The construction and engineering firm’s company directory listed over nine hundred employees. Their offices consumed all fifteen floors of a building in Nizhny Novgorod. Anna and her mother both worked on the fourteenth floor and, according to notes cross referenced to a real-time chat with Anna, close enough that her mother could watch her like a hawk. At home, she shared a two bedroom apartment with that mother, whom she described as overbearing, and her father, who seemed to do very little. One more name, highlighted on the company directory, turned out to be Anna’s fiancé, the one she had told Sandy she hated, but whom she was being forced to marry. Family business, indeed.
The history channel was showing a World War II docudrama with a deeply moving orchestral soundtrack. Normally, it would have had me glued to the set, but it had become a distraction. I switched off the TV, poured myself some Jameson — neat — and tried to get back to that almost obsessive place in my thought process where I visualize and analyze outcomes, ramifications, and scenarios in an attempt to come up with a plan of action.
Intelligence on the Menchikovskaya crime syndicate was important to international interests due to the cross border nature of its criminal activities. Foremost among these was the procurement and smuggling of radioactive isotopes into what western interests thought of as rogue states. I had been following that particular activity when things went terribly wrong for Jack. The syndicate’s activities also included human trafficking, the usual narcotics and gun running and a predilection for political sabotage and interference. It was this political activity I hoped to connect Anna to as a source. If it looked interesting enough, I could probably convince a contractor to send me in for some hard evidence.
Using a proxy server to make anyone tracking my activity think I was somewhere and someone else, I logged onto the Russian Acquaintances dating and chat service. I was looking for the original chat transcripts between Anna and Sandy and maybe something Sandy had missed in their real-time chat. Nothing, but I noticed Anna’s chat name had changed to Anna Prekrasnaya from the offensive Anna Ku Klux Klan. I ran a text search on Sandy’s notes and found nothing referring to Prekrasnaya. In Sandy’s last letter to Anna, she had asked her why she was using the Ku Klux Klan moniker and if she knew what it implied. The date of the correspondence was several days earlier, but the chat system was showing Anna Prekrasnaya currently logged in. Better check the email for a response to that letter.
Sure enough, six unread emails had accumulated since Sandy handed the Anna account off to me. The unanswered letters had become increasingly desperate as time passed and Anna received no reply. She had attached photos to at least half of the emails. The recurring theme was Anna’s concern with the sudden and unexplained cessation of correspondence from Sandy. She worried that it had to do with her previously offensive KKK chat name. She begged for forgiveness, rationalizing her use of the nasty moniker as a phrase she thought sounded funny and American. Confused, I read on.
Email number six, the most recent of them, contained an apology for ever having used a term that might offend. Anna begged her western friend to reestablish contact, promising she would never use that name again. I was making mental note of Anna’s level of anxiety, thinking she was too real for words, when the minimized browser window alerted me to an incoming message from the Russian chat system.
ANNA PREKRASNAYA: You hate me now? Why do you not reply?
I typed that I had been busy and apologized for not having responded sooner. It was weird taking over from someone mid-conversation. I assured Anna that I didn’t hate her and liked her beautiful new chat name.
She replied: “You are correct. Prekrasnaya means beautiful. You know Russian now?”
Whoops, not supposed to know Russian! I typed: “I looked it up. It is much nicer than your last chat name.”
The time of night and the whiskey weighed on my brain, but this was a chat I didn’t want to cut short. Making sure I didn’t close the laptop, shut down the Wi-Fi and lose Anna, I carried the computer to the kitchen, plugged it into an outlet on the island and put on the kettle for a pot of tea.
Perched on a stylishly uncomfortable kitchen stool, I continued the Internet text-chat conversation. Anna had already posted several lines of text before I got settled and focused on the screen. “My mother she makes more trips for business to Kiev. This I like cuz then more can I chat to you! :-))))” A few minutes after that she typed, “I hope I am not too much bothering you.”
Before replying, I ran a frantic text search on Sandy’s transcripts to get up to speed on what Anna and I were talking about and what it might have to do with her mother and the Ukrainian capital.
Anna got impatient and started typing, “hello?” and “r u there?”
I should have studied-up on the whole correspondence before jumping in midstream. I typed, “I’m here, pls wait 1 sec. Making tea…” The kettle came to a violent boil and Anna was typing question marks in the chat window before I could hit send. “Bloody hell, when it rains it boils!” I yelled. Anna’s question marks ceased when I finally hit send.
Back on an even keel and with a mug of superheated Red Rose chasing the whiskey fuzzies from my brain, I made the occasional comment while Anna happily told me about her mother’s comings and goings. She was, according to her, overseeing a large construction project in Ukraine with her business partner; a man whom Anna admired called Sergei. The two of them would come back from Ukraine bringing boxes of chocolates and good liquor for Anna.
Why she was sharing that information with me was one thing. The fact that she did, told me she thought mother and partner were up to something. If it was for real, Anna could turn out to be a truly useful resource. If it wasn’t, I wanted to know why she thought someone would be interested in it. The reality of it was, Anna was fun to chat with. I started probing for information I could use to nail down the identities of some of the players in her stories. Of course, I was after connections to internationally interesting syndicate activity. I hoped Anna knew and wanted to provide more of the kind of information I could use to confirm identities and make those connections.
Sandy was at the office cleaning out her desk when I got there. It was hard to believe, six weeks had passed since she had first happened upon Anna. It was also hard to imagine how far beyond her work-study job description Sandy had gotten within our brother-sister computer security firm. Now she was headed back to the classroom to finish her degree. I promised her a glowing letter of recommendation, and we briefly discussed Anna. Gavin hadn’t shown up yet, not at all unusual for him, and there wasn’t much left to say. Sandy shouldered her pack. “Hey boss, I guess I’m not really supposed to know what you’re into but I’m kinda interested. I’m not saying anything, and I never would, but if you come up with something for me, you’ve got my email.” She swung the bulky pack behind her to get into the stairwell. About five steps down she called back, “Hey, I’m really going to miss Gavin… the big nerd! Tell him he can call me any time — or maybe I’ll just call him.”