He thought he heard a knock on the glass door. Raul looked up from the computer, to see whose knocking on his cabin door. It was Diana Kobka with a cup in her hand. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Immersed in his work, he has forgotten everything happening around him. He looked at the large clock kept on the wall, it was quarter past 5 in the evening. Diana knocked again. "Oh..sorry!", saying that Raul pressed the button on the wall near him to unlock the glass door, letting her in. "Sir, tea", she kept the tea on the table. "Oh!! Thank you" Raul responded leaning back on the chair. "So, you done for today?" asked Raul "Yes Sir, Sonya is waiting outside for me and I am waiting for the server backup process to conclude" said Diana."Sir you look tired.!" Raul gave a wry smile "Haven't we all! A major release is coming this fall and everyone is running like a race horse against the clock." ...

Raul, never had many friends. He kept only a very few, a handful literally. The colleagues at his work place, mostly never made it into his friends list. In the world of information technology, it is not a joke when some one says, they barely know the person sitting next to them in a cubicle. It is a hard reality, an occupational hazard. Everyone are tasked to squeeze the double into every passing second. It is not just a race against time what a professional does inside the maze of cubicles, but spinning faster in their spots, than the planet earth itself. For Raul, who was heading two departments, he was on warp speed trying to stick with his schedules. When he goes home after work, he lie down on a comfortable couch reading books With news on TV in the background, no communication with friends or others. Loneliness brings life into another realm. In the  quietness, there is a new beginning for humankind, to think more and think from themselves. For Raul, loneliness and solitude...

Raul felt much better after a shower. Going back into the cabin, he changed into  white t-shirt, with a  peach colored shirt over it  and pulled up a blue jeans.  He more or less live in denim 24/7. The air inside the cabin was perfumed, by the scent of the lemon grass and musk from his clothes.There is something unsettling about the smell. It has a familiarity, that took him way, back in his life. The smell engulfed him and he smiled. She had me surrounded - he thought as he adjusted his hair looking at a small mirror on the cabin wall. The train has ample storage space, under the bed. He lifted the  bed to place his backpack inside and closed it, tugged on the lock of the backpack to see if it fastened well. He drew the window curtains back, kept the pillows properly and placed the folded blanket and bed-sheet on top of it. The phone charger was kept near the mineral water bottle on the coffee table. He took a good look inside the cabin and taking a mental ph...

Raul scrolled through the pages of Московские новости ( Moskovskiye Novosti ),reading about the news and happenings in Moscow. It is only very recently he started using smart phones. He kept himself disconnected from the networked world as much as possible. He preferred old bulletin boards and online forums than using social media. He found these online forums more informative and rational than the rabid Social media. The bulletin boards these days are like an old lost forgotten civilization,  only a handful kept alive by the old timers with their personal servers at home. He visited these bulletin boards because, he could learn reliable information from them. With his alter ego, he is sensibly active on these forums. Even though he is a hard core Information Technology professional, it is an irony that his personal life adapted very late to these technologies and was rustic. He bought his first iPhone only a couple of months back. Till then he used the basic mobile phone for e...

Raul got inside the farmhouse with Sunil behind him. On the wooden rocking chair, closer to the far wall sat Mr.Wilson looking straight at him. His mind was a surging perplexity. Just when we think we are the master of our thoughts fate takes a new turn. Emotions come like hands on the wheel of a "car," taking us somewhere different to the place we had expected. The destination may be beautiful or insufferable; yet feeling afraid for it is all new and the heart beating all the harder. "Raul...take a chair", he felt the hands of Sunil on his shoulder, nudging him gently to the wooden chair next to him. Raul sunk in the wooden chair. He felt the chill of the cold wood through the denim blue jeans he wore. His eyes was still adjusting to the  luminous of the solar lanterns that almost faded into the darkness few feet away from the lantern itself. Sunil, left them at the hall and went into the kitchen. Raul felt that the anticipation was a nervous kind of energy....

Back at Atlanta Inc. Raul maintained his cover, as an operative for Mr.Wilson. His constant engagements with the CEO went unnoticed by others, as he also headed the R&D ( Research and Development ) division, directly under the purview of the higher offices. The tasks assigned to him by Mr.Wilson were becoming more complex and time consuming. Raul had been an operative for so long now that he no longer remembered what it was like to be himself. He was either the person undercover, roles he adapted to so well and it was like an alternative life. When he immersed into his assignments, he was the professional, executing orders, giving reports and being debriefed. The man he had been, the one who skipped stones into the winter ocean , who painted oil paintings and pencil sketches, was all gone. Mr.Wilson really knew how to feed the lone wolf inside Raul. Wilson have found a way to do his job nice, neat and clean. It was a Sunday late afternoon in June . Mr. Sunil Joseph, his former...

Raul studied each photos which was sent to him, zooming on them. He wanted those photos to talk to him. He seem to recognize the gray building in the picture. "Was it the 'ONE TEASPOON CAFE?'"- He asked to himself. The brick walls, the green thicket on the right, the steel gray painted lower wall, everything looked very familiar to him. He zoomed in on the yellow number plate, of a car in the picture. The code 777 on  the right hand corner of the number plate confirmed that these photos were indeed taken in Moscow. The picture sent to him seemed very recent. Raul smiled at the thought that, Mr. Wilson already has spotters at Moscow keeping an eye on the clients. Raul decided to do some Digital Recon on these six individuals he was about to meet in another days time. Digital Reconnaissance and Surveillance was something that Raul mastered over the years, it was one of his other skill that made him valuable. Today, the world operates on a digital landscape. Wearable te...