In the last chapter, after Ohmie interprets the data on the thumb drive, Ohmie’s parents decide to leave him in the chateau under Mme Benoir’s care and go to Berlin for his mother a passport. Ohmie decides to travel to Minsk.

My cover story was that I was going to my Godfather’s. My dad was killed in the fighting in Ukraine and my mom was unable to care for me. She’s in Paris. I only speak French and a little Ukrainian. I am sorry. I’m sick. I don’t need any help. Thank you. My Godfather was a sales rep for a product used in smelting ore. Belarus was his territory. That was my story. My French was good enough to sell it. I hoped.

I called Mme Benoir from Warsaw simply telling her that I was fine.

The bus from Lucerne to Zurich was only a forty-five-minute ride. Then I flew to Minsk. Lucky me, there was a direct flight. Ol’ Tymofiy was getting to be quite the world traveler. I could have saved some money by changing planes in Warsaw, but I’ve already seen Warsaw. Besides, it wasn’t like Dad was going to have to buy me another birthday present, not even a Christmas gift, ever.

It was a bit of a hassle at the customs desk. I guess Belarus doesn’t like Ukrainians much. I convinced them that I was really French, adding that my good-for-nothing father had been put to death by some patriotic Rushkie. I just needed to go to my Godfather, please, that I had lymphoma and might pass out any minute. I guess I was convincing. They wanted to be rid of me.

Before getting a cab, I gave myself an injection of the opioid and steroid stuff. I had enough for two more shots of each.

I activated my phone. Whoever would be looking for it, probably nobody, would play heck getting here and finding me before I left again. My phone gave me the address of Deus Comtec. Taking a cab, I got there an hour before closing time. In my best Ukrainian, I told the receptionist that I had to see my mother and bolted, if you want to call my fastest bolting. The elevator was only steps away. I probably looked more like the old man in Up, think arthritic sloth. I got lucky that someone was leaving work early and the elevator door opened for me.

It was only an eight-story building. I went to the seventh. It didn’t stop at any of the levels going up, so no one got on. I went to the stairwell and went part way up. No one who worked on the eighth floor would take the stairs at quitting time. If they did, I would go down and take my chances through the door to the seventh floor until the hikers passed by. If anybody entered the stairway from the seventh, I could go up and be out of sight. If it went as I’d hoped, I would take a nap for a few hours. I’d deactivated my phone, so I couldn’t set my alarm.

I might’ve napped a few times, but I was too tired to have had much sleep. I did not feel rested. I didn’t want to battery up my phone, but I knew that it had to be midnight or later. I couldn’t tell that any lights had been turned off, but the windows to the outside were dark. That wasn’t much of a barometer, though. It was probably this dark outside at nine o’clock. Regardless, I thought it was time.

I didn’t think there would be any way that what I wanted, the meat and guts, would be on the top floor, the penthouse. I started on the seventh. None of the office doors were locked, but none looked like work stations, more like secretaries and paper-pushers, maybe bosses. The sixth floor was where I finally saw a clock: eleven twenty-one. Fine. Even the latest worker shouldn’t be here at this hour. My only real concern was a nightwatchman. But my bet was that he would be on the first floor and only get up to check the two, or maybe three entry doors. Anyway, the sixth floor had conference rooms, an eating area, and a kitchen, probably a bathroom, too.

The fifth floor had six rooms with computer stations, two and three to a room. One of the rooms was locked, but I could get to it through a pass-through door after I entered the next office. The lights were turned off, but the computers were all left on. On my way through, I tapped a key on each computer just to see if they were password-protected, and I would be locked out. They weren’t. But one of the ones in the locked office did need a password. There were no sticky notes anywhere nearby. The desk drawers were not locked, but I didn’t see anything obvious.

I’m not a computer geek. And I just hate shows that stereotypically have an ugly, gangly kid (or young adult) who can get into anything and extract exactly what they need, or get money out of off-shore accounts with blazing, lightning-speed keystrokes, all while the bad guy is inserting his key in the door. But you don’t have to be nerdy to pick up the keyboard and look underneath. Nope, again no sticky note. But there was a piece of masking tape stuck to the bottom with an eight-digit combination number, letters, and symbols. My bet is that it was computer generated and the administrator changed it regularly.

Bingo! Like I said, not a geek. But I know about history, and about email, and about saved files. When we bought a spare thumb drive to copy what was on Dad’s, we bought two. I kept one of them. I copied nearly everything. If I could see it, I copied it. It was simple as pointing and dragging. I’d been at that one for nearly thirty minutes when I heard a crash. I froze. Then I backed the computer to its screen-saver. I didn’t dare try to move the chair, not knowing what noise it would make. I didn’t dare try to wriggle out of it without moving it for fear that it would zip out and away, or worse, crash down.

When I heard voices, two men talking, I chanced moving the chair just enough to slide out. I had to get out of the line of sight of the still locked office door. I said it was two men talking, but I actually only heard one. But it was obviously in conversation with another. The tone told me that it was conversation between two men, gruff, declarative, staccato-like. Of course, I would have no way of knowing, but my bet was that it was shift change. It was midnight. The new guy, was all pumped, ready to start his shift. He was also hard-of-hearing, which caused him to nearly shout. I was on the fifth floor, remember. The crash must have been him slamming the back door shut. It probably has an issue. Good to know for when I plan my escape.

I carefully made my way to the stairwell just in case the new guy was going to make rounds. There was no more talking. My guess was that the old guy left through a quieter door. I wish I knew where that door was. I heard the elevator. I felt certain that he was going to the top floor – elevator up, stairs down, just like every good high-rise mailman- common sense. I hid on the sixth landing. After checking out the top floor, he would take the stairs to the seventh. That’s when I would sneak up to the eighth. And stay there until I figured he had time to get back down to at least the second or third, preferably all the way to the first where he might very well take a nap.

He wasn’t long on the seventh floor, but he took forever on the sixth. The kitchen! He was eating everyone’s leftovers. It was nearly one o’clock before I heard him on the stairs again. He must have had leather heels because I could hear them tap. I could also hear him rattle the locked door that I’d been behind.

Not too long after that, I went back to the locked office, again through the back way. There I did the same to the other computer in the same office. It wasn’t password-protected, so all I was really interested in was files that looked like lists, anything that had an English, or American name, and emails. Right then is when I thought to get the computer’s IP address, the number that identifies that particular machine. I went back to the locked computer and got that one, too.

I didn’t have all night, so the computers in the other offices, as well as the ones on levels three and four, I randomly opened and copied what looked interesting. There wasn’t much. Going down to the first floor, I was glad that my shoes had rubber soles, and not the kind that squeaked.

I wish I’d taken the time to look for cameras when I entered the building. I was too conscious of getting by the receptionist. The back door, the one I’m sure the guy had slammed, was a steel door. There was an exit light above it, though it was in Belarus and didn’t say exit. It did light up the hallway enough that I could see there were no cameras. They were probably all on the outside. I went into a room that had a window to the back parking lot. I saw one car parked under one of the lights. I couldn’t tell if the windows were wired for alarms, or not. I couldn’t even tell if they’d ever been opened.

My goal was to get out without anyone having known that there’d been a visitor. I didn’t want any of the good stuff that I might have copied to be changed, rendering my stuff half useless. I mean it was one thing to find a smoking gun. It would be quite something else if you could turn that same smoking gun back on its owner and shoot him. It was nearly four in the morning. As soon as I got back to the back door area, I heard the guard’s footsteps. I quickly stepped back into the same room I was in and hid behind the door. I could hear the back door open, followed by the crinkling of what I guessed to be a pack of cigarettes. I was surprised that a smoker could wait four hours between smokes. I crept as quietly as I could out of the room and down the hall toward the front, back the way the guard had come. I stood at the front door until I heard the slam of the back door. One: that told me where he was for a certainty. And two: he was still hearing his own slamming, when I opened and shut the front door, making my escape.

No one was going to look at the video recording unless a break-in was suspected, or something was missing. I was free. I just had to get away and get somewhere that I could get a cab and not be associated in any way with this building. I remembered a sort of main street a few blocks away. There ought to be a cab there, if not then, then later. When I finally got into a cab I literally collapsed.