Love Is for Tomorrow (8 page)

“Range, five hundred meters,” Mini said. “Wind velocity…”

Priya focused on her own task. She took the controls of the quadrocopter and started its engines. The rotors accelerated and lifted the UAV. She nudged it carefully out of the mansion.

She went over to her laptop and followed the camera feed of her drone. The gorge opened up below her. If she lost contact with the drone, there would be nothing left to retrieve from a fall of that height. She bridged the canyon in under a minute. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. It was still out of microphone range. “Come on, come on, move closer,” she whispered, while she felt her legs twitched involuntarily. She tried to calm herself and exhaled slowly. The drone was now in range but she still had no visual on the targets.

“Using camera zoom,” she said and enlarged the view on her screen.

“Got a sight on both targets,” Mini said in the same moment.

“Positive,” Smith answered.

A flash of metal tore through flesh. The wound was clean, with little blood squirting over the white plate. Priya watched it through the high-resolution video feed as if she was sitting at the same table. It was not something she wanted to see up close.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ENTER THE ENEMY

“When in doubt, blame the Chechens.” - Russian saying

Priya watched as Tanya’s knife cut into something sacred. Her fork speared the Argentinian steak. The only part of the meal that Priya could agree with was the Spanish red wine.

Priya activated the hyper-microphone and aligned it to the other side of the valley, using the resonating sound waves on the huge glass windows to record their voices. Tanya’s sunglasses prevented the facial recognition software from positively identifying her. Running her voice through a database check for comparison later would have to do.

Priya had to keep on them to find out as much as possible. The sniper-spotter team, Mini and Smith, was only there in case something went wrong.

“Clear shot, clear shot,” Smith said.

“Er..,” Priya said, not knowing how to respond.

“Just saying.”

The master marksman seemed edgy. But they didn’t come here to get blood. They came here to gather intel.

The voices were unclear at first. Priya adjusted the equipment, so that it was set to the right wavelength and filtered out the ambient noise.

“...deep in a terrorist organisation,” she heard Tanya say. “I can’t do much on my own to stop it without giving up my cover. That is why I’m turning to you. The motherland is in great danger from within. Hardliners in Chechnya are undertaking an attack on St. Petersburg. A dirty bomb from the Al nusra Khorasan group is on the way from Syria to Russia. It will arrive at the Georgian-Russian border on the night of the fourth at eleven thirty."

“We need to stop it,” Olga said.

“No, the bomb needs to get over the border safely. I’m in charge of the crossing. If the bomb gets stopped there, they will execute me, find another bomb and acquire a new target. The attack will still happen, only I will be dead and you won’t have any warning. Right now, I have all the intelligence we need: Names, dates, locations. I worked three years to get this deep. Trust me, it is our only chance.
”

“What’s your plan, then?
”

“You help me get the bomb into the country. I help you destroy the terror cell right before their attack. We root them out, every last one of them. We strike in St. Petersburg, at their end target. The President will be there before he returns to Moscow for Victory Day. Think about the effect of stopping the attack and dissolving a hidden terror cell in the motherland.
”

Olga let that sink in. It was not what she had bargained for. The stakes were much higher. So were the rewards. She wanted a moment to ponder it. If only she could talk to her father.

Then Tanya handed Olga an envelope.

“Tomorrow you go to Barcelona and meet a man named Khabib at the Opium Club. You give him this envelope, no more, no less. Payment instructions.” Olga started to open it, but Tanya’s hand stopped her. “And one more thing. Don’t trust him. Khabib is not on our side, don’t forget that. He is our deadly enemy, his weapon aimed at our motherland’s heart. So we let him come closer, and when he’s close, we stab him in the back.”

“Da.” Olga agreed and the decision was made for her. She was now part of Team Tanya.

The recorded audio showed on Priya’s phone as graphs of overtones produced by the speaker’s vocal cords. It was unlikely that two individuals would develop the same pattern given all the different variables. Mobile phone and speech recognition apps providers had been recording and storing each user’s vocal fingerprint for years, which was the reason most agency operatives used hacked devices to keep each biometric identifier on the phone instead of sending it back to the provider.

“Rose? Got the voice recordings?” Priya asked. She was already on the way to her Porsche.

“We’ve been running them through our database,” Rose said. “No match.”

Priya sighed and leaned back against the headrest.

“Given their backgrounds, it’s no wonder,” Rose said. “They hid their tracks well, but there are other databases.”

“Other than our own?”

“Every secret service has one.”

“Please don’t say you want me to hack into all of them,” Priya said.

“No need. I have contacts. Let me deal with the identification,” Rose said. “You go to Barcelona and find out about Khabib.”

Priya entered the new destination into her GPS. “It’s a seven hour drive.”

“And I know with that car you can be there faster,” Rose said.

Priya smiled.

“Opium is a luxury night club,” Priya said, running a search through her phone. “I don’t suppose you can use one of your connections to get us in with a good spot.”

“Sadly I don’t,” Rose said. “But I think there is someone who can get us what we need.”

“Usman Salim.”

***

Barcelona, Spain

“Alright, I get it.” Salim’s voice sounded amused over the car’s speakerphones. “Every time money, gear or transport is needed, it’s: ‘Better call Salim’.”

Priya raced past
La Monumental
after a five hour drive. Barcelona’s biggest bullfight arena,
could hold twenty thousand spectators.  It was a ring of red walls and high towers that held black and white domes aloft in the cloudless blue sky. It was still early afternoon. The turquoise shine of the sea, yellow sands and newly built port welcomed Priya. A sail-shaped tower, the Hotel Vela, reflected the sun.

She parked just off
Placa Catalunya
, where the tourists and street artists met under sparse shadows in the cool breeze of the yard’s huge fountains. Flocks of pigeons rose up in the sky. They reminded her of peace, of what they fought for, even when the voices of the city trilled like a call to war.

Priya made her way along
La Rambla,
the walking promenade that connected everything. It bristled with tourists and beautiful women. Now, in one of the most renowned fashion capitals of the world, Priya regretted not having had time to consider her wardrobe.

The street opened into a modern harbor, laden with yachts and beach sides restaurants.

Priya strolled so as not to break a sweat. She had the whole afternoon before Olga would meet Khabib in the night club. A blushing grin spread across Priya’s face as the idea of seeing Salim occurred to her. She sent him a tantalizing message to meet her for an afternoon of play.

***

Opium club was a haven for top international DJs and their deafening arsenal of dance music. Salim had said this was the finest beach club in Barcelona. The huge neon lights in the form of poppy blossoms guaranteed nobody forgot its name: Opium.

While waiting to get in, Priya indulged in an old pastime. She assessed the securities around the compound. They looked professional. Two crowd entertainers were disguised as alien invaders. They walked on stilts, wearing frightening masks and clawed gauntlets. They pretended to battle the securities with their shoulder mounted laser pointers.

If Priya were to get into the club unnoticed, without a ticket, she would use one of their disguises.

Not today.

Today she would pretend to have fun and blow money. With Salim at her side, she would see what more they could learn about their enemies. The line between danger and play would be thin. An unforgettable night could end in the blink of an eye.

“I got a seat at a VIP table,” she told the doorman, who checked the guest list. “Under Usman Salim.”

He gave her a bright neon yellow wristband and let her through. She made her way to the bar where she could see Salim’s table.

Salim was filling his table with the best looking girls from the waiting line. Priya frowned. How could she keep up with them? These were models and actresses. Why did Salim chose her over them? Was he just playing with her?

Priya saw Salim follow a waitress to his VIP table.

They passed each other with a wink.

Priya moved to the dance floor.

“May I say, you look incredible tonight,” Salim said in his micro-bead.

She suppressed a smile. Salim had obtained both her and Mini’s evening wear. They hadn’t
packed for a mission in  Spain
’s hottest nightclub.

“Is the package here?” Priya said, eager to move the topic away from her, especially with her boss listening.

“Sitting in the Beluga lounge, waiting for the other package,” he said.

Priya glanced at Olga on her way to the dance floor.

It was full to bursting point, with violet lights and dancers on tables to stand out from the crowd. Beneath them a sea of ecstatic people surged like waves. Priya dove in and disappeared.

Her heart pounded. It was partly the music vibrating through every bone, and partly the urge to compete with the other female guests. It was also that she couldn’t come too close to Olga for fear of being recognised.

Priya went over to the bar, ordered water, and watched from a distance.

Olga was in the lounge, under the violet shine of the neon opium flower. The night sky shone overhead. A wooden gangplank led along the whole beach, where guests from this and other clubs mixed with each other.

Salim was having fun with friends and models. Priya felt a stab of jealousy, but this was his lifestyle and he excelled at it, winning over the hearts of people around him.

“Second package just arrived,” she heard Mini say through her earphone.

Mini got up from a couch, adjusting glasses onto her face. She was headed towards Olga’s table. Priya’s eyes followed her.

A man walked up to Olga and shook her hand.

Priya’s stomach clenched. If Mini was too intrusive she would endanger the whole mission. She was meant to dance close to Olga’s table and record everything with the camera in her glasses. But that was only plan B.

“Confirm, it is Khabib,” Mini said. She turned her back on them moving her hips to the rhythm.

The man took the seat opposite Olga.

“Priya, I want to hear what they are talking about,” Rose’s voice sounded in Priya’s earphone.

Priya turned to the barkeeper. She got his attention immediately.

“Can you send a bottle of Beluga to that table?” She pointed at the one with Olga and Khabib. Tell them it’s on the house if they ask.” She held up her neon VIP wristband. “Charge it to him,” she said, indicating Salim.

The barkeeper prepared the drinks and mixers, then put the bottle into a bucket of ice on the bar in front of her. Priya thrust a hand inside and dropped in a waterproof microphone. She took an ice-cube out and brushed it over her neck before signaling the waiter to take the drinks over.

“Tanya’s envelope is on the table. Confirm,” Mini said.

“Positive, it is the same one from yesterday,” Priya replied.

Priya could hear the waiter taking the cans out and filling up two glasses. The ice-cubes in the bucket sounded like grinding metal in Priya’s ears.

“Thanks,” Olga said.

Khabib sat with his jacket still on. He ran a finger down the collar of his shirt and opened a button, then another. It was getting hot, but he obviously wasn’t planning to stay long. Priya had to catch everything that was exchanged between them.