dr_kromm | The Company

On April 12, we had everyone: 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), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanov," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorov").

Time: November 1, 2009 (19:00).
Place: Offshore of Grandfather's island, south of mainland Greece.
Last Event: Sending off Iannis.

With Grandfather's island hit hard and doubtless occupied by the Greek police and military by now – and Iannis gone with Grandfather, Olga, and the evidence to meet said authorities – the Agents decide that it's time to ship out. After a brief, all-hands scramble find anything useful for deceiving casual observers, the team scrapes together flags, stencils, and spray paint. Vinnie ponders why a yacht, even one owned by gangsters, would carry such obvious smugglers' tools. Qoqa finds the answer: the cover over the small pool on the afterdeck conceals not water but crates of assault rifles and ammo!

The Agents hastily do their best to disguise the vessel. With Vinnie supervising, they raise an Italian flag, spray a false registration number on the hull, and use duct tape and leftover paint to hide the many bullet holes under "graffiti" which – should anyone ask – was left by punks at the last port of call. Wen and Zhang, being too wounded to work, monitor the television and radio. There's no news of Grandfather's arrest, or even the obvious explosions, fires, and gunfights leading up to it. Wen suspects that there may never be a public report . . . not after the authorities see that Russian arming box.

Vinnie steers the yacht away from the Greek mainland. When the Agents finally rest, they realize that while the ship carries a wide variety of luxury foods – and while Grandfather stocks a great wine cellar – there are no basic staples aboard. The ship is a little light on fuel, too. Everybody agrees that remedying the supply situation is the new top priority, so Vinnie plots a course for a relatively isolated island town, more of a large fishing village.

Well after midnight on November 2, Anabel decides to pull out the secure satellite phone and try to reach Chaturvedi again. This time, she succeeds. It turns out that the lack of an answer last time was due to nothing more sinister than the handler having talked himself hoarse pulling strings for the Agents!

Anabel asks Chaturvedi for a safe port where the group can get some R&R and repairs, and for a new registry entry that will check out with the authorities. He can oblige, but warns that fixing all that will require several days. He instructs the Agents to head for the Balearics, where the Company has a favor to call in. While he realizes that the yacht's fuel might not be up to the trip, he can do little to help with that; he recommends that the team procure fuel by whatever means are practical. He also advises dumping the Russians' huge shipment of rifles and ammunition overboard.

After sorting out immediate needs, Anabel changes the subject to the assignment. Chaturvedi says that he heard from his Interpol contacts that the Greeks' raid on the island went well and met with little resistance, but that the Greeks suddenly stopped communicating on the matter. Anabel fills him in on what the Agents found: diamonds, account numbers, blackmail material, and an arming box for tactical nukes. Chaturvedi suspects that this last item explains the abrupt silence. He asks the group to keep the diamonds for bribes and to guard the incriminating negatives until he can fetch them.

It's around 10:00 when the Agents anchor the yacht offshore of the town that Vinnie picked out. Anabel, Qoqa, and Vinnie motor into port in one of the ship's two small boats. Their plan is to act as if they're simply part of the crew of a luxury vessel come into town on a supply run – at least until they can establish whether the local businessmen are sufficiently corrupt that they'll trade fuel for diamonds and luxury goods.

As it turns out, such a deal is easy to swing. All of the local businesses seem to be run by a few "brothers" (who look nothing alike, and aren't even very close in age). Only Mihalis speaks Italian – Kostas and Tasso speak only Greek – but Vinnie manages to fix a swap: diamonds and cases of champagne in return for a load of fuel sans paperwork. The three Agents return to the yacht with Mihalis, who either doesn't notice or doesn't care about the bullet holes. He pilots the yacht up to the refueling quay.

Qoqa makes sure that everything being traded is thoroughly "cleaned" of fingerprints or other clues, and then turns over the agreed-upon payment. Once Kostas is certain that the goods are everything that Vinnie said they were, he gives Tasso the nod. Without further ado, Tasso starts fueling up the yacht. While they wait, several of the Agents take the group's petty cash and head into town to buy groceries, paint, sealant, and spare clothing. Everything is ready to go by late afternoon.

Toward dusk, Vinnie plots a course for the Balearics. While the yacht could get there in a little over three days if it steamed day and night at high speed, he opts for a slow cruise instead. Vinnie estimates arrival in about a week. The Agents use this time mainly to rest and recover, and to tidy up the ship a bit more. They also dump the crates of guns and ammo, once they're well out at sea. Zhang takes advantage of his downtime to write a careful after-action report on the mission.

On November 9, the ship puts into port on Mallorca, where the yacht is merely one among many and 11 foreigners are just a drop in the tourist bucket. By then, JB, Klas, and Lev are essentially healed up; Zhang's wounds have knitted well enough that they're no longer slowing him down much; and even Wen is able to hobble around, albeit slowly. The Agents meet Chaturvedi's nameless contacts, who arrange transportation to Palma, where the handler has several apartments waiting.

Chaturvedi informs the group that after such a major operation, everybody has earned a vacation. He gives them until early March to heal wounds, unwind, and regain some measure of anonymity. There are certainly worse places to spend the winter than Mallorca! During the next four months, the yacht undergoes repairs and is reregistered as the Cephalopod, sailing out of Palma. As for the Agents:

• Anabel checks herself into an exclusive cosmetic surgery clinic for the very wealthy and very beautiful, and pursues her long-term plans for becoming a sex goddess. She uses her recovery time to study languages, for which she has a natural gift. Once she's looking her best, she takes advantage of her remaining downtime to dance, party, and generally catch up on pop culture and trends.

• Ben, JB, and Vinnie – not being party animals – mostly stay out of sight. They spend a lot of time aboard the yacht, learning its ins and outs, and take it out for several short cruises. By the time they're done, Vinnie and JB are established as skipper and first mate. Ben concerns himself more with the vessel's maintenance, reasoning that if the Agents plan to use it as a floating home, then he wants it to be in good shape!

• Hamid hits the nightclubs some, but that's not his preferred scene. Mainly, he catches up with the latest science and technology news, and spends a lot of time working on his screen tan. However, he spends more than a few nights at the casino . . .

• Jili, on the other hand, lives for parties and clubbing. She spends about as much time on the town as Anabel. Ostensibly, her goal is "improving her social engineering tool kit," which she explains is an important part of being a hacker. In reality, it looks like she's taking advantage of a nice paid vacation to blow off some steam and get her head right after all the shooting and killing.

• Klas and Lev, too, take advantage of the downtime to unwind. However, being more outdoorsy types, they get out of the city and spend most of their time hiking and climbing in the Serra de Tramuntana. Klas, being a dyed-in-the-wool sniper, can't resist the challenge of sneaking onto Puig Major and snapping a few gun-scope photos of the military radar station there, just to say that he did it. Lev has no comment on this.

• Qoqa loses herself in Palma's seamier side, inasmuch as it has one at all. Nobody is entirely certain what she's up to, but it appears to involve drinking in dockside bars, fist-fights, more drinking, knives, even more drinking, and driving too fast afterward. Oh, and smoking a lot – even more than usual. Yet she looks strangely refreshed afterward.

• Wen aggressively trains her kung fu as physiotherapy to recover from her injuries. It isn't clear to her associates what beating her fists bloody on a muk yan jong has to do with healing, but she seems to believe it will work. The herbal remedies and strict vegetarian diet probably help more.

• Zhang, being compulsively unable to relax, does what he always does: By day, he works out at the gym. By night, he patrols the streets and rooftops like Batman, looking for delinquents and punks to set straight. Palma de Mallorca's mix of old and new architecture prove a fitting challenge for his Parkour skills, however, and even Zhang has to admit that's rather fun!

The Company

I'm the Goddamn Batman.