To Russia With Love (Countermeasure Series) (47 page)

P
AVEL ZAREV WAS STANDING BY the window looking out over St. Petersburg when he heard a knock on the door. Turning to face it, he called out in a curt demand, “Come in.”

Vitaly Karyshev, his right-hand man and longtime friend, walked into the office, a serious expression on his face. “Edik has traced the withdrawal. The money was deposited into another account in the same bank.”

Pavel had fumed over the hack discovered by one of his accountants during a routine money transfer he had requested be made to an associate’s account. “Good. Then tell him to return it to mine—with interest. Did he find out who took it?” Fury leached into Pavel’s voice. “I will show whoever did this they cannot steal from Pavel Zarev and live. It is like prison all over again.” Vitaly nodded in agreement.

Pavel continued with his musings out loud. “Suppose someone in prison told you to fuck off and people around you heard it. You would have no choice but to pull a knife and cut into the bastard, otherwise you would lose respect. In prison, anyone with self-respect would respond to such words with retaliation, deeds. I want who did this dead. Planted in the woods,” Pavel ordered coldly.

Vitaly dipped his head in understanding. “Edik was able to pull a name for the other account.”

Pavel raised an eyebrow, waiting for his henchman to spit out the name.

Vitaly appeared to hesitate. He eyed Pavel warily and then finally blurted, “Mikhailov.”

“Son of a bitch!” Zarev pounded on his desk with closed fists, his eyes darted with anger. “He is dead!”

“There is more. The money—it is no longer there. They moved it somewhere. We have no way to pull it back from the account.”

Vitaly’s words fueled Pavel’s anger. Heat suffused his face. He slammed his fist on the desk again, sending the items dancing across the wooden surface. “If Mikhailov thinks he is getting out of this alive, he is wrong! Nobody messes with me and lives to brag about it!”

This was not a question of pride anymore. It was survival of the fittest. Pavel knew that if he accepted the theft without retaliation, it would be the end for him. Fights between gangs in Russia came down to more than money. It was all about defending their honor, reputation, power, and territory. Accepting such an offense showed weakness, an open invitation for other gangs to try the same: his organization would become the prey.

“Gather the others. Tell them to arm themselves with as much ammunition as they can carry. Load the cars.” Pavel paused, mentally planning their course of action, and added, “Call in whoever you can. Instruct them to meet us at Mikhailov’s mansion. He is about to be paid a courtesy visit.”

Clusterfuck

T
REVOR’S THREE DAYS WERE UP. He had to deliver the damn decrypter by the end of that day or shit would hit the fan. He wasn’t concerned about handing the finished product to Mikhailov. The program would literally implode and self-destruct like the message in a
Mission Impossible
movie once he added the Trojan virus to it. Sometime after he demonstrated the decrypter’s capabilities and before he left the mansion, he would find a way to slip the code in and recompile it. For now, his concerns focused solely on the destruction of the data stored on the mainframe and backup.

Without that crucial step, his effort to inject the virus in the software would be for nothing. Mikhailov would still have the source files and could easily hire someone else to finish the job. If, and only if, he could find someone skilled enough to handle the code. The time he had spent in that hole away from Cassandra would be in vain if he didn’t accomplish that one crucial task. The completion of the job and retrieval of his father’s notes in Prague depended on its full success.

The clacking of keys against the door indicated his new friend had arrived to release him. Dmitriy was later than usual, and Trevor was chafing, eager to get away from the small room. When the door opened, a roughed-up Dmitriy stood just outside. The left side of his face was swollen and bruised, his left eye a mere slit, the damage clearly caused by a well-aimed fist. He avoided Trevor’s gaze as he dabbed a handkerchief against his bloodied nose.

“What the fuck, man?!” Dmitriy, who appeared flustered and embarrassed, like a child who had been spanked in front of friends, ignored his startled comment. Trevor watched him closely as they walked to the mainframe room. He was puzzled, but, not wanting to embarrass Dmitriy further, held his tongue in check. Trevor would probe him later to find out who had used him as a punching bag and why.

Once the door clicked locked behind them and they reached the subterranean room, Trevor headed straight to his usual workstation and continued with his charade, initiating the sequence of commands to open the programming tool and subsequently the decrypter files. Dmitriy moved to his own computer and sat quietly, dabbing at his bloody nose.

Trevor glanced over at Dmitriy. Impatient to find out what exactly had happened to him, Trevor broke the silence. “If it’s a new fashion statement you’re going for, you missed the boat on that one.” He had hoped his smart-ass remark would bait him, drag him out of his shell. When Dmitriy didn’t bite, he shrugged. Unable to ignore the ticking of the clock, Trevor returned his attention to figuring out how to accomplish the last part of his job.

*****

Time was teasing and slowly driving Cassandra mad. The knowledge that Trevor didn’t have much time left was unnerving. Her confidence in his ability to complete the task and get out of the shark tank alive, once rock solid, was now cracked and chipped at the edges. It had been a while since Trevor’s last broadcast. Once he’d disappeared into the hole, she’d double-checked everything. Cassandra caught sight of the corner of the airline tickets peeking out from under her notebook and remembered that she needed to change their flights, since they were leaving later than expected. The penalty fee would be a bitch, but more than worth it to leave Russia and the mafia behind.

Cassandra finished clearing out the last of their belongings and returned to her laptop just as the incoming chat window alert flashed on the screen. Clicking it, she saw a curt message from George.

Stand by.

“Shit. Come on, George! Don’t leave me hanging!” Pushing her chair back, her stomach tied up in knots as she paced the room, waiting for him to come back online. Ten minutes later, the chat window flashed with activity a second time.

Cassie, are you there? Can you talk?

Yes.

A voice call request promptly popped up on the screen.

“What do you have, George?”

“Is Trevor with you? Hey, Trev. You’re both going to want to hear this!” When Cassandra didn’t respond right away, George’s tone became inquisitive. “Cassie? Trev?”

“Trevor isn’t here at the moment.” She paused, trying to find a way to introduce the subject. “We have a small development.”

“What kind of development?”

Cassandra released a deep breath. George wasn’t going to be happy with her answer.
She
wasn’t happy with the answer. “He’s been in the mansion for over two weeks now, George. As you know, physical access was the only option in this case, but we ran into some minor complications.”

“Shit, Cassandra! Minor complications? Ah, hell! Please say he isn’t the developer I’ve heard being discussed on the feeds.”

Cassandra could hear the anxiety creeping into his voice and in her mind’s eye could see him raking his fingers through his hair again and again in frustration. She could almost see his hair standing on end.

“Well…we didn’t think things would get this prickly. But we’ve got it handled.” Cassandra opened a blank document to capture any valuable information for her file. “What do you have? Anything useful to us?”

“That friend of your father’s? It took me a while, but I managed to track down new information on him. I am sending you a few files. Check it out.”

Cassandra saved the incoming files to her desktop and opened them as soon as they transferred. Her breath hitched and her head spun as she absorbed the information they contained.

“Holy hell!” Cassandra sat dismayed by another confirmation that wolves amongst them were wearing sheep’s clothing. “This is big. I need to let Trevor know. Damn it! I wish he had ears!”

“Wait, what? What do you mean ‘had ears’?”

“He doesn’t have a receiver, only a transmitter. And even that only works when he is out of the room he’s been working in. Some sort of strong signal dampening.”

“Damn, Cassie. This is bad…. We need to find a way to pass this info to him.”

Stunned, Cassandra’s eyes grew bigger as she read each new line. A fist squeezed her heart and her breath accelerated in tandem. Trevor was in the lion’s den, oblivious to the fact that he was a pawn being used by both sides in a dangerous game.

*****

Trevor eyed his keeper for the hundredth time. He had observed Dmitriy’s bruise changing hues to a deeper purple as the day went by. He didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon and hadn’t said much since they’d settled to work. All Trevor’s attempts at small talk had only resulted in nods or grunts and the occasional chuckle, but nothing productive had been exchanged, which was very unusual for them. They usually enjoyed full geek-out conversations throughout the day.

Trevor decided on the direct approach. “What happened to you?”

Dmitriy was silent for a long time. Trevor watched as a frown creased his brow, his eyes narrowed, and his expression darkened. Anger seemed to get the better of him. “Sergei.”

“What did you do? Block his porn?” he teased with a cocky smirk. Instead of a chuckle or laughter, Dmitriy shot him a resentful look.

“You really want to know? This,”—Dmitriy pointed at his own face—“is because of you.”

Trevor immediately went on alert. His pulse beat wildly, a loud drum in his ears.
Does Mikhailov know why I’m here? Did Tomlin get wind I was hired and alerted Mikhailov about a foreigner heading to Russia?
The “what-ifs” swirled in his head until Dmitriy’s next words pulled him back from the abyss.

“Indirectly. I left you unattended yesterday. Uncle Vladimir didn’t quite like that.”

Trevor let out a long breath of relief. His anxiety spike was a knee-jerk reaction. It was clear that he would be in much rougher shape than Dmitriy by now if Mikhailov knew of his connections and what he’d been commissioned to do. “And he let Sergei beat you? A member of his family? Just because of that?”

Although the treatment Dmitriy had received was appalling, in reality Dmitriy had been damn lucky he was family. Considering what Trevor knew about Sergei and Mikhailov, had it been anyone else, he or she would’ve received a treatment of the definitive kind.

Dmitriy scoffed and continued to give Trevor details on what had transpired earlier. “Fucker. I’ve been helping his cause for a long time. I have information he would pay a lot to keep under wraps. And this is how he treats me?! His sister’s only son?!” Driven by anger, he didn’t realize how telling the details were. Sergei would probably beat him to a pulp if that little talk ever reached his ears.

By having access to all the information the network carried, Dmitriy had become a valuable commodity, dead or alive. In that part of the world, with his connections, it didn’t take much to sign your own death warrant. Poor guy was between a rock and a hard place and didn’t even realize it.

Dmitriy continued on a roll, ranting about his uncle and Sergei, spilling Mikhailov’s plans to dive heavy into the world of online fraud. He expounded on Mikhailov’s dealings with smaller gangs specializing in phishing and hacking, similar to the group that had hacked into a major online gaming network and stolen thousands of user files not long ago. No wonder Mikhailov was so obsessed with the data stored in the server. That mainframe was the ultimate online fraud tool—a con artist’s golden egg.

By taking such a forward approach toward online fraud, Mikhailov would be ahead of the game in the digital age and, if successful, he would become the top dog in all of Russia. The decrypter would play a huge part in jumpstarting his success, giving him access to decoding credit card information, PINs, and passwords stored in those files.
Holy shit!

Trevor’s face must have reflected his convoluted thoughts because, in that very moment, Dmitriy seemed to realize he’d been talking way too much, for far too long. His mouth snapped shut and he pushed from his desk. Standing, he stared at Trevor. He opened his mouth and snapped it shut again, raking his fingers through his hair as he began to pace the room.

A heavy bang hit the door and the sound of the locks turning reverberated down the stairs, startling them both. Dmitriy rushed up the stairs, leaving Trevor alone in the room. Sliding the chair closer to the foot of the stairs, Trevor overheard Dmitriy and the guard arguing in Russian.

“They are here.”

“What do you mean? Who is here?”