The Roman Gambit Pt. 02

She said, "No - I want to sit opposite you. This is important."

I was mystified but I said, "Get dressed and I will meet you down in the dining car as soon as you're ready."

I went back to my cabin and shucked the jeans and t-shirt and put on a nice flowered sleeveless blouse over a pair of tight khaki pants, which were tailored to show off my round bottom and hips. I always think about those things. I substituted a pair of 3-inch heels for my slippers.

Mel appeared in the dining car about a half hour later. She is a slow riser and she always likes to do a little make-up before she goes out in public. If I had eyes as big as hers, I would do the same thing. There are times when Mel looks like the world's sexiest lemur.

She sat opposite me. I was picking at a plate of fruit and croissants and drinking the train's outstanding French press. I drink coffee like it is my life's blood.

Mel said, "The strangest thing happened after you left."

I laughed and said, "You mean staggered off, don't you?"

Mel said, "Whatever... The man who took you back to the cabin sat down with me as soon as he dropped you off. I knew nothing had happened with you two because he was only gone a short time."

I felt an extreme pang of jealousy. So, he had fucked Mel. No wonder he was willing to drop me off. But I said rather resignedly, "Well I tried."

Mel said, "He told me who he was and why he was so interested in both of us. He is somebody that Sir Alex sent to keep an eye on us. Apparently, this is a personal favor between the two of them, not something that is part of an assignment. I guess the people we are investigating are ruthless and very dangerous and Sir Alex thought we could use the help."

Mel added concerned, "He knows these men and he said he will provide some backup if it becomes necessary. He said that this is our assignment and he will stay out of the way. But he gave me a card with a phone number in case we wanted to involve him."

I had two thoughts about that. The first was the disappointment that Sir Alex didn't think I could handle things by myself. But the second one was that Sir Alex had gone far beyond the usual handler requirements to ensure our safety, so he must value us.

My most surreptitious girly thought was absolute joy at the thought of being able to see my mystery man again. The train pulled into Budapest Keleti Station at 3:30 that afternoon.

Mel and I disembarked like we were stretching our legs before re-boarding. We wanted to do that as stealthily as possible since we didn't know who was watching and I had not seen my mysterious friend again, even though there were only 150 people on the train.

We stood on the platform, looking as if we were taking in the sights and then we moved very quickly out to the Enterprise counter where we rented a vehicle that was as non-descript as I could find. I intended to trade it in for something I actually wanted to drive as soon as we got to Prague but for the time being a Peugeot 407 station wagon seemed ideal.

I had all of my gear in a second roller bag that I had attached in a train with the one that had my clothes and I was not going to be able to roll everything out to pick up the car without attracting attention. So, I held onto our bags and Mel got the car. Then, when I got her call, I briskly wheeled all three bags trained together out to the curb at the front of the station.

That was the point where anybody watching would have seen us leave. But there was so much of the usual station commotion going on that what I was doing seemed natural and thus indistinguishable. The point of good tradecraft is to act decisively and sell it with conviction.

We quickly tossed the bags into the open back of the station wagon and disappeared into late afternoon traffic. The station is on the wrong side of the Danube from where we wanted to go so the drive out of Budapest almost took more time than it took for us to cross the border on the E-75 into Bratislava.

The entire trip took about 5 hours, which was longer than we had anticipated, and we were tired when we checked into the Hotel Kings Court. I had booked that place because it was about a quarter mile walk down to the old town area where our quarry was located.

The hotel itself met my exacting standards for comfort and luxury. The building is a 5 story neo-renaissance baroque classic. The interior was as luxurious as any place I have ever stayed, and I particularly fancied the beds, which were some kind of specialty of the house.

I booked a Junior Suite for both of us. The 284 Euros a night was pricy. But I didn't want to share with Mel, and I think she has gotten used to having her own space as well. It was close to 9:00 and we hadn't had dinner, so we went downstairs to the Vodka Lobby Bar.

We were both very tired and so we chose not to do the mEating Point restaurant even though the play on words was interesting. We picked at a plate of cheese and fruit and had a final drink before we turned in. I told Mel that we would meet for breakfast and we could plan from there.

We walked back to our adjoining suites. My little friend said, "Good night dear" and slipped into her room. I went into mine, shed my travel clothes and climbed between the fresh sheets of the bed. I was sound asleep in minutes.

*****

Ivan had watched them slip the Bratva tail with a neat little move at the Keleti train station. They had worked a classic "Find the Lady" shuffle as slick as any Central Park Three Card Monte hustler.

The beautiful one, who Ivan now knew as named Hilley appeared to be loitering innocently with the bags while her friend disappeared, perhaps to the ladies room. Then Hilley took a phone call and marched decisively out the door dragging all three bags in train behind her.

The window to see that the target was on the move was less than one minute. Ivan almost missed it himself. The tail had left his position watching Hilley to see where the little gorgeous one, who Sir Alex had told him was named Mel, had gone. He completely missed the switch.

When the tail came back, he looked confused and then boarded the train. He apparently thought that the girls had re-boarded. Ivan followed out the door of the station and saw the two women driving off in a non-descript Peugeot. Shaking his head in admiration, Ivan went to the ticket office and bought a first-class seat on the next train to Prague.

Ivan was feeling mixed emotions. He was doing this as a favor for his friend and mentor. But now there was a lot more at stake for him. He found that he had a baffling need to see more of Hilley Larson. He sensed a deep connection with her that was unlike any feeling he had in the past with a woman and it was a very disturbing feeling indeed. Ivan had lived 46 years without attachments. It wasn't that he was incapable of emotion. It was just that he had only once met a woman who interested him.

That was inevitable. There was probably no woman close to his capabilities. Being both Spetsnaz and KGB/FSB he was an exceptional fighting man. He had incomparable speed, strength and physical endurance and he was a trained killer with every kind of weapon from knives to guided missiles. But that was the least of his talents. He had also spent a decade as a master of tradecraft and a successful player in the Great Game.

Ivan's main feature was his intelligence. As part of his preparation for that Game he had gotten his doctorate in Economics from Oxford University and he had actually served as the economic and trade advisor to the Russian Ambassador to the U.K. Due to that time in England his accent, behaviors and general self-effacing manner all branded him an Oxford Man, not FSB.

He had left the FSB in 1998 at the urging of one of the Putin oligarchs. They had gotten to know each other when they were part of the Russian Intelligence service and Lebedev knew Ivan's capabilities. Using those abilities, Ivan had made a fortune as a money manager for Lebedev.

Ivan's subsequent work with the portfolio for Ilyusion had grown his personal wealth past the $500 million mark. However, since he had spent so much time as a soldier, he did not use any of that wealth like the usual oligarch. Instead he lived on a relatively simple estate in Provence growing grapes.

Ivan had shut the door on all of his former associates and his entire life prior to retirement, mainly because he was carrying around a lot of guilt. Everything he did; he had done for his country. But there were times that he had regretted what he had to do.

Ivan was not a political man, or a deep thinker. He was a man of action and he had acted as he was told. But the politicians who WERE directing him had put him into situations that he could not reconcile with his sense of right-and-wrong. That was the problem and he solved it by separating himself from his past.

Ivan Kovalyov was dedicated to being reborn as the person he always knew he was. In many ways Ivan's actions had been a lot less violent and heartless than his mentor, Sir Alexander Haig. But it was a matter of proportion and scale and Ivan Kovalyov, wanted to spend the rest of his life atoning for his past sins.

Ivan now had the money to officially become whoever he wanted to be. So, the first step in that rebirth was to lay Ivan Kovalyov, ex Spetsnaz and KGB to rest. And then emerge reborn from his cocoon as John Smith gentleman farmer.

That new persona was not so hard to get used to, since John Smith was just his given name Anglicized and it was the one that he had used all of those years at Oxford. In fact, he recalled with delicious irony how "common" his name was.

The past few years had been a revelation for him. Because of the constant danger, John Smith had always been highly disciplined. That discipline taught him that excess in anything, except perhaps physical exercise, was abhorrent. But he HAD lived on fear for so long that he might arguably be considered to be an adrenaline junky.

It was the ability to come off of that dreadful drug that had informed his next direction in life. Now he preferred the simple pleasures. So, for many long and beautiful days in southern France he sat in the shade of his grape arbor in Chambray and savored the beauty of the Provencal landscape. Ivan had enjoyed every quiet minute of it.

*****

It was raining when we woke up. So, we took our leisurely time strolling down to the Caffe Italia on Staromestske Square for breakfast.

The square itself must have been a center for the medieval city since the houses and the Gothic Church of our Lady, which is a baroque landmark, are all 15th and 16th Century. The Caffe's location on the East side of the Square let us scout out the address on Parizska Street that Sir Alex had sent us.

The place we were focused on was on a side street about a third of the way up on the north side of the Square. The usual number of tourists was reduced somewhat by the rain. The fact that we were sharing one big black umbrella, which was held by five foot nothing Mel, was a further inconvenience. But I couldn't hold the umbrella and work all of the wardriving equipment I had stashed in my kicky Hermes bag.

The location we were targeting was around the corner from the Kinsky Palace on Parizska Street. The building itself looked later than 16th Century, perhaps 18th. This one looked commercial even though it still blended in nicely with the architecture of the immediate area around the square. All of the buildings along the Square are substantial historical buildings.

We were trying to see what kind of electronic link we could establish. Our target was the building above and to the right of the Blue Praha store a half block from the Square itself. So, we sauntered across the Square past the Jan Hus memorial and the corresponding Hussite Church on the corner and up the street.

So, we were just two girls out to see the historical sights of Old Town Prague; clustered under one big umbrella. We loitered to read the sign for the 27 crosses worked into the pavement. Apparently, the people who ruled Prague back in the 15th Century had a penchant for burning people at the stake; Hus... And then chopping off the heads of his followers, which accounted for the 27 crosses.

We wandered up the street with me tightly jammed against Mel and looking intently at my ten-inch netbook. It was as if I was reading the story of all the bloody happenings. Being the little Cockney street performer that she was Mel was almost convincing ME that she was listening to my story instead of shielding everything I was doing with her body.

What I was ACTUALLY doing was wardriving, "warwalking" if there was such a word in the hacker vocabulary, sorting through all of the signals in the 5 gigahertz U-NII band. The netbook that I was carrying was running my own version of Netstumbler, which is a very simple reconnaissance utility.

The antenna we were using was in the Hermes bag along with the GPS and the wireless connection to the internet. I was running that through a sat-phone uplink in order to get the speed I required. The point of the exercise was to get the information that I would need to identify and crack the router at Bratva headquarters. As we approached our target, I got a strong signal from the same SSID that had sent the initial information to Paris.

I immediately locked that ID into another of my fake brick repeaters, just like the one that I had used to bug my rat friend in Paris. It was on the same sat-link as the netbook. I then dropped my little repeater into the nearest trash receptacle. , I would own the Bratva network once I got back to the hotel; that is, until they picked up the trash.

It might seem unbelievable that an organization like the Bratva would be so easy to crack. But conventional criminals, especially men of a certain age, have no idea what god-like powers a person like me has.

They probably felt safe because they had firewalls and malware detection software, and everything was secured by passwords and encryption. But I was about to go back to my five-star hotel and look into every aspect of their operation.

I would do it in a way that they could not have imagined during the Cold War. Surveillance in the internet age is all about slipping past the other guy's internet access point, not sitting somewhere with binoculars and a tape recorder. In the information age, everything is on computers and nothing is safe from a person who knows how to infiltrate them.

I am one of those people and I have been one since I was 12 years old. I did my first simple hack just to prove to myself that I could do it. It was the usual break-in at my school, and I didn't change any grades. I always got "A's" anyhow, so I didn't need to. I just wandered around for a while and looked at some of my less popular teacher's evaluations. I imagine they couldn't understand why I was smirking at them after that.

I know that I have a superior mind, at least when it comes to electronics. But the capabilities that were required to do what I had just done are nothing special. In fact, they are a basic part of the skill set of most teenage nerds. Thank God, successful 60-year-old crime lords don't understand that capability and given how fast things change they probably never will.

We wandered back along the square and up Celetna Street to the hotel. I had some serious computing power in my room. So, I linked it to my repeater and got a strong signal from the Bratva's wireless network. They were using WPA instead of WEP, which was actually good news since they were probably confident that they were secure. Like every other hacker in the universe I knew about the hole in WPA.

Without getting into the technical details I used the cracking utility to do a brute force PIN attack on the target router. It took almost two hours to break into their network. But brute-forcing was a simple and reliable approach. By that afternoon I was roaming around the Bratva's files and e-mail. By 5:00 I had everything I needed. I turned to Mel and said, "It looks like we are taking a trip to a place called Deutschkatharinenberg."

*****

Arminius sat on his horse in the aftermath of the battle. He looked out at the defeated Romans. He was sweating from the exertion of all that slaughter, even in the cold rain. At six foot five and 250 pounds he towered over his Roman captives, especially with his horned helmet, which made him appear to be close to seven feet tall. He thought, "They aren't so arrogant now."

A vast majority of the legionnaires had been killed by his warriors but perhaps two thousand had been allowed to surrender. Those would make excellent slaves; all except for the officers who he planned to sacrifice to Woden. He would do that by nailing them to the sacred trees.

Arminius heard the screams as the Centurions and the other petty officers roasted over slow fires. The latter feature was strictly Arminius's idea. He had hated his Roman overlords for a very long time. His uncle Inguiomer approached him and they clasped arms. Inguiomer said, "Now that they are all dead, what do you want me to do with the treasure?"

Arminius looked down the line of ox carts. There were fifty of them. All of them were brimming with the treasure that the Romans had forced from the German people. Arminius said, "We will give a portion to each of the tribes, Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti and Bructeri. We will also send a third to Bohemia as a present to King Marbod of the Marcomanni. We will need that tribe if we are going to throw the Romans back over the mountains."

Arminius was also going to send Varus's head to Marbod, just to underscore who was in charge of the German confederates. Several weeks later sixteen treasure laden carts began the almost 350-mile journey to the land of the Marcomanni. Marbod had sent an escort of over 100 cavalry troopers to ensure that those carts made it safely to his camp.

The carts wound through the trackless plains of Central Germany to arrive at the capitol of the Marcomanni people and their chief. It was in an area that would come to be called Bohemia. They were greeted with much feasting. Then, the Cherusci nobles who Arminius had sent to accompany those carts and negotiate the alliance were all sacrificed to the Germanic Gods and Varus's head was carefully returned to the Romans with all due ceremony.

Marbod had not been pleased by Arminius's blatant attempt to take over Germanic leadership, and he always liked to play both sides. Marbod knew that his treasure would attract the attention of the other southern tribes. And he was also certain that the Romans would be back. So as soon as the inconvenient Cherusci had been dispatched and his warriors were sobered up, he moved the hoard another sixty miles southwest, to the Weinbergholen near the Danube.

That cave complex had been known and used by various people since the Neanderthals. Its amalgamation of interconnecting caves and tunnels would be the ideal place to hide Marbod's new-found loot. And make no mistake, Marbod planned to keep it for himself. There were six caverns in the complex. Marbod's people stored the treasure in the sixth cave, which was furthest back within the hill.

Then the seven Marcomanni who had hidden the treasure were all killed by the accompanying members of Marbod's immediate family and their bodies were sealed in the cave to keep the secret. It was impossible to tell that there even WAS a sixth cave in the complex, once Marbod's relatives had finished collapsing the entrance.

When his family members returned to the Marcomanni camp in triumph, Marbod had them all poisoned. They had expected to share in the windfall. Marbod had other ideas. He had thought of everything. His plan had worked perfectly up to this point. Except Marbod had not factored-in how Arminius might view his bloody rejection of the peace offering.