The few dozen words in the summary part of the email from ‘Sam’ was enough to turn Sergei’s world upside down a few dozen times.

That evening he read the documents through twice before going to bed. Sam had included more than 30 attachments as well as a twelve-page intelligence report that was in his opinion, clearly the work of MI6, but with all the nice juicy bits redacted. There was more than enough unredacted detail to make him wonder just what he’d gotten himself into.

There was so much data in the email that he decided to sleep on it and resume his deliberations the next morning once he’d gone to the office in Reading. He was getting used to being seen going about his business in an orderly manner. This was his normal way of working. If his current understanding of the situation was correct, the mysterious ‘Uncle Vanya’ would be looking for changes in his behaviour as a sign that something was about to happen. That was one thing that he was not going to give his nemesis.

Not long after resuming his work on the documents the following morning, Sergei started to curse himself for getting into this mess but stopped short of doing so. The person posing as Uncle Vanya had led him by the nose to Reading and to a supposed victim who turned out to be someone who was a skilled operator in the business of eliminating people a.k.a. assassination, just like he was.

The dossier made it as clear as day. Ayesha was Uncle Vanya.

Those four words had been like a dagger penetrating his heart at first. Then logic prevailed and he began to think long and hard about the case right from the start.

Sergei had to admire her plan. It was unlike anything that he’d encountered before. She wanted to trap him in the act of trying to kill her, and either kill him or turn him into the law. The reason why was a mystery for another day. While he'd taken care of several very bad people in his career, as far as he knew, he'd not pissed off any of their families to such an extent that they'd put out a contract on him but there was always a chance that it could be the reason why she wanted him dead.

In his mind, there had to be another reason for her to want to eliminate him just as he was going to retire. That reason was at the moment, not that important. Staying alive and while he didn’t want to, Uncle Vanya needed to have the curtain come down on it final performance ASAP.

After some reflection, Sergei concluded that she would never turn him into the law. That would cause a lot of questions to be asked and could, if Sam’s data was correct, lead to her arrest and him walking away free and clear. He was certain that choice would not happen. That left her wanting to eliminate him.

Nevertheless, Sergei sent out a couple of emails to the agents that handled ‘contracts’ that people like him dealt with. He wasn’t asking who had put a contract out on him, but just if there was. That way, no breach of confidentiality would be broken. In his line of work, trust was very hard to come by and very easy to lose.

He spent the rest of the day going through each attachment very carefully. As he did so, a picture of who she was and how she operated became clear. She’d been in business for at least five years, but her background before that was practically non-existent. Only a few sketchy details of a childhood spent in Russia, Iran and Kuwait before being granted asylum in the UK in 2005. Her father had been a diplomat in Saddam Hussain's regime who had married a British woman of Russian descent, in Kuwait in 1996. Other than her father being a Christian and not a Muslim, everything else was a big fat blank.

A second five-page document that was almost entirely redacted, but with an MI6 heading, it was more proof that there was a lot more about her than was for his eyes and possibly even Sam’s unless he needed to know or in Sam’s case suck up to ‘M’, the head of ‘6’.

Another document listed the contracts that she’d been associated with. A few of the names were familiar to him as jobs that he’d had passed bidding on mostly because he was busy with other jobs at the time. The picture of her became even clearer when another document showed the names of seven very nasty people that he had eliminated as being jobs that she’d bid on only to be elbowed out by his good self.

Assassins like himself were often part of a bidding process for a contract. A third party would handle the bidding as well as hold the fee for the job. It was in their interest to obtain the lowest price for the job. That increased their take on the deal, but it was a balancing act. If the cheapest bid failed to do the job, then their reputation would take a hit.

Sergei totted up the value of the jobs that he’d won in competition with her from memory. This was not the sort of thing you wrote down anywhere. He was slightly surprised to find that it came to just under 4.6M euros. That was more than enough to make someone in their rather unique line of work more than a bit pissed off. That might be reason enough for all this ‘Uncle Vanya’ farce but he wasn’t sure about that being the only reason. She could have killed him many times if money was the only reason. There had to be something else but that was for another day.

Sergei read the documents at least three times and made some notes for the meeting with Sam the next day. By the time that was done, it was dark outside and the streets of Reading were quieting down. After closing up the office, he took the train to Wokingham and made himself some Spaghetti Bolognese before checking on his emails.

The last of his enquiry emails had been answered by the time Sergei was ready for bed. None of them had a contract out on him. That made it clear to Sergei that she was working on her own here and directly for the client. Someone he had wronged in the past wanted him dead. Sergei resisted trying to go down that rat hole. Doing so would only divert him from the task at hand, namely, staying alive.

---

Sergei awoke with a start just before 08:00. Something had triggered his subconscious mind. At first, he could not put a finger on the issue. Then he remembered something he’d read not long before he’d called it a day. ‘She’ was like himself, a stickler for routine. Sergei had to be seen in Reading or she would start to suspect that something was going on. There was no doubt in his mind that someone on her side of the fence had clocked his comings and goings in the town.

In a bit of a panic, he got himself ready in record time and headed for the railway station. He had more than enough research to do and with his different 4G connections, it did not matter where he worked.

Sergei arrived at his temporary office just before 09:30. Any hopes he had of keeping the place secret were gone when he looked at the security tape for the previous night. Just before 04:20, someone had let themselves into the ‘office’ with a key. That was not good. The intruder saw the visible camera and covered it with a cloth. Thankfully, Sergei had put another camera into the false ceiling disguised as a smoke detector. This one gave him a great picture of the intruder who went about their business in a very methodical manner. He could ignore the search because there was nothing related to the case in the office at that time of night. What disturbed him was the very visible act of the intruder leaving not one, not two, but six different bugs before leaving the office just before 05:00. The intruder returned a few minutes later and removed the cloth that he’d put over the security camera.

Sergei reviewed the footage once more and looked at how the intruder moved. He concluded that it wasn’t ‘her’ but a man. The size of their feet told a similar story.

Sergei kicked himself for leaving the bug sniffer back in Mallorca. He could have done with it right now. He didn't so he had to guess that the bugs were both audio and video in nature. Luckily, none of the bugs were able to view the screen of his laptop because it faced a blank wall. He had to hope that whoever was listening/watching would not see anything out of the normal in his actions. He left the bugs in place and carried on with his work or that was what he hoped that the person on the other end would think.

He spent the rest of the morning trying to formulate a plan for how he would deal with the clear and present threat that she was presenting him. Sergei could have ended it with a single shot from 200m away but that would start a huge manhunt and also expose him to a lot of scrutiny from the press and police on four continents once his secrets were released into the wild which would happen in the event of her sudden death if that particular threat was true.

To put it bluntly, Sergei was up shit creek without a paddle. It was up to him to get the leaking boat to the shore where there was no quicksand or hungry alligators waiting to snaffle him up for lunch.

Sergei worked on a possible plan until almost 13:00. His stomach told him that it was time for some lunch. Instead of going to Pierre’s, he went into the station and bought a pasty and a cup of coffee from one of the shops there. Then he bought himself a return ticket to Didcot. He chose that town because there was a fast train due to leave in four minutes. With the ticket in hand, he hurried up the escalator and down to platform 8. A minute after getting on board, the doors closed and the train started to move.

A more relaxed Sergei had just enough time to eat the Pasty before the train slowed down for the Didcot stop. He prepared to get off the train, when he saw a familiar figure doing the same in the next carriage. It was one of the goons who had been observing their boss on the first day in Reading. Sergei was sure that he was tailing him.

Sergei used his phone and had just had enough time to buy an E-Ticket from Didcot to Swindon before the train came to a halt a Didcot. Sergei stepped off the train and found that he was following the man along the platform towards the stairs down from the platform. That was a stroke of luck. He ducked back onto the train just as the doors closed. Sergei waved at the man as the train pulled out of the station. The last view he had of the man was him preparing to make a phone call. Someone on the other end would not be happy. He sat down and drank his coffee knowing that she was clearly upping the ‘ante’. He mentally prepared himself for another tirade disguised as an email from Uncle Vanya.

Whilst the train sped westwards, he made a phone call to his gadget supplier in Slough. After a bit of horse-trading over price and delivery, they struck a deal. The supplier or one of his staff would meet him in the Gents toilet on Platform 8, at Reading Station in just under two hours. Sergei would exchange a wad of cash for a couple of devices that he needed to keep prying eyes out of his business as well as a bug detector. He needed to make sure that both his temporary residence and home were still 'bug-free'.

Sergei used the stop at Swindon to visit a couple of cash machines in the town to make sure that he had the requisite funds for the exchange before catching a train back to Reading.

---

[two and a half hours later]
Sergei breezed back into his office as if nothing had happened. He resolved to appear to whoever was watching and listening that he was acting as if nothing had happened even though it was a total lie. This is the game of cat and mouse that he enjoyed playing most of the time but not in this case.

He worked on his plan until it was time to close up for the night. Before he left, Sergei set up one of the devices that he’d bought that day. It was a signal jammer. Very illegal but covered the 2.5Ghz and 5Ghz bands over a radius of 30ft. The office bugs would go silent within a minute. After waiting a good five minutes, he quickly removed them from their hiding places and removed the batteries. Their lives were over.

After stuffing them along with all the papers into his shoulder bag, Sergei locked up the office and went home.

---

The first thing Sergei did when he arrived at his temporary home was to scan it for bugs. He found just the one. It was on the back of a door in the kitchen and disguised as a coat hook[1]. He knew the sort of thing it was because he’d used one just like it on a job a couple of years before. You could even buy them directly from Amazon in the USA. This sort of device relied upon someone coming to service it regularly to retrieve the images and to recharge the battery with a USB phone charger.

He didn’t remove the battery but cut the wire from it to the camera circuitry and extracted the micro-SD card which he cut up with a pair of scissors. Sergei made a mental note to flush the remains down the toilet that evening. Then he disguised the cut wire so that anyone coming to ‘service’ the bug would not notice that it had been disabled. His final action was to replace the micro-SD card with one that had been security erased. Anyone checking the bug would find a big fat nothing.

His multiple train journeys that day had allowed him to think a bit more about the whole thing. Having to turn the tables on a very determined adversary was a new thing for him. It made him even more determined for this to be his last job on the wrong side of the law. How to go about this was still an ever-present problem but he did know one thing and that was, he could not do this entirely on his own. Deep down Sergei knew that he needed the help of Sam and his bunch of unmentionables. He was fairly confident that Sam would be willing to help because there would be some money in it for his department at the end of the day.

Sergei composed an email via his cloud account and sent off the idea to him before calling it a day and going to bed.

---

Sergei was up early and out of the house well before 07:00. He took the train to Reading as normal but then caught a London train. The throng of commuters made finding a tail next to impossible. It didn’t matter one little bit. The most crowded trains were those that ran non-stop to Paddington. Sergei didn’t take one of those but one that stopped at places like Twyford, Maidenhead and Slough before making a final call at Ealing Broadway. That was his destination.

Quite a lot of people alighted from the train at Ealing Broadway. The Central and District line tube trains ran from there. He planned to take the District Line to Turnham Green where he’d change for a Richmond train. At Richmond, his plan was to take a train to Staines and with one last change, get to Windsor. This very roundabout way would make it next to impossible for someone to follow him without being noticed. He could have taken the bus, but he wanted to protect Sam as much as himself.

Sergei was waiting for Sam at the coffee shop in Windsor. Sam wasn’t smiling when he sat down with a cup of tea.

“What sort of giant Hornets’ nest have you stirred up this time Sergei?”

“Sorry about that Sam. It wasn’t my intention I assure you. I was enjoying my retirement in Mallorca before all this came along.”

“I know that Sergei, and it is my intention to do anything I can to allow that retirement to continue. What did you think of the documents?”

“Very enlightening. Please give your team a big thank you from me. They did a great job.”

“Thanks. I will pass it on.”
After a brief pause, Sam asked.
“What is your next move?”

“I’m going to have to do the job that she wants me to. As much as I don’t want to, I can’t see any other way.”

“I think that you are right about that.”
“This came in late last night. It gives some more background on the target and her family.”
Sam passed over a buff-coloured envelope.

Sergei guessed what Sam was alluding to.
“Thanks Sam. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

They shook hands as Sergei left Sam to finish his tea.

---

Sergei read the document that Sam had given him in Windsor as he travelled by bus to Wokingham. It made some interesting reading especially about ‘her’ and someone that he’d already met, Yvonne Forrester. Her bio showed that she’d been adopted by Mr and Mrs Forrester as a six-month-old baby. Her birth mother was none other than the mother to ‘her’, Ayesha Robinson. Robinson was their mothers’ English maiden name. Her Russian family name was Sakalova. Sergei knew one person with that name in his old country. This was a General Sakalov. He’d mysteriously fallen out of a window in Petropavlovsk just after Putin had become President for the second time. He didn’t know if they were related but it was not unheard of for wealthy Russians to send their families abroad for educational purposes.

Ayesha was in Kuwait when Yvonne was born in London. Something told Sergei that the marriage had broken down. Yvonne’s mother had died six days after giving birth from a prolapsed uterus. The chances were that Yvonne didn’t know that she had a sister. The information that Sam had provided told him that their father had died in 2005 in a hospital in Qatar from cancer. That was probably why Ayesha came to the UK.

There was a big fat blank where there should be the reasons/motivations for her to have become an assassin. The whole case had gotten a lot more interesting. The Russian FSB was always on the lookout for new recruits. Someone with at least some Russian heritage would be an obvious target. Sergei had been approached more than once since he surfaced in the UK. Both times, those approaches failed. The last messenger was sent back to Russia with two broken fingers. The trigger fingers on each hand had essential nerves and tendons cut. That was an old KGB warning that he’d learned from his father. No more approaches were made.

---

The next morning, Sergei set up a new motion-sensitive camera in his kitchen. It was focused on the door where the camera bug was located. He guessed that whoever had installed the bug had swept the house for cameras and bugs first. Sergei hoped that the new camera would remain undetected until it had done its job. He configured it to send the data to a new cloud account as well as store the images locally. Unless the discoverer was familiar with this model of camera, they might not know about the dual storage feature.

When he was satisfied with the security of the house, Sergei headed for Wokingham Railway Station and a train to Reading.

To his relief, his office security had not been breached in the night but there was an email from Uncle Vanya.

“You think that you are so smart, don’t you? My associate on the train was there to distract you while I made another visit to your so-called office. Then you wiped my bugs. That will cost you. I am sure that you know how much devices of that quality cost.

When am I going to see some action then? I won’t wait forever.

Uncle Vanya.”

Sergei’s immediate reaction to the email was to reply there and then but luckily, he restrained himself. The words ‘react in haste, repent for eternity’ came to his mind. He drafted a reply but didn’t send it. He resolved that he would let it sit there until at least the end of the day. Given the new information he had on her, Sergei was surprised that ‘she’ hadn’t come and planted the bugs herself. The man doing the deed, was one of the two jerks in the leather jackets.

Sergei checked his cloud email via one of the ten different VPNs that he had set up. This particular VPN made his presence appear to come from South Africa. Sam had left him a reply sometime in the early hours of the morning.

“We, as in my people would love the chance to help in the background to take down this nasty person. ‘6’ are also after her because she ‘dealt; with one of their operatives in Angola last year. Any dirt she might have on you will be fair game for us. But, just remember that I have enough on you to bury you deep in a Thai jail for life should you go back on our agreement. I know that you hinted that this was going to be your last job so I will be holding you to that commitment. I will set my team on the hunt for both the dirt and geld on her if you know what I mean. Just tell me when it will be going down and we will act and clean up after you. Don't mess this up even if you are better than this nasty SOB.
Sam
“

Sergei stared at the email for a good ten minutes. It was good to know that he had Sam and his team behind him but the threat was there for him to see. Sergei crafted a reply.

“Sam,
I’ll do my best not to screw this one up but if I do then please make sure that she also loses.
Chameleon.
“

Sam to Sergei’s surprise replied almost immediately.

“Wilco. Please read the attached and let me know your thoughts. It only came in an hour or so ago.
Sam.”

Sergei read the attached file with incredulity. It listed all the ‘victims’ of Assassin Ayesha and how they’d been ‘disposed of’. Like many women, it seemed that poison was her favourite weapon. He would have to be careful of her should he get close to her when doing the dirty deed.

There was also some more information on her sister. The assessment had been done by MI5 and indicated that Yvonne did not know about her sister, but that Ayesha was fully clued up about Yvonne. It explained why Ayesha had come to the Reading area. The last paragraph of the document revealed that Yvonne had been the sales agent when Ayesha purchased her home in Winnersh some eighteen months earlier. Sergei admired her nerve but that is what a successful has to have in bucket loads if they are to survive in the game.

Other than the contacts relating to the purchase, there had not been any communication between them. That mystified Sergei but it did provide a clue about how his office and home addresses were known to Ayesha. If… if Yvonne’s phone or work computer had been bugged or infected with malware it could explain the leaking of that data. He still had doubts because there were more than a dozen estate agents in Reading. It was more than likely to be a coincidence but… there was always a chance of it not being that, but because of the deviousness of Ayesha, he'd played right into her hands.

---

The news about the existence of a younger sister complicated matters a great deal. If he dealt with the older one, then legally, Yvonne would become entitled to the contents of the estate. That would entail a lot of questions and the inevitable involvement of the authorities. That left him with no alternative, 'She' would have to disappear without a trace and the link between them should remain one way only.

That evening, Sergei started to re-plan his campaign from the beginning. This time, he wanted the event that dealt with his adversary to be a matter of self-defence. His target’s passion for poison or drugs presented him with a problem, but that choice of weapon was not unknown to Sergei. He’d only used it twice when posing as a woman. The of some types of poison allowed the assassin the opportunity to look into their victims' eyes as they died. He'd read some papers on the preferred methods of killing and how they differ between the sexes. Poison was in many cases used by people who had been abused or even tortured by the target. Seeing the abuser die was often regarded as the start of their rehabilitation process. Sergei decided there and then, that she'd probably try that on him. It was down to him to make sure that he was the one to survive the attack and not her. All the evidence he had seemed to indicate that her ‘war on him’ was an act of revenge.

He did some more research into her ‘jobs’. The list that Sam had provided gave him the perfect starting points for the search. He checked the records or those available to the public and found that curare was a common factor in the vast majority of the cases where poison was used. That matched the data from Sam’s team. The effects of curare paralysed the victim but they were aware of their circumstances which made it perfect for a revenge killing. He'd read that some of his kind used a poison such as curare to tell the victims about all their crimes while incapacitated. It was gruesome, cruel, and just the sort of thing he could imagine was right up her street.

Sergei smiled at just how easy it was to connect the dots in those deaths. He’d almost always varied the way he had completed the contract. That was a way of avoiding leaving a signature which in many cases leads to the downfall of serial killers. In his opinion, she had been quite lazy in this respect. The only time he'd used exactly the same method on two jobs, had been when he was contracted to eliminate two brothers who jointly ran a crime family in Athens. The use of the same method had told the family that it was just the one contract.

He went to bed happy with part of his plan settled, but with a lot of questions and uncertainties remaining. The one thought uppermost in his mind was ‘what if this one was different?’ That was all part of the game of life and death for assassins.

[to be continued]

[1] This sort of device is part of a lawsuit going through the turgid US legal system.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/05/amazon_camera_hook_ca...