Mother Russia

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Chapter Eight

Ada checked her appearance in the mirror one more time, and after a short inspection, she nodded in satisfaction. She looked good, but not perfect. Her makeup was nice but perhaps a bit overdone, and her hair had a few strands out of place. Her dark red evening dress fit well, but it wasn’t flashy and didn’t expose too much skin, and her red high heels were too bright and didn’t match the dress.

Arkady would expect her to look like an average professional woman dolled up for a rare night on the town. Nothing too sensual or revealing. She considered padding her bra but decided against it. If she showed up looking like a supermodel, she would be out of place and Arkady would be confused and maybe suspicious. Ada could certainly have looked like a supermodel if she wanted to, but it would attract too much attention, and she didn’t want that. She had to look nice, but still average.

She had on some cheap jewelry, imitation pearls and fake diamond earrings. Hung over her shoulder was a small black purse with the name of a popular designer, but on close inspection it was just a knockoff. The woman that Ada was pretending to be – a French business consultant named Jeanette Archambeau – wouldn’t own the real thing. It was all part of the act. She had to give off the appearance of an average woman trying to look wealthier and more cultured than she really was.

She had a tiny pistol in a sheath on the inside of her thigh. That particular accessory didn’t fit in with her character, but she didn’t like being unarmed.

She ran through the plan as she drove to the restaurant, her mind naturally coming up with various ways to steer the conversation toward the information she was trying to get. She knew what questions to ask Arkady to get him talking about work. After several weeks of researching his life, she could ask innocuous questions that would make him speak more freely. Out of habit, she checked the restaurant’s floor plan ahead of time and had already come up with alternate routes of escape in case something went wrong. It was possible, although not likely, that she might slip up and Arkady would realize she was trying to squeeze him for information. In that case, she would have to make a quick exit.

The date was at 8:00. She arrived at the restaurant about fifteen minutes early and entered the lobby. It was called the Restoran Belyy Aist, which was Russian for the White Stork Restaurant. It was an upper-class seafood restaurant, the kind of fancy, expensive place that a woman like Jeanette Archambeau probably didn’t visit very often. Beautiful crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the sound of violins was piped through hidden speakers. The waitstaff wore bright white shirts and black slacks, and they delivered meals on shining silver platters. The cheapest bottle of wine on their wine list cost over one hundred dollars.

Clutching her purse, feigning a look of nervous excitement, she stood in the lobby and looked around. There were a few short benches in the lobby, but she didn’t sit down just yet.

There was the tiny chance that Arkady wouldn’t show up, but Ada doubted that. Arkady was the kind of man who fancied himself a gentleman, and he was quite punctual, as Ada had already noted. She guessed he would enter the lobby at exactly seven.

Although he had never married, Arkady had been in several relationships in his life, always with women with professional jobs like his own. His last girlfriend had been an office manager for an employment agency, but they broke up because they rarely got to see each other, mainly due to Arkady’s work schedule, and the girlfriend before that was a business executive for one of Umbrella’s suppliers in Yatovska, but that relationship ended when she transferred to Moscow. Arkady liked professional women who were intelligent and ambitious, and based on his dating history, he preferred brunettes. Ada was actually a bit too young for him, but she didn’t think that would be an issue.

Arkady came in at 7:59, dressed in dark gray pants, a blue dress shirt, with a black tie and black jacket. She could tell the clothes were not new. She wondered if he had worn them the last time he went out on a date.

“Hello!” she said with a wave. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you as well,” he said with a smile, walking over to give her a short hug and a kiss on the cheek. He glanced down at her body, but he didn’t ogle. “You look fantastic.”

“Thank you,” she gushed. “This is the first time I’ve really gone out since I came here. It feels so great to do something social.”

“I don’t get out too often myself,” Arkady admitted. “I’m usually too busy at my job. But I thought it would be nice to go out to eat tonight. Thanks for accepting my invitation.”

“Of course,” Ada said. “Have you eaten at this restaurant before?”

“I try to come here a few times a year,” he said as they walked over to the podium where the maître d’ was standing. “They have a great atmosphere and the food is wonderful.”

They had a reservation, so the maître d’ brought them over to their table. The menus were printed on very fine paper and tucked into brown leather folders tied with a black ribbon. There were candles at their table, but they were unlit. The silver cutlery gleamed and reflected the light from the chandeliers overhead. Ada took her seat and folded her hands in her lap.

The maître d’ left them to examine the menus, and Arkady said, “So you’ve only been here a few months? How do you like our fine city so far?”

“Oh, it’s very nice here. I haven’t been all around the city, but the downtown area is just great. It seems like the economy here is really thriving, that’s always good to see.”

“Yes, the business sector here is always expanding, we have new companies starting up all the time. They tell me there’s lots of growth potential.”

Ada smiled. “Well, I guess that’s why they sent me here, after all.”

“Have you traveled to many other places?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been to a number of places in Europe. London, Helsinki, Bern, places like that. This is my first assignment in Russia, though.”

“You speak the language quite well for a beginner.”

“Well, my father was in the military and he spent some time in Russia, where he learned the language, so I was always interested in speaking it. I have a knack for languages though, to be honest. I can speak English and German as well. And some Japanese, but I’m not fluent.”

Arkady was impressed. “I can speak a little bit of English, I suppose. And I know Ukrainian, but that’s not very different from Russian.”

“Have you lived in Yatovska your whole life, then?” Ada asked.

“I was born in Belgorod, actually. My mother still lives there. I moved here for my job about twenty years ago.”

“What a coincidence,” Ada said with a smile, “I moved here for my job, too.”

They ordered dinner and talked a bit more about superficial topics. Their family, their hobbies, what they’ve been up to lately. Ada kept the conversation moving, and made sure all her questions were vague enough that Arkady could fill in the blanks as he saw fit. She made sure to avoid too much talk about work. She talked about some of the movies she had seen lately, but Arkady didn’t watch a lot of movies or television. He talked about sports, but Ada didn’t have much interest in that. Now that they were eating and things were going well, Arkady ordered a bottle of wine.

“Has your job been busy, then?” he asked her.

“Fairly busy,” Ada said, wiping her mouth daintily with a napkin. “We’re still in the process of negotiating with our new clients to see exactly what they need done. Mainly we do consulting for internet infrastructure and sales, but we also do lots of work in real estate. That’s my primary focus, finding good locations and finding investors for development, that kind of thing.” She listed a few businesses in Yatovska, smaller companies that Arkady probably had not heard of, but they were all real local companies.

Arkady’s eyes glazed over just a little bit when she started talking about her consulting work, which was what she expected. Most people wouldn’t find that kind of thing interesting, which is why she chose it as her cover job in the first place. She knew Arkady wouldn’t ask any pointed, industry-specific questions that she would have trouble answering.

“What about you?” she asked. “You said you were busy at work too, right?”

He sighed a bit and nodded. “Oh, very busy. My employer is starting up some new projects and I’ve been overseeing some of them lately.”

“I remember you said you work for Umbrella,” Ada said in a lower voice. “I know a lot of people in Yatovska work there. It must be so strange, they’ve been in the news so much.”

Arkady nodded and looked down at his food. “Yes, it’s been tough. But the work goes on. We can’t just stop doing medical research because of what happened.”

“Oh, of course not,” Ada agreed. “I understand completely. And obviously you had nothing to do with it,” she added quickly. “That was in America, halfway around the world. Umbrella’s one of the biggest companies in the world. They probably employ millions of people worldwide.”

Arkady nodded and took a sip of his wine. Ada knew she had to play it very carefully. She couldn’t just pretend that Arkady working for Umbrella didn’t matter, because anyone he met would wonder about his opinion of the Raccoon City disaster. But she obviously couldn’t be negative or critical about Umbrella, because she needed to get on his good side. She had to balance a normal comment about Umbrella’s involvement in the disaster with a question to get Arkady talking about it. She needed to be supportive and non-judgmental, but also curious and sincere.

If Arkady had lingering worries about Umbrella’s guilt in the Raccoon City disaster, then he would be that much easier to manipulate. Up until now, he had not been involved in any of Umbrella’s viral research, but now he had to confront his own ethical and moral concerns. All Ada had to do was give him a little push, just a nudge in the right direction.

“So where did you go to college?” she asked, politely changing the subject. “You have a PhD, is that right?”

As they talked, Ada casually glanced around the restaurant. The place was packed. Almost every table and booth was occupied by well-dressed couples, and the waitstaff moved around constantly, checking on tables and making sure everyone’s dinner was going well. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one of the waitresses hurrying over to the maître d’ and speaking rapidly. The maître d’ followed her back in the direction of the kitchen.

Some of the other waitstaff seemed nervous about something. She could tell in their expressions and how they moved. Ada turned her head, following the sounds of conversation, trying to pinpoint what was going on. There must be a problem in the kitchen.

She caught a pained voice among the murmur of conversations. It wasn’t very loud and it wasn’t directed at her, but she only noticed it because she was paying attention. “Excuse me? Excuse me, please,” a woman said, her voice high-pitched with fear. “Please, please call a doctor. I think my husband is having a heart attack.”

Another voice, this one male. “What’s wrong? Karine, call the police. This man is very sick.”

Arkady followed Ada’s gaze into the crowd and sat up straighter. “Is something wrong, Jeanette? What’s going on?”

“Oh,” she said, looking back at him. “I’m sorry. I heard someone say there’s a man having a heart attack over there.”

“That’s terrible,” Arkady said sincerely. “Are they going to call an ambulance?”

“I think so, I’m not sure.”

Two more waiters quickly walked past their table. She caught a glimpse of the maître d’ standing near the kitchen entrance, speaking into a cell phone and gesticulating with her other hand. Ada tried to read his lips, but she couldn’t read lips in Russian.

Suddenly they heard the sound of shattering dishes from the other side of the restaurant, and then some of the other diners were looking around as well.

A voice cried out, “Stepan! Stepan, my God!”

Ada and Arkady looked at each other uncomfortably. Some of the people sitting nearby did the same. Someone tried to wave down a waiter, but he shook his head apologetically and hurried into the kitchen. More voices were raised as people began to try and find out what was going on. In the space of a few seconds, a strange, tense feeling had settled on the entire restaurant.

“I don’t know what we can do,” Arkady said. “They must be calling an ambulance.”

“Yes,” Ada said vaguely.

As the conversations in the restaurant began to pick back up again, Ada shrugged and gave Arkady a lopsided smile as she picked up her fork. “Such a sad thing. A man’s having a heart attack and we’re all just sitting around. I thought they might call out of there were any doctors here.”

Arkady nodded. “Well, I certainly hope that he’s okay. They must have it under control –”

There was a scream from the kitchen area. Ada quickly turned in her seat. It was a woman’s voice, and the scream went on and then stopped just long enough for her to suck in a breath and then scream once more. A waiter burst from the kitchen doors and ran for it.

“What in the world?” Arkady said, pushing his seat back to stand up.

Ada was already on her feet. Something was going on, she could feel it in the air. Everyone else just remained seated, staring at each other with confused, awkward expressions.

She left Arkady at the table and took a few steps toward the kitchen. Suddenly people were shouting and yelling behind her. Just as she was about to reach the door, there was another crash of dishes and more screaming, and Ada turned and darted between tables as other diners began to get to their feet and back away, shouting and pointing. A few people just got up and ran away, and Ada found herself fighting against a surge of panic, fighting her way through the other people until she broke free and could see what was happening.

Two waiters were holding a man down against the floor, who was scratching and flailing his arms at them. His face was twisted into a deranged grimace and he groaned hideously as they pushed against his chest, pinning him down. The nearest table was knocked over, the tablecloth torn away and broken dishes all over the floor. Nearby, a middle-aged woman in a classy evening dress sobbed uncontrollably, gripping her bleeding arm, as three more waiters tried to help her.

“He just … he just bit me … What is happening?” the woman choked out. “He said he was sick and then he just …”

“Emil!” a waitress demanded. “Iosef is going crazy, you have to call the police!”

“I’m trying to!” the maître d’ shouted back, the phone against his ear. “They put me on hold! Someone else try and call them!”

The man on the floor snatched at the arm of one of the waiters holding him down, and yanked it towards his mouth with inhuman strength. The waiter shouted in surprise and tried to pull away, but the man’s fingers dug into his arm, holding him in an unbreakable grip. His teeth clamped down like a bear trap, biting through the sleeve of his white dress shirt. The waiter screamed and desperately tried to pull his arm free.

More people ran out of the kitchen, waiters and chefs as well. “He’s attacking Marina!” one of the chefs yelled. “He bit her face! She’s bleeding everywhere!”

Everyone was screaming now, and the nearby diners were running for their lives. The man on the floor knocked the other waiter off his feet and snarled like a wild animal. The injured waiter stumbled away, cradling his bloody arm, and tried to kick at the man to keep him back. Instead, he turned on the old woman, his wife, and lunged at her. She screamed as he bit down on her exposed shoulder, and the other waiters tried in vain to pull him away, crying and begging for help.

“My God!” someone screamed. “Iosef just killed Grigory! He killed him!”

Ada felt like she was moving through a dream. Visions of blood and fire swept across her vision, and she felt her heart pounding so hard that it hurt to breathe. This could not be happening, it could not be happening.

“No, no , no,” she mumbled to herself. She shoved her way past the terrified onlookers and ran back to her table, where Arkady was standing with a dumbfounded expression.

“Jeanette?” he asked. “My God, what’s happening?”

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

The kitchen doors up ahead suddenly burst open and a woman in a chef’s uniform came running out, tears streaming down her face. “Help!” she sobbed. “My God, someone help!”

Right behind her, a waiter came shambling through the doorway, reaching out with a bloody hand that snatched at empty air. His face was smeared with gore, and his white shirt was soaked in blood halfway down his chest. He groaned and lurched forward, and the few people in the restaurant who hadn’t already stared to leave got up and ran screaming as soon as they saw him. Chairs were knocked over and dishes crashed to the floor as people took flight, abandoning their jackets and personal items on the table in their panic.

“God!” Arkady gasped, his face going white. “He’s … he’s …”

Ada stepped back as the blood-drenched waiter staggered towards them. Repressed memories surfaced like demons leaping out the mist, visions of bloody faces biting at her, crooked fingers grabbing at her clothes, hordes of diseased madmen haunting her every step. The world of nightmares had returned, just when she thought she had managed to forget the worst of them.

Barely thinking about what she was doing, Ada lifted up her dress and drew her concealed pistol. She raised it and fired a bullet into the zombie waiter’s eye. Amid the sounds of shattering dishes, high-pitched screams, and stomping of feet as the diners escaped, the sound of the gunshot was almost ignored. The waiter gurgled and toppled over sideways, cracking its head against the side of a table as it went down.

Ada grabbed Arkady’s arm and dragged him away. He stammered at her uncomprehendingly, “You shot … you shot him … You had a gun? Why did you have a gun?”

“Let’s go!” Ada ordered, pushing him along. “We have to go now!”

“That man was … My God, he was …”

The lobby of the restaurant was in chaos, tables upturned, the front podium knocked over and menus spilled all over the floor. A few people lingered near the doors, while others shouted and pushed their way past. A woman sat against the wall, crying and holding her leg, her high heel missing.

“Wait, wait, Jeanette,” Arkady protested.

“Where are you parked?” she snapped.

“What?”

“Your car! Where are you parked?!”

“My car’s out front ...”

Some of the people in the lobby blocked them, so Ada raised her pistol and fired a shot into the ceiling. “Get the hell out of my way!” she screamed.

Arkady tried to get away from her, but she grabbed a hold of his collar and dragged him out of the restaurant. Outside, there was a crowd of terrified people all talking and pointing, and the sound of sirens, but too many, far too many sirens. It was getting late and the sky was dark.

They had to shove their way past the crowd to get to Arkady’s car. Arkady was a blubbering mess, and Ada shoved him into the driver’s seat and then ran around to get on the passenger side. She slammed the door.

“Who … who are you?” Arkady asked pathetically, his hands shaking as he tried to put the key in the ignition.

Ada still had the gun in her hand. She pointed it at him. “I’ll tell you on the way! Now drive!”

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