The Oracle Code

41



General Anton Cherkshan Residence

Patriarshiye Ponds

Moscow, Russian Federation

February 20, 2013

“Are you sure there is nothing else you need me to do?”

Anna looked into Lieutenant Emil Basayev’s face and smiled at him as they sat in front of the house where her parents now lived. “No. Thank you for everything you have done. You have been a prince. But I’m sure the general will want you back at your post.”

Emil sighed dramatically. “This is true. I am glad we got this time to spend together. We both lead such busy lives these days. It is very hard to find time to be with friends.”

“When I get a spare moment, I will give you a call. Perhaps for lunch?”

“I would love lunch.” Emil smiled at her.

At another time, she might have enjoyed his attentions. He was a handsome man, and he looked splendid in his uniform. She had seldom seen him in it except in pictures. When they met at functions with friends, he was always in street wear.

Anna opened the door and let herself out. He waited at the curb, and she knew he wouldn’t leave until she was inside. She turned and trudged up the walk toward the tall, turreted alabaster house her parents had bought and moved into during her pre-teen years from the flat where she’d grown up.

On a lot of days, she missed that old flat. She’d had friends there, and stories had loomed on every corner.

The new house was nice, bigger than anything Anna had been able to imagine at the time, but it still didn’t feel like home. This house was where her parents lived, despite the fact that she had finished growing up there.

Across the pond, she saw the hulking structure that had been built back near the end of World War II at Stalin’s order to house the army generals. In the nearby park, statues from Ivan Krylov’s fables alternately entertained and frightened children. The gold-handed monkey was always amusing, but for a long time, Anna hadn’t cared for the large bear.

The neighborhood was often referred to as the soul of Old Moscow. When Anna had heard that, she had thought of how well her father had fit into the neighborhood. If the soul of Old Moscow could be said to be embodied in any person, it was the general.

At the door, she used her key to let herself in. She’d just gotten off the phone with her mother, who was at the market buying food to cook for Anna’s welcome-home dinner. Her mother thought she was returning home to get some support after everything that Anna had been through.

Instead, she had come to burgle her father’s office.

As she waved to Emil and watched him drive away, Anna wondered if a general’s daughter would still be shot as a spy if she were caught doing what she was about to do. She turned and faced the door, knowing the answer was yes and knowing, too, that she would not be stopped.

She walked into the house, closing the door behind her, the thump it made sounding loud inside the empty house. She lifted her voice, trying to remember if her mother had changed domestics since she had last been at the house three months ago.

“Varvara?”

There was no answer. Anna felt certain she was alone. She hung her hat and coat on the rack beside the door, then went to her father’s study.

The house was Old World, the hallways narrow, the floors hardwood, and the rooms smaller than were found in new homes. As she’d gotten older, Anna had wondered why her father had purchased this place instead of getting one of the more modern ones. Then she had found out the choice had been her mother’s.

Her father’s study was in the back of the house. As always, it was locked. But Anna had come prepared for that. Before allowing Emil to drive her home, she had insisted that he first take her by the offices of The Moscow Times.

Kirill had wanted her to stay, of course. There was work to be done, and keeping track of everything going on in Russia and the Ukraine—and keeping up with international reactions to the “reunification”—was daunting.

She hadn’t told him what she was going to do. She had merely taken the things she needed from her locker, accepted a mild rebuke from Kirill for leaving them in their time of need, and left with Emil.

Among the things she’d gotten was a lockpick kit. One of the other reporters for the paper had learned many things during a “misspent youth.” Lockpicking was just one of those things. Now, he used some of those skills getting into and out of government offices. Kirill had cautioned him, letting him know he would one day get caught, but then Kirill always congratulated him on his scoops as well.

Anna had gotten him to teach her because he had been interesting and handsome. Unfortunately, he was also unable to commit to anything more than a deadline. Thankfully, she had found that out early in the relationship.

She knelt and worked on the lock to the general’s study, smiling in triumph when she heard the tumblers click into place. She put the lockpicks away and turned the knob. Even though she knew the general didn’t keep any alarms in the house other than the smoke alarm and the burglar alarms on the entrances and windows, she still expected some kind of siren to go off.

The room was neat, and everything was in its place, just as she remembered it always being. One of the general’s prize possessions was a large globe in a three-legged floor stand. It had been given to him by his father, who had traded labor for the globe and told his son that one day he would travel the world as a successful man if he would only do his job as any good Russian did. The globe was sadly out of date regarding the names of countries and the shifting boundaries. But the general loved that globe and used to talk to her about countries he had seen in the Middle East. He had never been to America, and he’d never wanted to go.

The desk was large and imposing, a monolith that took up a lot of floor space. It looked extravagant, but when the general was working on a project, he covered all of the available space with folders and papers and pictures.

Anna had seen him working sometimes, and he’d always looked grim when he did.

A massive bookshelf took up nearly one entire wall, filled with volumes on history and politics and on military hardware and training manuals. It also held some of the books the general had read to her as a child.

Forcing her thoughts to the task at hand, knowing that her mother could arrive home at any time, Anna sat down at the desk and brought up the general’s computer. It asked for a password.

She didn’t even try to guess. Instead, she dug out the second thing she had gotten from her office, a small USB device that could connect any computer to her friend, Spaso, a hacker she had met in Moscow while writing a story dealing with the Internet.

Spaso lived off the grid, and she had never been able to identify him. He was a ghost, and anyone in the digital information business in Russia and a dozen other countries told stories about him. He wasn’t hacking for money, though he’d told her he took that when he needed to, but was more interested in obtaining the most valuable commodity in the world: information.

They had become friends. Spaso was also a handsome man, bearded and very mysterious, but he’d told her that he wasn’t interested in anyone who couldn’t live off the grid with him. Even her friendship was a risk. But he’d been willing to take it because she’d been so charming.

At the time, she’d blushed and been surprised at how quickly the outlaw had swept her off her feet. Spaso had taken his name from Spasopeskovskaya Square, which meant Savior on the Sands and referred to the sandy soil of the Arabat District in Moscow. She’d wondered if he had lived there once or, perhaps, if he lived there still. He claimed to be the Savior of Cyberspace.

Quieting her nerves, Anna pushed the device into an open port on the general’s computer. Then she opened her phone and dialed a number Spaso had forced her to commit to memory. It wasn’t written down anywhere.

Occasionally, Spaso changed the number because one contact or another had gotten caught or sold him out. When that happened, he came around and met her—almost anywhere. She was surprised at how well he tracked her movements, until she remembered they were all in her planner in her computer. He would take her to lunch in the park or somewhere, and he would give her the new number, never once explaining why the old one had been compromised.

“Hello, Anna.” Spaso’s voice was low and cheery.

“Hello, Spaso. I do not have a lot of time, so I need to be quick about this. I will be glad to meet you for dinner at some time in the future.”

“I look forward to that. I suppose you need a computer unlocked.”

“I do. I have your device installed, but the computer is asking for a password.”

“It is no problem. Sit back and watch me work magic.”

True to his word, the password field suddenly filled in, then the computer booted up the rest of the way.

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything you can find involving the Russian military.”

Spaso was quiet for a moment, then when he came back on the line, he wasn’t quite so laidback. “You didn’t say whose computer this was.”

She didn’t want to hide the truth from him. He was putting himself at risk to do this. “General Cherkshan’s.”

“Ah. You are asking for trouble then.”

Anna watched the screen as pages flew by. “Not if we do not get caught.”

“This is true.”