‘if youre making some I’ll have a coffee,’ replied Jenny, ‘and yes - anything to make the time go by.’ The two nurses laughed. It was indeed turning out to be a long night.
Alison Brooks and Jenny Adebisi, along with a third nurse, Jane Hao, were employees of a private convalescent home, Bryantern House. The home was set to receive three high profile guests the following morning, and the three had been detailed to prepare the rooms, check the equipment in each of the rooms, and wait for the arrival of the patients, the first of whom was due to arrive at 6.30 am.
It was now 3, and the girls’ work was done. So they were doing their best to pass the time, chatting and drinking copious amounts of tea.
Alison was 27 and had been an NHS staff nurse for five years. She had for a long time resisted joining the private health sector on principle, before succumbing to the economic temptations.
The job at Bryantern had seemed too good to resist. A small, discreet facility in Harrow, usually no more than three or four patients at a time, basic care duties – and a salary over twice what she had earned at her previous employer, St Thomas’s Hospital in central London.
There was, it had to be admitted, nevertheless something slightly strange about the Bryantern facility, as Alison had often noted to herself. In place of the scrubs usually favored in the NHS, the nurses wore a more traditional uniform – a white dress, blue buckle belt, black sheer tights and black shoes. The dresses were slightly shorter than the usual NHS length, too – finishing just above the knee.
Alison, who was 5’8’’, slim, and with long fair hair, had also noted that while the other nurses were clearly qualified professionals, they had also been chosen for their looks. Her companions for the night shift were a case in point. Alison didn’t know either of them particularly well, but they conformed to what she had noted to be the typical profile of the Bryantern nurse.
Jenny Adebisi was 25, and from Ibadan in Nigeria. She too was around 5’8’’, very slim, and with the kind of figure which a nurses’ dress naturally compliments. She had qualified in nursing in Ibadan and had then come to England, where she began working at Bryantern straight away. Jane Hao was 28, an immigrant from Hong Kong. She was a little smaller, only 5’6’’, but also with sharp, striking good looks and a slim figure.
The point was, thought Alison to herself as she looked at her two colleagues seated at a table in the office, that both these girls could have been models if they’d wanted to be, and the general appearance of all the Bryantern staff tended to conform to this high standard. ‘you’re basically working at a high class rich mans’ club and rest home,’ her sister had said to her, when Alison described her new job. And it was true. Still, the other girls were fun and Alison figured she’d keep the job for a while and maybe save money.
Jenny had turned out to be a good companion for a long night shift. The Nigerian girl was naturally vivacious, and she enjoyed discussing her love life with a certain surreal sense of humor and an eye for detail which kept her colleagues constantly amused. ‘I cannot believe this man,’ she would say in her heavy Nigerian accent, ‘I say to him ‘man, you need to put a condom on – or forget it. He tells me ‘as long as we wash afterward, its all right.’ What a fool. This is Africa.’ And the three would join in their laughter.
As for Jane, Alison hadn’t really had a chance to talk to her one on one. She seemed quieter, efficient, polite but with a certain distance. In any case, Alison thought, just three more hours, then we can get the new ones settled in and hand over – and then home, and sleep. And not before time.
‘I’ll just go and take a look in room 14,’ she told the others after a few moments silence. ‘The Russian guy should be arriving at around 7 or so and I want just to make sure that the oxygen equipment is all ready to go there. “ And she raised herself up from her chair, pulling down her dress which had ridden up a little as she did so.
‘go there,’ said Jenny as Alison opened the door, ‘but make sure you don’t fall asleep on the bed. We still have to go through the patient files here.’ The fair-haired girl laughed as she exited, ‘wouldn’t miss it for the world’, she said, catching Jenny’s eye.
Katya placed the second microphone carefully beneath the bed. That should do it, she thought. Two devices in place for when Mr Rudnitski arrived. Her job was done. Now all she had to do was to get back to the sluice room and wait for the place to fill up, before quietly slipping out. Everything appeared to be going to plan.
Katya hadn’t wanted to take this particular job. She was tired, having just returned from an assignment assisting aid convoys into northern Syria. But the old man had asked especially for her, saying it was a relatively minor task, but one which would suit her skills. And she had been happy to play a part in helping to gather evidence against Semyon Rudnitski.
‘You know who Rudnitski is, right?’ the old man had asked her. She knew, all right. Semyon Rudnitski, ‘businessman,’ former KGB officer, arms dealer, trafficker in women, dealer in misery. Rudnitski had interests all across Europe and the Middle East. He owned politicians in Russia and Ukraine. He was close to the authorities, of course.
Precisely the type that Katya was happy to do a bad turn. The sort she considered were destroying any hope of normal life in Russia.
Katerina Chervinskaya was 32. She was a former member of a special unit of the Moscow police department - trained in firearms, martial arts, and later in investigation and covert methods. But she had left the service, disgusted by the corruption and nepotism, the extent to which all was for sale. Since then, she had worked in private security, as a bodyguard, and then for an investigations firm. She was 5’9’’, with a superbly toned body and long, straight brown hair and a charming but slightly toothy Russian smile.
Her work for the old man derived from her investigations portfolio. The
old man - Yakov Yashin - was an oligarch himself, but one with at least
democratic pretensions. So he financed civil society projects and when
these needed a security element, Katya and a few others could be called
in.
This mission was a fairly straightforward one. Rudnitski was having surgery and would be convalescing in the Bryantern facility. During that time, his business meetings would be conducted from his hospital room. Yashin wanted microphones placed in the room.
Katya had watched the facility for a couple of days before concluding her plan. During the day, it was relatively easy to move about there, but not possible to place the mics because of the large number of people about. But she had concluded that room 14 would be Rudnitski’s because of the obvious security considerations that had gone into its isolated location and private elevator.
She had entered the facility without problems at 4 pm. Then she had hidden herself in a sluice room, waiting for night to come so that she could place the microphones and then return to her place of hiding. Once daylight came and the place filled up, she thought she would be able to slip out with no problem.
Everything seemed to be going fine. She reached the sluice room. She heard the day employees leaving and had then been surprised to hear the sounds of voices as three nurses went about their business preparing the rooms. This was unexpected. Katya had thought only the single security guard at the entrance would be there all night. Nevertheless, it wasn’t an insurmountable problem.
Katya figured she ought to be able to reach room 14 while the three girls were relaxing in their office. And if absolutely necessary, she was armed and had brought along a surgical mask and a supply of chloroform which she would deploy if subduing one or more of the nurses became necessary. She hoped she wouldn’t need to use any of this equipment, though. She preferred to keep things clean, and simple.
It was not to be. She had just completed the placing of the device and was getting up to begin her exit when the door opened. A slim, fair haired nurse took a step into the room and stared at the intruder in shock.
‘Who are you?’ said Alison, her eyes wide, ‘What on earth are you doing here?
Katya reacted swiftly and in accordance with her training and instinct. With a single smooth movement she drew her Glock 19 from her shoulder holster and directed it at the nurse. Then, with a quiet, sharp, hissing tone that would brook no objections, and with her Russian accent more pronounced than usual, ‘Shut the door. Get in here quick or you’re dead. Don’t say a word. Shut your mouth. ‘
The terrified nurse obeyed, her blue eyes focused only on the weapon pointed at her. Its barrel, the possibility of sudden death.
Katya directed the girl toward a chair by the bed. ‘Sit down, nurse. Now, you and me are going to have a quick talk. I don’t have much time. And if you answer everything to my satisfaction, I wont have to hurt you. Clear?’
Alison nodded. What the hell was going on, she thought to herself. How had this person got in? what could be happening?
But she had no time to think. The questions came fast.
‘What’s your name, nurse?’
‘Alison.’
‘Ok Alison - I need to know - is there any way out of here except by the front entrance? Any back door, staff entrance, something like that?’
‘N-no,’ Alison stammered, ‘only the front way. The windows are all barred on the ground floor. Theres only that entrance.’
‘ok, Alison,’ a plan was already forming in Katya’s mind.
The young Russian woman was quite calm, considering her options. She knew from long experience that the thing to do in such situations was to slow one’s reactions, to keep cool, and maintain detachment.
She would get out of this. With a little help from this nurse.
‘Ok, what’s going to happen right now, Alison, is that you’re going to be going to sleep for a little while. When you wake up, you’ll be in another room, and I’ll be gone. I want just to mention something. I haven’t much time. But the man due to come in this room is a criminal, a trafficker. And I work for his enemies. Look up his name when you get home. You shouldn’t be blind to all this. And then decide how much of this you want to report.’
There was little time. Undoubtedly, the nurse’s colleagues would come looking for her shortly. Katya needed to get out, and she needed to get past the security guard at the front entrance. For which your dress is going to come in handy, she thought as she moved behind Alison, to prepare the drug that would knock the nurse out.
‘I’m behind you, and the gun is pointed at your head,’ she said quietly. ‘I am going to put a mask over your mouth and nose and you are going to breathe deeply, and go to sleep. There’s no way out of this and the sooner youre asleep, the sooner this will be over. Is it clear.’
Alison nodded almost imperceptibly.
Placing the pistol on the bed, out of the nurse’s field of vision, Katya crouched down to her bag and removed a surgical mask and a small glass bottle. She sprayed twice on the mask. Then, holding it in one of her black gloved hands, she picked up the pistol and placed it at the girl’s temple. Then, standing behind her, she applied the mask over Alison’s mouth and nose.
Alison recognized the smell. Chloroform, as she had expected. She was quite calm now. Partly, it was Katya’s manner, which was ruthless but dead cool, not aroused or passionate. Whoever she was, this woman was clearly a professional of her own particular strange field. There was nothing Alison could do, and she found herself cooperating, partly because of the gun, partly because of this curious and somehow not unfriendly, cool manner. Things were happening too quickly for fear. The nurse was pulled along, overwhelmed.
The smell of the drug was sweet and sickly, choking. The effect began almost immediately. Alison began to feel the room growing blurred, her thoughts resolving into simplicity. The room began to spin.
Everything falling.
As she slipped from consciousness, her last thoughts were clear. Its ok, Alison, she told herself. She’s not going to rape me. And her body surrendered her.
Katya felt the tension leave the nurse’s body as she lost consciousness, and she swiftly replaced the Glock in its holster and the mask in a sealed plastic bag. The girl was slumped in the chair, her white dress ridden up to her thighs, her legs apart. Her mouth was slightly open, her straight fair hair falling over her face as her head lolled back. There was no time to waste. Katya moved around to the front and lifting Alison’s limp body in a fireman’s lift, she deposited the nurse on the bed. ‘ok, darling,’ she said, ‘I’ll be needing that dress.’
Placing Alison on her back, Katya first unclipped the nurse’s tight blue buckle belt and pulled it free. Then she swiftly unbuttoned Alison’s dress, placing the girl’s limp arms by her sides, she maneuvered it from her shoulders , and then down and off, dropping the white dress on the floor. Well, well. The nurse’s bra and panties were white, simple and minimal. But unexpectedly, Katya noted that she was wearing a black suspender belt and stockings, rather than the pantyhose she had expected.
Alison favored the stockings not for sexual reasons but because she found them cooler to work in. But she had not, of course, anticipated that she would be showing her legs to a stranger in a room at the hospital. Not that she was aware, anyway. Katya with a shrug swiftly unclipped the suspender belt, then unfastened the girl’s black stockings and rolled them off her long, smooth legs.
The girl’s body was exquisite, but Katya didn’s have time to enjoy her thighs and her smooth buttocks, as she would have wished. Instead, she swiftly removed her own clothes, placed them in her bag and donned the nurse’s uniform. A near perfect fit, tho the skirt was a little short. Not to worry. It was time to go.
‘Sorry about that, darling,’ she said to the sleeping Alison and then, for a moment tempted, she turned the nurse over onto her front, leaving her shapely buttocks exposed, the white panties squeezed over them. With a smile, she gave the sleeping Alison’s bottom a friendly pat. ‘You seem like a nice girl, Alison,’ she said to her quietly, ‘but you should be more careful who you go to work for. ‘
Alison, in any case, was dead to the world and remained motionless, now stripped to just her white bra and panties, lying on her front on the bed she had intended to prepare for Semyon Rudnitski. Her mouth was slightly open, revealing the faintest glimpse of white teeth. Her long hair over her face.
Katya was ready to move.
Then a sudden thought struck her. And she cursed herself for accepting this job. Who would have expected such complications?
These three nurses had come on duty presumably when the security guard was already there. In other words, he would know exactly who was supposed to be in the hospital, and who was not. This meant she had no chance of just slipping by him without raising suspicion.
Her mind raced. Everything became more complicated. What she would need to do was to stay in the hospital now until the security guard reached the end of his shift and was relieved. Then she would slip by past the new one, who wouldn’t know who was meant to be up there, and who not. She contemplated for a moment simply forcing the guard at gunpoint to let her by, but decided against it. Dealing with a nurse was one thing, but it was possible that the guard had some kind of alarm button which he would quietly activate. Not worth the risk.
This meant that she was going to have to stick around on the hospital landing for a while. But then that created another dilemma. She was, after all, sharing the landing with two nurses, and had just drugged and stripped one of their colleagues. Alison had presumably been off to perform some errand in room 14. About a quarter of an hour had passed since her entry. They would no doubt be growing concerned in the charge room and would shortly come and investigate.
This meant a window of opportunity. Katya realized that she was going to have to deal with the two remaining nurses. There was no way that she could spend another hour or two on the landing without them finding the drugged Alison and raising the alarm. So the other two would have to join Alison in having a no doubt well-deserved sleep. But how to arrange this?
Thinking fast, Katya, still in the white nurse’s uniform, grabbed her bag and with swift and silent steps left the room and her victim to her slumber.
She covered the ten meters to the sluice room, on the left hand side of the corridor. From it, she could hear what was going on in the office further down. She would hear when one or other of the nurses came to see what was up with her luckless colleague. And then Katya would be ready.
As it was, she was now on damage limitation mode. That girl entering the room meant that the hospital security or Rudnitski’s own men would probably search the room or demand that the oligarch be placed in a different one. Katya intended nevertheless to move the sleeping Alison once she had dealt with her colleagues. But it was probable that her mission was a failure. Now what remained to do was to avoid turning operational failure into disaster by ensuring her own tidy exfiltration from the hospital.
This mission was a fairly straightforward one. Rudnitski was having surgery and would be convalescing in the Bryantern facility. During that time, his business meetings would be conducted from his hospital room. Yashin wanted microphones placed in the room.
Katya had watched the facility for a couple of days before concluding her plan. During the day, it was relatively easy to move about there, but not possible to place the mics because of the large number of people about. But she had concluded that room 14 would be Rudnitski’s because of the obvious security considerations that had gone into its isolated location and private elevator.
She had entered the facility without problems at 4 pm. Then she had hidden herself in a sluice room, waiting for night to come so that she could place the microphones and then return to her place of hiding. Once daylight came and the place filled up, she thought she would be able to slip out with no problem.
Everything seemed to be going fine. She reached the sluice room. She heard the day employees leaving and had then been surprised to hear the sounds of voices as three nurses went about their business preparing the rooms. This was unexpected. Katya had thought only the single security guard at the entrance would be there all night. Nevertheless, it wasn’t an insurmountable problem.
Katya figured she ought to be able to reach room 14 while the three girls were relaxing in their office. And if absolutely necessary, she was armed and had brought along a surgical mask and a supply of chloroform which she would deploy if subduing one or more of the nurses became necessary. She hoped she wouldn’t need to use any of this equipment, though. She preferred to keep things clean, and simple.
It was not to be. She had just completed the placing of the device and was getting up to begin her exit when the door opened. A slim, fair haired nurse took a step into the room and stared at the intruder in shock.
‘Who are you?’ said Alison, her eyes wide, ‘What on earth are you doing here?
Katya reacted swiftly and in accordance with her training and instinct. With a single smooth movement she drew her Glock 19 from her shoulder holster and directed it at the nurse. Then, with a quiet, sharp, hissing tone that would brook no objections, and with her Russian accent more pronounced than usual, ‘Shut the door. Get in here quick or you’re dead. Don’t say a word. Shut your mouth. ‘
The terrified nurse obeyed, her blue eyes focused only on the weapon pointed at her. Its barrel, the possibility of sudden death.
Katya directed the girl toward a chair by the bed. ‘Sit down, nurse. Now, you and me are going to have a quick talk. I don’t have much time. And if you answer everything to my satisfaction, I wont have to hurt you. Clear?’
Alison nodded. What the hell was going on, she thought to herself. How had this person got in? what could be happening?
But she had no time to think. The questions came fast.
‘What’s your name, nurse?’
‘Alison.’
‘Ok Alison - I need to know - is there any way out of here except by the front entrance? Any back door, staff entrance, something like that?’
‘N-no,’ Alison stammered, ‘only the front way. The windows are all barred on the ground floor. Theres only that entrance.’
‘ok, Alison,’ a plan was already forming in Katya’s mind.
The young Russian woman was quite calm, considering her options. She knew from long experience that the thing to do in such situations was to slow one’s reactions, to keep cool, and maintain detachment.
She would get out of this. With a little help from this nurse.
‘Ok, what’s going to happen right now, Alison, is that you’re going to be going to sleep for a little while. When you wake up, you’ll be in another room, and I’ll be gone. I want just to mention something. I haven’t much time. But the man due to come in this room is a criminal, a trafficker. And I work for his enemies. Look up his name when you get home. You shouldn’t be blind to all this. And then decide how much of this you want to report.’
There was little time. Undoubtedly, the nurse’s colleagues would come looking for her shortly. Katya needed to get out, and she needed to get past the security guard at the front entrance. For which your dress is going to come in handy, she thought as she moved behind Alison, to prepare the drug that would knock the nurse out.
‘I’m behind you, and the gun is pointed at your head,’ she said quietly. ‘I am going to put a mask over your mouth and nose and you are going to breathe deeply, and go to sleep. There’s no way out of this and the sooner youre asleep, the sooner this will be over. Is it clear.’
Alison nodded almost imperceptibly.
Placing the pistol on the bed, out of the nurse’s field of vision, Katya crouched down to her bag and removed a surgical mask and a small glass bottle. She sprayed twice on the mask. Then, holding it in one of her black gloved hands, she picked up the pistol and placed it at the girl’s temple. Then, standing behind her, she applied the mask over Alison’s mouth and nose.
Alison recognized the smell. Chloroform, as she had expected. She was quite calm now. Partly, it was Katya’s manner, which was ruthless but dead cool, not aroused or passionate. Whoever she was, this woman was clearly a professional of her own particular strange field. There was nothing Alison could do, and she found herself cooperating, partly because of the gun, partly because of this curious and somehow not unfriendly, cool manner. Things were happening too quickly for fear. The nurse was pulled along, overwhelmed.
The smell of the drug was sweet and sickly, choking. The effect began almost immediately. Alison began to feel the room growing blurred, her thoughts resolving into simplicity. The room began to spin.
Everything falling.
As she slipped from consciousness, her last thoughts were clear. Its ok, Alison, she told herself. She’s not going to rape me. And her body surrendered her.
Katya felt the tension leave the nurse’s body as she lost consciousness, and she swiftly replaced the Glock in its holster and the mask in a sealed plastic bag. The girl was slumped in the chair, her white dress ridden up to her thighs, her legs apart. Her mouth was slightly open, her straight fair hair falling over her face as her head lolled back. There was no time to waste. Katya moved around to the front and lifting Alison’s limp body in a fireman’s lift, she deposited the nurse on the bed. ‘ok, darling,’ she said, ‘I’ll be needing that dress.’
Placing Alison on her back, Katya first unclipped the nurse’s tight blue buckle belt and pulled it free. Then she swiftly unbuttoned Alison’s dress, placing the girl’s limp arms by her sides, she maneuvered it from her shoulders , and then down and off, dropping the white dress on the floor. Well, well. The nurse’s bra and panties were white, simple and minimal. But unexpectedly, Katya noted that she was wearing a black suspender belt and stockings, rather than the pantyhose she had expected.
Alison favored the stockings not for sexual reasons but because she found them cooler to work in. But she had not, of course, anticipated that she would be showing her legs to a stranger in a room at the hospital. Not that she was aware, anyway. Katya with a shrug swiftly unclipped the suspender belt, then unfastened the girl’s black stockings and rolled them off her long, smooth legs.
The girl’s body was exquisite, but Katya didn’s have time to enjoy her thighs and her smooth buttocks, as she would have wished. Instead, she swiftly removed her own clothes, placed them in her bag and donned the nurse’s uniform. A near perfect fit, tho the skirt was a little short. Not to worry. It was time to go.
‘Sorry about that, darling,’ she said to the sleeping Alison and then, for a moment tempted, she turned the nurse over onto her front, leaving her shapely buttocks exposed, the white panties squeezed over them. With a smile, she gave the sleeping Alison’s bottom a friendly pat. ‘You seem like a nice girl, Alison,’ she said to her quietly, ‘but you should be more careful who you go to work for. ‘
Alison, in any case, was dead to the world and remained motionless, now stripped to just her white bra and panties, lying on her front on the bed she had intended to prepare for Semyon Rudnitski. Her mouth was slightly open, revealing the faintest glimpse of white teeth. Her long hair over her face.
Katya was ready to move.
Then a sudden thought struck her. And she cursed herself for accepting this job. Who would have expected such complications?
These three nurses had come on duty presumably when the security guard was already there. In other words, he would know exactly who was supposed to be in the hospital, and who was not. This meant she had no chance of just slipping by him without raising suspicion.
Her mind raced. Everything became more complicated. What she would need to do was to stay in the hospital now until the security guard reached the end of his shift and was relieved. Then she would slip by past the new one, who wouldn’t know who was meant to be up there, and who not. She contemplated for a moment simply forcing the guard at gunpoint to let her by, but decided against it. Dealing with a nurse was one thing, but it was possible that the guard had some kind of alarm button which he would quietly activate. Not worth the risk.
This meant that she was going to have to stick around on the hospital landing for a while. But then that created another dilemma. She was, after all, sharing the landing with two nurses, and had just drugged and stripped one of their colleagues. Alison had presumably been off to perform some errand in room 14. About a quarter of an hour had passed since her entry. They would no doubt be growing concerned in the charge room and would shortly come and investigate.
This meant a window of opportunity. Katya realized that she was going to have to deal with the two remaining nurses. There was no way that she could spend another hour or two on the landing without them finding the drugged Alison and raising the alarm. So the other two would have to join Alison in having a no doubt well-deserved sleep. But how to arrange this?
Thinking fast, Katya, still in the white nurse’s uniform, grabbed her bag and with swift and silent steps left the room and her victim to her slumber.
She covered the ten meters to the sluice room, on the left hand side of the corridor. From it, she could hear what was going on in the office further down. She would hear when one or other of the nurses came to see what was up with her luckless colleague. And then Katya would be ready.
As it was, she was now on damage limitation mode. That girl entering the room meant that the hospital security or Rudnitski’s own men would probably search the room or demand that the oligarch be placed in a different one. Katya intended nevertheless to move the sleeping Alison once she had dealt with her colleagues. But it was probable that her mission was a failure. Now what remained to do was to avoid turning operational failure into disaster by ensuring her own tidy exfiltration from the hospital.