To Russia With Love (Countermeasure Series) (42 page)

He dropped his head back against the chair, closed his eyes, and let the wave of loss he had been holding back wash over him. He raked his fingers through his hair and stared at the ceiling, lost in thought, lost in a movie of memories from the last weeks with her as they lit up the screen in his mind. It was only then that he allowed the tears he had suppressed so skillfully to roll freely from the corners of his eyes.

Snake Pit

T
HE SLIDE OF METAL AND turn of a doorknob jerked Trevor from his restless sleep, and he scrambled from the bed to face whomever was coming through the door. Dread flooded him when Deminov stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. Leaning lazily back against it, Deminov crossed his arms and his legs at the ankles. Trevor was wary of his calm demeanor and mimicked him by leaning against the opposite wall. His gut knotted.
What the fuck does he want?

His big mouth got the better of him. “Sorry. I don’t swing that way, Deminov.”

Deminov’s eyes narrowed and a nasty gleam shone from them. “Always such a smart ass. You should watch that little habit.” The angry edge to his voice accentuated his accent.

Trevor’s blood ran cold. Mikhailov wasn’t a patient man. His little warning had sounded loud and clear: “Deliver or else.”
Was this his “or else”?

“Why is it taking so long, Ivanov? Mikhailov is not happy.”

Trevor shrugged. “For one, people like you waking me up in the middle of the night. I need my geek sleep, helps keep my brain nimble.”

In two strides, Deminov grabbed him by the throat, his face inches from his. Trevor gasped for breath and his ears rang from the impact against the wall. He held Deminov’s glare and clutched the henchman’s wrist, wiggling the fingers of his other hand under the henchmen’s grip. “Dude, chill out,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

Deminov leaned in even closer, his thumb pressed against Trevor’s jaw, forcing his head to the side, and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “Listen to me carefully. I will only say this once. You have three days to finish the work. Three. Days. Be sure you use your time wisely.”

Trevor felt the warmth of Deminov’s breath against his ear.
This
was the “or else.”

Deminov tightened his grip on Trevor’s neck and stars appeared before his eyes.
Fuck that!
Trevor grunted and spat out,
“
Keep…this…up
—
” Trevor swung his knee up into Deminov’s gut and pulled back on three of his fingers wrapped around his neck. Deminov cursed and fell to his knees like a log. Trevor leapt away from him and rested his hands on his legs, sucking in deep gulping breaths. “—and you will have to finish it yourself,” he gasped out as the sound of loud banging on the door filled the small room.

As Deminov pushed up from the floor, Trevor could have sworn he saw his death sentence written in his eyes. “What is it?” Deminov barked out in Russian at whoever interrupted their little parley, keeping his hateful gaze on Trevor the entire time.

“We are needed. Now,” a woman’s muffled voice responded from the other side of the door.

Deminov held his gaze a moment longer; Trevor could see the evil in the depths of his eyes.
Oh, yeah. He was definitely seeing red.
Once Deminov turned on his heel and slammed the door shut again, Trevor’s body sagged in relief. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed at his neck. Deminov was jonesing for him, and it was just a matter of time before he found a way to make his warped fantasy a reality.

“Shite!” Trevor exclaimed out loud as he eyed the shoe sitting on the nightstand. Cassandra had either already heard the live broadcast of the little altercation or would hear it later. She would not like the approaching deadline. They were in such a mess. If only he could look her in her eyes—eyes that always reminded him of warm whiskey—and tell her it would be okay. “It will be okay, Cassie. I have it under control.”

Trying to lighten the mood, he joked, “So what character do you think Deminov is? Nate is already the Hulk, all green and shit. I got it! Abomination! You know, the KGB agent who became stronger than the Hulk after an overexposure to gamma ray radiation.” Trevor tapped his lip with the tip of his finger. “Hmm…in his first story he kills the Hulk. I might have a use for him yet. Must investigate.” In his mind, he could hear Cassandra’s laughter. She would totally get where he was coming from. Flopping back on the small bed, Trevor tried to dislodge the rock that sat like a heavy weight in his gut.

The strain of being away from Cassandra was slowly eroding his confidence. Some nights he wondered in silence if that was it for them. If he would make it out alive. But then his usual stubborn self would take over and steel his determination to return to the comfort of her arms. After all, he had promised her he would. Every night.

The stakes had just risen a notch; he needed to move his ass and get it done. There was one thing in his favor: Dmitriy was becoming more comfortable with him, which could turn out to be extremely useful. The wheels in Trevor’s head turned at an even pace as he began to plan his strategy, whatever the hell it was. He closed his eyes, but knew that sleep had flown right out the door with Deminov.

*****

Trevor changed and waited for Dmitriy, just as he did each morning. Soon he heard the familiar clacking of keys and the door opened.

“Good morning,” Dmitriy greeted.

“Is it?” Trevor’s frustration was clear in the tone of his voice.

“You must be getting tired of being here,” Dmitriy prompted after a few minutes as they walked toward the mainframe room.

“You have
no
idea.”

“How are you doing with the programming?”

“Coming along. Clearly not as fast as Mikhailov expected. Deminov paid me a visit overnight. I have three days to get it done.”

Dmitriy shot him a sympathetic look. “Are you going to be able to finish it? The other developer that failed—”

“I’m getting there.” Trevor’s response was abrupt. He didn’t want voiced possibilities jinxing his drive. “It’s a complex program. The algorithm seems to work on some subsets of data, but doesn’t on others. I’m still looking for the break in the code.”

“I know hardware and networking, but what you just said was Greek to me.”

Trevor chuckled. “The program decrypts some things but not others, so technically it’s still broken.”

“Ah…you’re fucked.”

“Yep.” He would be in even more trouble if he couldn’t find a solution to his file extraction dilemma soon. The clock was ticking. “I’m going to start a new subset today and hopefully make some progress. I just need more time on the computer.”

“I would strongly recommend you do. If not—”

“You don’t have to remind me,” Trevor grumbled as they arrived at the entrance of the subterranean room. “And here we go again, into the cone of silence….”

Dmitriy unwittingly laughed at what he thought was a joke. In reality, it was his way of passing a status update to Cassandra. Another day in the hole. Another day closer to getting back to her.

*****

“Have I said I absolutely hate the cone of silence? Seriously!” Cassandra muttered and then sighed deeply. It would be a few hours before she heard from him again. Slipping some money in her pocket and grabbing her coat off the bed, she headed out. She had been living off coffee and had pretty much chugged it all. She planned to be back in time to hear him again. Just as Trevor went about his forced routine in the mansion, Cassandra had kept some semblance of normalcy in her life—if she didn’t, she would go insane.

Based on the information that Trevor had passed to her, it appeared that his babysitter had taken a shine to him and was not a threat. Nothing had really popped when she did a quick check on his name. But then again, when push came to shove, you never knew.

Her thoughts flowed to the woman she had seen at the mansion. Something about her made her hair stand on end. As luck would have it, Trevor mentioned a woman by the name of Nikol Petrovna who was joined at the hip with Deminov. He had only seen her in passing. Had no interaction with her, even though he said she seemed to be watching him closely. There was something about her he also could not pin down. Cassandra hoped to ID her soon and then have Jessica and George on her case.

*****

Trevor was so entranced in the debugging of the program he hadn’t realized how quickly time had flown. Success was within his grasp. He had identified a flaw in the algorithm that could possibly be the source of the bug. Trevor had three more days to fix it and find a way to remove the files Boris wanted; somehow, that part was proving to be more challenging than finishing development on the high-level encryption software. Go figure. He had also written a Trojan virus he planned to embed in the decrypter at the last minute after he had demonstrated the software’s functionality to Mikhailov.

“I’m heading for lunch.” Trevor almost jumped when he heard Dmitriy speak right beside him. “You have to be hungry by now. Want me to get you a sandwich? Something light? A drink?” Trevor understood Dmitriy’s concern. He knew that leaving the room for meals would reduce the time he had to get the job done.

“Sure, a sandwich and drink would be great.”

“Anything specific?”

“Nope. Whatever Tatiana gives you is fine. I’ll eat anything.”

Trevor kept his eyes glued to the computer screen while his brain did cartwheels around the whole file transfer problem. There had to be a vulnerable point in the network and he was going to find it. As he retraced the steps he took to burrow his way into the network, something stood out in his mind.
Computer equipment.
Dmitriy had been looking at computer equipment online. Buying the replacement network cards.
Damn it. Why didn’t I catch that earlier?
Dmitriy’s computer was connected to the internet, while the one Trevor had been assigned to was not.

Trevor’s pulse beat in a rapid thrum in his veins. He couldn’t find a way in through to the mainframe before, but now that he was inside, he could find a way out. He could create a backdoor from Dmitriy’s computer to his laptop back at the apartment since he could easily gain root access to it.

Calculating that Dmitriy would take at least half an hour to come back from lunch, he rushed to his computer. Taking Dmitriy’s seat, he reached down and worked the micro thumb drive he had smuggled in on his first day on the job from the hem of his pant leg. He inserted the device in the front USB port and then opened the command prompt. Using the root kit files saved on the thumb drive, he quickly opened a connection to his laptop, all the while wishing he could also upload himself back there.

Once done, he checked the type of access privileges Dmitriy’s computer had for the mainframe. Without blinking an eye, Trevor opened the advanced security tool and changed them from read-only to full access. It would grant him permissions to not only read and copy the files he needed, but also install the program he would use to erase the whole damn mainframe before anybody got wind of it.

Trevor began to copy the files he had flagged as must-have. Documents, lists, databases, and other files, together with a text file clearly named for Cassandra, were all bundled into a zipped file. The file size was daunting and he was afraid the connection would crap out before the transfer was completed. If that happened, it would mean starting all over again from scratch. He mentally crossed his fingers and initiated the upload. His anxious eyes followed the percentage on the progress bar.

His gaze jumped to the stairs with each scratch, each sound. Time dragged along painfully; a nervous energy possessed his foot—which tapped the floor in sync with each passing second—and his fingers, which drummed to the same tune beside the mouse.

“Come on! Damn slow connection! Freaking feels like dial-up,” he grumbled to himself.

Sweat beaded on his brow as the progress bar inched higher—and just as it almost kissed the 100 percent mark, it stalled.

“
Fuck me
! Move!” Almost as if scared by his cursing, the bar jumped forward and, just as it reached full transfer, the click of the key turning in the lock bounced down the stairs.

A rush of adrenaline jacked his bloodstream, revving his heart. He dragged the mouse in quick jerks, closing all open windows. As he heard the door bang against the wall at the top of the stairs, he rushed for his chair. Glancing back at the computer he had just abandoned, the butt of the thumb drive still lodged in the port snared his gaze.
Shite!
With a push of his foot, Trevor rolled his chair to Dmitriy’s station, snatched the drive, and rolled back to his own.

Dmitriy stepped off the last step into the room as Trevor palmed and furtively slipped the drive into his shoe. Trevor turned and smiled as Dmitriy approached his station carrying a tray, which he set next to Trevor’s monitor. The tray held a decent looking sandwich and a beverage can.