Chapter 37

  Prague, the Czech Republic

  The sun had been down for nearly three hours when Ivan Rakov slipped unnoticed into the back alleyway of the small apartment building on a quiet residential street in Prague. Except for the few slight differences in the front facade, the brick building was almost exactly the same as all the other apartment buildings on the block. He could detect no security cameras anywhere on the street or on the apartment building exterior. Ivan never took chances, though. He swore that he would never set foot in prison again. Ivan entered the alley and stopped to scan the area. He heard a few dogs barking in the distance and spotted a mangy cat searching for scraps in the nearby garbage cans. Other than that, the alley was empty. His eyes ever alert, he slowly walked up to the back of the apartment building and used his picklock to gain entry through the back door. He turned the door handle and cautiously looked in every direction before entering. The target’s apartment unit was on the third floor in the back of the building, and his closest neighbor was across and down the hall. She was an elderly woman who retired to bed early and was up before the crack of dawn. He had been watching the apartment for several days and knew the man’s routine. He had one hour before Dr. Chakinski would arrive home. The young man lived alone and had no girlfriend or few friends that Ivan knew of. The man was a research scientist. Some would call him a genius, but to Ivan, he was just another assignment that would pay him well.

  It had been several years since Ivan had set foot in Prague. The last time, he was working for a different employer. He was sent there to kill a man who took something that didn’t belong to him. It belonged to one of the most ruthless men in the Russian mob. It was a fatal mistake with lethal consequences for the thief and a well-paid job for Rakov.

  Ivan bathed with unscented soap, and his clothes were washed and dried the same way. Although being a heavy smoker, he never smoked when he was on the job. He once made the mistake of not bathing or washing his clothes for several days while staking out a target. Ivan was new to the game then, and it had almost cost him his life. His target had picked up his offensive odor as soon as he entered his Moscow home. Now, years later and at the tender age of twenty-four, he was a seasoned professional and didn’t make mistakes.

  Ivan quietly made his way to the third floor, and within seconds, he was at the target's door. Using the picklock again, he quickly opened the door and entered the small apartment as quietly as a mouse. Ivan stood just inside the doorway and surveyed the sparsely furnished apartment. He was not surprised to see several low-wattage lights on in every room. He knew that Peter Chakinski deliberately left them on when he was not home and only turned them off when he went to bed. Undaunted, Ivan moved to the desk with a laptop computer perched on top of it. He opened the computer, and as he suspected, a short black line blinked on the user password entry box. Ivan plugged a flash drive into an unused USB port, and it attempted to start a download that would extract everything from the hard drive. However, it was immediately stopped by the computer's very good security system. Ivan called Dimitri, who confirmed the failure. They now decided to install a monitoring camera to hopefully capture Chakinski's password. He closed the laptop and moved on. Using his flashlight, he searched the entire apartment for any disks or flash drives he could copy. He found none. After searching the entire apartment, he reached into his bag and pulled out a small camera. He found the perfect hiding place in the smoke detector mounted to the ceiling in the main room. After installing the camera, he made a call and confirmed the reception. Ivan slipped out of the apartment and into the hallway two minutes later. As he made his way to the back stairs, he took one last look before heading down the staircase.

  The movement was slight, but he just caught the door to the elderly woman’s apartment close without a sound. Ivan let out a sigh and turned around. Now, he had to deal with Martha. Ivan approached her door and knocked gently.

  Very softly, he said. “Martha, I’m one of Peter’s associates. I’m afraid Peter’s been in a bad auto accident.” Ivan waited for the old woman to reply and was only met with silence.

  “I just wanted to tell you because I saw that you were still up. Good night, Martha.”

  Ivan slowly started down the hall. He knew she would open her door, and he wasn’t disappointed. Martha undid all the door locks and stuck her head into the hall. She was immediately frightened by his appearance. She knew he was Russian by his voice, but she wasn’t prepared for what she saw. The man looked very dangerous. He was very large and muscular. He wore dark pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. His head was large and round, with many visible scars. His hair was long and jet black, as was his mustache. As he got closer, she could see a spider web tattoo coming out of his shirt collar and tattoos on his hands and arms. Despite her reservation, the man had a very calming voice, and her concern for Peter overrode her initial fear, yet she remained very cautious.

  "What happened to Peter? Is he all right? You said something about an auto accident?"

  Ivan inwardly smiled, "Peter is fine. He wasn't injured badly, but they are keeping him at the hospital for a while just to monitor his condition."

  I don't believe I've ever seen you before. Who did you say you were?"

  "I'm one of Peter's security people. My name is Ivan."

  Martha knew of Peters's work, and he told her of the risks of his research. Peter had never mentioned any security people before, so she remained guardedly suspicious. Ivan slowly started back toward Martha's apartment. He didn't risk making any sudden moves that would alarm the old woman. As he got closer, the scars on his face were more prominent.

  "When did this happen? Martha asked with great concern in her voice.

  As Ivan moved closer, she instinctively moved back into her apartment yet remained close by the door.

  “A couple of hours ago, he went to pick up some supplies for the lab, and his auto was struck by a lorry.”

  “How do you know my name, and how did you get into the building?”

  “Peter gave me his key and told me to come by and pick something up for him while he was in the hospital. He also told me to tell you he would be there for a while if you were still up. He knows you go to bed early, so I didn’t want to wake you. He told me to give you this note if you were up.” Ivan lied and reached into his pocket, pretending to take out the fictitious note.

  With this new information, Martha let her guard down and reached out her hand to take the note. Ivan used it to close the gap quickly, and he was on her in an instant. Ivan grabbed her left arm, pulled it hard, and spun her around before she knew what happened. He placed one big hand over her mouth and the other across her shoulders. He then lifted her back into her apartment and used his foot to close the door.

  “Martha, I’m very sorry, but you should’ve gone to bed,” Ivan said, slightly dismayed.

  He looked around the small living quarters and wasn’t surprised by all the crosses depicting Christ’s crucifixion and other religious icons scattered around the apartment.

  “Now Martha, I can see that you’re a religious woman, and that’s very nice…but me not so much, so I’m afraid you’ve forced me to help you meet your maker a bit prematurely.” Martha’s eyes widened, and she tried to scream, but all to no avail. In one quick motion, Ivan twisted the old woman’s head sideways, snapping her neck like a dried twig.

  Ivan gently set Martha’s lifeless body down in an oversized, overstuffed chair. He carefully opened the door and searched the hallway. There was no sign of life. He picked Martha back up, quietly carried her through the door, and closed the door again with his foot. On the back hallway landing, between the second and third floors, he gently placed her head face down and her feet on the stair treads above her head. It was perfect. Satisfied, he then headed for the rear exit. As he left the building and headed down the alley, he sighed, “Pity that accidents can happen when you’re old. You just never know when your time is up.”

  *****

  Peter Chakinski was born into a Communist State within the Eastern Bloc. But after the "Velvet Revolution" in 1989, Czechoslovakia returned to a liberal democracy. Peter had very few people skills; however he was blessed with a brilliant mind. He was relatively short, standing at five feet six inches, with a slight build; he wasn't exactly a lady's man. He looked like a young Albert Einstein with long, wavy dark, brown hair, and a receding hairline. With a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from Lancaster College in the U.K., he published his college thesis online, "Oil, The 800-pound gorilla on the back of the world." Immediately after and before he even graduated, he received job offers from many alternative energy companies in the U.S. and Europe. Unfortunately, his thesis also caught the attention of Sheik Mohammed Bin Abdullah Al Ali, who saw him as a major threat to his vision. Peter had unwittingly made an enemy that would watch him very closely.

  Peter’s field of expertise was Photovoltaics. He applied for a grant at UNYP and received an award based on his thesis. While the average efficiency of solar panels using multicrystalline silicon wafers was in the range of fifteen to eighteen percent and with a life span of twenty-five to thirty years. Peter’s theory and design was exponentially higher. With an efficiency of seventy-five to eighty-five percent and with proper maintenance, a life span of fifty to seventy-five years or higher. The design used a liquid, closed-loop, slow-flowing grid system with two separate layers to form a PN Junction and a monitoring system that added doping when needed. It was also estimated to cost one-third to manufacture vs silicon wafers.

  This had Al Ali terrified. If Chakinski’s theories hold true, the oil demand would plummet. And his hopes of a worldwide Islamic Calafate would collapse. He tried to infiltrate his research facility with spies of both genders. However, Peter rejected them all, much to Ali’s displeasure. The obvious choice was a woman, yet he rejected both the beautiful and the plain. He was beginning to think that Peter was gay. But the truth was much more straightforward. Peter was simply shy around women and didn’t want the distraction. With no one on the inside, Ivan and his partner Dmitri were called in to spy on Dr. Chakinski. These two were not his first choice, but given the fact that they were Russian and would not draw attention in Prague, they would have to do. Dmitri was the computer genius who could hack into almost any computer system, and Ivan was the muscle. The only problem with Dmitri was that he loved the money that Al Ali offered him but was a coward when it came to fieldwork.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Al Ali had no intention of using any new technology that he acquired, at least not until the oil ran out. His only intent was to steal the research material and file for patent rights before the rightful owners did. Through the Ishmael Group, which was just an untraceable shell corporation, Al Ali owned several research facilities in the U.S. and other countries that were only research fronts. Once any new technology was stolen, one of his research facilities would file for patent protection. Like Alexander Gramm Bell and his historic long battle over the invention of the telephone, they would fight the rightful owners in court, oftentimes for years if need be. But with billions of oil dollars at his disposal, Al Ali could retain the best law firms that money could buy, and the fights were often genuinely one-sided.

  *****

  A short time after his thesis was published; President Roberts sent a special team to pay the young scientist a visit in an effort to make him an offer. Peter listened to their proposal with keen interest. Before their visit, Peter had been very na?ve about the world of big business and industrial espionage, even though some of his college professors mentioned it. All he was concerned with was pure research and nothing more.

  Peter loved his country, but moving to America had a certain allure. His parents had both died in a small plane crash while he was still in college. They were both college professors at The University of New York in Prague and were traveling to Switzerland for a seminar when their plane went down in bad weather. Their original pilot arrived at the airport on time but had stopped at a pub for a few glasses of “Pivo” before the flight. To their demise, he was replaced by a young pilot who had just received his instrument rating. Many said the seasoned pilot could have flown the aircraft better drunk than the sober young pilot who crashed. The twenty-eight-year-old man with two doctorates had few relatives and fewer friends in Prague. His confinement to the research facility was the only thing holding him back from taking the President's offer. He loved his freedom, and the thought of being confined in any way did not sit well with him. He politely turned down the President's offer, and with his connections at the UNYP, Peter applied for and received a grant to fund his own research on alternative energy. However, after he turned down the President's offer, he was extensively schooled by his representative on how to keep his secrets safe from the unseen powers that would try and steal his research. Thus, Peter was no longer na?ve about the evils that lurked in the world and the ruthless men who would do anything to protect their interests. Or at least he thought he was.

  In a newly built, highly secure facility on the University Campus, Peter conducted his research with a small staff of paid employees and a few student volunteers he screened personally. The only way to enter the research lab was with a retina scan identification and access password, which Peter routinely changed randomly. All chemical analysis and lab test results were entered personally by Peter into an encrypted database. No outside internet access, cell phones, or cameras were allowed in the test lab, and all data was transferred to a hard drive and backup storage device in a secure vault at the end of each day. Until he had a substantial breakthrough, this would have to do. It wasn't as secure as Lawrence Livermore, but with limited funds, it wasn't bad.

  Peter parked his old BMW 318i on the street and headed for his apartment. It was a cool evening, and the streets were wet from a quick passing thunderstorm. He was tired from the long day of research, testing, and paperwork. He just wanted to take a long hot bath with a glass of wine and then get a few hours of sleep before the routine started all over again. He entered his apartment through the front door and climbed the front stairs to the third floor. As he was passing Martha’s door, he noticed that it wasn’t closed all the way. At first, he was bewildered but quickly became very concerned. He gently knocked on her door. He knew she retired early and would never leave her door open for any reason. He knocked harder and eased the door open when he got no answer.

  "Martha, it's Peter; are you alright?"

  When he got no reply, he entered her apartment and said a bit louder, "Martha, are you alright?"

  Still, he got no answer. He went through the small apartment but found no sign of the old woman.

  Nothing seemed to be out of place. Then Peter noticed what appeared to be a damp spot on Martha's chair where she watched TV. Peter knew that Martha was meticulous and would clean up any spill she made. Peter walked over to the chair and looked at the wet spot. He thought tea, perhaps, until he decided against her drinking tea at this late hour. Puzzled, he bent down and took a quick sniff. The pungent odor of urine caused him to retreat abruptly. Peter now made his way back to the bathroom and rechecked it. Perhaps she hit her head on the tub cleaning herself up after her accident. No Martha.

  Peter took out his cell phone and was going to call the super when he found that the battery was dead. This was not unusual because he often forgot to charge it even though he was the only one allowed a cell phone in the lab. However, he knew the manager's number, picked up Martha's landline, and called him. It was answered after three rings.

  "Petrov, this is Peter. Martha's door was open when I came home a few minutes ago, and she's not in her apartment. Do you know where she is?" Peter asked with evident concern in his voice.

  "No, I don't… maybe she went out to buy something?"

  "I've never known her to go out at this time of night. Why don't you come up? It looks like she was here not long ago because there is a wet stain on her chair. I'll be in my apartment. Just knock when you come up."

  Petrov said he would be up in a few minutes and ended the call.

  Fifteen minutes later, Petrov came up the back staircase and found his missing tenant. “Sweet Mother of God,” he said as he crossed himself.

  After Peter finished talking with his apartment manager, he left Martha’s apartment and walked across and down the hall. He inserted his key into the deadbolt, unlocked it, and entered his private sanctuary. Peter used the bathroom, then went to his small refrigerator and poured himself a glass of German Riesling. He took a sip and looked around the small four-room apartment. Nothing looked out of place, yet he had a strange feeling something was different. Maybe it was just Martha’s disappearance that had him upset. She was like a grandmother to him. She would often bake him bread and bring him food, then remind him that he was single and needed a woman to take care of him.

  “Peter, you don’t eat enough; all you do is work. When are you going to find a nice girl and get married and have children?”

  Now Peter was worried that something might have happened to her. It was not like her to go off and not tell a soul where she was going. It was not like her at all!

  As he did every night after coming home, Peter opened his Toshiba laptop, entered his password, and logged on. He intended to update his daily log, which was separate from his research log. When his computer was fully up, he noticed the red flashing icon on the self-installed security system that indicated that he had an intrusion. If anyone had entered his apartment, the motion sensors would activate the hidden cameras and record the event. Normally, he would have received a notice on his cell phone, but that didn’t happen because of his oversight. He took out his cell phone and plugged it into the charger. Still tethered to the charging cord, he powered the phone up and looked at the screen. He wasn’t surprised that he had several voice messages from unanswered calls. He often muted his cell and let the caller leave a message simply because he was too busy to answer any calls. He scrolled down the call log until he found the number he was looking for. Martha had called about two hours ago. She didn’t leave a message. He took another sip of wine and leaned back in his chair to gather his thoughts. Peter wasn’t concerned about the intrusion. Petrov was supposed to fix his leaking sink, although that was a few days ago, and Petrov wasn’t the fastest person in the world. But when he pulled up the video on his laptop, he was shocked to see someone other than the building manager had entered his apartment. The camera lenses were very small and expensive, and the detail was sharp and extraordinary.

  The man was big and looked like he could rip a man Peter’s size in two. The man looked dark and evil. His greasy, long black hair and scared face terrified Peter. Yet, as large as the man was, he still moved like a cat. Peter had never seen the man before. He put his hand up to his mouth and sat in stunned silence as he watched him move through his apartment. The man came in and closed the door quietly. After he entered, he just stood a couple of feet past the door and looked around. He took in everything, then headed for his desk.

  Peter could see that he had on latex gloves. He watched as the man opened his laptop and stared at the screen. Then, the intruder plugged in what looked like a flash drive into the side of the computer and made a cell phone call. When he pulled it out a minute later, Peter sat back and ran his hands through his long, curly hair all the time, keeping his eyes on the screen. Peter peered at the screen in amazement as the intruder went through his apartment with military precision. At one point, his face was only inches from one of the tiny camera lenses. He involuntarily pushed himself back from the computer screen at the sight of the man’s face looking straight at him. He then watched as the man placed something on the ceiling, then he took out his cell phone again and made a call. As the man was talking, he sat down at his desk and moved his hands over the keyboard as Peter watched with fascination. He seemed satisfied because he put his cell phone away, closed the laptop, and quietly left his apartment.

  After Peter finished watching the video, he stood on shaky legs. He looked at the ceiling, knowing that the man in the video most assuredly had something to do with Martha’s disappearance, but what frightened him more was the fact that he was probably watching him at that very moment. The surreal experience left Peter dumbstruck, and he began to tremble. He finally composed himself and placed his chair over the smoke detector. He stepped up, twisted it off the ceiling, and opened the case. Inside, he found the small device. He pulled it out, turned it over in his hand, and then placed it in his pocket. Suddenly, there was a loud knock on the door that sent a jolt of electricity surging through his body. Peter jumped involuntarily, almost falling off his chair. He was relieved when he heard the accompanying voice a few seconds later.

  "Peter, Peter, it's Petrov. Open the door."

  He immediately opened the door and was greeted by Petrov, whose face was ashen.

  "What is it, Petrov?" Peter asked with concern.

  "I found Martha… and I think she's dead, Peter," Petrov said with a shaky voice.

  Peter felt another blow hit him.

  "Where is she?"

  Petrov turned and pointed, "She's in the back staircase. I think she may have had a heart attack and fell." Peter rushed to the stairway and looked down at the body of his elderly neighbor lying face down on the next landing. He took the steps two at a time. Reaching the landing, Peter bent down and turned the elderly woman over. He put his ear next to Martha's mouth. Nothing! Next, he placed his fingers on her neck and checked for a pulse. Nothing! Peter didn't need a medical examiner to tell him that Martha was dead. The woman was lifeless and starting to get cold. He sat down on the stair tread and let out a long sigh.

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Petrov; Martha is dead. Did you call the police yet?”

  “No, I came right to your door after I found her.”

  “Call the police, Petrov, and tell them to hurry. I think someone killed her and tried to make it look like an accident.”

  “What! Are you serious? Who would want to hurt Martha?” Petrov said with some indignation.

  “The same person that broke into my apartment just before I got home tonight, that’s who,” Peter whispered.

  Petrov looked at Peter with a bewildered look but decided not to question him. He took out his cell phone and punched 112, the emergency number for most of the European Union.