# Chapter 3

He woke on the couch at around 5am with pumping headache. He went to the kitchen and fill the big glass with tap water. One tablet of ibuprofen works wonders. He took on and went to the shower. At 5:30am he was ready to go. The ibuprofen started to work and the headache softened. It needed another 15 minutes to disappear completely. He knew the coffee will weaken the ibuprofen effect but he needed his morning dose.

He still had some time to check the local news. He hoped to not find anything about a dead body found in Marriot at Russian Hill. He opened SF Chronicle(opens new window) and SFGATE(opens new window) and started to skim over the news.

Unfortunately there was a small piece on the dead body found in a Marriot Hotel. Do you know this feeling when in the back of your head there's still a hope that someone made a mistake or that maybe, just maybe it's someone else and not your friend.

He started to feel a bit dizzy but he knew that he has to keep a clear head. He needed to calm down and concentrate. The door bell got him back to consciousness. He went to the door and looked through the peephole. That was Vlad.

  • "Why are you ringing the door bell - it's your house."
  • "I am a well-brought-up boy 😄. Are you ready? We cannot miss the flight and we cannot let your flight buddy wait. Have you checked the news?"
  • "Yes, I did. Do you think it's about her?"
  • "The chances for the opposite are very low - you know that it's quite unrealistic that someone else died in the same hotel at the same day. But don't think about it. Get your bag and let's get going."
  • "Ok, give me a second."

He went to the kitchen and got some water then walked back into the room, shut his Mac and put it into the backpack.

  • "I'm ready let's go."

He put his stuff on the backseat of the car and they drove off to the airport.

  • "How was your night?"
  • "Mine was awesome as usual - did you expect something else? 😁"
  • "Not really but I still cannot understand how you can deal with the people here and have fun."
  • "It's your soviet childhood talking. I would rather talk to someone, who you would probably call shallow, but who's fun and enjoys life than spending time somewhere in a shitty kitchen in a small shitty soviet apartment talking with very smart but wasted people about mistakes Nazi Army made during World War II. Leave your old school way of thinking behind and finally start enjoying the life."
  • "I'm having hard time talking to people who don't know history or geography and acting as if they were the center of the world."
  • "It doesn't work like in the movies, mate, it neve did. Good guys or smartest guys don't win. Ignorant, stupid people who take action win. They don't know history, they create it. Yes, the quality of people dropped significantly lately - god bless tech, but let's be honest 90% of the people are dumb and were dumb always. Smart people are outliers - they're not a normality. That's one of the reasons the system doesn't like them. They're hard to control, they're unpredictable."

When they arrived at the Oakland International, Jet was ready to go. Vlad was faster to say bye:

  • "Take care, mate and don't beat yourself about what happened - it's not your fault."
  • "I feel stupid to say thank you again but thank you!"
  • "Don't thank me. As long as we're on the same side of the war, I'm here to help. We'll see how it will look later."

They hugged and he went to the terminal. The girls was already waiting for him with the name shield. He went straight to her:

  • "Good morning, I'm Arthur. You look great today!"
  • "Oh, good morning Mr. Arthur. The jet is ready, please follow me."

They went through the building to the airfield, get into a golf cart and started driving towards the jet. When they went up the he was greeted by the pilots and his flight companion - Thomas. Thomas was a good-looking half German, half Hungarian entrepreneur from Budapest who was also living in Munich part time. It was quite convenient - they could speak either English or German. Arthur was fluent in both languages but preferred to speak English whenever he couldn't use his mother tongue.

Even after spending majority of his life in Germany but being a boy from Leningrad he still couldn't forgive the Germans for the Siege of Leningrad(opens new window) where the people had to dig out freshly buried bodies and use their meat as food to survive.

Every little boy from Leningrad grew up with staples of books that showed the pictures of streets of Leningrad covered with snow that had sledges with dead bodies.

  • "Thank you very much for taking me with you. It's really hard to get to Europe at the moment with almost all countries being locked down and the airlines cancelling most of the flights."
  • "Absolutely no problem. It's even better than I don't have to fly alone."
  • "I would love to keep you company but I have to get some sleep. If you would excuse me for a couple of hours I would try to rest for a bit and we can spend some time together before the landing."
  • "Sure, no worries - I have a lot of work to do anyways and the flight time is the best possible time to use for work - nobody is disturbing you. Let's see if I will be awake when you will wake up 😀."

He knew he won't be able to fall asleep immediately but he needed some rest- the time after the landing will be short and intense. He will have to find out what has happened in San Francisco and who was trying to set him up. The talks about Russian intervention in the US election campaign haven't stopped for the last 4 years but all the accusations were blatant manipulative lies without any evidence.

After the fall of Soviet Union, USA factually lost its only enemy, so driven by the fairy tales of Hollywood and Marvel comic books, they invented new enemies for the people but the state still needed one. So after some trial and error they re-invented Russia as an enemy in early 2000s.

US attempted to completely destroy the biggest part of the former USSR - Russian Federation. Drug and people trafficking- the social impact was immense. Life expectancy fell, with up to five million excess adult deaths in Russia in 1991-2001, birth rates collapsed.

Even after Russia reestablished itself, US continued with the efforts to undermine it by widening the NATO and eventually creating an anti-Russia out of Ukraine by going full in and leading the Coup D'Etat in 2014 by killing people on both sides and using the help of right wing extremists on supporting the newly created government

His travel companinon was deeply concetrated on his work - at least that's how it looked like since he was staring on his notebook and fast typing something on his keyboard. Does he have to get suspicious - no, bullshit Vlad couldn't have set him up.

  • "Could I get a glass of whiskey, please?" - he asked the flight hostess>
  • "Yes, sir, sure. We have Macallan, Tallisker and Higland Park - which one do you prefer?"
  • "Higland Park, please."

She returned with a glass of whiskey. Jet was ready to take off.

He put the glass on the table and fastened the seatbelt.

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