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The Company
On July 21, 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: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 (night).
Place: Sakata's lair in Sweden.
Last Event: Planning some downtime.
The Agents arrange for two months off in Taha'a, French Polynesia – as much to let their trail cool down as to take a much-needed break. Chaturvedi organizes the travel and accommodations, while Sakata sets up Internet "dead drops" that the Company can use to contact the team in an emergency. A few days later, the group is on a plane headed to warmer climes. The flight is without incident, and shortly after arrival, there's nothing more pressing to decide than where to swim and what to sip.
The vacation goes well, and the appointed check-in date – Wednesday, July 16 – arrives all too quickly. The Agents are nothing if not reliable, though, and set aside their tiki drinks to call Chaturvedi as promised, using one of their special secure phones. Chaturvedi indulges the group by listening to stories about their wonderful break, and then gets down to business. At the top of his list is the aftermath of the recent raid.
It seems that the hard drives the Agents snatched mostly contained records of the rather boring business of running the island: ammunition counts, maintenance reports, cash transfers (but no account numbers), and so on. There's a frustrating lack of names or damning evidence. The one gem is a time-keyed list of satellite frequencies and callsigns for other enemy base stations. Although the location of these bases isn't apparent, this suggests the possibility of contacting and somehow manipulating the Company's rivals.
The Agents lend some thought to this and concoct a scheme: They could pose as a deep-cover team operating out of the Cyclades base, unaware of the fate of their HQ and calling another station for pickup after receiving no response from home base. To grab the interest of whomever they contact, they figure they would have to reveal something tempting – but largely useless – about themselves or the Company at large. And what better bait than to hint that the Company is a nuclear power?
The plan that shapes up is to call the enemy from Mazatlán – where the team intercepted a rogue nuke in 2011 – and reveal enough truthful information about that mission to raise doubts and concerns, wording it as the result of an investigation by this fictional deep-cover operation. Giving away the FSB safe house full of guns in Mexico City would be a start. Guiding the opposition to the warehouse where the nuclear weapon was kept, where there's doubtless some trace radioactivity, wouldn't hurt. The Agents figure they could even disclose the location of the submarine pickup, as the Russians used a missile to blow up the group's abandoned cars on the way out, leaving more evidence.
All this would be only mildly interesting if it ended with the nuke safely in Russian hands, but if the story were changed a little – say, the device arrived by sub, or perhaps there were two weapons – then the enemy couldn't afford to ignore the lead. Of course, calling blind and convincing the people on the other end to check out evidence is one thing. Tracking whomever they send back to a base is quite another. One way to do this would be to have an Agent pose as a person of interest and get picked up! Anabel figures that her skills at disguise and deception are up to the challenge.
The whole scheme is incredibly risky, as it depends on cold-calling the enemy and gambling on their response to a lie – and on their treatment of someone they're liable to see as a prisoner. The plan will require fancy tracking devices for Anabel to carry, serious surveillance gear for the other Agents, Sakata's support listening for any call out Anabel might make, and a solid physical extraction plan. Given that the gambit involves blowing an FSB safe house and hinting at the involvement of a Russian sub, bringing in V seems worthwhile, too. All told, the ploy will call for careful travel arrangements, lots of high-tech gear, and quite a few favors. Anabel calls up Chaturvedi and puts in the preliminary requests.
Time: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 (night).
Place: Sakata's lair in Sweden.
Last Event: Planning some downtime.
The Agents arrange for two months off in Taha'a, French Polynesia – as much to let their trail cool down as to take a much-needed break. Chaturvedi organizes the travel and accommodations, while Sakata sets up Internet "dead drops" that the Company can use to contact the team in an emergency. A few days later, the group is on a plane headed to warmer climes. The flight is without incident, and shortly after arrival, there's nothing more pressing to decide than where to swim and what to sip.
The vacation goes well, and the appointed check-in date – Wednesday, July 16 – arrives all too quickly. The Agents are nothing if not reliable, though, and set aside their tiki drinks to call Chaturvedi as promised, using one of their special secure phones. Chaturvedi indulges the group by listening to stories about their wonderful break, and then gets down to business. At the top of his list is the aftermath of the recent raid.
It seems that the hard drives the Agents snatched mostly contained records of the rather boring business of running the island: ammunition counts, maintenance reports, cash transfers (but no account numbers), and so on. There's a frustrating lack of names or damning evidence. The one gem is a time-keyed list of satellite frequencies and callsigns for other enemy base stations. Although the location of these bases isn't apparent, this suggests the possibility of contacting and somehow manipulating the Company's rivals.
The Agents lend some thought to this and concoct a scheme: They could pose as a deep-cover team operating out of the Cyclades base, unaware of the fate of their HQ and calling another station for pickup after receiving no response from home base. To grab the interest of whomever they contact, they figure they would have to reveal something tempting – but largely useless – about themselves or the Company at large. And what better bait than to hint that the Company is a nuclear power?
The plan that shapes up is to call the enemy from Mazatlán – where the team intercepted a rogue nuke in 2011 – and reveal enough truthful information about that mission to raise doubts and concerns, wording it as the result of an investigation by this fictional deep-cover operation. Giving away the FSB safe house full of guns in Mexico City would be a start. Guiding the opposition to the warehouse where the nuclear weapon was kept, where there's doubtless some trace radioactivity, wouldn't hurt. The Agents figure they could even disclose the location of the submarine pickup, as the Russians used a missile to blow up the group's abandoned cars on the way out, leaving more evidence.
All this would be only mildly interesting if it ended with the nuke safely in Russian hands, but if the story were changed a little – say, the device arrived by sub, or perhaps there were two weapons – then the enemy couldn't afford to ignore the lead. Of course, calling blind and convincing the people on the other end to check out evidence is one thing. Tracking whomever they send back to a base is quite another. One way to do this would be to have an Agent pose as a person of interest and get picked up! Anabel figures that her skills at disguise and deception are up to the challenge.
The whole scheme is incredibly risky, as it depends on cold-calling the enemy and gambling on their response to a lie – and on their treatment of someone they're liable to see as a prisoner. The plan will require fancy tracking devices for Anabel to carry, serious surveillance gear for the other Agents, Sakata's support listening for any call out Anabel might make, and a solid physical extraction plan. Given that the gambit involves blowing an FSB safe house and hinting at the involvement of a Russian sub, bringing in V seems worthwhile, too. All told, the ploy will call for careful travel arrangements, lots of high-tech gear, and quite a few favors. Anabel calls up Chaturvedi and puts in the preliminary requests.