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Kornev was unaware of his ringing cell phone. He had ditched the phone he had been using for over a year, and to keep from being tracked by either the CIA or Hail, he switched to a burner cell phone. He’d also hired a Black Net service to redirect his customers’ calls to any phone he activated on their encrypted website. This ensured, no matter how often he changed phone numbers, all his customers would be able to contact him. The service was extremely expensive and labor intensive because it was completely analog, no digital switching involved. When one of his customers called, somewhere in the world a real person answered. That person then called the burner phone number Kornev had updated on his account. The service physically connected the two phones together, actually setting one on top of the other. By using this method, it was impossible to trace the Russian because the trace would terminate at a phone center in Bangladesh or some other third-world country.
At 39,000 feet there was no signal, and the plane didn’t offer a cell phone uplink service. That was why, as Kornev flew first class stewing over Hail and the horrible way he had been treated by the CIA agent, he was unaware that the inspector of the Peshawar Police Department was attempting to call him.
Of course the Russian didn’t need to be told a woman was staying at his safe house. He already knew she was there. He had also provided her with the physical address of one of the two men responsible for the death of her parents. One of the men had been guilty of pulling the trigger on the shoulder-fired missile that took down her parents’ plane. The other man had helped finance the mission supplying funds to the TTP sect operating in Pakistan. The men operated as a team, and quite literally, were brothers in crime. Without one, the other could not function. Idly, Kornev wondered if the CIA agent cared about that fine line. Back in the tunnel, the bitch had been hell-bent on knowing which of the two men had pulled the trigger. Frankly, when it came down to it, Kornev was certain if granted the opportunity, she would kill both Zain and Naveed.
Kornev realized he had an opportunity. The CIA spy, Kara, was likely making plans to kill Sallah while holed up in his safe house complex in Peshawar. Now he had a chance to get his revenge on the woman who had first played him, turned him into a CIA asset, and then left him for dead in the tunnel beneath his home.
A slew of thoughts coursed through the Russian’s mind. Most centered on how exactly she should pay for leaving him for dead. Kornev only knew a single passage from the Bible, but he lived by it: “You are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Deuteronomy 19:21)
He decided he would humiliate the woman and leave her to die in the tunnel under his Peshawar safe house complex.
Kornev smiled and sipped his wine. He so looked forward to the humiliation part.