by J K Ellem
Whatever his true name was, Nadia knew something was wrong. She had never had a face-to-face meeting before. Business was conducted purely in cyberspace, deeply hidden under an invisible tear in the fabric of the web where all her assignments were sanctioned, monitored, allocated resources and final reports issued. A world where no physicality existed.
It was late afternoon by the time she drove her rental car along the waterfront esplanade of the small marina. The sun was sinking into the warm waters of the Mediterranean turning the surface into a molten ripple of orange.
The waterfront cafés, restaurants and bars were starting to fill with the usual evening tide of sunburnt Brits, suntanned locals, holiday makers, wealthy families, screaming children, frazzled nannies and well-healed retirees, wrinkled and flabby from too much rich food and local wine. The pickpockets, grifters and local hookers swum amongst them, like sharks through a school of mackerel, easy pickings to be had.
Nadia sat down at the designated table at a waterfront restaurant, the aroma of garlic and ripe tomatoes heavy in the air, the waves of the ocean lapping just meters from her feet. She hung her casual beach bag over the back of the chair, her Beretta and two full magazines inside. She was Nordic blonde today, not her natural color but she felt distinctly Jackie Onassis when she woke this morning, so she donned a large floppy sunhat and oversized sunglasses.
A few minutes later a man sat down in the seat opposite her. Despite the late afternoon heat, he was dressed in a navy blazer with cravat, linen pants and wire-rimmed sunglasses that adjusted to the light. He had gray wavy hair and matching gray eyes that glimmered from a lifetime of wisdom given and compromise refused.
He regarded Nadia thoughtfully, as though he was ticking off a mental checklist in his head, finally comparing her in the flesh to the voluminous file he had on her.
Then he asked her a question in Russian. She replied in German and he corrected her in Spanish. They then conversed in the Queen’s English for the rest of the meeting.
* * *
Giles made a show of picking a piece of lint off his blazer as he spoke. “You seem to forget Nadia, we gave you sanctuary, took you in, smuggled you out of your mother country at a time when every Oligarch this side of Siberia wanted you dead.”
“Really?” Nadia scoffed, looking out over the ocean. A light breeze ruffled her fringe and she turned her face into it. “Let them come after me,” she replied defiantly. “I will kill them all.”
The conversation had become distinctly cold when Nadia advised Giles that she didn’t want anymore assignments for awhile. She was tired, she needed a break.
Giles looked at Nadia, choosing his next words carefully. She was a strange animal indeed was Nadia. “It would be very disappointing if you did that Nadia.” Giles gave a wry smile. “Nearly every over-priced restaurant in the City of London would go broke and you would throw the British Premier League into disarray.”
Nadia cocked her head, a faint smile on her lips. Most of her previous superiors had fled to the sanctuary of London after the economic collapse of Russia that was brought about by the sweeping reforms instigated by Boris Yeltsin in the 1980s. Most of the Russian state-owned assets fell into the hands of a few scheming politicians and military elite for a pittance of their real worth. Now these so called Russian “strong-men” hide in exile under the protection of Her Majesty’s Government. They glided down Knightsbridge ensconced in armored Bentleys, trading soccer players like cattle while checking on the billions in their Swiss bank accounts they had siphoned out of Russia.
“I have been loyal to the organization,” Nadia said.
Giles nodded, “I know you have and for that we are truly grateful. I know what someone of your talent could command on the open market.”
“I’m not a freelancer,” Nadia snapped. “I don’t shop around for the highest bidder.”
It was true. Nadia Levon was a private contractor, but she did not have the luxury of choosing what assignments the organization gave her, until now. “I don’t clean and I don’t do retrievals.”
“I know this Nadia,” Giles said, trying to soothe her. “We have teams for that type of work. But we have a problem. An urgent assignment I would like to sanction to you. But no terminations this time, not like the last one.”
Nadia said nothing for a moment, content to just sit and watch the setting sun and enjoy the warmth on her face and the smell of salt that lingered on the ocean breeze. Young couples walked hand-in-hand along the beach. Families played with their children at the edge of the surf. She had a much different life compared to them. Money was not an issue, she was certainly paid well for what she did. But it was times like these, when she paused to observe the normality around her, that she yearned for a simpler life, an uncomplicated existence.
Giles spoke again. “I see you have enrolled again at the Conservatoire de Paris this summer.”
Nadia flashed her eyes at him.
“You should know by now Nadia that we know everything about our assets.”
“Asset?” Nadia replied, as though the word left a bitter taste on her tongue. “Is that all I am?”
“Oh, a very valuable asset might I add as well.” Giles didn’t want to ruffle her feathers. She was a very special animal, aloof and temperamental at times, but she had reason to be. Nadia had never questioned any of her assignments, she just carried them out with ruthless efficiency. She had no political preferences nor religious inclinations and at times she brought a certain level of flair to her assignments especially when it involved dishing out justice to the unjust.
“What I do in my own time is my own business.”
“I agree,” Giles replied. “But I could help you get into the course. I believe they only accept thirty applicants a year?”
Nadia had tried three times and three times her application had been rejected by the Conservatoire de Paris, one of the most exclusive and oldest schools of music in the world. Nadia had been an accomplished violinist in her day, had attended the Moscow Conservatory before she had fled the country.
“You know,” Giles lent forward, smiling like a Cheshire cat, “a quiet word in the right ear, then a deposit into the right bank account and voila! An acceptance letter delivered right to your email inbox.”
Nadia sat in silent contemplation, considering the offer. There were some doors in life that money couldn’t open. Only influence and the right connections could turn the lock on those doors.
“I want the enrollment acceptance legally certified and delivered to me first.”
Giles smiled. He had her. She was all business-like now. “Before the sun reaches its zenith tomorrow,” Giles promised with a gracious bow.
“What is it that you want me to do?”
Giles pulled his chair forward towards her. “I need you to retrieve a key.”
Nadia frowned. “A key?”
Giles just nodded.
“What kind of key? What does it unlock?”
He had no authority to tell her and he was breaking every protocol but he needed her to understand the gravity of this new assignment. “It’s a key that if turned can lock every financial system on the planet. In the wrong hands it can render every monetary transaction from a simple credit card payment to the global share market trades totally useless. If used, the key would create a total and irreversible financial meltdown.”
Giles let the words sink in for a moment before continuing. “They say that money makes the world go around and that’s true. But if this key is used, then the flow of money will stop and with it this planet that we all live on will stop turning too. It will make the GFC look like a bounced check fee.”
“What about your best person. I know I’m good, but you have other people, more qualified assets as you say.”
Giles sighed. “And, hence my dear there lies the problem. The man, who is,” Giles paused, “or should I now say was our best operative, intends to steal this key.”
3
Zurich to Vienna
By the time they had pulled out of Zurich Hauptbahnhof, the largest train station in Switzerland, Nadia had read the complete file on Hans Kern, an Austrian mathematician. Considered a genius, Kern’s specialty was complex algorithmic chains.
He had turned down numerous offers from major social media and search engine companies. Instead he was squirrelled away by government officials to work in an obscure research lab renowned for internet applications.
Kern had an immense dislike for banks, fuelled after seeing his parents lose everything, including their family home when his father was laid off from the local factory when Kern was just a child. It planted the seed of hatred in Kern that drove him to develop what Giles had called a cryptonic key or “cryptokey.” If activated, the cryptokey would wipeout every financial record, file and system on the face of the planet, replacing all currencies and trade with Kern’s own crypto currency. Nadia didn’t really understand the technicalities of what Giles had explained to her, but she did understand that if the cryptokey was activated, then the ten million dollars she had safely deposited in her Liechtenstein bank account would suddenly disappear and would be replaced by a currency that only one person could control.
Nadia’s ticket allowed her a private sleeper compartment on the train, but there would be no sleeping for Nadia. She travelled light, just a small hard-shell roller case that contained a change of clothes. She gazed out the window at the rows of lights from roads and small villages that blurred past in the darkness. The train trip would take nine hours and would pass through some of the most picturesque countryside along the borders between Switzerland, Germany and Austria. However, Nadia would see none of deep wooded valleys and mountain streams as the train departed Zurich at 10pm and would arrive in Vienna at 6am. The train would stop only at a few stations along the route, picking up and dropping off passengers with the most notable stops being Innsbruck at 1:30am and Salzburg at 4am.
During the time, Nadia had to locate Kern as unobtrusively as possible amongst the hundred or so passengers and then retrieve the cryptokey from him without drawing attention to herself. There could be police and railway officials on the train from time to time and she preferred to avoid them at all cost.
Kern’s name did not appear on the ticket manifest. That would be too obvious. But surveillance of him in the last two weeks revealed that he would be onboard. Nadia had enough photographs of Kern to identify him, even if he had changed his appearance recently. Short of plastic surgery, if he was on the train, then she would find him.
Giles had been very specific in his final instructions. She was to use whatever means deemed necessary to secure the package and everything else was collateral damage in the process.
But it was clear that Hans Kern was running. He had stolen the cryptokey, even though it was his own creation, and was scheduled to make the exchange in person at a hotel not far from the main train station in Vienna. Giles was determined that Kern not make that appointment and the best location for the intercept was on the train.
Nadia got up, unlocked the door and emerged in the passenger corridor. She made her way to the dining car, the train gently undulating under her feet as it sped through the night. She went past the second class coach compartments, casually glancing in through the glass windows, noting each person, committing their faces to memory. They were mainly student tourists, backpackers or young couples no doubt traveling through Europe, fulfilling long lost dreams.
Nadia reached the dining car but paused at the automatic doors between the two carriages. Another train shot past in a blur of white light from its windows and a shriek of its horn startled her for a moment. On the left were the restrooms. They were empty. Nadia pressed the button and the toilet door opened with a hydraulic hiss. She entered the small compartment, closed the door behind her and locked it.
The space was small, framed in dull stainless steel with a small mirror over a stainless steel wash basin and faucet. There was a stainless steel toilet in one corner, the floor was thick rubber with a diamond tread for grip. In the other corner, secured to the wall with latches was a sanitary receptacle canister with a simple one-way tilting lid. Next to it, attached to the wall, was a plastic bag dispenser where sanitary waste could be hygienically bagged then dropped into the receptacle via the hinged lid on the top.
From her jacket pocket Nadia pulled out a multi-tool and set about unscrewing the top of the receptacle canister. Several times the train jolted as it switched tracks and the end of the Phillips head screwdriver bounced out of the screw head. It was a fiddly and intricate job. The content of the canister was obviously emptied at each destination when the train was stationary and not swaying at over a hundred-miles-per-hour along the train tracks.
Two minutes later Nadia had all four screws off and she placed the lid on the floor.
Inside the canister were a pile of neatly knotted yellow lavender scented bags sitting within a black plastic bin liner. The canister was half-full, Nadia reached inside and began the unenviable task of rummaging through the small bags searching for the one she wanted.
It was near the bottom, in its own scented yellow bag, heavier than all the others for a reason.
Nadia carefully lifted the bag out, placed it on the floor and undid the double knot. Inside she found a HK 45 compact handgun, with two full clips of ammunition, thirty rounds in total. No suppresser. The handgun was smaller than her usual Beretta but it was far easier to conceal. If she needed to use the hand gun it was because everything had turned to shit and aggression, not discretion was called for.
She was going to have to shoot her way out to survive, but Nadia always did self-preservation very well.
4
The Smile
The configuration of the train was typical. Ten carriages in total being pulled along by a powerful diesel-electric engine. Two freight carriages had been attached at the end carriage when they had left Zurich and all carriages including the freight carriages had a system of gangway connections and push-button hydraulic doors. The dining car was the third carriage from the end, just before the two freight carriages.
It took Nadia fifteen minutes to slowly and discreetly walk from one end of the train to the other, observing faces. In her head she counted ninety-eight passengers that she could see, not including those in the restrooms or in private compartments. There were two transit police who were also riding the train and they casually brushed past her going in the opposite direction, towards the front of the train.
She arrived in the dining car, the last public place left to search. Despite it being nearly midnight, it was almost full. She found a small table at the far end and sat down and stared at the silhouette of trees, open fields that passed under the moonlit sky. She ordered a coffee and sandwich when the waiter arrived and slowly took in the room, using the reflection off the darkened windows to aid her. There were young people, old couples, tourists with maps laid out on tables, planning their next adventure, a few single people trying not to look so lonely and a few couples having affairs, stealing away to Vienna for the weekend, telling their respective spouses that it was an important “business trip.” Two hours of continuous sex in their private compartment to the rhythmic rocking of the train usually meant they would finally emerge around this time into the journey to replenish their calories for the next session of physical activity.
Nadia tagged most of the people in the dining car, a few gave her some puzzlement, but she dismissed them as non-threats.
The automatic doors opened at the far end with a hiss and a ticket inspector entered, a large portly man who moved with the sure-footedness of someone who had spent his whole life walking back and forth on passenger trains. He had a genuine smile on his face, offering a nod here, a tip of his hat there, his hips and legs moving in sync with the gentle roll of the train almost as if he knew every track crossover or bend in the rail in advance.
He smiled as Nadia showed him her ticket then gave her a curt nod and moved on. At the end o
f the carriage he came to the locked door of the freight car. It was a solid-looking door with a peep-hole. He pulled out an old set of keys linked to a chain attached to his trousers, opened the door and disappeared inside.
Nadia quietly drank her coffee and ate only half her sandwich as she continued to watch the people in the dining car in the reflection of the window glass.
The automatic doors hissed open again at the far end of the carriage and a man stepped in. Nadia glanced up then quickly averted her gaze out the window. Even through the reflection she could see clearly the detail of his face.
Hans Kern.
* * *
Kern took a seat at the small curved bar midway along the carriage, next to an old couple who were having a night-cap and a middle-aged business man in a rumpled suit who looked like he been drinking ever since the train pulled out of the station in Zurich.
The photographs of Kern that were supplied to Nadia were from the usual sources: Austrian drivers license, employment photos and passport picture. But some more recent and non-usual photos had also been supplied, captured when Kern was unaware that he was under surveillance. Kern staggering out of a gentleman’s bar in Zurich at 2am; Kern discreetly walking in through the alleyway entrance of a brothel in Amsterdam. Kern walking across the lobby of an exclusive hotel in Salzburg, arm-in-arm with a blonde woman young enough to be his daughter. These recent photos left no doubt in Nadia’s mind and that of Giles as well that Hans Kerns was being courted by faceless people who remained hidden in the shadows, but who wanted what Kern had: the cryptokey he had created.
Kern was on his third drink when Nadia got up, moved towards the bar and sat down on a stool a few places away from him. She ordered another coffee and scrolled through her cell phone, checking on messages. She then sent an encoded text to Giles confirming that she had made contact with Kern. Moments later a reply landed on her phone. Giles seemed pleased. He would have people ready at the station in Innsbruck and Salzburg should she want to disembark sooner.