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Speaker 2: Warning, the following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes.
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Speaker 3: I was very sick, just fever, but very heavy virus,
Speaker 3: and I was alone and I couldn't contact anyone, like,
Speaker 3: no one at all because I was hiding that time.
Speaker 3: And I remember I had such a strong fever that
Speaker 3: I passed over and I saw all all this goths,
Speaker 3: all these like souls of people whom I had to terminate.
Speaker 3: They all was standing in front of me and they
Speaker 3: told me that's your time. We're taking you with us.
Speaker 3: And I felt like I was lifted by them and
Speaker 3: I went into the space. I reckon it wass a
Speaker 3: hell or something like that, because I felt pain in
Speaker 3: every single of my coorse of my body. It was
Speaker 3: so painful that you cannot even handle it. And I
Speaker 3: said like stop, stop, stop, I can't do this, and
Speaker 3: they said, well that's what you deserve. But then I
Speaker 3: was another soul ghost and it said let her go,
Speaker 3: and then it said to me, you you will be back,
Speaker 3: but you have to complete your mission. You didn't finish
Speaker 3: it yet, you have to go back and do it.
Speaker 3: And then I woke up and the next day my
Speaker 3: favor was gone to kill you. I'm really sorry I
Speaker 3: had to do that.
Speaker 4: I go tu like to you. Episode eleven, chapter twenty four, Fearless.
Speaker 3: And then when I opened my eyes, I wasn't that
Speaker 3: kind of like military hospital. But it wasn't really hospital.
Speaker 3: It was just the big room in the building which
Speaker 3: was half destroyed. There were many, many different injured soldiers,
Speaker 3: and some of them they wouldn't survive.
Speaker 4: Aliyah was still on the border of Chechnya and Russia,
Speaker 4: but further back from the front lines, recovering from her
Speaker 4: injuries in a makeshift military hospital.
Speaker 3: I had a doctor maybe like forty forty five is
Speaker 3: years old, and she said, don't cry, everything will be good.
Speaker 3: You would do He also very soon, no worry, And
Speaker 3: I felt like I felt like she was like my mom,
Speaker 3: you know, like kind of like she cared about me,
Speaker 3: which it was nice that she she gave me this support,
Speaker 3: that moral support.
Speaker 4: After a few days, the doctor discharged Aliah, gave her
Speaker 4: crutches and sent her to a hospital closer to her
Speaker 4: hometown in Russia. As she sat on the train back home,
Speaker 4: Alah thought about her friend and fellow soldier, Rashid, who
Speaker 4: had died in the attack on Alea's base.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know where he lived. I didn't know
Speaker 3: his address or anything. I regretted that I didn't ask,
Speaker 3: and then at that point I felt guilty.
Speaker 4: The train dropped the way off in her hometown, where
Speaker 4: she had been cut off by her family. She was
Speaker 4: taken directly to a hospital to recuperate. Alone, with no
Speaker 4: friends or relatives, Her thoughts began to fixate on the
Speaker 4: abusive colonel whose marriage proposal she rejected, and she wondered
Speaker 4: about his involvement in sending her to Cheeshnya.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to believe that he would send me
Speaker 3: there Ford. You know, I still couldn't believe. I still
Speaker 3: was thinking that, no, he can't do it. He loves me,
Speaker 3: he can just like send me to die. It's probably
Speaker 3: a bad luck. That's what I was telling myself, and
Speaker 3: I was struggling. I wanted to hear his I was
Speaker 3: so curious, but at the same time, I was so devastated.
Speaker 3: If you would really do this to just kill me.
Speaker 3: And I decided to call him and find out. Downstairs
Speaker 3: in the hospital, they had stationary telephone, and I remember
Speaker 3: I had his cell number. I even remember it now.
Speaker 3: I remember a lot of things about him. I remember
Speaker 3: the date of his verse every single day of the year.
Speaker 3: I remember that funny. So I called him and he
Speaker 3: picked up and I said, hey, this is me. And
Speaker 3: it was a long post and he said, so did
Speaker 3: you fix your mind? Did you learn anything in the world?
Speaker 3: Did you become more obedient? And I asked him, did
Speaker 3: you know what really happened there? He said, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: So did you become obedient? He asked me again, and
Speaker 3: I said, what do you want exactly? And he said,
Speaker 3: I want you to listen to me and follow my order.
Speaker 3: Whatever I say you have to do. And he said,
Speaker 3: and if you didn't learn your lesson, I will give
Speaker 3: you another one. And I was so angry and frustrated
Speaker 3: the way he talked to me, like I was kind
Speaker 3: of like a dog on the street. He's like, I'll
Speaker 3: give you the second lesson, like you know, fuck you.
Speaker 3: But I couldn't tell him fuck you. I wish I could.
Speaker 3: I just said goodbye, and I hang up with the phone.
Speaker 3: But straight away after this telephone call, I had them
Speaker 3: feeling inside it. Christopholla was right. He did send me
Speaker 3: there to die. And second, what shall I do now?
Speaker 3: And then the hospital gave me the paper where they stayed.
Speaker 3: Now you are recovered, and now it's time to go
Speaker 3: back to work. Then they sent this referral to my department,
Speaker 3: to my commander, and I came back home to my apartment.
Speaker 3: It was really lonely and it was really empty. I
Speaker 3: even had some thoughts that time that I wish I
Speaker 3: could be dead with Rashett and other soldiers.
Speaker 4: Part of that wish to no longer be here was
Speaker 4: because Leah knew what was waiting for her back at
Speaker 4: the Department of Internal Affairs, her commander, the lieutenant general
Speaker 4: whose advances she'd rejected. And sure enough, as soon as
Speaker 4: Leah was no longer on crutches, the nightmare with him resumed,
Speaker 4: but this time it would have a different ending.
Speaker 3: By that time, I already didn't have crunches, but I
Speaker 3: still walked kind of like Limpin and my lieutenant general,
Speaker 3: my commander, he let everybody leave and he said stay
Speaker 3: here for a little bit where he was sitting. It
Speaker 3: was quite big room and behind on the wall where
Speaker 3: he was sitting there was the president portrait and the
Speaker 3: Russian flag, very patriotic. So he said, come closer. So
Speaker 3: I took all my papers and everything and I moved
Speaker 3: to the chair which was closer to his table. And
Speaker 3: he said, take off your blouse and I said, excuse me?
Speaker 3: He said, take off your blouse. Like open new buttons. Oh,
Speaker 3: don't worry, like why you like again, like a fucking vision,
Speaker 3: just like, take some buttons. I just want to see.
Speaker 3: I surprisingly for myself. I started to open some buttons,
Speaker 3: and when I was opening, I was like thinking, what
Speaker 3: exactly does he want? And I was in like this
Speaker 3: doubt where I didn't want to go back to the war.
Speaker 3: I was so tired and exhausted. I didn't want to
Speaker 3: have any other problems. And I asked myself that moment,
Speaker 3: could I potentially potentially have sex with this man who
Speaker 3: is so disgusting to me? I was asking my brain,
Speaker 3: like can you do it? You know, just to save ourselves.
Speaker 3: But just like first two buttons, and he said, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm not the man who will ask two times. I
Speaker 3: ask you one time, and I'm not the guy who
Speaker 3: will run after you and trying to chase you. And
Speaker 3: he said, with my position, I can destroy you or
Speaker 3: I can reward you like a queen. You choose, and
Speaker 3: you know what, I made my choice that moment, and
Speaker 3: I said, inside of myself, do you know what if
Speaker 3: I survived the war, I'll survive. Fuck you as whole.
Speaker 4: In that moment, a Leah realized that the only power
Speaker 4: that the lieutenant general had over her was fear. So
Speaker 4: she did something that her experiences in Shshnya made possible.
Speaker 3: I closed my buttons, I turn around and I walked
Speaker 3: out from the room. And you know what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, it will be the day when I
Speaker 3: will press the trigger and you'll be dead.
Speaker 4: You'll see the aliah Rosa that had left for Cheshnia
Speaker 4: was not the same person who had returned. When you've
Speaker 4: been the Helen back and are no longer afraid to die, threats,
Speaker 4: punishments and consequences hold no power over you, you are,
Speaker 4: in a sense free.
Speaker 3: Something happened with me after that war. I felt like,
Speaker 3: you know what, like, what else can you do? Send
Speaker 3: me back? No problem? Send me back. You know you
Speaker 3: want me to be that I kind of like I
Speaker 3: already was there. I was almost dead. When you come
Speaker 3: to the point when you're not scared anymore, I became
Speaker 3: completely fearless, and it gave me so much power and
Speaker 3: I just felt it. I felt that moment and I said, like,
Speaker 3: I'm not I don't. I will never again in my
Speaker 3: life allow any man to use my body like they
Speaker 3: used to do it. I will not allow that. I
Speaker 3: can only sacrifice my body for some big missions, if
Speaker 3: it has to be done to save some people, but
Speaker 3: I definitely won't do it just to please some asshole.
Speaker 3: And that moment when the lieutenant general told me, like,
Speaker 3: take off your blouse and I said and said, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not doing that. I started to respect myself. It
Speaker 3: completely shifted and I was proud of myself. I said,
Speaker 3: I will fight. I just had that feeling and I
Speaker 3: still have it.
Speaker 4: After standing up to her commander, a strong sense of
Speaker 4: peace overcame Aleiah. That evening, she slept without nightmares for
Speaker 4: the first time in years.
Speaker 3: I woke up feeling better and I woke up without
Speaker 3: having nightmares like I used to have every single night.
Speaker 3: I was in a good mood when I came to
Speaker 3: the department and as always eight am we have our report.
Speaker 3: Morning I looked at his face and I always tried
Speaker 3: to hide my eyes, but that morning I looked straight
Speaker 3: up to his fucking face, straight to his eyes, and
Speaker 3: I've noticed that he was a waiting looking into my face.
Speaker 4: That's because he was planning. The same thing is done
Speaker 4: in the past, and someone rejects his advances, sends them
Speaker 4: on a mission where the most likely outcome is a
Speaker 4: bullet in the head. But this time it wouldn't be cheshnyah,
Speaker 4: it would be another type of war.
Speaker 3: In the end of the reporting, our commander Lieutenant general
Speaker 3: said that he signed agents for the special mission, which
Speaker 3: was to find out places where hearing was supplied and
Speaker 3: sold from Afghanistan by the criminal gang, which was the biggest,
Speaker 3: the most violent, the most dangerous, not just in the city,
Speaker 3: in the whole area, and they monopolized the whole market
Speaker 3: of drug trafficking and human trafficking. And we're supposed to
Speaker 3: work on this gang. That moment, I felt like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, we are so fucked.
Speaker 4: After selecting Lea for this mission, the commander that announced
Speaker 4: her support team, the four youngest least experienced agents in
Speaker 4: the department.
Speaker 3: So we had the tia of losers, basicly, but nobody
Speaker 3: said anything. Everybody were so scared of our commander, and
Speaker 3: there was just sitting looking at the floor and just
Speaker 3: like doing nothing and just like sweating.
Speaker 4: Chapter twenty five. The Mafia Estate.
Speaker 5: The first half of the nineties was major gang wars, shootouts, explosions,
Speaker 5: grenades being launched into buildings, people being murdered on the streets,
Speaker 5: really a lot of mayhem.
Speaker 4: This is Joe Cirio, author of several books on the
Speaker 4: Russian mafia and reportedly the only American to work in
Speaker 4: the Organized Crime Control Department of the Soviet National Police.
Speaker 4: Before we get into a Leah and her team's dangerous assignment,
Speaker 4: I called him to better understand how the mafia works
Speaker 4: in Russia, because it's nothing like in the movies. It's
Speaker 4: worse in an appetite for violence, a lucrative international enterprise
Speaker 4: stretching from Moscow to Israel to Thailand to the United States.
Speaker 4: There have no qualms about murdering people.
Speaker 3: If they have to kill you, they'll kill you. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Here's Joe Sirio again, explaining how the breakup of the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union created a power vacuum that the Russian mafia
Speaker 4: then stepped into. As Russian suddenly cut loose from state
Speaker 4: support looked for new sources of income. This network of
Speaker 4: gangs grew in size and influence.
Speaker 5: You had these athletes who no longer had the support
Speaker 5: of the state. You had military that was being demobilized
Speaker 5: from Afghanistan. You had security services that knew where all
Speaker 5: the bodies are buried. And toward the end of the
Speaker 5: nineties and into the two thousands, it started becoming consolidated,
Speaker 5: especially around the oligarchs and the security services.
Speaker 4: So when the government was ready to reassert itself, not
Speaker 4: only did it have to work with the mafia, but
Speaker 4: there was no telling who is government and who was
Speaker 4: mafia anymore. Everybody wanted money and power.
Speaker 6: The one critical thing to understand in Putin is that
Speaker 6: he's not really running country. He's running a massive mafia state,
Speaker 6: and it's often, if not always, about money.
Speaker 5: One thing that people have to understand is that organized
Speaker 5: crime mafia in a way that we think about it traditionally,
Speaker 5: was not an outside invading force. The gangs were part
Speaker 5: of the landscape. They worked hand in hand with the state.
Speaker 5: So some gangs were actually made up of prosecutors and cops.
Speaker 5: Some gangs were former state officials. Some gangs were the
Speaker 5: typical criminal gangs that came out of the quote unquote underworld.
Speaker 5: You could have one guy who was a gangster and
Speaker 5: a bureau at end a politician all in the same person.
Speaker 5: But if you think about organized crime in mafia as
Speaker 5: a separate entity, you'll totally come to the wrong conclusions
Speaker 5: about Russia. So you're operating all the time in this
Speaker 5: environment of smoke and mirrors.
Speaker 4: So, as Aliah tells this next part of her story
Speaker 4: through her experience, it may be helpful to zoom out
Speaker 4: and consider what her commander's real agenda might have been,
Speaker 4: perhaps not just for her death, but for his enrichment.
Speaker 5: Russia is about survival period, end of story. The mentality
Speaker 5: is a thousand year old mentality, and the mentality among gangs, gangsters,
Speaker 5: organized crime groups, politicians, people in power is I will
Speaker 5: take until you're strong enough to stop me. And the
Speaker 5: difficult part of all this is that you have this
Speaker 5: mafia mentality in the state, and you have this mafia
Speaker 5: muscle in terms of gangsters, in terms of firepower, So
Speaker 5: what do you do with that?
Speaker 4: Leah was in her early twenties at this time, and
Speaker 4: had lived a very insular life, first in her strict
Speaker 4: home and then in the military, so she was unaware
Speaker 4: of this complicated game of chess being played around her.
Speaker 4: But those walls were slowly coming down.
Speaker 3: A few times, my agents, my colleagues, we were chasing
Speaker 3: some drug dealers, and eventually when we would like get
Speaker 3: into the house or like apartment where they would sell drugs,
Speaker 3: our commander would call us and say, get out of
Speaker 3: their like you can't touch them, and we would like understand,
Speaker 3: how like fuck again, like we couldn't touch them because
Speaker 3: they would give money to our commander because he was bribed.
Speaker 3: But yet our commander wanted us to complete five cases
Speaker 3: a week. How the fuck was supposed to do that?
Speaker 3: And of course, like agents, like what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 3: We take like prostitute or drug dealer, put in the
Speaker 3: back or like in the pocket, like these drugs and
Speaker 3: then pretend like there is the whole criminal case and
Speaker 3: send them to the prison and say, like okay, if
Speaker 3: we did five cases, so what.
Speaker 4: Despite getting pulled in by this corrupt culture, Eliah still
Speaker 4: wasn't aware that the problems in Russian intelligence went far
Speaker 4: beyond bribery and abuse. She was still inspired or brainwashed
Speaker 4: by the belief that there were bad people and good
Speaker 4: people out there, and her job, her assignment was to
Speaker 4: fight the evil, at least when the evil wasn't paying
Speaker 4: a cake back.
Speaker 3: By that time, my motivation was to I don't know,
Speaker 3: I just I still have Nightmarcy cannot forget these faces
Speaker 3: of these twelve ten years old girls being like overdosed
Speaker 3: and being literally like dad, laying on the floor of
Speaker 3: different labs and on the street. So for me that time,
Speaker 3: I thought, I don't want to leave anyway, but at
Speaker 3: least my life can be for good. You know, when
Speaker 3: you don't have fear to be killed, you don't have
Speaker 3: fear of death, you can do crazy things.
Speaker 4: The Leah and her team decided to do their best
Speaker 4: with the mission they'd been given to bring down one
Speaker 4: of the biggest drug and human trafficking gangs in the city.
Speaker 4: They were then assigned a slightly more experienced team leader
Speaker 4: who had been undercovering the gang for the last few
Speaker 4: months as a small time drug dealer, providing them with escorts.
Speaker 4: Under his direction, they began a surveillance operation on a gang.
Speaker 3: So we divided and the first team that would patrol
Speaker 3: the house the criminals would hang out, They would check
Speaker 3: restaurants where they go and basically everyone who is involved.
Speaker 3: Then the second team would be doing exactly the same
Speaker 3: but with another members of the gang. So we were
Speaker 3: just collecting information. The gang was really big, and it
Speaker 3: took for us like quite a long time because we
Speaker 3: had to find out all details. And then every single
Speaker 3: day in the morning, like at eight am, during the report,
Speaker 3: my commander he would scream at us and say, like
Speaker 3: give me more information, like what did you do? Like
Speaker 3: do you do any.
Speaker 4: Shat Their main target was the leader of this gang, Vladimir.
Speaker 3: My colleague brought the photo and he said, well, this
Speaker 3: is our guy.
Speaker 4: This is the leader, a great danger to themselves. Aliyah
Speaker 4: and her fellow agents again staking out Vladimir at the
Speaker 4: boxing gym hewned.
Speaker 3: So we basically earn his daily routine. He would wake
Speaker 3: up early morning. He lived in the house together with
Speaker 3: his other guys in the gang. Then they would drive
Speaker 3: black trunk and they would drive to the boxing court
Speaker 3: and then they would have meetings like meetings with the brothers.
Speaker 3: And one day, remember we were following the car and
Speaker 3: we went maybe like twenty kilometers from the city and
Speaker 3: it was closer to the forest. The meeting was between
Speaker 3: two criminal leaders. For like maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty
Speaker 3: people was standing in front of each other and there
Speaker 3: was some tension going on. But then at one moment,
Speaker 3: everybody took the gun and started to shoot each other.
Speaker 3: So the few brothers were killed from both sides. So
Speaker 3: I thought like, yeah, this is pretty scary and it's
Speaker 3: pretty wild.
Speaker 4: And it was about to get scarier for Leah because
Speaker 4: her team leader, who was undercovering the game as a
Speaker 4: sort of pimp, soon gave her a specific assignment.
Speaker 3: So he told me, I will bring you introduced you
Speaker 3: to the Vladhimer and you need to use all your
Speaker 3: seduction techniques because you need to establish connection with Vladhimer.
Speaker 3: And I couldn't say no because he's the boss of
Speaker 3: our team, you know.
Speaker 4: In other words, he would be introducing Leah to their
Speaker 4: target as an escort, and her job was to somehow,
Speaker 4: while playing that uncomfortable role, seduce Vladimir into wanting to
Speaker 4: see her more. Leah thought back to her training in
Speaker 4: order to figure out her first.
Speaker 3: Moves in the academy. They told us, and they taught us.
Speaker 3: First of all, the most important if you want to
Speaker 3: have a power of anyone, any of your target, the
Speaker 3: most important thing is to find his weaknesses through his childhood,
Speaker 3: mostly could be parents than former partners, the first lave
Speaker 3: and knowing this weakness, you can manipulate your target motives, emotions, dreams, desires.
Speaker 4: Leah and her team went through one of Vladimir's high
Speaker 4: school yearbooks and look for former classmates who they could
Speaker 4: reach out to. Eventually they found someone willing to talk.
Speaker 3: His former classmates said that Vladimir was coming from a
Speaker 3: good family and he graduated his school and eighteen years
Speaker 3: old he was sent to the army. And this is
Speaker 3: very important information. Now he had a sweetheart, a girl
Speaker 3: from Uzbekistan, and for a few years they had this
Speaker 3: boyfriend girlfriend relationship and it was his first love. Everybody
Speaker 3: knew that one day they would get married and have
Speaker 3: children and nice family, but it didn't happen. When Vladimir
Speaker 3: went to the army, she didn't wait for him, so
Speaker 3: she started to date someone else. She started to date
Speaker 3: one criminal, and then he came back from the army
Speaker 3: and she was already pregnant from that criminal guy. So
Speaker 3: Vladimir was heartbroken and he went first to the police,
Speaker 3: then he quit and he went to the criminal gang.
Speaker 3: And when we heard that story together, we have exactly
Speaker 3: the same idea. It's the same strategy of each really
Speaker 3: learned in the academy. I will explain. It's a little
Speaker 3: bit veered, but that's exactly what government does. For example,
Speaker 3: users are what they used to do when they try
Speaker 3: to manipulate the whole population.
Speaker 4: Although this had begun as a suicide mission, Eliah felt
Speaker 4: that through this weakness she now had a possible way
Speaker 4: into the gang. She just needed to use one of
Speaker 4: the key techniques she'd learned in her training. What psychologist
Speaker 4: and marketing expert Robert Chaldini explains here as pre suasion.
Speaker 7: Pre Suasion is the practice of gaining agreement with a
Speaker 7: message before you deliver it. The choices that we make
Speaker 7: are more related to what is top of mind just
Speaker 7: before the choice.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what we decided to do for Vladimir. His
Speaker 3: first love was Asian from Central Asia. I have the
Speaker 3: same look, and we created that plan. What if we
Speaker 3: will program his unconsciousness that there is a happy end,
Speaker 3: potentially somewhere in another world, in another life with another woman,
Speaker 3: but same as her, but just better version. This is
Speaker 3: the manipulation technique, where you create a virtual reality for
Speaker 3: the target brain.
Speaker 4: I found it interesting and terrifying that these love traps
Speaker 4: are often set and planted in the target's unconscious mind
Speaker 4: long before the target has even met the agent.
Speaker 3: So I ask some of my friends girlfriends who looked
Speaker 3: more or less Asian, and we created three couples, kind
Speaker 3: of couples. Every morning, Vladimir would have his breakfast with
Speaker 3: his brothers, so this one couple would go to the
Speaker 3: same cafe and they would sit just in front of
Speaker 3: him in the next table. They would kiss each other
Speaker 3: and hug each other and just look at each other
Speaker 3: with the lovable eyes. So it was first step, the
Speaker 3: second step, another girl Asian looking and another boy who
Speaker 3: was wearing uniform from the army. We put the pillow
Speaker 3: in her belly, presending that she was pregnant. So once
Speaker 3: Vladimir went out from the boxing cort going to the car,
Speaker 3: he saw that couple. Third time, we had a little baby.
Speaker 3: We gave it to another Asian looking girl, and we
Speaker 3: had another guy who would wore the uniform from the army,
Speaker 3: and we put the baby into courage and they would
Speaker 3: walk around the house where Vladimir lived. So we planted
Speaker 3: in his head. In some reality, there is a potential
Speaker 3: happy ending of the story.
Speaker 4: Once these subconscious messages were implanted in Vladimir's brain, the
Speaker 4: next step was the conscious part of the seduction. It
Speaker 4: was time for Leah to turn herself into a version
Speaker 4: of this woman, a reminder of the path not taken.
Speaker 3: We couldn't really find out the way she looked like,
Speaker 3: but we asked some questions from the classmate, so his
Speaker 3: first laugh, she looked Asian. She was very funny, all
Speaker 3: this positive and smiling. She was wearing like short skurs
Speaker 3: use a type of uniform, and the white sox. She
Speaker 3: had long hair braided. So we started to work on
Speaker 3: my appearance and we decided that I should be somebody
Speaker 3: like a student, but on the side, I would need
Speaker 3: to be a prostitute basically, so I had to play
Speaker 3: this role that I don't have money and I am
Speaker 3: a student and I need money for my parents who
Speaker 3: are sick.
Speaker 4: So still before her first encounter with Vladimir, Leah began
Speaker 4: practicing for the role. Living in this new identity.
Speaker 3: I had to create the name of my mom. I
Speaker 3: had to create her illness. I created the whole background
Speaker 3: which never existed in my life, but I just created
Speaker 3: in my brain and made my brain believe in it.
Speaker 3: It's important because sometimes, like when you sleep, or you
Speaker 3: in or you in a high pain, unconsciously, you can
Speaker 3: give your real name. That's why as an agent, you
Speaker 3: literally have to become this person.
Speaker 4: In addition, whenever her fellow agents arrested prostitutes, Aliah would
Speaker 4: speak with them so she could learn and imitate how
Speaker 4: they dress, walk, talk and act.
Speaker 3: Every time when I would check prostitutes in order to
Speaker 3: find drugs in the bag, I would find just a
Speaker 3: few things which always were there. Condoms, lubricant, powder, lipstick.
Speaker 3: That's it. So I literally started to carry in my
Speaker 3: back same stuff. I created that image of that girl
Speaker 3: who was that good girl, but she needed money, so
Speaker 3: she desperately needed his help. Somebody who will protect her
Speaker 3: and somebody who will fall in love.
Speaker 4: Eliah was now ready for the most dangerous seduction of
Speaker 4: our life. Setting a love trap for a foreign official
Speaker 4: comes with low consequences. If you're caught in your own country,
Speaker 4: it's just a failed mission. But with criminals. If your
Speaker 4: identity as an undercover agent is revealed, there's typically just
Speaker 4: one consequence death.
Speaker 3: I was preparing for the most important meeting in my life,
Speaker 3: and I knew that I will go to the club,
Speaker 3: same as Vladimir and his brothers go almost every day.
Speaker 3: And I knew exactly what table it would be, what bar,
Speaker 3: how we'll respond, how we we'll talk. And I wrote
Speaker 3: a report to my commander and I said, we will
Speaker 3: do the first contact next Friday. And the commander said, okay,
Speaker 3: I confirm you can go ahead. And we received the confirmation,
Speaker 3: so you were ready to go.
Speaker 4: Leah's story continues in episode twelve as she begins this
Speaker 4: dangerous mission infiltrating one of the biggest drug gangs in
Speaker 4: the city.
Speaker 3: He started to kiss me, and I just forgot that
Speaker 3: it was my job.
Speaker 4: To die for is a production of Tenderfoot TV in
Speaker 4: association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written
Speaker 4: by me Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistants by Tristan Bankston.
Speaker 4: Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. For
Speaker 4: iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams.
Speaker 4: Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional editing by
Speaker 4: Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Consultants
Speaker 4: include Nushin, Valiza Day, Chelsea Gooden and Jamie Albright. Artwork
Speaker 4: by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set,
Speaker 4: mixed and mastered by Dayton Cole. Our theme song is
Speaker 4: Killer Shangwi Law by Psychotic Beats featuring Pattiamore. Special thanks
Speaker 4: to Aren Rosenbaub and the team at Uta Bech Media
Speaker 4: and Marketing Aarren Siegel, Becky Johnsen, the Nord Group, Meredith
Speaker 4: Stedman and Alex fespustaed