The next email from ‘Uncle Vanya’ arrived just after the sun had set for the day. Sergei had watched the light of the day ending from the west terrace of his home.

He loved this spot on the island because of the magnificent sunsets and equally beautiful sunrises over the mountains to the east. More often that he’d care to admit, he’d fallen asleep in that very spot as he pretended to watch the sunset.

Of all the places he'd stayed in or lived in, in his life, this was by a long way, the best one. The contrast to the squalid rat-infested damp tower block of his early years could not be more dramatic. He’d certainly miss this place, but now that his location had been compromised, it was likely that his days of escaping from the rat race to Puerto Soller, were numbered.

Sergei opened the email and saw that it was an encryption key. He guessed that it was the public key for his nemesis. It was perfectly clear that the man knew an awful lot about him. That was troubling in itself because he'd gone out of his way to remain as inconspicuous as possible ever since his first contract. He was sure that he’d taken every precaution possible to avoid attracting the attention of the law only for someone else to step up and mess up his life big time. He knew very well that with every job, the chance of him being arrested grew. With twenty-nine jobs under his belt, it looked like that his good run was now at an end.

He saved the key to a file on the new laptop and waited.

And waited.

He gave up waiting just before midnight and went to bed with an immense feeling of frustration. He was not used to not being in control of things.

---

By habit, Sergei was an early riser. The sun hadn’t appeared over the Serra de Tramuntana mountains when he took his second cup of coffee onto the terrace. A cool breeze was coming from the northeast, but that didn’t bother him as the terrace faced southwest towards that mountain village of Deja.

Feeling ready to face the day, he opened up his old phone and the email app. Once he’d sorted through the usual spam and newsletters that he’d never signed up for, he found that there was no email from his nemesis.

Sergei sighed as he looked out at the world. Right there and then, he made a decision. He was not going to let this person whoever they might be dominate his life as they might think they were. He had things to do, places to go and people to see.

He went inside the house and sat at his desk. The new laptop and phone were exactly where he'd left them the night before. They needed setting up before he could ditch the old ones. That job would take him several hours. Only when that was done would he be ready to start his fight back.

While the laptop was booting into Windows, he went to his wall safe and opened it with a fingerprint. He’d had the device custom built for him by a techno-savvy safe maker in Dusseldorf not long after he’d bought the house in Puerto Soller. If someone tried to bypass the fingerprint or try more than two different fingers within a 24-hour period, the contents would in the best ‘Mission Impossible’ tradition self-destruct. The then state of the art fingerprint reader included an oximeter so that if someone cut his finger off it would not work and the self-destruct sequence would begin. There were some things in his life that he was pretty paranoid about. This was one of them.

The display on the inside of the door told him that the last time it had been opened was more than two weeks ago. That was good news. Whoever had installed the bugs in his home hadn’t managed to get inside the safe. Not that the safe was in plain view. It was located inside a cupboard in the basement which was full of junk by design. There was no sense in advertising the presence of such an item.

Back at his desk, Sergei signed into the laptop and spent the next hour removing as much of the crap that comes with a windows system as he could. Then he plugged in one of the USB sticks that he’d retrieved from his safe and copied some files. One of these was his custom encryption key generator. When he was back online, he would send his new public key to a select few trustworthy contacts. One of those, he’d be seeing in a few days if plan that he was roughing out in his mind was put into place.

Once the laptop was in a semi-usable state, he turned his attention to the phone. It was not the latest model but would do the job that he wanted from it. His final act was to create a new cloud storage account using the details of a one-time credit card from a different online service that he used. None of these accounts had any records on the old laptop or phone. The only place where things were recorded were in his mind and in his safe.

When he was satisfied that both of his new tools were usable, he broke for some lunch. The earlier breeze had died away so he took his plate out into the garden where he had a view down into the bay.

He chuckled as the same party of American tourists that he’d encountered the previous day on the tram to Soller, were being ushered onto a coach. He guessed that they were leaving because of the pile of luggage being loaded into the coach. Watching the tour guide struggle to round them up was like watching a sheepdog with sheep. One would always wander away to take another photo of the Hotel, the bay or a tram.

“If I ever get like that then I give the lord permission to strike me dead,” he muttered to himself.

While the tourists were a nice diversion, he was wondering why there had not been another email from his unknown nemesis.

“Life must go on,” he thought to himself as he returned to the house.

---

He went down into the basement and turned his attention to the bugs and cameras. After removing all of their batteries, he packed them all into an old shipping box not forgetting to put the ‘zappers’ on the top. After taping it shut, he put it into his car and making a mental note to drop them and the sniffers off at Mike’s emporium on his way off the island. Mike would refurbish the bugs. Then he could sell them, which would make him a good deal of money. That was his way of paying Mike for the bug zappers.

Mike would come out on top financially, but that didn’t bother him. In his line of work, you had to trust a few people with at least some of your business. He knew that Mike knew that if he ratted him out, then Mike would not be long for this world. Trust only goes so far and so far, his business with Mike had been very profitable for both parties and the old saying, ‘Money Talks’. It would take a lot of money or some life-threatening threats to get Mike to flip on Sergei.

Seeing the tourists leaving had convinced him that his earlier decision was the right one. He was going to leave the island ASAP and would keep moving while he worked out a way of fighting this mysterious person.

Dusk was almost upon him when his old phone beeped. He had mail!

The decoded message read,
"Well, Mr Chameleon or should I say, Sergei Labrov, you are indeed a resourceful person. I did not expect you to find all my devices as soon as you did. It does not matter now. I have a job for you.

I have watched you from afar for some considerable time. That enabled me to learn how you operate. I admire the care and patience with which you go about your business. That is why I chose you for this job plus the fact that you do not know who I am makes the game all the sweeter don't you think?

I am sure that you want to know what this job is. Well, let me delay that no further.

In one hour, I will send you another email with a photo and the details of your job. Do the job as I require and our paths will never cross again. Try to find me and you will regret it. All that lovely incriminating data that I siphoned from your laptop is my hold on you. As long as I die a natural death it will die with me. If not then the authorities in at least ten countries will get a nice gift-wrapped present from my associates. I am sure you understand my meaning.

As evidence of my powers, your place near the lovely city of Rouen will go up in flames at 21:00 local today. I could do the same to your other homes and even where you are now in Puerto Soller. I do have to congratulate you on choosing such a nice location. It would be a pity to reduce it to rubble. The Polish RPG-76 Komar does a very good job at demolishing buildings as you well know. That was contract number six, wasn’t it?

As the Americans love to say, stay tuned for the next instalment.

Oh, and the keys used in these emails will not be used after today.

Uncle Vanya.
“

He read the email several times. With each read, his anger grew. Was there nothing about him that he didn’t know?

Sergei thought back to the job where he’d used that particular weapon. The man was an arms dealer so what better way for him to exit this life than for one of his cache of weapons to malfunction just when he was demonstrating it to some very nasty people? It was a case of four birds with one stone. That was a very satisfying job and one for which he was well rewarded. It had put him on the map in certain circles. The ‘nasty people’ who were about to buy more than fifty RPG’s were a thorn in the backside of several national security services around the world. One had eventually connected Sergei to the incident. He’d received what amounted to a ‘get out of jail free’ card with certain conditions from that organisation.

He sighed. That was then. This was now and it was his life on the line.

After he'd calmed down, he thought back to the email. 'Uncle Vanya' had claimed to have syphoned off a lot of data. Being a careful sort of person, his old laptop never had a lot of incriminating data on it in the first place. The last thing he’d ever want was for him to be caught crossing a border with incriminating data on the machine. The same applied to his phone. The one that Uncle Vanya had supposedly bugged had been purchased in Madrid after his last contract. Once again, the word ‘bullshit’ came into Sergei’s mind. Uncle Vanya knew some things about Sergei but what he or she did know was just the tip of the iceberg.

He'd learned a few things from his drunk of a father. One of those was compartmentalisation. Sergei had done that with his life ever since he had left home.

But, just to be sure, he powered up the old laptop making sure that his internet connection was already disabled. The last thing he wanted was for some malware to phone home to ‘Uncle Vanya’ or download a bunch of illegal files such as child porn.

He made sure that the two internet browsers that he used were locked down tight and configured to purge all cookies and history whenever the browser was closed. After two hours of almost forensic examination of the device he found nothing that could incriminate him or that should not be there.

The more he thought about it, the more he concluded that the mystery man or woman was bluffing about the laptop data. Nothing that could implicate him was on the laptop. That was because he scrubbed it after every job.

There was a lot of data in existence that would incriminate him in seconds but that was right here at his home and was very safe and secure. He was sure that his intruders hadn’t found it because it wasn’t in the house.

He’d started keeping vital bits of data very separate from the laptop some years before because it was evidence that would incriminate several very powerful politicians around the world if it was released. He'd learned a long time ago that evidence was a two-edged sword.

---

Sergei used the time before the arrival of the next email to pack a bag. It was time to bug out… Well, he’d wait until first thing in the morning before leaving. Then he used the new laptop and phone to book passage on the late morning ferry to Barcelona. He'd read between the lines of the email and in his estimation, the job for this mysterious man was going to be in the UK. The language used in the emails indicated a native English speaker or at least someone who had lived in the UK for at least ten years. His first job was to get on-site wherever the job was without anyone and especially ‘Uncle Vanya’ knowing. That ruled out flying or the taking train from Barcelona. There were many ways of getting into the UK without attracting any attention. The big advantage was that none of them was detailed anywhere other than inside his mind.

When all his prep work was done, he poured a glass of an excellent wine and sat down. He was ready for the next email.

It arrived dead on schedule. Once he’d decoded the contents, Sergei managed a small smile. There was no commentary from the mysterious man. It was all detail, detail that confirmed his guess about the target being located in the UK.

The detail of the target troubled him from the outset. He, Sergei Labrov, might be an accomplished assassin but he had a set of standards that had worked for him for more years than he wanted to admit. He’d never accepted a contract where the target was a woman or anyone under the age of eighteen.

That simple fact stopped his train of thought dead. Under normal circumstances, he’d reject the contract and return the evaluation fee. He began to accept that this man or woman who had sent him the details was in control of the operation and not him for at least the time being. That was a new experience for Sergei and not one that he wanted to continue a moment longer than humanly possible.

The whole concept of eliminating a woman was just not something that he’d had to consider before. Now that he was faced with it, he really had no choice. Despite knowing that Uncle Vanya had lied about a few things, he was not someone to take chances on a job. He had to get his mind into the right mental state if he was going to come out the other end with a future.

This lack of control made Sergei more determined to get to the bottom of the contract. That was the only way he could see of getting out of this dilemma and then being able to start the new life that he’d been working towards since… since forever. If he came out of this in one piece then this job would definitely be his last and he could concentrate of being the person he had dreamed about as a child in between the beatings from a drunken father.

Sergei shut down his laptop and began to think, plan and scheme. He sat almost motionless with his eyes closed for more than three hours while he went over the numerous possibilities in his mind.

The first part was clear in his mind and had been since before the email about the ‘job’ had arrived. He had to get to the UK as discretely as possible once he reached the Spanish mainland. That could involve him calling in a few favours along the way, but he'd have to do it in such a way as not to put the people helping him in danger.

His modus operandi for all the jobs he’d done was to do it slowly and with care. This would be no different. As the mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ wanted him to do the job in his normal way, who was he to disagree. He would appear to do the job in his normal way but behind the scenes, he would be searching for his nemesis. They would have to be keeping tabs on him so… they would not be that far from the action.

With a clear plan for getting to the UK in his mind, he began to gather things together for his departure early in the morning. He refreshed the mental note not to forget to drop the box of goodies off at Mike's place on his way to the port. Sergei estimated that Mike could make around eight hundred Euros when he resold them on the black market. By dropping them off before Mike opened up, Mike could not reveal where he was going.

Next on the list was all the perishable food. He hated wasting food and he knew of a family who lived very close to the Barbers shop in Soller, who were living close to if not actually in poverty. He was sure that they would appreciate a donation of fresh food and some euros. He had his barber, Miguel, to thank for that tip-off when he’d left for a previous job.

There was by now, a sizeable pile of bags and boxes by the front door waiting to be loaded into his ancient SEAT car.

One huge drawback to living on an island the size of Mallorca was that there are only a few ways out of the place. Even worse, there was only one road into and out of Soller, plus the railway with one or at most two trains a day to Palma.

Trying to slip off the island unnoticed was a virtual non-starter unless he chartered a boat but the Spanish Navy were pretty hot on small boats who were often used by drug and people smugglers. Because ‘Uncle Vanya’ had told him that the job was in the UK, he wasn’t going to hide that part of his journey to the UK. Once he’d reached the Spanish mainland, his ability to blend into the background would be key to getting across the English Channel undetected.

His reason for getting into the UK in as quietly as possible, was that the more time he had observing the subject before ‘he’ found out that he was on the job, the better.

---

Just before 06:00 the next morning, Sergei drove his loaded car away from the only place he’d dare call home in the last six and a bit, years and for possibly for the last time. Puerto Soller had been good to him since he’d discovered the place while researching a victim. That particular contract had been completed some weeks later in Rome but he’d never forgotten the place and a few months later, he’d bought his home and became as local as he could apart from taking Spanish Nationality.

Soller was just starting to come alive for the day when he dropped off a box of groceries outside the Barbers shop. There was a note inside giving instructions for them plus €100. The family that lived nearby who had fallen on hard times would appreciate that donation.

Some people might have called that going soft but Sergei had always shown humanity in his work. He had been fastidious in avoiding ‘friendly fire’ casualties unlike many others who called themselves assasins.

The road out of Soller towards Palma goes over a mountain. At one of the many hairpin bends on the climb up, Sergei stopped his car and looked back over Soller towards the port. If he had some binoculars with him, he could probably see his home. If this was to be the last time he would see it, he wanted it to be memorable. It was. He could have dallied there for hours but time waits for no man, and he could not expect the ferry to the mainland to wait for him.

---

By 08:30, he’d dropped the box of goodies off outside Mike’s Electronics Emporium and was enjoying some breakfast at a café on the seafront in the resort of Arenal. This particular café also offered Internet access and Sergei was taking full advantage of it before going dark for at least a few days.

He logged onto a cloud account email system and sent two emails. The first was to the owner of a Garage in the border town of La Tour de Carol. The second was to a fisherman in Brittany. He was confident that this account had not been hacked by his unknown nemesis. Sergei only accessed this account from a non-default web browser that by default purged all cookies and web history when the browser was shut down. He'd set up a new VPN on the laptop so anyone tracing the email would see that it was coming from Denmark. Tomorrow, the trace would come back as coming from Greece. None of the account details were saved in the browser system, they were all retrieved from his memory.

When the emails had been sent, Sergei relaxed with a small glass of Rioja. All that remained was to head to the ferry and the seven-hour crossing to Barcelona.

---

Sergei found a place to sit at the back of the bar on the ferry and settled down with a good book. He was re-reading 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. He'd always been something of a stranger wherever he'd lived ever since he'd run away from home in Novosibirsk, Russia at the age of 10. His father was a drunken bully and often took his frustrations with post-Soviet Russia out on Sergei and his younger sister. He'd returned to Russia many times in the intervening years but only once to Novosibirsk when he repaid his father for all the beatings that he’d given his son all those years before. He always maintained that he became the person he was because of those terrible days as a child. The bears in the nearby mountains had a nice feed on his father who was still alive when they attacked him. It was in his mind poetic justice because that was the end that his father had promised him as a child just to scare him to death by promising to feed him to the bears.

The crossing went without issue and right on time, Sergei drove his SEAT off the ferry and began to concentrate on his immediate two tasks. His prime objective was to get out of Barcelona in the middle of the evening rush as quickly as possible and the second was to make sure that he wasn't being followed. The last thing he wanted was to put his next helper in danger.

Sergei was satisfied with the latter by the time he stopped for a brief meal in the small fishing village of Palamos just before ten that evening. Unless there was a tracking device that had been attached to his car since he’d scanned it that morning, he was free and clear for the time being at least.

From Palamos to the border town of La Tour de Carol was a two-hour drive. He arrived just before 01:00. Most of the inhabitants of the area were in their beds but there were lights at the local garage. As he came to a stop, the front door to the house next to the garage opened and a woman stepped out.

“Добрый вечер, дорогая сестра” (good evening dear sister) said, Sergei.

“Добрый вечер, брат дорогой. Это было слишком долго.” (good evening brother dear. It has been far too long) replied the woman.

Илиана, я пригласил тебя приехать в гости”, (Iliana, I did invite you to come over)

“ Я знаю, но Томас ненавидит лодки” (I know but Tomasz hates boats) said, Iliana.

“Я здесь сейчас, все готово?” (I am here now, is everything ready?)

Да, контейнер находится вокруг задней части мастерской “ (Yes, the container is around the back of the workshop), said Iliana.

Sergei nodded his head and drove his car to the back of the workshop. A shipping container was waiting for him with its doors open. He drove into it and switched off the engine. He sat a few seconds before taking a deep breath and getting out of the car taking his single bag with him. With the car inside the container, any tracking bugs would be rendered useless.

He closed the doors to the container and went to join his sister in the house.

Iliana and her husband Tomasz were waiting for him in the kitchen.

Tomasz gave Sergei a big hug before pouring him a glass of local wine.
“It has been a long time my friend, ваше здоровье (cheers).”

“It has Tomasz., ваше здоровье.”

“You look troubled. The tone of your email was not your usual happy self. You seemed to feel at home on Mallorca and now you are here. This is obviously not a social call so what gives?”

Sergei sat for a moment before saying,
“I am being blackmailed into a contract on a woman.”

A deathly cold silence fell over the room. Hits on women were strictly off-limits for both him and Tomasz.

“I’ve got your back if you need me,” said Tomasz.

Sergei nodded his head.
“Whatever happens, this is my last job. Iliana has the contact details of my lawyer in Madrid should things go pear shaped.”

“Is it that bad?” asked Tomasz.

“Worse. My home was invaded and bugged to hell and back.”

“That is not good,” said Iliana.

“It is why I’m here and need your help as I outlined in my email.”

Tomasz looked at his wife and smiled.
“I was a bit stumped at first but Iliana came to the rescue. A friend of hers who lives between here and Villefranche-de-Conflent on the ‘Yellow Train’[1] had a Nissan Van for sale. We went there early this afternoon, and did a deal. €1000 cash secured the deal. I gave it a check over and it will do what you want it to. It would take you to Novosibirsk in summer if you wanted it too although the front tyres will need changing after a couple of thousand kilometres if you are careful.”

“Thanks Tomasz, I only need it to get me to the channel on the ‘N’ roads,” replied Sergei.

“You really don’t want to be tracked, do you?”

Sergei shook his head.
“My current plan relies on me getting into the UK without going through an official border.”

“Rather you than me,” said Iliana.

“I’d rather be at my villa on Mallorca than crossing the channel in the Autumn on a small boat.”

Iliana laughed.
“What is it with you men and rough water?”

The trio laughed. Then they turned in for what remained of the night.

[to be continued]

[1] https://about-france.com/tourism/yellow-train-pyrenees.htm