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The Company
Time: Monday, August 5, 2013.
Place: Seoul, South Korea.
Last Event: Cleaning up the cleaners.
After dealing with what were hopefully the last of the armed men sent to intercept them, the Agents feel that it would be prudent to be on their way. Qoqa stuffs the clean-up squad's mysterious "bomb" into a large shopping bag that Wen found in the basement, while Anabel hides the attackers' laptop computer in her attaché case, along with a set of lockpicks swiped from the gear the enemy operators were packing. Klas, Lev, and Wen quickly disassemble the cleaners' silenced handguns and have Anabel stash those, too, just in case. While all this is going on, Paul ditches his bloody jacket and borrows Lev's clean one to cover up his wounds. Jili keeps watch as her colleagues work, but there's no further trouble.
Their preparations made, the Agents make their way to an underground passage leading to an adjacent building. Jili has no difficulty disabling the alarm on the fire door, whereupon Anabel picks the lock and the group keeps moving. After sneaking through several basements without incident, the team reaches a subway station on the far side of the adjacent block. Paul scans the crowd for prying eyes and dodgy-looking characters, but as far as he can tell, there's nobody waiting. Once he gives the nod, everyone boards the next train headed toward their hotel.
On reaching the hotel, Jili and Paul recommend staying put – Jili because she fears the Agents' faces showing up on surveillance cameras, Paul because he sees no pressing need to give policemen or even shopkeepers cause to know where the group is staying. This meets with reluctant agreement; in particular, Anabel isn't thrilled with being parked in a hotel room, ordering room service. In the end, though, Anabel admits that it's for the best, and decides to dedicate her time to planning a report that will make it look as though Deringer's people were sloppy about leaving behind their high-tech "phone." Her hope is to have Sakata leak this after the mass-produced item hits the street, hopefully souring relations between Emerson Tactical Solutions and its CIA backers.
The Agents stay alert as they await a message from Park or Gae, but nothing untoward happens – it seems that their enemies have had no luck locating them. Qoqa uses the time to take care of Paul, who heals up nicely. The only team member who leaves the hotel is Lev, who makes a brief shopping trip to fetch tools that Wen needs to disarm the strange "bomb." When he returns with most of the gear on Wen's list, Wen gets to work. It turns out that the device isn't an explosive but a tank fitted with a pressurized gas capsule, intended to disperse a chemical. Qoqa identifies the stuff as an emulsified enzymatic cleanser that would destroy forensic traces like hair follicles and sebum.
Jili spends her time repairing the purloined laptop and then defeating its physical and digital security. This isn't easy – the countermeasures are cutting-edge – but she manages to bypass the defenses and get a look at the data. She turns up several items of interest.
First, Jili finds a photo workup of Anabel and Qoqa at Park's building, and a later series showing those two, Wen, and herself at Gae's party. All of the images are grainy and low-quality. There are no shots of Klas, Lev, or Paul – and none taken at the hotel – suggesting that whoever snapped them was watching Park and Gae, not following the Agents. Indeed, Paul notices that there's considerable footage of Park's offices and Gae's residence that's time-stamped days before the team arrived in Seoul. However, someone appears to have run an advanced video search on the four women and found a match for Anabel: the pornographic recording she made in Ottawa when the group needed cash!
Jili also discovers a powerful software suite designed to run on a computer plugged into digitally controlled building systems – air conditioning, elevators, security cameras, digital locks, etc. – and take them over. In addition to powerful cracking algorithms, it has a huge database of up-to-date protocols for infrastructure developed by dozens of major manufacturers the world over. Though it wouldn't stand a chance against a truly secure site, it would make it easy to play games with ordinary office towers and shopping malls. It certainly explains how the team's attackers got the jump on the group when they went to visit Park. Jili files away a copy, and Anabel suggests that she consider adapting it to the advanced "phones" the Company is paying Gae to manufacture.
Finally, Jili determines that although the laptop superficially resembles a mass-market model, many of the components are bespoke. The COTS parts are costly and made in the U.S.A., not East Asia. These clues and the high-end security she had to crack suggest that it's the work of American spooks. Naturally, whoever built it took great pains to ensure that this would be impossible to prove conclusively.
It's the evening of Thursday, August 15 when the Agents are contacted about the next phase of their scheme in South Korea. Anabel – or to be precise, "Ms. Wilson" – gets a phone call from the lobby. It turns out to be one of Gae's goons, the big guy the group met at Park's building, with a car and a dinner invitation. Anabel has the man wait while she arranges to have Jili, Qoqa, and Wen join her, and plans a schedule of check-ins with Klas, Lev, and Paul. Then the women dress for the evening and hit the road.
The ride is uneventful, aside from Gae's oversized troubleshooter going on at length about the audacity of American spies operating in South Korea. Before long, the Agents find themselves at Gae's downtown residence, as promised. Mrs. Gae meets them and explains that her husband wanted to conclude the deal at the office but that she wouldn't hear of it. Then she escorts the women to the huge dining room. Wen keeps the squad back at the hotel apprised of the situation . . . throwing in jealousy-inducing commentary on the wonderful meal for good measure.
Over dinner, Mr. Gae says that after reviewing the technical information about the "phone," his engineers informed him of its true capabilities. He is willing to manufacture it and play up the communications privacy that it can offer its users, but he believes that it will precipitate interesting challenges once the intelligence world gets wind of it. Thus, he'll need a bigger percentage to cover his security expenses – though Anabel suspects that this is mostly a ploy to get the Company to fund his operations. Gae says that if those terms are acceptable, then he should be able to tool up for production by late September and ship product before the end of 2013. Anabel agrees to all this and signs the paperwork.
Anabel also takes the opportunity to warn Gae that things might get hairier than he realizes. However, Gae states that he can afford good protection, especially with his extra margin. He explains that he'll increase physical security and have sensitive areas swept for surveillance on a more-frequent basis (in fact, he had the dining room swept earlier in the day!). Still, he's happy to accept a copy of the information that Jili found on the laptop – any edge might help. The evening goes well after that, and casual conversation suggests to Anabel that Gae knows how to reach the Company if he needs to; indeed, it dawns on her that he might be one of its secret backers.
As the night grows old, Mrs. Gae politely informs her guests that they're welcome to stay until morning. It seems that attending the Gaes' orgy earned their friendship. After having Wen send a quick message to the hotel to let the rest of the team know, Anabel accepts the invitation on the condition that Mr. Gae can give her access to a secure line. Proud to show off his new security measures, Mr. Gae happily agrees.
Late that night, Anabel uses the secure line to contact Chaturvedi and brief him on the situation in Seoul. He seems relieved that the deal is signed and that almost two weeks have passed without violence. However, something is clearly worrying him, and it soon comes to the surface: Asuka has gone AWOL. She was last seen at Genève Aéroport, and while it wouldn't be a Company assignment, Chaturvedi would like the group to track down the girl. Against her better judgment, Anabel accepts, telling Chaturvedi that she'll arrange transportation for the team through Mr. Gae.
virtual thanks
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