Chapter 9: In the Bag

Boris had listened carefully to what the pretty young receptionist told everyone in her briefing while the manager disappeared into the kitchen with the driver and a couple of the passengers, Sally and George, although he wasn’t sure why. The manager had said something, but his accent was so weird he couldn’t make out any of it.

He did have a cup of tea and a sweet biscuit, before leaving the Sun Room via the downward ramp into the bar area. He was pleased that he had negotiated the ramp successfully without jiggling the contents of his overnight bag too much, which he had secured to the scooter earlier that morning, using the elasticated “bungee” ropes with handy hooks on the ends that came with the scooter and also used half a roll of “gaffer” tape that he had got one of the care home cleaners to get for him from the nearest hardware store.

He turned left, away from the windows, and passed the bar area towards a set of double doors leading to the corridor beyond. The double doors slowly and gently closed, using springs and hydraulics, immediately behind him. Once in the corridor he was faced with two signs on the opposite wall, one pointing right that stated was the direction of the “TV Room” and the other pointing left read “To Rooms 101-108”, before he turned left and headed toward the bedrooms. He had already looked at his cardboard key with its magnetic strip on the back and arrows on the front, indicating how the card should be inserted in the lock, and noted that his room number was 107 and his table in the dining room was A3. So he was confident that he was on the right direction towards his room.

Very soon he passed the goods lift on the right, which he recognised using himself only a short while ago, as well as the ramp on the left leading up to the Reception Area and onto the Sun Room that he had just left. He went through another set of doors, again spring-loaded heavy fire-retardant doors which gently and silently closed behind him. Boris was faced with fresh signs on the wall, one pointing left indications that Rooms 101-102 were towards the front of the hotel while Rooms 102-108 were indicated on his right and towards the back. He steered his scooter past Room 103 and 105 next to each other on the left and 104 and 106 similarly positioned on the right and then, at the end of the corridor in front of a fire exit to the back yard area, he discovered Room 108 on the right and his Room 107 on the left.

Using the pair of arrows on the card as a guide he inserted the card where indicated and he heard the near silent click of the door, which he pushed open before remembering to remove his card from the lock. Then he entered the room, the door silently shutting behind him.

The room was in darkness but before the door closed Boris could see that there was a light switch conveniently lower than normal switches just inside the door on the right wall, which he flicked on. The central light came on as well as bedside table lights either side of the single bed.

It was a fairly Spartan room, not much different to what he had become used to at the care home. There was a short hallway just under two metres wide and about three metres long before entering the main part of the room, with a window on the right which had a pair of curtains fitted which he could draw closed or open easily with a cord handily hanging below the level of the curtains.

It was already twilight outside, there was no sight of the sunset so his window was facing mostly east, but could be between NNE and SSE. The window barely adding any light to the interior, so he stopped the scooter and closed the curtains.

Boris got off the scooter, as there really was little further headway that the vehicle could make into the room. There was a single bed just beyond the window, and another window on the far wall which had the view of a brick wall of another tall hotel next door, which he walked slowly around the single bed towards, his gait since the stroke was more of a shuffle than a walk. Hence his usual habit of using a Walker or a walking stick until the very recent use he was able to make of the recently vacated motor scooter.

The looped cord ran all the way up the side of the curtains, so it was no problem for Boris to reach and pull down to close the curtains on the second window. He turned. From his new vantage point he could see a wardrobe to his immediate right, next to it was a desk with a chair in front, with a row of three narrow drawers holding up the desk on either side of when the chair was tucked underneath. On one end of the desk there was a kettle and a couple of upside down cups and saucers, containers for tea and coffee and tiny sealed foil cups of UHT milk in a brown plastic tray. Above the desk was a wall mounted TV set opposite the bed. A tv remote control lay on the desk and at the far end of the desk from him was a telephone. Casting his eyes beyond that he could see that a door lead into another room, which he assumed was the en-suite shower and toilet.

The thought of the toilet reminded him that he needed to use it after the ninety-minute mini-bus ride and the top-up of his bladder from the hotel’s cup of tea. The light switch was outside the shower room and, as soon as he switched on that light, an extractor fan in the shower room started spinning.

The soap, taken out of a fresh wrapping, suds up easily and felt creamy and pleasantly fragrant.

“Bourgeois soap,” he mutters to himself and was pleasantly surprised that the towel rail in the shower room was heated as he dries his hands. After he left the room and switched off the light, the extractor fan continued quite noisily for a moment or two before turning itself off.

Boris took his coat off and hung it on one of the two hooks on the back of the room’s front door. He noticed that there was a “Do Not Disturb Sign” hanging from the inside door handle but didn’t feel a need to use it.

Boris spent a good ten minutes unstrapping the gaffer tape from the bag he had taped securely to the scooter. He had already removed his walking stick and left that hanging on the other door hook next to his coat.

He thought that at least for the evening meal and the breakfast in the morning he would use the walking stick in preference to the Scooter. That reminded him that he needed to plug the scooter into the mains to ensure that the battery was fully charged up by the next day. He pulled out the long plug lead from its storage space in the scooter and found a spare socket in the wall next to the bed. He plugged it in and looked at the power indicator, which showed that it was already 96% full.

Finally, he had all the tape removed and it was just a case of unhooking the elasticated ties and the precious bag was free to be removed. He took the bag to the bed and sat down gratefully.

He admits to himself that he was definitely too old and too tired for all this energetic espionage stuff. He had never said anything to the anonymous KGB handlers, the ones who sent his messages and texts on the supplied mobile phone he was given, but they clearly kept close tabs on him because they knew about his stroke and that he had to be relocated to the care home, so they must’ve been keeping an eye on him.

He wondered, as he had several times before, if the Nurse Sofija was also a spy who was sent to spy on him. He hadn’t said anything to his handlers about his reliance on the hearing aids nor that he was really tired after almost any physical exertion on his part, so they must be aware of his disabilities yet still entrust him to do this ... thing, this momentous thing, for Mother Russia and has supplied him with the means to do so, contained in this bag, the contents of which had been delivered by Amazon “maybe” just the week before.