NOTES: Recall that in my world, the Covid-19 pandemic was stopped before it got started by Carmichael Industries, in alliance with Verbanski and some others. Because of that, the movie Wonder Woman 1984 was released on its originally planned release date in December of 2019, rather than December 2020. Thus Chuck can have seen it already in June of 2020.
Dialogue in / / represents Russian language.
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 23: The Grand Hotel 1
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 8:25 p.m. local time...
"Jill," Chuck Bartowski asked the dark-haired woman who sat next to him in the front seat of the Nerd Herder, "this is going to be tricky. I can call on my people at the Buy-Mores, and apparently Ellie is in town as well if we can get in contact with her and her team, but that's still not very many people. And we have no idea what we're up against, other than that they are big enough to mess with the world-wide telephone system."
Jill was silent for a moment, head leaning against the rest of the passenger seat, and for a moment Chuck wondered if she had fallen asleep, but then she opened her eyes.
"Tell me about it," Jill replied wearily. "It's all I've been thinking about since that first shot almost got me today. And what makes it the more frustrating is that normally I could call in my organization and have fifty people here in a few hours...but with the communications trickery I don't dare!
"I sent one of my people as a messenger to alert my organization, but without fast communications it's going to take a few days or more to mobilize them. Everything will have to be done face-to-face, and that takes time, especially since it has to be done as secretly as possible."
"I can use the LaserLink to call home safely...I think," Chuck said. "But getting more people here in a hurry would be very hard to manage in all the chaos and still maintain some kind of secrecy. I think for the moment that we're on our own."
Chuck maneuvered the Nerd Herder past a truck, turning the windshield wipers to a higher setting to remove the rainy spray that the truck threw at them, and added, "And Tony's plan is not exactly what you'd call 'low risk'."
"It's a desperation play," Jill said, "we need to be honest about that. It's a Hail Mary pass, Chuck," Jill said. "Oh, wait, you wouldn't know what that is, would you?"
The last question was asked in a teasing voice, and in spite of the rather grim situation, Chuck laughed. It was a running joke between them, going back to their Stanford days, that Jill knew more about sports than he did, reversing the stereotype. It had been true enough in his college days, Chuck had never been much interested in pro sports, other than baseball a little, while Jill had grown up in a sports-oriented family and with a brother who played football in high school and who had lived and breathed NFL.
"Of course I know what it is," Chuck answered, with a smirk, "do you think I've hung out with John Casey for thirteen years and I don't know football? After thirteen years I could probably plot out the plays for an NFL team."
Silence fell for a moment, more because of mutual exhaustion than anything else. As Chuck took the Nerd Herder through a five-way intersection, alert for traffic in the steady rain, Jill suddenly asked, "Does Stephie miss me?"
"What?" Chuck asked in surprise.
"Just what I said," the brunette said. Chuck risked taking his eyes off the road for an instant to glance at her, and he saw her leaning back against the seat, exhaustion radiating from her. Her brown eyes were focused on him, though. "This is the longest I've gone without seeing her at all in...well, since she was a baby, anyway. I haven't seen my child face-to-face in two months, Chuck. I just wondered..."
"Yes, she misses you," Chuck replied, as they rounded a corner and came into sight of their destination. "She talks and asks about you a lot, and when she sees your name on her phone she lights up like a little sparkler. Feel better?"
"A little," Jill said. "When this is over...assuming we manage to prevent this from turning into a catastrophe...I just want to spend some time in person with my little girl. Right now that's all I really want in the world."
Chuck started to answer, then thought better of it, because they had reached their parking place in the multi-level parking complex associated with the Gagarin-Tolstoi Hotel. It was time to go to work.
"Are you sure this will work?" Jill asked.
"No," Chuck admitted. "But it's got a good chance, I've pulled variations of this scam off before on many occasions."
Chuck and Jill emerged from the Nerd Herder, and to almost anyone watching they would have seemed quite natural, because they were dressed to match their vehicle. Before they had left the safehouse, Jill had changed into a female version of Chuck's Nerd Herd uniform. Several such uniforms were included as standard equipment in a secret compartment of the Nerd Herder car, part of the clandestine role of the modern Buy-More chain. Jill had chosen the version with the short skirt, in spite of the weather, and Chuck knew why. Distractions could be useful in their work.
And she certainly does look distracting, Chuck mused, taking a surreptitious glance at his old girlfriend in the tight top and short skirt. Never mind that, get your head in the game, Bartowski!
Chuck was grateful that the parking garage was roofed, they could hear the rain and feel the chill through the open sides of the building, but at least the higher levels kept the rain off of them. They were parked on the second floor, which was not ideal but the best they could do, and there was a covered walkway linking the second floor of the garage to the Hotel proper on that same level, above the main street.
"So how does it happen that you had a software bomb already in place in the hotel's computer system?" Jill asked him in a whisper as they made their way across the second-story walkway, tool-briefcases in hand. "All ready to go?"
Before they had left the safehouse, Chuck had risked connecting to the Internet for a few minutes, and triggered that self-same software bomb that Jill was talking about. Given the way their mystery-enemies were manipulating communications, it was a risk but a necessary one.
"Whenever I have business in Moscow," Chuck replied in an equally low whisper, "I usually stay at one of a few hotels, and as a precaution CI planted software traps in their systems, just in case of a situation like this. It's been in place for a while, I just had to trigger it from a blind email account."
As they reached the other end of the walkway and entered the Hotel proper, Jill looked at him and whispered, "And now I'm wondering how other places around the world have little CI surprises in the computers."
Chuck just smiled and said nothing.
A few moments later, an employee of the Gagarin-Tolstoi greeted them effusively in Russian, explaining that the Hotel's reservation system had mysteriously frozen and there were arrivals backing up and demanding to know why their rooms and suites weren't ready or were mixed up and they could not make new reservations and it was a nightmare!
A few minutes later Chuck and Jill were in the server room, and it was the work of thirty minutes for Chuck to restore the system to proper working order. Actually, that was not true. It required about thirty seconds for Chuck to disable the logic bomb, but he pretended more time was required in order to give them cover for their actual activities. Even as Chuck was pretending to labor over the keyboard in the server room, Jill was heading for the lobby to await the arrival of Tony and Darya and Niles.
Actually, pretending was not quite the right word, Chuck was laboring over the keyboard, it was just that he was not doing the work he was pretending to the Hotel management that he was doing. Even as he worked, he was also laboring to keep his mind off worrying about Ellie and John and his mother, who he now knew were in Moscow themselves, if not exactly where. Devon had told him much of the 'why', but obviously things had gone sideways.
Damn it, I hate operating in the dark, Chuck thought savagely. It's almost like the old days when I was just an asset and nobody told me anything. I hated it then and I hate it worse now!
In spite of his worry, Chuck was succeeding at his immediate task. With the enemy having clearly penetrated so many means of communication, Chuck was trying to sidestep that by using the equipment and accounts of the Gagarin-Tolstoi Hotel to operate electronically without being observed or interfered with.
Jack's plan is a long shot, Jill is certainly right about that, Chuck mused. But...it could work, it just might, and if it does we might be able to salvage something from this, short of disaster. But his plan has a lot of moving parts to get right, so get busy and move the parts, Bartowski!
Chuck shoved aside his worries and began to type faster.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 9:25 p.m. local time...
The lobby of the Gagarin-Tolstoi Hotel was in chaos, with lines of people at the reception desks yelling angrily at the staff and each other in Russian, English, and a smattering of other languages. Other people had gathered in the lobby to watch the chaos, guests who were already securely booked in and had the rooms secured.
Even with the ongoing entertaining uproar at the desks, however, the redhead who walked into the Hotel lobby through the main entrance was able to draw several appreciative glances, mostly from various males. She was substantially taller than average for a woman, with long red hair and blue eyes and a smile that almost seemed to invite impure thoughts. Her spectacular figure was showcased by a long green dress with a deep open slit that ran between her breasts and down well lower, and a back that was mostly non-existent above the waist level.
Her real name was known to very few people on the planet. Not even her closest friends (with one notable exception) knew it. The name she most commonly went by among her friends was 'Carina Miller'.
She looked over at the uproar by the desks, and asked a passerby what was happening.
/"Oh, apparently a whole mess of business people were arriving this evening for some kind of do in a couple of days, and the hotel's computer has had some kind of seizure and nobody can figure out who had what reservations. Eight or ten guys are shown as being booked to one room, and other people are not showing up at all, and the staff can't keep their terminals working."/
/"Yeah," another bystander put in, "and they're reacting like spoiled children, too! Between that and everything else happening today, I just wish I was somewhere else!"/
/"I'm glad I'm already checked in,"/ Carina said in Russian, as she shrugged and headed for the elevators. Part of her mind was making a note of the situation, anything out of the ordinary might be important, after all, but probably it was just what it seemed. Computers did malfunction, after all. Most of her mind was on other matters.
Carina had not heard from her squad mates in hours. Sarah and Zondra and the women in CAT Two were hours past their check-in times, and that combined with the chaos that afternoon from the explosions and fires seemed like too big a coincidence. Carina had not dared go near the safehouse where they had been supposed to be meeting, it was too risky, but she knew that something had happened there because it had made the local news.
Most of the news was still focused on the accident/terrorist attack/corporate espionage/whatever it was that had happened in mid-afternoon, with the fires and uproar. But then had come news of gun battles and outlaws engaging in various violent trouble here and there across the city and its surrounding metropolitan environs. One of the sites mentioned in the local newscasts was the very safehouse where Carina knew Sarah and Zondra had been supposed to be.
She had tried to contact the JIA, but the response had been...off. She could not put her finger on it, but something about General Conroy's reaction to her report was just not right.
Which left Carina worried sick about her fellow CATs, especially Sarah and Zondra. For all Carina knew, they could all be dead...but Carina tended to doubt it. She knew them well, and knew how dangerous and capable those women were, especially her fellow Seniors. It struck her as doubtful that they were all dead.
She especially hoped and prayed that Sarah and Zondra were all right. They were as close to family as she had, other than one person.
The elevator deposited Carina on the floor of her suit, and she headed down the corridor, half of her mind on her worries and the other half alert as always for trouble. Coming down the corridor toward her were two maids with a pushcart full of cleaning supplies, and something about them immediately set off her 'doesn't look right' alarms. It was nothing Carina could pin down, precisely, it half an intuitive feeling and half subconscious observation, but almost from the moment she laid eyes on the 'maids', she knew they were not what they seemed.
To make matters worse, as she and they approached each other in the corridor, Carina noticed that the two maids and their cart were positioned in such a way that there was no easy way past them. The redhead's mind raced as she considered her options, all the while she continued to walk calmly toward them as if she had noticed nothing.
However, just as she was approaching them, she stumbled as the high heel of one of her expensive shoes broke...or at least, that's what it would have looked like to a casual observer! She appeared to stumble, just as she reached the maids, and that apparent stumble was why the tranquilizer dart one of the 'maids' fired went over her head instead of burying the tip of its needle in her exposed shoulder!
What followed was fast and brutal. Even as the other maid made a grab for the redhead, Carina had pulled out a switchblade from a tiny hidden pocket of her dress and sliced the woman's throat. As she went down Carina felt the other one get a grip on her arms...and discovered to her horror that the woman was unbelievably strong. She squirmed and kicked but was unable to break free until she managed to land the heel of her still-unbroken shoe, hard, in her assailant's foot. The woman let go with a yelp of surprised pain, and Carina whirled, and landed a kick at a place she suddenly suspected would be vulnerable, given how deep the 'woman's' voice had been in that pained cry.
Her suspicion was confirmed as the man, for such it was, went down in agony at the blow to his crotch. Carina followed up quickly, snatching up her knife from where she had dropped it and finishing the man off before he could recover.
Now Carina was alone in the corridor...except of course for the two corpses.
She had been in not entirely dissimilar situations before, however. Her first priority was making sure there were not more assailants coming at her, but the corridor appeared to be clear, and Carina doubted she would be attacked again immediately. For one thing, for someone to go to the trouble of disguising a small male in a maid uniform and a woman in another, meant that this had not been a 'hit' but almost surely intended as a capture operation. That was the main reason she was still alive, she knew. Her attackers had been trying to take her alive, which had given her the time and opening to kill them both.
First priority: conceal the evidence. It was fortunate that Carina Miller was larger and stronger than most women, it made woman-handling the corpses easier. A few minutes sufficed for Carina to conceal the bodies in a little-used storage closet on that floor. Carina had 'scoped out' the entire floor and the two immediately above and below when she had checked in under her current alias, and she knew most of the closets and other concealed spaces. The bodies would keep for a little while there, though of course she would quickly have to made other arrangements!
Then there was the little matter of the blood on the carpeting from two slit throats! Luckily, it was a real maid's cart that the two had been using, which gave her the supplies to clean up that mess before the blood had time to dry. Then, to add to the confusion, she deliberately spilled some of the cleaning liquids in the floor, and left the cart on its side in the mess. Police forensics would be able to 'see through' the mess, given time, but hopefully such would not be immediately deployed. If the Hotel management thought there had simply been an cleaning accident on the spot, it would take time before anything else happened.
Assuming, of course, Carina mused grimly, that someone in the Hotel's management was not in on this to start with!
The next step was changing her alias. She might or might not be able to resume her current one, depending on how events played out, but for the moment she needed to be someone else. Which meant taking the risk of returning to her suite, but that could not be helped. Cursing herself for the oversite of not concealing emergency supplies outside her suite, Carina made her way toward her rooms, after reattaching the detachable heel that had saved her earlier.
Carina was on high alert all the way to her suite, and once inside, to her horror, she found more maids in the process of cleaning her suite! This time she was ready, her nine millimeter came out and she was taking aim when one of the maids when that woman pulled off her maid's cap and wig to reveal familiar features!
"Sarah!" Carina gasped in relief, even as the other maid was revealing herself as Zondra Rizzo.
Still, her gun stayed leveled, as she demanded: "Passcodes, now!"
"Bellisarius, Barbosa, Bastion," Sarah intoned rapidly, alarmed.
"Omega Norse Pershing Dulles," Zondra said. "Cari, put down the damned gun, it's us!"
Carina slowly lowered her pistol and led out a long sigh of relief.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 12:35 p.m. local time...
"Of all the stupid, stupid boneheaded moves," Thomas Delgado snarled. "What the Hell were they thinking, sending just two people against a Senior CAT?!"
Delgado had arrived at the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi only a few minutes before. When he did, he learned to his disgust that an overeager subordinate had 'jumped the gun' before he arrived, and possibly botched the entire operation.
After the grand-scale clusterfuck that had gone down in the afternoon, Delgado had conferred with Shadowman, and the two had decided on a fallback play. They knew, of course, that the Senior CATs and one of their best subordinate teams were in Moscow, and they knew that Carina Miller was staying (under an alias) as the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi. They also knew that Bartowski was staying at that same hotel, under his own alias of 'Terry Stanton', though they were not sure if he would dare try to use it after the afternoon's events.
They had decided to take Carina Miller alive, as a hostage, and a bargaining chip, since they knew exactly where she was. The plan had been for Delgado to supervise the capture, but by the time he arrived at the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, it appeared that a junior FULCRUM operative had taken it upon himself to try to put Miller in a bag on his own. When Delgado learned what a half-baked attempt it had been, it had required a real effort of will not to shoot the idiot on the spot for his abject incompetence.
"Two people?! You sent just two people to capture Carina Miller? And now they've disappeared and are out of contact and Miller's somewhere in the Hotel but you don't know where?! You idiot, just in case you haven't figured this out yet, it's a very safe bet that your operatives are dead. That woman is dangerous. She's smart, she's unpredictable, and she's totally ruthless when it suits her, and she's been doing this for years. You might as well have shot your operatives yourself, that would at least have been efficient!
"Now she knows we're making a play for her and wonder of wonders, she's vanished. Imagine that! You idiot, why didn't you just telephone her suite and give her a formal warning of our plans while you were at it?!"
Delago eventually vented enough of her anger on the terrified fool to dismiss him, at least for the moment, and consider the situation. They had searched Miller's suite, of course, and equally of course had come up empty. Most of her alias' clothes were still in the closets, most of her personal effects (or rather her alias' personal effects) were still present, but there was no trace of the occupant herself, and none of the specialized items Delgado knew someone in her line of work would have close at hand.
OK, so Miller made it back to her suite after what could laughingly be called the attempted capture, Delgado mused angrily, still considering the situation and his options. She cleaned out her equipment, as well as probably enough stuff to change her alias entirely, and skeddadled, as my grandfather would have said. By now she could look totally different and we have no idea what to look for. But even allowing for that...where would she go and what would she do?
The problem was that answer that last question required having some idea what Miller knew, and Delgado had no idea about that. The idiot who had bungled the capture thought she was probably still in the Hotel, since none of their operatives had seen her leaving by any known exit. Delgado laughed sourly, that assumed they knew about all the exits and further assumed that they would recognize Miller in whatever disguise she chose. Still...the idiot could be right this time, Miller might still be in the Hotel somewhere.
We drew the CATs to Moscow in the first place using Gaez and his floozy as bait, Delgado mused. We knew, or at least Shadowman guessed, that General Conroy would recognize the trap as such and send in the CATs anyway in hopes of reversing the trap. That part worked like a charm.
Delgado continued to consider the matter from various angles, and the more he did, the more convinced he became that for once, the overeager idiot might be right, at that. On balance, Delgado concluded, Carina Miller probably was still somewhere in the immense maze that was the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi.
Her orders are to find out who's behind all this, Delgado mused. She knows we made a laughably incompetent grab for her earlier tonight. But will she think it was really incompetent, or assume it was some kind of manipulation? Either way she knows we're here, and we are her assigned prey. So on balance I think she'll stick close to the Hotel in some way or form, hoping to turn the tables on us, maybe hoping we'll screw up. Either way, that's the way I'm betting.
Delgado turned to the men he had brought with him to the Hotel, men he knew were rather more competent than the advance team idiot, and began issuing his own orders.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, 12:35 p.m. local time...
Even as Thomas Delgado was setting his own plans into motion, not so very far away from him, Jill Roberts was in the process of changing clothes for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day. She found a women's bathroom, locked the door, and opened up what looked from the outside like a Nerd Herd tool case, and which contained a different outfit inside. She had packed it before they left the safehouse, and now she changed clothes as rapidly as she could manage.
From the ridiculously short-skirted Nerd Herdess uniform, the brunette changed into an office-appropriate blue skirt, a white blouse, tan hose and maroon pumps. She looked at herself in the mirror and winced, the bruises from her earlier adventures that day were becoming visible again, necessitating some quick makeup work. Packing the Nerd Herd uniform into the 'tool case', she concealed it as best she could in an air duct, and headed for her next destination, stifling a yawn of exhaustion as she did.
I really need a blazer or a jacket to make this look perfect, Jill mused, but I couldn't have fit that into the case. Anyway, it's past freaking midnight, so probably I'll pass muster a business guest anyway.
Jill's immediate goal was the front doors of the main lobby. Outside, she waited briefly under the protective front facade of the Hotel to avoid the slow rain. She did not have to wait long, before a small but stately-looking limousine pulled up in front of the Hotel and disgorged two passengers from the back.
Jill smiled to herself. She might be momentarily cut off from most of her people and resources, but those she had with her were good. It had not taken Niles Foxe long to lay hands on a limousine and some other accoutrements to go with it, and she was confident that he had done so while leaving no paper or electronic trail.
The two people who emerged from the back were familiar as well, but they looked rather different than they had a few hours before at the safehouse. Tony Rogers was wearing a very nice suit and tie, the woman with him had on a form-fitting dress that showed off a figure that a woman twenty years younger might envy, a dress that concealed everything while allowing an occasional flash of leg to show through slits in the side. Her hair was up on her head in a complicated style, and she looked fantastic.
I hope I look as good as Darya when I'm her age, Jill mused for a moment, then chastised herself to focus.
"Mr. Rogers," Jill said, as she walked down to greet the pair. "So glad you could come!"
"Not a problem, kid," he said to Jill, grinning at her in a not-quite-lascivious way. "I always like to scope out the site of a meet, why don't you show us around?"
Jill led the two inside, as Tony continued to play the role of a dissolute 'businessman' and Darya his 'companion'. They walked toward the front desk, and Jill felt herself tense up slightly inside. They were about to find out if Chuck's work on the Hotel's IT systems would hold up.
By this time, the crowds at the desk had thinned, the computers were running again and the harried staff had managed to get most of their angry guests to their appropriate rooms, and it was now quite late. But when Jill brought her 'guests' to the desk, the identity and reservations were right there in the system and they were checked in without fuss. Chuck had implanted the necessary information in the system earlier that evening. A bellboy even escorted the trio up to the pair of upper floor suites, opposite each other across a corridor, that Chuck had arranged for them to occupy.
Not bad, Chuck, Jill mused as she saw her rooms. The dual room suite was far from the nicest the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi boasted, but it was comfortable and exactly the sort of thing a 'businesswoman' such as Jill was currently pretending to be might occupy. She did a 'walk through' from habit, making sure the suite was empty, and then she, Tony, and Darya proceeded toward Ballroom C, which was integral to Tony's rather hasty and highly iffy plan.
The five-star Hotel and 'entertainment complex' that was the Gagarin-Tolstoi boasted four enormous ballrooms, which could also serve any number of other purposes, of course, and which were for rent. It so happened that in a few days, Ballroom C was scheduled to play host to a high-end dance competition, which suited the needs of Tony's plan almost perfectly.
Just then, though, the enormous room was empty and quiet, and a little dark, since only some of the overhead lights wree on. It was, after all, now well past 1:00 a.m. and the sensible people of the world, or at least that part of it, were asleep.
Dark or not, Tony was wearing sunglasses. It was part of the image he was projecting, Jill knew. He was supposed to seem like a wealthy and successful businessman, but that projection was meant to seem just slightly 'off', and he was already getting 'into character' for the charade they were planning to attempt over the following days.
"Yeah," Tony said quitely to the women, "I think this might just work. I've already been in touch with our contact, and dropped some hints that there might be a buyer who's willing to pay big for fast access. Nothing too blatant, mind you, but hints. Tomorrow I'll add a little more cheese to the mousetrap."
In spite of her best efforts, Jill was unable to suppress a yawn.
"But that's tomorrow, Trouble," Tony said gently. "For now, why don't we all get some rest? That's why the Schnook set us up our rooms in the first place."
"I"m for that," Jill admitted. "Assuming I can sleep at all under the circumstances."
The three of them split up, Tony and Darya heading for their own suite, Jill making her way to check on Chuck.
The server room was empty, but she found Chuck a few minutes later, sitting near some vending machines and sipping a cola, and quite obviously half-asleep.
"Come on, Chucky," Jill said with a soft laugh, "time to turn in for the evening."
Chuck got wearily to his feet, as Jill handed him the papers from the front desk confirming his reservations under his new alias, the very one he had created on the computers hours earlier. Hopefully, they could hide behind their new aliases long enough to evade their enemies and get some rest.
Jill was still worried about Chuck, considering how hard he had hit that concrete wall earlier in the day. He seemed focused enough at the moment, he was able to hold up his end of a conversation about various movies they had seen of late.
"It was okay, I guess," Chuck was saying, as they stepped off the elevator onto Jill's floor. "Gal Gadot makes a decent Wonder Woman, and she probably looks the part of an Amazon as well as anybody can...anybody who wants to keep both boobs, anyway."
Jill giggled. "I don't think that part of the mythology would play well with a modern audience."
"But to me it kind of fell flat anyway," Chuck went on. "Somehow the movie just didn't seem like 1984...granted I can't remember that year very well. I was only three at the time."
They had reached the doors of their rooms, and Chuck started to open his, when Jill put a hand on his arm.
"Uh-uh," she said. "My rooms."
"I-uh, that is-" Chuck stammered, blushing, but Jill just smiled.
"Relax, handsome, my intentions are pure," Jill assured him. "At least for tonight."
Since we're both too exhausted to stay awake long enough to do anything anyway, Jill added to herself ruefully.
Jill reached up to brush his face with her hand.
"I don't want you alone tonight, Chuck," she added seriously. "I saw you hit that concrete wall today, and I know damn well you're not completely recovered. So no, you don't get to be alone tonight. I want you where I can make sure you're all right."
It did not take much effort to convince him to cooperate, mostly, Jill suspected, because he knew she was right. A few minutes later, Chuck Bartowski and Jill Roberts were sound asleep in the double bed in her suite.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 2:05 a.m. local time...
At just about the same time that Chuck and Jill were falling asleep, and in fact only about two hundred feet away from them (though blissfully ignorant of that fact right then), Sarah Walker, clad in a mundane, far-from-sexy maid's uniform, her golden hair stuffed under a brown wig and wrapped in a headscarf, stepped into a staff elevator. She pressed the button for her chosen floor, and then another woman came running up, catching the elevator just in time and stepping inside. As the new arrival pressed the button for her chosen floor, Sarah had to suppress a double-take, and she barely managed to do it!
The problem was that Sarah recognized the new arrival instantly, from the photographs she had seen in the information packet Chuck had sent her about her father's current activities. The woman looked different than she had in the telephotographs, but not so much that Sarah Walker could not instantly recognize her! In the pictures she had worn nicely tailored office clothes, now she was clad in blue jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, and she had on a hotel staff badge, but Sarah still recognized Darya Kamkin instantly!
Sarah calmed herself as best she could, but there was something about sharing an elevator with her father's paramour that was...unnerving! She surreptitiously observed the woman, memorizing everything about her. She had been trained in this by her father himself, and then by the CIA, and she was very good at it.
The woman was not quite as tall as Sarah, but she had a decent figure, and curly-long hair that was currently blonde. A pretty face went with it, and Sarah could see, loathe though part of her was to admit it, why her father might find her appealing. Just as she had seen in the photographs, too, there was definitely a slight resemblance between this woman and her mother Emma.
The elevator opened, and 'Darya' stepped out, and Sarah was torn between following her, and the knowledge that she had no reason to do so in her current alias and that she had pressing business elsewhere. As the doors of the elevator were shutting, Sarah heard another, very very familiar male voice, saying, "Darlin', it's about time you got back!"
Dad! Sarah realized, fighting a tremendous urge to hit the stop button and send the elevator back down. Dad's right here in the hotel!
Sarah was still trying to get her mind around that and her thoughts in order when she reached the meeting with Zondra and Carina a few minutes later.
Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 2:25 a.m. local time...
The clerk on the late night/early morning shift at the front desk scratched her head, wondering what had just happened.
An attractive woman in her late twenties, she had thought she knew what it meant when the older man had come up to the front desk and began to casually chat with her as he checked in. He was at least forty years her senior, and she remembered wondering what possessed men that age to think they could charm women young enough to be their granddaughters. That had been about thirty minutes earlier...and somehow she had lost track of time and ended up telling him several things she was not supposed to reveal about their guests, and agreeing to meet him for drinks the following day!
What just happened?! the girl asked herself in confusion.
Meanwhile, on an ascending elevator, that man and a woman his age, both dressed as tourists, were talking quietly, having already scanned the elevator for 'bugs'.
"Did you find out what we need to know?" General (ret.) Diane Beckman asked the man beside her in a whisper.
"Of course," Roan Montgomery replied. "But this is not the best place to discuss it."
"By the way, you are not keeping that date for drinks with that girl," Beckman said sternly.
"All in the line of duty," Montgomery replied, as the elevator doors opened that the disguised retired general and the disguised retired secret agent headed down the corridor.
To Be Continued...