Sergei

Sergei

This woman is annoying, thought Sergei. It had to be a woman. Something in the forms of expression used, and the lack of camaraderie, the absence of an effort at dominance. Honing in, reusing Sergei's own words to counter them, like a female in an argument. Annoying.
What kind of name was TentenOhMe anyway? He'd seen some ridiculous usernames. But this one was just annoying.
He looked out of the kitchen window by the table where he worked. The thermometer placed on the concrete outside by his grandmother decades before read -5 degrees centigrade. Spring was coming. The tram lines of Avtovo gathered and curved in the distance, the Soviet era apartment blocks a pale peach in the wet of the melting slush, the marsh of Avtovo edged with the grey of melting snow. He thought briefly of the party he'd be going to at the weekend, and turned back to his laptop.
Which username to use now? He had more than a dozen on this online news page, and meticulous notes on the characters, life stories and opinions of each. Each commentator had his or her own favoured idioms, sayings, references. He prided himself on his ability to sound authentic. He updated the comments record on the database he'd created to display the fictional character behind each username more fluidly and intuitively, satisfied with his work.
He thought about Yvgenia, the woman who worked as a teacher, who would also be at the party. He hoped he could begin a relationship with her. They would kiss and then he would ask her if she wanted to walk along the river the next day, maybe go to the Hermitage; he wanted to do that instead of trying to have sex with her there and then. It could make him seem effeminate and pretentious rather than sensitive and sophisticated, but she was gentle and calm, and he hoped together they could discover the beauty of the world, all while he conveyed how much she meant to him.
Yvgenia was from a middle class family who lived in a tiny flat one stop down the red line at Kirovsky Zavod. They owned a large dacha in the country, but he knew the flat where Yvgenia lived with her parents and younger brother was small. Hardly any of their friends could afford to leave the parental home without two wages. Yvgenia had never married, and she was twenty-seven. The fact Sergei lived on his own in a two bedroom flat had to make him an attractive prospect. She had just broken up with Sasha, a distant friend of his. He wondered if she was over it. He hoped so.
Sergei brewed some more coffee. He always said he was able to work from home because he built the back-end of retail websites, and both friends and acquaintances were impressed at how it enabled him to live alone and wondered what he might do next.
Sergei typed out a short, pointed retort, designed to rankle and tear at TentenOhMe's earlier comment. He waited a few moments, and then clicked on the tick that would recommend the comment randomly between ten and twenty times over two minutes. He would repeat it later. It was important to recommend the comment enough to give it weight, but not so much that it would draw suspicion. If enough ticks appeared, his comment would gather more recommends all by itself. Such was the nature of people. The skill lay in building momentum.
The program on his computer that masked his real I.P. address worked impeccably. Right now, the news website's online moderators thought an irate Russophile based in Berkshire, England, was in argument with TentenOhMe, while recommends supporting his Berkshire alter ego flooded in from Newcastle, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds, London.
He updated the database in which he detailed the number and gist of anti-Russian regime comments. It was important to follow trends, and to counter them. Or void them. He went online to another few sites, left a few comments, and then decided to finish the pasta with sausage and cheese.

Sergei awoke in the dark, his neck cranked at an odd angle on his grandmother's long sausage pillow. The knock wasn't a dream. It was insistent and loud. Sergei sat up, and shouted for whoever it was to cut it out. The knock broke on his door again. Yvgenia stirred, her breath scented with vodka and hazelnuts, and switching on his grandmother's tasselled bedside lamp, Sergei gently untangled a strand of her honey-coloured hair from his watch. He then pulled on his jeans.
His elderly neighbour was stood behind her front door, he knew it. Spying through her spy-hole to find out what the commotion was. His grandmother's old rival and occasional friend, she watched old television serials dubbed into Russian at top volume all day and always greeted Sergei with affection, even as she observed his comings and goings with her real face, set shrewd and unsmiling.
Sergei stared at the man on his doorstep. It was Sasha. He was in the beaten leather jacket and black scarf he usually wore. Shorter than Sergei, with blond hair and dark eyes, he was the one who had introduced Sergei to the man with the contacts. That was how Sergei had gotten his job. The cigarette in Sasha's hand dripped ash onto the doormat.
Sergei began to speak in protest. He didn't want a fight.
"It's not about Yvgenia. Let me in, we have to talk."
Sergei let Sasha in.

They sat in his grandmother's kitchen, the overhead bulb lighting the cork tiles with the pink flower motif, the dank pink fading into the orange-brown. Sasha lit another cigarette and offered Sergei one.
Sergei put some coffee on.
"I have someone else already. Don't worry about her. It's not about her, like I said to you."
Sasha said this into Sergei's topless back.
Sergei sat down.
"So why are you banging on my door and waking the babushka next door at three am, Sasha?"
"Because you've dropped me in the shit, that's why."
Sergei hoped Yvgenia would stay asleep.
"What are you talking about?"
"Does Yvgenia know what you do for a living?"
Sergei stared. He hadn't realised that Sasha knew.
Sasha laughed. "The regime pays a lot of people's wages, Sergei. You are not special."
The coffee pot began to bubble. Sergei was glad to be able to stand up and turn away. How could Sasha, who worked at his father's garage, work for the regime? Was it arrogance to assume that Sasha had nothing to offer the machinery of government? But no, thought Sergei. It was rational. After all, it wasn't as if Sasha could speak and write flawless English; Sergei was the one who could adopt the tone and idioms of Westerners, and for what he did, he was employed at a bargain price. Others who did the same work all day on Western news sites were too obvious, with the mistakes in their English, and their crude, simplistic rudeness. Sergei had a feel, an understanding of others that eluded the trolls employed in Moscow's crowded news factories. It was his talent at computers and languages that enabled his life, his flat, his self-determined working hours. That and his time abroad, spent long ago.
What did Sasha do for the regime?
Sergei could see the amusement in Sasha's eyes as he put the coffee pot and cups on the table. Sasha stirred sugar into his drink animatedly. He made a manly grunt, and spread his legs, the leather of his jacket squeaking and smelling strongly.
"Why are you in the shit?" Sergei lit a cigarette.
"Andrei is not happy. He called me tonight. They are furious."
"They?"
"They might send you to Poland," said Sasha, his lips thinning as he smiled.
Sergei decided to ignore the reference to exile and the unknown. It was an old joke about how ravaged Poland had been before Russia rescued the country from the Germans.
"Have you ever talked to Yvgenia about politics?"
Sergei guffawed. "Of course not. What would she know? We've only just started as well."
Sasha shrugged. "She's not a fan of the government. I had to give her a bloody nose once, for what she said about the President. Her father spent time in jail fifteen years ago or so. Like you, he lived abroad for a while."
Sergei watched Sasha finish his coffee. He thought he could hear Yvgenia stir in the bedroom at the end of the corridor, but she did not appear.

Sergei cancelled the walk along the River Neva and the trip to the Hermitage. He could see the disappointment in Yvgenia's eyes, but he promised to call her as soon as his work project was over. That day he worked without a break, redoubling his efforts, commenting and recommending his own comments and other pro-Russian comments on as many online news sites as possible. He kept twitching, and looking at his watch. He didn't like to admit it, but he was waiting for his mobile phone to ring.
Finally, he decided around six in the evening that Sasha had come round only to harass him, out of jealousy. He had been baiting him. Sergei picked up his mobile phone to call Yvgenia. It lit up fluorescent green and rang at him instead.

Like other natives of the district, Sergei had long since stopped noticing the magnificence of Avtovo's underground train station. Built in the Soviet era to proclaim the glory of the people, the chandeliers and marble columns and dazzling geometric marble tiles were rarely gawped at by strangers, since few came this far along the metro's red line. Occasionally, though, he would grin in memory of the English girl who had stayed with his grandmother nearly a quarter of a century before, while on a university programme to teach English. How she had exclaimed loudly, gaining the glances and frowns of passing public, the barely contained rolling of eyes!
Alighting at Ploschad Vosstaniya, he walked through the tunnel and exited at Mayakovskaya station. From there, he made his way to the bar.

Andrei downed his vodka when Sergei came in. "We're not staying. Follow me."
They were in a car parked illegally on the main road that led out of the city centre, a little past Ploschad Vosstaniya metro station. Where the city streets gracefully widened and stretched, beaded by the lights in the nineteenth century architecture. Sergei sat in the sleek red Chevrolet and waited.
"I will be brief with you, Sergei Petrovich Anishin. You have done good work, we are pleased with you. We have even considered you for promotion. But this week was a bad week. And a bad week for you to slacken off."
Andrei's face was in the dark. His hands rested lightly on the steering wheel and lit by one of the many ornate streetlamps, Sergie could see a finger set with a thick signet ring. His face in dark profile was more youthful than it looked full-on. Sergei began to formulate a sentence to utter in response, but stopped. He wasn't nervous, he wasn't afraid. He wasn't a man to be easily or quickly reached. But he still couldn't understand.
"You have gone wrong lately. You have become lazy and complacent."
Sergei's mouth opened again in indignation. It was true he wasn't as prone to anger or violence as other men, but he knew how to withstand threats to his masculinity, how to garner acceptance and even respect. He could defuse without appearing weak, or so he thought.
"I am the best chaser in the whole of Saint Petersburg, and you pay me a pittance for it."
Chaser was the term they used. Not troll or hacker. Chaser. Sergei liked the term; it reminded him of a scene from the Matrix, of rebels chasing green binary code along screens, effortlessly reading the zeroes and ones, and finding worlds of truth within.
"You keep arguing on their terms. You say Russia is a democracy. You bleat about Russia's history in the Crimea, and the wrongs done to Russia. That is stupid."
"I try to put things in terms they understand!"
"And that is why they beat you again and again! It is not that Russia should be a democracy - that is not the point. Why argue that when the world is beginning to agree, one by one, even the United States? In the West they have begun to see that they too need the strong hand of a real man, and real men in charge at home, and real men at work in the factories and when necessary, real men out on the streets. You do not argue with them on their terms. You tell them that the terms themselves have changed. You tell them the world has changed and they, poor weaklings, have been left behind."
Sergei listened. His head began to throb.
It wasn't as if the point Andrei made hadn't occurred to him. And yet somehow he had left that thread behind. He didn't know why. Was it the fact of Yvgenia's appearance in his life? Or was there something in him that resisted?
"You fucked up. Occasionally, somebody very important reads the articles Westerners put online about Russia. And when he does, he makes sure to read the comments. Unluckily for you, he read one you worked on. And he was unimpressed."
Fear began to glisten on Sergei's upper lip. The Chevrolet had its lights on but the engine was off, and the evening temperature had fallen below zero. Yet Sergei began to feel hot.
"I work hard, I have created many online commentators, I make sure to gather many, many recommends -"
"You are the best at the recommends. We acknowledge your skill here. But this - do you remember?"
Andrei passed Sergei his tablet. On the screen glimmered the black and white page where Sergei's Berkshire based alter ego had argued with TentenOhMe.
"This commentator says our President will end the same way as Mussolini and that without power our President is dead, so he has nothing to lose. Do you remember?"
Sergei's eyes glazed over the exchange. His body tensed. He could almost feel the shadow of Andrei's fist over him, even if Andrei's arms lay loosely by his sides.
"And here where you call Russia a democracy, this little liberal lists the names of dissidents supposedly murdered on the orders of our President. See here? Here." Andrei pointed with his left hand while his right reached behind Sergei's head and moved his face, forcing him to focus.
Sergei stammered, wanting to explain that he had decided to concentrate on the recommends rather than countering each point made in the debate.
"You're not paid to encourage this kind of precision attack, Sergei Petrovich. Do you think this is what you're paid to do? You do not make your adversary look like a clueless relic left behind in the new world of the twenty-first century. Instead, you encourage this loser into a full lecture on human rights, making us look like the barbarians."
Sergei began to speak, but Andrei raised his right hand.
"You should sow seeds of doubt, not inspire full-blown recitals of the Declaration of Human Rights. You're meant to point out the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of our enemies and those who threaten Russia, to make the citizens of those countries doubt their own governments. You always point the finger back, you do not defend, do you understand? Talk about their arms traders, their backroom dealers, their shadowy establishment that enriches itself while wreaking havoc across the globe. You tell those commentators that it is they who allow this. You have not done that here. Instead of attack, you defend."
Andrei paused for effect. His arm still lay behind Sergei's head, loosely leaning on the headrest of the seat. Sergei wanted to move forward, to raise his arms as a shield.
To his relief, Andrei moved, and lit a cigarette.
"You've one chance and one chance only, Sergei. The very important person wants this user wiped off the Internet. He was offended not only for the office of the President and the government, but for our motherland."
The pain in Sergei's head travelled across his skull, before settling like a centipede in a straight line above his left brow. His eye began to flutter with the tic he'd had as a young boy.
"How can I wipe a person off the Internet? Someone who lives thousands of kilometres away in England?"
Andrei wiped his tablet's screen lovingly with his sleeve. As if Sergei's microbes could contaminate it. "TentenOhMe, whoever this person is, find them. I know you're not into chasing. We have a specialist who will be in touch."
Andrei met Sergei's eyes. "This is your last chance. You will be given precise instructions about what happens next. If you fail, you go to Poland. Now get out of my car."
Stumbling into traffic beeping red, Sergei crossed the white lanes and once safely underground at the metro station, sank against a cold pillar of white marble.

Sometimes, Sergei thought about how he wanted to walk into the Hermitage, dive into a painting by Miro or Kandinsky, and then plunge into the Neva in winter. He thought about how he didn't want to learn any more history, he just wanted to travel and see the art in the world, and leave behind Saint Petersburg at that point when it sparkled pure and white with the freshest snow of earliest winter.
He thought about talking to Yvgenia.
He sat at his kitchen table by the window in the fourth floor apartment, and again he looked out of the window. The instructions had arrived. The time had come.

It was surprisingly easy. The online newspaper's safeguards were the rudimentary, clunky affair expected of a media behemoth, and once the offending commentator's internet address had been obtained, entry into her devices was easy. TentenOhMe had installed the usual protections on her computer that were easily traversed. It was as light as walking into the neighbour's apartment while she was out, after finding the key under the doormat. It was a pleasure akin to ransacking his elderly neighbour's glass stores of home-brewed alcohols and richly sugared fruit preserves.
It made him wonder how it would feel to read the diaries Yvgenia might have kept as a girl, or to take her phone and download everything on it, to examine at his leisure. To ransack her memories would enable a full possession of her being, and Sergei wondered how it would feel to possess her so fully, in a psychological grip she would be helpless to evade.
It was a sharp, tangy taste he had never known before.
He hacked into TentenOhMe's social media accounts, her emails. It was a she. She was methodical, diligent. Her administration was filed into a particular folder, her personal emails in another. He found nothing. They had instructed him to destroy her life. To find intimate pictures and post them all over the Internet.
There were no intimate pictures.
It was rifling through her laptop's hard drive that was most interesting for Sergei. It was like imagining the life of the English girl who had left Saint Petersburg a quarter of a century before. How the life of that English girl might have turned out. He rarely thought of her name. He remembered her face and that she was English.
TentenOhMe was a freelance copyeditor. The invoices on her laptop showed she earned precious little; there had to be a man who kept the roof over her head. She had two children, and photos of these were plentiful throughout her social media accounts, even if set to private. On her laptop, Sergei opened a picture of a woman with two children.
She was in her late thirties. He found a scanned copy of her passport.
She was youthful for her age. Unkempt, the way British women could be. Her hair had roots of white, her eyes were lined where they needn't have been. Her nails, from the picture with an arm around the shoulders of her youngest child, were unpainted and short, if clean.
She was not ugly, however.
Every person has dreams, thought Sergei as he rifled through her laptop files, her life.

They were in the sleek red Chevrolet again. This time Andrei parked in a proper parking bay, although without paying the charge for parking.
"Well?"
"I have found nothing. No naked pictures. She's a bored and boring woman. She takes photos of her children, she constantly posts political articles to her social media accounts. She has strong opinions."
Andrei growled, his hands on the steering wheel. He lifted his hands to thump its thick leather. "Find something! You destroy her life, her reputation. And then you plant the malware. You understand?"
Sergei nodded. He wanted to smoke. He wanted to forget. He wanted winter to return, the ice of the Neva, the snow along Nevsky Prospekt. He wanted to call Yvgenia and tell her everything. But since that first time, he had not called her.
He wanted to throw her onto the bed and prove that he was a man, he was still a man.
Once again, Andrei barked at Sergei to get out of his car.

Something Sergei hadn't even thought of happened. Yvgenia called him.
"Sergei?"
"Yvgenia?"
"How are you? You're still very busy?"
"A little."
"I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk along the river and then maybe go see some art at the Hermitage Museum."
Sergei held his mobile phone in silence. His left hand went to his eyes.
"Yes, Yvgenia. I would like that very much."

That afternoon, Sergei resolved to be done with it. He had organised for all emails from TentenOhMe to stop at a server owned by the Russian regime. The emails banked up at a network hub in Saint Petersburg, some miles away, near where the sea beckoned to Finland. Sergei set to work.
TentenOhMe was discussing the end of term Easter play that would be performed by the children at school. Did these women have nothing better to do than worry about school plays months away? The email was to be sent to many mothers and some teachers. It was in response to an email from another mother who had replied to an email from the school asking for help with the daffodils and other Easter decorations required for the school performance.
Hello everyone
I was wondering if we could turn this into a crafts afternoon with our children, using colourful crepe paper to decorate the cardboard baskets for the daffodils. I would volunteer to help any teachers willing to do this.
Sergei noticed the words, the allusions, the sensible, matter of fact manner, the solidity of the expression. This was the English of a grownup woman, a mother in early middle age. Sergei changed the words.
Hello motherfuckers
Fuck the lot of you entitled, over-privileged scum. Stuff your dandelions up your arse and don't expect me to waste my time ever again.
He managed a grin and pressed send.
The next email in the outbox was to one of TentenOhMe's copyediting clients. It was a response to a request for reediting.
Learn to write properly yourself you fat bastard. Fuck your fucking shit boring work, you lazy wanker.
Sergei sighed. He had no idea if the copyediting client was fat or not. It was hardly incendiary stuff.
One more email looked promising. TentenOhMe had composed an email to the builder working on her house.
Hi Jim
Just wondering if you might be able to quote for those veluxes this week and sort out the skirting boards.
thanks
A tram was passing. The line ended shortly after Sergei's apartment block even as the Soviet workers' buildings sprawled their identical facades far beyond the outskirts of the city. The English were so dull. Maybe Andrei was right. Without real men, all life fades. With their children's plays and music lessons and professionally managed clients and builders and their relentless dropping off and picking up of children, Sergei wondered if what TentenOhMe needed might not be a good fucking. Why was there never any mention of her husband, the father of her children? Living by her online schedule would make him want to die. She had next to no personal emails and those she did discussed ridiculous things such as which cottage to book on holiday or who should host the next coffee morning. She spent her life discussing trivialities, worrying about her children who had to be sick of the sight of her and her pointless interventions. She worked from home, she had to have the time for more, the thirst for more. Perhaps she still had a landline and talked to a lover on that.
Hi Jim
Just wondering if you might be able to quote for those veluxes this week and sort out the skirting boards.
And then when that's done, how about you bend me over the banister and fuck me hard from behind.
Take me now I'm waiting
Sergei put out a cigarette. He felt lighter, even if in some tiny circuit of his brain guilt lightly fizzed. He pressed the button to send all altered emails and then plant the malware that would wipe out everything on TentenOhMe's laptop and mobile phone, scrambling each file, email, contact and calendar, to be lost forever to the ether of the Internet.
She hadn't been such a political adversary after all. Her online activism proved to be a chimera, shimmering like the thinly stretched skin of a soap bubble. The only evidence of her opinions informing her life lay in an email Sergei found about a charity jumble sale for refugees.
TentenOhMe would be out of action for a while.
Sergei left the flat and crossed the thawing marshland between his apartment block and the tramline to meet Yvgenia at Kirovsky Zavod.

This time, Andrei met Sergei in the bar. Two tiny shot glasses with icy vodka concealed within glinted on the shiny bar counter. They sat on high bar stools and smoked.
"Well done. For now you won't be going to Poland. We might need you again soon, though."
Sergei smiled. "What for?"
"We might embed you with some Russian tourists. Your English is good enough for you to go from there. Some plans are forming for a small mission to aid our fascist brothers across the Gulf of Finland. Not just for news sites."
Andrei waited for Sergei's response. Sergei took a gulp of vodka.
"I don't like you saying fascist. Nationalist, maybe. Patriotic, yes. We know Mother Russia is misunderstood. The sleeping bear awakens. But we are not fascists."
Andrei grinned. As if Sergei were an old friend. "Tell me about this woman whose life you hacked."
Sergei shrugged. "Nothing much to tell. A very ordinary, boring woman. No sex in any of her emails or pictures or anything else. She lives for children, work, and her opinions. Most of all she seems to like proving herself to other bored and boring mothers."
Andrei nodded. "So all she's missing is a good fucking."
Sergei laughed.
"Nothing incriminating you could have posted to her social media accounts or emailed to her friends?"
Sergei thought for a moment. He twirled his glass. "She writes sometimes. She writes poems."
"And? Are they any good?"
         He paused.
"It would be better if she didn't."
Andrei guffawed, and motioning at the discreet waiter, ordered another two vodkas, while Sergei thought about how he had spared TentenOhMe the humiliation of that particular exposure. How her longing wound itself into the sparks of lines and phrases he had not been able to understand. And then his mind flickered to how he would go home and call Yvgenina, and how he would have sex with her that night.