From Filth & Mud (18 page)

Aiden landed in Moscow at 8 p.m. on a Friday, though days and times were inconsequential throughout most of the country in the dead of its January winter. He was jet-lagged from his sixteen-hour flight aboard his Gulfstream, a brand spanking new toy that he had decided to splurge on given the $100 million dollar advance that Collier Analytics had been given on behalf of the terrified American taxpayer. Though he had flown in the utmost of luxury, pampered by an exceptionally eager crew of gorgeous stewardesses, he could not fight against his internal clock which had lost so many hours. As the door to the cabin opened, his exhaustion was beaten away by a funneled blast of penetrating cold. His body was immediately immolated by ice. He had been warned by the stewardesses, and his translator slash fixer, Sasha, that he needed to drink a little vodka before landing because it was the only way to stay alive. He had resisted at first, but then heeded their warnings once he realized that they were gravely serious.

As Aiden froze in place, Sasha trundled up behind him and laughed heartily
.
“Maybe you should have drunk a whole bottle!” Sasha slapped him across the back and handed him a bottle which Aiden quickly brought to his numbed lips and gulped. The burning warmth of the alcohol conspicuously burned its way down his esophagus and into his stomach. Now emboldened, Aiden stepped through the cabin door and shivered at the grim expanse before him. The sky held still above the earth as snowflakes swirled along the tarmac like icy tumbleweeds, piling against the dimly lit hanger that stood alone in the desolate distance. Down below, lost in the snowy wind, stood a lone figure, that was barely visible through his nearly frozen corneas. Unwavering against the all-engulfing, wintry wasteland, the figure climbed methodically up the stairs and met him at the top. It motioned for him to follow, pivoted, and descended.

“What are you waiting for?” Aiden was not sure if he or Sasha had spoken. He was delirious,and Sasha was emphatically drunk
.
Not seeing any other option, Aiden followed. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he could faintly see the figure standing next to a dark limousine, its outline defined by the light that it emitted from its headlights and refracted in the fog of icy snow. Aiden approached with caution as a second figure emerged from the driver’s seat, this one much bigger than the first. The second figure opened the back door of the limousine and the first disappeared within.

Sasha jogged up alongside of Aiden and continued without hesitating, singing loudly into the wind, bags in tow. As Aiden neared, the second figure, now towering over him, swooped down and hoisted his bags out of his frostbitten hands. At that moment, he imagined what an encounter with a polar bear or yeti would be like—quick and painless he hoped. Freed from the bonds of his bags and the clutches of the cold, Aiden entered into the warmth of the sedan and gazed upon an unexpected face. His eyes began to thaw along with the rest of his now tingling body.

The darkness could not hide her steely gaze nor could it hide her beauty. “Yulia,” the equally steely voice broke the silence. She thrust her hand out suddenly, and Aiden recoiled rather noticeably. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the way the vodka slowed his ability to process movement, but either way he was not making a good impression. He obliged the handshake as his vocal cords cracked—still not fully thawed. 

“Aiden,” he managed.

“So you are Mr. Collier?” The questioning tone revealed disappointment.

Aiden nodded meekly.

“And you are the man that wants to find Tovarich?”

Aiden answered again with a meek nod and a half-thawed smile.

“You have come a long way Mr. Collier, maybe for nothing?” Yulia’s unwavering eyes sifted through his mind and found the spark of fear that had emerged three weeks before when his prized coder had gone silent. He had searched the usual, Darknet stomping grounds to no avail. He had even tried to coax Tovarich out of hiding by daring him to hack into a closed-circuit television system that was protected by his best firewalls and polymorphic algorithms which if cracked, would have revealed a brand new Rosso-Corsa Ferrari 458 parked in a private garage below the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya. Yet unnervingly, there it had remained for three long weeks.

Aiden hoped that the car would be gone when he arrived at the Leningradskaya. He hoped that Tovarich was just being an impetuous teenager. Rumors had circled through the coder community that Tovarich had been picked up by the FSB for hacking into one of the Russian President’s secret accounts, and diverting some funds for his personal piggybank in the Caymans. Some had Tovarich being picked up by the CIA for tapping into the uplink of a Global Hawk drone, and diverting it from its Syrian area of operations into a loitering pattern over a Grecian nude beach. That story made it to the major media outlets. The tabloids explained that the CIA was secretly snooping on nude people to get their jollies. The latter sounded like something Tovarich might do.

However, after three weeks of searching, his team had come up empty. Tovarich like all hackers of his ilk, loved leaving breadcrumbs for whoever was smart enough to track them down to a specific virtual or physical site where they could discuss business or share information. It was a way for coders to socialize with one another, but as with all social circles, there was a hierarchy. The more elite the coder, the smaller the circle he or she inhabited. His team members, it appeared, were not elite enough to track Tovarich, and he hated not having the very best.

Aiden was so lost in thought that he did not realize that Yulia had not taken her piercing eyes off of him. Sasha was sloppy drunk, and he was trying vainly to gain Yulia’s attention. She made it deathly apparent that she was not interested in anything that the drunken fool had to say. The limousine made a sudden turn that robbed Sasha of his balance. The drunken man hurtled uncontrollably toward Yulia’s lap. Aiden barely caught a glimpse—a blur really—of Yulia’s leg as it extended into Sasha’s face, her boot heel finding the point of the drunkard’s chin. Luckily for Sasha, he was too drunk to feel it and he had landed on top of the limousine minibar. At least there he could soothe his aching jaw with more spirits once he regained consciousness. Aiden laughed at the display and turned his unsteady gaze back to Yulia.

“I didn’t like him either,” he panned.

Yulia shrugged and continued, “So where do you believe your Tovarich is?”

“I truthfully have no idea.” Yulia was suspicious. “No, no. Honestly I’m not bullshitting you.” Aiden was trying to relax, but Yulia’s intensity was palpable.

“So what are you doing in Moscow?”

“I’m going to go to the hotel to wait for him. It’s not like I’ll be suffering while I’m there. I’m going to enjoy some good food, and some more of this country’s great vodka! Maybe a little dance?” Sober Aiden would not have attempted the last insinuation, but he was hardly sober.  Aiden hoped that the overture would not be similarly obliged with a boot to the face.

Yulia softened, smiling coyly, “You dance, Aiden?” He was no longer Mr. Collier, and her voice abandoned its previous steely tone as it rang with the ivory-tickled timbre of a well-tuned temptress. The staccato of her plodding, Russian accent softened subtly and floated gracefully into his ears. He managed a weak nod in response, like a teenager at his first school dance.

“Well then maybe we can dance while you are in Moscow. After all, there is no reason why you should just work. You must always leave a little room for play, Aiden.” Yulia leaned close and bumped her shoulder into his, allowing her ample chest to rest comfortably on his arm. “When in Moscow, do as the Muscovites. Eat, drink, dance, this will be good for you.” Her emerald-tinted eyes drew him into a trance. “Don’t worry Aiden, your fox will turn up.” Yulia smiled wryly and pointed her leather-gloved finger to the ushanka, which sat atop her head, the furry exterior bearing the pelt of its previous wearer. In that moment, Aiden was overcome by the tantalizing sensation that he was the fox, and he could not think of a better fate than to have his skin wrapped around Yulia, the ravenous huntress.

- - - - - - -

Tovarich came as advertised. He was every bit the awkward, nerdy coder that Aiden had envisioned and he was brilliant. There was one thing that Aiden had not counted on, and that was simply that he was a
she,
and
her
name was Irina. She was a slender, gregarious type, once you pierced her guarded shell, which was cloaked in the trappings of alt-culture, urban Russian youth. She looked like a member of an all-girl, Russian punk band and though she shared many of their cultural critiques, she was smart enough to actually rage against the machine in an effective manner.

Irina sat across from him and downed her second shot of vodka. Two shots of whiskey were waiting on deck.

“Thanks for the Ferrari,” she said before she downed the first whiskey shot.

“Shouldn’t you hold off a little bit on that?” Aiden stumbled still stunned by the revelation of the hacker’s identity. He was incredulous. He would have doubted her had it not been for the improbability that she would have been able to crack the multiple cyphers that his team had slaved day and night over a week to create. She had to be Tovarich!

Irina burped, cupped her mouth as an afterthought, drew a deep breath, and swilled the last whiskey down her throat. “Tak!” she exclaimed and then reached for a large pickled tomato that sat at the bottom of a massive pickle jar which had occupied the table long before Aiden had sat down. Using two bony fingers, she fished about the brine until she pinched the plump, soft skin between them. She smiled, pleased at her catch, and took an apple-sized bite out of it. She pointed the remnant of the brine-dripping heirloom at him. “You were saying? Oh yes, how did I find you? Why do I have a pussy and tits? How old am I? Can you fuck me? Right?”

Aiden was at a loss for words. He hadn’t expected this level of petulance. Of course coder culture was a rather garish one, since it mostly consisted of young teen to thirty-something-year-old, sexually repressed males whose ideas of intimate relationships came from reading seedy Japanese manga. These often depicted cyborg sex, or
tentacle-rape,
which was something Aiden had to research and immediately regretted. Though he was a Gen-X trailblazer, he could not relate to current coder culture which was completely off of the reservation. Whatever happened to good-ole Playboy, and if you wanted something a little more risqué, Hustler? No, to get off on that you might as well be Amish by this generation’s standards.

“I just want to talk business. I want to make you a proposition.” He quickly regretted his use of words as Irina crudely grabbed her breasts and mouthed a lewd comment. His face flushed instantly, his eyes darted around the poorly lit, smoke-filled room of the underground bar. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for since no one was paying attention to either one of them. The crowd consisted of drunken, ecstasy-dosed youths throbbing to pulsating electronic dance music. Perhaps it was the fact that Irina looked all of sixteen-years-old that made him worry.

“Come on, please don’t do that! I’m trying to talk business here.”

“Relax, Aiden, no one is coming to arrest you. It’s okay if you fuck me.” Irina then raised her shirt over her perky, bare breasts. “You could even do me here on the table and nobody would care. Everyone is too busy having a good time, except
you
.”

Aiden was beyond disturbed and rose to leave. This was a joke and he was obviously the butt of it.

“Relax! I’m fucking with you. I don’t even really like men. I mostly like girls, and when I need dick, I usually like them young and hard, plus I’ve already had my fill this month.” She rubbed herself as if to show her satiation. “Let’s talk business. I’m serious now, have a seat.”

Aiden shook his head still angry, but somehow calmed by the fact that maybe she didn’t want him to perform some kind of lewd, public act as a prerequisite to their business. The truth was that she had all of the bargaining chips.
He
needed
her
.

“So how did you crack the cypher? I want to know if you are as smart as your reputation says you are.” He was done being made a fool of, and his opening salvo should have let her know.

“I didn’t.”

“What? What do you mean?

“I didn’t,” Irina answered this time with a shrug and with less give-a-damn.