Bucharest, Romania
August 21, 2017
A city of stark contrasts, Bucharest's crumbling facades stood between strip malls and still wore the faded trappings of the brutal Communist dictatorship that kept the city at a stand-still for decades. It had been almost twenty years since Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were given due process in a ninety minute trial and unceremoniously machine-gunned in the square on Christmas Day. Hundreds of the city's gritty survivors gathered to see the fitting end of a cold and ruthless dictator who robbed Romania's spirit and soul. The area around the bodies had been trashed and smelled strongly of urine. Empty bottles and cans littered the ground. A veteran limped up to the body of Elena and unloaded a mouthful of yellow spit onto her bare feet. Someone needing a pair of shoes had torn the cheap Russian loafers from the stiff limbs. They'd taken the socks too, marveling at how the feet were so clean and looked as though they'd been carved from a block of Italian marble. Up the street from the square stood the Athenee Palace Hilton Bucharest, a grand edifice resembling a stately government building from a bygone era. The magnificent structure had been architected by a German and built in 1914. Years of exhaust-borne dirt and grime stained its marble exterior.
Mr. Brown seemed an odd name for the dark, olive-skinned man who carried a United States passport and stayed a single night. The front desk clerk asked him if he needed any help with his luggage. He replied with a painful smile and a shake of his head, holding up a thick black engineers' flight bag. The automaton at the desk ushered him out with a cheery "Have a wonderful day!"
He walked out into the sunlight and turned right. Around the corner of the hotel past the casino were a series of apartments with first floor shops sharing a common roof and dirty, depressing brown stucco walls. The fourth store front housed an adult shop featuring live shows, magazines and videos and a large selection of toys. For months, people living in the squalor here noticed the acrid smell of chemicals. A local doctor observed a disquieting number of his patients complaining of migraine headaches. The authorities had been called several times, but nothing ever changed in Bucharest. The local police had the building under surveillance for several months but not because of the sudden onset of migraine headaches. No, there was another more sinister reason.
Mr. Brown took the ancient lift to the fourth floor and knocked on an unmarked door. A small man's head appeared as the door opened slowly and after recognizing the expected visitor, swung open wide. The man ushered him down the hallway into a large bedroom converted to a makeshift laboratory. Two men worked silently sealed in an inner room isolated by heavy translucent plastic sheeting that billowed the walls before it was evacuated through a connecting room. Inside the plastic cocoon, the open plastic drums emitted visible vapors that looked like a chemistry teacher's worst nightmare, but neither man paid any attention because they wore industrial air masks to complement their protective chemical suits. The familiar transaction was completed mechanically, wordlessly. Mr. Brown opened the flaps on the top of the hard-sided bag and banded bundles of Romanian Lei were replaced by two dozen plastic blocks which looked like oversized computer power supplies. The high grade C-4 explosive had been made without the taggant chemical to identify it. He nodded to the small man and left the bomb boutique. He'd been there for less than five minutes. Now outside, he only needed to deliver the case to a locker at the train station and drop the key in the sharps box in the men's bathroom. A simple and straight-forward task with generous compensation and no W2 form required from an employer he would never meet. A dream job by any standard. Little did he know these power supplies would wreak havoc 5,000 miles away months later. On the other hand, he didn't really care.