EL GIZA.EGYPT


Terrorist leader Giovanni carefully observed the man seated comfortably across from him in a wide armchair. He was tall, lean, and gaunt, with a mop of red hair that draped a little over his forehead. His eyes were an intense light green, and he wore a black business suit. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two years old.

Giovanni's eyes dropped from the man down to the silver briefcase he had set upon the table. He knew what was inside that briefcase: billions of dollars' worth of computer microchips for sale on the black market, enough to drive all the computers in the world haywire.

"So, do we have a deal?" Yami Muto said. He extended his hand across the table.

Giovanni leaned back in his chair to think. He locked eyes with his head of security, James, standing by the door. He blinked twice, and James nodded. He had just received his orders.

Giovanni turned back to Yami, still seated composed in his chair. "Very good, sir," he said, "Thank you for doing business with me." He clasped hands with him. Yami smiled; the light, invisible tracking powder that had been on his hand had now been transferred to that of Giovanni.

The terrorist leader reached down and picked up the briefcase. Yami stood and followed him to the door. Giovanni nodded to him. "Your gift was quite valuable," he said, then added. "James will escort you out."

Yami felt something hard pressed to his back: the muzzle of a gun. Several more men stepped out from various other doors, and even—at this, he couldn't help smiling to himself—the closet, each of them pointing a gun at point-black range. Giovanni smiled and closed the door.

Yami supposed he should act surprised, but in reality, he had known where they had been hiding the entire time he had been discussing with Giovanni in the room.

Any time now…

Something crashed through the glass window: a small metal capsule, which immediately began emitting vast amounts of nerve gas which soon filled the entire room.

Yami, of course, had instantly snapped his gas mask on, and in the state of confusion that followed he dislodged James's gun, ducked into the heavy atmosphere of gas, and in a flash had tripped one of the men and had shot down two of the others.

The rest were uncoordinated and unable to follow as he jumped right out the broken window and fell several stories—straight into the bed of a pickup truck, lined with an inflatable cushion to gently break his fall.

He quickly got into a sitting position, pulled off his mask, and yelled at the driver in the truck, "We're finished here; hit it!" The driver, who was nothing but a shadow in the truck's body, gave him an affirmative wave, and the car sped off down the street, tires screaming. Yami lay back on the cushions and wiped the sweat from his face. Giovanni, no matter how furious he got, would never be able to locate a Yugi Muuto that didn't exist.

CIA HEADQUARTERS


 
"Heading directly west, presumably toward the nearest major city, which would be Cairo," said Heero Yuy, studying the digital map carefully on his computer. There was a single blinking yellow dot represented where Giovanni was headed. "Good job, Yami. He doesn't even know he's being traced."

"Are you sure giving him those chips was a good idea?" Yami asked, standing in the office before his superior. "I know they're all fake, but what if he has them tested? There won't be enough time for us to operate."

Once returning to their headquarters in Washington, DC, Yami had dropped his disguise, washing the red dye out of his tri colored gold, red and black and removing the green eye contacts, revealing sharp, dark violet eyes beneath.

"Not to worry, Yami," Heero said. "You have played Giovanni right into our hands. As long as we're able to locate where his base is, nothing else is of great importance, especially fake chips."

Yami bowed formally, and then turned to leave. Heero's voice stopped him. "Yami, do me a favor," he said, "Call Mizu over to my office. I need to speak with her."

"Sure," Yami said, and stepped out of the office, closing the door behind him. He stared around at the vast building he was now in: the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, of which he was but an agent.

He headed immediately for the office that he and his partner for the past three years, Mizu Li, shared. When he opened the door, she was seated at her desk, rapidly translating a coded document and scribbling the message onto a sheet of lined paper beside the keyboard. She had been the driver in the truck the previous night.

Once again, her gentle beauty struck him as he stepped into the office. Her soft facial features contracted so greatly with her inner personality, violent and daring, nursed under a horrifyingly abusive childhood. She did, however, possess the ability to demonstrate acts of great kindness and caring, and she could be as soft and tender as a mother whenever she chose.

Watching her, her dark blank hair with a wisp of purple tied up in a ponytail, wearing a white blouse and jeans that ran down to her feet where they opened in the end up to her socks. Concentrating intently on her work, she was the ideal model of a woman dedicated to her profession. Barely twenty-two, the same age as he was, she was angelic in his eyes.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Received an email from Syaoran," she said, "Sounds urgent, else he wouldn't have coded it." Syaoran was Mizu's brother, older than she was by four years, and a member of the United States Secret Service.

"Heero wants you," Yami said, dropping into a chair at the opposite desk that was his own.

"Hmmmm…" Mizu stared at the message she had just written. She raised an eyebrow.

"What's going on?" Yami asked.

"Not exactly sure myself," Mizu said. She handed the sheet of paper to him. "It's in a highly-advanced computer code," she said, "An improvement on the old zeros and ones. Now he's added twos."

"Looks like a bunch of crap," Yami said as he read the queer message. "Two birds shot down in the sky around Times Square; the Empire State Building's rod was on fire around six o' clock Thursday. Grilling steak in his kitchen. Smiley Face pin?

"We developed it when we entered intelligence services, so that our communication couldn't be monitored." Pointing to the indicated text on the page, she explained. She smiled.

"Pretty obvious once you know which way to look," Yami said, handing the paper back to Mizu.

Taking it, she put it through the shredder and tossed the remaining pieces into the wastebasket. "Now, if you'll excuse me," she said. "You said Heero wanted to talk with me?"

Yami nodded. Giving her an assistance smile, that had endeared, she walked past him and out the door. Watching, he saw her enter Heero's office.

Smiling softly to himself, Yami turned toward his own desk opposite Mizu's. Sitting down, he leafed briefly through his mail, and was surprised to find a postcard among the various other envelopes. Peering carefully at the childish scribbles, he easily recognized his girlfriends Tea's handwriting. Ever since he had first been recruited by the CIA as a college freshman, Yami and Tea's only connection the two lovers ever had were through the mail and phone calls.

 

"Mizu, you've been a little…detached lately." Heero stared hard at Mizu, who stood in the office before him.

Despite her resolve, Mizu could feel her courage tremble beneath his cold stare. "I know," she said quietly, "But it's been hard for being in full-time field work, mission after mission…it's very unnerving."


"More than that, Mizu," Heero said, leaning forward in his seat, "I've scanned your computer records, and I've monitored you for the past few weeks. Your actions are quite jagged."

Even though she knew he had every right to do this, Mizu could feel the anger rising within her, "You've been watching me? Like I'm some sort of government target!?"

"Please, Mizu, calm down," Heero said, "I've just been looking out for your well-being, is all. However, I would like to know what you are doing, and why you're jumping from city to city, first Los Angeles, then Chicago and then Houston. My men even tracked you once out of the country, in Spain."

Mizu hesitated, uncertain of whether or not she should tell him about Syaoran.

"Go ahead, Mizu," Heero persuade, "You can tell me. It's best that each partner know everything about the other person in a working relationship."

She decided that he was right. "It's Syaoran," she said, "He's having some problems with the government—constant threats of attack, brawls with the media, things like that. He wants to meet me in those conspicuous cities, easy to find, to discuss the matters. There's nothing more to it."

Heero stared at her, as if trying to see whether or not she was being honest. Finally, convinced that she was indeed telling the truth, he turned back to his computer. "I have your word that nothing else is going on?" he said.

Mizu nodded. "Of course," she said, "The last thing I'll do is betray my country."

He nodded, "All right. I just wanted to know what was going on. You can go."

Mizu nodded. Turning, she opened the door and was about to exit when his voice stopped her. "Remember, Mizu," he said, as she turned to face him again. "If there are any problems you want to discuss with me, my office will always be available to you."

She smiled warmly. "Thanks." Closing the door softly behind her, he watched her return to her own office.

"What was he talking to you about?" Yami asked, looking up from one of his letters. Glancing briefly at the envelope, Mizu couldn't conceal a smile.

"What?" he said genuinely confused.

"That's your cell phone bill, isn't it?" she asked.

He made a face. "Fifty-seven dollars. What a butt."

She shrugged. "Then maybe you should stop calling Tea every day."

His face took on an expression of mock-disappointment. "And miss checking up on my priceless girlfriend? Of course not."

He eyed her questioningly. "Back to where we started…?"

She shrugged off his stare, sinking back into her chair and switching on her computer once more. "Wanted to know why I was hopping around," she said, "I told him about Syaoran."

"How'd he know about your trips?" Yami asked, tossing aside the bill and picking up another letter.

She gritted her teeth, "He's been having men monitor me for the past few weeks." They've been following me everywhere, and he's even gone so far as to snoop around in my computer records. I'm gonna have to clear them all."

"Isn't that a violation of your rights?" Yami asked a little hesitantly, knowing that he was treading on dangerous ground when she was angry.

To his relief, she shrugged again. "You've really got no rights when it comes to you, the CIA, and Heero Yuy." She paused as she entered her password, and then quoted, "You're only committing a crime when you're caught." Highlighting all her records, she erased them all from the hard drive.

"He could get angry with you for doing that, you know," Yami couldn't help observing.

She watched as the last of her history records disappeared from the file archive. "Then he'll have to take those records and shove 'em up his butt," she said. Rising from her chair, she stretched to relieve muscles aching with nonuse.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

She closed the door behind her and walked out of headquarters completely. He saw her fill a cup of coffee along the way. She then exchanged a few friendly words with Owari Lee, the head of their mechanical team. Yami couldn't help sneering when he noticed how forced her smile was. Out of all the workers in the CIA, she hated him the most.

CAIRO.EGYPT


"You were right, sir." The head of Giovanni's medical team, Dr. Rex, peered carefully at the reading on the computer monitor. "That Yugi Muuto definitely put something onto your hand."

Giovanni removed his hand from the reader and walked up to the computer, staring as glowing red patches on the image of his right hand showed where something had certainly rubbed off during his handshake with the man.

Sitting inside a large black truck, his "portable base," he liked to call it, he had become suspicious that Muuto was more than he seemed after his escape the previous night, and had decided to have himself checked out to make sure there were no strings attached.

Apparently there were.

"What is that?" he asked, examining his hand carefully. It looked normal enough.

"You can't see the powder with the naked eye," Rex helpfully informed him, "It's so small and microscopic, it's nearly invisible. You can only detect it with special medical scanners and a computer like this one." He pointed to the patches on the screen. "It's a tracking powder," he said, "Designed so that Muuto could see where you were going every second."

"A very smart boy," Giovanni said, musing, "I wonder whether or not he works for the government, and if he does, for which one? There are just too many out there, waiting to be demolished." He paused, and then ordered, "Do a profile scan on all government files. Search Yugi Muuto. We should come up with something."

The computer scanned millions of records in less than a few seconds, returning with a finding: NO MATCH.

"Hm…" Giovanni thought hard. "Muuto is probably an alias," he said, "Very common among government agents who don't wish to be traced. Upload a facial image from the security cameras, and do a visual scan." Rex obeyed, and the computer spit out one match.

"Yami Muto," Giovanni read, peering over Rex's shoulder, "An agent of the United States CIA. Well, well, well, Yami, I wonder how long you'll last as my enemy?" He smiled with the wickedness of his heart.

One of the other guards entered the room and stood behind the two men for a few minutes, until finally Giovanni turned and acknowledged him. "What is it?"

"We've tested the chips, sir," the guard said, his face firm and serious, "They're all fake, every single one of them."

Giovanni simply shrugged. "I had a feeling they would be," he said. "At least I only had to pay a very small price. Very good, you may go." The guard turned and walked out.

Giovanni stood for a moment, thinking the situation over. Finally, after a long period of musing, he spoke. "I want the powder removed," he said, addressing Rex, "Return it in a package to me. I'm going to send the CIA off on a wild goose chase."

Moments later, an old man carefully backed his car out of a nearby parking lot, unaware to the fact that the CIA was now tracing the powder carefully attached to his license plate.