Countdown in Cairo rt-3
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Boris smiled and nodded. He lifted his hand from her leg so she could stand.
She took a tentative step to leave, played the drunkenness just right, and steadied herself with a hand on his massive shoulder. She turned toward the bar exit, struggled a little on her heels, and headed out. From her peripheral view, she saw him knock back another shot of vodka. He then reached to his pocket and dumped a fistful of cash on the bar.
Alex passed directly by Rizzo. She left the bar and crossed the lobby with another wobble. She went to the elevator. She turned.
Good. He had followed. Now Boris was about ten feet from her, trying to make a decision. She gave him a smile and then, to seal the deal, a wink.
The elevator door opened. There was no one else in it. She stepped in and he followed again.
“My room is on the sixteenth floor,” he said.
“Mine is on the seventh,” Alex said.
“We will go to mine,” Boris said.
“I need to stop at mine first,” she said.
She wondered if she had somehow alerted him to danger. His expression suggested that he didn’t like that idea, her room. In the Russian services, or any services, survival was contingent upon the continuing talent for suspicion. And so far, Boris had survived very well.
“I will wait for you upstairs,” he said.
“If I lie down in my room I might never get up,” she said.
The elevator arrived on the seventh floor. The door opened.
“So if I don’t come upstairs, I’ve gone to bed alone. Don’t wait.”
Impulsively. Boris stepped out of the elevator behind her. But she could pick up the scent of suspicion from him. He didn’t like this. Something about this was setting off alarms.
“Why do you have to go to your room first?” he asked.
She held his hand and gave him a wink.
“Never ask a woman too many questions,” she said. “But if you really want to know, I want my toothbrush and a few overnight things. Is that okay?”
He didn’t answer. She moved to her door. Everything was going the way she wanted it to so far, but it was essential that she bring him into her room, if only for a moment. If he held out for his own room, she was sunk.
But he followed her to her door. She felt his body hulk behind her. She could smell the bad cologne and imagined that she could feel his breath on her neck.
“I have a negligee that I was going to wear for my boyfriend,” she said. “But now, tonight, I don’t care. You’ll be my boyfriend, and I’ll wear it for you. Two days from now I’ll be back in Miami and no one will ever know about us. Except us. How’s that?”
“That’s good,” he said.
“Will you wait outside my room for me?” she asked. “Do you want to wait here? Or would you like to come in and watch me get undressed?”
He didn’t answer. She ran her room card through the proper slot on the door above the doorknob. The little green light came on. She placed her hand on the doorknob and began to push the door open. She felt his powerful hands on her shoulders. She wondered how he would try to kiss her. Then, quickly, she found out.
His slid his hands roughly down her and surrounded her body with his arms. He pulled her back closely to him until her body was flush against his. His lips came down on the right side of her neck and he began to kiss her bare shoulders. He held her in one of the strongest and most powerful grasps that she had ever encountered.
The grasp didn’t thrill her. It scared her.
She managed to turn around in his arms, but only because he let her. He could have overpowered her in an instant. He could have choked her to death in a few seconds. She looked up to him and he smiled. She knew she had him.
His lips came down on hers. His lips were firm and warm, and she realized it had been quite some time since she had allowed a man to kiss her like this. Then one of his hands was busy behind her back. He had the zipper to her dress in his fingers, and he was working it downward.
She professed shock, even when he had it down a few inches and the shoulder strap of her new dress was loose. Her body was pressed firmly against his. She managed to move a leg and push the door open behind her.
“You’re a very bad boy,” she said. “I don’t think we’re even going to get upstairs.”
He grunted. “Maybe not.”
“My room is very comfortable,” she said. “The bed is big enough for two. Follow me?”
Alex pulled away from him. She had a sense that the booze had caught up with him, and his reactions might be dulled. She hoped she was correct.
Flirtatiously, she smiled and took his necktie in her hand. “This is going to be fantastic,” she said. “Come along.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
She felt the door open inward behind her. She pulled him along and whatever hesitation he had felt now dissipated. Boris followed her into the room. As they took the first steps inside, she leaned back to him, cupped her hands behind his head to block his view, and kissed him again.
Their lips were still touching when the blackjack in Abdul’s hand came from the right side and smashed across Boris’s temple. The blow landed with more of a clunk than a crack. It split open the skin and bounced off.
With exquisite timing, Alex released her prey and pulled her hands back. Tony, crouched low behind the door, came from the left with a small iron club that went straight at Boris’s knee from the left side. The club smashed into the side of the kneecap with a resounding crunch. A second harder blow to the same spot staggered Boris more than the first.
At the same time, two of Voltaire’s other local people rose like phantoms from behind a sitting-room sofa. They rushed toward Boris, who was now screaming profanely in Russian. Alex ducked out of the way. Her four backup men tried unsuccessfully to drag Boris to the floor.
Alex kicked the door shut as the men wrestled violently. Voltaire’s men hit Boris hard and shoved him forward until he crashed onto the carpet, knocking over a table and a lamp.
Alex moved too close and caught an elbow to the side of the face. She staggered from it. In the melee, other fists flew wildly. One of them grazed her under the chin. Half of her face stung, and Alex realized that she was right in the midst of the brawl herself. She had lost a shoe and a shoulder strap had ripped.
Boris fought like a wild man. He threw his powerful elbows at the men on top of him. He caught one in the jaw and one in the gut. The room was alive with crashes, thumps, and profanity. Boris clenched one of his huge fists, threw a massive backward punch at one of Voltaire’s men and caught him in the testicles.
The man howled profanely and loosened his grip.
Boris lunged for his right ankle, and Alex realized she had been correct. That’s where his gun was. “Pin his leg! Pin his leg!” she yelled.
Abdul sat on the leg, and the other men managed to yank Boris’s hands upward behind his back as Alex knelt and lunged into the fray, grasped at Boris’s ankle, and struggled to take the gun from him. Abdul shoved a Taser to the base of Boris’s neck and let fly with several seconds of current. The electric charge shot out of the Taser with a cracking, zapping sound.
Boris’s body jumped like a great fish on a line. He howled again. His body convulsed, then the howl ceased, and a guttural near-choking sound followed. At the same time, Tony and Abdul continued to work his hands upward behind him. Finally they succeeded in handcuffing him.
Alex accessed the gun on Boris’s ankle. She pulled it out.
Voltaire stood nearby, arms folded, surveying calmly. A few seconds later, it was over.
Boris lay stunned but not unconscious on the crumpled and torn Iranian carpet that covered the floor. Tony grabbed him by the hair, lifted his head, and slammed it down again.
He was still breathing hard, clinging to consciousness, blood flowing from his brow and skull. He was probably wondering how he could have been so stupid as to follow a woman into a hotel trap.
“Very nice,” Voltaire said. “Dare I say, th
is is almost an art form.”
Abdul and Tony unleashed a strand of duct tape. They wrapped tape firmly across Boris’s mouth and looked to their boss for further instruction.
“Give him a lot more,” Voltaire said with more feeling than was necessary. “He’ll need it.”
The assailants stood him up. Tony caught him again with a fist to the midsection, then another. They Tasered him again and watched his body convulse. Then they picked him up and shoved him awkwardly down onto the sofa, his wrists still manacled behind him.
The sofa was bolted to the floor and from somewhere someone produced a chain. They wrapped the chain around the captive, locked it to the sofa, and then stood back.
“Nicely done,” Voltaire said again.
Boris came out of his stupor slowly. His eyes were wide and delirious, like a beached shark. But he was a prisoner and he knew it. Alex stepped back, her hand to her face where she had been hit twice.
“Are you all right?” Voltaire said evenly. “I’m fine. I got grazed. No big deal.”
“I’m so glad,” Voltaire said. “At least you don’t have to undress and go to bed with him. That might have been even worse.”
“Very funny,” Alex said. It wasn’t.
“Ouch,” Voltaire said. “But I assure you I’ve done worse in the call of duty.”
Voltaire reached beneath a jacket and pulled out a Glock. He stepped forward until he stood five feet away from Boris, with his arm extended and the business end of the Glock trained at Boris’s head.
“Okay,” he said to Alex. “Talk to our guest.”
Alex pulled a chair into a position a few feet from Boris. She sat down and crossed her legs to get comfortable.
She spoke in Russian.
“We’re very sorry to inconvenience you, Boris,” she said. “But we need some cooperation from you.”
Boris looked at her with surprise and then hatred. But her Russian was so sharp that night that it corralled Boris’s attention immediately. He stopped struggling and was very still.
“Cooperate with us, and we will make it worth your time. Cooperate and you’ll be out of here in twenty-four hours. No one will ever know what happened. You’ll be free to go, and my employer will even reward you with a few thousand Euros for your trouble. Fail to cooperate, and I’m afraid my friend here will grow impatient and shoot you.”
She let it sink in.
“Unfortunately,” she continued, “time is very short. So you have only ten seconds to decide.”
Boris searched the room. Voltaire removed the clip from his weapon so Boris could see it was full, then slapped it back in. He whirled it in his hand with a sadistic flourish and moved the weapon closer to its mark. He squinted with one eye as if to bring the aim to the center of Boris’s head.
“Such a beautiful carpet in this room too,” Voltaire said. “It would be a shame to stain it. Let’s see what our boy has to say now.”
Abdul reached to the duct tape and ripped it off Boris’s face.
Boris responded with a torrent of obscenities in Russian, Putinstyle. Then he spit at Voltaire.
“Oh, dear,” Voltaire said. “Insubordination.”
Boris turned back to Alex.
“Who are you?” Boris asked. “Americans?”
“It doesn’t matter, Boris. You’re our prisoner until we get what we want.”
The hostage continued in Russian. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Cooperation,” she said. “Now. What will it be? Please make the wise decision.”
Boris spit again. This time the expectoration contained parts of a tooth. But at least it was the beginning of a dialogue.
FORTY-FIVE
Ten o’clock the next morning. There were six of them now in Room 734. No one was particularly cheerful.
Boris sat on the sofa, chains still across his feet and his waist, a large white bandage covering the purple bump and gash across his forehead. There were bags under his eyes. His captors had seen to it that he had been up all night.
Alex sat on a chair several feet away in a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and her Beretta on her right hip where it now lived. She had changed since the previous night, and while the cocktail dress had been fun and served its purpose, the jeans were a better fit.
They had been joined by a young Swiss who went by the name of Leonardo-after DiCaprio, not Da Vinci-a lad who was the resident cybergeek who worked for Voltaire in Cairo. A wiry young girl named Rebecca had done an impressive break-in of Boris’s room. She had filched Boris’s laptop and brought it downstairs.
Now Leonardo picked his way through it. Mimi, Rizzo’s friend, teamed with Leonardo to work on hacking Boris’s encryption. Mimi had graduated from her colorful Sailor Moon period that was so-twomonths-ago and had now suddenly gone Goth, a drastic overhaul from just a few days earlier. Black nail polish, black boots, soft powdery makeup, a black miniskirt, and two silver rings on each internet-savvy finger. She had also roared past Leonardo and was taking the hacking of Boris’s machine to new levels.
She had been at it for an hour when she leaned back, satisfied.
“He’s using Advanced Encryption Standard,” Mimi said, staring evenly at the screen and continuing to work the keypad. “It’s a symmetric 128-bit block data encryption technique developed in 2007 by the Van der Waal brothers, a couple of insane Dutch cryptographers,” she said.
“So?” asked Alex. “Can you penetrate it?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” she said. “It’s not a bad program. There’s backdoor access to it, but difficult to achieve. The US government adopted the same algorithm as its encryption technique in 2008, replacing the DES encryption it used to use. I’m surprised to see a Russian goon using this stuff,” she said.
Boris’s eyes, all one and a half of them, were wide with rage.
“The Van der Waal brothers were psycho, like I said,” Mimi continued, “so the logic of their program is elliptical. It doesn’t follow any traditional encryption logic. That’s what’s so severe about it. It goes by the rules of ‘Mondo van Waal,’ which is to say it’s completely unpredictable and follows no logic at all, more like a counterlogic, but it’s still kinda cool.”
“So can you crack it, Mimi?” Rizzo asked, exchanging a glance with Alex.
“Hell, yeah,” she said.
“You rock, Mimi,” Rizzo said. “Doesn’t this girl rock?” he asked the room.
The room admitted that Mimi rocked. All except Boris.
Alex glanced to the battered and unhappy camper on the sofa.
“You should warn your people,” Mimi said to Voltaire, Alex, and Rizzo. “Someone was drop-dead careless exporting this encryption technology. You could apply this program to a different platform and break into existing GSM codes all over North Africa. I don’t think Boris here is smart enough or computer-savvy enough to do that, but, for example, if terrorists gained these same encryption codes for your own laptops, they might be able to impede your abilities to track them.”
She worked the keypad intensely. Leonardo had bailed.
“They could also apply a GPS application,” Mimi said, “and monitor your movements. That way,” she said cheerfully, “they could know where you live and be there to meet you. They could put broken glass in your bathwater, arsenic in your coffeemaker, or just an ice pick in your ear as you slept. Someone needs to be more careful with this crap. Anyone got a cigarette?”
Alex looked at her.
Rizzo gave her one of Boris’s disgusting Russian smokes.
Mimi lit up. “This thing’s gross,” she said. She snuffed it after two drags. “What is it?”
“Bulgarian tobacco,” said Rizzo.
“Yuck,” she said. “No wonder people fled to the West for fifty years. Anybody got a Winston or a Pall Mall or even a Nakla or anything that doesn’t taste like horsesh-?”
Abdul had a pack of Winstons, which kept Mimi calm.
“So, young lady, you’re telling us that most of the police agencies of Weste
rn Europe and North America are sharing the same encryption technology as this hood?” Voltaire asked.
“That’s pretty much what I’m telling you, Einstein, yes,” Mimi said, smoking.
“Great,” muttered Voltaire. “That’s a whole separate report to Langley.”
“I’ll let them know,” Alex said.
Alex turned back to Boris. “Why don’t you earn yourself a few extra points here and tell us where you got your encryption system?” she asked in Russian.
Boris shrugged. “Moscow,” he said unhelpfully in a muffled voice from under the tape across his mouth.
“Most likely that’s true,” said Mimi. “It was already programmed into the laptop when it was given to Boris. I don’t think he’s smart enough to program it or apply it himself. I mean, just look at him.”
“Strong as a bear, but only half as smart,” Rizzo suggested pleasantly.
“Do you hear what my technician and my associate from Rome are saying about you, Boris?” Voltaire said. “They don’t think you’re the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
By now, Boris was wondering why they were talking about knives.
“Okay,” Mimi finally said. “I’m into the program. What now?”
“We need to send something,” Bissinger said.
“That’ll be a problem too,” Mimi said, “unless you get your prisoner to do it.”
“Why?” Alex asked.
“There’s an extra encryption layer,” she said. “The laptop has been textured to recognize finger touch, keystrokes, and speed. It’s like it’s looking at your handwriting and telling who you are. So anyone important who he sends to is going to be alerted that it’s another sender. Unless Boris does the typing.”
Bissinger and Voltaire looked to Boris.
“That’s not going to be a problem, is it, Boris?” Bissinger asked.
Another low profanity from the Russian indicated that it wasn’t.
Alex leaned forward. “Here’s what Boris should send,” she said.
She leaned forward and handed her notepad to Voltaire.
On it, there was a message that purported to be from Boris to Michael Cerny. Voltaire eyed it, made no changes, and passed it along to Boris. Rizzo walked to Boris and, with a quick yank, again ripped the adhesive duck tape off the Russian’s mouth.