Kara found her large suitcase still sitting next to her front door where she had left it. She would have loved to jump into a shower and cleansed the Russian’s scent off of her, but there was no time for that.
She tossed her suitcase up onto the bed and turned on both wall lamps on each side of the bed.
The bag was a big green thing with a central zipper that circled the main section. She unzipped the suitcase all the way around and opened the flap. Inside was a small amount of clothes and a massive selection of phone chargers. Hundreds. Each charger was inserted into a plastic slot fused into a thick plastic sheet. Each sheet had ten rows and five columns of chargers. Each sheet had chargers on the front and back. There were ten sheets of plastic. The CIA tech who had packed her bag had not told her how the chargers would be organized. As she gazed down at them, the only order Kara could make out was that they were arranged by color and size. That would seem to make sense, if whoever was trying to locate a charger was in a hurry. She was in a hurry. So the arrangement worked in her favor.
The charger she held in her hand was black, so she removed all the white sheets of chargers until she found the first selection that had nothing but black phone chargers. She began the process by holding up Kornev’s charger in front of each charger nestled in its clear pocket.
Nothing on the first sheet. They were all too large.
She flipped over to the backside of the first sheet and repeated the comparison for each of the new candidates.
Nothing again. No matches.
She set that sheet aside and began on the next batch. She was optimistic of finding a match. The next set of black chargers was still too big, but they continued to get smaller and smaller. She completed her scan, found nothing that matched, so she flipped over the sheet and searched the backside.
Halfway through, she said, “Yes,” and reached down and pulled open the Velcro seal that secured a small black phone charger in a plastic slot.
Under the direct light of the lamp, she held up Kornev’s phone charger against the one she had selected. They looked just the same. She placed them next to one another and turned them around this way and that, until she was sure they were exactly the same.
Confident in her find, she placed Kornev’s charger in the night table drawer next to the bed. She put the replacement for Kornev’s phone charger in her purse. Her watch told her that five minutes had expired since she had left Kornev’s room. Not bad. Reaching over on the bed, she collected all the sheets of chargers she had removed and put them back in the suitcase. She closed the flap, but didn’t bother zipping it back up. She then moved quickly to the door. Rolling her shoulders back into pretty girl position, Kara stuck her head out and performed a quick hallway inspection. Seeing no one, she stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her.
An older couple unexpectedly exited their room as Kara was passing. Kara greeted them with the Russian Добрый вечер, which meant good evening and was used any time after six at night. The old man’s eyebrows went up when he looked at Kara. Dressed in a cocktail dress, her red hair in disarray and not wearing shoes, she guessed she looked like a high-class hooker that was sneaking out of a room with her trick’s wallet. Nevertheless, the couple politely returned the salutation and walked down the hallway in the opposite direction, whispering to one another.
Kara made it back to Kornev’s room and was relieved to see that the paper holding open the bolt was still in place. Using her index finger and thumb, she pinched the edge of the paper and opened the door. Once inside, she placed the paper in her purse. No sense in leaving strange folded objects in plain sight. She then walked over to the desk.
Instinctively, Kara looked back over her shoulder at the front door. Her paranoid side told her that Kornev would walk in on her at any moment. She retrieved Kornev’s original charging cable and plugged it into the new CIA phone charger. She then plugged the new CIA charger back into the lamp. Still paranoid, she checked the door, but Kornev had not walked back into the room. Nor did he walk into the room an hour later. Or an hour after that.
Kara took the time to pen a letter she would leave when she ditched Victor Kornev and jumped on a plane headed back for the states.
My Dearest Victor,
Alas, I needed to leave on an important invite to attend the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Drop me an email the next time you are some place fun and want some company. Russia… not so fun.
Your new friend, Tonya (Tonya Merkulov 123@gmail.com)
Four hours later, Kornev open the door and entered the room.
Kara had her dress on, her shoes off and was watching Russian television; a fate worse than death, as far as she was concerned. The show was a Russian sitcom called Univer. Continually translating the Russian to English was making her tired and agitated.
Kornev saw her sitting on the couch. He said nothing. He walked over to the couch and sat down next to her. He reached over and took her hand in his. There was an uncomfortable silence when two people, two strangers had just had sex together.
Kara remained silent. It was her method of control. She wanted Kornev to talk first so she could gage his demeanor. Anything could have happened while he was gone; up to and including some source of Victor’s telling him that there was a CIA spy in his room. Kara had to remain vigilant and be able to react quickly and decisively if things got ugly. Her high-heel shoes were sitting next to her on the couch. These were not shoes that could be bought from Macys. These were CIA issued shoes. The long heels in each of the shoes were metal spikes. If swung at a semi-solid mass, the heel would peel away, allowing the spike to go deep into the target.
Kornev was the first to talk.
“How are you?” he asked in English.
“Fine. And you?” Kara replied politely.
“I’m good,” Kornev said, but his heavy Russian accent made good sound more like guwt.
Kara was silent.
“Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?” He asked.
Kara was hungry, but she really didn’t want to hang around with Kornev any longer than she had to. If there had been no restrictions on her assignment, she would have ordered a big thick steak. And as she finished her last bite, she would have jammed the steak knife deep into Kornev’s neck, severing his jugular vein. She would have then calmly watched him bleed out as she slipped on her CIA shoes, picked up her purse and exited the room without looking back.
But they wanted Victor Kornev alive. Her bosses and their bosses wanted the man to continue breathing. If he was dead, then they wouldn’t know who he was working with. If Kornev was discovered with a four-inch steak knife sticking out of his neck, then the CIA wouldn’t know what countries and terrorist organizations were actively buying arms and of what type. If Kornev was planted six-feet under, then a new arms dealer would take over the trade and they would have to start all over.
The CIA’s phone charger (Kornev’s new phone charger) was indeed a phone charger. It would charge Kornev’s iPhone. But it was so much more than that. It was a very expensive, very special piece of CIA hardware.
The first time that Kornev plugged his phone into the CIA charger, several unique things would happen. First, the charger would set up a peer to peer network with a similar charger that was plugged into Kara’s lamp in her room. The (PLC) or power-line communication protocol allowed a high-speed network to be established over hotel power-lines that joined the rooms. The second thing that would happen was a small back door program would be installed on Kornev’s iPhone. That program would instantly start copying every single bit of data to the empty phone in Kara’s room. The copy program would create an identical image of Kornev’s iPhone onto Kara’s phone.