Series: The Russian Takedown

The new house was fin­ished — had been for sev­er­al weeks and I was ecsta­t­ic over the results. The old place had been com­fort­able and I thought at the time that it was per­fect for me.  But it was a house that I had pur­chased with the farm, had belonged to oth­er fam­i­lies before me, and I had sim­ply adapt­ed to it.  Now I was liv­ing in a house that had been designed from the ground up to my own spe­cial tastes and one that acknowl­edged its surroundings.

I had a dif­fi­cult time get­ting a call through to Pearl; she always seemed to be out some­where and I could find no one who either knew her pri­vate num­ber or was will­ing to give it to me.  Certainly, her office had no inten­tion of giv­ing it out.

Finally, I went to her office, and though she was­n’t there, I asked them to get in con­tact with her to find out when she would be back in, which pro­vid­ed me a win­dow of when I could either call again or stop in to see her.

I thought Friday would nev­er come.  I don’t remem­ber feel­ing that gid­dy in a long damn time.  What the hell was wrong with me.  It was just a date between two adults, not like the first prom for a pre-pubes­cent teen.

I bus­ied myself get­ting togeth­er the things I need­ed for the meal.  I had decid­ed on Chicken Basque, a light chick­en dish pre­pared with ver­mouth, a mixed green tossed sal­ad with cher­ry toma­toes, dou­ble-baked pota­toes with sour cream, and for dessert, a choco­late brown­ie with rocky road ice cream and white choco­late chips sprin­kled on top.  I sure hoped she was­n’t aller­gic to choco­late!  With that dessert and an aller­gy, I could wind up killing the sheriff.

The chick­en and baked pota­toes were hot, the sal­ad prop­er­ly chilled, as was the Zinfandel, and the evening was going well; an enjoy­able meal accom­pa­nied by small talk.

With the main course fin­ished — I was sur­prised that she had helped her­self to two serv­ings of chick­en — I cleared the table and brought out the brown­ies just as the cof­fee quit perk­ing. As we fin­ished the meal with the sweet end­ing and sipped our cof­fees, I heard a cell phone buzzing on the table in the liv­ing room. The tone was famil­iar to Pearl, and she rose to answer it as she mut­tered, “Excuse me.” It looked like our evening was about to come to an end.

“Yes?” she asked a bit petu­lant­ly, per­haps as annoyed as I was at the intrusion.

“Oh? Okay. Keep things locked up until I get there. It’ll be about twen­ty minutes.”

With that last com­ment, I real­ized that our date was concluding.

Armin’s men­tion of Krislov sent my thoughts wan­der­ing back to nine years ago when I first — and for the only time — encoun­tered a man with a hor­rid rep­u­ta­tion and one whose death would not have been mourned by many, includ­ing me.

Arkady Krislov had been born in Leningrad and even though his birth fol­lowed by many years the end of “the Great Patriotic War,” his sur­viv­ing grand­par­ents and par­ents nev­er failed to impress upon him the hor­rors that some of them had suf­fered dur­ing the long siege by the Germans that wit­nessed the deaths of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple trapped in the city.

There was no mis­tak­ing Janic.  I had been giv­en numer­ous pic­tures of the man, and his appear­ance was suf­fi­cient­ly unique that it would be near­ly impos­si­ble to mis­take him.  He was an unusu­al­ly tall man, six and a half feet, and was reput­ed to weigh well over three hun­dred pounds.  His hair was uni­form­ly gray and was cut with mut­ton chops extend­ing down each side of his face, a face severe­ly pock-marked with rem­nants from a child­hood dis­ease.  At his height, he stood well above all those in his entourage, a fact that would make my job that much eas­i­er as I zeroed in on his emerg­ing head from one of the vehicles.

It was actu­al­ly four days and late in the after­noon before Armin showed up.  He drove up the dri­ve­way in a dark green Range Rover, its wipers wav­ing fran­ti­cal­ly against a rag­ing rain­storm.  I stood shel­tered on the porch as he approached, smil­ing inward­ly, know­ing that he was going to get drenched in the short jaunt from his vehi­cle to the house.  Imagine how dis­ap­point­ed I was when he emerged, imme­di­ate­ly expand­ing a huge, black, typ­i­cal­ly British umbrel­la and walked leisure­ly up to greet me as if he were sim­ply shel­ter­ing him­self from the sun.

Between sips of Scotch for Armin and cof­fee for me, and with the con­tain­ers of both being fre­quent­ly replen­ished, the full expla­na­tion of Krislov’s plan for America was laid out.

As Armin explained it, Krislov had teamed with anoth­er Soviet dis­si­dent who was skilled at com­put­er hack­ing and had pre­vi­ous­ly been work­ing with­in the Soviet gov­ern­ment, worm­ing his way into var­i­ous com­put­er sys­tems through­out the world, most specif­i­cal­ly in the U.S.  He had even had some suc­cess at infil­trat­ing cer­tain parts of the com­put­er sys­tem of the NSA, though he found it much eas­i­er to breach secu­ri­ty of large major corporations.

Armin and I agreed that he would stay in touch with me as I trav­eled to Toronto and pro­vide me with the lat­est info avail­able regard­ing the where­abouts of Krislov and Osmenov once I arrived in the city.

I decid­ed that, since this was going to be my last caper, I might as well do it in style.  I researched hotels in Toronto and select­ed a five-star place called the Hazelton.  It was­n’t cheap, even using Expedia or one of the oth­er vaca­tion sup­port web­sites, but I was­n’t about to let Armin off the hook at this point.

The Hazelton is locat­ed at the cor­ner of Hazelton and Yorkville avenues, and its ameni­ties includ­ed a restau­rant, bar, in-house movie the­atre, work­out cen­ter, spa, indoor swim­ming pool, and numer­ous ser­vices to ease the stay of the upper ech­e­lon busi­ness­man … like me.

Toronto is a beau­ti­ful city, obvi­ous­ly mod­ern in every sense of the word, a bustling metrop­o­lis with all the accou­ter­ments that one would expect to find in a pro­gres­sive city.  No doubt, like all cities, Toronto also has its seedy areas where the under­cur­rents of dai­ly life reside, but I hoped not to see any of that if only my quar­ry would lim­it them­selves to the nicer areas.

It took a while to nav­i­gate to the Hazelton since I spent a good deal of my time get­ting there just gawk­ing at the sur­round­ings, wish­ing I might have suf­fi­cient time to take in more of the sights while here.

As I pulled up to the front door of the hotel, I was prompt­ly greet­ed by a friend­ly, mid­dle-aged gen­tle­man who was at the dri­ver’s side door before I could exit, hold­ing the door and wel­com­ing me to the Hazelton.  He informed me that I could go ahead and reg­is­ter and that he would take care of park­ing the car and bring­ing my lug­gage to my room.

As I returned to my room, deter­mined to set­tle in for a good night’s sleep, I found the phone infor­ma­tion sig­nal beep­ing, indi­cat­ing that there was a mes­sage for me and that I should con­tact the hotel switch­board to col­lect it.

I was informed by the switch­board oper­a­tor that a Mr. Andy Panda had left a num­ber and asked to be called at my ear­li­est con­ve­nience.  I almost laughed out loud when I heard the name, real­iz­ing that it was from Armin, using the ini­tials of his first and last names.  Where he came up with Andy Panda was a mas­ter­stroke.  Not one per­son in a hun­dred would know that the name was from a car­toon char­ac­ter that was pop­u­lar back in the 40s and 50s.

As I watched the boat I pon­dered how I might be able to use their habi­tat to my advan­tage.  It was rea­son­ably seclud­ed here in the har­bor, and there was very lit­tle activ­i­ty among the oth­er boats.  I decid­ed to try to rent a boat myself.  If I could find one avail­able in the right loca­tion, it would allow me to keep watch on our two friends more eas­i­ly than sit­ting in a car in the mid­dle of a park­ing lot, espe­cial­ly when the weath­er cleared and there would be more peo­ple about.

I start­ed the car and drove over to the club­house, hop­ing to find some­one there who could pro­vide a lead for rent­ing a boat, if one were avail­able.  I parked direct­ly in front of the club­house and rushed in, shield­ing myself as well as pos­si­ble from the rain.  Shaking off in the spa­cious lob­by, I spot­ted a sin­gle indi­vid­ual cross­ing the space and hailed him to inquire about rent­ing a boat.  He informed me where the office was locat­ed and went on about his busi­ness as I walked down the hall to the des­ig­nat­ed space.

“Mr. Panda, (I was using the name he had left with the switch­board oper­a­tor, try­ing not to laugh out loud while doing so) I think I’ve worked out some­thing to deal with our friends.  As you indi­cat­ed, we don’t know how quick­ly they can get their project under­way, so I’m mov­ing as fast as cau­tion will allow.  I’m going to need a few things.”

I gave Armin the list of my needs.  He said he would have them deliv­ered to my hotel in a few hours.  Now that’s what I call ser­vice!  Trying to get these spe­cif­ic items through the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment or the gov­ern­ment would require both a moun­tain of paper­work and a lengthy amount of time.  I told him I would wait at the hotel for the deliv­ery since it was so immi­nent.  I hoped that the mate­ri­als would arrive before I had to head back to the yacht club for the three o’clock appoint­ment with Mr. Willows.

The rest of the day passed unevent­ful­ly.  Krislov and Osmenov returned to their boat by noon, imme­di­ate­ly went inside and, I sup­pose, got to work on their plan.  I con­tin­ued to watch them off and on, and even though I could plain­ly see them mov­ing about, it was impos­si­ble for me to tell exact­ly what they were doing.

Evening drew near.  I snacked on some of the things I had bought ear­li­er and main­tained my watch. Darkness arrived, and the lights on their boat came on as they con­tin­ued their activities.

Finally, about sev­en o’clock I saw the lights go out and watched the two of them once again leave, head to their car and dri­ve away.

Time to put my plan to work.

The explo­sion was horrific.

Immediately fol­low­ing the noise of the det­o­na­tion, my boat began sway­ing against its moor­ings, bump­ing the boats on either side and ris­ing up and falling again with the tide that was cre­at­ed.  Holding onto what­ev­er I could grasp, I peered out the port­hole and saw that the boat at slip 107 had van­ished, a ris­ing col­umn of smoke in its place with uniden­ti­fi­able debris rain­ing down.

Unfortunately, sev­er­al crafts on either side were either total­ly wrecked or dam­aged.  I regret­ted that my solu­tion had result­ed in inno­cent vic­tims, those who would have to deal with insur­ance com­pa­nies or pay for their own repairs or replacement.