by Kat Smith
She’d learned that, on the rare occasions Christopher came down from Moscow, he’d pay her a small sum to keep his side of the house cleaned. Devan knew life in Russia was hard, but she’d never quite understood how hard. It reminded her of the days when she had to rummage through dumpsters in search of food.
Devan felt bad that the woman was spending her meager wages to put another plate of food on the table. Meals had always consisted of whatever vegetables Teona could find boiled in a watery broth. On payday, there may even be a few slices of bread and a bit of meat.
She knew she was being selfish, but Devan would prefer she spent the money having the phone line repaired. She would have gladly forgone a few meals to see that happen. However, Teona had informed her that the repair would cost nearly a month’s salary. She’d continued to explain that even if she had the money, there were only a handful of men who worked for the phone company in the southern district of Russia, and it could take weeks or months for them to show up.
The days and nights were long, and Mother Nature was taunting them with a cruel flick of her finger. With only three degrees of latitude difference between Fort Meade and Makhachkala, the weather was much like that of home. However, Teona had warned that the unseasonable cold weather they were experiencing in October was a warning of a hard snow-laden winter to come.
Devan’s leg was feeling much better, and the previous day, she’d tempted leaning her full weight on it, but that had been a bad idea. Now she sat with it propped on an ottoman as she watched a fuzzy Russian movie on the small black and white television in Teona’s sitting room. Although Teona was helping her pass the time by teaching her Russian, Devan couldn’t understand anything the two actors were saying. Frustrated, she drummed her fingers on the plaster cast on her arm, and in a moment of insanity, she decided it was time for the bulky cast to come off.
She was at the kitchen sink, pounding on the hard plaster with an ancient hammer when she looked up to see a black van come to a stop on the back drive. She looked down at the shards of plaster scattered over the counter and quickly raked as much as she could into the trash before hobbling back into Teona’s apartment. She stood by the door, listened, and heard the side door of the van slide shut. She couldn’t be concerned with her leg. She had to move fast and hide before whoever was in the backyard caught sight of her. She stepped quickly into the bedroom and shut the door, then knelt beside the bed to retrieve her weapon. She pulled out the AK-12 Teona had hidden there on the first day but decided the smaller MP-443 sidearm would be better in close quarters. She pulled herself up and onto the bed, sat, and waited.
She listened intently as the man walked back and forth from the van into the adjacent apartment. Devan could only speculate that it was the mysterious Christopher. She was still sitting and waiting four hours later when she heard Teona’s car circle the house.
Devan knew Teona was a calm steady woman, and with any luck, she could get into the house before the man next door intercepted her path in the kitchen.
Payton was sitting at her desk trudging through the latest reports on an investigation the FBI had tossed her way. They had picked up online chatter indicating a possible terrorist attack on a metropolitan European city. Because the FBI could not work outside the boundaries of the United States and its territories, they had tossed it over to the ICC, and in turn, the case had dropped on her desk to follow up and investigate.
Payton had jumped at the chance to transition from the NSA to the newly formed ICC in 2018. The ICC inside Fort Meade was created to assist U.S. spies with the critical infrastructure to fight and prevent online threats. The workforce, or “cyberwarriors,” as they were often referred to, was made up of a combination of NSA and U.S. Cyber Command analysts working together on domestic and international investigations. If investigations pointed to domestic terrorism, the cases were tossed to the NSA and the FBI for further investigation. If international targets were identified, U.S. Cyber Command worked with the CIA or other foreign intelligence services to find and eliminate the threats.
It was the best of both worlds. Working for the ICC freed Payton from the often-constricting regulations of the NSA that prevented her from proceeding when a lead crossed the U.S. border. Now she could freely investigate a lead wherever it led, and she had the FBI, CIA, and all sorts of secret acronymed organizations to help put the bad guys in a cage.
She was making a few notes to send back to the analysts in the ops center when there was a short triple tap knock at the door. She knew that knock…had heard it a thousand times. She smiled. “Come in.” She wiped the smile off her face, sat back in her chair, and watched her best cyberwarrior casually stroll into the office. “Took you long enough.”
Alex tipped her head and sent Payton a warning look. “I can just as easily turn my ass around and walk out again if you’re going to be so damn smug about it.”
Payton threw up her hands in surrender. “Fine, you win.”
Alex sat in one of the hard metal chairs in front of Payton’s desk. “I’ll give you one week.” She inspected her perfectly manicured nails. “Then I’m going to Tahiti.”
Payton couldn’t govern the snort. “Tahiti? You’re going to Tahiti.”
“Yep.” Alex looked defiant. “There or, hell, anywhere away from this cyber coalmine.”
Payton closed the folder she’d been reviewing. “That gives us seven days to get the team up to speed on your program.”
“Hell no.” Alex growled. “Five days. I wasn’t talking about your usual slave-driving, seven-day workweek.”
Payton decided to take what she could get and conceded. “Fine. Let’s get started.” She rounded the desk and opened the door for Alex to pass through. As they walked toward the operations center, Payton couldn’t help but push a little harder. “That’s five twelve-hour days, right?” She grinned and trudged forward when Alex lifted a finger and flipped her off.
Teona dropped her bag on the kitchen table, looked around the kitchen, and saw the shards of plaster on the floor. She assumed it was from Devan’s cast and worried that Christopher had ambushed her. Her heart pounded in her chest. Christopher had always been nice to her, but she recognized the dark underbelly of his personality.
Her father, may he burn in hell, she thought, had the same dark charm. She knew too well what could happen when he was crossed. Those dark sultry eyes would turn cold an instant before he would strike out with unabashed anger.
She only hoped that Devan was tucked safely in the apartment. She would figure it out on the fly, she decided. She picked up the teakettle and filled it with water. She purposely slammed the cupboard door and immediately heard shuffling in the next apartment. Moments later, Christopher Bryzgalova walked into the kitchen.
“Teona.” He took her hands, kissed her on the cheek, and stepped back to give her a look and a smile. “You look wonderful.” When she did not return the smile, he released her hands and sat at the table. “I hope I did not awaken you.”
She chose a direct attack and lit into him, arms waving in anger. “Many men came into my home. They have guns, they fight. Men were killed, blood all over.” She stopped and sat in the chair across from him, tears brimming. “Christopher, I was terribly afraid.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. “They will not return, my dear.”
“I feared they would kill me when they came into my apartment.”
He searched her face. “Did you see them? See their faces?”
She did not answer. “They dragged me from my bed, forced me to sit, and tie me to chair.” She pointed to the hole in the wall. “Destroy my phone.”
Christopher asked again, “Did you see their faces?”
“No. They had,” she waved a hand in front of her face, “cover on faces.”
He stood and removed the kettle from the stove. “I let someone stay here. People were chasing him, trying to hurt him. I can only guess they found him and took him.”
He poured water into
their teacups.
“No. Other people took him.” This is where it was going to get interesting, she thought.
His hand jerked, and boiling water splashed onto the table. “What other people?”
“Soldiers. They came before. They took him away.”
Teona could see his jaw twitch. A frown formed on his face, but he quickly looked at her and smiled. “Well, it’s over now. Let’s have some tea, and you can tell me everything.”
Alex reviewed the data from the last dump. She turned to Vincent. “Remember when you traced the computer that was used to send the email to our CIA agent about the vehicle for sale?”
He kicked out, and his chair rolled across the slick floor to Alex’s desk. “Yes, he’s in Moscow.”
“Now he’s in Makhachkala.” She pointed to the screen. “He just sent an email to someone we’ve identified as a member of the rebel group.”
“How do you know it’s them?”
She studied the data on the screen. “When I loaded the program on the computer in Makhachkala, I connected to a VPN that was set up on that computer. I assumed it was a connection into their network.”
Alex studied the data on the screen. “The program has now spread to at least a dozen computers in Moscow, but also to a network somewhere around Makhachkala.”
“Yep, that makes sense.” When Alex just looked at him, he continued. “The local police would have confiscated the laptop when they arrived at the house that night.”
“I’m sure.” She let him continue.
“Well, when the director asked me to try to get into the local PD network to see what information I could find on the events that unfolded that night and anything I could find on the soldier that was lost…”
“Hold on, what did she ask?” He had her full attention now.
“Umm, well, Director Cardina asked me to dig around to see if I could find out if they found…her…uh…body.”
Alex’s hands began to tremble, so she hid them in her lap. “What did you find?”
“Nothing.” He looked away. “Sorry, I heard she was a friend of yours.”
“Yeah, she was.” Alex cleared the lump rising in her throat. “You’re sure they didn’t find a body?”
“They found several bodies actually, but none of them was female.” He stared uncomfortably at his feet.
Alex shuffled a few papers on her desk, then stood. “I need to use the restroom. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Vincent watched her go and mentally kicked himself. He was sure Director Cardina was going to chew him out for upsetting Alex.
Alex pushed into the restroom and locked herself in one of the small cubicles and sat shakily on the toilet. The restroom was empty, and all she could hear was her own ragged breathing. Her mind was reeling. She stood, turned around in the cramped space, swiped a long string of paper from the roll, then sat again. She needed to think but couldn’t get the image of Devan falling from the helo out of her mind. “Stop it…just stop it. Think, Sheridan.” She wiped a tear that threatened to fall onto her cheek. “If they didn’t find her body, then there could only be…” Her gaze popped up toward the ceiling when she heard the door open, then swoosh closed. Everyone in the office already thought she was mentally unstable, now she was talking to herself in the restroom. She sat quietly until the unknown intruder left, then stood and paced in circles in the cubicle. She knew there had been one rebel left alive from the ambush, the person who shot Devan. She sat on the toilet again when she contemplated the only two possible outcomes. “Either Devan was captured and taken back to the rebels’ HQ, or…” She closed her eyes in agony. “Or Devan had died alone in the underbrush in that stand of spruce trees.”
It took her another ten minutes to compose herself, but when she did, she found Vincent. “Can you get back into the local PD’s database to see if they found a dead female anywhere in the area since that night?”
“Um…sure.” When Alex turned to leave, he stopped her. “Alex, one more thing if you have a minute.”
She pulled up a chair. “Sure.”
“I wanted to show you something I just found.” He flipped through several screens of data as he talked. “See this IP address. Well, that’s the IP address of the computer that sent the email to the CIA agent.”
“Yeah, so?” Alex wasn’t in the mood to IP hop, but she forced herself to listen.
“Well, that IP address is also one we picked up here.” He flipped to another screen and pointed. “All these emails go back a long way before the CIA agent met him, and they are all to known members of the rebel group.”
Her brows furrowed as she looked at the data on the screen.
Vincent turned. “Alex, this Christopher guy is one of them?”
Alex slowly turned to look at Vincent. “No, not just one of them. He’s their fucking leader.”
Devan was forced to wait an excruciating thirty minutes for Teona to come into the bedroom. She’d listened intently to the muffled voices through the door as Christopher and Teona chatted in the kitchen. They spoke in English, which surprised Devan. From what she’d been told about this Christopher fellow, he was Russian. But he spoke perfect English. He even sounded American, possibly from the Boston area the way his R’s sounded more like A’s.
She’d been able to pick up a few words, enough to know that Teona was handling the situation with genuine talent. Devan wondered for a moment if she’d ever worked as a KGB agent, then tossed the idea aside. No, Teona was just a regular woman with excellent street smarts.
Teona fought back a scream when she entered the bedroom and saw Devan had a gun pointed at her temple.
Devan tipped the barrel of the gun to the ceiling and whispered, “Are you alone?”
Teona nodded and sat on the bed trembling. “He asked many questions.”
Devan gingerly moved to sit beside her, could feel Teona’s leg shaking. “What did you tell him?”
She gripped her hands together on her lap. “Everything except you.”
Devan knew she had to take it slow. It was imperative that she keep Teona calm. Devan gently rubbed Teona’s back. “What is he doing now?”
She was settling. “He is sleeping.”
Alex sat at a small table in the corner of Payton’s office. “I’m certain this Christopher fellow is the leader of the group. Somehow, Jacob screwed up and gave himself away.”
Payton popped a K-Cup into the Keurig on her credenza. “What a royal fuckup.” She turned and leaned against the antique credenza. “Let’s forget Jacob for the moment. You said one of the computers you’re tracking is now in Makhachkala.”
“Yes, and I believe it’s Christopher.” I have Vincent working on a geo-location right now, but I think he’s at the safehouse.”
Payton shrugged. “So, what if he is? That doesn’t help us…doesn’t get us any closer to capturing this group or stopping the attack.”
Alex opened a file on her tablet and set it between them. “I’m still reviewing and cross-checking a few things, but it looks like they’re in the final stages of planning. I still don’t have the when or where, but Christopher’s movement could be a sign that they’re about to strike.”
“How do you figure that?”
Alex leaned back in the chair. “Look, if you were planning a bombing, you wouldn’t want to be somewhere you could easily be found when it all went down.” She had Payton’s attention. “He’d want to get as far away as he could and let his cronies do the deed.”
Payton nodded. “Go on.”
“By moving his headquarters to Makhachkala, he’s close enough to maintain direct command over the rebels, but far enough away to keep his hands clean.” Alex tossed her pen on the desk. “Add to that, he’s on the coast of the Caspian Sea and less than a hundred miles from the border of Azerbaijan for a fast escape if anything goes wrong. He could have a boat and be in Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan in a day, then off our radar forever.”
Payton considered Alex’s argument. �
�Okay, put a flag on his IP address. I want to know every time that computer connects to anything. We may get lucky and capture some solid leads on the attack.”
“That’s it?” Alex’s frustration was bubbling to a boil. “Call your friends at the CIA and get them to send someone to Makhachkala.” She threw her hands in the air. “Better yet, call the colonel and get her to send a team to capture him.”
Payton studied her protégé. She was good but still had that conquer the world attitude so many of the young incoming analysts felt when they first started out in the hidden world of intelligence. “If we grab him before we know when and where the attack is going to happen, then we only have a detainee with alleged ties to a rebel group.”
She dropped her elbows on the desk and leaned in. “If we get solid intel about the when, the where, and the how, we can capture them all and lock them in a box for the rest of their miserable lives.” She poked a finger in Alex’s direction. “The world of intelligence gathering is a grind. It’ll grind your pretty little ass right into the ground if you let it. However, even though the wheels grind slow, we still beat the bad guys ninety-nine percent of the time by doing good solid investigational analysis.”
She dropped back into her seat amid a wave of exhaustion. “Your generation was born with an addiction to instant gratification. You’re a brilliant analyst, and I can see you in this chair one day in the not-so-distant future if that’s what you’re striving for, but you’ll never get here or anywhere else unless you learn the virtually lost art of patience.”
Teona had confessed that, on occasion, she’d allowed Christopher to comfort her during some of his visits. She’d been worried that he might barge in during the night to offer some of his comfort to Teona, so Devan had slept on the hard floor beside Teona’s bed the night before instead of the sofa in the sitting room as she had for the last month.
It had been cramped, but they’d managed to maneuver around each other. Now in the light of day, both were feeling a bit uncomfortable in the tight space. Devan knew they could not continue this way for long. Teona’s shift had been changed to days, which would force them both to exist in this cramped space for extended periods of time. Devan had devised a plan during the long cold night on the floor, but it would take Teona’s cooperation for it to work without either of them getting hurt or killed.
