Storm Front

“Yes, General, I’m just getting them now,” Yuri answered. General. Volkov insisted all his men called him General. He believed that if the USSR had held together, he would have eventually risen to the top of the KGB, then switched to the military, where he would have ascended to that rank and exerted his influence on the Politburo. That none of that ever came to pass did not change Volkov’s opinion that he ought to be addressed in that manner.

“And you’ve got this terminal set up?” Volkov asked.

“Yes, General. I’ve been working on it, but I…”

“All right, let’s see it then,” Volkov interrupted, strolling across the branch of the cave that served as his communications center.

The MonEx 4000, protected by a casing of beige-painted steel, was the size of a footlocker and weighed several hundred pounds. It looked not unlike a large server. Not all digital electronics had yet shrunken down to handheld size, and this was one the complexity of which necessitated its ample dimensions. It fit on the top of a table one of the crewmen had brought into the communications center.

“General, with all due respect, I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Yuri said.

“You don’t understand what?”

“Our employer is paying us generously for each MonEx code we supply, am I right?” Yuri asked. Volkov had not told his crew how generously. He was getting a million dollars per code, but he told his crew it was a hundred thousand. Each member of the five-man crew thought he was getting a decent deal — ten thousand each, with the other half going to Volkov. If any of them suspected the split was, in fact, much less fair than that, none of them dared let on.

“That’s correct,” Volkov said, feeling his anger starting to grow. He did not like being questioned by an underling.

“So why don’t we just keep supplying codes? A hundred thousand to kill a paper-pushing banker — it’s good money for easy work, is it not?”

“Shame on you, Yuri. You think so small,” Volkov said.

“How so, General?”

“Simple logic. If someone is willing to pay us a hundred thousand for a code, it must be worth more than that, yes?” Especially when he’s really paying us a million, Volkov thought.

“But maybe it’s only worth that much to him,” Yuri countered. “Maybe, we should…”

“Yuri,” Volkov said, grabbing the young man’s ponytail and jerking it backward. Yuri’s eyes grew wide as Volkov slapped a hand on his throat. “You are correct in that we may not be able to exploit these codes for our own purpose, in which case we will accept our bounty and move to our next job. But I would like to think optimistically. Don’t you want to be an optimist, Yuri?”

“Yes, General,” he choked out.

“In chess, a grand master does not just approach the game one way,” Volkov said, tilting Yuri’s head farther back. “He has many different strategies, all working at the same time. That way he is prepared, no matter what his opponent does. Do you understand this?”

“Yes, General.”

“I waste my breath on you, Yuri. Just show me what you have,” Volkov said, and released his grip, then subconsciously adjusted his eye patch, which had been knocked just slightly off center.

Yuri rubbed his neck. He did not relish what he had to say next.

“That’s the problem, General. I don’t… We don’t… We don’t have anything.”

“What do you mean? The terminal was reassembled perfectly. We took pictures. I studied the schematics myself.” The volume of Volkov’s voice crescendoed to at least a mezzo forte.

“It’s not that, General. I…”

“Is it the connection? I thought you said you had the satellites set up properly.”

“Yes, General, I do. It’s just…”

Volkov was now at forte. “Then what is the problem?”

“It’s this,” Yuri said, tilting the screen so it was directly facing Volkov.

The Russian’s one good eye scanned back and forth across the text on the screen, his confusion growing with each passing second. It was not that the letters were unfamiliar — they were from the Roman alphabet, one Volkov had long ago been taught. It was not that the words were undecipherable — it was clearly English, which Volkov spoke fluently. But the screen, when taken in its entirety, was incomprehensible. Or at least it was incomprehensible to someone who had not received extensive training in the peculiarities of the MonEx’s unique operating system. And neither Yuri nor Volkov had.

“You’ve entered the code properly?”

“Yes, General. I double-checked it twice.”

“Then what’s… what’s this?”

“I’m just not sure,” Yuri said.

“We must be able to… transfer funds out of this somehow… or… something.”

“I’ve tried, General. As you can see, the func—”

“Get out of my way,” Volkov ordered, gripping Yuri’s shirt and using it as a handle to toss him roughly from the chair.

Volkov sat, tilted his good eye at the screen, and surveyed the keyboard. Surrounding the familiar QWERTY setup were rows and columns of buttons the purpose of which he could not even guess. He typed transfer funds. The screen lit with:

[INVALID COMMAND ERROR]