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Entry tags:
The Company
On February 15, we had Bonnie ("Xiang Wen," a.k.a. "Wu Xie Zhi"), Marc ("Anabel Windsor," a.k.a. "Abigail Wilson"), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanov," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorov"). Martin ("Zhu Zhang," a.k.a. "Harold Lee") and Mike ("Vincenzo Calliente," of many aliases) were still out of the picture. We're taking bets on whether Martin will get back from Japan before Mike recovers from the Dreaded Lergy.
Time: November 1, 2009 (09:00).
Place: Grandfather's island, south of mainland Greece.
Last Event: Infiltrating up the cliffs.
With "base camp" established out of sight behind Grandfather's private heliport by the cliffs, it's time to move in. Hamid, Lev, Vinnie, and Zhang check their radios one last time and secure their loose gear. Then they set out across the landscaped gardens toward the big house, using trees, shrubberies, low walls, and occasional fountains and statues for cover. The early morning shadows help – and of course guards are few and far between on the highest ground of a private island owned by someone who doesn't want thugs ruining his illusion of genteel decadence. They're mostly off watching places where people are likely to land boats.
Back at the cliffs, Jili reports over the communications net that she has a weak signal from the computer tracking devices. It's coming from down the hill to the east, likely from the second-largest building on the island, which the Agents saw only from the air. Wen moves to the edge of the roof she's on to better cover her friends and possibly get a look at the structure where the gimmicked computers are being kept. The tree cover doesn't let her see much, however.
Eventually, the four Agents moving in on the mansion reach the side of the building and crouch in the shrubs beneath an open window. Hamid pops his head up for a quick look. He smells coffee and sees and maid leaving a nicely appointed lounge with a tray, apparently cleaning up after breakfast. He then stalks west and steals a glance through another window, which is closed. He spots a man in his 60s sitting in a study, sipping coffee and looking at a laptop computer. Returning to the others, he recommends entering through the lounge.
When the maid makes her next trip out, all four Agents quickly slip through the window and into the mansion. Avoiding the doors to the study and the kitchen, they head for what's likely the exit to the hall. Zhang hears a whirring noise on the other side. Cracking open the door, he sees a servant using a high-tech vacuum cleaner to dust the frame of a painting – a Dutch piece that was reported stolen in an Interpol bulletin he read some years ago! Fortunately, the woman doing the cleaning has her back turned and can't see him, nor can she hear him over the noise of the machine.
With Zhang leading the way, the Agents check a couple of doors to the left and soon find one that gives access to a side corridor containing a cargo elevator. Vinnie spots a door to a staircase, but it's locked. With Zhang keeping an eye on the bustling kitchen at the far end of the little passage, and Hamid and Lev flat against the wall, Vinnie picks the lock on the stairway door, cracks it open, and uses a mirror-on-a-stick to look inside. He spots a camera above the door, pointed directly down the stairs beyond.
At this stage, Hamid takes over. He checks the camera's type and cable, and then jury-rigs a transmitter-receiver pair with a short delay – remotely controlled – to insert into the circuit. Using long-handled tools, he expertly slips the device into place. He manages do this skillfully enough not to set off alarms and quickly enough that he's finished before anybody strays through the area. Then he tells the others that he can open a 30-second window to dash downstairs unseen.
As soon as Hamid gives the sign, the four Agents slip down the stairs. Vinnie brings up the rear, quickly locking the door behind him. The stairs go down to a landing, and from there to a door into the basement level. This door is a much more serious obstacle, being armored and sporting a costly digital lock. Hamid pulls out his tools and gets to work. The other three take this opportunity to report in to their waiting associates from the relative privacy of the staircase. Unfortunately, the radios aren't working well down here – although Lev manages to relay the highlights.
Soon, Hamid has the lock rigged and is ready to go. He warns that the open door will almost certainly show up on a panel somewhere, so it's imperative to be quick. Zhang and Lev move to the front, and then Zhang slips through the door into a hallway . . . and emerges right next to someone standing on the other side! Zhang doesn't hesitate – he drops the man with a vicious tonfa blow to the head. As Lev moves out to catch the collapsing body, he spots a camera up the corridor. He and Zhang hastily drag their victim back into the staircase, out of sight of the camera.
However, there are no alarms, shouts, or rushing guards. As Hamid explains, the mansion is huge and people live here. There's no way that every camera is watched 24/7 – that just isn't how things work, least of all when you have guards on foot already. That said, the watchman will be missed as soon as he fails to report in, and then somebody will pay attention . . . so there's little time to lose. Zhang searches the man he coshed and finds, in addition to the expected pistol, a radio and an electronic key card. He hands the radio to Lev (who understands Russian) and the card to Hamid.
With Zhang in the lead again, the four Agents dash across the corridor, dragging the unconscious guard between them. Hamid opens the nearest door using the captured key card. Everybody piles into what proves to be a washroom. Vinnie and Zhang handcuff the group's captive in one of the stalls.
Lev listens in on the guard's radio and hears a voice in Russian: "Number 17! Report in." He informs the others, and after a few seconds of hushed discussion, they agree that Lev should say something to allay suspicion. Lev draws on his experience in the Russian military to say, in suitable slang, that he's in the washroom and indisposed for a few minutes. The people at the other end seem annoyed, but they buy the story. Lev warns his allies that they should do whatever they plan to do quickly – he can't stall the security staff forever with bad lies.
Looking around, Hamid notes that the room has a false ceiling. Unfortunately, the walls go all the way up, so there's no access to adjacent rooms. However, the basement is extensive and sealed off with security doors, necessitating air ducts. These do seem to go between areas, and Zhang is confident that he could move through them if he were to ditch most of his gear.
Seeing no real alternative, the others agree that Zhang should at least go take a look. While Zhang strips down, Hamid rigs a small camera for Zhang to wear on his head. The receiver is plugged into Hamid's laptop, enabling Hamid, Lev, and Vinnie to see what Zhang is looking at. When Zhang is ready, the others boost him up to the vent, where he removes the grille and squeezes inside.
Zhang has little trouble negotiating the duct. He pauses at each vent to take a look. He crawls over two rooms that are dark but for the blinking lights of electronics, and another that's completely dark, before finally reaching a vent with significant light coming through. Peering in, he sees two men sitting at consoles and talking on headsets. It looks like a security post – very likely where the level's guards report in, and probably the primary site from which the basement cameras are watched.
Zhang decides that this is too choice a target to pass up. He carefully and quietly loosens the grille over the vent, and positions himself to drop into the room below. Then he erupts out of the vent, dives to the floor, rolls into a handstand, and kicks both men in the head! The two guards slump in their chairs, knocked insensible, as Zhang comes to his feet. When Zhang reports in to his allies, who are rather surprised at his risky stunt, he requests that Vinnie join him.
Vinnie ditches his own equipment and wriggles down the duct to Zhang's location. His journey isn't as smooth as Zhang's – he's not the athlete that Zhang is – but on the other hand, he's skinnier. Eventually, he drops out the vent at the security post. There, he takes a look at the consoles and sets the level's cameras and alarms to allow Hamid and Lev to join him and Zhang without being detected. Hamid and Lev grab their associates' gear and head for the guardroom, where Vinnie lets them in.
Once all four Agents are inside, they take a look around. Aside from the door to the corridor, there are two other exits: one to the unlit room that Zhang observed from the vents and another to an area that nobody has had a chance to check out. The guardroom's contents consist of two unconscious guards, a couple of security consoles, and shelves containing various gear: submachine guns, fire extinguishers, first-aid kits, flashlights, etc.
After a brief discussion, the four agree that it would be best for Zhang to approach the rooms to either side of the guardroom via the ducts and then signal subtly through the vent. Hamid will sit at the console, watch the monitors, switch between cameras, and look for the signal. This will reveal which cameras watch those areas. With that decided, Zhang goes back up into the air ducts, crawls over to the vent in the dark room, and flashes his cell phone a few times. Hamid eventually spots the flickering and loops the video on that camera so that if anybody else is watching, they won't see much.
Once Hamid has the camera rigged, he unlocks the door to the unlit room and flicks on the lights. It appears to be an armory – and one far more impressive than the London stash. In addition to the expected pistols, SMGs, rifles, and grenades, it contains recent-model shoulder-launched SAMs and antitank rockets, as well as thermobaric flame weapons and other deadly military hardware. There's more than enough armaments here to defend the mansion and indeed the island, or even to knock over a small Third World country. The Agents pull out their cameras and take plenty of photographs.
Zhang does the same trick to identify the camera covering the area on the other side of the security post. This room is lit and looks to be some sort of detention area. There are no additional guards in there, though, so Hamid simply loops the camera and then opens the door for Vinnie. This gives access to a narrow corridor with two cell doors along one side and no exit to the main hallway. The nearer cell contains a mostly unclothed woman, chained at the wrists, while the farther one holds a man with a bag over his head, strapped into a chair. Both appear to be beaten unconscious.
Zhang drops in from the vent and takes photos of this unpleasant scene. Meanwhile, Vinnie signals Lev via radio to leave the armory and bring a first-aid kit from the guardroom to the prison area. While Hamid keeps a watchful eye on the consoles, the other three open the cell doors and attempt to revive the two captives.
The woman prisoner comes to first. She speaks Russian to Lev, identifying herself as "Olga." Grateful for being freed, she's willing to talk. She explains that she worked for Grandfather – who is definitely a real person: an elderly Russian gangster with a taste for young women – and foolishly grabbed a diamond from a pile of hundreds of gems left sitting on a table in the mansion. One of Grandfather's men saw her do this and hit her in the head. She woke up here, where she has been tortured and abused for the past two days.
Then Lev revives the other prisoner, who speaks Greek. None of the Agents understand Greek, but Olga does, and explains that the man is saying that he's a policeman. Vinnie suspects that a Greek cop might know some Italian, if he works in an organized crime unit, and gives it a shot. The cop's Italian is bad, but enough to convey that he was investigating an Interpol lead – sent via London – regarding a smuggling case. This led him to a small town on the mainland, where he was grabbed from behind and choked unconscious. When he woke up, he had a bag on his head and some Russians yelling at him in bad Greek.
The Agents tell both captives that they're a special police unit engaged in a clandestine investigation of Russian organized crime. They can't act directly, and must call for official help. In the meantime, it's important to stay quiet and do nothing to get the gangsters' attention. Both of the prisoners agree, their attitudes bolstered by being freed and receiving first aid . . . and the fact that Zhang hands the cop a pistol as a gesture of goodwill.
Stepping out of the detention area, the four Agents hatch a plan:
Time: November 1, 2009 (09:00).
Place: Grandfather's island, south of mainland Greece.
Last Event: Infiltrating up the cliffs.
With "base camp" established out of sight behind Grandfather's private heliport by the cliffs, it's time to move in. Hamid, Lev, Vinnie, and Zhang check their radios one last time and secure their loose gear. Then they set out across the landscaped gardens toward the big house, using trees, shrubberies, low walls, and occasional fountains and statues for cover. The early morning shadows help – and of course guards are few and far between on the highest ground of a private island owned by someone who doesn't want thugs ruining his illusion of genteel decadence. They're mostly off watching places where people are likely to land boats.
Back at the cliffs, Jili reports over the communications net that she has a weak signal from the computer tracking devices. It's coming from down the hill to the east, likely from the second-largest building on the island, which the Agents saw only from the air. Wen moves to the edge of the roof she's on to better cover her friends and possibly get a look at the structure where the gimmicked computers are being kept. The tree cover doesn't let her see much, however.
Eventually, the four Agents moving in on the mansion reach the side of the building and crouch in the shrubs beneath an open window. Hamid pops his head up for a quick look. He smells coffee and sees and maid leaving a nicely appointed lounge with a tray, apparently cleaning up after breakfast. He then stalks west and steals a glance through another window, which is closed. He spots a man in his 60s sitting in a study, sipping coffee and looking at a laptop computer. Returning to the others, he recommends entering through the lounge.
When the maid makes her next trip out, all four Agents quickly slip through the window and into the mansion. Avoiding the doors to the study and the kitchen, they head for what's likely the exit to the hall. Zhang hears a whirring noise on the other side. Cracking open the door, he sees a servant using a high-tech vacuum cleaner to dust the frame of a painting – a Dutch piece that was reported stolen in an Interpol bulletin he read some years ago! Fortunately, the woman doing the cleaning has her back turned and can't see him, nor can she hear him over the noise of the machine.
With Zhang leading the way, the Agents check a couple of doors to the left and soon find one that gives access to a side corridor containing a cargo elevator. Vinnie spots a door to a staircase, but it's locked. With Zhang keeping an eye on the bustling kitchen at the far end of the little passage, and Hamid and Lev flat against the wall, Vinnie picks the lock on the stairway door, cracks it open, and uses a mirror-on-a-stick to look inside. He spots a camera above the door, pointed directly down the stairs beyond.
At this stage, Hamid takes over. He checks the camera's type and cable, and then jury-rigs a transmitter-receiver pair with a short delay – remotely controlled – to insert into the circuit. Using long-handled tools, he expertly slips the device into place. He manages do this skillfully enough not to set off alarms and quickly enough that he's finished before anybody strays through the area. Then he tells the others that he can open a 30-second window to dash downstairs unseen.
As soon as Hamid gives the sign, the four Agents slip down the stairs. Vinnie brings up the rear, quickly locking the door behind him. The stairs go down to a landing, and from there to a door into the basement level. This door is a much more serious obstacle, being armored and sporting a costly digital lock. Hamid pulls out his tools and gets to work. The other three take this opportunity to report in to their waiting associates from the relative privacy of the staircase. Unfortunately, the radios aren't working well down here – although Lev manages to relay the highlights.
Soon, Hamid has the lock rigged and is ready to go. He warns that the open door will almost certainly show up on a panel somewhere, so it's imperative to be quick. Zhang and Lev move to the front, and then Zhang slips through the door into a hallway . . . and emerges right next to someone standing on the other side! Zhang doesn't hesitate – he drops the man with a vicious tonfa blow to the head. As Lev moves out to catch the collapsing body, he spots a camera up the corridor. He and Zhang hastily drag their victim back into the staircase, out of sight of the camera.
However, there are no alarms, shouts, or rushing guards. As Hamid explains, the mansion is huge and people live here. There's no way that every camera is watched 24/7 – that just isn't how things work, least of all when you have guards on foot already. That said, the watchman will be missed as soon as he fails to report in, and then somebody will pay attention . . . so there's little time to lose. Zhang searches the man he coshed and finds, in addition to the expected pistol, a radio and an electronic key card. He hands the radio to Lev (who understands Russian) and the card to Hamid.
With Zhang in the lead again, the four Agents dash across the corridor, dragging the unconscious guard between them. Hamid opens the nearest door using the captured key card. Everybody piles into what proves to be a washroom. Vinnie and Zhang handcuff the group's captive in one of the stalls.
Lev listens in on the guard's radio and hears a voice in Russian: "Number 17! Report in." He informs the others, and after a few seconds of hushed discussion, they agree that Lev should say something to allay suspicion. Lev draws on his experience in the Russian military to say, in suitable slang, that he's in the washroom and indisposed for a few minutes. The people at the other end seem annoyed, but they buy the story. Lev warns his allies that they should do whatever they plan to do quickly – he can't stall the security staff forever with bad lies.
Looking around, Hamid notes that the room has a false ceiling. Unfortunately, the walls go all the way up, so there's no access to adjacent rooms. However, the basement is extensive and sealed off with security doors, necessitating air ducts. These do seem to go between areas, and Zhang is confident that he could move through them if he were to ditch most of his gear.
Seeing no real alternative, the others agree that Zhang should at least go take a look. While Zhang strips down, Hamid rigs a small camera for Zhang to wear on his head. The receiver is plugged into Hamid's laptop, enabling Hamid, Lev, and Vinnie to see what Zhang is looking at. When Zhang is ready, the others boost him up to the vent, where he removes the grille and squeezes inside.
Zhang has little trouble negotiating the duct. He pauses at each vent to take a look. He crawls over two rooms that are dark but for the blinking lights of electronics, and another that's completely dark, before finally reaching a vent with significant light coming through. Peering in, he sees two men sitting at consoles and talking on headsets. It looks like a security post – very likely where the level's guards report in, and probably the primary site from which the basement cameras are watched.
Zhang decides that this is too choice a target to pass up. He carefully and quietly loosens the grille over the vent, and positions himself to drop into the room below. Then he erupts out of the vent, dives to the floor, rolls into a handstand, and kicks both men in the head! The two guards slump in their chairs, knocked insensible, as Zhang comes to his feet. When Zhang reports in to his allies, who are rather surprised at his risky stunt, he requests that Vinnie join him.
Vinnie ditches his own equipment and wriggles down the duct to Zhang's location. His journey isn't as smooth as Zhang's – he's not the athlete that Zhang is – but on the other hand, he's skinnier. Eventually, he drops out the vent at the security post. There, he takes a look at the consoles and sets the level's cameras and alarms to allow Hamid and Lev to join him and Zhang without being detected. Hamid and Lev grab their associates' gear and head for the guardroom, where Vinnie lets them in.
Once all four Agents are inside, they take a look around. Aside from the door to the corridor, there are two other exits: one to the unlit room that Zhang observed from the vents and another to an area that nobody has had a chance to check out. The guardroom's contents consist of two unconscious guards, a couple of security consoles, and shelves containing various gear: submachine guns, fire extinguishers, first-aid kits, flashlights, etc.
After a brief discussion, the four agree that it would be best for Zhang to approach the rooms to either side of the guardroom via the ducts and then signal subtly through the vent. Hamid will sit at the console, watch the monitors, switch between cameras, and look for the signal. This will reveal which cameras watch those areas. With that decided, Zhang goes back up into the air ducts, crawls over to the vent in the dark room, and flashes his cell phone a few times. Hamid eventually spots the flickering and loops the video on that camera so that if anybody else is watching, they won't see much.
Once Hamid has the camera rigged, he unlocks the door to the unlit room and flicks on the lights. It appears to be an armory – and one far more impressive than the London stash. In addition to the expected pistols, SMGs, rifles, and grenades, it contains recent-model shoulder-launched SAMs and antitank rockets, as well as thermobaric flame weapons and other deadly military hardware. There's more than enough armaments here to defend the mansion and indeed the island, or even to knock over a small Third World country. The Agents pull out their cameras and take plenty of photographs.
Zhang does the same trick to identify the camera covering the area on the other side of the security post. This room is lit and looks to be some sort of detention area. There are no additional guards in there, though, so Hamid simply loops the camera and then opens the door for Vinnie. This gives access to a narrow corridor with two cell doors along one side and no exit to the main hallway. The nearer cell contains a mostly unclothed woman, chained at the wrists, while the farther one holds a man with a bag over his head, strapped into a chair. Both appear to be beaten unconscious.
Zhang drops in from the vent and takes photos of this unpleasant scene. Meanwhile, Vinnie signals Lev via radio to leave the armory and bring a first-aid kit from the guardroom to the prison area. While Hamid keeps a watchful eye on the consoles, the other three open the cell doors and attempt to revive the two captives.
The woman prisoner comes to first. She speaks Russian to Lev, identifying herself as "Olga." Grateful for being freed, she's willing to talk. She explains that she worked for Grandfather – who is definitely a real person: an elderly Russian gangster with a taste for young women – and foolishly grabbed a diamond from a pile of hundreds of gems left sitting on a table in the mansion. One of Grandfather's men saw her do this and hit her in the head. She woke up here, where she has been tortured and abused for the past two days.
Then Lev revives the other prisoner, who speaks Greek. None of the Agents understand Greek, but Olga does, and explains that the man is saying that he's a policeman. Vinnie suspects that a Greek cop might know some Italian, if he works in an organized crime unit, and gives it a shot. The cop's Italian is bad, but enough to convey that he was investigating an Interpol lead – sent via London – regarding a smuggling case. This led him to a small town on the mainland, where he was grabbed from behind and choked unconscious. When he woke up, he had a bag on his head and some Russians yelling at him in bad Greek.
The Agents tell both captives that they're a special police unit engaged in a clandestine investigation of Russian organized crime. They can't act directly, and must call for official help. In the meantime, it's important to stay quiet and do nothing to get the gangsters' attention. Both of the prisoners agree, their attitudes bolstered by being freed and receiving first aid . . . and the fact that Zhang hands the cop a pistol as a gesture of goodwill.
Stepping out of the detention area, the four Agents hatch a plan:
• Zhang will stalk back up to ground level where he can use the radio to signal Anabel, Ben, JB, Jili, Klas, Qoqa, and Wen to sneak into the mansion and join him.
• While Hamid, Lev, and Vinnie wait in the basement, the others will grab Grandfather. Their best guess is that he's the man in the study, but if he isn't, a gun pointed at that chap or a servant should be all it takes to learn where Grandfather can be found – hopefully in the shower or the gym, or out by a pool somewhere. Hamid will rig a camera so that Olga can confirm that they're snatching the right man.
• After finding Grandfather, the Agents upstairs will hustle him back down to the guardroom where Hamid, Lev, and Vinnie are waiting with Olga and the Greek cop.
• Hamid will actively manipulate cameras, alarms, and radios from the security console to facilitate these steps as much as possible.
• With Grandfather as their prisoner, the Agents will fortify the guardroom and pose as rival gangsters, telling Grandfather's people that they'll kill the boss and blow the place up if their demands aren't met.
• This ruse will buy time for Hamid and Jili to get a signal out to Chaturvedi, so that he can tip off the authorities that there's a gang war in progress on Greek soil, and that there's a Greek cop (complete with ID number) in danger. To give the tip more legitimacy, Chaturvedi may be able engineer things so that it comes from MI5 via Terence West, who's likely to play ball after events in London.
• When the authorities arrive, they'll be hard-pressed to ignore illegal arms, stolen art and diamonds, prisoners, and so on. More important, the distraction will give the Agents the opening they need to get into Grandfather's records and – hopefully – find proof of his human slavery operations.
• Grandfather's fate will depend entirely on how cooperative he is and what kind of task force the Greeks send in response to Chaturvedi's call.
To be continued . . .