Vincent quickly bowed out of any more greeting or bellman activities and whispered to his young assistant, "We need to delay these guys as much as possible. We will get a big tip if we can do it without being too obvious." He then darted into the lobby and called up to Cindy, "Cindy, they have arrived! I am 99% sure that Anatoly and Georg are in a cream colored Volga in front of the hotel."
"Thank you, Vincent." was all Cindy said and she raced over to the desk in the room to review notes and pull my toolkit out from under the bed. She didn't open it but was praying I would arrive soon. She placed it in the middle of the room then ran downstairs with cameras and bugs in purses for carrying out some version of the surveillance routine we had been practicing for the past two days. I arrived 10 minutes later, and opened the door to the room spotting the bag first thing. I was back in the lobby in 90 seconds.
Cindy had taken photos of the men in "Self-Parking" removing their bags from the trunk of the car and from the back seat. She then got several shots as Georg was walking to the hotel to retrieve a bellman's cart and then rolled it back to the car. Anatoly, according to Vincent, had been swearing non-stop as he was moving the bags around by the car. We'd told Vincent that we needed close measurements of their bags and he had tried to offer them help bringing the luggage in. They had refused and Anatoly had again made reference to Vincent's testicles being at risk of violent removal if he touched anything of theirs. Understandably, Vincent sought other means of getting close enough to measure their bags.
Anatoly and Georg both were quite dark complected and, as Cindy stated, "These guys look Romanian but their Russian is absolutely Moscow Central City dialect." (I suspected Cindy meant that they looked like Gypsies or "Roma".) They both needed a haircut and greased their hair down quite close to their head. Both had sideburns that were not typical of the times and Cindy began to suspect that they were living in Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. She'd noticed their shoes and workman jackets were typical of that region. She took a two minute video of both men loading the bags onto the bellman's cart. She saw a huge difference between the way the men handled the two bags that seemed to be normal travel bags, and the two other bags that were heavy and were placed much more carefully onto the cart. Those bags were placed on their side whereas the normal luggage was standing like a regular suitcase might.
Vincent's earlier suggestion to the young assistant gave pause to the boy to consider how to delay their progress getting to their room. Unbeknownst to us, he removed several metal pins that kept the wheels on the luggage carts. All three carts had at least one pin missing he told us later. The cart that they were using had made it out to their car, was loaded with their things, and was now beside them at the registration desk. The young boy had not told Vincent about removing the pins.
In the time that it had taken them to get inside the hotel through the parking lot entrance, pass through the lobby by the business center, turn left at the concierge desk, and stop briefly at the convenience store to discuss where they would be getting food and drink; Cindy and I had placed bugs on their shabby coats, photographed them from all sides, swabbed their bags for lab analysis, made two passes with the geiger counter, and had gotten measurements of their bags using the swab stick and the geiger wand as a "ruler". Cindy and I were acting like we were organizing our things with luggage and bags about 20 feet from the registration desk as they pulled the cart up to where they were going to check in. Cindy had a 12" parabolic antenna hidden in a piece of luggage hooked up to a microphone and was listening to the conversation at the desk. Anatoly was speaking in a quiet voice to the hotel clerk so it was good that we had the antenna but we certainly didn't need it for anything that Georg said. He was pissed off at everything and threatening everyone's testicles...even if they weren't equipped as such.
"I know the reservation was for a regular room with two beds but a larger room would be best. If you have a suite separated by a door, we would be willing to pay for that." Anatoly told the desk clerk.
The desk clerk looked through his vacant rooms list and politely answered, "We have something like that but the second room is quite small with only a couch, coffee table, and TV. It is not appropriate for sleeping in...and the couch is not a sofa bed. Cindy smiled and winked at me as she heard Anatoly say, "The luggage will go in the second room. We don't want to be in the same room as the luggage. Georg's dirty clothes are in it." Cindy recorded this portion and played it back to me later. We imagined that even bad guys don't want to be too close to bad stuff that might make them sick.
"How will you be paying?" the desk clerk asked Anatoly.
"Cash now." he answered.
"If you want to use the phone in your room during your stay, we will need to have a deposit or a credit card on file." the clerk reminded Anatoly. To which Anatoly responded, "Oh yeah...we have to make a call later." Georg let out six or seven swear words loudly and told Anatoly to hurry up. It was at this moment that Vincent's young buddy went into action without warning. He told us later that he was standing with his back to them but watching in a mirror for the right moment to pass by them without being noticed. At the moment he thought was best, Vincent tapped the wheel of the cart with his toe, knocking the wheel off, and at the same time ran his hand over the top of the regular luggage bag, tripping the snap release and opening one side of the bag...as the cart was now falling over on its side where the wheel had been. The loose wheel was rolling quickly toward us.
Even Anatoly began to swear as the cart was falling over dumping all four bags onto the floor. "Oh, Jesus Christ! Georg! Fuck!" Georg grabbed the upright on the cart but the action of pulling it back made the bags all slide more quickly off the cart. The opened suitcase spilled mainly clothes and some toiletries all over the rest of the bags. One of the heavy suspect bags came down very hard on the floor and clanked like a scuba diver's oxygen tank as it slid on the floor two or three feet and stopped when it hit the wall. This bag, now more visible to Cindy and me, was actually a bag made of something like burlap or hemp with cheap shipping tape wrapped around it. Whatever was inside had shifted and ripped the bag. Clearly visible through the tear in the bag was the radioactive symbol and less readable was a logo or symbol next to it. Cindy's microphone bag had a camera next to the parabolic antenna. She stepped back quickly and snapped a photo hoping that it was high enough to see inside the tear that we were staring at.
It was Anatoly's reaction that said the most to me about what was inside that bag, and scared me to death. Rather than move quickly toward his bags, he held his hands and forearms to his face as if he was afraid something would explode...or maybe, go critical...like enriched uranium. Everyone noticed it, including the night security guard who jokingly called out, "You act like you just dropped nitro glycerin." Instead of going on another tirade about ripping someone's balls off, Georg had a weird look on his face and waved both Vincent and the boy away. He said to them, "Thank you. I'll take care of it. Sorry for the problem."
Both Georg and Anatoly straightened out the mess, repacked the suitcase that had popped open and took their keys from the desk clerk that was holding them out for Anatoly. She said, "Room #605...Junior suite. Elevator is over there." and she pointed to her right. "Do you need help with your bags?" she asked. Georg resisted the urge to threaten anyone's gonads as he gingerly pushed the cart toward the elevator while Anatoly followed close behind slowly shaking his head.
"Well that was certainly a strange incident," said the desk clerk after the elevator door closed and Vincent walked out into the middle of the lobby with a broom and dustpan. He then stepped toward me and asked if he and his colleague had delayed them enough for us to do what we needed to do. I said, "Absolutely yes. Thank you! And...please don't clean up yet where the baggage cart fell. Let me do something first."
I still had the geiger counter handy and taped inside my heavy coat with the wand inside my sleeve. Running my hand with a wash cloth over the area where everything had fallen, I was getting a final swab for testing and doing a quick check with the geiger counter. The counter was screaming at me that bad stuff was around. I moved it over to a spot about 5 feet away and the screaming calmed down to a low growl. It appeared that bad stuff had passed this way.
***
"So we need to inventory what we've got and what we still need to get from these guys." I said to Cindy as we put our toolkits back under the bed and removed film canisters and tapes. "Do you think we need to keep an eye on their room tonight?" I asked her.
"Vincent and his little buddy will come to the rescue for that type of work." Cindy smiled and said, and then there was a knock at the door.
"Speak of the devil! Hi Vincent" I said as I saw Vincent standing in the hallway.
"Sorry to bother you but I wanted to ask you for a favor. I told Ben, the guy that was helping me earlier, that you would tip him for his involvement. I hope that was ok?!" Vincent said sheepishly.
"Not a problem. If I give you four $20 bills, is that enough to distribute between yourself and Ben?" I offered.
"Wow...that seems like too much!" Vincent said with surprise in his voice.
"Well, maybe not. We are hoping that someone can let us know if anything goes on unusual over at Room #605 tonight. Also, we need to know how many nights they have reserved. Would that cover what you did today, finding out their length of stay, and watching the room tonight?" I asked.
"Yes. I'll call if anything happens." a smiling Vincent said as he saluted to me and looked over my shoulder to see if Cindy was there.
"Bye Vincent!" Cindy said in a monotone,
"Oh, Vincent!" I called out as I started to think about better instructions for him. "These guys may get super drunk, have women over, get in a fight, order food, and cause general mayhem here at the hotel. None of that is cause to bother us. What is cause to contact us is if they both leave...with or without the luggage and if any of those bags are taken from the room...by anyone. In fact, if any bag goes out, let us know. It's possible that they've transferred things to other containers since the whole hotel witnessed their embarrassing mishap earlier."
"Got it." Vincent said.
"Thank you, Vincent. Good night." I said.
The message phone in our room lit up about ten minutes later. I put in my code and listened to the message Vincent had just left:
"Vincent here. Our guests are staying on a day to day basis. They said it could be one night and it could be up to five nights. They also said they are waiting for a phone call from Switzerland to be patched into their room. Good night again."
"Switzerland. That could be the money guys or the consignees." I thought out loud.
"Or both." Cindy added.
"Novosibirsk...crossroads East and West and North and South. Makes sense they are waiting here for further instructions. Go West! Go South! Go Southeast! Militant Islamic buyers and you go South maybe. Arabic terrorists hiding out in Switzerland call to arrange a letter of credit if their reps confirm delivery. But where will delivery be?" I thought out loud.
"That's what Embassy Joe wants us to find out and why he sent me here to say Fifi 66 to you. Looks like we are only halfway to finish line." Cindy shook her head and said.
"Hey, I've been curious about something and I hope you won't be mad at me if I ask." I looked at Cindy and said.
"You want to know if I am really a prostitute." Cindy said to me quickly and then turned to see how I would react.
"Jesus Christ! Yes! That's what I was wondering!" I couldn't believe she had again read my mind.
"And I am wondering if you are a real businessman." she countered.
"I don't know what I am, Cindy." I said glumly and then said "Goodnight". Cindy watched me collect my things and make moves to go to my room. She stood motionless and then said, "Let's get up early and talk about next steps.
"OK...I'm up at 6."
Cindy reached out and touched me for the first time since we'd been together and stroked my face and head softly with both hands. We hugged silently for about two minutes and then she said, "Goodnight, Bill".
No comments:
Post a Comment