Chapter twenty seven

"What is the meaning of this Persephone?"

It was Sunday and the time for my meeting with Vladimir Mikailov had finally arrived. He was sitting in the very exclusive restaurant in the plaza hotel waiting for me, but instead he had received a laptop brought there by a special courier.

"Well you wanted a face to face meeting and this is it. There is your face , here is my face. I believe this qualifies as a face to face meeting."

"When I said I wanted to meet , I meant in person. If I wanted to speak to a computer screen I could have stayed at home and skyped with you instead of going to all this trouble."

"I think you will find that that laptop is a little more complicated than Skype. It is encrypted by several levels of encryptions and any attempts to hack it will erase everything. The signal it is sending bounces off secure satellites owned by several agencies including the CIA , discreetly piggybacking on other important frequencies, basically any attempt to track the signal to me will result in you becoming the enemy of several countries simultaneously. It has been wiped clean of any physical traces inside and out. The courier service I employed were paid in cash and have no idea of my identity or location. I went to all that trouble to find a way for us to communicate , I think going to a restaurant isn't too hard of a task for you."

"That is a little paranoid, isn't it Ms Persephone?"

"Recent events have made it clear that making myself visible would be a very bad idea right now."

"Does this sudden cautiousness have anything to do with the three billion dollar bounty on your head?"

"That is one of the reasons, one of many."

"You never fail to surprise me Ms Persephone, three billion dollars is a lot of money to offer for the death of one person. I know that you are the only one to kill one of these things but three billion dollars seems a little extreme, it seems almost personal if you ask me."

"We are not here to discuss how much the creatures hate me."

"You are not here at all Ms Persephone but I won't be so obtuse, pray tell why are we here?"

"To talk about your enemy, our enemy. They are called the Atelli, evil spirits that devour the soul of their victims and change them to the monsters that you have been seeing lately. Fairweather tech is their front company and they want your docks."

"Please spare me the story about spirits and souls, I have heard enough about souls from my priest. If you don't have anything concrete to tell me except for fairy tales then I think this meeting is going to be very short."

"Do you want concrete? How about this for concrete, your organization has already been infiltrated by them."

"Is this the part of the meeting where you tell me that one of my men are possessed? Ms Persephone if you don't want to share what you know about this monsters you could have just said so, no need to make up stories."

"Does the name Babichev mean anything to you?"

"That is not funny Ms Persephone, he is a very close personal friend. I am the godfather to his daughter, I would trust him with my life."

"Well I hope you reconsider the last part because the thing using Babichev's body isn't going to hesitate to end you. You don't believe me? Fine , ask him questions that only the real Babichev would know, but I would suggest you do it in a place where you can put a lot of bullets in him when he fails because the thing inside of him isn't going to die easily. After you've done that you can call me again, this time with an apology. Keep that laptop safe, you are going to need it soon."

"If you are lying and this turns out to be some idiotic plan to turn me against my men I will hunt you down and kill you."

"You can get in line Mr Mikailov."

Then I pressed a button breaking our connection and ending the meeting.

Kazimir sighed and said," That went as well as I expected. Take off that disguise Sophia, even in the bunker it makes me nervous. Dressing up like that is hazardous to your health right now. Three billion dollars! Three billion! Everyone is going to be gunning for you. And when I mean everyone I don't mean just from Russia, I mean everyone and their uncle is going to be boarding a plane to St Petersburg just to get a crack at you."

"Calm down, I'll just stop being Persephone until the heat dies down."

"You don't understand, for three billion dollars the heat is never going down. Unless you are going to stop fighting the Atelli the hitmen are going to find you sooner or later, whatever you may look like. These are professionals , they are going to figure it out if you go around slaying monsters."

"I'll figure something out Kaz, I have to continue fighting."

"But what if you.....wait, what did you call me?"

"Kaz, I think it's cool. Kazimir is a bit of a mouthful.'

"My name is Kazimir, use it."

"Whatever you say Kaz."

"You know what, that three billion dollars is starting to sound really good right now."