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The Company
At our November 2 session, we had Bonnie ("Xiang Wen," a.k.a. "Wu Xie Zhi"), Marc ("Anabel Windsor," a.k.a. "Abigail Wilson"), Martin ("Zhu Zhang," a.k.a. "Harold Lee"), Mike ("Vincenzo Calliente," of many aliases), Stéphane ("Hamid Fassal"), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanov," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorov"). Full house!
Time: September 24, 2009 (early afternoon).
Place: Restaurant in downtown London.
Last Event: Anabel's lunch with Terence West.
With lunch over and an agreement made, Terence West takes his leave. Anabel suspects that by now, a few of West's associates have taken up position outside the restaurant, so she decides to stay put and have another coffee until her allies call her and tell her that the coast is clear. Qoqa and Zhang follow Anabel's lead, lingering over lunch and keeping an eye on her. At the phone box a block away, Vinnie and Wen see nobody suspicious, so while Wen decides to wait – just in case – Vinnie heads up to the restaurant on foot to check for surveillance. Back at the safe house, Hamid coordinates everyone by phone.
Outside the restaurant, Vinnie spots no obvious watchers. He suspects that's mostly because Anabel isn't moving. He texts Anabel to head out so that he can see who pays attention. Sure enough, as soon as Anabel steps out the door, Vinnie notices a reaction from a man with a newspaper, shadows moving in an upstairs window across the street, and a taxi rolling forward to be conveniently in place should Anabel need a cab. Anabel keeps walking and Vinnie continues to observe.
Less than a block from the restaurant, a large woman in a long coat bumps into Anabel and lets her glimpse a hidden knife. In a Russian accent, the woman orders Anabel to get into the cab that just pulled up next to them. The door to the cab opens, and Anabel can see a man in the back seat pointing a silenced pistol at her. With Qoqa, Vinnie, and Zhang half of a long block away, and Wen even further back, Anabel decides that it would be wise to get in before she's stabbed or shot.
Vinnie sees this happen and hails another cab – one that's passing at speed, not one conveniently parked nearby – and asks the cabbie to tail the taxi carrying Anabel. The driver is initially reluctant, but seems to buy Vinnie's story about following "his wife, who's having an affair." From the back of the cab, Vinnie texts Hamid, asking him to alert the others and suggesting that if he can track Anabel's phone, this would be a good time to do it. Hamid obliges on both counts.
Alerted by Hamid, Zhang races up the street on foot. Wen hails her own cab and has the driver take her toward an intersection that looks like it's in the path of Anabel's captors. Qoqa simply grabs the next taxi that comes along and heads in the same direction as Anabel, Vinnie, and Zhang. Hamid keeps everybody posted on Anabel's coordinates via phone.
Two blocks from the restaurant, Vinnie finds himself waiting a few cars behind the cab holding Anabel when it stops at an intersection. He's thinking of acting . . . when suddenly, a speeding utility vehicle cuts across traffic, smashes into Anabel's ride side-on, and then speeds off down the cross street! He sees the ramming vehicle only briefly, but his training leaves him certain of a few things: (1) this was a deliberate collision, (2) the attacker was reinforced specifically for the purpose, and (3) the attacker had no license plates.
The cab containing Anabel and her captors is a total wreck. It's rolled on one side and ploughed into a signpost, with the right side caved in. The driver is sprawled in the street, his blood mingling with the rapidly pooling petrol from the ruptured fuel tank. None of the vehicle's other passengers is visible. A small fire is licking out from under the bonnet.
Vinnie is the first one on the scene. As traffic screeches to a halt and a crowd gathers, he dashes into the nearest business and manages to find a fire extinguisher and a small first-aid kit. Zhang and Qoqa arrive as he's running back out into the street. Qoqa grabs the first-aid kit from Vinnie and heads for the cab, shouting, "I'm a medic!" Vinnie blasts the fire and pooling fuel with the extinguisher. Zhang stays in the crowd, calling in a situation report to Hamid.
Hamid immediately contacts Chaturvedi and requests medical resources. Chaturvedi tells him that the Company can provide access to a physician's residence with modest facilities not far from the safe house – apparently, keeping a separate medical safe house in reserve is SOP – and passes along the address. Hamid texts the address to his teammates. Ben and JB, the other two Agents with medical training, head out the door to get the place ready.
Back at the scene of the attack, Qoqa finds that Anabel and her female captor are still alive, while the driver and gunman are both dead. She does what she can to keep Anabel stable. As she works, she hollers at Vinnie, doing her best not to let on that she knows him: "Hey, buddy! Don't just stand there. The fire's out. Now we need to get this woman to a hospital!"
Vinnie jogs over to one of the many cabs stopped nearby. He does an amazing job of convincing the cabbie that he's a professional driver – the man even thinks he recognizes Vinnie from a Grand Prix! – and that he needs to borrow the taxi to drive the wounded woman to a hospital. Following Qoqa's lead on regrouping the team, Vinnie then shouts to Zhang: "You look like a strong fellow! Help the medic get that woman into this car!"
Zhang and Qoqa manage to get Anabel into the cab without injuring her further. Then they get in, along with Vinnie, and drive off. Hamid uses digital maps and online traffic reports to direct Vinnie to the medical safe house via the fastest route possible. He also keeps an ear on a police scanner to help Vinnie avoid being pulled over. In the back seat, Qoqa has her hands full just keeping Anabel alive.
Wen arrives at the intersection after Qoqa, Vinnie, and Zhang have left with Anabel. She mumbles something to the bystanders about first aid, and pretends to help the other passengers of the wrecked taxi. In reality, she gathers blood samples and fingerprints – in blood – just in case such clues can be used to identify Anabel's captors. Moments later, police cars and ambulances arrive on the scene, and Wen hides in the crowd, staying around long enough to get the hood number of the ambulance that carries away the surviving abductor.
Shortly after that, Vinnie pulls up in front of the residential practice of "Dr. C. Mortimer." Ben and JB are already there and set up, and help Qoqa, Vinnie, and Zhang get Anabel inside. The three medics waste no time – they start treating Anabel immediately, with Qoqa serving as lead surgeon. Working quickly and efficiently, Qoqa manages to put Anabel back together well enough that the prognosis looks good.
As Qoqa cuts and sews, Vinnie searches the borrowed taxi and finds its operator's ID. As soon as Qoqa is done with Anabel, he has her come out and "clean" the cab of blood, prints . . . the works. Qoqa does this as quickly and professionally as she fixed up Anabel. Vinnie then drives the clean cab to the cabbie's home address, parks it outside, leaves £200 in the dash, and calls the taxi driver to tell him where to find his vehicle – and his reward.
While all of this is going on, Wen calls Hamid from downtown and asks him to scan the airwaves for information on the car wreck, passing along the call number of the ambulance carrying the woman who grabbed Anabel. Hamid listens and pokes around, and soon deduces which hospital the ambulance went to. He tells Wen, who immediately heads to the hospital.
At the hospital, Wen manages to remain unnoticed at first. She gleans that the woman was admitted as a "Jane Doe," with no ID. After watching for a while, she sees Jane Doe wheeled out of the ER toward the ICU – a decent sign that Jane didn't die on the table.
Things go bad when a policeman spots Wen and recognizes her as one of the people who tried to give the "accident" victims first aid. When he tries to detain Wen for a few questions, she bolts! Unfortunately for Wen, she isn't the athlete that Zhang is and the policeman isn't the unfit type. She soon finds herself collared and being held for questioning by two cops.
As a last-ditch ruse, Wen plays at having little English and only speaking Mandarin. The officers react to this by deciding to take her to their station, where they apparently have a colleague who can speak Mandarin. At the station, the officers ask Wen for ID, but she can't produce any. She motions to her phone, saying that she'll call her employer. The policemen let her make the phone call.
Wen calls Zhang and addresses him in Mandarin, as if he were her boss. He soon realizes that she can't speak freely, and manages, through yes-or-no questions, to ascertain her situation. Hamid uses her phone to triangulate her location.
This charade leads the policemen to suspect that Wen is either an illegal immigrant who doesn't have papers, or a legal immigrant who's doing slave labor for a boss who has confiscated her papers. They make this fairly clear, and these concerns soon crowd out the questions about the dreadful collision. The police bring in a specialist on such things, and through the Mandarin-speaking cop, this case officer starts asking Wen pointed questions about her employer and employment.
Back at the safe house, Hamid realizes that getting Wen away from the police will require false ID. Fortunately, Chaturvedi foresaw the need for such, and tells Hamid where to find the necessary fake documents. When the police eventually call to speak with Wen's boss, Hamid answers and says that he's on the way with Wen's papers. He grabs the Company forgeries for Wen and himself, and hops in a cab to the police station.
It doesn't take long for the smooth-talking Hamid to extricate Wen and himself from the police. The papers check out flawlessly, and Hamid does a good job of convincing the officers that Wen's problems are those of language and forgetfulness, nothing more. As far as the police can tell, Wen and Hamid are both British citizens in good standing, however odd they may seem as individuals. Soon, Hamid and Wen are in a taxi back to the "Dr. C. Mortimer" residence.
It's night by the time all the Agents are in one place again – that being Anabel's bedside. Qoqa makes it clear that Anabel will need at least a week before getting out of bed, and more like two or three to be fully recovered. Considering that Terence West needs at least a week to get his files together, the group decides that it would be best simply to hide out for about that long. However, there's still the issue of people trying to kill either Anabel or her captors . . .
After some discussion, the team agrees that it's rather unlikely that MI5 would ram people with cars. They decided to warn West that there are killers at work here in London. Hamid composes e-mail from his anonymous account, informing West that there might be a security breach in his organization, as Anabel was rammed and nearly killed shortly after leaving their meeting at the restaurant. Hamid deliberately omits the fact that this happened after Anabel was abducted, however.
Meanwhile, Wen calls Chaturvedi and asks for firearms, just in case the automobile assassins return to finish the job with guns. She also passes along a request from Vinnie for a "clean" vehicle. Chaturvedi says he'll do what he can about that. He concurs with the Agents' plan to stay out of sight for a week while Anabel heals and West gathers his files, and points out that by then, Dieter may have the squad's body armor ready.
With that, it's time to rest. Both Sharkmeat and Röttwalkyr keep a low profile for the next week, using the time to rest, heal, and let any police interest in the collision cool down some. Qoqa dedicates herself to looking after Anabel. Toward evening on Thursday, October 1, Anabel is feeling good enough to get up and walk around, and is relieved to see that she has no marks on her face. She decides that her explanation for the bruises on the rest of her will be "a skiing accident in Switzerland" . . .
Place: Restaurant in downtown London.
Last Event: Anabel's lunch with Terence West.
With lunch over and an agreement made, Terence West takes his leave. Anabel suspects that by now, a few of West's associates have taken up position outside the restaurant, so she decides to stay put and have another coffee until her allies call her and tell her that the coast is clear. Qoqa and Zhang follow Anabel's lead, lingering over lunch and keeping an eye on her. At the phone box a block away, Vinnie and Wen see nobody suspicious, so while Wen decides to wait – just in case – Vinnie heads up to the restaurant on foot to check for surveillance. Back at the safe house, Hamid coordinates everyone by phone.
Outside the restaurant, Vinnie spots no obvious watchers. He suspects that's mostly because Anabel isn't moving. He texts Anabel to head out so that he can see who pays attention. Sure enough, as soon as Anabel steps out the door, Vinnie notices a reaction from a man with a newspaper, shadows moving in an upstairs window across the street, and a taxi rolling forward to be conveniently in place should Anabel need a cab. Anabel keeps walking and Vinnie continues to observe.
Less than a block from the restaurant, a large woman in a long coat bumps into Anabel and lets her glimpse a hidden knife. In a Russian accent, the woman orders Anabel to get into the cab that just pulled up next to them. The door to the cab opens, and Anabel can see a man in the back seat pointing a silenced pistol at her. With Qoqa, Vinnie, and Zhang half of a long block away, and Wen even further back, Anabel decides that it would be wise to get in before she's stabbed or shot.
Vinnie sees this happen and hails another cab – one that's passing at speed, not one conveniently parked nearby – and asks the cabbie to tail the taxi carrying Anabel. The driver is initially reluctant, but seems to buy Vinnie's story about following "his wife, who's having an affair." From the back of the cab, Vinnie texts Hamid, asking him to alert the others and suggesting that if he can track Anabel's phone, this would be a good time to do it. Hamid obliges on both counts.
Alerted by Hamid, Zhang races up the street on foot. Wen hails her own cab and has the driver take her toward an intersection that looks like it's in the path of Anabel's captors. Qoqa simply grabs the next taxi that comes along and heads in the same direction as Anabel, Vinnie, and Zhang. Hamid keeps everybody posted on Anabel's coordinates via phone.
Two blocks from the restaurant, Vinnie finds himself waiting a few cars behind the cab holding Anabel when it stops at an intersection. He's thinking of acting . . . when suddenly, a speeding utility vehicle cuts across traffic, smashes into Anabel's ride side-on, and then speeds off down the cross street! He sees the ramming vehicle only briefly, but his training leaves him certain of a few things: (1) this was a deliberate collision, (2) the attacker was reinforced specifically for the purpose, and (3) the attacker had no license plates.
The cab containing Anabel and her captors is a total wreck. It's rolled on one side and ploughed into a signpost, with the right side caved in. The driver is sprawled in the street, his blood mingling with the rapidly pooling petrol from the ruptured fuel tank. None of the vehicle's other passengers is visible. A small fire is licking out from under the bonnet.
Vinnie is the first one on the scene. As traffic screeches to a halt and a crowd gathers, he dashes into the nearest business and manages to find a fire extinguisher and a small first-aid kit. Zhang and Qoqa arrive as he's running back out into the street. Qoqa grabs the first-aid kit from Vinnie and heads for the cab, shouting, "I'm a medic!" Vinnie blasts the fire and pooling fuel with the extinguisher. Zhang stays in the crowd, calling in a situation report to Hamid.
Hamid immediately contacts Chaturvedi and requests medical resources. Chaturvedi tells him that the Company can provide access to a physician's residence with modest facilities not far from the safe house – apparently, keeping a separate medical safe house in reserve is SOP – and passes along the address. Hamid texts the address to his teammates. Ben and JB, the other two Agents with medical training, head out the door to get the place ready.
Back at the scene of the attack, Qoqa finds that Anabel and her female captor are still alive, while the driver and gunman are both dead. She does what she can to keep Anabel stable. As she works, she hollers at Vinnie, doing her best not to let on that she knows him: "Hey, buddy! Don't just stand there. The fire's out. Now we need to get this woman to a hospital!"
Vinnie jogs over to one of the many cabs stopped nearby. He does an amazing job of convincing the cabbie that he's a professional driver – the man even thinks he recognizes Vinnie from a Grand Prix! – and that he needs to borrow the taxi to drive the wounded woman to a hospital. Following Qoqa's lead on regrouping the team, Vinnie then shouts to Zhang: "You look like a strong fellow! Help the medic get that woman into this car!"
Zhang and Qoqa manage to get Anabel into the cab without injuring her further. Then they get in, along with Vinnie, and drive off. Hamid uses digital maps and online traffic reports to direct Vinnie to the medical safe house via the fastest route possible. He also keeps an ear on a police scanner to help Vinnie avoid being pulled over. In the back seat, Qoqa has her hands full just keeping Anabel alive.
Wen arrives at the intersection after Qoqa, Vinnie, and Zhang have left with Anabel. She mumbles something to the bystanders about first aid, and pretends to help the other passengers of the wrecked taxi. In reality, she gathers blood samples and fingerprints – in blood – just in case such clues can be used to identify Anabel's captors. Moments later, police cars and ambulances arrive on the scene, and Wen hides in the crowd, staying around long enough to get the hood number of the ambulance that carries away the surviving abductor.
Shortly after that, Vinnie pulls up in front of the residential practice of "Dr. C. Mortimer." Ben and JB are already there and set up, and help Qoqa, Vinnie, and Zhang get Anabel inside. The three medics waste no time – they start treating Anabel immediately, with Qoqa serving as lead surgeon. Working quickly and efficiently, Qoqa manages to put Anabel back together well enough that the prognosis looks good.
As Qoqa cuts and sews, Vinnie searches the borrowed taxi and finds its operator's ID. As soon as Qoqa is done with Anabel, he has her come out and "clean" the cab of blood, prints . . . the works. Qoqa does this as quickly and professionally as she fixed up Anabel. Vinnie then drives the clean cab to the cabbie's home address, parks it outside, leaves £200 in the dash, and calls the taxi driver to tell him where to find his vehicle – and his reward.
While all of this is going on, Wen calls Hamid from downtown and asks him to scan the airwaves for information on the car wreck, passing along the call number of the ambulance carrying the woman who grabbed Anabel. Hamid listens and pokes around, and soon deduces which hospital the ambulance went to. He tells Wen, who immediately heads to the hospital.
At the hospital, Wen manages to remain unnoticed at first. She gleans that the woman was admitted as a "Jane Doe," with no ID. After watching for a while, she sees Jane Doe wheeled out of the ER toward the ICU – a decent sign that Jane didn't die on the table.
Things go bad when a policeman spots Wen and recognizes her as one of the people who tried to give the "accident" victims first aid. When he tries to detain Wen for a few questions, she bolts! Unfortunately for Wen, she isn't the athlete that Zhang is and the policeman isn't the unfit type. She soon finds herself collared and being held for questioning by two cops.
As a last-ditch ruse, Wen plays at having little English and only speaking Mandarin. The officers react to this by deciding to take her to their station, where they apparently have a colleague who can speak Mandarin. At the station, the officers ask Wen for ID, but she can't produce any. She motions to her phone, saying that she'll call her employer. The policemen let her make the phone call.
Wen calls Zhang and addresses him in Mandarin, as if he were her boss. He soon realizes that she can't speak freely, and manages, through yes-or-no questions, to ascertain her situation. Hamid uses her phone to triangulate her location.
This charade leads the policemen to suspect that Wen is either an illegal immigrant who doesn't have papers, or a legal immigrant who's doing slave labor for a boss who has confiscated her papers. They make this fairly clear, and these concerns soon crowd out the questions about the dreadful collision. The police bring in a specialist on such things, and through the Mandarin-speaking cop, this case officer starts asking Wen pointed questions about her employer and employment.
Back at the safe house, Hamid realizes that getting Wen away from the police will require false ID. Fortunately, Chaturvedi foresaw the need for such, and tells Hamid where to find the necessary fake documents. When the police eventually call to speak with Wen's boss, Hamid answers and says that he's on the way with Wen's papers. He grabs the Company forgeries for Wen and himself, and hops in a cab to the police station.
It doesn't take long for the smooth-talking Hamid to extricate Wen and himself from the police. The papers check out flawlessly, and Hamid does a good job of convincing the officers that Wen's problems are those of language and forgetfulness, nothing more. As far as the police can tell, Wen and Hamid are both British citizens in good standing, however odd they may seem as individuals. Soon, Hamid and Wen are in a taxi back to the "Dr. C. Mortimer" residence.
It's night by the time all the Agents are in one place again – that being Anabel's bedside. Qoqa makes it clear that Anabel will need at least a week before getting out of bed, and more like two or three to be fully recovered. Considering that Terence West needs at least a week to get his files together, the group decides that it would be best simply to hide out for about that long. However, there's still the issue of people trying to kill either Anabel or her captors . . .
After some discussion, the team agrees that it's rather unlikely that MI5 would ram people with cars. They decided to warn West that there are killers at work here in London. Hamid composes e-mail from his anonymous account, informing West that there might be a security breach in his organization, as Anabel was rammed and nearly killed shortly after leaving their meeting at the restaurant. Hamid deliberately omits the fact that this happened after Anabel was abducted, however.
Meanwhile, Wen calls Chaturvedi and asks for firearms, just in case the automobile assassins return to finish the job with guns. She also passes along a request from Vinnie for a "clean" vehicle. Chaturvedi says he'll do what he can about that. He concurs with the Agents' plan to stay out of sight for a week while Anabel heals and West gathers his files, and points out that by then, Dieter may have the squad's body armor ready.
With that, it's time to rest. Both Sharkmeat and Röttwalkyr keep a low profile for the next week, using the time to rest, heal, and let any police interest in the collision cool down some. Qoqa dedicates herself to looking after Anabel. Toward evening on Thursday, October 1, Anabel is feeling good enough to get up and walk around, and is relieved to see that she has no marks on her face. She decides that her explanation for the bruises on the rest of her will be "a skiing accident in Switzerland" . . .
Why didn't they take the other Woman as well?
Re: Why didn't they take the other Woman as well?
2. As Vinnie pointed out, the car wouldn't have been big enough for the job. Not with him driving, Qoqa doing medical stuff, and Zhang riding shotgun.
3. Leaving Jane Doe at a public hospital created a situation where the Agents could see who came to check up on her. Wen wasn't the right person for that job, unfortunately.
This was all discussed quickly and agreed upon as the best course of action.