a lot
younger. Comes in handy at times. People don’t suspect a little
girl and will say just about anything around me.”
“I’m glad
you got here,” he told her. “I’m not so sure about
the agency’s plans for getting us out of here. Oh, this is
Monique, she’s coming with me.”
“How does she
fit into this mess?” the station chief asked him.
“She’s my
fiancée,” he told her and Monique gave him a big hug.
“Great,”
she commented. “Two to go. Now why don’t you tell me just
what happened to send the SVR scurrying all over St. Petersburg.”
Rick went over what
had happened, starting with him being contacted by the agency in
Washington DC and his planting the bomb in the office building near
where Monique had taught English. He went to great lengths to let the
station chief know about her innocence in the whole matter and how
she had nothing to do with the operation until he took it on himself
to break into her apartment and ask for help. He concluded by talking
about the last few hours and how he’d been forced to recover
the super drive and commandeer a computer at a warehouse.
“So let me get
this straight,” the chief said to him. “You set off a
bomb in an office which is supposed to have hacked into an American
database and use this lady, who you now call your fiancée
although you’ve only known her less than two days, to conceal
you and then you find out the super drive has been lifted from the
dead drop but you get it back and pull a gun in a warehouse to use
their computer before meeting me here? Did I cover everything?”
“That about
sums it up,” Rick told her. “I don’t think I left
much out.”
“Well this is
just some kind of bullshit,” the chief swore. It was a little
strange to see such harsh words coming out of the mouth of a woman
dressed like a fashion model who didn’t look eighteen.
“So is there a
better way to get out of here than the Trans-Siberian Express?”
Rick asked her. “The SVR is going to be watching everything.”
“First of all,”
she told him, “do you have any idea what the office was doing
when you set-off the bomb?”
“I was told
they were hacking a pentagon database and I copied all the files I
was supposed to on the super drive,” Rick explained.
“At least we
have that,” the chief responded. “Because all hell is
breaking loose in Washington over this mess. I don’t have to
tell you what it’s going to do with any relationship we had
with Moscow.”
“Why?”
Rich asked. “It was their people hacking the database, wasn’t
it?”
“I wish,”
she said. “It would at least give us some closure. You might be
interested to know you just blew up a CIA operation.”
Rick stared at her
speechless. “But I thought the whole thing was approved by
Washington,” he finally spoke up. “Isn’t that why
they hired me? To take out the post these clowns were using.”
“Look, it’s
been screwed up from the beginning,” she explained. “Someone
approved a hack intrusion test to see if the big database could be
broken into from Russia. We know it can because they repeatedly did
it over and over. I hope the clowns in charge can use the information
to better protect the firewalls. The men who were running the
operation are all on their way back now. They managed to get them on
a plane an hour after the explosion. But it didn’t take the
local police long to figure out something wasn’t right about
the whole set-up in the office building. They called SVR who knew
what was going on. And let me tell you, they are not happy to find
out the agency was pulling this stunt under their noses. It’s
why they want you, to find out how the operation was pulled-off. You
might not know a thing about that end, but they do know two Americans
are on the loose in St. Petersburg with some information. So they
will find you both unless I can figure out what to do.”
“But why did
the agency hire me to plant the bomb?”
“It’s
what