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The Company
Time: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 (wee hours).
Place: London, U.K.
Last Event: Returning the recovered "guerrilla journalism" footage to Roger Morton-Cox.
Once everybody is home again, the Agents who aren't either sleeping or too injured to work discuss what to do with Kamal and his four thugs. The eventual plan is to put them into their banged-up Range Rover – which Vinnie has hidden in a dark corner of the car park – and ram it into a signpost, leaving the mess for the police to find. Qoqa knocks out all five men with drugs that scumbags of this caliber might conceivably abuse, adding booze to the mix for good measure. To further confuse whoever ends up investigating the wrecked car full of stoned gangsters, Qoqa strips Kamal naked and scrawls "Traitor" on him in Arabic.
When Qoqa is done, Vinnie and Klas drag the unconscious heavies downstairs and seat them in the Range Rover. They stuff Kamal in the back. Then Klas plants the remaining illegal firearms on the goons, while Qoqa chucks an empty vodka bottle in the cabin for good measure. Finally, Qoqa carefully "cleans" everything, doing her best to ensure that the only fingerprints present belong to Kamal's guys. Before heading upstairs to clean up her makeshift interrogation chamber, she reminds Klas and Vinnie to wear gloves, and recommends a good place to crash the Rover (she spent time working as a cleaner in London before she joined the Company, so she knows all the best areas).
After that, Vinnie pulls on a pair of gloves and takes the wheel of the Range Rover, while Klas hops in one of the rental cars and follows behind. As police attention would be a disaster, they drive extremely carefully to the area Qoqa suggested. When it's clear that nobody is watching, Vinnie points the vehicle at a signpost, puts on the handbrake, pulls one of the thugs into the driver's seat, and pins down the accelerator. Then he takes the brake off and leaps back. The Rover obligingly lurches forward, rams itself into the pole with a resounding crunch, and stops. Klas picks up Vinnie at once and drives away from the scene; as far as Vinnie can tell, nobody is following.
Much later that morning, the entire team meets over a meal to discuss Luna-Tech's plans for the future. They decide that a week-long break is the first order of business – that should give those who were injured some time to recover, and afford a chance to lie low and watch for any repercussions from dealing with the Libyans. As Vinnie is unhurt, he intends to use the week to clean up and repair the group's rental vehicles, especially the badly shot-up van. He phones in to extend the leases, and then heads out to buy tools, spare parts, and paint. The gym bag full of money he found in the Range Rover proves to contain £20,000, so there's no shortage of petty cash to cover supplies and rental fees.
The next week sees the Agents resting under the watchful eyes of Ben and Qoqa (who's working around injuries of her own). Mostly, everyone stays in for the duration – although Anabel and Wen insist on experiencing the royal wedding festivities on April 29, toughing out their aches and pains to stand in a crowd, dressed in stylish clothing of Anabel's choosing. Anabel neurotically insists on walking and taking the Tube, saying something about London being a horribly unsafe place to drive a car. By the end of the week, Anabel, Hamid, Lev, Paul, and Wen have a clean bill of health from the team's medics, Paul attributing his speedy recovery to Guinness (prescribed by Qoqa over Ben's objections). Qoqa and Zhang are still somewhat sore, but mobile enough to drink vodka and exercise, respectively, to aid their recuperation.
The Agents also take the opportunity to watch their copy of Stephanie's footage. It seems to have been shot surreptitiously and in short segments, the photographer taking great care to establish time and place with each shot, and even greater care not to be seen. The content consists of atrocity after atrocity – an hours-long cavalcade of abductions, beatings, rapes, tortures, and execution-style murders. It's downright horrific, and Anabel can't even finish watching it.
Toward the end of the week off, Anabel makes sure that Terence receives a copy of the footage along with the promised intelligence report on the Libyan agents. Terence thanks Anabel for the information but doesn't say more. The Agents turn their own copy over to Chaturvedi via Ben, on the theory that it's likely to assist Company efforts in the near future. Chaturvedi promises to keep it safe, and recommends that the team develop its cover identity more – just in case. The Agents decide to work as Luna-Tech for the months of May and June, anyway.
On reopening for business on Tuesday, May 3, Luna-Tech is promptly hired for a low-key job. Two weeks later, they're contracted again. These assignments go beyond unchallenging, all the way to downright boring; they aren't quite "Who's stealing the paperclips?", but they come close. Then again, nobody gets shot! June brings three pieces of work, and while two of these are no more thrilling than May's projects, one is considerably higher-profile: an information-security project for a high-rolling producer, referred to Luna-Tech by Roger Morton-Cox. It seems that Roger is a man of his word, whatever his other flaws.
It's Sunday, July 3 when Chaturvedi calls up about something other than Luna-Tech. He has important news and wishes to meet with the group in person. Qoqa recommends a Pakistani restaurant with private rooms, and Chaturvedi says that he'll make reservations and ring back. The place turns out to have a room free, so the meeting is set for the evening.
Chaturvedi and Ben greet the team at the restaurant (which, to Jili and Wen's chagrin, seems to be the only Pakistani place in London that doesn't understand "vegetarian"). Once the food arrives and the staff have vanished, Chaturvedi gets down to business. First, he passes along news from Darmstadt: Staedert is pleased with the group's lower profile of late, and still thinks that the Luna-Tech cover is a good idea. Chaturvedi points out that she didn't mention the Libyan affair, which means that however messy it got at times, the Agents successfully avoided INTERPOL notices and their faces in the newspaper.
After that, Chaturvedi reveals the real reason for the meeting. It seems that Toru – the Company patron whom the team exposed as a human-trafficking Yakuza boss – has a new plan for expanding his criminal empire. Namely, he's looking to forge an alliance with the Russian mob "general" Georgi, whom the group put out of a job when they took down Grandfather in Greece. Both parties are in the human-smuggling business, possess contacts in regions where the other has little presence, and have suffered setbacks courtesy of the Company. Together, they could certainly assemble a far-reaching and powerful empire, pressing girls into prostitution across Europe and Asia, and shipping them anywhere there's a demand.
Chaturvedi adds that it's safe to say that Georgi and Toru share a common side goal: wreaking revenge on the Agents. He suspects that before the team exposed Toru, the Yakuza boss used his access to Company information to get a list of the group's old enemies – he's demonstrably Machiavellian in his methods, after all. And Georgi is without question the Agents' foe. Grandfather's demise was a severe blow to his credibility as a solver of problems and provider of security. With his "Red Army" largely intact, he's well-positioned to repair his reputation.
All Chaturvedi knows for sure is that the two gangsters intend to meet in person. He doesn't know where or even when, beyond "soon." When asked about the origin of this sketchy information, he admits that it's another tip from his INTERPOL contacts. The Agents are a little worried about this, as their troubles in Japan implied Yakuza influence over INTERPOL there – and worse, the CIA used INTERPOL to track down the group. Chaturvedi acknowledges that it could be a trap, but adds that Toru represents a major security risk to the Company who must be taken down, and that the team is uniquely qualified to deal with him and Georgi. He adds that Staedert is aware that the operation will be "messy" but approved the assignment anyway; it's that important.
After dinner, the Agents take their leave and return home, Jili and Wen showing up late because they stop to pick up some vegetarian food. Everybody agrees that acting without intelligence would be deadly – Georgi commands a well-drilled company of killers and enforcers, many of them ex-Spetsnaz, while Toru's soldiers are honor-bound and near-fanatic. Learning what they're up to, and where and when they're meeting, is vital. Hamid and Jili get the job of looking online for any signs of Toru traveling; the social-networking accounts of the mobster's daughter, Asuka, are a prime target. On the theory that the FSB may have a lead on Georgi, Anabel leaves a coded message signaling to V that the team would like to speak with her. She also leaves a message for the Canadian journalist that she tipped off after the Taluar seizure and the CIA-backed attack outside Irricana, on the off chance that the press has wind of something relevant.