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.