Recess Was Over
Chapter 12
Pet made good on her promise to move me to better accommodations. I was now ensconced in a nice pensione located close to Red Square in the heart of Moscow. I walked by the Kremlin, Lenin’s Tomb and the onion domed St. Basil’s Cathedral every morning en route to the Lubyanka. The weather hadn’t turned brutally cold yet and I prayed it wouldn’t until I departed for parts unknown. The unknown part bothered me.
I looked forward to our meetings and we got along well, although she hadn’t asked me out on a second date. I wasn’t playing hard to get so I didn’t understand her reluctance. Again, maybe she was like that tardy Godot character I’d already mentioned and I’d have to be extremely patient. No matter, she was worth the wait.
Pet said that she’d pushed out an alert to all of her country’s residencies throughout the world regarding one Vladimir Booskowsky with a warning that he should be considered armed and dangerous.
I thought it was an understatement for a ruthless sociopath directing Islamic terrorists in destroying the oil distribution system on behalf of a Middle East predator. Perhaps it was the nuances and differences in our respective languages: her English and mine.
Her bosses had contacted Interpol which had issued a Red Notice for the detention of Vladimir, along with the caveat about his penchant for pathological violence.
Jersey Briggs had cabled every Regional Security Office throughout the world, summarizing who we were searching for and generally why. He followed-up by sending handbills with Vlad’s photo and physical statistics as well. Those offices would handoff the flyers to their host government contacts for further distribution throughout the country.
It was a good start to our search and maybe we’d get lucky with a bona fide sighting or two.
Pet had posted two large maps on her office walls depicting the Middle East and the east coast of Africa. On her desk was a map of western Russia with lines drawn in magic marker. I was about to receive a recap and refresher on the finer points of the terrorist attacks over the past months. It was a worthwhile exercise and I longed to be the teacher’s pet. Though the maps were in Russian, I could still sorta identify all the countries shown. My Russian might be rusty, but my Braille was as sharp as ever.
She pointed to her desk and I sat down beside her. She smelled sweet and sexy and I had trouble concentrating on the map in front of us. Okay, down boy, I said to myself with a horndog look on my face. I honestly meant to think hangdog given the shame over my lustful thoughts.
“It was a worm,” she pronounced “that shut down a series of pumping stations along these lines, running her index finger down the marker lines. It’s what the experts call a backdoor attack, a malicious piece of computer code introduced to our system and remotely manipulated by the worm’s author as a zombie or bot net as such things are called by my knowledgeable colleagues.”
“Our firewalls, security software and other protective measures couldn’t detect and defeat the intrusion; hence the shutting down of the system for a period of time. Oil flow to the Caucasus was halted as a result. The experts still don’t know the source of the attack and likely will never identify the perpetrators. Because sensitive data could have been stolen, our computer gurus had to completely reconfigure the system from the top down, adding more levels of security than before.”
I wasn’t particularly moved by the malicious event remembering the Russian meddling in our election process. No crocodile tears were shed over this one.
“We strongly suspect that Vladimir and the Bhutaris had a hand in the attack. We’d love to prove it, but it makes no difference. Booskowsky must be eliminated and Bhutar taught a serious lesson in political reality. If we’re fortunate, perhaps we can get the United Nations to impose sanctions against the country too. Regardless, finding and eliminating him is our objective and nothing else. Those are my orders and yours as well I believe.”
I nodded my head and mentally agreed. Vlad the Impaler must go quietly or not so quietly into that good night. I congratulated myself for borrowing the bit of purple prose and iffy hyperbole. It was the best I could come up with on short notice.
Besides meeting with Pet, my daily work routine included a stop at the U.S. embassy to check for cable traffic slugged for my attention. I’d occasionally speak to Jersey Briggs via secure phone to keep up with the progress on his end. There wasn’t much to report on my side as we were still in a gathering mode. The hunting would come later or so we hoped. I also visited the chancery’s commissary and stocked up on duty-free Marlboros and bottles of white Zinfandel. It seemed boxed wine wasn’t in vogue or stock yet. Moreover, to my dismay, Two Buck Chuck wasn’t available. I didn’t complain since my vices and addictions were pretty well satisfied for the moment nonetheless. All but one, I mused.
“Dick, are you still with me?” Pet asked, breaking my train of thought about smoking and drinking while trying to block Jersey from my mindless thinking.
“Yeah, sure, Pet. Sorry, I was just daydreaming.”
“Well, it’s time to come back to earth and reality. I just received a report of another attack on an oil pipeline in Nigeria. The Nigerians seem helpless and can’t stop Boko Haram from carrying out these things. The initial reporting suggests a major breach in the line and a massive oil spill the authorities are trying to clean up. Here we go again!”
“Yeah, Nigerian troops and military forces from the adjoining countries have been battling the terrorists in the northeast of the country while Boko Haram operatives attack the country’s pipeline complex in the southwest; an end run that the Nigerians can’t seem to cope with. It’s sort of a whack-a-mole situation for them and they’re always slow to respond and slower to anticipate such acts in the first place,” I mentioned in return.
“Right, with the current, low price of oil and the disruption of crude, the revenues from oil have plummeted over the past year, badly hurting the Nigerian economy. More of Bhutar’s behind the scenes involvement, I suspect, which pressures us to bring things to closure more quickly,” Pet spoke more or less to herself.
The closure part would be Vlad’s death at our hands, I mused. I had no qualms about killing him if it came to that, but I’d have nightmares and bad memories afterwards for a long time. Maybe I did have a conscience, a soul or whatever after all. I didn’t know if Pet had ever killed someone in the line of duty and decided not to ask: too much information.
“Okay, let’s move on,” Pet urged. “I’ve received a few reports of Vlad sightings from around the globe that I’ve summarized and translated into English. I’m not sure they’re true or not because each report has caveats like: could be, possibly, resembles or kinda like. But let’s go through them anyway. We need to do our due diligence diligently to satisfy our superiors. That means we must scrupulously dot all the Is and cross all of the Ts,” she jokingly tried to wordplay.
I thought her attempt at a little humor was pretty good and her alliteration even better. It was obvious that I’d have to watch all my P’s and Q’s around the lady to stay in her grammatical good graces.
The first came from a source in Beijing and we both read the sketchy report. Confidential Source A mentioned he’d overheard a conversation by a male of Vlad’s approximate age and general physical description speaking Russian with a Slavic accent. It was in a hotel bar frequented by westerners. The information was incredibly thin and certainly nothing conclusive or even promising. Pet told me she’d messaged back to the SVR officer to have his source make further contact with the subject to obtain more detail about him. A photo would be appreciated as well. It was nothing to run with, but something that needed to be followed up.
I could see that this would be a tedious exercise resulting in many dead ends. But I liked the comment about westerners congregating at a bar in China. I could envision chaps, boots and cowboy hats mingling with the Chinese patrons. But I kept the silly, inscrutable image to myself for safekeeping to avoid embarrassing myself. I didn’t want to expose a chink in my emotional armor in front of Pet.
The next several sightings were much the same as the first; iffy, vague reports and little more. Where’s the beef? I wondered; mincing my own words as I mentally spoke them.
Pet then produced a piece of intelligence plucked from the ether. This turned out to be more interesting, at least to me. It was an intercept of messaging between a party in Somalia and another in the Seychelles. I asked Pet about its origin.
She hemmed and hawed for a bit before telling me it involved sensitive sources and methods and couldn’t disclose its source. She did mention the obvious: electronic monitoring in all its forms was like a vacuum cleaner that sucked up every bit of data possible. Word recognition was used to capture those items of interest, a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff. The wheat was the desired product which had to be analyzed for intelligence value. Given the enormous amount of information, the wheat in this instance had to be sifted and sorted to determine its viability and utility. It would often take many days to get around to analyzing the product so there was always a lag time to deal with. That wasn’t a good thing for fast-breaking situations.
Pet then bent down and whispered in my ear: “It came from intercepted emails. We broke into the IPO address.” She put a finger to her lips warning me not to say anything. She was concerned that our meetings were being monitored. I didn’t particularly care, but she appeared to be a bit paranoid knowing how the SVR worked, even with its own officers it seemed. I played along and stayed silent.
I took an imaginary key out of the breast pocket of my mauve leisure suit and put it to a corner of my lips and turned it. I then threw it over my shoulder. She started laughing and had trouble stopping. I was always pleased when I could bring joy to a woman and obviously hadn’t lost my touch. Hot damn, my magical Mojo was still working!
However, I laughed to myself at the whole notion, recalling the old strip in Mad Magazine: Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy. Who could you trust these days? I wondered. No one I guess, answering the rhetorical question myself.
The verbatim translation disclosed a rather innocuous exchange of information. But a couple of words caught my attention: oil tanker and money. I believed the parties were trying to talk around the real subject of their conversation. I wasn’t sure what that might be, but this needed to be followed up ASAP.
Pet agreed and said she’d task the collectors to focus on future correspondence of this nature. It was interesting, but nothing close to conclusive, perhaps just another dead end. Speaking of dead, I was dead tired and went home to hit the hay, staying with my earlier musings about make-believe cowboys hanging out in Chinese bars.