by BWWM Club
They spent a few months training him for what he was supposed to do. The agency had connections with a number of private companies who had firing ranges and obstacle courses where he could learn how to dodge more bullets than he had in the army. The focus was on individuals being sent in to do a job and get the hell out. Usually it had to do with some kind of technology the agency wanted or didn’t want someone else to have. Computer hackers could only do so much, every now and then someone on the ground had to be sent in to complete the assignment.
He’d been parachuted in to Turkey with the knowledge of the Turkish military who didn’t like a whiny little sheik stirring up trouble in the southern part of the country. Rick had located the plans when he broke into the sheik’s office in the middle of the night, then torched the computers where they would have hidden copies of the plans. He couldn’t be sure all of them were gone, it didn’t matter; the agency had sent the sheik a warning by breaking into his office and burning up some valuable office equipment. It would be a long time before he thought about trying something so stupid again.
It was the first of many assignments the agency gave him. He’d been to Indonesia, France and China. And right now he was sitting in a coffee shop in St. Petersburg talking to a very fine looking black American woman. Too bad the assignment had to come first. If everything went according to plan, he’d be out of this country in another forty-eight hours with a big fat bonus waiting for him once he got back to American soil. All he had to do was find out if a certain office building was being used by the Russian mob to hack an important security database inside the pentagon. The hackers had stolen a lot of valuable data. The pentagon’s computer security people had recognized the attempts at intrusion a few weeks ago and traced it back to St. Petersburg. The location was narrowed down to a cluster of office buildings. Now all Rick had to do was find out which building was being used to hack the database. The pentagon security people had already prepared a honey trap for the hackers who thought they were getting valuable data. In reality, it was controlled data. And when they tried to make use of it, the hackers were going to find out what that data could do in ways they’d never thought possible.
Chapter 2
The card was heavy in Monique’s hand as she walked back to her small apartment on the prospect near the school where she taught. She’d just met a handsome and hunky fellow American who wanted to go out with her the next time he was in St. Petersburg. It was cold that evening, about what you might expect for a city located so far to the North. Monique made sure the gloves were taught over her hands because the weather wasn’t going to get any warmer for the next few months.
She stopped and watched the river flow in the distance. Monique loved the city where she worked. She loved the statues, the museums and the streets. Tsar Peter had picked the ideal location for a city when he’d founded it hundreds of years ago. She could imagine him in the distance of time looking at the plans for his creation, wondering how long it would take the damn serfs to finish the job. He had built the city on the conscript labor of thousands of his subjects, but the result had been such beauty. Funny how he was revered everywhere with all kinds of statues to him in the city.
She stopped by a small chapel and gave thanks to God for having sent this man to her. Monique’s mother wasn’t all that religious and when she did go to church it was one of the Catholic ones on the West side of Philadelphia. She remembered the quiet service on Sunday mornings and the holidays. Monique had loved Easter the best because she always was given some new clothes. It was a time to get together with her relatives from other parts of the country. For some reason they didn’t talk much to her, but she enjoyed being around her aunts and uncles.
She wondered whatever happened to the last guy she dated before leaving for Russia. He was a medical student who had a bright future in front of him. But he didn’t see Monique as having a career of her own. The way he viewed any future wife was to be the mother of his children and stay home managing the household. Monique was having none of his June Cleaver future. She intended on going places and seeing the world. Her mother hardly ever left Philadelphia and she wanted more than clubbing on South Street on Saturday nights. She’d broken off the relationship with her medical school boyfriend the day she accepted the job to travel to St. Petersburg. She had no idea what he was doing presently, but it no doubt involved some fancy place in the suburbs. He was the kind of man who would be successful at anything he wanted to do and she had no desire to be a trophy on his shelf. There were too many opportunities to consider junking the career she had prepared herself for since entering college. Her mother would have been very disappointed if she had learned Monique was doing nothing with her degree.
And who was this Rick Wilson character anyway? He had given her a business card and the invitation to call him sometime. He claimed he was only in St. Petersburg for the next two days, but the whole thing seemed like some sort of scam. She had run into so many import-export people in the city who claimed to have “connections”. Monique would roll her eyes every time someone tried to impress her with a title. Everyone was a vice president of something or other. No one was a mere salesman or front line soldier. Did some of these companies consist of nothing but vice presidents? Were they indeed presidents of vice? She no longer cared. Five years in Russia had turned her into the worst cynic imaginable.
Two days later she had just finished locking up her room and was heading home. Some of the older residents claimed they didn’t have to lock their doors twenty years ago, but that was before they started showing up. By they the residents of the city meant the Armenians, Chechens and Turks. There was always someone more wretched than you to blame your troubles upon. It had been a long day struggling with unruly Russian kids and trying to get them to understand the variances in English. The kids would always stare at her dumbfounded when she tried to explain to them that “odor” and “smell” had the same essential meaning, but the origin of the words had much to do with the influences on the English language. She nearly had a heart attack when one of the kids messed up a sentence using “President Obama” and “black”. The poor kid had to be reminded of what kinds of comparisons are inappropriate.
She had her lesson plans gathered in one arm and was walking past the building next to the international school where she taught. Monique was wrapped up in a sheepskin jacket she’d bought in the open market the year before. She’d been told by the locals where you could get the best deal on winter clothing and managed to buy what she needed early this year. The man she bought it from, an older Kazak, was flattered she wanted his business. He was so flattered he reduced the price down to what he charged the customer before her. Although he’d conducted his business with her in English, he’d done the transaction before in Russian which he assumed she didn’t know. When Monique thanked him very much in Russian and told him to have a pleasant day, he nearly fell over his booth.
She turned and looked at the office building next to her while she walked home. There was a light burning brightly on the third floor. She found it a little odd since no one ever worked late at the place. Monique had learned early on there were some topics best not discussed. Such as why an office had plenty of people going in and out of it, although the name plate might read “Linguistic Research” in Russian. St. Petersburg was the Russian capital for a long time and still had plenty of government connections. If something seemed odd about a building or office, there was probably a state connection you shouldn’t be asking about. No reason to have a Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki man pay you a friendly visit in the middle of the work week to remind you that your residency status could be revoked at the drop of a fur hat. So whatever was going on in that building wasn’t her concern. If someone had to work late to get a job done, well they did that all the time back home in Philadelphia too.
So when the explosion went off on the third floor, it was a total surprise to her.
Monique was heading down the street when a loud “whump” sent her fl
ying across the sidewalk into the street. She felt the shock wave of the blast before she saw the glass fly down from its level and shower her. Fortunately, none of the pieces were large enough to do any damage, other than cutting her hands. The gloves she wore prevented the sharpest pieces from doing any real damage.
She began coughing from the smoke and turned over to see the building behind her on fire. Flames were crackling out of the window where she had noticed the light, but she didn’t hear anyone screaming. Monique managed to right herself off the ground and tried in vain to gather up all the classroom papers scattered across the road. Lights were coming on in some of the stores across the road and people were starting to come out and look at the fire. She was wobbling on her heels while trying to stand up. Then she heard the sirens wail from miles away. The fire brigade was on its way; at least someone had pulled the alarm.
She brushed the glass off her and looked at the alley between the buildings. There was someone in it staring at her. Through the smoke and haze, she saw the face of the man she’d talked to in the coffee shop days earlier. What the hell was he doing in the middle of the explosion? Did he have something to do with it? She saw the man who called himself “Rick” staring back at her through the cloud of smoke, but she had to get clear of the building. Monique tried to grab more of her scattered papers and staggered forward on the pavement. She was reeking of smoke and some chemical. The fire was burning nicely now, giving her plenty of heat on the ground. But she had to get away before it became worse or the building started collapsing. It was an older building that was only four floors high, but any building could fall apart when it started burning. She’d seen it happen in Philadelphia.
Monique began to feel her way to the building next to her. She had to get home before anyone identified her. She was a foreigner who had been in the vicinity of some kind of explosion. It wasn’t that long ago that Moscow had been rocked by terrorist attacks. If anyone was going to get blamed for it, it would be a foreigner of color who happened to be in the wrong place when the bomb went off. She looked around her and didn’t see anyone else she recognized. The man she had met the other day, Rick, was gone. Was this some kind of “hit” being carried out by the Russian mob? She had to get home before the police showed up and she disappeared into the bowels of the Russian penal system. She began walking down the street rapidly as more people came out to watch the fire. Maybe it was an accidental explosion and someone was working with flammable chemicals on that floor. It didn’t make any difference to her, she had to get home.
Most of her savings went into a Swiss account, so Monique wasn’t concerned about losing all the money she saved while teaching in Russia. She had a local bank account, but the cash from it was for her living expenses. She did have a special saving in her apartment that no one else knew about. With it was an airline ticket which she updated every six months. If relations between the United States and Russian Federation became real bad, which they might at any moment, she could catch a flight out and not have to worry. Her passport was stashed in the wall of her apartment too.
The apartment walls had been used as a safe before. When she found the access to it behind her bedroom closet, Monique discovered thousands of Rubles in 1940’s money. She’d left them there since trying to cash them in might arouse the wrong kind of suspicion. Besides, the person who had left them there all those years ago might come back and get them.
Her apartment was close, so it wasn’t all that much trouble to find her way through the alleys to it. She used the back approach to her apartment several times when she didn’t like the attention some drunk had given her. Russian men had a hard time understanding the word “Nyet” from a foreign woman, whom they all assumed were sluts. She found her street in the darkness quickly enough and walked to her building, making sure all the glass was off her just in case she ran into any of her neighbors. Monique almost yelled as a rat shot across her foot in the alley, but it had better things to do. She stayed quiet and pulled out her pass card when she approached the door. No one was waiting for her, thank God. She ran it through reader, the light flashed green and the building door unlocked. Brushing the last of the glass fragments off her coat, she went inside.
The vestibule was empty. It was a weeknight and the bars weren’t open all that late. A rowdy crowd might show up later, but for now she could be left alone. Monique made her way up the stairs; the elevator was out of service again, to her apartment. She pulled out her key and unlocked the door to it, staggering inside. So far no one had seen or heard her. She might just pull out of this thing alright, but experience had taught her to be cautious. Monique dropped the file of papers down on her dining table, next to the little nesting dolls she collected and sat down. She thought about it for a bit longer and went to the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of wine which was saved for emergencies. What she had just been through constituted an emergency. She poured herself a glass of wine and drank it down slowly.
Once the alcohol had soothed her nerves, Monique went to the television and turned it on. There were no reports of the explosion yet, but it didn’t surprise her. The official news tended to drag a little bit, but there would be an official statement in a few hours from the city government.
Since there was nothing on TV, she booted up her computer and found some local blogs and websites. In spite of the government making threats against bloggers, or because of it, she could find out all kinds of unofficial news the moment it happened. It took her two minutes to find a Russian blogger who was talking about a blast in an office building. She saw the photographs of the fire brigade working to put it out. The blogger claimed the firemen had it under control and it shouldn’t spread to any other parts of the building. No one was hurt as the office where the blast had taken place was closed for the evening, which didn’t square with the light Monique had noticed before the explosion. At least she didn’t read any reports of a dark-skinned woman fleeing the scene of the explosion. She let out a sigh of relief and shut-down the computer.
Monique was going to take a shower, but then she had another thought: what about the money she had stashed in the wall? She got up from the kitchen table and made her way back to the closet. Monique pushed aside the clothes she had hanging in there and found the small icon she’d purchase to cover the opening she’d discovered when doing some painting a few years ago. The plaster had collapsed while she was scratching off the loose paint to reveal the hidden cavity with the Rubles in it. There was enough room in the cavity after she closed it up to put her emergency money and passport into it with the updatable airline ticket.
She turned on the light and pulled back the icon. There was the cavity and it was empty.
“You really should have converted those rubles, you know,” a voice said behind her.
Monique whipped around to face the man she had met a few days ago in the coffee shop, the man who called himself “Rick Wilson”. He was standing there holding her money, passport and the Rubles which had been placed inside the cavity almost seventy years ago. Now he was wearing a black nondescript jacket and jeans to match. She was terrified at having him in her apartment, but at the same time a little tingle went through the space between her legs. He was slightly dusty from having been near the scene of the explosion.
“How did you get in here?” Monique demanded. “What are you doing with my money and passport? Give it back to me!”
“I’ll be glad to give you the recent money and passport back,” he said, handing them out to her. “The old Rubles we might want to talk about. I’m sure the St. Petersburg police would be very interested to know you were taking good care of them. Do you know what you can get for harboring stolen goods in this town?”
“Who said they were stolen?” Monique asked him. “I found the money years ago and just left it there.”
“I might believe you,” Rick said to her, holding up the Rubles with his other hand. “But there are quite a few of these. About forty million in today’s currency. They left som
e big denominations. Looks like somebody was on the run after World War Two. If they are even legitimate. Might be counterfeit and I’m sure the government would really find all the bogus money stashed in your apartment wall amusing.”
“Why are you here?” she demanded. “Aren’t you the man I met two days ago? I saw you outside the building where the explosion happened. You had something to do with it!”
There was a knock at the door. Monique felt very scared and looked at Rick. What the hell had she got herself into? How was she going to explain this one? Rick grabbed the money off the floor and shoved it with the passport back into the cavity, swirling the icon back over it.
“Saint Seraphim,” he noted. “Forgive us.” He turned to Monique. “Tell whoever it is you’re not decent.”
“Give me just a minute,” she called out in Russian to the door. “I’m just getting out of the shower.”
“Now get your clothes off and get in the shower,” he told her. “Don’t worry about me.” Rick vanished into her bedroom.
Monique ran to the shower and stripped off her clothes. She was in the shower just long enough to wash the smell of the explosion off her, dry herself and get into a robe. She returned to the door where the knocks were becoming more frantic.
Monique opened the door to reveal two St. Petersburg uniformed officers and a man wearing a plain coat. They stepped inside the apartment and began to look around.
“Who are you and what do you want?” she yelled at them, also in Russian.