The Russian Takedown: Chapter 11

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.

Disconnecting from the switch­board oper­a­tor, I punched in the num­ber she had giv­en me and was greet­ed by Armin at the oth­er end.

“Cheerio, Michael, ol’ boy.  Enjoying your­self there in Toronto?” he inquired.

“Immensely, Armin.  You’ll find out just how much when you get the bill.”

He chuck­led, “I’m sure I will.  Anyway, I’ve got some infor­ma­tion to pass along regard­ing the where­abouts of our friends.”
“Okay.  Shoot.”

“It seems they’ve leased a yacht at a place called the Etobicoke Yacht Club there in Toronto.  Must have thought that this time of year, there would­n’t be much yacht­ing going on and they could be more seclud­ed there and less like­ly to be observed.  Obviously, they don’t need much high-tech equip­ment so being on a boat works as well as would any­place else.  The num­ber of the boat they’re on is 34–7683, and it’s berthed in slip num­ber 107.  We’ve got peo­ple watch­ing them and will keep you informed if there are any changes that might affect your work, but for now that’s about all I’ve got.  Guess I’ll just leave it to you to set up your own sur­veil­lance from this point, but if you need any­thing, you can reach me at this same num­ber, at least until we hear that busi­ness is concluded.”

“Okay.  Thanks for the info.  I’ll take it from here.  You prob­a­bly won’t hear from me until it’s over, but if I need some­thing, I’ll call.  Any advice on the Canadian constabulary?”

“Not real­ly.  They’re total­ly out of the loop, as you’d say.  They’re good, com­pe­tent peo­ple and they’ll be on you like foam on a pint if you mess up, but if you oper­ate in your usu­al care­ful man­ner, you should be alright. 

“One more thing.  We don’t know when our friends are going to attempt the hack.  It will prob­a­bly take them some time to work their way into the var­i­ous sites and to set up the hack to be simul­ta­ne­ous, but you should plan on get­ting your oper­a­tion into swing as soon as possible.”

“Okay, I’ll be in touch.”

“Right.” 

And he was off the line.

I real­ly did­n’t expect any “good ol’ boy” small talk con­sid­er­ing how our ear­li­er meet­ing had end­ed.  He under­stood that this was total­ly busi­ness and would be the last assign­ment.  I jot­ted down the num­bers he had giv­en me before I should for­get them and decid­ed to hit the sack and start look­ing up info on the yacht club tomorrow.

The next day dawned cloudy and misty, threat­en­ing rain at any time.  By the time I roused myself from bed, the morn­ing fog had dis­si­pat­ed, but there was a dull­ness still hang­ing over the city.  I decid­ed to order break­fast in the room, plac­ing my order before jump­ing into the show­er and fin­ish­ing with a quick shave.  I had­n’t much more than got­ten dressed when a knock on the door sig­naled that break­fast had arrived. 

The young — twen­ty-ish — fel­low who deliv­ered the meal placed every­thing on the table in the sit­ting area of the room, passed me the receipt slip, and quick­ly depart­ed after I had signed and insert­ed a gen­er­ous tip.  Breakfast con­sist­ed of two eggs, over medi­um, Canadian bacon — appro­pri­ate­ly — toast and mar­malade (it’s mar­malade here, not jel­ly), orange juice, and a full carafe of cof­fee which, before I left for the day, would be com­plete­ly drained. 

The hotel thought­ful­ly pro­vides a copy of the Toronto Star, and I read through it while fin­ish­ing the last of the cof­fee.  I then called down to the desk and asked them to have my car brought around and if they could pro­vide a map of the city.  The car was already out­side the entry doors when I exit­ed the ele­va­tor and walked to the concierge desk.  I was­n’t about to ask where the Etobicoke Yacht Club was in case my work there wound up as a head­line in the paper and some­one made a con­nec­tion to an American ask­ing about the place. The park­ing valet was wait­ing by the car and thanked me for the tip slipped into his hand as I got behind the wheel.

Before leav­ing I opened the map and scanned it, look­ing for the yacht club.  Knowing it had to be locat­ed some­where on the lake shore, I scanned that area until I came to a like­ly-look­ing place south­west of down­town Toronto and, sure enough, found a small print nota­tion of the club.

At this point, I had no con­crete plan about how this assign­ment was going to go.  I was just going to have to play it by ear until I got to the yacht club and recon­noi­tered the area.

It took quite a while to get there.  Toronto is a big city and some of the streets I took think­ing they would get me to the club quick­ly turned out to be out of the way. I had to do some dou­bling back but final­ly arrived after about an hour.

It was now rain­ing.  Not hard, but enough to keep peo­ple off the streets unless they had some spe­cif­ic busi­ness to attend to.  I fol­lowed a road back to the yacht club park­ing areas, dri­ving around a bit, look­ing for the slip num­bers, and final­ly find­ing 107.  There weren’t many vehi­cles in the large lots and not much activ­i­ty this time of year, com­pli­cat­ed by the weather. 

I parked a safe dis­tance away, far enough not to draw any notice from the boat, but close enough to use my binoc­u­lars to sur­vey any activ­i­ty there.  Many of the boats in the basin were cov­ered to pro­tect them from the ele­ments but, because this par­tic­u­lar boat was being rent­ed, no such cov­er was in place, and I could see some move­ment inside the light­ed cab­in space.  Not enough to real­ly see what was going on but suf­fi­cient to see that some­one was aboard.

Since the rain was obvi­ous­ly keep­ing peo­ple indoors, I decid­ed it was safe enough to keep the boat under watch, at least for a while, with­out fear of being asked what I might be doing.