The Russian Crisis

CHAPTER 24 - 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

In his condo, at about the same time, Jackson Phillips switched on his tv and turned to the all-day CBC news channel. But he killed the volume as his phone rang.

It was Gamil Abboud, an Egyptian Canadian man with whom Jackson had worked when the two were member of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Jackson had asked Gamil to follow him at a distance so Gamil could identify the men following Jackson more closely.

"I tailed you yesterday and today, Jackson," Gamil said. "Indeed, it didn't take long to spot your tail. What twits." Jackson wasn't surprised. Gamil was one of the best surveillance men in CSIS and, in retirement, he still took on PI jobs for wealthy clients.

In a burst of short sentences, Gamil reported on the activities of the two Arabic-looking men doing such a lousy job of surveilling Jackson. They had followed Jackson the previous day and, then, today from his condo building to JPI and then to another office building. "A board meeting," Jackson explained.

Gamil had tailed the hapless pair to an apartment building near the Distillery District in east-end Toronto. They went to a unit rented by a man named Roman Petrenko. "I have him as a part timer for the GRU," said Gamil, naming the Russian military intelligence service. Low to mid-level. Recruits - or tries to - in the Ukrainian community. Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier."

Unlike Jackson and Gamil who had kept secure smartphones when they left public service, Petrenko's phone could be tapped and Gamil had done so using tricks he had learned at CSIS.

"I got him talking to his crew. A seedy bunch of characters including your two tails." Gamil then chuckled. "But, the clown has more than one cell and I can't get into the others. Doncha love mysteries, Jackson?"

"Not much," was Jackson laconic reply.

"I'm emailing you, as we speak," Gamil added. "Names, addresses, stuff like that. Light bedtime reading. See you soon."

The email arrived with more information than Gamil had imparted in the phone call and more information than Jackson really wanted. The bottom lines were that Roman Petrenko worked as a part time agent for the GRU. His handler was housed at the Russian consulate rather than the Ottawa embassy. Petrenko was low level and Toronto-focused.

Petrenko's crew members were certainly not GRU pros and would not be allowed to work on any missions assigned by Moscow to the military intelligence group.

Three of the crew were Arab-Canadians. One other was a black Canadian who worked at a Jamaican restaurant. Two were born-in-Russia car thieves with long records including convictions for assault. There used to be a seventh member of the crew but he was nowhere to be seen by Gamil and his colleagues.

'Crew members are unimpressive,' the email report read. 'All have records but Arabs have no convictions.' The email ended with the line: 'Can exert pressure on Arabs if desired.' Jackson decided he 'desired.' He returned a cryptic email.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"Problem." Mariah's first words made Jackson groan. It was after ten o'clock in the evening and he had been at it most of the day. He had conducted extensive phone calls from the temporary office in JPI's boardroom and from his condo.

A great deal of planning was needed just to set in motion development of Version 3.0 of JPI's software. Human Resources was tasked with finding, vetting and hiring more than two hundred programmers not to mention other techies. Payne's staff was drawing up a new, large budget for the work. Marketing was working with Public Relations and Sales to co-ordinate promotion, peddling and shipping of the final product. Fred Nbodo, the technology chief had already assembled a team to manage the tremendous amount of work required to create a whole new set of software from source code to compiled machine code in the end solutions. He also was shepherding setup of training for people who would install and configure the new software a year from now.