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Entry tags:
The Company
On February 18 and March 4, we had Bonnie ("Xiang Wen," a.k.a. "Wu Xie Zhi" and "Dot"), Marc ("Anabel Windsor," a.k.a. "Abigail Wilson" and "Vicky"), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanova," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorova").
Time: Friday, January 24, 2014.
Place: Barcelona, Spain.
Last Event: Foiling what looks like a hasty attempt to grab Chaturvedi.
As Klas, Paul, Qoqa, and Wen thrash the thugs who arrived by van moments ago – and as Jili races to join them, leaving the goons' defeated allies at the mercy of the crowd she roused up the street – Anabel hustles Chaturvedi into a nearby hotel. Once safely indoors, Anabel whips out her high-tech phone, calls Lev (who's minding V), and fills him in on the situation. Hearing police sirens in the distance, she then turns to Chaturvedi and whispers, "Let's get a room!" It takes Chaturvedi a moment to realize that Anabel means they should hide by becoming guests of this very hotel – but since he and Anabel aren't obviously linked to the violence outside, he sees no reason not to try. He pulls some false identity papers and cash from his briefcase, hands these to Anabel, and lets her work her charms.
Meanwhile, the Agents outside manage to take down their attackers and then retreat into the hotel lobby, pushing through the gathering throng. Luck favors them – despite their dirty, scraped-up condition, they get out of sight before the Guàrdia arrive. By the time the first patrol car pulls up, Anabel is on her way to a luxury suite and phoning her associates from the elevator. She lets the rest of the team know where she's headed and asks them to join her discreetly. The others skillfully vanish into the crowd, and soon everyone but Lev and V reaches the rooms Anabel procured, Qoqa doing her paranoid best to memorize all the exits along the way. As far as they can tell, neither hotel security nor police are on their trail.
The instant the door to the suite is closed and locked, the team springs into action. Anabel calls Lev back and asks him to bring V as soon as possible. Qoqa patches up Klas' scratches and bruises. Chaturvedi opens his briefcase and hands each Agent a packet containing €30,000 and documents associated with a pair of strong false identities, one European and one North American. He recommends destroying any old papers at once. Then Paul and Wen tidy up and return downstairs to keep an eye on things until Lev and V turn up.
Good fortune continues to smile upon the group: The police eventually leave the area, taking the beaten thugs with them. Shortly thereafter, Lev and V arrive and make their way into the hotel unmolested. Paul and Wen join them in the lobby and escort them to the suite. Once everybody is in the same place, Chaturvedi informs the Agents and V that he needs time to contact "his people" and arrange receipt of V's files. In the meantime, he suggests staying in, ordering room service, and keeping a low profile – advice that meets with no arguments.
Over the next few days, Chaturvedi makes endless phone calls while the Agents take advantage of the hotel's comfortable facilities. They also watch the news, which links the skirmishes in the nearby street to criminal activity rather than to international espionage. It's Monday, January 27 when Chaturvedi has something to report: He needs to get V and her files to Copenhagen. His inclination is to fly, but his team advises him that it would be more secure to travel by car. Though it's a 22- to 24-hour road trip, they point out that it should be comfortable enough if the group rents three spacious cars and does the driving in shifts.
Anabel and Paul get the task of procuring transportation. Anabel's disguises, the new ID that Chaturvedi provided, and a practiced calm, casual manner ensure that there are no surprises. The two return shortly with the keys to three rented sedans, which are parked behind the hotel. Driving arrangements are to be Lev and Qoqa taking turns at the wheel of the lead vehicle, with Wen as their passenger; Anabel and Klas trading shifts in the middle car, chauffeuring V; and Jili and Paul spelling each other at the back of the convoy, Chaturvedi riding along with them. After Anabel settles up at the front desk, it's time to roll.
The Agents drive all day, staying fresh by stopping as needed and regularly swapping driving duties. They pull into Nancy, France near midnight and get some rooms in a small inn. The night passes uneventfully and the convoy is back on the road first thing Tuesday morning. Once again, there are frequent stops and shift changes, so the team doesn't reach Copenhagen until almost 22:00. Anabel surprises everyone by announcing that she already has a hotel lined up . . .
Apparently, there's some kind of fashion fair in town, and Anabel is bent on staying in the hotel that's hosting it. She spins a yarn about the group being late to the show and needing last-minute accommodations, and somehow ends up mistaken for (or lies about being) somebody important. This nets her a block of rooms that were reserved but never claimed. Before long, the Agents are stretching out in yet another luxury establishment with excellent room service.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 29, Chaturvedi says he has to meet with his contacts here in Copenhagen. He explains that he was instructed to bring V, but that the people he's meeting want to maintain some distance from the field to ensure deniability, so the Agents cannot come along. They agree . . . and then have Paul shadow Chaturvedi. Paul follows his handler's cab to a park, where Chaturvedi and V get out and are met by a large black car. Paul then tails this vehicle until it stops at a posh townhouse, where a bevy of servants escort Chaturvedi and V inside. After that, all Paul can do is wait.
Several hours later, Chaturvedi emerges without V or her briefcase in sight. He then climbs into the same black car, which Paul follows to a different park. There, Chaturvedi gets out and flags down a cab. Paul shadows this as well, and when he realizes that it's headed back to the hotel, he peels off and races back ahead of Chaturvedi. When Chaturvedi steps in, he finds Paul sitting in front of the television sipping a whiskey.
Chaturvedi tells his team that in return for V's files and other concessions, the Company has agreed to help the FSB officer with her predicament. He adds that the intelligence V provided will go to the Company's analysts, and ought to produce results in about a week. In the interim, he recommends staying put and playing tourist. Before anyone else can answer, Anabel agrees – it's Fashion Week, after all!
It's Wednesday, February 5 when Chaturvedi is called out again. As before, Paul follows at a careful distance and witnesses Chaturvedi changing vehicles and visiting the same posh townhouse. And as before, after a long wait, Chaturvedi reappears and sticks to the same routine on his return trip. This time, Paul is looking bored and working on a crossword puzzle when Chaturvedi walks in.
Once again, Chaturvedi assembles the team to hear the latest news from the Company. He says that the analysts pored over the data, interrogated V, and concluded that there's a 68% chance that the Company's rivals are operating out of a base somewhere in the Cyclades. On hearing this, the Agents exchange worried glances: Could this be Grandfather's island? It was formerly occupied by Russian gangsters, many of whom were ex-FSB, like the men who betrayed V. And Greek authorities did auction it off to someone wealthy enough to buy an island and stay anonymous.
Chaturvedi agrees that this hypothesis is worth checking out. In response, the Agents ask him whether the Company can help them reconnoiter the island covertly. He reacts by pulling out his phone and making another round of calls. A few hours later, he tells the group that one of the Company's backers sponsors legitimate geoenvironmental and oceanographic studies, and has researchers working out of the University of Athens. The scientists have access to a small plane with instruments adequate for snooping, and Chaturvedi has just arranged for the team to fly out with these people in the guise of fellow academics.
The Agents are satisfied with this plan, and ask Chaturvedi to book flights to Athens as soon as possible, to arrange to have new body armor shipped there (Dieter has their measurements), and to be ready to procure firearms, if needed. After what happened in Barcelona, however, they request that he be discreet. Chaturvedi arches an eyebrow and explains that the recent attack worried him as well, so he had his Copenhagen contacts investigate what happened. It turns out that Klas and Wen's encounter with the Spanish border authorities got their photos checked through Interpol, which is likely how the group was found.
Time passes while Chaturvedi makes the necessary arrangements. During this break, Paul shares a theory about the Danes being sympathetic to the Company on some unofficial level. He is almost certain that the townhouse Chaturvedi visited belongs to somebody important in the Danish government, and points out that pulling strings to learn about the Interpol angle took official clout. Certainly, it all fits – and it's interesting that Chaturvedi plans to remain in Copenhagen rather than come along to Athens.
The Agents' flight to Athens departs the afternoon of Friday, February 7. All goes well, and by evening the team is at a dormitory for visiting researchers at the University of Athens. The accommodations are nothing like a luxury hotel, but they aren't bad. Later that night, Chaturvedi calls Anabel to let her know that he has arranged a morning meeting with the geoenvironmental researchers. He reminds her that as far as the scientists know, they're meeting with another survey group that has the same financial backers.
On Saturday morning, Anabel, Lev, and Paul walk to a nearby café for what appears to be a very informal meeting. They meet the leader of the research team, a Swede named Ilka Lyngstad, and her Greek associate, Eleni Angelis. The scientists are polite enough, and happy to have the extra grant money that this diversion is going to bring in. They answer every question put to them, and see no reason not to overfly a particular island and direct cameras and ground-penetrating radar at it. Their pilot doesn't work weekends, but he can fly them out first thing Monday; there should be room for two or three people. The Agents agree to this, thank Lyngstad and Angelis, and take their leave.
After the meeting, Anabel says that as far as she could tell, Lyngstad and Angelis were the real deal, not enemy agents or anything of the sort. The only oddity she noted, if one could call it that, is that Angelis was clearly attracted to her. The others just roll their eyes – everybody is attracted to Anabel. The Agents use the rest of the weekend to prepare, brushing up on fake scientist-speak while Klas plots an optimal flight path over what was once Grandfather's island.
The morning of Monday, February 10, Jili, Lev, and Wen meet Dr. Lyngstad's people at a small local airstrip. Jili does most of the talking, and easily convinces the pilot, George, to follow Klas' route as closely as possible. Lev sits up front and does his best to correct George's course – ostensibly to collect better data on birds or rocks or whatever, but in reality to make sure that no sites of potential tactical importance are missed. In back, Wen handles the camera while Jili operates the ground-penetrating radar. By evening, the Agents are reunited in their dorm with raw intelligence in hand, recorded on digital media.
Paul, being the ex-cop and the only Agent with experience at photoanalysis, gets the job of leading the analysis. The others provide technical expertise as needed. All told, wading through thousands of high-speed photos and hours of radar imagery is boring and time-consuming. It's Friday before the team has anything that could be called a report. Their efforts turn up several items of interest:
1. There are lots of men walking around on the island. None of them are in uniform, yet almost all of them are armed with military weapons.
2. On the island's lower-but-larger hump – the one nearer the dock – high-tech camouflage netting conceals a helipad that wasn't present during the Agents' previous visit. This has a large, long-range chopper sitting on it.
3. On the island's higher hump – the end where Grandfather had his mansion – a dense antenna farm conceals what appear to be military-grade radar, thermal-imaging, and other surveillance instrumentation among ordinary civilian hardware.
4. Also near the former mansion, under high-tech netting like that hiding the helipad, is a small SAM battery. It's hard to identify the specific weapons system, but there's no doubt at all about its presence.
This looks like the right place . . .
Time: Friday, January 24, 2014.
Place: Barcelona, Spain.
Last Event: Foiling what looks like a hasty attempt to grab Chaturvedi.
As Klas, Paul, Qoqa, and Wen thrash the thugs who arrived by van moments ago – and as Jili races to join them, leaving the goons' defeated allies at the mercy of the crowd she roused up the street – Anabel hustles Chaturvedi into a nearby hotel. Once safely indoors, Anabel whips out her high-tech phone, calls Lev (who's minding V), and fills him in on the situation. Hearing police sirens in the distance, she then turns to Chaturvedi and whispers, "Let's get a room!" It takes Chaturvedi a moment to realize that Anabel means they should hide by becoming guests of this very hotel – but since he and Anabel aren't obviously linked to the violence outside, he sees no reason not to try. He pulls some false identity papers and cash from his briefcase, hands these to Anabel, and lets her work her charms.
Meanwhile, the Agents outside manage to take down their attackers and then retreat into the hotel lobby, pushing through the gathering throng. Luck favors them – despite their dirty, scraped-up condition, they get out of sight before the Guàrdia arrive. By the time the first patrol car pulls up, Anabel is on her way to a luxury suite and phoning her associates from the elevator. She lets the rest of the team know where she's headed and asks them to join her discreetly. The others skillfully vanish into the crowd, and soon everyone but Lev and V reaches the rooms Anabel procured, Qoqa doing her paranoid best to memorize all the exits along the way. As far as they can tell, neither hotel security nor police are on their trail.
The instant the door to the suite is closed and locked, the team springs into action. Anabel calls Lev back and asks him to bring V as soon as possible. Qoqa patches up Klas' scratches and bruises. Chaturvedi opens his briefcase and hands each Agent a packet containing €30,000 and documents associated with a pair of strong false identities, one European and one North American. He recommends destroying any old papers at once. Then Paul and Wen tidy up and return downstairs to keep an eye on things until Lev and V turn up.
Good fortune continues to smile upon the group: The police eventually leave the area, taking the beaten thugs with them. Shortly thereafter, Lev and V arrive and make their way into the hotel unmolested. Paul and Wen join them in the lobby and escort them to the suite. Once everybody is in the same place, Chaturvedi informs the Agents and V that he needs time to contact "his people" and arrange receipt of V's files. In the meantime, he suggests staying in, ordering room service, and keeping a low profile – advice that meets with no arguments.
Over the next few days, Chaturvedi makes endless phone calls while the Agents take advantage of the hotel's comfortable facilities. They also watch the news, which links the skirmishes in the nearby street to criminal activity rather than to international espionage. It's Monday, January 27 when Chaturvedi has something to report: He needs to get V and her files to Copenhagen. His inclination is to fly, but his team advises him that it would be more secure to travel by car. Though it's a 22- to 24-hour road trip, they point out that it should be comfortable enough if the group rents three spacious cars and does the driving in shifts.
Anabel and Paul get the task of procuring transportation. Anabel's disguises, the new ID that Chaturvedi provided, and a practiced calm, casual manner ensure that there are no surprises. The two return shortly with the keys to three rented sedans, which are parked behind the hotel. Driving arrangements are to be Lev and Qoqa taking turns at the wheel of the lead vehicle, with Wen as their passenger; Anabel and Klas trading shifts in the middle car, chauffeuring V; and Jili and Paul spelling each other at the back of the convoy, Chaturvedi riding along with them. After Anabel settles up at the front desk, it's time to roll.
The Agents drive all day, staying fresh by stopping as needed and regularly swapping driving duties. They pull into Nancy, France near midnight and get some rooms in a small inn. The night passes uneventfully and the convoy is back on the road first thing Tuesday morning. Once again, there are frequent stops and shift changes, so the team doesn't reach Copenhagen until almost 22:00. Anabel surprises everyone by announcing that she already has a hotel lined up . . .
Apparently, there's some kind of fashion fair in town, and Anabel is bent on staying in the hotel that's hosting it. She spins a yarn about the group being late to the show and needing last-minute accommodations, and somehow ends up mistaken for (or lies about being) somebody important. This nets her a block of rooms that were reserved but never claimed. Before long, the Agents are stretching out in yet another luxury establishment with excellent room service.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 29, Chaturvedi says he has to meet with his contacts here in Copenhagen. He explains that he was instructed to bring V, but that the people he's meeting want to maintain some distance from the field to ensure deniability, so the Agents cannot come along. They agree . . . and then have Paul shadow Chaturvedi. Paul follows his handler's cab to a park, where Chaturvedi and V get out and are met by a large black car. Paul then tails this vehicle until it stops at a posh townhouse, where a bevy of servants escort Chaturvedi and V inside. After that, all Paul can do is wait.
Several hours later, Chaturvedi emerges without V or her briefcase in sight. He then climbs into the same black car, which Paul follows to a different park. There, Chaturvedi gets out and flags down a cab. Paul shadows this as well, and when he realizes that it's headed back to the hotel, he peels off and races back ahead of Chaturvedi. When Chaturvedi steps in, he finds Paul sitting in front of the television sipping a whiskey.
Chaturvedi tells his team that in return for V's files and other concessions, the Company has agreed to help the FSB officer with her predicament. He adds that the intelligence V provided will go to the Company's analysts, and ought to produce results in about a week. In the interim, he recommends staying put and playing tourist. Before anyone else can answer, Anabel agrees – it's Fashion Week, after all!
It's Wednesday, February 5 when Chaturvedi is called out again. As before, Paul follows at a careful distance and witnesses Chaturvedi changing vehicles and visiting the same posh townhouse. And as before, after a long wait, Chaturvedi reappears and sticks to the same routine on his return trip. This time, Paul is looking bored and working on a crossword puzzle when Chaturvedi walks in.
Once again, Chaturvedi assembles the team to hear the latest news from the Company. He says that the analysts pored over the data, interrogated V, and concluded that there's a 68% chance that the Company's rivals are operating out of a base somewhere in the Cyclades. On hearing this, the Agents exchange worried glances: Could this be Grandfather's island? It was formerly occupied by Russian gangsters, many of whom were ex-FSB, like the men who betrayed V. And Greek authorities did auction it off to someone wealthy enough to buy an island and stay anonymous.
Chaturvedi agrees that this hypothesis is worth checking out. In response, the Agents ask him whether the Company can help them reconnoiter the island covertly. He reacts by pulling out his phone and making another round of calls. A few hours later, he tells the group that one of the Company's backers sponsors legitimate geoenvironmental and oceanographic studies, and has researchers working out of the University of Athens. The scientists have access to a small plane with instruments adequate for snooping, and Chaturvedi has just arranged for the team to fly out with these people in the guise of fellow academics.
The Agents are satisfied with this plan, and ask Chaturvedi to book flights to Athens as soon as possible, to arrange to have new body armor shipped there (Dieter has their measurements), and to be ready to procure firearms, if needed. After what happened in Barcelona, however, they request that he be discreet. Chaturvedi arches an eyebrow and explains that the recent attack worried him as well, so he had his Copenhagen contacts investigate what happened. It turns out that Klas and Wen's encounter with the Spanish border authorities got their photos checked through Interpol, which is likely how the group was found.
Time passes while Chaturvedi makes the necessary arrangements. During this break, Paul shares a theory about the Danes being sympathetic to the Company on some unofficial level. He is almost certain that the townhouse Chaturvedi visited belongs to somebody important in the Danish government, and points out that pulling strings to learn about the Interpol angle took official clout. Certainly, it all fits – and it's interesting that Chaturvedi plans to remain in Copenhagen rather than come along to Athens.
The Agents' flight to Athens departs the afternoon of Friday, February 7. All goes well, and by evening the team is at a dormitory for visiting researchers at the University of Athens. The accommodations are nothing like a luxury hotel, but they aren't bad. Later that night, Chaturvedi calls Anabel to let her know that he has arranged a morning meeting with the geoenvironmental researchers. He reminds her that as far as the scientists know, they're meeting with another survey group that has the same financial backers.
On Saturday morning, Anabel, Lev, and Paul walk to a nearby café for what appears to be a very informal meeting. They meet the leader of the research team, a Swede named Ilka Lyngstad, and her Greek associate, Eleni Angelis. The scientists are polite enough, and happy to have the extra grant money that this diversion is going to bring in. They answer every question put to them, and see no reason not to overfly a particular island and direct cameras and ground-penetrating radar at it. Their pilot doesn't work weekends, but he can fly them out first thing Monday; there should be room for two or three people. The Agents agree to this, thank Lyngstad and Angelis, and take their leave.
After the meeting, Anabel says that as far as she could tell, Lyngstad and Angelis were the real deal, not enemy agents or anything of the sort. The only oddity she noted, if one could call it that, is that Angelis was clearly attracted to her. The others just roll their eyes – everybody is attracted to Anabel. The Agents use the rest of the weekend to prepare, brushing up on fake scientist-speak while Klas plots an optimal flight path over what was once Grandfather's island.
The morning of Monday, February 10, Jili, Lev, and Wen meet Dr. Lyngstad's people at a small local airstrip. Jili does most of the talking, and easily convinces the pilot, George, to follow Klas' route as closely as possible. Lev sits up front and does his best to correct George's course – ostensibly to collect better data on birds or rocks or whatever, but in reality to make sure that no sites of potential tactical importance are missed. In back, Wen handles the camera while Jili operates the ground-penetrating radar. By evening, the Agents are reunited in their dorm with raw intelligence in hand, recorded on digital media.
Paul, being the ex-cop and the only Agent with experience at photoanalysis, gets the job of leading the analysis. The others provide technical expertise as needed. All told, wading through thousands of high-speed photos and hours of radar imagery is boring and time-consuming. It's Friday before the team has anything that could be called a report. Their efforts turn up several items of interest:
1. There are lots of men walking around on the island. None of them are in uniform, yet almost all of them are armed with military weapons.
2. On the island's lower-but-larger hump – the one nearer the dock – high-tech camouflage netting conceals a helipad that wasn't present during the Agents' previous visit. This has a large, long-range chopper sitting on it.
3. On the island's higher hump – the end where Grandfather had his mansion – a dense antenna farm conceals what appear to be military-grade radar, thermal-imaging, and other surveillance instrumentation among ordinary civilian hardware.
4. Also near the former mansion, under high-tech netting like that hiding the helipad, is a small SAM battery. It's hard to identify the specific weapons system, but there's no doubt at all about its presence.
This looks like the right place . . .