The Moscow Witch

 "Once upon a time in Moscow," said the babushka who was sat next to the flickering stub of the candle, "there was an American who was so old that it was rumoured you could tell his age by counting his wrinkles.  He had flown all the way there in winter and so was greatly surprised by the difference in temperature as it was snowing in Moscow and had been for weeks."  She shifted in her seat; she didn't often tell tales with a basis of truth but the body of the American, now buried under an inch of iron-hard soil in the cellar, was making her uneasy.  "He had come with strange news to tell about the presidential election in his home country."

The child in the bed was already asleep and the snow outside the window was still falling heavily so she decided to continue.  If nothing else it would take her mind off the story of the Tell-tale Heart which was resonating with her ever more the longer the body lay downstairs.  Artem had said he would be back before midnight, with men to take the body away, but there were only two hours to go now and she was starting to worry.

"Technomancers," she said, as she still found smartphones and tablets to be near-witchcraft, "had worked their spells over great distances and wrought changes in the digital infrastructure, and the old man who resembled a turtle in so many ways that you would think he hailed from the Galapagos Islands, had come to tell the Russian President that he was now, in fact, President of the United States as well.  Of course, the Russian President already knew this for the technomancers had promised this to him and had told him once they knew their enchantments and ensorcelling had worked, but this would make it official and seal the spell for four years."

Was that the front-door?  She strained her ears, but no more noise came.  Probably just a snowfall outside then.

"But unluckily for the man, who was known as the Moscow Witch in his home country," she hesitated here, not sure she'd got that right.  It was hard translating from foreign languages, even when you spoke five, and the handwritten letter she'd been translating from had been written by someone very cold and unused to pen and paper.  "Unluckily for the Moscow Witch," she repeated, deciding to stick with what she had, "he met a woman at the train-station who recognised his aura of evil and knew how to deal with such vile spirits.  While his entourage gathered themselves together and disported themselves around him for protection she disguised herself as a cleaner and followed him into the toilets as he realised that there would be a few more hours before the next opportunity."

She smiled.  That had been a stroke of good luck, for her at least.  They hadn't actually expected his security detail to let him go in alone, or to fail to see the cleaner -- herself -- but it seems they thought this was a 'backward' country incapable of simple stratagems.  She'd followed him in, and even he had purported not to see her, and dropped a bucket over his head while he was fiddling with his trousers and hit him with a map hard enough to make her forearms go numb.  Bundling him into her trolley -- carefully constructed to let her force him into it, though she hoped he'd been dead when she had because to wake up contorted like that would have hurt -- she'd left and the body was being driven out of the airport before his security detail decided he was taking too long and went looking for him.

Finally the front door clicked and she felt herself relax.  Bringing the body here had made sense -- no-one would be looking out here in the oblasts for the body of the Witch -- but she still was uncomfortable about it.  Time to go dig it up and let the men take it to wherever they intended to ransom it from.  And then she'd turn the news on and find out how the Technomancers were taking the loss of their agent.