I minus 31
At 1:00 a.m. Vladimir was parked about five kilometers away from the hotel examining the wound in the back portion of his upper right shoulder. It was really painful and bleeding pretty badly. He knew he needed to have it looked at, but it was obviously a bullet wound and any doctor he went to in Poland would report it to the police. He knew a doctor he could count on who, for a couple hundred US dollars, would treat the wound and never make a report. Unfortunately, this doctor was in Moscow. He’d have to pack and bandage the wound as best he could and get back to Moscow immediately. He just hoped he wouldn’t lose too much blood before he could get to the doctor. He drove back to the Hilton, went to his room, wrapped the small amount of ice he found in his mini bar inside a hand towel and pressed it to the wound. That should slow down the bleeding.
After that he called the airline office and booked an early morning flight to Moscow. He could sleep for about three hours before he had to leave for the airport. He also made a mental note: while in Russia, get a better gun, but not another Russian-made gun. The black market always had plenty of weapons, even American made.
The wound in his shoulder, while not life threatening, was painful, so he washed down four ibuprofen tablets with a vodka from the mini-bar. That should help. He fell asleep quickly, but slept fitfully until the alarm sounded a few hours later.
When he awoke three hours later, he took three more ibuprofen, this time with water. He then stuffed part of a washcloth into the wound, trying to cut off the bleeding and bandaged it as best he could by taping a piece of plastic bag over the washcloth. That should keep the blood from leaking through until he got to the doctor that afternoon. Even with the ibuprofen it was still really painful, though. On the flight to Moscow Vladimir thought about what all this meant to his plans. He knew he’d need a few days to recuperate so he couldn’t do anything right away about Thurmond and the other guy who shot him. He was confident they wouldn’t be able to track him back to Moscow. But time was running out.
He had to come up with a new plan for Thurmond. He thought about it and concluded that Thurmond couldn’t go much further contacting people on the list because everybody was dead. Thurmond didn’t necessarily know that, but when no one showed up at the meeting places, he would eventually have to give up and go home. Maybe he could find him in Washington. Maybe Thurmond would be at the inauguration and he’d take care of him there. It was highly likely Thurmond knew his code name, but he couldn’t know his real identity and would never be able to find him. Even after it was over and he knew he killed the new President, Thurmond would only know him by Vladimir and he was pretty sure Thurmond had never gotten a visual on him. That wouldn’t be enough to find him in a country as big as the United States. No, he really didn’t have to worry about Thurmond.
The other guy, however, the one who shot him, did get a look at him and might be able to identify him. But, he didn’t know who that person was, so there really wasn’t anything he could do about it right now. Not what he’d hoped for, but maybe the best he could get under the circumstances. His first priority was to get bandaged up before the wound got infected.