I'm posting this a little early as I have a solo story ready to post on the 25th. Not really Christmas themed but hopefully, a bit of feelgood for these dark grey days of December. The last part of this tale will appear on the 29th. [now back to the story]

---

[the following morning]
Even an email from ‘Uncle Vanya’ that had arrived at 04:11 that morning failed to take the smile off his face.

“Well Sergei, aren’t you the smarty pants. Avoiding my man at the station and hopping on a train to Bristol was not in our plan, was it? How are you going to deal with her then? Isn’t it about time that you shared it with me? I’m going to find out anyway… So?”

Uncle Vanya.”

Sergei read the email as he ate his breakfast. The contents had proved one thing, and that was that one of his phones had been bugged or hacked or both. It just made the execution of his plan even easier. He knew which one it was because he knew which one it was that he’d used to book a return ticket from Reading to Bristol. He’d used his other phone to rent the car at Swindon railway station. His habit of keeping things as far apart as possible had worked again. In future, that phone would only be used when he wanted his nemesis to know about it.

He refrained from replying to the latest missive from Uncle Vanya. If that made ‘Uncle’ angry then even better.

After a leisurely breakfast, Sergei went into the Reading office. This time, he didn’t even try to dodge his tail who on that day, was the woman with dreadlocks. As he left the station, he noticed that her apparent down-at-heel appearance was nothing more than a costume. Her nails looked expensive and not what someone pushing a supermarket trolley full of her possessions would spend their money on. A flash of an expensive watch on her wrist, as she negotiated a kerb with the trolley, confirmed his suspicion. He wouldn't put it past 'Uncle Vanya' to have put a camera in the shopping trolley. She was that sort of person.

That woman had a lot to learn when it came to disguises. Sergei could have taught her but then he would have had to kill her and he was never one to take out people who were not on the contract. He would have never made such a shoddy job of a disguise.

Sergei spent the morning reviewing his plans. He had to wait around the office for a delivery so it wasn’t a wasted exercise.

The delivery was made just before midday which was normal for the Royal Mail. He watched the lady postie leave on his CCTV system. He saw the woman with the deadlocks manoeuvre her trolley to follow the postie as she went about her business. To Sergei, that confirmed his suspicions that there was a camera in the trolley. That gave him a message to send to Uncle Vanya.

“Vanya,
I wonder if Thames Valley Police/Crimestoppers might like a call about your watcher with the dreadlocks? Those photos of a postman going about her business might be the prelude to a terrorist attack. Interfering with the Royal Mail is a serious crime or didn’t you know that? (Postal Services Act 2000).
Honestly, I would have thought that you were more subtle than that. Why not call off your dogs? You should know my habits by now.
Oh, and that is rather an expensive watch for an apparently homeless person to wear, isn’t it? Add that to her expensive nail job, her attempt at portraying a homeless person clearly needs a lot of work.
For your interest, I received a new phone in the mail. After all, you or one of your associates has hacked my phone. How else would you know about my ticket to Bristol?

As for my plans, they are coming along. I am down to three possible solutions to the problem. For your information, I have not used any of those options before on any of my jobs.
Sergei.
“

He hoped that might spur Ayesha into action. It might not be for a few days but he expected something to happen sooner or later.

Sergei carried on going about his business as if nothing had happened. He decanted the curare into two bottles. One of which he kept inside one of his cameras in the office. The other was in the cupboard under the sink at his home. The latter was disguised as a bottle of bleach.

---

Nothing happened for two days as he'd expected. The phoney war ended when the Postman delivered an invitation to dinner at Ayesha’s home. It was from her even if it purported to come from ‘Uncle Vanya’, the address was that of ‘her’ if the reports he’d received from Sam were correct. That confirmed her identity and that she knew nothing about ‘Sam’ and his merry crew.

Sergei sat and looked at it for over an hour. He was trying to work out why she was inviting him to dinner. That must mean that she was coming out into the open and wanted to trap him.

He took a photo of the invitation and sent it to both Sam and Naomi. She was his secondary backup in case Sam’s team for some political reason could not do the job. He sorely hoped that that particular insurance policy would not be needed. Even after doing that, he felt very exposed. He hadn't expected this turn of events at all. He'd never given it a moment's thought… until now.

The more he thought about it, moving the action to her home turf was a very smart move indeed. She’d have all the advantages of home turf. At first, it seemed to be insurmountable with little chance of him coming out on top.

After a lot of thought, Sergei came up with a possible plan but he could not do it himself but first, he sent a curt reply to ‘Uncle Vanya’.

“Uncle Vanya,
Thank you for the invitation. Sadly, I will have to decline. When I entered the assassination business, I made a solemn pledge not to meet anyone involved with the job before, during or after. I fully intend to uphold that pledge.

Chameleon.
“

He hoped that would give him a little more time to organise his counterattack.

By now, Sergei knew the times of the trains from Reading to Wokingham during the day off by heart. At one point every other hour the three platforms used for services to Waterloo and Redhill/Gatwick were empty for around five minutes. That would be the perfect time to make a phone call to the person who was able to help him carry out a little breaking and entering. He would appear to have missed his train and was calling someone to rearrange a meeting or something like that. Appearances can lie.

Now that he had the next step worked out, he became like a caged animal as he waited for the right time to leave the office and do a little bit of shopping before heading to the station.

---

Thirty-three minutes after leaving the office, Sergei almost ran into the station. As he got to Platform 5, the train for Waterloo was just leaving. He’d have to wait for nearly fifteen minutes for the next Gatwick train to arrive.

While he made out that he was disappointed, inside, he was as pleased as punch. His ‘tail’ had given up when he’d gone from the office to Pierre’s in St Mary’s Butts, and purchased his lunch. On the way back, he’d bought another new but slightly used phone and a SIM card. He needed another 100% clean phone for this part of the operation.

Sergei walked along the platform and sat down on one of the benches. He glanced back towards the station concourse and saw the woman with the dreadlocks talking on a phone. She was too far away to hear him make an essential call.

His first step was to send a text to Naomi. It said just one word, ‘physostigmine’. That was the name of the antidote to curare. It would identify that it was him calling from a new phone.

Sergei waited for five minutes before calling Naomi. She answered on the first ring.

“Hello Naomi.”

“I thought that might get your attention.”

“Yes, I do need your help. Fancy a spot of B&E?”

“Good. I need you to break into ‘her’ house and leave a few things behind.”

“That’s right. I have to be seen to be doing nothing out of the ordinary. Their surveillance of me will give me the perfect alibi.”

“I’ll email you the details in an hour or so. But… this woman is not to be underestimated. I’d give the place a good checking over before even setting foot on the property. I’d normally do it but I don’t want to be seen or tracked to anywhere near her home for obvious reasons. With my tails in Reading, I have a good alibi. She knows that I am a loner in my work. Therefore, she won’t be expecting someone to be casing her home on my behalf.”

“Yes, I am serious. She killed that guy in Hawaii by putting poison on the Lei that he was given at a civic ceremony. That takes ingenuity. Now that she has officially told me her address, she may be setting a trap for me.”

“No Naomi. I’m just going to be seen to be acting as I have been ever since I got here. As I said, normality is my alibi.”

“Thanks Naomi.”

Sergei hung up feeling a lot happier. The next train to Wokingham was just arriving. He’d timed that very well.

---

Once home, he swept the place for new bugs. His camera had detected an unwelcome visitor. They’d gone straight for the camera that looked like a coat hanger. It was one of the goons who had been tailing him intermittently in Reading. It was clear that he had a key to his home. That was not good, but only to be expected given the quality of the person he was up against.

He watched his visitor replace the old coat hanger bug with a new one and left. Sergei was surprised that he didn’t check the old one for any images but that would have taken time. He guessed that it would not be long before he received an email from ‘Uncle Vanya’ complaining about the cost of another bug that he’d destroyed.

Sergei disabled the new bug in the same way as before and go on with sweeping the house. This time, he found two new bugs. One was placed to cover the front door and the other one covered the backdoor. The exit through the garage was clear unless a bug had been planted across the road. These cameras were not that well disguised, so he suspected that they’d been placed in a rush or by an amateur. It didn’t matter that much. Now that he knew of their existence, he could use them to his advantage should the opportunity arise. He noted their type and knew from past experience that he could easily make them send images to two destinations.

It was getting close to time for him to turn the tables on her but before he did that, there were still a couple of jobs to do.

---

Sergei had developed a habit of documenting each case before he carried out each job after reading a John Le Carre novel on a voyage from Cape Town to Buenos Aries. That was after the job where he’d met Naomi. Something in the text had made him think about not repeating his own mistakes.

Since then, he had documented every case in excruciating detail. With a conclusion to the case about to happen, it was time for that to happen with this one. He travelled into Reading and purchased another used laptop. Once again, this was something that he did for every case. This was a single-use device. It would only be used for this purpose. Once the files had been uploaded to a site in Germany, he would wipe the hard drive with a military spec eraser and then leave the device in a public place or on a train for some lucky person to find. No matter how many bugs or bits of malware had been put on his main laptop, none of them would show what he was doing. Those bits of spyware would show him referencing various documents that had been viewed before, but that was it. The whole idea was to appear to be doing nothing out of the ordinary. A new VPN would hide his upload activity using the data allowance of the new phone.

Some people might call him paranoid but it was all part of his insurance policy.

Only one person in the world besides Sergei could access the upload and that was Dieter Muller, his lawyer from Hanover. The upload would trigger a message to Dieter. If Sergei did not contact Dieter within five days of the upload, Dieter would read the files and send them to the appropriate law authorities.

People in his line of work could not get life insurance unless they underwrote it themselves. He had a lot of dirt on the people who had employed him to do their dirty work. If he was deceased then at least he could make sure that the people he’d worked for got their collars felt.

It was well past dawn when Sergei uploaded the last part of the material. He did a stretch and walked around his temporary home. As far as places to stay while on a job, this had been one of the best.

While he made himself some breakfast, he began to think about what he should do after this job was over. Apart from retiring, there was almost a blank canvas in front of him. Deep down he knew that he could not remain in his Puerto Soller home now that it was known to be home to at least one assassin, even if he came out on top in this case. He’d have to look for a new refuge. That lead him to think about Yvonne.

After a moment with her in his mind, Sergei mentally rebuked himself. There was no point in thinking about something that most probably would never happen even if he was able to come out on top in his battle with Ayesha.

---

Sergei was not used to waiting for others to do their job. He was a successful assassin because he did not rely on other people for major parts of his work. This time, it was different. He had to rely on Sam and his team to clean up after him, just as he was relying on Naomi to break into Ayesha’s home before he could move to the next phase of his plan. This was not good for his nerves.

He tried to make things appear as normal as before but he was not confident that he managed it.

Three days passed before Naomi sent him a sitrep using a new public/private key pair that he'd set up before his last meeting with her.

“Sergei,
Not good news. Her place is bottled up tighter than Fort Knox. She has the highest security I've seen outside of places like the Louvre. She has placed infrared and UV lasers all over her house, for when she's not there. Outside it is just as bad. Even a rat set off the outside lights. There are motion sensitive IR cameras covering every possible access route except via parachute onto the roof but that is out of the question. There is a 133kV grid pylon less than 30m from her back door so that option is out.

I watched her arrive and she disabled the security with a radio device. From the data that my scanner received, the device appears to be a token exchange unit that changes the token keys after every use. Almost impossible to crack without physical access to her part of the device.

The only word I can use to describe her is ‘Paranoid’. I’m afraid that you are going to have to get her to come to you.
Sorry,
Naomi.
PS
The solution to all your other problems will be delivered tomorrow at your office.
“

If Sergei had possessed a cat, he would have kicked it at that moment. The email reinforced the fact that Ayesha was a worthy foe but at the same time, he was no farther forward in his quest to deal with her. The only upside of the whole thing was that it was Naomi who had discovered the security system that she had set up at her home. She had been a top security operative for MI6 for almost 20 years before transitioning from Stephan to Naomi. After that, she’d run a security consultancy. He thanked all the gods in every heaven, that he hadn’t tried to break into her house. He would have blundered into the external defences like an amateur, which was probably what Ayesha had been counting on.

He read the email at least a dozen times before shredding it with a DOD-approved file deletion tool.
Getting her to come to him would be easier said than done. As he sat at his kitchen table, he had zero ideas about how to move forward and that was usual for him.

The arrival of the post lady with another small package for him the next morning did nothing to help in his quest for even an inkling of an idea. He had nothing, zilch, nada, nowt and there were no signs of that changing anytime soon.

Uncle Vanya would be getting rather impatient for some action. It was entirely possible for her to come after him. That thought sent a shudder through his whole body. Uncertainty was part and parcel for an assassin, but not when you might become the target.

[to be continued]