he decided to postpone it.
It was late afternoon before he arrived back at the house in Wokingham with all the toys that he would need for the duration. He'd also stopped at a supermarket and bought some food and again at the Reading IKEA store to buy towels and bedding. He also purchased some of their excellent cloudberry jam.
During the viewing of the house, Sergei had asked about the lack of towels, sheets and the like. The agent had explained to him the difference between a 'fully furnished' and a 'furnished apartment'. One came with all the furniture and kitchen equipment, while the other one was all that, plus bed linen.
It didn’t matter much to Sergei, but it was good to know. He already knew that he could buy anything else that he needed in Reading. Ikea was not the most convenient store as regards access from Wokingham, but he knew from previous experience that he could get everything he needed there.
He drove the van into the garage and closed the door behind him. He didn't want any nosy parkers to see what he was removing from the van.
He spent the evening setting up security in the house. One of the items he'd bought was a 4G router. All the cameras and sensors were set up to upload to the cloud their recordings. Part of the package was a SIM card with unlimited data. He'd been caught out on a previous job with expiring mobile data limits and wasn't going to get trapped again.
He had another router and SIM card that would go into the office. He’d worked out during the viewing that he could set up a camera that looked down on the entrance to the building where the target worked. That way, he could observe what was going on without appearing at the window of the office.
With everything set up at the house, he went back to his hotel for a final night and checked out the next morning. While in his room, he verified that he could access the security cameras remotely. Once that was settled, he enabled motion detection on all the cameras. If anyone broke in and went anywhere other than the kitchen the alarms would sound. The backdoor had a 'cat flap' that could not be locked. That and the evidence of cat paws on the kitchen floor told him that the house had an occasional feline visitor. He just needed to make sure that he left nothing of importance in the kitchen when he wasn't there.
Suitably refreshed, he returned to the office and began working through several hunches whilst keeping an eye on the monitor that showed the entrance to the company where 'she' worked.
He mentally rebuked himself for not using her name, Ayesha Robinson.
The name meant nothing to him other than that there was a Tim Robinson who had been a bully at his school until he tried it on with Sergei. The younger and quite diminutive Sergei showed the bully that he was no pushover. Tim Robinson ended up being pushed stark naked into the local river, and with a promise that next time he'd be weighed down with a bag of cement. Sergei was never bothered again.
Sergei watched and waited for three days. He concluded that Ayesha was a woman of habit. That pleased him no end, but he wasn't getting anywhere with finding out who the man posing as this mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ was, and who was the reason why he was sitting in an office in Reading in October 2019.
Friday afternoon came along and Sergei had heard nothing from Sam so he decided that it was time to make contact with Ayesha. He’d had plenty of time to work on a plan for this moment. It was time to put it into practice.
Before leaving the office, Sergei printed out a simple document that he hoped would explain a few things to Ayesha in a way that would cause as little alarm as possible. After all, it is not every day that you get told that there is a contract out on your life…
Just like the week before, Ayesha got off the bus at the Winnersh Crossroads stop and headed for the supermarket. This time Sergei followed her.
Keeping a respectful distance, he followed her into the shop and like her, he took a basket. Unlike her, he had no list of items to buy but that didn’t matter. Ayesha had a definite purpose about her. She clearly knew where everything she wanted was located inside the store. Sergei followed at a distance and picked a few items that he needed. When he caught Ayesha looking at the items in her basket, he knew that it was time to head for the checkout.
He paid for his items plus a carrier bag and headed for the exit. As he left the checkout area, he saw Ayesha begin to scan her items in the self-service area. She would not be far behind him.
Sergei waited outside. Now it was just a matter of timing.
As she walked out of the supermarket, he was about to make his move when the thing that had been niggling him for more than two days came roaring back to the front of his mind.
“I wonder?” he muttered to himself before disappearing into the shadows.
[to be continued]
[1] Sam is the head of the mysterious department that first appears in the 'Off the Books' story
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book-page/78656/books
Sergei retreated away from the supermarket entrance and waited. Several minutes ticked by before ‘she’ emerged. He ducked down behind an SUV. He saw her stop in the entrance and look around almost as if she was expecting someone to be there.
Ayesha came out of the supermarket and after another quick glance around, she made her way across the car park towards the traffic lights. Sergei watched her press the button to allow pedestrians to cross. After what seemed an eternity, the lights changed and she walked off into the darkness.
Sergei stood up and breathed a sigh of relief. That gut feeling he’d had a few times in his life had saved him again. This woman was not all that she appeared to be. The items that she’d put into her basket told him several things and none of them were good. While her behaviour could with a wild guess be construed as laying a trap for Segei, what swung it for him was seeing her put six cucumbers into her basked along with picking vinegar and a half kilo of salt.
Anyone who has been brought up in rural Russia knows that autumn is when you pickle cucumbers and fish for the winter. As a child, he would often watch his mother eat a whole cucumber with just a bit of salt. Those clues were what had triggered him. Ayesha was not whom she portrayed.
Her reaction in the car park was the final part of the puzzle. It was as if she knew that he was following her right from the moment he’d left the office. He’d almost stepped into a trap. That was not good, not good at all. He should have used one of his many disguises. That mistake was down to his carelessness. Her shopping? While her facial features could be that of a European Russian, they could also be from any of the Slavic countries in Europe. After WW2, Russia, west of Moscow was a mess of peoples and not all of them were from the states of the USSR. Hitler conscripted people from across Europe to serve and die on the eastern front. The cucumber habit caused him to thank the lord that he’d already consulted Sam about her. If she was a wanted criminal from another country then he might get away with killing her and not face retribution from Sam and his team of trained killers.
Sergei waited in the darkness at the edge of the car park for almost half an hour before walking along the main road towards Wokingham. At the next bus stop, he caught a bus into the town and went to his temporary residence all the time trying to analyse what had gone wrong. Only when he nearly stepped out right in front of a car to cross the road did he concentrate on getting home in one piece. For an almost critical moment, he'd looked right instead of left at a crossing and had nearly stepped into the oncoming traffic.
Sergei wasn’t happy with what had happened that evening.
He spent the evening trying to explain that ‘gut feeling’ but couldn’t. This was most unlike him. He had lived on certainty ever since he had made his first kill. That kill had been the result of uncertainty in that he’d almost killed the wrong man. He vowed from then on, he would not make the mistakes that come from not being certain about both his plan and the possible outcomes.
He could not put his finger on what he’d missed. Were the cucumbers a clue or a diversion? His, only answer was that one that he did not like. Every which way he sliced and diced it, it always came back to the same result, he wasn’t in control.
Sergei knew one thing and that was that he didn’t like it one bit.
He’d not been ‘in control’ ever since that first message arrived but after the events at the supermarket, he felt strange and uneasy. He was not used to being in total control of his operation. This time the mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ and this woman were in charge.
An hour later, the follow-on message arrived.
"Well, Chameleon,
I expected more from you. I never thought that you were a chicken but you are. I saw you duck out of your encounter with 'her' at the supermarket. That is not like you. Did you eat something bad for your lunch? I saw you eating it in Forbury Gardens. I told you that I was watching you. Perhaps you should remember the words to that classic song from 'The Police', 'Every Breath You Take'.
However, given the time you have taken on previous contracts, I have to wonder if I am putting undue pressure on you. I am in no rush and the ends do justify the means.
Just remember that my eyes are on you…
Until next time,
Uncle Vanya.”
Sergei would have thrown something if there was something convenient to hand. Thankfully, there wasn’t anything suitable around.
He felt that he’d been played for a right Charlie by ‘Uncle Vanya’. His only thought was to get out of town and start thinking again about everything. He didn’t have an idea about where he could go to take his mind off yesterday’s debacle if only for a few hours.
He Googled ‘things to do near Reading’ and one item in the results stood out.
“That will be a change,” he muttered to himself.
After clearing away his things, Sergei headed for the Railway Station and a train to Wokingham. He was going to collect his van.
Gradually, some of the words in the latest missive began to make sense or rather a sort of sense that while crazy and illogical was clear to Sergei.
Sergei cursed himself for being so lax and not living up to his ‘Chameleon’ nickname. It was time to rectify that for the next phase of the operation.
It was early afternoon before he emerged and loaded four cardboard large boxes into his van.
He wasn’t done but headed a few miles to another unit on the Slough Trading Estate being careful not to get caught by the plethora of speed cameras on the A355. That bit of road had in his opinion, far too many cameras than it needed and that it was purely for revenue rather than road safety but even so, he didn’t want to get caught. Any speeding fines would end up going to his sister in France and he’d never hear the end of it.
Sergei left the second unit carrying another large cardboard box. He was thankful for driving the van. His cargo would remain invisible until he’d parked the van in the garage at his temporary home.
On his way there, he stopped at a supermarket in Maidenhead and bought some more food. He’d decided that he wanted to cook some Paella because he missed the food in Puerto Soller.
Sergei spent the next day busy in the house preparing himself for the work ahead. He ended the day by packing some items into his backpack and an overnight bag ready for the next phase of his plan.
He went into the Reading office the next day carrying the backpack and overnight bag. Before starting work for the day, he went out for a baguette, this time, a Cheese and Ham Salad and a visit to a couple of shops that were on the nearby Broad Street. He needed a few accessories.
Back in the Office, he set to work. He didn’t rush there was plenty of time before he put it into action and that was at the end of the day.
At eighteen minutes to five, a very different-looking Sergei left the Office. Now, he looked like a sixty-year-old woman. She followed the majority of workers who were heading for either the Railway Station or their busses home.
Ayesha caught a No 17 bus that was going to ‘Wokingham Road’. No one batted an eyelid at this smallish slightly hunched late middle-aged woman with greying hair who was carrying a handbag that was very much past its use-by date.
The clear weather of a few days earlier had turned into a steady rain. At the terminus of the No 17’s route, she got off and put up an umbrella and walked off into the gloom. She walked towards the town of Wokingham and stopped at the next bus stop. There, she waited for the next Bus to Bracknell. With any luck, ‘she’ would be on this one.
To her dismay, ‘she’ wasn’t on the bus. Sergei/she shrugged her shoulders and went home. Once she was off the bus, she came alive. There was a possibility that ‘she’ had changed her tactic and had come looking for Sergei. He’d learned a long time ago that being cautious was key to survival.
Sergei walked up and down the road past where his rented house was situated. There was no sign of anyone watching the house but she wasn’t going to take any chances. She’d have to find another place to stay for the night.
A train took her back into Reading whereupon, she went into the Office and half an hour later Sergei left by a back door. He’d booked a room at a nearby cheap chain hotel and spent the night wondering what had gone wrong… again.
Sitting in his room, he reviewed the events of the day. After a bit of reflection, he smiled. He was out of practice with the ‘chameleon’ part of his repertoire. As for not jumping to conclusions about ‘her’ having twigged that he’d adopted a female persona, he’d have to do a bit of sleuthing the following morning to confirm it one way or another.
By 08:00, he was on a bus travelling from Wokingham to Reading. As the stop at Winnersh approached he looked at the group of people waiting to board. To his relief, she was there. What was different was that she had a red nose. Just before it was her turn to board, she sneezed.
Workman Sergei breathed a huge sigh of relief. Immediately he regretted it but none of the other passengers sitting at the rear of the lower deck looked at him with disdain.
‘She’ boarded the bus, showed her pass and went upstairs without even a glance in his direction.
He guessed that she’d caught a cold and had not been at work. His slight panic of the previous day had been for nothing.
He also took some time to enhance the selection of disguises that he could use depending on the situation. The numerous charity shops in the town provided a lot of what he needed. Staff in the shops twigged that the female clothes were for him to wear but not in the way they might have imagined. One great purchase was a winter coat. It was almost vintage in that it was made by Jaeger but the quality was great and for £20, it was a steal.
Some things, such as wigs and shoes were ordered over the Internet for delivery to the office.
With so much 'stuff' stored there, Sergei increased the security of the place. Extra cameras and sensors were obtained from a source in London. He took the train to Paddington and did the exchange on the Circle Line platform at Bayswater. His supplier went one way, and he went the other. Half an hour on the train, and he was back in the office with everything he needed.
“Suggest meet same place as before, 11:00 three days from now. The attached brief will make very interesting reading.”
Sergei replied in the affirmative and after checking that ‘she’ was on the bus as usual; he took the train to Wokingham feeling a lot happier with himself. He even resisted reading the attached brief to the email on the train. It could wait until he was in the relative comfort and safety of his rented home.
[to be continued]
The few dozen words in the summary part of the email from ‘Sam’ was enough to turn Sergei’s world upside down a few dozen times.
That evening he read the documents through twice before going to bed. Sam had included more than 30 attachments as well as a twelve-page intelligence report that was in his opinion, clearly the work of MI6, but with all the nice juicy bits redacted. There was more than enough unredacted detail to make him wonder just what he’d gotten himself into.
There was so much data in the email that he decided to sleep on it and resume his deliberations the next morning once he’d gone to the office in Reading. He was getting used to being seen going about his business in an orderly manner. This was his normal way of working. If his current understanding of the situation was correct, the mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ would be looking for changes in his behaviour as a sign that something was about to happen. That was one thing that he was not going to give his nemesis.
Not long after resuming his work on the documents the following morning, Sergei started to curse himself for getting into this mess but stopped short of doing so. The person posing as Uncle Vanya had led him by the nose to Reading and to a supposed victim who turned out to be someone who was a skilled operator in the business of eliminating people a.k.a. assassination, just like he was.
The dossier made it as clear as day. Ayesha was Uncle Vanya.
Those four words had been like a dagger penetrating his heart at first. Then logic prevailed and he began to think long and hard about the case right from the start.
Sergei had to admire her plan. It was unlike anything that he’d encountered before. She wanted to trap him in the act of trying to kill her, and either kill him or turn him into the law. The reason why was a mystery for another day. While he'd taken care of several very bad people in his career, as far as he knew, he'd not pissed off any of their families to such an extent that they'd put out a contract on him but there was always a chance that it could be the reason why she wanted him dead.
In his mind, there had to be another reason for her to want to eliminate him just as he was going to retire. That reason was at the moment, not that important. Staying alive and while he didn’t want to, Uncle Vanya needed to have the curtain come down on it final performance ASAP.
After some reflection, Sergei concluded that she would never turn him into the law. That would cause a lot of questions to be asked and could, if Sam’s data was correct, lead to her arrest and him walking away free and clear. He was certain that choice would not happen. That left her wanting to eliminate him.
Nevertheless, Sergei sent out a couple of emails to the agents that handled ‘contracts’ that people like him dealt with. He wasn’t asking who had put a contract out on him, but just if there was. That way, no breach of confidentiality would be broken. In his line of work, trust was very hard to come by and very easy to lose.
He spent the rest of the day going through each attachment very carefully. As he did so, a picture of who she was and how she operated became clear. She’d been in business for at least five years, but her background before that was practically non-existent. Only a few sketchy details of a childhood spent in Russia, Iran and Kuwait before being granted asylum in the UK in 2005. Her father had been a diplomat in Saddam Hussain's regime who had married a British woman of Russian descent, in Kuwait in 1996. Other than her father being a Christian and not a Muslim, everything else was a big fat blank.
A second five-page document that was almost entirely redacted, but with an MI6 heading, it was more proof that there was a lot more about her than was for his eyes and possibly even Sam’s unless he needed to know or in Sam’s case suck up to ‘M’, the head of ‘6’.
Another document listed the contracts that she’d been associated with. A few of the names were familiar to him as jobs that he’d had passed bidding on mostly because he was busy with other jobs at the time. The picture of her became even clearer when another document showed the names of seven very nasty people that he had eliminated as being jobs that she’d bid on only to be elbowed out by his good self.
Assassins like himself were often part of a bidding process for a contract. A third party would handle the bidding as well as hold the fee for the job. It was in their interest to obtain the lowest price for the job. That increased their take on the deal, but it was a balancing act. If the cheapest bid failed to do the job, then their reputation would take a hit.
Sergei totted up the value of the jobs that he’d won in competition with her from memory. This was not the sort of thing you wrote down anywhere. He was slightly surprised to find that it came to just under 4.6M euros. That was more than enough to make someone in their rather unique line of work more than a bit pissed off. That might be reason enough for all this ‘Uncle Vanya’ farce but he wasn’t sure about that being the only reason. She could have killed him many times if money was the only reason. There had to be something else but that was for another day.
Sergei read the documents at least three times and made some notes for the meeting with Sam the next day. By the time that was done, it was dark outside and the streets of Reading were quieting down. After closing up the office, he took the train to Wokingham and made himself some Spaghetti Bolognese before checking on his emails.
The last of his enquiry emails had been answered by the time Sergei was ready for bed. None of them had a contract out on him. That made it clear to Sergei that she was working on her own here and directly for the client. Someone he had wronged in the past wanted him dead. Sergei resisted trying to go down that rat hole. Doing so would only divert him from the task at hand, namely, staying alive.
In a bit of a panic, he got himself ready in record time and headed for the railway station. He had more than enough research to do and with his different 4G connections, it did not matter where he worked.
Sergei arrived at his temporary office just before 09:30. Any hopes he had of keeping the place secret were gone when he looked at the security tape for the previous night. Just before 04:20, someone had let themselves into the ‘office’ with a key. That was not good. The intruder saw the visible camera and covered it with a cloth. Thankfully, Sergei had put another camera into the false ceiling disguised as a smoke detector. This one gave him a great picture of the intruder who went about their business in a very methodical manner. He could ignore the search because there was nothing related to the case in the office at that time of night. What disturbed him was the very visible act of the intruder leaving not one, not two, but six different bugs before leaving the office just before 05:00. The intruder returned a few minutes later and removed the cloth that he’d put over the security camera.
Sergei reviewed the footage once more and looked at how the intruder moved. He concluded that it wasn’t ‘her’ but a man. The size of their feet told a similar story.
Sergei kicked himself for leaving the bug sniffer back in Mallorca. He could have done with it right now. He didn't so he had to guess that the bugs were both audio and video in nature. Luckily, none of the bugs were able to view the screen of his laptop because it faced a blank wall. He had to hope that whoever was listening/watching would not see anything out of the normal in his actions. He left the bugs in place and carried on with his work or that was what he hoped that the person on the other end would think.
He spent the rest of the morning trying to formulate a plan for how he would deal with the clear and present threat that she was presenting him. Sergei could have ended it with a single shot from 200m away but that would start a huge manhunt and also expose him to a lot of scrutiny from the press and police on four continents once his secrets were released into the wild which would happen in the event of her sudden death if that particular threat was true.
To put it bluntly, Sergei was up shit creek without a paddle. It was up to him to get the leaking boat to the shore where there was no quicksand or hungry alligators waiting to snaffle him up for lunch.
Sergei worked on a possible plan until almost 13:00. His stomach told him that it was time for some lunch. Instead of going to Pierre’s, he went into the station and bought a pasty and a cup of coffee from one of the shops there. Then he bought himself a return ticket to Didcot. He chose that town because there was a fast train due to leave in four minutes. With the ticket in hand, he hurried up the escalator and down to platform 8. A minute after getting on board, the doors closed and the train started to move.
A more relaxed Sergei had just enough time to eat the Pasty before the train slowed down for the Didcot stop. He prepared to get off the train, when he saw a familiar figure doing the same in the next carriage. It was one of the goons who had been observing their boss on the first day in Reading. Sergei was sure that he was tailing him.
Sergei used his phone and had just had enough time to buy an E-Ticket from Didcot to Swindon before the train came to a halt a Didcot. Sergei stepped off the train and found that he was following the man along the platform towards the stairs down from the platform. That was a stroke of luck. He ducked back onto the train just as the doors closed. Sergei waved at the man as the train pulled out of the station. The last view he had of the man was him preparing to make a phone call. Someone on the other end would not be happy. He sat down and drank his coffee knowing that she was clearly upping the ‘ante’. He mentally prepared himself for another tirade disguised as an email from Uncle Vanya.
Whilst the train sped westwards, he made a phone call to his gadget supplier in Slough. After a bit of horse-trading over price and delivery, they struck a deal. The supplier or one of his staff would meet him in the Gents toilet on Platform 8, at Reading Station in just under two hours. Sergei would exchange a wad of cash for a couple of devices that he needed to keep prying eyes out of his business as well as a bug detector. He needed to make sure that both his temporary residence and home were still 'bug-free'.
Sergei used the stop at Swindon to visit a couple of cash machines in the town to make sure that he had the requisite funds for the exchange before catching a train back to Reading.
He worked on his plan until it was time to close up for the night. Before he left, Sergei set up one of the devices that he’d bought that day. It was a signal jammer. Very illegal but covered the 2.5Ghz and 5Ghz bands over a radius of 30ft. The office bugs would go silent within a minute. After waiting a good five minutes, he quickly removed them from their hiding places and removed the batteries. Their lives were over.
After stuffing them along with all the papers into his shoulder bag, Sergei locked up the office and went home.
He didn’t remove the battery but cut the wire from it to the camera circuitry and extracted the micro-SD card which he cut up with a pair of scissors. Sergei made a mental note to flush the remains down the toilet that evening. Then he disguised the cut wire so that anyone coming to ‘service’ the bug would not notice that it had been disabled. His final action was to replace the micro-SD card with one that had been security erased. Anyone checking the bug would find a big fat nothing.
His multiple train journeys that day had allowed him to think a bit more about the whole thing. Having to turn the tables on a very determined adversary was a new thing for him. It made him even more determined for this to be his last job on the wrong side of the law. How to go about this was still an ever-present problem but he did know one thing and that was, he could not do this entirely on his own. Deep down Sergei knew that he needed the help of Sam and his bunch of unmentionables. He was fairly confident that Sam would be willing to help because there would be some money in it for his department at the end of the day.
Sergei composed an email via his cloud account and sent off the idea to him before calling it a day and going to bed.
Quite a lot of people alighted from the train at Ealing Broadway. The Central and District line tube trains ran from there. He planned to take the District Line to Turnham Green where he’d change for a Richmond train. At Richmond, his plan was to take a train to Staines and with one last change, get to Windsor. This very roundabout way would make it next to impossible for someone to follow him without being noticed. He could have taken the bus, but he wanted to protect Sam as much as himself.
Sergei was waiting for Sam at the coffee shop in Windsor. Sam wasn’t smiling when he sat down with a cup of tea.
“What sort of giant Hornets’ nest have you stirred up this time Sergei?”
“Sorry about that Sam. It wasn’t my intention I assure you. I was enjoying my retirement in Mallorca before all this came along.”
“I know that Sergei, and it is my intention to do anything I can to allow that retirement to continue. What did you think of the documents?”
“Very enlightening. Please give your team a big thank you from me. They did a great job.”
“Thanks. I will pass it on.”
After a brief pause, Sam asked.
“What is your next move?”
“I’m going to have to do the job that she wants me to. As much as I don’t want to, I can’t see any other way.”
“I think that you are right about that.”
“This came in late last night. It gives some more background on the target and her family.”
Sam passed over a buff-coloured envelope.
Sergei guessed what Sam was alluding to.
“Thanks Sam. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
They shook hands as Sergei left Sam to finish his tea.
Sergei read the document that Sam had given him in Windsor as he travelled by bus to Wokingham. It made some interesting reading especially about ‘her’ and someone that he’d already met, Yvonne Forrester. Her bio showed that she’d been adopted by Mr and Mrs Forrester as a six-month-old baby. Her birth mother was none other than the mother to ‘her’, Ayesha Robinson. Robinson was their mothers’ English maiden name. Her Russian family name was Sakalova. Sergei knew one person with that name in his old country. This was a General Sakalov. He’d mysteriously fallen out of a window in Petropavlovsk just after Putin had become President for the second time. He didn’t know if they were related but it was not unheard of for wealthy Russians to send their families abroad for educational purposes.
Ayesha was in Kuwait when Yvonne was born in London. Something told Sergei that the marriage had broken down. Yvonne’s mother had died six days after giving birth from a prolapsed uterus. The chances were that Yvonne didn’t know that she had a sister. The information that Sam had provided told him that their father had died in 2005 in a hospital in Qatar from cancer. That was probably why Ayesha came to the UK.
There was a big fat blank where there should be the reasons/motivations for her to have become an assassin. The whole case had gotten a lot more interesting. The Russian FSB was always on the lookout for new recruits. Someone with at least some Russian heritage would be an obvious target. Sergei had been approached more than once since he surfaced in the UK. Both times, those approaches failed. The last messenger was sent back to Russia with two broken fingers. The trigger fingers on each hand had essential nerves and tendons cut. That was an old KGB warning that he’d learned from his father. No more approaches were made.
The next morning, Sergei set up a new motion-sensitive camera in his kitchen. It was focused on the door where the camera bug was located. He guessed that whoever had installed the bug had swept the house for cameras and bugs first. Sergei hoped that the new camera would remain undetected until it had done its job. He configured it to send the data to a new cloud account as well as store the images locally. Unless the discoverer was familiar with this model of camera, they might not know about the dual storage feature.
When he was satisfied with the security of the house, Sergei headed for Wokingham Railway Station and a train to Reading.
To his relief, his office security had not been breached in the night but there was an email from Uncle Vanya.
“You think that you are so smart, don’t you? My associate on the train was there to distract you while I made another visit to your so-called office. Then you wiped my bugs. That will cost you. I am sure that you know how much devices of that quality cost.
When am I going to see some action then? I won’t wait forever.
Uncle Vanya.”
Sergei’s immediate reaction to the email was to reply there and then but luckily, he restrained himself. The words ‘react in haste, repent for eternity’ came to his mind. He drafted a reply but didn’t send it. He resolved that he would let it sit there until at least the end of the day. Given the new information he had on her, Sergei was surprised that ‘she’ hadn’t come and planted the bugs herself. The man doing the deed, was one of the two jerks in the leather jackets.
Sergei checked his cloud email via one of the ten different VPNs that he had set up. This particular VPN made his presence appear to come from South Africa. Sam had left him a reply sometime in the early hours of the morning.
“We, as in my people would love the chance to help in the background to take down this nasty person. ‘6’ are also after her because she ‘dealt; with one of their operatives in Angola last year. Any dirt she might have on you will be fair game for us. But, just remember that I have enough on you to bury you deep in a Thai jail for life should you go back on our agreement. I know that you hinted that this was going to be your last job so I will be holding you to that commitment. I will set my team on the hunt for both the dirt and geld on her if you know what I mean. Just tell me when it will be going down and we will act and clean up after you. Don't mess this up even if you are better than this nasty SOB.
Sam
“
Sergei stared at the email for a good ten minutes. It was good to know that he had Sam and his team behind him but the threat was there for him to see. Sergei crafted a reply.
“Sam,
I’ll do my best not to screw this one up but if I do then please make sure that she also loses.
Chameleon.
“
Sam to Sergei’s surprise replied almost immediately.
“Wilco. Please read the attached and let me know your thoughts. It only came in an hour or so ago.
Sam.”
Sergei read the attached file with incredulity. It listed all the ‘victims’ of Assassin Ayesha and how they’d been ‘disposed of’. Like many women, it seemed that poison was her favourite weapon. He would have to be careful of her should he get close to her when doing the dirty deed.
There was also some more information on her sister. The assessment had been done by MI5 and indicated that Yvonne did not know about her sister, but that Ayesha was fully clued up about Yvonne. It explained why Ayesha had come to the Reading area. The last paragraph of the document revealed that Yvonne had been the sales agent when Ayesha purchased her home in Winnersh some eighteen months earlier. Sergei admired her nerve but that is what a successful has to have in bucket loads if they are to survive in the game.
Other than the contacts relating to the purchase, there had not been any communication between them. That mystified Sergei but it did provide a clue about how his office and home addresses were known to Ayesha. If… if Yvonne’s phone or work computer had been bugged or infected with malware it could explain the leaking of that data. He still had doubts because there were more than a dozen estate agents in Reading. It was more than likely to be a coincidence but… there was always a chance of it not being that, but because of the deviousness of Ayesha, he'd played right into her hands.
The news about the existence of a younger sister complicated matters a great deal. If he dealt with the older one, then legally, Yvonne would become entitled to the contents of the estate. That would entail a lot of questions and the inevitable involvement of the authorities. That left him with no alternative, 'She' would have to disappear without a trace and the link between them should remain one way only.
That evening, Sergei started to re-plan his campaign from the beginning. This time, he wanted the event that dealt with his adversary to be a matter of self-defence. His target’s passion for poison or drugs presented him with a problem, but that choice of weapon was not unknown to Sergei. He’d only used it twice when posing as a woman. The of some types of poison allowed the assassin the opportunity to look into their victims' eyes as they died. He'd read some papers on the preferred methods of killing and how they differ between the sexes. Poison was in many cases used by people who had been abused or even tortured by the target. Seeing the abuser die was often regarded as the start of their rehabilitation process. Sergei decided there and then, that she'd probably try that on him. It was down to him to make sure that he was the one to survive the attack and not her. All the evidence he had seemed to indicate that her ‘war on him’ was an act of revenge.
He did some more research into her ‘jobs’. The list that Sam had provided gave him the perfect starting points for the search. He checked the records or those available to the public and found that curare was a common factor in the vast majority of the cases where poison was used. That matched the data from Sam’s team. The effects of curare paralysed the victim but they were aware of their circumstances which made it perfect for a revenge killing. He'd read that some of his kind used a poison such as curare to tell the victims about all their crimes while incapacitated. It was gruesome, cruel, and just the sort of thing he could imagine was right up her street.
Sergei smiled at just how easy it was to connect the dots in those deaths. He’d almost always varied the way he had completed the contract. That was a way of avoiding leaving a signature which in many cases leads to the downfall of serial killers. In his opinion, she had been quite lazy in this respect. The only time he'd used exactly the same method on two jobs, had been when he was contracted to eliminate two brothers who jointly ran a crime family in Athens. The use of the same method had told the family that it was just the one contract.
He went to bed happy with part of his plan settled, but with a lot of questions and uncertainties remaining. The one thought uppermost in his mind was ‘what if this one was different?’ That was all part of the game of life and death for assassins.
[to be continued]
[1] This sort of device is part of a lawsuit going through the turgid US legal system.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/05/amazon_camera_hook_ca...
Those doubts and uncertainties had not gone away when Sergei left the house to go into Reading the next morning. Almost as soon as he got to the railway station, he felt that something was wrong. Both the car park at the station and the platforms were almost empty.
It was only after a glance at his phone that he realised that it was Saturday. For a second, he hesitated, but something made him carry on. He could work all day in the office, and not have to watch out for 'her' or her friends in the area around the office.
He strode onto the platform, pleased with himself for doing something different for a change.
His good mood didn’t last as one of the two ‘goons’ who had followed him before was hanging around at the exit to the station in Reading. He was pretending to read a newspaper while watching people heading for the town centre.
Sergei shook his head and exited the station by the Caversham exit. A ten-minute walk saw him arrive at his office, with no sign of the man or anyone else following him.
The branch of Pierre's that he normally used was closed on Saturday, so he carried on walking and headed for the branch in St Mary's Butts. As it was a reasonably nice day, so he sat in the nearby churchyard to eat his breakfast and drink his morning coffee. It was then that he saw a new face or at least a new face amongst those who had been following him. This time, it was a young woman with a hair full of dreadlocks who was pushing a shopping cart filled with ‘stuff’. He'd always thought that that hairstyle looked silly on white women, but hey, there is no accounting for taste.
He’d seen her on the train from Wokingham earlier strangely without the cart, and was sure that she'd followed him from the station unless she'd guessed where he was going to go before heading into his office. Going to the same sandwich shop day after day was a bit of a giveaway, but to Sergei, it was all part of his plan to appear to be going about his business in a normal manner.
Sergei opened up his phone and checked the security of the office. No video files had been uploaded to the cloud. The system at his home was likewise 'all clear'. That could only mean that 'Uncle Vanya' was upping the pressure. It was time to act or at least start things in motion that would lead to one or both of them, suffering a premature end of their careers.
He made a decision just as he finished his coffee. He would go home tail or no tail. Then, he'd take his van out for the day. He was in no doubt that he could lose any tail, provided he swept the van for bugs beforehand.
His mind was even more unsettled than it had been before he had come to Reading as he headed for the train to Wokingham. He was not used to an adversary like her. It was time to get Sam's team ready for action. He also had to make a few phone calls, but he would not do that in this area. He'd relished the virtual freedom that his recent trip to Swindon had given him. As he boarded his train, he saw an advert for 'Bicester Shopping Village’ on the platform. Something in that ad, tickled a memory. While he waited for the train to leave, he searched for a bit more information. Sure enough, there was a railway station close by with a large car park. It operated as a 'Park and Ride' for those going to Oxford or London during the week. That would be perfect for his new plan for the day.
Sergei waited for the next train going to London. He was pleased that no one else was waiting to board that particular train. So far, he’d eluded any tail since he’d left the station in Wokingham.
His final destination was not London but High Wycombe. His old friend, would be waiting in a car park near the railway station for him to arrive. The success or failure of the whole endeavour relied upon what would happen in the next three to five days. He thanked himself to have the wits to buy yet another a second-hand phone, and a new and as yet unused SIM card a few days earlier. That phone had never been switched on other than to check the network connection. If his main phone had been hacked, then he was certain that this one was clean. He’d switched the old phone off and left it in his van at the park and ride. He’d lasted this long in the business because of his care and caution, despite a few recent lapses. He knew from personal experience just how easy it was to clone a phone given time and the right equipment. Being careful was back as ‘Job 1’ and he was not going to change that now.
The London train arrived and his heart sank at how busy it was. To his relief, most of the passengers got off there, so he assumed that they were tourists going to the Shopping Village. He boarded the now much quieter train and quickly found a double seat to himself for the journey to High Wycombe.
The relatively short journey allowed him to plan much of his next move. He had to admire his adversary for her skill at nearly luring him into a pretty cool trap. To pretend to be the planned target was risky, and certainly unusual. If he'd not followed his usual course of action for a job and gone completely off script and done a quick hit-and-run job, then she’d be long dead by now. That told him that she’d been not only watching him for a while but planning this to get the extra resources she’d need to spring the trap. That fact alone meant that he had to approach this case in an entirely different way. He hoped that the meeting in Wycombe would help him work out the final details of what way that would be.
Naomi Younger, his contact, was a former MI6 intelligence officer. She'd worked for the spooks all her working life before retiring some ten years before. Their paths had crossed purely by accident when he was on a job in Cape Town. Naomi had been there on holiday when he needed a ride in a hurry. Naomi had been driving the car he chose to temporarily hijack that day.
She’d sussed him out before they’d gone ten miles up the coast. He was wearing a disguise that had fooled most people, but she'd seen straight through it. Instead of turning him in, she'd helped him complete the assignment. Something between them had made them connect. After all, who would suspect a grey-haired lady on holiday as being an accomplice to an assassination? Since that first encounter, Naomi had helped him out on two jobs in return for a nice fat fee. He expected this to be the same.
It was only much later that what had connected them came to the surface. From then on, they were best friends.
“Same here Sergei. I must say that life on an island suits you.”
He smiled back at her as she led them towards her car.
“I was pleasantly surprised to get your call. I was just about to go out but… your offer was too good to refuse… certainly over a trip to a packed Tesco’s on a Saturday afternoon.”
Both of them laughed as they reached her car.
After pouring the tea, Naomi sat back and said,
“Ok, you got my interest. How can I help you?”
Sergei opened his wallet and pulled out a sheet of paper. On it, he'd written the names of 'her' victims as had been supplied by 'Sam'.
“I need all there is to know about how and why these people were killed.”
Naomi read the list. Most of the names were unknown to her. One stood out.
“This one, Juan Fernandez, was from memory, one of our local assets in Angola. Are you saying that this woman killed all these?”
“I am.”
“Who supplied this list? Don’t tell me, Sam?”
“He did. I promised him the clean-up funds for his help. He wants her off his patch.”
“It figures. Then, he could go to ‘6’ and inform them of her elimination and they’d owe him a big favour. ‘6’ does not take kindly to its assets being removed. With security service agents, it is part of the job, but those minor cogs in their machine? No way. They have to be seen to be keeping an eye out for assets like Mr Fernandez.”
Naomi folded up the paper and put it on the table.
“Now Sergei, you know what comes next?”
He nodded.
“I do. To date, I have not accepted any jobs here. This is also my last job. I don’t have the heart for it any longer. I didn’t really have much choice with this one.”
She smiled.
“That is good to know. As for the second thing, your whole demeanour screams I don’t want to do this any longer.”
“I told Sam the same thing when we me. He smiled back at me. He’d come to exactly that conclusion. That’s why he agreed to help me.”
“So? What is your cunning plan to rid the world of this blot on the landscape?”
Sergei outlined his plan. Naomi refrained from commenting until he’d finished.
Her first reaction was to shake her head.
“That is awfully high risk, isn’t it?”
“I know, that’s why I am going to get Sam to have my back. If I fail then he has a perfect reason to move in and deal with her.”
“True and knowing Sam as I do, he’d jump at the chance. Have you told him about the plan yet?”
"No. I wanted to run it past you and …?"
"And If I gave you the ok, get you some curare perhaps?"
“I’m sure that you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who has access to it?”
"I do. It will take me a few days, but it can be arranged both to get it and to deliver it to you."
“Thanks Naomi.”
“Don’t thank me yet. The only thanks I’ll need is when you make her disappear that you think of me in your prayers.”
Sergei smiled.
He knew exactly what Naomi meant by ‘prayers’. It meant that he was to give thanks to all those who helped make the mission a success but remained in the background.
“I won’t forget.”
“Good. Now eat up. You will need all your strength to make this work. I really don’t envy you in this fight. Women can be such unpredictable beasts.”
He smiled.
“I know. That’s where I’m going when I retire.”
Naomi grinned.
“At last.”
"Ok, don't rub it in. I know that I have been promising this for a long time, but this operation has finally forced me to make up my mind.”
“Well, don’t forget to come and visit when you have transitioned. It is a lot easier these days, than when I did it. I had to leave ‘6’ for starters. They thought that I was a security risk and all that crap. Things are a little different now thankfully.
“I will Naomi and thanks for the help.”
Sergei put an envelope on the table. Naomi nodded. She knew what it contained and that if Sergei's mission was successful, a lot more would be forthcoming. That was how they had worked for the past four years. She was just sad that this was likely to be the end of their working relationship, but their personal friendship would always survive. He'd been there for her when she needed help. Most of her family had given her the very cold shoulder over her transition and had broken off all contact with her despite her being awarded a CBE for services to Government a year after she had retired. Families the world over are strange beasts and Sergei had become one of her much-reduced family circle when she’d been at her most vulnerable.
Burying a body so that it would not, no make that never be found is a big job for one person. A JCB would help but could be traced. He didn’t fancy trying to dig a grave that wasn’t just a shallow one. Burning is a smelly and messy process as is trying to dissolve a corpse in acid or alkaline. Then you have to dispose of the acid or alkaline after the job is done and dusted, so they were quickly ruled out as possible options.
At that moment, top of his list was dumping the body in the middle of the Channel with a concrete waistcoat seemed to be very attractive but probably unachievable, but even so, he racked his brains for another option and singularly failed to get any ideas.
Sergei decided to get out of the office even if it was pretty awful outside. As he passed the old Town Hall, he saw a sign promoting an event for children the following weekend at the Public Library. He'd gone a good 10 yards past the sign before it registered. He cursed himself for not thinking of that. He needed a diversion, and what better place to find it than in a Library and a big plus was that it would be dry inside?
He soon found the library and walked inside brushing the excess water off his coat. Almost immediately, he collided with a trolley loaded with books.
“Sorry, let me move that,” said an Assistant as she came around a counter.
He noticed a book on the top of a pile. For some reason, the title registered.
“Excuse me,” he said putting on a Russian accent and picking up the book.
“What is a narrow boat?”
The title of the book was ‘Narrow Boat’.
“I think I have seen some on the river?”
The assistant hesitated before answering.
“I honestly don’t know for certain. Why don’t you follow me to the Transport section? I’m going to put this back on the shelf. I’m sure that there will be an answer to your question there.”
He smiled.
“Thank you. Anything to get out of the rain for an hour. This country is so damp.”
She chuckled and pushed the cart deeper into the library. A few minutes later she left him to browse the shelves. After selecting a couple of volumes, he sat down to look at them.
The 'Narrow Boat' book proved to be inspirational. He'd seen boats going up and down the rivers and even the odd canal in his travels around the UK but the picture that the book painted of the waterways at the end of WW2 was very different. Many canals had been abandoned for years and were unnavigable. A lot of that was down to a lack of maintenance before and during the war. He read about the Thames and Severn Canal and how the collapse of a Tunnel had forced it to cease operations. Now, much of the canal was abandoned unlike the nearby Kennet and Avon Canal that ran through Reading not many metres from where he sat reading the book.
As he read more about the canal network, an idea began to form in his mind. As it became clearer, he put all the books back on the shelves apart from 'Narrow Boat', and went in search of some maps.
Twenty minutes later, he had a possible solution to his problem. After returning the maps and the book to their proper places, he headed for the exit. As he passed the counter by the door, the same assistant asked,
“Did you find out the difference?”
Sergei stopped and smiled at the young lady.
“I did. You were very helpful indeed. Thank you.”
She smiled back as he walked out of the door.
A loud beep on its horn brought him back to reality. He didn’t go back to the office instead, he headed for the railway station and home.
As he neared his temporary home, he saw a white van not that dissimilar to the one that had nearly run him down in Reading being unloaded outside a nearby house. On the side of the vehicle, was the name of a car and van hire company. He smiled and went into his home knowing how he could make a visit to the area of the canal and not stand out like a sore thumb in a French registered vehicle.
His visit proved very fruitful, apart from going down a few dead ends because ‘Mr Google’ was so badly wrong. One such dead end resulted in him being in a field with a Bull and some Cows. Some of the sections of the canal were almost invisible, and others were deep in a heavily wooded cutting. Nevertheless, he actually enjoyed the day out in the country and to finally have a solution to his problem was a huge bonus.
An email from Naomi was waiting for him when he returned to his home in Wokingham. It informed him that his order would be delivered the next day. That nicely rounded off a very good day. His plan to deal with ‘Uncle Vanya’ was beginning to come together.
[to be continued]
JCB : A backhoe digger produced in the UK (and elsewhere by the JCB company).
I'm posting this a little early as I have a solo story ready to post on the 25th. Not really Christmas themed but hopefully, a bit of feelgood for these dark grey days of December. The last part of this tale will appear on the 29th. [now back to the story]
“Well Sergei, aren’t you the smarty pants. Avoiding my man at the station and hopping on a train to Bristol was not in our plan, was it? How are you going to deal with her then? Isn’t it about time that you shared it with me? I’m going to find out anyway… So?”
Uncle Vanya.”
Sergei read the email as he ate his breakfast. The contents had proved one thing, and that was that one of his phones had been bugged or hacked or both. It just made the execution of his plan even easier. He knew which one it was because he knew which one it was that he’d used to book a return ticket from Reading to Bristol. He’d used his other phone to rent the car at Swindon railway station. His habit of keeping things as far apart as possible had worked again. In future, that phone would only be used when he wanted his nemesis to know about it.
He refrained from replying to the latest missive from Uncle Vanya. If that made ‘Uncle’ angry then even better.
After a leisurely breakfast, Sergei went into the Reading office. This time, he didn’t even try to dodge his tail who on that day, was the woman with dreadlocks. As he left the station, he noticed that her apparent down-at-heel appearance was nothing more than a costume. Her nails looked expensive and not what someone pushing a supermarket trolley full of her possessions would spend their money on. A flash of an expensive watch on her wrist, as she negotiated a kerb with the trolley, confirmed his suspicion. He wouldn't put it past 'Uncle Vanya' to have put a camera in the shopping trolley. She was that sort of person.
That woman had a lot to learn when it came to disguises. Sergei could have taught her but then he would have had to kill her and he was never one to take out people who were not on the contract. He would have never made such a shoddy job of a disguise.
Sergei spent the morning reviewing his plans. He had to wait around the office for a delivery so it wasn’t a wasted exercise.
The delivery was made just before midday which was normal for the Royal Mail. He watched the lady postie leave on his CCTV system. He saw the woman with the deadlocks manoeuvre her trolley to follow the postie as she went about her business. To Sergei, that confirmed his suspicions that there was a camera in the trolley. That gave him a message to send to Uncle Vanya.
“Vanya,
I wonder if Thames Valley Police/Crimestoppers might like a call about your watcher with the dreadlocks? Those photos of a postman going about her business might be the prelude to a terrorist attack. Interfering with the Royal Mail is a serious crime or didn’t you know that? (Postal Services Act 2000).
Honestly, I would have thought that you were more subtle than that. Why not call off your dogs? You should know my habits by now.
Oh, and that is rather an expensive watch for an apparently homeless person to wear, isn’t it? Add that to her expensive nail job, her attempt at portraying a homeless person clearly needs a lot of work.
For your interest, I received a new phone in the mail. After all, you or one of your associates has hacked my phone. How else would you know about my ticket to Bristol?
As for my plans, they are coming along. I am down to three possible solutions to the problem. For your information, I have not used any of those options before on any of my jobs.
Sergei.
“
He hoped that might spur Ayesha into action. It might not be for a few days but he expected something to happen sooner or later.
Sergei carried on going about his business as if nothing had happened. He decanted the curare into two bottles. One of which he kept inside one of his cameras in the office. The other was in the cupboard under the sink at his home. The latter was disguised as a bottle of bleach.
Sergei sat and looked at it for over an hour. He was trying to work out why she was inviting him to dinner. That must mean that she was coming out into the open and wanted to trap him.
He took a photo of the invitation and sent it to both Sam and Naomi. She was his secondary backup in case Sam’s team for some political reason could not do the job. He sorely hoped that that particular insurance policy would not be needed. Even after doing that, he felt very exposed. He hadn't expected this turn of events at all. He'd never given it a moment's thought… until now.
The more he thought about it, moving the action to her home turf was a very smart move indeed. She’d have all the advantages of home turf. At first, it seemed to be insurmountable with little chance of him coming out on top.
After a lot of thought, Sergei came up with a possible plan but he could not do it himself but first, he sent a curt reply to ‘Uncle Vanya’.
“Uncle Vanya,
Thank you for the invitation. Sadly, I will have to decline. When I entered the assassination business, I made a solemn pledge not to meet anyone involved with the job before, during or after. I fully intend to uphold that pledge.
Chameleon.
“
He hoped that would give him a little more time to organise his counterattack.
By now, Sergei knew the times of the trains from Reading to Wokingham during the day off by heart. At one point every other hour the three platforms used for services to Waterloo and Redhill/Gatwick were empty for around five minutes. That would be the perfect time to make a phone call to the person who was able to help him carry out a little breaking and entering. He would appear to have missed his train and was calling someone to rearrange a meeting or something like that. Appearances can lie.
Now that he had the next step worked out, he became like a caged animal as he waited for the right time to leave the office and do a little bit of shopping before heading to the station.
While he made out that he was disappointed, inside, he was as pleased as punch. His ‘tail’ had given up when he’d gone from the office to Pierre’s in St Mary’s Butts, and purchased his lunch. On the way back, he’d bought another new but slightly used phone and a SIM card. He needed another 100% clean phone for this part of the operation.
Sergei walked along the platform and sat down on one of the benches. He glanced back towards the station concourse and saw the woman with the dreadlocks talking on a phone. She was too far away to hear him make an essential call.
His first step was to send a text to Naomi. It said just one word, ‘physostigmine’. That was the name of the antidote to curare. It would identify that it was him calling from a new phone.
Sergei waited for five minutes before calling Naomi. She answered on the first ring.
“Hello Naomi.”
“I thought that might get your attention.”
“Yes, I do need your help. Fancy a spot of B&E?”
“Good. I need you to break into ‘her’ house and leave a few things behind.”
“That’s right. I have to be seen to be doing nothing out of the ordinary. Their surveillance of me will give me the perfect alibi.”
“I’ll email you the details in an hour or so. But… this woman is not to be underestimated. I’d give the place a good checking over before even setting foot on the property. I’d normally do it but I don’t want to be seen or tracked to anywhere near her home for obvious reasons. With my tails in Reading, I have a good alibi. She knows that I am a loner in my work. Therefore, she won’t be expecting someone to be casing her home on my behalf.”
“Yes, I am serious. She killed that guy in Hawaii by putting poison on the Lei that he was given at a civic ceremony. That takes ingenuity. Now that she has officially told me her address, she may be setting a trap for me.”
“No Naomi. I’m just going to be seen to be acting as I have been ever since I got here. As I said, normality is my alibi.”
“Thanks Naomi.”
Sergei hung up feeling a lot happier. The next train to Wokingham was just arriving. He’d timed that very well.
Once home, he swept the place for new bugs. His camera had detected an unwelcome visitor. They’d gone straight for the camera that looked like a coat hanger. It was one of the goons who had been tailing him intermittently in Reading. It was clear that he had a key to his home. That was not good, but only to be expected given the quality of the person he was up against.
He watched his visitor replace the old coat hanger bug with a new one and left. Sergei was surprised that he didn’t check the old one for any images but that would have taken time. He guessed that it would not be long before he received an email from ‘Uncle Vanya’ complaining about the cost of another bug that he’d destroyed.
Sergei disabled the new bug in the same way as before and go on with sweeping the house. This time, he found two new bugs. One was placed to cover the front door and the other one covered the backdoor. The exit through the garage was clear unless a bug had been planted across the road. These cameras were not that well disguised, so he suspected that they’d been placed in a rush or by an amateur. It didn’t matter that much. Now that he knew of their existence, he could use them to his advantage should the opportunity arise. He noted their type and knew from past experience that he could easily make them send images to two destinations.
It was getting close to time for him to turn the tables on her but before he did that, there were still a couple of jobs to do.
Since then, he had documented every case in excruciating detail. With a conclusion to the case about to happen, it was time for that to happen with this one. He travelled into Reading and purchased another used laptop. Once again, this was something that he did for every case. This was a single-use device. It would only be used for this purpose. Once the files had been uploaded to a site in Germany, he would wipe the hard drive with a military spec eraser and then leave the device in a public place or on a train for some lucky person to find. No matter how many bugs or bits of malware had been put on his main laptop, none of them would show what he was doing. Those bits of spyware would show him referencing various documents that had been viewed before, but that was it. The whole idea was to appear to be doing nothing out of the ordinary. A new VPN would hide his upload activity using the data allowance of the new phone.
Some people might call him paranoid but it was all part of his insurance policy.
Only one person in the world besides Sergei could access the upload and that was Dieter Muller, his lawyer from Hanover. The upload would trigger a message to Dieter. If Sergei did not contact Dieter within five days of the upload, Dieter would read the files and send them to the appropriate law authorities.
People in his line of work could not get life insurance unless they underwrote it themselves. He had a lot of dirt on the people who had employed him to do their dirty work. If he was deceased then at least he could make sure that the people he’d worked for got their collars felt.
It was well past dawn when Sergei uploaded the last part of the material. He did a stretch and walked around his temporary home. As far as places to stay while on a job, this had been one of the best.
While he made himself some breakfast, he began to think about what he should do after this job was over. Apart from retiring, there was almost a blank canvas in front of him. Deep down he knew that he could not remain in his Puerto Soller home now that it was known to be home to at least one assassin, even if he came out on top in this case. He’d have to look for a new refuge. That lead him to think about Yvonne.
After a moment with her in his mind, Sergei mentally rebuked himself. There was no point in thinking about something that most probably would never happen even if he was able to come out on top in his battle with Ayesha.
He tried to make things appear as normal as before but he was not confident that he managed it.
Three days passed before Naomi sent him a sitrep using a new public/private key pair that he'd set up before his last meeting with her.
“Sergei,
Not good news. Her place is bottled up tighter than Fort Knox. She has the highest security I've seen outside of places like the Louvre. She has placed infrared and UV lasers all over her house, for when she's not there. Outside it is just as bad. Even a rat set off the outside lights. There are motion sensitive IR cameras covering every possible access route except via parachute onto the roof but that is out of the question. There is a 133kV grid pylon less than 30m from her back door so that option is out.
I watched her arrive and she disabled the security with a radio device. From the data that my scanner received, the device appears to be a token exchange unit that changes the token keys after every use. Almost impossible to crack without physical access to her part of the device.
The only word I can use to describe her is ‘Paranoid’. I’m afraid that you are going to have to get her to come to you.
Sorry,
Naomi.
PS
The solution to all your other problems will be delivered tomorrow at your office.
“
If Sergei had possessed a cat, he would have kicked it at that moment. The email reinforced the fact that Ayesha was a worthy foe but at the same time, he was no farther forward in his quest to deal with her. The only upside of the whole thing was that it was Naomi who had discovered the security system that she had set up at her home. She had been a top security operative for MI6 for almost 20 years before transitioning from Stephan to Naomi. After that, she’d run a security consultancy. He thanked all the gods in every heaven, that he hadn’t tried to break into her house. He would have blundered into the external defences like an amateur, which was probably what Ayesha had been counting on.
He read the email at least a dozen times before shredding it with a DOD-approved file deletion tool.
Getting her to come to him would be easier said than done. As he sat at his kitchen table, he had zero ideas about how to move forward and that was usual for him.
The arrival of the post lady with another small package for him the next morning did nothing to help in his quest for even an inkling of an idea. He had nothing, zilch, nada, nowt and there were no signs of that changing anytime soon.
Uncle Vanya would be getting rather impatient for some action. It was entirely possible for her to come after him. That thought sent a shudder through his whole body. Uncertainty was part and parcel for an assassin, but not when you might become the target.
[to be continued]
Now that dealing with her on her own turf in the manner that he had originally planned was out of the question, Sergei turned his attention to trying to work out how to get her to come to him, and then how to deal with her when she was there. The last thing he wanted to do was underestimate her. Even the slightest error on his part from now on, could lead to his demise.
Sergei hadn’t got very far when Naomi sent him an email marked ‘Urgent’. That was the only part of it that was in plain text. Everything else was encrypted using a new private key. He was waiting for another message with the key when a text arrived on the phone that he’d used to call Naomi. All it contained was a web address. He guessed that it was the location of the public key part and knowing Naomi, it would be a one-shot access. The first person to access the page would get the data and then it would magically disappear.
Sergei copied the URL to his laptop and security erased the phone three times. He was not going to take any chances with the information that Naomi wanted to send him.
The decrypted message pulled no punches.
"Chameleon, my supplier of your solution has reported another sale to a mutual friend. Be careful.
Naomi.
PS
If I don’t hear back from you in 72 then I’ll have a discrete conversation with ‘Sam’.”
“
As he read it, a shiver ran down his spine. Things were starting to move up a gear. Naomi was telling him that she had his back and that if things went pear-shaped, he could rely on Sam and his people to clean shop. It was small comfort but at least she would not get away with killing him or at least he hoped that was not going to happen. If she prevailed, then she would have an exit plan already to go. She could be long gone before his demise was noticed. While that would no longer be his problem, Sergei hated loose ends. That made him even more determined to come out on top.
After a period of contemplation, Sergei sent a reply in code to Naomi.
“I’ll text you when the curtain is about to go up.”
Then he sent a brief update to 'Sam' that indicated that it was all going to go down within the next 72 to 96 hours. He ended it with 'NNTR', No Need to Reply.
Sergei’s immediate problem was that he had no idea when the curtain was going to go up.
Once the messages had been sent, Sergei security erased the laptop and restored it from a backup that he’d made after setting it up. The time it took him to do this allowed him to think about his adversary and how she was managing to outsmart him at almost every move. To say that he’d never met an adversary like her was an understatement of monumental proportions. He did the same to the phone. That would give him two ‘clean’ devices to use for the finale of this most weird operation.
The news about her procuring some Curare was a clear indication that things were moving rapidly towards a climax. With her very much running the show, he could only do so much in advance of her attack.
The more he thought about the situation, the one and only way out of this dilemma was to let her make the next move. All he could do was hope that the antidote to Curare would allow him to take control of the situation at the appropriate time. He had no idea when that would be. Thankfully, the antidote was in tablet form. All he could do was to make sure that he took a dose regularly. There was little else he could do but wait.
Sergei hated waiting for more than half an hour for anything when he wasn't in control… Waiting for her to move would be hard, very hard.
Ayesha’s move came four days later.
For a casual observer, it had been just another Friday but for Sergei, he knew that as the saying goes, ‘tonight’s the night’ thanks to the security system he had installed at his rented home.
He’d watched Ayesha leave her work early and head for the railway station. From the time of her departure, he guessed that she was going to take the Gatwick Airport service that ran non-stop to Wokingham.
His guess was proved correct when at 16:47, his systems lost contact with the 4G modem that he was using to run the system. It was only offline for three minutes but it was enough for him to know that she was making her move. Sergei smiled. She’d made her move and unlike her home, his was not a fortress but he had unseen protection in the form of a Raspberry Pi system that sent a ‘keep-alive’ message to a cloud server every 30 seconds. If the server missed two consecutive messages, a text would be sent to his phone. The message would be in Spanish and would say that he had missed a check-up appointment. That seemingly innocuous message told him that today was the day.
Sergei smiled and for a moment, he felt pleased with himself for making his system work that way. She’d blocked the 4G signal while she gained entry to his rented home.
He checked the video feed and that had not been blocked. She was good. A bit of pre-recorded video hid her entry to the house. The small server that sent the ‘keep-alive’ messages was well hidden and unless she’d used a network sniffer, the small 96 byte message that it sent would remain undetected. The message was at first glance, a DHCP renewal message. He mentally thanked an associate in the USA for the software and hardware. This was the third contract that he’d used the device on. It had certainly paid for itself now.
Sergei waited until 17:00 before springing into action.
He sent a text to Naoimi. The message said, “One small step”.
Sergei sent another cryptic message to Sam. Both of his backups would be primed and ready to go should his plan go badly wrong.
It was up to him to go home on time, and appear as unsuspecting as he could.
He didn’t wait for a reply as none would be forthcoming. Instead, he initiated a factory reset on the phone. He repeated it two more times before removing the SIM card and cutting it into small pieces. These, he wrapped in a piece of paper. That would be put into a bin in the street or at the station.
His last action before leaving the office was to take a dose of the curare antidote. He had to hope that she wanted to prolong his agony and
would not give him a fatal dose as he stepped through his front door.
Sergei walked to the station and made the Gatwick Airport train just before it departed. As he watched the lights of Reading disappear into the looming night, he hoped that he’d be still alive by the end of the evening. Despite the horrible architecture, he’d grown rather attached to the place.
His home was all in darkness when he arrived just before 18:50. He’d stopped to buy some food as was his normal practice for a Friday. If she had anyone watching him then it would appear to be a perfectly normal Friday.
Sergei walked up to the front door and without hesitation, opened it. There were a couple of flyers for local fast-food joints lying on the mat. He ignored them and headed for the kitchen.
That’s when he felt a prick in his neck. His reaction was to strike out but she ducked and missed his arm.
“I’d sit down before you fall down Sergei,” came her voice from the darkness. She flicked on the light. A gun was in her right hand. He guessed that it was a Glock 17 with a silencer.
“Finally… I have you right where I want you. I am going to enjoy this, really enjoy this.”
Sergei put down the bag of food and sat on a chair. The gun and especially the silencer told him that she really did mean business.
“Is it starting to take effect yet? I do hope so,” said Ayesha who was clearly enjoying his misery.
She grinned as she came close to Sergei. He smelt her perfume. Subtle but alluring and very different from the exclusive sent she’d worn before.
“There is a saying, do unto others as they do unto you. I’m going to do unto you as you did to someone else. You see Sergei Labrov, I have followed your career very closely for some years. Burying Gustav Henkel alive in the foundations of his new house was a masterstroke. You did unto him as he did to his victims and now it will be your turn to experience that fate. There is a new building going up in Forbury Gardens. There is a concrete pour due at 08:30 tomorrow morning. You will be underneath that pour. Perhaps in a thousand years, your body will be found like that of King Richard in that car park in Leicester. If you are wondering who is paying me to dispose of you then wonder no more… It is Gustav Henkel’s widow. She is going to pay me a cool five million for getting rid of you. Then it will be me who retires to your home in Puerto Soller. Oh, don’t worry, the records in Palma will show that you sold it to me a year ago. Yes, that’s how long I have been planning this.”
Sergei almost let the cat out of the bag and said that she was lying. His property in Spain was owned on paper by a company in Andorra. The only officer of the company was his German lawyer who could not sell it without him signing the authorisation in person. Thankfully, he managed to stay perfectly still. Only his eyes moved as he watched her 'assume' control of the situation.
Ayesha went over to her handbag and extracted a small case. She put it down on the table and opened it. While her back was turned, Sergei attempted to lift up his left leg. The antidote was working. He was able to move it just an inch or two. He relaxed and waited for her to continue to gloat about her victory over him.
Inside was another syringe and a small bottle that contained a liquid.
She turned to face him again.
“This is concentrated curare. The dose that I gave you just now was enough to slow you down. This one will keep you motionless for the next twelve hours. When this has taken effect, I’ll take you to your last resting place and may God help your murderous soul or perhaps the devil will be opening the gates of hell for you. Either way Sergei, the game of chess is over and my queen has your king in a trap. One last move and you are gone.”
She picked the syringe up from the case, and after holding it up and removing some air from it, she approached Sergei grinning from ear to ear.
This was the trigger that Sergei needed. He sprang into action by swinging his left leg. It caught her by surprise and she lost her balance as she tried desperately not to stab herself with the syringe. She failed and it rolled away as she fell to the floor.
In a move that he had his long-dead bully of a father to be thankful for, Sergei had Ayesha pinned down on the ground in under three seconds. She was not giving up and stretched out a hand in the hope of grabbing the syringe.
“Noooooooo!” she shrieked as Sergei moved it out of her reach. He turned her over onto her front that took her even farther away from the syringe.
“Yes, Ayesha. Karma is a bitch, isn’t it?”
Sergei reached up under her skirt and pulled down her tights.
“Go on then fuck me. I’ll enjoy every moment of it and then I’ll come back to haunt you.”
“I’m not going to touch you. I just need these to tie you up while I deal with you. Using curare or should I say trying to use it was your undoing. Your suppler told a good friend of mine who told me. That same supplier gave me some antidote that’s why your initial dose had zero effect on me. I did my research on you Ayesha just like you did on me. The difference is that I have a number of associates who work for a number of Governments who would very much like to see the end of you. These departments have been most helpful to me in this case. That’s also how I came to know that you are the elusive ‘Uncle Vanya’. You really should not have taken out an asset of MI6. They are very protective of their people.
Ayesha struggled a bit more but he had her pinned down on her stomach. All the time, he was tying her hands tightly.
“Yes Ayesha. I will have to admit that it was a good move to make yourself my target. Because you know my methods there was little danger of me taking you out from 500 yards with a sniper rifle. You certainly did your homework on me but even that was deficient in so many ways. Your demise will make a fitting end to my career. I can head for retirement knowing that I finished on a high. Yes Ayesha, I had more or less made the decision to quit the game before you came and interrupted my slumbers. It is a shame. If you had just waited then you could have had one less competitor without even lifting a finger."
Sergei proceeded to hog-tie her arms and legs. She struggled but he knew the right pressure points that would nullify her struggles until she was securely bound.
Once she was secure, he rolled her over onto her side.
She spat at him like a hissing cobra. Sergei just smiled.
After removing a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, he picked up the syringe.
“Now it is my turn. Just a little to incapacitate you and keep you quiet. The rest I’ll leave for later.”
Ayesha struggled but it was no use. He injected her with a small amount of the contents of the syringe between the big toe and the next one on her left foot. Her struggling motions continued for almost two minutes before gradually subsiding.
“Good!” he said as he stood up.
“I’m going to get my van. When I return, you will go on your last journey. May you rot in hell or rather down a collapsed tunnel vent. Your body will probably never be discovered.”
He went towards the door but turned around and knelt down in front of her.
“If only you had waited. They say that ‘only fools rush in’. Well Ayesha, you rushed in and you will pay the price for your foolhardiness. I was going to bring the fight to you, but I discovered that your home is defended like Fort Knox. That’s when I knew that you were coming to play on my turf. Interrupting my video feeds was good but not good enough. I have another data feed running in the background that you missed. That was when I knew that today was the day. I win and you lose.”
Sergei returned a few minutes later. Ayesha remained motionless on the floor but her eyes followed his every move.
“I must remember to thank your sister, the delectable Ms Foster for suggesting this house. The private access to the garage from the kitchen is going to prove most useful, most useful indeed.”
Ayesha’s eyes told him that he’d hit a raw nerve. That was what he intended.
Sergei dragged her into the kitchen and out to the garage. After a bit of a struggle, he got her into the back of his van.
“I’ll be back,” he chanted hoping to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Sergei, as was his habit, did not leave anything to chance. He left the van doors open and retreated to the kitchen and therefore out of sight of the door to the garage. He waited to see if she would try to move. The grunting that came from the rear of the van told him that he’d been successful with the dose of curare.
Sergei returned to the garage and checked on Ayesha. Her eyes followed his every move. They were still filled with hate and vile so he put a towel over her face effectively blinding her. It would also stop her from spitting at him again.
After returning to the house once more, he began to pack up for a night time trip to the middle of nowhere as well. Then he’d start the process of tidying up all the loose ends.
Ten minutes later, he returned to the van. He had bagged up all her things including the ‘zapper’ that would disable her home security system.
Sergei cut the bonds holding Ayesha’s feet. She didn’t move. He smiled and began to tie her down to the floor of the van. The previous owners had welded some ‘D’ rings to the floow and walls to secure loads. They were perfect for her last journey. His last job was to cover her up with a coat.
Five minutes later, he was driving away from Wokingham. There was still a good amount of traffic around but that didn’t bother him in the slightest. He headed for the A329M and then the M4 in a westbound direction. At the next junction, he turned off and took the A33 towards the centre of Reading where he stopped at a large DIY store a mile or so from the junction. Ten minutes later, he returned with a wheelbarrow, a large tarpaulin and a set of work gloves. After loading them into the van, he drove back to the M4 and continued westbound to the nearby Services.
Before continuing west, he bought himself a large coffee. It was going to be a long night.
Just over an hour later, he left the M4 at Junction 17 and headed north. At the first opportunity, he pulled over and went to the back of the van putting on a head torch as he did so.
He removed the coat from over her face. The look of defiance on her face told him that he was just in time as she began to struggle against the lashings.
“Well Uncle Vanya, it is time for your last journey. I really do hope that you enjoy your last moments on this earth.”
Sergei straddled her and forced her mouth open. Then, he injected the remainder of the drug into the inside of her cheek. He waited for her to lapse into unconsciousness. The amount of curare in her system would probably be enough to stop the breathing reflex in a few minutes. He switched off the torch and waited. A few cars went along the main road that was about 100m away but none of them turned into this small lane.
Her breathing stopped and the job was done. This was one job that would always leave a bitter taste in his mouth. Killing a woman had done it for him. He was done with the assassination game for good no matter how much she deserved to be his last target.
Sergei closed up the back of the van and carried on north. His destination was not that far away and was thanks to a book he’d found in Reading Library. The book had been about the history of the ‘Thames and Severn Navigation’.
From that book, he had discovered that the long abandoned Sapperton Tunnel had several airshafts. One of those is blocked by a rockfall about 30m from the surface. That is where he was going to dispose of her body and the wheelbarrow would help him move it from the car to the shaft once he’d wrapped her in the tarpaulin. The work gloves would make sure that he left no fingerprints on it once he’d removed it from the plastic bag. That bag was safely stowed in his pocket. Sergei’s training had kicked in big-time. He was determined not to leave any trace of his actions behind.
Ayesha’s cooling body disappeared into the blackness of the shaft just over an hour later. Sergei tossed the body of the syringe body parts into a river just off the M5 near Bridgewater two hours after that. Only her fingerprints were on it but the water would wash them away very quickly. The water would dissolve what remained of the curare very quickly. After that? It would be regarded as just another junkie syringe. The needle was dropped into a discarded beer can which was dumped into a wastebin, on the forecourt of an all-night filling station on the A38 south of Taunton.
Sergei carried on driving south and rejoined the M5, and passed Exeter just before 04:00. Only then did he begin to breathe a bit easier. Every mile that he travelled was one more mile away from the scene of his most distasteful job, a job that would always leave a bitter taste in his mouth but he was finished with the game. Once the cleanup was done, he could start to think about the future.
He found a café near the port in Plymouth not long after 05:00. It didn’t open until 06:00 but he didn’t mind. All he hoped was that there was space on the morning ferry to Roscoff.
From where he was parked, he sent an email to Naomi saying that it was done. He also sent an email to ‘Sam’ saying the same thing and also letting him know about her house and importantly the location of the security device that would disable the security system that protected her now former home.
“The job with Uncle Vanya is over. If your boys fancy a spot of B&E training then please go ahead and use it, otherwise, the keyfob that will open up the property, is in the mail to your Paddington mail drop. I am officially retired. I have a few bits of cleaning of my own to do and I should be back in sunny Spain in a few weeks. Thank you Sam and I will not go back on my word.”
Sergei”
While waiting for the café to open, Sergei booked a place for him and the van on the ferry to Roscoff. He also booked a cabin in the hope that he could get a few hours of sleep because his adrenaline high was rapidly coming to an end.
Late that afternoon found a much-rested Sergei back in France. He’d declared the wheelbarrow at French customs. The official didn’t believe him but did so after seeing it in person. He and his colleagues had a good laugh at his expense.
Once out of the port, he drove the short distance to his friend George’s home and left the wheelbarrow on his front porch with a little note of thanks for his help plus an envelope containing five hundred euros. George could use the barrow on his vegetable patch where he grew prize-winning onions and garlic.
Sergei drove off into the gathering dusk with a smile on his face. At last, he could relax and head east towards Paris. Shortly after 02:00, he pulled up at a small industrial area between the suburb of 'Choisy Le Roix’ and Orly Airport. The area was very quiet with traffic or people moving about which was good for this part of his clean-up operation. The nearby market at Orly was a hive of activity, but this part of the area was pretty dead at that time of night. That was perfect for this last act in his fight for survival.
“Well old girl, you have done a great job these past weeks. Now it is time for me to leave you,” he muttered to the van.
Sergei gathered his things together and got out of the van. He left the keys in the ignition, the driver's window wound down and walked away from the vehicle and didn’t look back. He didn’t need the reminder of what he’d done just over a day ago.
The river Seine was not that far away and he intended to follow it as far as Notre Dame before heading for the Gare Du Nord and a Eurostar train to London. He was in no hurry and to be honest, he enjoyed watching the city come alive.
A baguette and a coffee from a vendor at the Gare du Nord satisfied his hunger as he waited for the first London train of the day. While he waited, he sent an email to his sister explaining that the van had been stolen from an address in Paris the previous evening. She would know that it was a lie, but it would be enough to keep the Paris Gendarmerie off their backs. They might want to speak to Sergei but by then, he’d be in London.
The train journey to London and again on to Reading was not enough respite for Sergei and he was definitely running on empty by the time he reached his destination.
A very tired but slightly happy Sergei was back in his Office in Reading and eating a Cheese and Ham Baguette from Pierre’s just after one in the afternoon. Ironically, this one was far tastier than the one he’d bought in Paris.
He looked around and felt rather sad. A lot had happened since he was last sitting at that desk and looking out at the street below. Now it was time to tidy up a few loose ends before heading off into retirement.
His only worry was that he’d be connected to the disappearance of Ayesha despite the fact that he’d been very careful when contacting her. On the plus side, he had never been seen going anywhere near her home. She had been to his rented place and that would need a deep, deep clean before he handed back the keys. The office would need the same treatment just in case she had been inside as she had boasted.
That thought reminded him of something. None of the ‘watchers’ had been waiting for him at the station. Ayesha must had been so confident of her success that she’d called them off before that fateful evening.
He finished the baguette and made himself a cup of coffee. There was a huge weight on his shoulders. There was a persistent nagging thought that he’d forgotten something. That was so unlike him. Planning and more planning was his hallmark and so far, he’d managed not to leave incriminating evidence behind. Having to act very much on the fly was strange to him. Only time would tell on that one.
Before leaving for the day, he sent off a longer email to his sister Iliana telling her that he was fine and would be going home shortly. That would tell her that the job was done. The local Gendarmerie would probably be asking questions about the van. In his mind, it was either being broken up for spares or driven around on false plates. He’d chosen the place for the drop off carefully because in the past those units had been a place that people went to for a dodgy car or cheap original parts for expensive cars.
Sergei took the bus to Wokingham even though the train would have been a lot quicker, but taking the train didn’t allow him to make a stop at the supermarket in Winnersh, for some food and some cleaning materials. He planned to start on the house cleaning in the morning, but tonight he was going to eat a nice steak, wash it down with a fairly decent Claret and hopefully get a good night's sleep in a bed after sending an email to Sam. Sam replied saying that their operation to cleanup her affairs would begin the next day. They’d confiscate any funds from her accounts. That was just part of how they worked after all, their department does not appear on any records in H.M. Treasury.
[four days later]
“Mr Labrov, I have never seen a place so clean at the end of a rental contract,” said the Estate Agent, Yvonne Foster as she inspected the house that he’d rented.
“My later father used to say that a job worth doing is a job worth doing well,” he replied.
It was only a bit of a lie. His KGB training had actually said, ‘don’t leave loose ends alive’.
“I can agree to that.”
Then she added,
“There is still six weeks to run on the lease…?”
She’d left a question hanging in the air.
Sergei couldn’t take his eyes off this delightful creature. She was clearly in the wrong job.
“I don’t want a refund. My work here finished earlier than expected and I have been paid in full.”
“A good result I hope?”
“Not entirely. There were some surprises, but it should work out in the end, but only time will tell.”
“Where to next? Somewhere nice I hope.”
“As this contract finished early, I’m going home. I’d planned on being here for Christmas but that is not going to happen now.”
“Where’s home if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Not at all. At the moment, I live in a house on the island of Mallorca. That is about as close to home as it can be.”
“Is home somewhere in Russia? Your name seems to be Russian.”
He nodded.
“I was born in a place called Yekaterinburg. That is a good number of hundred kilometres east of Moscow. It is not a place I ever want to return to. Mallorca has been my home for a while, but it may be time to move on. Far too many tourists these days.”
Yvonne took the hint and didn’t press him further. Sergei took that as a good sign.
[The next day at the Office in Reading]
“You do make my job very easy Mr Labrov. This place is as clean as the house,” said Ms Foster.
“Thank you again for the compliment. As I think I said yesterday, I hate leaving a mess behind me.”
“Everything seems to be just as it was when you rented it. I’ll sign off the rental document. Then we can arrange for the deposits to be transferred to your bank.”
Sergei was prepared for this problem.
“Mr Foster, if it is at all possible, I’d like the deposits back in cash. I need some funds for the remainder of my stay here. If the money is sent to my bank, then I would have to pay currency conversion charges when it is converted to Euro’s. Then I would pay them again to convert them to pounds. Do you see my problem?”
She smiled.
“I understand perfectly. Let me make a phone call to my boss.”
“Please go ahead. If it ok with you don’t mind, I’m going to adjourn to my hotel. I’m staying at the newish hotel next to Caversham Bridge. If you could join me there once you have discussed things with your manager? Shall we say three hours from now?”
“Well… I suppose it will be ok.”
“I’m going to be waiting in the bar. It will be lunchtime then. I hope that you could join me?”
Sergei was winging it and had been for a while. If he fell flat on his face, then so be it.
“Mr Labrov, I’d be happy to join you for lunch,” said a smiling Yvonne.
“Thanks for coming Yvonne,” said Sergei as she arrived in the restaurant with an excellent view along the river Thames.
“This is very nice. I’ve never been here before.”
“This place is a bit too formulaic for my tastes but for a few days, it will do. The best places all need a car to get to and I’m without one at the moment.”
“Oh, you had a van, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I had an old van. It was stolen from an office car park on the Slough Trading Estate, last week. In my line of work, it does not look very good at a lot of places if you turn up in a shiny new Mercedes or BMW, only to make half the workforce redundant. I only paid a thousand euros for it on my last job before here.”
“I suppose so. I’ve only had this job for two years since I graduated from university.”
“Oh, what did you study?”
“PPE. Politics, Philosophy and Economics. It put me off politics for life I’m afraid.”
“So, you became an Estate Agent?”
“For want of something else to do. I should have chosen a different degree.
Sergei chuckled as the waiter arrived with the menu.
[an hour later]
“Yvonne, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your plans for the future?”
She chuckled.
“I don’t mind at all. The honest answer is that I don’t have a clue. I can’t see me being an estate agent for all my working life. But… what my next step is…? As I said, I don’t have a clue. If you don’t mind me asking… why did you ask?”
“Touche!”
“I asked because I might have a job for you. It is totally above board and could turn out to be very lucrative for both of us. Are you interested in finding out at least a bit about it?”
Yvonne smiled back at Sergei.
“There had to be an ulterior motive for splashing the cash on me on a nice lunch so please… go ahead.”
“I’m beginning to like you, Yvonne. You are a very smart person, which I like.”
She sat patiently waiting for him to make his pitch.
“There is an old song called ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ by Lou Reed. Do you know it?”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“Let me play it to you. I have the track on my phone.”
He found the track and handed her one earbud before pressing 'play'.
Yvonne listened to the song. As she did so, a smile broke out on her face.
“I have heard it before.”
“Are you willing to take that walk into the unknown?”
“But… the lyrics are about someone who is Trans or at least pretending to be?”
Sergei nodded.
“The challenge is to make me the best woman possible. I know the basics but there is so much that I don’t know.”
“What is in it for me while all this is happening or is that the wrong thing to ask?”
He grinned.
“It is fine. What is in it for you is this.”
He pulled out a sheet of paper from a folder that was by the side of the table. It contained the details of his Peterborough hideaway.
“That’s yours free and clear at the end of the job. I paid just under three hundred thousand for it almost three years ago.”
Yvonne scanned the sheet hardly believing her eyes.
“Are you trying to scam me?”
“Not at all. I’m prepared to get a contract drawn up that you can take to a lawyer to get checked. There is no mortgage on the property so as I said, it is yours free and clear at the end of your work. In the interim, you would live with me all expenses paid. We could agree on a salary that would be paid here if you desire just to keep your taxes ticking over. It is all open to negotiation but I’m not a skinflint. At the very least, you could sell the flat, pay off your student loan and have more than enough to put down on a place of your own or even bum around for a few years while you decide what to do next but I don’t think that is really you is it?”
“But… you don’t know me from the woman in charge of the front desk here?” replied Yvonne as she ignored what he’d just said.
“I’ve seen you operate. That told me a lot about you as a person. Methodical was the first word that came to mine. That is very much like myself.”
Yvonne didn’t say anything so Sergei carried on.
“As I said, I need someone to educate me in the fine art of becoming a woman. A guestimate is that this is a twelve to eighteen-month assignment.”
“Why? Why do you want to do this?”
Sergei smiled.
“Have you even met a Trans person before?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t say for sure but I don’t think I have.”
“Most of us know from an early age that we were born in the wrong body. I knew when I was about six. My father was not happy when he found me wearing my sister’s clothes. He beat me so badly that I ended up in the hospital for a week. When I recovered, I wised up and never tried to do that again, but the desire never went away. I bided my time and two days after my tenth birthday, I left home and stowed away on a train that was heading for Moscow. From there, I carried on west and with a good dose of luck, I arrived here eleven weeks after leaving home. I applied for and was granted refugee status on account of the number of broken bones that I had thanks to my late father and the growing persecution of LGBT people in Putin’s Russia. It is ten, twenty times worse now but the writing was on the wall with the Pussy Riot group.”
Sergei took a deep breath as he remembered those dark days in Russia.
“I was in a children’s home for a year but luckily, I was sent to as a foster child to a lovely couple in Newmarket. One of them was from Minsk. They helped me become a British citizen.”
“You poor thing…”
“What about your history?”
“Much like you. I was adopted. I found out earlier this year that I have a sister. I felt that she was close by until very recently. Then one day just about a week ago… it was as if part of me died. I never knew her so I can’t miss what I didn’t know.”
Sergei felt a little uncomfortable. He put that aside and carried on with his close-to-the-truth, but not quite the truth backstory.
“Now it is time for me to realise that dream, but I am savvy enough to know that I can’t do it alone. I had no idea about how to make it come true.”
He smiled at Yvonne.
“Then I met you.”
"That is quite a carrot you are dangling in front of me," said Yvonne after a few seconds of thought.
“This is a photo of me a week or so back.”
He passed over a selfie of him dressed as an older woman.
“That is very good. Why do you need me?”
“There is a world of difference between playing a part for a few hours and living that part for good. I needed to disguise myself in order to follow the person who I suspected of selling the company secrets to the opposition. Most people don’t even think about old people they see out and about. I got the information and that’s why we are here today. He was selling the company out to help fund his wife’s addiction to painkillers. He was quietly shown the door without any severance money. Unofficially, he’s been blacklisted and will never get an executive level job again unless he starts his own company.”
Yvonne looked at the photo and back to him several times. Her face remained almost expressionless.
“Please take some time and think about it. A week won’t be a problem. As I said, I am prepared to make it formal with a contract and everything. As for salary… That will be at least twice what you are making in your present job and there will be very few outgoings.”
Yvonne smiled.
“Mr Labrov…”
“Sergei please.”
“Sergei… When I accepted your offer to come to lunch, I knew that there was an ulterior motive, but not anything untoward. That is not you. I never expected to be offered a job even remotely like the one you have laid out for me. I underestimated you.”
“In a good way I hope?”
“Oh yes. You have given me something to think about. That something was not what I had expected which is good.”
To seal the moment, they chinked their glasses.
[one week later]
Sergei glanced at his watch for at least the tenth time since he had sat down at the same table as a week earlier. He was getting a bit anxious. With every minute that ticked by, his hopes for a successful conclusion were becoming more and more remote.
After one final glance at his watch, he stood up, dropped a £10 note onto the table and headed for the lifts. He intended to check out and head back to Mallorca with his tail firmly between his legs.
Twenty minutes later, he returned to reception and paid his bill.
“Can you ring for a taxi? I want to go to the Railway Station to get the bus to Heathrow.”
“They normally take about ten minutes to get here. The road works on the IDR are playing hell with the traffic on Caversham Road.”
“I know,” replied Sergei.
“Don’t bother with the taxi, I’ll walk along the river. I could do with some exercise.”
Sergei's mind was elsewhere because he'd missed the arrival of Yvonne. She was standing right behind him. As he turned away from the counter, he bumped right into her.
“Going somewhere without me?” she said grinning.
A very relieved Sergei smiled back at Yvonne. By her side was a single wheeled suitcase. His prayers had been answered.
“Nearly, but not now. Come on, we have a plane to catch.”
[two and a half years later]
A very different Sergei who was now officially called Maria, was sitting under an umbrella on the terrace of the villa that sat high up on the coast some 55km from Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia, looked up at Yvonne who had just returned from a trip to the market and smiled.
“Shhhh. I’ve just got the twins to sleep for their post lunch nap.”
Two babies were in her arms. Each of them was gently sucking on one of her breasts. Maria tucked a strand of her now long blonde hair behind one ear before blowing a kiss at her wife.
Both of them had changed a lot in the past thirty months but together it had been quite a ride especially now that they had twin girls to look after.
Covid had come and almost gone without drastically affecting their little household. The couple had found and moved into their new home just before the pandemic hit the world. The periods of lockdown had cemented their relationship and any thoughts that Yvonne might have had about leaving after her work transforming Sergei had been completed were long forgotten as was her old life and the crazy upside-down case that had brought them together.
Because the twins had been born in Spain and were therefore Spanish Citizens, both Yvonne and Maria had easily qualified for EU residency after the BREXIT deal was signed. Eventually, they would get dual nationality but that was in the future.
Transforming Maria had given her a purpose in life that was missing in the estate agent’s office in Wokingham. Being together 24/7 had allowed their relationship to blossom. The arrival of the twins had cemented their life together.
Any thoughts of Ayesha had been sent to the dark depths of her mind like the death of her father. They were history. Now they had a different life to persue.
The Chameleon had changed its colours for the last time. Its tongue would no longer strike at the speed of light at its prey but was content to move slowly through life looking after his family.
[the end]
[authors note]
The ending for this story was inspired after watching the 1957 film, ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ starring, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power. This was shown on the Freesat ‘Talking Pictures TV’ channel in late Dec 2021.