![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Company
Time: March 31, 2010.
Place: Genoa, Italy.
Last Event: Arriving by yacht.
The Cephalopod leaves Beirut without incident; if the Israelis are interested in her or her crew, they don't show it. After a restful nine-day cruise, the yacht enters Italian waters and makes port in Genoa. Throughout the trip, strings pulled by Chaturvedi open all the necessary doors – there are no legal troubles on departure, in transit, or on arrival. The Agents' business in Italy is straightforward: R&R. Anabel does some shopping in Milan, Wen tries out downhill skateboarding in the Alps, Klas and Lev go climbing and skiing, and Vinnie simply lives la vita italiana.
On April 19, Chaturvedi calls with the next assignment. He has a potential recruit in Belfast: Paul Mullen, an ex-cop in his 40s with an enviable arrest record during the tail end of the Troubles. Mullen's foes in the more radical IRA splinter groups are still out to get him, while his agitation against police violence in the arrest and interrogation of IRA moderates made him no friends on the force and ultimately got him fired. Mullen is an exceptional investigator who's clearly capable of seeing both sides of the most explosive situation, and would be an asset to the Company. With his life threatened by old enemies of all kinds, it would be easy to fake his "assassination" and bring him aboard.
The Company doesn't take on anyone without a background check, however, and would rather not tip its hand by sending a huge team to do this. It needs a small group – from three to five people – to go to Belfast and observe Mullen for four months. They are to get close to him, inventory his skills and personality, establish that he isn't working undercover for the police (or worse), covertly protect him from assassins, and eventually extract him. Chaturvedi asks the Agents to decide on their lineup and cover stories, and then call him back.
After a brief discussion, Anabel, Jili, Vinnie, and Wen are selected. The other seven will take the scenic route down the west coast of Africa to South Africa and play at being wealthy dilettantes attending the World Cup. The cruise alone will take about five weeks, leaving a little over two weeks for bureaucracy, refueling stops, and so forth. Once the Cup is over, they'll head for Australia to refit or trade the yacht, which is potentially on Mossad's radar. That journey will add four or five more weeks. Throughout, Qoqa will be on standby to fly into Belfast to handle any cleaning the extraction requires.
Talk then turns to cover stories for the four headed to Belfast:
Anabel will be Victoria ("Vicky"), a London-based linguistics scholar, widowed and with an adopted daughter. Formerly married to another academic, Jules, she saw a lot of the world during the 1990s. She and Jules adopted a Chinese girl (Dorothy, to be played by the petite Wen) while living in Australia in 1999. In 2003, all three moved to Spain . . . where Jules was almost killed in the Madrid train bombing of 2004. Vicky, Jules, and Dorothy returned to the U.K., where – after two painful years in hospital – Jules committed suicide in 2006. Today, Vicky is trying to get her life back on track after a few years of leave. She moved to Belfast, with Dorothy in tow, to accept a low-profile teaching post at Queen's.
Wen will be Dorothy ("Dot"), Anabel's adopted daughter. Born in 1995, she was orphaned the same year and eventually adopted internationally by an Australian family. That didn't work out, thanks to divorce, and she was left drifting around the Aussie system, where most potential adopters saw her as damaged goods. When respectable U.K. academics Jules and Victoria asked to adopt her, the Australians were happy to agree. In 2003, Dot moved to Spain with her adoptive parents. She saw her adoptive father almost killed in 2004 and finally take his own life in 2006. Having been through two-and-a-half sets of parents and three continents in 15 years, Dot is troubled . . . Belfast should prove interesting.
Vinnie will be more-or-less himself, with whatever assumed name can be arranged. He was born in Las Vegas and lived there ever since. He worked as a cabbie and didn't have much experience with the world at large outside of the Internet. On the net, he corresponded with other cabbies on message boards; which is to say, they shared pictures of naked porn girls. Recently, he and an online acquaintance in Belfast, Mike Ryan, entered a GPS-company sponsored contest for cabbies: submit a joint entry with another cab driver, who must be in another country, and win a one-year "swap" – a heavily financed "working vacation" in the other guy's city. Vinnie and Mike won!
Jili will be Sunita, a Sri Lankan girl schooled in London and naturalized in the U.K. She's a computer whiz who followed the tech boom across the Irish Sea to Dublin, where at the time it was easy to get into Ireland. When her company went bust, she traveled up the Dublin-Belfast corridor, hoping to use her U.K. citizenship to make a go of things in Belfast. She's largely unattached and somewhat detached – a techno-hipster looking for a life.
The plan is for Anabel and Wen to arrive together as mother and daughter. After that, Jili and Vinnie will show up, one at a time, with no initial connection to any of the other three. The four will eventually meet – although the circumstances of their meeting will depend on how the situation looks in Belfast.
The Agents call up Chaturvedi and relate these details. He tells them that he'll need some time to establish the necessary false identities and companies, and to acquire suitably forged visas, adoption papers, and so forth. More important, he needs to arrange accommodation for Anabel, Jili, Vinnie, and Wen in Mullen's area. Fortunately, Mullen lives in a neighborhood that was hit hard by the Troubles and that never fully recovered, so it's more than half-vacant, with plenty of flats to let and houses for sale.
On April 20, all 11 Agents head their various ways on their current false travel papers. Anabel and Wen fly to London together, Jili flies to Dublin, and Vinnie flies to Las Vegas. All four intend to wait until their new IDs are set up before heading to Belfast – Jili by train, the other three by air. Meanwhile, the Cephalopod sets out on its long voyage for South Africa and then Australia.
The first papers that Chaturvedi has ready are those for Anabel and Wen. He calls up on April 22 to indicate that he lucked out with setting up their identities, and that they can head to a rental unit that the Company set up for them in Belfast. Anabel and Wen arrive in Belfast late on the afternoon of April 23. Their new home for the next four months proves to be an upstairs flat in working-to-middle-class terrace housing. The place is dingy, and the landlady – Ms. Grantham – is rather sharp and nosy, but they're just three doors down and across the street from Mullen.
The next day (April 24), Anabel and Wen are surprised when Mullen takes the initiative and visits them. He explains frankly that the neighborhood is a little rough for a single mom and daughter from away, tells them that he's a former cop (and shows them his canceled ID), and lets them know that he's just across the street if there's trouble. He also mentions that he has seen "Dot" skateboarding around his car, and warns her not to ding it – although by the looks of his ratty car, it's hard to imagine that he would notice! He concludes by saying that there's a pub nearby, and that he'd be happy to introduce them to the neighbors down there tonight.
Anabel and Wen decide to grab a bite to eat at the pub that night. Mullen isn't there yet, but a local chap, David, clearly takes a fancy to Anabel and won't leave her alone. From David, Anabel learns that Mullen is an ex-cop, a bit of a boy scout, and between jobs just now. David backs off when Mullen comes in. Mullen sits with Anabel and Wen, grabs a pint and a meal, and chats. Anabel uses the opportunity to tell some of her cover story – though not the depressing parts, not yet.
As the evening wears on, David gets less sober and keeps eyeing Anabel. Something about Mullen makes him keep his distance . . . until Wen gets up to head to the toilets. On her way back, a drunken David propositions her, despite being somewhere between twice and three times her age. She rejects him and goes off to play darts – and manages quite by accident to hit the leering David in the shoulder. The drunk responds by coming over and hitting her in the face!
Wen has had much worse, but she bawls and carries on in keeping with her part. Meanwhile, Mullen and the pub staff eject David. This development puts an end to the night's fun, however; Mullen escorts Anabel and Wen to their flat, apologizes for David, and says he'll have words with the man. With that, everybody heads home. Behind closed doors, Wen sees to her relatively minor injury.
Over the next three days, Anabel and Wen do their best to fit into and learn their new neighborhood. Anabel makes the acquaintance of some neighbor women (deliberately avoiding the men for the time being). She spreads gossip about her false past – including some tidbits about her dead husband – and in return learns that while Mullen has had some girlfriends, he's never had anyone steady. Anabel and Wen keep a close eye on Mullen the whole time. Wen also spots David at one point; he looks as if he's had a beating by someone who knows not to bruise the face, and hastily crosses the street to avoid her.
On April 28, Jili arrives. The Company has managed to get her a flat five doors down from Mullen's and on the same side (two doors past and across the street from Anabel and Wen's place). Wen breaks the ice with Jili by pretending to be awed by the attitude and fashion sense of the cool tech-industry hipster; she makes sure that Jili knows where the pub is. Jili plays up being unimpressed with Belfast, but heads to the pub that night, where she meets Mullen . . . who apparently finds her exotic and attractive.
The next day (April 29), Vinnie arrives. He had the longest wait for papers but as a result, the Company hit the jackpot on accommodation – the place next door to Mullen! His first move is to buy tools and strip down his car right there on the street, where Mullen can't miss him. Sure enough, Mullen comes home and is taken aback to find a loud American disassembling an engine on the curb. Mullen and Vinnie get to talking, and Vinnie eventually convinces Mullen that his rattletrap car needs a tune-up. Mullen is clearly reluctant to let anybody near his vehicle, probably out of fear of bombs, but seems willing to consider letting the clearly knowledgeable (and foreign) Vinnie do the work.
Predictably, the day ends at the pub. Vinnie acts loud and buys rounds. The pub's operators seem happy to have new blood in the area paying for meals and pints with cash. The owner's daughter, Julia, seems friendliest to the new arrivals and even tosses a wink Vinnie's way.