"Burning the Midnight Oil"
02.55hrs MI9 Headquarters, London 24th April 2008 He sighed again, deeply. In three days he had achieved sod-all. The trail was elusive at best and non-existent at worst; despite making some progress, regarding the shooter Mikhael Rostovic. He had found out that he was a native Serbian formerly in the forces of Milosevic and then later working for one Arkady Bukharin, who was in turn known to be an associate of one branch of the Russki Mafiya. After that the trail went white, the MI9 term for cold, Sean had tried the international databases, and turned up little, either on the Mafiya or on any of the names he had. The woman, his contact had given him another name, Alexis Karpoulounis. There was no trace of him, who he was or even if that were just a pseudonym. He tapped the pencil he was holding on the desk, if there were a connection, even the smallest, it might give a clue to how to find the suspected arms dealer. Andrea had left him after `their' meeting with instructions to work until he had at least undone some of the damage. He had said nothing, what was there to say, he had been impulsive, but he could bear sitting in an office doing paperwork no longer; he hadn't joined the organization to be a pen pusher. Since seeing Saf he had felt increasingly unsettled. She had been so cold, so detached, that he wondered if she was the same person; then when he had kissed her, he felt her respond, before she pulled away from him. He knew then that she still had feelings for him, that a small flame still burnt inside her, but since then, nothing. He had tried sending reports to Gray, which got him reinstated on her list, but she hadn't responded to his messages. He wanted to explain, and have her listen to his side of the story, but that wouldn't work while they were separated by an ocean. His pencil dropped to the desk, as he fought against the overwhelming tiredness, the need to redeem himself stronger than his desire for sleep, until he woke, cold and cramped. 06.30hrs At some point in time, while he had slept, he realized he had missed out one important connection. Ilya Georgiev, late of SVR now Liaison to the SIA, surely he would know more about the Mafiya than anyone else in the field. Sean took a deep breath and emailed Ilya across the secure network, requesting a `chat' about the Mafiya. It took some time, but Ilya responded with some information that proved quite useful, the name of Alexis Karpoulounis was not known, but Arkady Bukharin was. He was certainly amongst the upper echelons of the Mafiya, although no charges had ever been brought and one of his closest business colleagues was a Alexei Konstantin. Ilya didn't say that Alexei was dirty, he had no need to, Sean was well able to put two and two together and the sums didn't quite add up. Sean thanked him, and gave him a telephone number to reach him at home in case anything else came up. Sean also had a hunch that if he found Alexei Konstantin, he would also have tracked down Alexis Karpoulounis, though quite why he felt that was the case he didn't know; in the past his hunches had paid off and he had learnt never to ignore them. He wrote up the report, and checked it for irregularities, Andrea was picky about the little things in life as well as the big things and he wasn't going to give her more ammunition. He printed off 2 copies, one for himself and one for Andrea before shutting down his laptop, he had done enough to get out of the mire for the moment, now he was going to put his head down. 11.00hrs Meridian Tower Sean had an apartment in a new development not far from Greenwich. Normally he would have jogged the few miles home, but today he had been too tired to consider it, and took the underground home instead. It wasn't the best thing; the underground was hot, smelly and cramped. He hated being with so many people at once and it was a relief to get out into the fresh air once more. The apartment had views overlooking the Thames, and he always felt that he had an affinity for old father Thames. He changed into jeans and a sweater and was going to sit on the balcony, but the early spring air was not warm enough and he ended up curled up on the couch listening to the radio. As much as he wanted to keep his eyes open, they were irresistibly closing and finally he gave in and slept. 13.40hrs The ringing of the phone woke him from a deep, dreamless sleep. He reached for it automatically, answering it with a soft "Hi". It was Ilya, "Sean, Zdravstvuyte. How are you?" Sean responded automatically "Dobry Den Ilya. I am fine." He knew his accent was not perfect, but it was getting better. Ilya was laughing at him, "Sean, I have some news for you. I checked with my team, who have done some routine surveillance on contacts of Alexei Konstantin, I don't know how important this is, but about one month ago they followed a woman; they met at a café and then went onto a nightclub, she left early the following morning." He paused before he continued "Sean, I have seen the surveillance photographs, it was the SIA agent, Sara Churchill, who was seen with him." Saf, Ilya was talking about Saf. The questions about what, when, how, who scrambled his thoughts. He felt choked, but he managed to thank Ilya for the information. What was Saf up to? Did she know who Alexei was? Sean knew that he had to talk to Gray before proceeding further. Return