The Russian man had Kort by the throat.
He'd caught up with him in an outside market in Brussels, Belgium, dragging him into a small, dark alley.
Kort thought to himself, a little amused, that people were always so pissed off that they wanted to ring his neck.
Sergey Oleskev was furious to discover the CIA was after him, and the microchip Kort had helped him purchase.
He was going to resell it, but now it had become a liability. No one would buy it from him while the CIA had a direct trail to him.
He'd spent several days, with one thought in mind. Killing kort.
"Tell me Mister Kort," he said with his thick Russian accent, "now that I have no capital to keep myself off the map with, what should I do with my wonderful microchip?"
Of all the buyers Kort had, Oleskev was the most violent and dangerously connected one.
If he didn't find a way to smooth things over, he would be a dead man, if not at that very moment anyhow.
"Sergey," he said as soothingly as he could, "it was not my doing. Latham double crossed us all. I would never be so foolish as to do anything to incur your wrath."
Sergey now had a knife, coming up to Kort's throat.
"Stop !" Kort cried, squirming. "I can fix it so you have something useful, something you can sell at top dollar."
"And what could you possibly give me that would bring enough money to make up for this…inconvenience?"
"A secret weapon, someone within the U.S. government, who can be programmed to kill anyone. He has access to many people of power…you can use him yourself, or someone can pay you for the hit, and he will take the fall for you."
He saw he had the man's attention.
"Hell, you can sell him to the highest bidder. I can introduce a target for you, with a few days of work, or I can just deliver him to you to finalize programming yourself."
The man thought about it for a moment. It would not make up for the money he lost on the chip, but – it would earn him enough to disappear and change his face.
He released Kort.
"You had better know what you're doing. Or I will kill you as slowly and painfully as I am capable of."
"Don't worry," Kort said, now with a smile, the plan giving him great pleasure, "I will make sure it's worth your while."