10
Dmitri picked them up from the side of the road hours later. Galina and Nik spent hours sitting out there in the forest alone and hiding. They discussed plans on how they’d hide, and Nik smothered a laugh as she mentioned the first thing would be to get an inconspicuous vehicle to drive.
The beautiful Aston Martin was gone and they would need something they could either drive and not raise a red flag … or ditch at a moment’s notice. She marveled at the technological ideas he had regarding scrambling their phone signals so they couldn’t be traced. It would give them a tether to use for the internet or call their families if needed. They could call no one else once this plan was put into play. They’d be completely alone- not even Dmitri could come to their rescue if things got bad.
They walked past the crushed Aston as they headed to the road to meet the bodyguard. There were bits of glass and plastic scattered everywhere. The silver car was barely visible from the road where it lay massacred. The front of the car had given way, forming almost a ‘U’ shape where the tree trunk stood strongly and refused to give. The side of the car had been horrifically crumbled with streaks of black paint all up and down the side. The silver car that had once been so sleek now looked like someone had wadded up tinfoil and attempted to smooth it out slightly.
“I’m so sorry, Nik.”
“I don’t care as long as you are alright. How are you feeling?”
“Much better.”
“Good,” he said firmly when he saw Dmitri’s car pull up. “Say nothing. If there is any suggestion or hint at our plans, I’m afraid that they’d stop us.”
“I won’t say a word.”
As Dmitri put the car in park, he got out, stood up, and stared at the car in momentary surprise – then at Nik and Galina. Grunting, he got back into the driver’s seat without another word. Nik insisted on Galina sitting in the back seat and he took the passenger seat. A little surprised he didn’t sit with her, she also comprehended why.
If something happened on the way home, the car was another target – one he intended to steer- if at all possible. She hated to admit it but if there were gunshots, she could also lay down in the back seat in self-preservation. She understood Nik’s reasoning and unspoken suggestion. The drive back into St. Petersburg was a silent one and seemed to take forever in the small vehicle. As they finally arrived at her hotel, both men insisted on walking her up to her room. Opening the door, Dmitri stepped inside the hotel room to inspect it and make sure there was no one waiting for her. Nik kissed her tenderly and leaned in to whisper in her ear.
“Don’t text me in case your phone is tapped. I’ll look at it tomorrow,” he said almost silently and nodded, looking directly into her eyes. “Let’s grab lunch tomorrow with Dmitri,” Nik said aloud in front of the bodyguard. “He can pick the spot since he’s got the only running car right now.”
“Someplace with massive steaks?” Galina suggested, picking up on the ploy. She’d never even dreamt that her phone security might have been compromised, but it was a possibility. They would know where she was at in a moment’s notice by tracing her. Nik mentioned ‘no red flags’ – but turning off the tracing on her phone would be a massive one waved for anyone watching. Could he secure what they needed that fast or would they meet a couple of times over the next few days?
“Get some rest, my little American, and call me if you need anything,” he said, pointing at the desk phone just inside her door. The hint was blatant and she understood. He thought her phone was bugged, but the hotel phone was a lot less likely to be. Whoever it was would have had to have known what room she was in and when she would have arrived. Or they would have had to access her room when she wasn’t there.
“Lock the door and push the chair up under the handle,” he instructed and she could see the worry in his eyes.
“I’ll be fine, Nik,” she reassured him. “You let me know when you get home safely and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.” He kissed her one more time, drawing another grunt from Dmitri nearby, and then slowly stepped away. Galina shut the door, throwing the deadbolt and the other safety latch. She pushed the desk chair up under the handle as he instructed, finally allowing herself to let out a deep breath. They were about to take a massive step together becoming fugitives, and Galina had not even told him that she was falling for him.
She took her time going through her things to see what was needed and vital -or to see what could be pared down even further from her travels. She wanted to be ready at the drop of a hat in case they needed to leave with no notice. Once that was done, she called her family and made innocent idle chitchat about how her trip was going so far. She described the buildings and sights she’d seen so far, but avoided discussing anything regarding Nik – or even Dmitri. She received Nik’s simple text, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and knew he was home safely.
Hanging up the phone, she took a long leisurely bath, laying there listening to the silence and thinking. Resisting the urge to go out and explore around the rest of the day, she stayed put knowing that it was best and safest for her. The fact that someone had gone out of their way to hit their car, sending them careening into a tree, was crazy and boggled her mind.
Part of her wanted to reach out to the CIA and ask for help, but another part of her wanted to see if they were aware of what had happened. If they were watching her -had they seen the accident or had they been involved? The people that had hit the Aston Martin spoke Russian, but that didn’t mean anything…Galina did too. If they were involved, what did that mean for her and her safety? What kind of country did she love and support if they could turn on her like this?
Thinking about the possibilities made her head spin and ache even more than the lingering headache she had going. She didn’t want to tell Nik earlier that she’d really taken a hit because she was actually feeling much better now. For a while there, she was really concerned that she’d had a concussion or something. Walking to her bed, she fluffed up her pillows and stacked them up. She lay down lazily and decided to watch television until she fell asleep, thankful that both of them were alive and relatively uninjured.
Dmitri and Nik arrived at her hotel room the next day about 11 AM. Nik had a light to his eyes and a hidden smile that made her feel hopeful. As she pulled the door closed behind her, she heard Dmitri’s stomach growl loudly and grinned, knowing that the bodyguard could eat enough food to feed an army.
In no time, Galina found herself sitting in a booth off in the corner of a bustling restaurant that looked almost like some sort of dive bar. Dmitri was talking with the waitress and ordering several things off the menu. Picking up her own laminated menu, she saw that the restaurant was more of a pub, serving burgers and such.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better – and you?”
“Bruised but okay,” he said quietly. “Change your mind or are you ready?”
“I’m packed,” she announced softly. “Whenever you say the word, I’m scared but prepared to go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I know, but I feel like that we have no choice anymore.”
“It will be alright. I hope you know that,” he told her, reaching across the table. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you are safe and make it home to your family.”
“I know.”
Listening carefully to his softly spoken words, she was impressed by what he’d done already in preparation for their departure. Nik had been a busy man! He’d scheduled a loop in the security camera of her hotel that would show them walking in and out of the room at random times over the next few days. So, if someone pulled the footage, they’d be seen. He had also taken his phone’s signal and ‘housed’ it in another building, scrambling his own so he could move about town without being tracked. He had two leads on used cars to purchase for cash and was meeting them this evening. If he bought one, Galina needed to be ready to go tonight.
“Once I get the car, th
e timer will start. I can’t have it parked out front long or they will be able to trace it. When we leave your hotel room, I will take down the cameras in town so we can make our exit unnoticed.” Nik stared at his glass in concentration. She could see he was moving the ‘mental chess pieces’ in his mind, making sure whatever path they chose -they’d be safe.
“They are going to assume that we are heading for the nearest border, if they guess our intent. That would be Finland. I was thinking we go the opposite direction, travelling through Belarus and crossing the border into Poland. There, they will have people that are familiar with our language, but it’s close enough not to raise a red flag. The more borders we cross, the more we could pop up on radar. If you want to continue on, we can head for Germany or France?”
“Poland is fine,” she agreed. “It doesn’t matter to me. Wherever we go, we’ll need to find shelter and disappear into town. A large town would be easier to blend in, but a small one would be less likely to have street cameras or things to identify us.”
“Exactly.”
“What about identification cards? Won’t we get stopped at the border with our passports?”
“No. I have already looked up yours and when they scan it at the checkpoint – it’s going to flag my neighbor as travelling,” he said with a grin. “You are going to be a fifty-year-old woman when they pull up the records and I will be a middle aged, father of four.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“A father of four children?”
“No, but someday I’d like a family. For now, I picked the least inconspicuous people I could find.”
“Are you going to be okay eloping with this fifty-year-old woman?” she asked with a grin, teasing him. “By the way, I look great for my age.”
“Eloping?” he said with a soft smile, his eyes warm and tender. “I’d be thrilled to.”
“You know what I meant,” she muttered embarrassed.
“I know, but I prefer what you said,” he admitted, kissing her knuckles warmly. “First thing is first, I’ve got to get you safe.”
“Us,” she said firmly. “We’ve got to get out of Russia safely together.”
“Yes ma’am.”
The waiter took that moment to interrupt them as they ordered. Galina ordered a large hamburger, thinking of home, and Nik ordered the same. They talked for a few more moments and Galina’s phone dinged loudly. She pulled it out of her purse and read the text message.
“What does it say?” Nik asked. “I don’t mean to intrude, but it might affect things.”
“They want to know if I’ve acquired the schematics. I wasn’t told to – I was told to find out if you had taken information from us,” she whispered confused, looking at Nik. “What do I say? Do I tell him no?”
“Tell him yes but you are out right now. Tell him you’ll email it later,” he instructed.
“But I don’t have anything to send and if I do, they will schedule my flight home immediately,” she protested.
“I will give you something to tide him over and buy time.”
“But your work,” she whispered in shock.
“It will be safe and it will get the heat off of you, giving us time,” he told her, nodding. “I’m not going to let anything happen. It will be okay. May I see your phone for a few minutes?”
Galina handed it over without question and watched as he flew through several screens, tapping away at the tiny glass faceplate as his fingers moved quickly. He really was a whiz at getting into systems and knowing where to go. He pulled his phone out and opened the screen, flipping through windows on his phone and then looking back at hers. As the waiter brought out their food, Nik kept working and simply moved the phones to the side.
“I locked myself out,” she told the waiter as he looked at Nik curiously. “Forgot my iTunes password and he’s fixing it for me. Isn’t that sweet?” The waiter shook his head and walked away from them. Galina saw Nik grin at her, winking before he went back to work. She was curious what he was doing on there but instead sat quietly, picking up a French fry off her plate. Nik held the phone aloft, took a snapshot of his phone screen for a split second – only to bury his head in her phone again.
“Thought so,” he whispered several moments later. “There’s a tracer on your phone. Did you give your phone to anyone before you left the United States? The tracer is buried deep in your programming.”
“No, I wouldn’t have – wait,” she said suddenly horrified. “They did a background check on me and I had to go into a private room. Everything went in Ziploc bags, in bins, along a wall. It looked very routine.”
“Everything went in – like your watch too?” he asked, pointing at Galina’s pink apple watch. She unbuckled it immediately and tossed it on the table between them like it was poisonous.
“Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “Everything. They had my purse, my wallet, my keys…they had my life story at their fingertips for about an hour while I went through testing.”
“I’ll take care of you,” he consoled, reaching across the table and patting her hand. “It’s okay. I’m tweaking it right now. It’s going to show you are here permanently. I’m dropping a virtual pin here and wiping the tracer. I’ll do the same with your watch so the two coincide. Eat your lunch while it’s hot.”
Obediently, she began to eat and watched him work. It was a good thing Dmitri was across the room from them, plowing through his food distractedly. He had several plates around him, and was picking food off of each one randomly. Galina saw Nik flipping through her photos and nearly upset the table reaching for her phone.
“Hey! That’s not part of the security on the phone,” she whispered scathingly, trying to grab the iPhone from him.
“No, it’s not, but I was curious if you had a boyfriend back home,” he admitted.
“Do you think I would have ever kissed you if I had?”
“No, but it doesn’t hurt to see what the past competition looked like.”
“There is no competition,” she snarled softly, aggravated that he was still flipping through the photos on her phone. Some were work, some were personal and some were just downright embarrassing. Galina reached for the phone again.
“I feel exactly the same way,” Nik said with a warm smile, handing it to her. “It’s clean now- no tracer. I think we need to take a few photos together too. There is only one of us together and that’s not nearly enough. Your watch will reset in just a few moments and that will remove the tracer from it too. Before we leave the restaurant, we’ll check your purse for anything else that could have a digital tag.”
Nik picked up his burger and began eating it, then mumbled aloud that Dmitri was watching them and had finished eating. Their time alone together was coming to an end and this meant that she would be soon escorted back to the hotel for her own safety, or the three of them would be hanging out together simply to increase their numbers. Galina was unarmed and certainly wasn’t a fighter. She was a planner, strategist and so was Nik. Dmitri was the only real ‘muscle’ they had on their side – and he was only on their side while he believed them to be helping the Russian Intelligence Agency. He was protecting a valuable asset of theirs…Nik Petrov.
Galina had no one here on her side…except Nik.
11
Galina ended up inviting Nik and Dmitri into her hotel room simply because she was bored and lonely. The idea of sitting alone all afternoon in the silence would mean that she would do nothing but think. She could not focus on Nik’s plan to flee his country because it sounded so insane to her. The idea of being able to get away seemed so ludicrous but then again, so did hacking into a computer system – and he did that easily. He seemed to have absolute confidence that it could be done and didn’t seem worried at all. She, however, needed something to get her mind off of things.
The trio ended up watching Russian game shows and the news into late in the afternoon before ordering pizza. Galina couldn’t have planned a better way to spend the
day. She was sitting on the tiny divan in the hotel with Nik’s arm wrapped around her shoulder, listening to him laugh or call out answers to the gameshow questions. Dmitri finally laughed at American Ninja Warrior as someone took a painful looking tumble into the water- startling both Nik and Galina as they stared at him in shock before looking at each other and laughing. Apparently the large, gruff man liked to see the physical contests of skills and it amused him to no end to see someone fail.
Checking his watch, Nik abruptly stood. Galina felt her stomach lurch in reaction. He’d mentioned he was meeting with someone regarding a vehicle and it must be time. She remembered his words, Once I buy a car- our timer starts. We’ll have to go or the car will be recognized.
“Is something wrong?” she asked innocently, playing it off.
“I forgot I had an appointment. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Nik said quickly and urged Dmitri towards the door. “C’mon big man,” he prompted.
“T.V.” Dmitri said firmly with a deep frown. Greaaaaat, she drawled out mentally with a frown, seeing the frustration on Nik’s face. The man wanted to finish the television show that amused him so much.
“I guess you can go by yourself or I could go with you,” she offered and saw Nik’s frown at the idea of the two of them being on the streets alone. “Surely you’ll be safe the one-time Dmitri wants to shirk his duty,” she said innocently, knowing that the proud man would be upset at her words. Sure enough, Dmitri flew to his feet and growled at her.
“I know my duty, American girl.”
“Galina be nice- things are different here,” Nik said firmly, frowning as Dmitri looked at him, and the moment Dmitri glared at her – Nik gave her two thumbs up behind his back, grinning from ear to ear proudly. Galina almost laughed out loud.
“I’m sorry, Dmitri. You’ve been a wonderful host and it was rude of me,” she said dutifully, smiling at the giant man who’d been a terrific host the past day or two. She’d only said it because she knew it would get under his skin and Nik was under pressure to get to his meeting about the car. Nik quickly ushered the large man out of the hotel room and smiled at Galina over his shoulder.
Spying on the Billionaire Page 9
