The Backup Asset

…27

Smithfield represented the best rural Virginia had to offer for someone like Evgheni Aleksandrovich Smolin. Quiet neighborhoods with houses sitting on large lots, far enough from one another to present numerous advantages from a privacy perspective. Scarce law enforcement presence, their services not needed much in one of Virginia’s safest neighborhoods. A small community of close-knit families, where a visiting family member from abroad would be instantly adopted and incorporated in the community, not many questions asked.

That was Smolin’s cover. He had arrived in the small town as the father of Olga Novachenko, visiting from Russia, there to stay a couple of months then go back home. He’d arrived ten days before, and people on the street already knew him and greeted him. It was perfect for his needs.

No matter how peaceful Smithfield was, Smolin wasn’t there to relax. He constantly worked on his laptop, installed in the home’s living room, from behind window treatments that maintained his privacy and kept all curious neighbors in the dark.

Smolin was comparing two long lists of IPs, closely reviewing each entry, and marking on the second list whenever a corresponding IP was associated with a name of interest from the first list. The first list was quite simple, only holding corporate names, their IPs, and their physical locations — their headquarters address in most cases. The second list was significantly more complex. It had primary IPs on each row, most of them matching entries in the first list, then a secondary IP associated with a user name, password, website, even credit card information for some entries. From studying both lists, Smolin got the information he was looking for: the people identified on the second list and their Web browsing habits were employees of the companies of interest found on the first.

Smolin put his headset on and made a Skype call to his aide back in Moscow. It rang a few times before being answered, maybe because in Moscow it was well after 1.00AM.

“Yes, sir,” his aide answered the call, recognizing his Skype ID.

“Anton, get me Valentina Davydova on the line. She’s staying at the Sosnovaya safe house.”

“Umm… they moved her back to the detainment center two days ago, sir.”

“Chto za hui, Anton, what the fuck? So she can get raped and killed by some idiot in there and leave us hanging? She’s an asset, Anton, what the fuck were you thinking?”

“Sir, if I may, no one asked me. I just found out last night. They needed the house for something else.”

“Who?”

“Major Vorodin from FSB.”

“He’ll be first in line to serve soup at the detention center, tomorrow and for the rest of his insignificant life. You wake him up and tell him that, Anton, you hear me?”

“Umm… yes, sir,” Anton answered hesitantly.

“Now get Davydova on the phone and then move her back to the safe house immediately. Call me when you have her.”

Less than an hour later, an incoming Skype call broke the silence in the quiet Smithfield residence. Smolin connected with video.

She’d been roughed up. Her left eye was swollen shut, her jaw was almost black and distended on the left side, and her hair hung in dirty strands sticking to her bruised face. Her left hand was wrapped in dirty gauze and hung limp. She’d developed the demeanor of someone who’s constantly expecting to be assaulted or killed: jumpy, averting eye contact, trying to look small.

Considering how badly he needed her to cooperate, that roughing up might have been for the best after all. Good thing they didn’t kill her, the stupid fucks.

“Y — yes?” she said insecurely on the Skype call.

“Valentina, good morning,” Smolin said.

She squinted into the camera, trying to recognize the man in the blurry, choppy video transmission.

“Ahh… g — good morning, sir,” she managed to articulate.

“This shouldn’t have happened. You’ll be going back to the safe house immediately, right now,” Smolin said.

A tear started rolling from her swollen eye. She didn’t say anything.

“I need you to do something for me,” Smolin said. She nodded, and he continued, “I received your first reports a few days ago and they were excellent work. Just what I needed. But I need more, and I need you to get me the physical addresses for some of those users. And I’ll need some kind of alert system to call me, or something, whenever one of these users is online. I’ll send you the list of the ones who interest me.”

“I–I don’t have a computer,” she whimpered. “They took everything away from the house when they took me. I lost the program I wrote for you. They took it. It was on that computer.”

“Tvoyu mat! You’ll have everything back,” he said, feeling anger raise a wave of bile in his throat. “Anton!”

“Sir?”

“Take her to a hospital first; see that she’s taken care of. Then take her to the house and have the fuckers who took my stuff bring it all back tonight. All of it! Then draft reports for every one of them and file them on their personnel records. Tell them to pray this doesn’t delay my op, ’cause if it does, I will kill every one of them with my own bare hands.”

He hung up the Skype call without waiting for any confirmation from Anton, and started pacing the room angrily. Those ignorant, reckless motherfuckers could have ruined it all.