Gregor’s eyes were blurry as he pulled up to the cottage, south of Minsk on the edge of a forest. Usually the meeting was held just before the end of the quarter, but this one was held weeks early. Something must be going on.
The cottage had ten rooms and a downstairs basement area (complete with a World War II era escape tunnel). Alexander and Viktor occupied the downstairs basement section during emergency situations. The cottage was actually three houses interconnected by tunnels. Each home had several bedrooms and a basement.
Gregor practically sleepwalked into the cottage. He had driven nonstop from his flat in downtown Grozny. The drive would have taken a normal person well over twenty-nine hours; he did it in less than twenty-five.
Why didn't I fly? Gregor asked himself as he rubbed at his eyes. He estimated it had been more than thirty hours since he last slept.
He had to find Brenna. She was in charge of everything related to Pretzelverse official business. Gregor hoped the meetings would be brief; he wanted time to visit his girlfriend Dunya, a fledgling fashion model, in Kyiv.
Gregor was greeted in the cottage by Natasha, a principal member of The Collective. Natasha held positions on both the Pretzelverse and Collective boards—the difference was that Prezelverse was a legitimate business and The Collective wasn't. The Collective was in the business of fixing problems (not necessarily game-related) and had a stable flow of repeat business. Some of the more controversial clients of The Collective included politicians and business people with problems to bury.
“Hey there,” Natasha said in Gregor's direction.
“Greetings, Comrade.”
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“You get me excited when you talk like that,” Natasha said in a playful voice.
Gregor smiled in return. Gregor was a good-looking, tall man in his late twenties and was used to women being attracted to him. When it came to Natasha, however, Gregor always kept their relationship professional.
“Are the other members here?” Gregor asked.
“Da, everybody except you.”
“Then let's not let them wait any longer!”
“Yeah, maybe we can have some fun later?”
Gregor just smiled as Natasha got up from her comfortable seating and opened the double doors.
“It was good of you to make it, Gregor,” Alexander said with a hint of venom in his voice.
Alexander sounded really annoyed. Or was it Alexei? Gregor couldn't remember. He was so bad with names.
“My apologies, Comrades. Circumstances dictated that I drove for this meeting,” Gregor said, taking a seat.
After a brief awkward silence, the meeting resumed.
“Brenna, what legal action can we take against the authors of this Glider tool?” Alexander asked.
“The authors of the tool appear to be unknown. Payment can only be made in Digibit through an anonymous store on the Dark Web,” Brenna answered.
“Is there any way to dox the store owners or administrators?”
“I think that is a question for our late arrival,” Brenna said as she smiled at Gregor.
“It is very difficult, but not impossible. I will see what I can do,” Gregor said.
“Gregor, give us a status on the code repository situation.”
Gregor explained that he noticed some unauthorized traffic egressing from one of Prezelverse's code repository servers. He traced the connection to a machine in California, near San Francisco, which was not surprising since Prezelverse did have a development office there. Although it was possible to access the server without a VPN, most developers didn't. However, the company did hire a number of outside contractors that didn't have access to a VPN. Gregor said he would file a report and have the IT manager fix the issues ASAP. The most troubling piece of news was from a connection in China; a large amount of data was transferred to that IP.
“The investigation results are still pending. I should have an update from my team by the end of today.”
“You have until tomorrow morning to finish your investigation and provide a report. I’m surprised and disappointed that you haven't already,” Alexander said.