Mother Russia

Chapter Four

Ada Wong took a sip of her latte and picked up a pair of small binoculars. She was seated on a bench in a small public park, surrounded by manicured grass and flowery bushes. The entrance to the park had a sign thanking the Umbrella Corporation for the generous donation that allowed the park to be built. The edge of the park was lined with trees spaced about twenty feet apart, and it was between the trees that Ada directed her gaze. There was a parking lot on the other side, next to a line of small office buildings, and then a major six-lane highway. On the other side of the highway, about three hundred yards from where Ada sat, was an entrance driveway to an Umbrella facility, blocked by a security gate.

The binoculars were small but very powerful. Despite the distance, if the guard at the security gate had held up a newspaper, Ada could have read the headlines. Currently sitting at the gate was a line of cars, full of Umbrella employees ready to leave work for the day.

Ada had been in Yatovska for six weeks. Her apartment was in a nice neighborhood about twenty minutes from downtown. She had taken advantage of her generous expense account to get a decent place, although at the moment it was mostly full of equipment and supplies. She would probably have to clean the place up and make it look presentable in a few weeks.

As she watched the cars drive through the gate, she mentally checked off the names of all the people she saw. By now, she recognized them by the cars they drove. The little notebook in her purse was full of lists of numbers, names, addresses, and dates. The majority of her time in Yatovska so far was spent investigating all the scientists who came out of that gate every afternoon, and by now she knew most of the information by heart.

“There you are, darling,” she said to herself. “Right on time. I like men who are punctual.”

A sleek black luxury sedan pulled up to the gate, and a middle-aged man reached out to hand his security card to the guard on duty. He was one of Umbrella’s Senior Project Directors. Thanks to her boss Wesker, Ada had access to a handful Umbrella computer systems, but their information was limited and some of it was out of date. As a result, Ada needed to do personal surveillance to build up a workable profile on her target.

Name, Arkady Sobolev. Age, 51. Never married. No children. Only family consisted of his mother, who lived in Belgorod, and a younger sister who lived in Moscow, who he had little contact with. No pets. Non-smoker. Drank alcohol rarely. Lived in a large house in a private community on the outskirts of the city. Did not socialize with his neighbors. Bought a new car every year, purely as a sign of his wealth and rank in the company. Golfed on weekends.

Very boring, Ada thought. But in many ways, the perfect mark. Arkady Sobolev was like many of the assets Ada had nurtured over the years. He was a lonely, predictable, socially-awkward workaholic in a very high-pressure occupation. Just the kind of man who would be thrilled and eager to please a beautiful woman who showed him even the slightest bit of attention.

Ada had a pretty good instinct for these kinds of things. In her line of work, knowing the difference between a promising target and a truly gullible one could mean the difference between success and failure. Most men, when confronted with a pretty face, let their common sense fly right out the window. It was easy for Ada to take advantage of a mark when their IQ dropped twenty points every time she smiled coyly and giggled at their jokes.

Arkady would not be quite so easy, but Ada was confident. After three weeks of researching every last detail of his life, learning his daily routines, watching him through binoculars, trailing his car, and even disabling the security system at his house and snooping around, Ada decided that Arkady was her best shot.

There would be some challenges. It would be easier if Arkady was a bit younger, as a man his age might be suspicious of a younger woman showing him attention. Ada had run into men like that before, men so jaded and pessimistic that they could never believe a woman like her would honestly want to go out on a date. It would also be better if he was a lower-level employee, like a middle manager or some kind of team lead. Someone who had reached the level of Senior Project Director would be much harder to manipulate and much more careful when they discussed their job.

She watched through the binoculars as the guard activated the gate. Arkady drove out and merged into traffic. Seconds later, his car disappeared behind the line of offices and Ada lost sight of him. She lowered the binoculars into her lap and took another sip of her drink.

She would have to get creative if she wanted to squeeze any information out of him. There were other candidates she might pursue, but based on her research, none of them had the kind of security clearance she needed. Only a handful of scientists at the facility were involved in the new projects, and Ada was certain that Arkady was one of them. He might even be in charge.

She finished her drink, packed up her things, and left the park. Her rental car was parked about a kilometer away, on the other side of another line of offices. The few people she passed were employees of the various businesses nearby, and if any of them were curious about who she was, they didn’t show it. Ada’s cover story was that she worked for an consulting firm and she was in Yatovska to determine if her company should purchase some available real estate. If anyone looked up her or her employer, they would find very legitimate-looking websites, some very convincing business records, and even tax forms and banking records.

She doubted that anyone would go to that much trouble. This part of the city was full of white collar businesses and professional office workers, including many Umbrella employees, and anyone who saw Ada would probably assume she was a recent hire or a transfer from another facility. There were plenty of new faces around lately, so she didn’t think there would be a problem.

Wesker gave her considerable leeway in how to obtain her objectives, but was frustratingly vague regarding exactly what those objectives were. All Wesker knew was that Umbrella was directing some of its viral research to this particular lab in Yatovska, and he wanted access to whatever they were working on. Basically, Ada was supposed to steal anything she could get her hands on, whether it was research data, computer models, photographs, specimen DNA samples, experimental records, prototype viral designs, or actual physical samples of the viruses used. Wesker wanted all of it and he expected Ada to deliver.

If she was going to take a shot at stealing anything from the lab, now was the right time to do it. Lots of new people were coming and going, and it might be possible for her to slip in unnoticed. The Umbrella facilities in Yatovska were not at all prepared to handle extremely-infectious biological samples, and Umbrella surely knew that. It would take awhile for them to redesign the lab complex to make sure the viral research was fully secure. Until then, there would be holes in their security system, and Ada knew how to exploit them.

But all of that was a moot point if she couldn’t get close to Arkady Sobolev. She needed to know what he knew. That meant learning what projects they were working on, gaining access to his security credentials, learning the layout of the lab complex, knowing exactly where the viral research was being stored, and knowing what other scientists had access to it.

Thankfully, Arkady was a creature of habit, and Ada knew his habits. Every day for his lunch break, he left the facility and drove to a nearby cafe, where he ordered a sandwich and soup and read the newspaper. Ada had gone to the cafe two out of the last three days at the same time as Arkady, but she did not interact with him yet. All she wanted to do was make him aware of her presence. If he saw her at the cafe a few times, he would let his guard down ever so slightly when she tried to make small talk with him. She couldn’t just go up to him on day one and ask him out on a date. She had to become part of his routine, he had to think of her as the lady he saw at the cafe, and then when she suggested they meet for dinner, he wouldn’t find it strange or out of the ordinary.

Wesker was already getting impatient, but Ada knew her business. It took time and hard work to gain the trust of a mark. By the end of next week, she would strike up a conversation with Arkady and gauge his reaction. If it went well, she’d say hello at the cafe more often. Another week and she’d flirt with him. Then, with any luck, he would be the one to ask her out to dinner. It was all part of her calculations. Ada had groomed numerous male assets over the years. It was all a matter of figuring out that they wanted, and giving them just a little hint that they might get it.

Most of the time, they wanted sex. That was obvious. Ada had become a master at keeping men at arms’ length while promising them that if only they would share some of their secrets, she might let them get closer. Men like that were the easiest ones to manipulate. But most of the time, what these men really wanted was someone they could trust, someone they could confess to, someone to be their personal therapist. Ada had become a master at that too.

And if Ada’s guess was correct, then Arkady definitely needed a therapist. If he was working on the new viral project, then his stress levels must be sky high by now. He had to know that the Yatovska lab was not prepared to deal with that kind of research. Working with such deadly viruses would make anyone stressed out. Those viruses has already destroyed an entire city and killed a hundred thousand people, and Ada was very nearly one of them.

When she reached her car, she got inside but didn’t start the ignition. She sat for a few minutes, looking out the window with the car key in her hand.

She tried not to think about Raccoon City too much. Every time her thoughts strayed in that direction, she froze and had to force the thoughts back down. She saw some truly terrible things in Raccoon City, and came awfully close to death more than a few times. Many of the city’s survivors had been forced to watch their friends and family members die and rise again as undead, so maybe that was worse than what Ada had been through. But like them, she suffered from PTSD. Sometimes she wondered how the other survivors dealt with it.

At first, she dealt with it by drinking large amounts of alcohol for several days after the disaster. But she could only do that for so long before she had to get herself sober and get back to work. And now, she was working for the man who played a crucial role in the events that led up to the entire outbreak. There was a kind of tragic irony in that, she thought.

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