Sergei spent most of the rest of the day in his hotel room working on a variety of plans for resolving the problem he faced in that there was no way in hell, was he going to kill a young woman.

He was even more certain about that now that he had seen her in real life. A photograph is one thing but seeing her with her work friends convinced him that there had to be another solution to the problem. The saying, ‘there are two sides to every coin’ and a lot of stuff like that crossed his mind at least once an hour.

He was hampered by the fact that, so far, he had no idea who was behind this whole thing in the first place. Then there was the nagging thought that he had that the whole thing was a setup and he could very well be walking right into a trap.

Sergei worked long into the night going over all the contracts that he’d accepted as well as those he’d turned down in the hope of getting a clue about who was behind this. It was well after midnight before he sat back and looked at the list of seven names, the magnificent seven who could be his nemesis at the end of an encrypted email.

He went to bed having concluded that he needed to call in a few more favours and had sent off one email that would hopefully kick things off. For once, he was glad that he’d made a decision very early in his career to never take on a contract on a British subject. He had developed a soft spot for his adopted home as a teenager and knew that future, he would need a safe place to retire to, and also a place where he wasn’t wanted for any crimes. That decision alone made it impossible for him to carry out this mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’s’ wishes.

His last act that night was to send an email from his cloud account to one of those old friends. That friend was the one person he knew who could legally penetrate the wall of mystery that surrounded this case. As much as Sergei hated it, this was one time when he needed some help.

---

[In a coffee shop in Windsor not far from the Castle, Sunday afternoon]

“Hello Sam. It is nice to see you again,” said Sergei as he sat down at the table.[1]

“Greetings Sergei. This is a surprise. Until I read your email, I thought you were in semi-retirement on Mallorca.”

Sergei smiled.
“I was hoping to make it permanent but as I said in my email, I’m being blackmailed into a job that I vowed a long time ago to never do. Firstly, because it is on a woman. Secondly, is that she is as far as I know, a British citizen and thirdly, it is to be done here. I’ve kept the promise I made to you when I got into this game and I have no intention of going back on it.”

“That is good to know because the last thing I would want to do is go after you for breaking our laws,” joked Sam, the head of a government department that does not officially exist.

‘Sam’ was not his real name but an alias that was adopted by the current head of that ghost department.

Sergei had helped the previous incarnation of Sam out in a tricky case, a few years before, and it was time for him to call in the favour. This ‘Sam’ had been deputy to the previous head of the department at the time. The favour had helped the department that does not exist take down a Serbian War Criminal who was working as an orderly in a retirement home in Pontefract, Yorkshire. That man went on trial at the Hague for his crimes and was sent to prison for life. It was the one contract that he’d accepted but had not delivered on. Sergei had returned the fee to the agent handling the deal after the arrest. When the man had been convicted and sentenced to life in jail, the full fee was paid to Sergei. He didn’t argue.

“I never imagined that you’d be on the wrong end of blackmail,” said Sam.

“Believe me Sam, it is not a nice feeling. I was well and truly hacked. My home, phone and computer. I guess I let my guard down a bit but whoever is behind this means business. The guy who broke into my home on Mallorca was found dead in Palma Harbour a couple of days later. That is not good, but it sends me a clear message. Your lot might know him, it was Ronnie Roberts. At one time, he was a low life enforcer for the Phillipson family.”

“I remember him. I’ll pass that the info about his passing onto to both ‘5’ and ‘6’.”

“I’m glad to be of some help.”

“It does help, but that does not explain the target that you have been given.”

Sergei handed over a printout of the email and photo that he’d received from his nemesis.

“On the surface of it, she looks like a pretty normal person. Why does this man want her dealt with is either personal, or it is a test to see just how far I would go? As you know, women are off limits for me. I’m divided about this whole thing. I don’t know if this is personal or is just a test that would lead to something more serious or is a big trap for me. Can you dig into her background a bit? Naturally, nothing overt or in any way that could tip the person behind all this off.”

“That’s what we do. As this is a threat to a British citizen then I’ll look into it without stepping on the toes of MI5.”

“Thanks. There is one other thing.”

Sam looked at Sergei with a smile on his face.
“There usually is.”

Sergei showed Sam photographs of the two men that he’d seen watching her the previous Friday.
“These two idiots didn’t even try to blend in so my guess is that they are expendable. I would not be surprised if they are tooled up. They need to be removed from the game. The bulges under their armpits got my interest. I saw a pearl handled Glock 19 in one of them. That means that they are a clear threat to everyone and not just me. Five years would do very nicely.”

He passed over a small slip of paper.
“This is the URL where those pictures are stored. They’ll be erased at midnight tonight.”

Sam nodded his head.
“I’ll get my team onto it as soon as I get back in town.”

“Thanks. The more information I can get on this person the better. I have my own suspicions about who it is but…”

“You are keeping that close to your chest?”

“Yeah. What you don’t know, you can’t accidentally let slip.”
Sam laughed.
“That’s your version of ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’. I do like it.”

Then he sighed.
“You have not lasted in the game for this length of time without being careful.”

Sam smiled.
“Sergei, you are almost paranoid about the care you take on your jobs. That’s why you are so good at it. If I even needed to hire a hitman who was not already on our books then you’d be at the top of the list and that is because you are both good and careful. I know for a fact that Interpol does not have a file on you, you are that good. Honestly, the evil that those you have removed from the game for all these years is incalculable. You have done humanity a service.”

“Thanks for the kind words, Sam, but I’m afraid that they won’t help very much given my current predicament. There is just too much that I don’t know for me to even think about doing the bidding of this ‘Uncle Vanya’ for some considerable time to come.”

“That’s good to know.”

Sam stood up and put on his coat.
“I’ll let you know anything as soon as we get it.”

“Thanks Sam. So far, there has been no pressure to carry out the operation, but my gut feeling is that it won’t last much longer.”

“Message understood.”

Sam moved away but stopped. He turned around and said,
“Be careful Sergei. This person whoever they are, are well organised even if they didn’t carry out their promise to destroy your French bolt-hole.”

Sergei nodded.

Sam left Sergei alone in the coffee shop.

---

[Monday Morning]
Sergei travelled to Wokingham after the morning rush was over where Ms Forester, had arranged for him to view a residential property that was available for short-term rental. The place was fully furnished and importantly, had a garage where he could park his van. An even bigger bonus was that the garage had private access to the kitchen. He could transport equipment in his van and unload it without other people seeing what he was doing.

Driving around the Reading area in a French-registered vehicle was hardly inconspicuous. It wasn’t ideal and getting another vehicle was on his list of things to do, but for the moment that could wait. Wokingham Railway Station was only a five-minute walk away from the house. Plus, he already had personal experience of the good bus service to Reading from the town. That fact alone took away any urgency to get another vehicle. Instead of standing out as a foreigner, he'd be just another commuter once he had obtained some clothes in one of the many shops in the town. That worked for him.

The house was more than adequate for his needs, so he agreed to rent it for three months. After returning to the Estate Agents offices in the town, he paid in full for both rentals and their deposits by bank transfer. When that was confirmed, he took possession of the keys to both properties from the very pleased agent, Ms Forester. He now had a base to work from.

Back in the van, Sergei headed for an industrial unit on the Slough Trading Estate. He had a contact there that would be able to supply him with the necessary security and surveillance equipment he'd need for the project. He'd already let his guard down once and had no intention of doing it again.

He stopped on the way to Slough, at a national tyre franchise and obtained a quote to get the shocks on the Nissan fixed. He decided to forego that for the time being. It wasn't that he could not afford it, but it would mean that the van was out of action for most of a day and while the case was still very fluid, he decided to postpone it.

It was late afternoon before he arrived back at the house in Wokingham with all the toys that he would need for the duration. He'd also stopped at a supermarket and bought some food and again at the Reading IKEA store to buy towels and bedding. He also purchased some of their excellent cloudberry jam.

During the viewing of the house, Sergei had asked about the lack of towels, sheets and the like. The agent had explained to him the difference between a 'fully furnished' and a 'furnished apartment'. One came with all the furniture and kitchen equipment, while the other one was all that, plus bed linen.

It didn’t matter much to Sergei, but it was good to know. He already knew that he could buy anything else that he needed in Reading. Ikea was not the most convenient store as regards access from Wokingham, but he knew from previous experience that he could get everything he needed there.

He drove the van into the garage and closed the door behind him. He didn't want any nosy parkers to see what he was removing from the van.

He spent the evening setting up security in the house. One of the items he'd bought was a 4G router. All the cameras and sensors were set up to upload to the cloud their recordings. Part of the package was a SIM card with unlimited data. He'd been caught out on a previous job with expiring mobile data limits and wasn't going to get trapped again.

He had another router and SIM card that would go into the office. He’d worked out during the viewing that he could set up a camera that looked down on the entrance to the building where the target worked. That way, he could observe what was going on without appearing at the window of the office.

With everything set up at the house, he went back to his hotel for a final night and checked out the next morning. While in his room, he verified that he could access the security cameras remotely. Once that was settled, he enabled motion detection on all the cameras. If anyone broke in and went anywhere other than the kitchen the alarms would sound. The backdoor had a 'cat flap' that could not be locked. That and the evidence of cat paws on the kitchen floor told him that the house had an occasional feline visitor. He just needed to make sure that he left nothing of importance in the kitchen when he wasn't there.

---

Sergei set up the equipment in the office early the next morning. Always an early riser, he was done and having a Coffee and a Bacon Baguette at 'Pierre's' by 08:00. While munching on the baguette, he checked the remote access to the office cameras. Because the cleaning crew worked outside normal hours, he could not enable the motion detection as he had done at the house.

Suitably refreshed, he returned to the office and began working through several hunches whilst keeping an eye on the monitor that showed the entrance to the company where 'she' worked.

He mentally rebuked himself for not using her name, Ayesha Robinson.
The name meant nothing to him other than that there was a Tim Robinson who had been a bully at his school until he tried it on with Sergei. The younger and quite diminutive Sergei showed the bully that he was no pushover. Tim Robinson ended up being pushed stark naked into the local river, and with a promise that next time he'd be weighed down with a bag of cement. Sergei was never bothered again.

Sergei watched and waited for three days. He concluded that Ayesha was a woman of habit. That pleased him no end, but he wasn't getting anywhere with finding out who the man posing as this mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ was, and who was the reason why he was sitting in an office in Reading in October 2019.

---

Friday afternoon came along and Sergei had heard nothing from Sam so he decided that it was time to make contact with Ayesha. He’d had plenty of time to work on a plan for this moment. It was time to put it into practice.

Before leaving the office, Sergei printed out a simple document that he hoped would explain a few things to Ayesha in a way that would cause as little alarm as possible. After all, it is not every day that you get told that there is a contract out on your life…

---

Sergei followed Ayesha to the bus stop just like he’d done the previous week. Just like the previous week, she boarded the bus and went straight up the stairs to the top deck. Sergei stayed on the lower deck and waited.

Just like the week before, Ayesha got off the bus at the Winnersh Crossroads stop and headed for the supermarket. This time Sergei followed her.

Keeping a respectful distance, he followed her into the shop and like her, he took a basket. Unlike her, he had no list of items to buy but that didn’t matter. Ayesha had a definite purpose about her. She clearly knew where everything she wanted was located inside the store. Sergei followed at a distance and picked a few items that he needed. When he caught Ayesha looking at the items in her basket, he knew that it was time to head for the checkout.

He paid for his items plus a carrier bag and headed for the exit. As he left the checkout area, he saw Ayesha begin to scan her items in the self-service area. She would not be far behind him.

Sergei waited outside. Now it was just a matter of timing.

As she walked out of the supermarket, he was about to make his move when the thing that had been niggling him for more than two days came roaring back to the front of his mind.

“I wonder?” he muttered to himself before disappearing into the shadows.

[to be continued]

[1] Sam is the head of the mysterious department that first appears in the 'Off the Books' story
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book-page/78656/books