Yuri, or William Armstead, as he was known at his residence on MacArthur Blvd., was still shaking from the action and close call at Kalin’s aka Brandon’s. He had lost three good men from his Charleston cell. They couldn’t be replaced. All of them had trained in the Soviet Union and infiltrated into the U.S. decades ago. That damn dog. He didn’t even know there was a dog in the house let alone a monster bear-like animal. There were more things he didn’t figure in his plan. The Asian servants fought like trained soldiers. He should have known Kalin wouldn’t be easy. Too bad Kalin wasn’t home 25 years ago when his team had killed Kalin’s wife and baby. Well, it was now a closed chapter. He had to get on with his plan.

His network was aging fast. Most of them had been living illegally in the United States for three decades and still thought he was an active duty Russian Intelligence Officer. Before he was forced out of the KGB, all of them had worked for him. In all the chaos following the breakup of the Soviet Empire, he had the perfect opportunity to relocate his former agents. The new Russian Intelligence Service would never find them without him.

A week ago he had given new missions to three of his cells. Yuri’s network was well trained. Professionals, they knew their leader was insistent upon attention to detail and adherence to schedules. The woman who runs the cell in Yulee, Florida is an expert in the use of explosives. Whenever she met Yuri, which was no more than an annual event and sometimes less frequently, she lobbied for a chance to use her skills. This time the woman, code named Crystal, was pleased. He had given her a chance to show off her skill in the innovative use of explosives. She still believed if she excelled maybe someone at the Center in Moscow would notice her. But long ago she knew she was never going back.

Crystal had grown used to the soft life in Florida and had no desire to go back to the bitter cold winters of Leningrad. She would never call her home city St. Petersburg. How bourgeois was that? In her late twenties Crystal had been a very attractive woman. She was now a senior citizen and the mirror was still kind to her. She had made enough money from her shop to afford decent medical and dental care and the frequent use of local spas. She thought, all in all, she was still a looker and attractive to older men. No! Whatever happened she was not going back to Russia.

After Yuri left for the airport, she called her live-in lover, the only person she had ever recruited for her cell, to tell him she would be home in an hour with some exciting news. Hell, this had been less than a part-time job for the last twenty years. She worked harder at her little antique shop than at her spy job. In Yulee she was known as Norma Carlson. Norma had a reputation for her fair prices and willingness to search for a have-to-have piece for a regular client. Norma hated to cook, and her lover Stanley Jones certainly was no connoisseur. As long as it was fried, he could care less. But tonight they would eat at her favorite restaurant in Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, just across the bridge from Yulee.

She needed Stanley’s help for this assignment, and they could make it a vacation. She would close up the shop the day after tomorrow and drive down to Miami. It had been at least five years since she had been there. Norma had learned after the stress of the first five years of living in the United States as an undercover KGB agent, you had to take romance and perks at every opportunity, and even at her age she still enjoyed a romantic interlude with Stanley. She might be the KGB trained agent, but it was Stanley who understood killing. The highlight of his life was his time in the Vietnam War.