Operation Hail Storm

Nizhny Novgorod, Russia ― Volna Hotel

Whereas Karen Wesley, the Directorate of Analysis for the CIA, attributed her climb in the agency to her ordinary looks, Kara Ramey knew the exact opposite.

Kara was supposed to be noticed.

Shoulders back, chest out, sitting up perfectly straight, she posed on her bar stool while sitting at the bar of the Volna Hotel.

Men who saw Kara were supposed to think, “Wow, what a great looking woman!” They were supposed to be attracted to her. They were supposed to tell her secrets.

Ramey’s primary role in the CIA was to draw attention. Her secondary role was to use that attention to extract data. She was just like all the other CIA special agents, with the exception of her undeniable beauty. Ramey had trained at Camp Peary, also known as the Farm, just like all the other CIA agents. Kara graduated at the top of her class in physical conditioning, vehicle handling, firearms, surveillance, and interviewing. In hand-to-hand combat, Ramey could dispatch her male counterparts and then outshoot and outdrive them, but none of that mattered. All that talent was useful as a CIA agent, but in reality, it was seldom used. Maybe in the movies, but if it ever got down the hand-to-hand stuff, there was a greater chance of some other actor taking out a gun and blowing her head off while she was grappling. The CIA found intrinsic value in Ramey’s inherent good looks, and that’s what had brought her to the bar of the Volna Hotel.

The city of Nizhny Novgorod was the fourth largest city in Russia. Located about four-hundred kilometers east of Moscow, it was the administrative center of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The hotel Volna was a continental four-star affair with modern accoutrements and fixings.

It was summertime in Russia. The temperature outside at cocktail hour was in the seventies. If it had been wintertime, then Ramey would have had to rethink her outfit. Kara was dressed in a tight pink one-piece dress that hugged her generous curves; the way that all men who looked at her would love to hug them. But Kara was not alone at the bar. Her curves were currently being admired by her new date. The man had recently excused himself to take a phone call out of her earshot. That was disappointing.

Her CIA intelligence team had been looking for her new admirer for quite some time; a man known as the Russian Liquidator.

Victor Kornev was a hard man to find. Always on the move. Always changing identities. Always making arms deals. And after more than a year of looking, the CIA analysts had finally found him. Kara had been immediately activated and sent in as a deep cover agent to see what she could dig up.

Beauty was not all it took to burrow into the hearts and minds of bad men who were suspicious by nature. It also took a great deal of acting. Dumb and beautiful were disarming traits that went together like ice cream and chocolate. Beauty was the attraction and dumb implied no agenda. Just a pretty girl out having fun looking for a rich guy that liked to have fun as well. Kara had done her best to ditz it up to the point where the Russian would let his guard down. But so far, no luck. Maybe she had overdone it, but she sensed that was not the case. After all, Victor Kornev had not become the world’s largest arms dealer by blabbing critical business snippets to a spoiled rich international floozy he had just met.

Kara took out a compact from her purse and put it in front of her face and took a snapshot of a queer little smile she flashed in the mirror. The picture had been sent to her controllers who understood the code. If they received the queer little smile; the smirk where one side of Kara’s mouth turned up while the other side remained normal, then Kara was OK. If she didn’t check in each hour, or she sent them a full smile, no smile, or any photo other than that strange smile, then she was in trouble and they needed to call in the cavalry.

Kara took a moment to touch up her makeup, which didn’t require much. Adjusting beauty was like trying to determine how shiny the Ferrari had to be. It was subjective. Some men liked makeup, even on a fashion model, and others found it more attractive for the beautiful to just be themselves. Kara still didn’t have a read on what the Russian liked, so she didn’t overdo it. Just some clear gloss on her thick lips and that was it. Her red hair was natural and had a slight curl. It puffed out around her shoulders and framed her elegant face. Her cheekbones were prominent and Kara wasn’t all that happy about it. Her mother had the same cheekbones and beautiful ivory thin skin. It was a great look when you were young, but it didn’t last. Kara had noticed a startling change in her mother’s face when she had reached her forties. As the natural elasticity in her Mom’s skin decreased, those prominent cheekbones looked more like a skeleton holding up pasty chicken skin. Not attractive in the least. Thin loose skin on sharp bones; it just didn’t work. But she never told her Mom that. What was the point? Her Mom was a beautiful person on the inside, so who cared about the outside. Kara was in her late twenties so she had some mileage left before they stuck her behind a desk and her life got boring. But she would be long gone from the agency before that ever happened.

The Volna Hotel bar was a tight little place. Situated just off the lobby, it was dark, wooden and had only a handful of tables that had been pressed into all the accessible crevasses of the room. Kara was sitting at the bar, more or less on display, perched on a bar stool, using her best posture. And the good posture thing wasn’t feeling all that good. She wanted to rest her elbows on the bar and slouch. But what refined woman would do such a thing? She wanted to get the six-inch pink stiletto pumps off her feet and grab a bag of popcorn and a beer and lay in bed for a few days. She would argue the point with anyone that told her this pretty girl stuff was an easy job.

Kara glanced around the bar and saw her assignment in the lobby still talking on his phone. Kornev looked back in her direction and waved, which was a positive action. That acknowledgment indicated he did not want her to leave. But then who would? Kara had never met a man that wanted her to leave, which was both a blessing and a curse. Her looks had opened many doors, but now, as she watched this Russian scumbag negotiate a meeting with the North Korean scumbag, she understood just how many doors her looks had closed.

Kara’s father was an international Banker and she was a rich spoiled socialite that fluttered along beside her father, wherever his business journeys took him. Of course all of that was a lie. That was the life of Tonya Merkulov, her fictitious cover. But all her papers, passport, visa, all her background cover story was in place and even searchable on Google. Tonya had a Facebook page that showed all the wonderful places she had been and all the wonderful people she had hobnobbed with. Dozens of dresses, scores of fake parties, fancy cars, stunning people, amazing nightclubs and exotic beaches. All of that had all been photographed and photoshopped in a single day. Some of it was shot in front of a green screen and the people and places had been added into the background, and the other photos were real of Kara being Kara. The CIA had the staff to turn a no-one into a someone in a matter of twenty-four hours. They worked with Google to directly seed Google’s powerful search engine with all sorts of links that pointed to Tonya’s past. Her fake Dad’s history, her fake Mom’s social events, but nothing about fake brothers and sisters. Why make more work for the agency than was absolutely required? No, Tonya was an only child. An only beautiful child. An only spoiled beautiful child that didn’t think any more of taking a lover for a night, than she would a cold remedy.

Kara saw her new acquaintance click off his phone and begin walking back toward her. She sat up rail straight and rolled her shoulders back and pressed her chest out. This beautiful stuff was for the birds, she thought as she held out her hand like a princess, waiting for it to be kissed by her returning Russian target.

“Я надеюсь, что я не оставлю вас слишком долго?” Kornev said, taking her hand into his and softly touching his lips to her skin.

“Мне было интересно, если вы когда-либо собирались вернуться,” Tonya responded, flashing what looked like an annoyed smile.

It was all a game. All acting. And there was no award based on the performance. No Oscar or Emmy. If she was perfect, executed her role marvelously, then the payoff would be information that the CIA could use to save millions of people’s lives. If she was having a bad day and her acting was not on point, then her award would not be a Golden Globe, but more in the shape of a lead bullet. It would be presented to her while she was sleeping via a high-powered hand gun with a silencer. Double-tap to the head. A high-class whore wrapped up in bloody silk sheets and found by the morning hotel staff. The Nizhny Novgorod police would chalk it up to another woman who played too close to the fire and got burned. Things were dangerous in the reformed USSR. Her fictitious father and mother would probably not make a big stink about it and therefore the police would not work themselves to death figuring out the who and the why.

But Kara had no intention of ending up as a silk mummy. This wasn’t her first rodeo. Victor Kornev was a dangerous man, but he was just a man. And men were her specialty. They always had been. As early as she could remember, boys were just big hairy goofballs that melted in her hands. Life was simple when you were beautiful, because men were simple. Since men ran most of the world, then the logic was easy. If you owned the men, then you owned the world.

Kornev released her hand and said, “Я извиняюсь, но мой бизнес очень требовательны. Я надеюсь, вы понимаете.”

Kara quickly translated the Russian in her mind, which equated to, “I am sorry, but my business is very demanding. I hope you understand.”

She calculated her response and said in Russian, “I don’t like business. I like to have fun. So are you all about business or do you like to have fun too?”

Tonya’s Russian was satisfactory. There were inflections of German, English and even a little Australian in her pronunciations of the hard-edged language. Kara was a language major in college. She had a knack for it and didn’t know why. Neither her real mother or father spoke any language other than English; however, her father was proud of the fact that he spoke a little Pig Latin. Some people were great at math, it just clicked for them, and the same could be said for Kara when it came to languages. By the time she had left college and had joined the CIA, she could speak more than six languages conversationally and understand many others, which made her even more desirable as a spy.

Kornev switched to French and asked, “Que pensez-vous de venir jusqu'à ma chambre pour un peu de champagne. Peut-être avec peut regarder un film à la télévision.”

Yeah right, Kara thought to herself. An invitation to go up to your room to watch a movie and drink some champagne. The French language was a nice change from the stilted Russian. French had a mellifluous and wonderful softness that few other languages possessed. French had lyrical phrasing and a sophisticated elegance, but still, Kornev was saying basically the same thing in any language. I want to take you up to my room and fuck you. It didn’t matter what language he used or how the offer was phrased, it still meant that same thing.

Unfortunately, sex was part of the job. Not part of the old CIA, but it was part of the new CIA. The bad guys vetted women by bedding them. It was good security craft. Certainly no foreign agent would get paid for having sex with their quarry, but again, that was the old CIA and the bad guys must have never got the memo. If you wanted to be a woman spy and work in close, undercover, then you had to work under the covers. It was simple as that, and the CIA had told her as much before she had signed on the dotted line. Straight up, her job was seduction in all its shapes and forms. Hell, the new CIA authorized their agents to snort drugs and drink and have sex. It was a regular sorority party. But Kara had always been a free thinker when it came to sex. She enjoyed sex and if the target was good looking, as was Kornev, then all the better. What she didn’t like was the postcoital intimacy and therefore she played that for all it was worth. Her assignments could get into her pants, but if they wanted to get into her heart, then they would really have to work for it. They would have to spoil her. They would have to make time for her. They would have to discuss their lives with her. She would insist on traveling with him. She would meet his friends and his business partners. She would be in his bed, in his bathroom and have access to his laptop and cell phone. He would have to offer up a big part of himself to woo her. A chunk big enough to loosen that rusted key on her heart, else she would treat him as if he were a one-nighter. And that drove most of her assignments crazy. So close, but so far. They could have all of that lovely outside, but all that wonderful and fulfilling affection, the gooey inside filling, well that was off limits and had to be earned.

Kara considered Victor’s invitation for sex and booze. She would be surprised if the TV was even turned on. There was a time element involved with this assignment. From the briefing she had received from her handlers, Kornev was always on the move. It was uncommon if the man spent two days in the same country. So the timetable had to be advanced. She didn’t want to come across as an expensive prostitute, but on the other hand she didn’t want him getting bored and frustrated and moving on. In a perfect world, she would do what she needed to do tonight and be out of the country before he awoke in the morning.

Kara responded in French, “OK, mais pas de trucs rigolos,” which translated to OK, but no funny stuff.

Victor looked like he was ready to place his hand on bible. His face was constricted with sincerity.

“Oh, non, non, non…” he said.

Kara believed him ― NOT! He would probably have her thin dress pulled off before she had even reached the couch, but that was a calculated risk. There was really no other choice. All the talking was done. She had spent several hours sitting pretty on her bar stool and telling Kornev about her delightful fictitious life. How she, like Victor, had a predisposition for learning languages. They began doing the back and forth flirty thing in different languages, both laughing, both drinking and generally pretending they were enjoying each other’s company. Hell, they were now old friends and trusted one another implicitly. If only it was that easy.

Kara wished she could have been activated twenty-four hours earlier, but this was the situation and she had to work with it.

She sensed that Kornev wanted to get the show on the road.

“So, yes a movie?” He asked the indecisive woman in heavily accented English.

Tonya acted as if she was thinking about it.

Victor lifted his scotch and drained the last few drops from the glass.

He asked Tonya, “그래서 당신은 갈 준비가 되셨나요?”

Tonya laughed and asked in English, “What language is that?”

“I’m trying to learn Korean,” he said, retuning the playful smile.

“It sounds funny when spoken by a guy with a Russian accent.”

Victor shrugged and smirked.

Tonya picked up her small handbag off the table, removed her gold compact, opened it and made a funny little smile as she checked her lipstick.

“Sure, let’s go, but remember. No funny stuff.”

Hours earlier, Victor Kornev had finished working with the hotel’s technical staff to set up a conference room that had a big screen, a camera and a high-speed Internet connection. Later that evening, he would connect to an encrypted conference call with Kim Yong Chang from North Korea. Kornev had no home. The only way to stay elusive was to continually be on the move. He rarely slept in the same bed two nights in a row. He favored using hotel Internet infrastructure because enemies never knew where he would be, therefore they couldn’t tap the hotel lines before he had completed his business. Different bed, different hotel, different country, he was a chess piece on an international board and had to stay in constant motion or be cornered and checkmated. It appeared that almost everyone wanted a piece of Victor Kornev these days.

Victor looked at the empty drink in front of Tonya. Starting from her glass sitting on its moist napkin, Kornev’s eyes began moving up her lithe frame. His gaze slowed to a crawl when he reached her full breasts. Hesitating for a moment, his eyes began moving up to her perfect white neck, then to her strong chin, and finally his eyes came to a dead stop at her striking green eyes.

Once again, his brain confirmed her undeniable beauty. But creatures this beautiful just didn’t appear out of the blue. He couldn’t say that it never happened. After all, he was an attractive man, dressed nice and exuded wealth and prosperity. All those traits tended to attract single pretty women as well as high class prostitutes. It was more of a timing thing that bothered him. Typically, someone this beautiful was not inexplicably this available. Just sitting there alone. Sipping on a drink. No suitors in the immediate area. There were a few single men checking her out, but she was alone. At least for now. He had emerged from his work and wanted a drink and there she was.

Kornev thought about the chain of events. He realized that he had been the one who had approached her, not the other way around. He had ordered his drink and then a minute later had made an excuse to trade conversation with the beautiful woman sitting alone at the bar. He assumed that any of the other men in the bar, or possibly even men walking through the lobby, would have approached her eventually, if he hadn’t introduced himself first. Based on that fact, Victor began to think that he was being overly paranoid. But then paranoia had kept him alive. Paranoia had been his friend for the last decade. And what works, works. What doesn’t work, makes you dead.

They had drunk and chit-chatted and she had told him that her name was Tonya Merkulov. She was the daughter of an international banker and traveled around with her father because he went to so many wonderful places. Was it a lie? Probably. Everyone lied. It was a worldwide epidemic. No one wanted to be who they actually were. What fun was that? But Victor didn’t care that she lied. What he really cared about was why she lied. It was apparent that she wasn’t carrying a hidden bomb or AK-47 under her thin dress, and his paranoia told him that there were no threats in the immediate area. So, that meant that she was simply a beautiful woman who was alone and available. Did she work for the American CIA or possibly the Israeli Mossad? Could be, but if any complication arose from his meeting with Ms. Universe, then he would take care of it the way he always took care of such matters. A double tap to the head and he would be gone like a ghost.

Kornev switched to French and asked, “Que pensez-vous de venir jusqu'à ma chambre pour un peu de champagne. Peut-être avec peut regarder un film à la télévision.” It was an invitation to go to his room to watch a movie. Of course he didn’t intend to even turn on the TV.

Tonya didn’t say anything. Her eyes were somewhere else and not really focused. Her head was up and she was just looking off into the distance, as if a beautiful scenic vista was laid out in front of her. Kornev looked in the same direction and only saw a huge mirror surrounded by dozens of bottles of various spirits.

“So, yes a movie?” He asked the indecisive woman in heavily accented English.

More hesitation and then she said in French, “OK, mais pas de trucs rigolos,” which translated to, OK, but no funny stuff.

Victor looked at her as if he was insulted.

“Oh, non, non, non…” he said.

Kornev glanced around the room, looking for something or someone out of place. He constantly scanned for predators. Just recently he had been arrested in Thailand for the delivery of anti-aircraft missiles and providing aid to a terrorist organization. A large sum of money had been paid to people who could open his cell and look the other way for a few moments, allowing Victor to slip away to Afghanistan were he delivered shipments to the post-Taliban government.

Kornev knew how to perform counter surveillance and was good at it.

He had graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages where he became fluent in six languages. These included Persian and Esperanto, which he had mastered by age 12. In the early 2000s, he had become a member of the Esperanto club in Dushanbe. As a former Soviet military translator, Kornev had made a significant amount of money through his multiple air transport companies, which shipped cargo mostly in Africa and the Middle East during the 2000s and early 2010s.

His old military connections and expansive wealth gave Victor the opportunity to buy specific military items that no one on the face of the planet could get their hands on, let alone sell.

In Africa, Kornev’s Air Cress service delivered surface-to-air-missiles from Burgas to the airport in Bulgaria. This was the first time that Kornev appeared on the CIA’s radar as an arm’s dealer. Kornev was suspected of supplying heavy arms for use in Sierra Leone, the Congo, Kenya, Lebanon, and Libya. But by far the most disturbing alliance, detected by cell phone chatter-taps, was that of his new friend in North Korea.

Victor lifted his scotch and drained the last few drops from the glass.

He asked Tonya, “그래서 당신은 갈 준비가 되셨나요?”

Tonya laughed and asked in English, “What language is that?”

“I’m trying to learn Korean,” he said, retuning the playful smile.

“It sounds funny when spoken by a guy with a Russian accent.”

Victor shrugged and smirked.

Tonya picked up her small handbag off the table, removed her gold compact, opened it and made a funny little smile as she checked her lipstick.

“Sure, let’s go,” She said. “But remember. No funny stuff.”