Not The Nine O'Clock Briefing
They'd just track Simpson down all over again, he knew. Even a small-time hood like that couldn't vanish forever.
(Colonel Jack O'Neill, from Not the Nine O'Clock Meeting)
He'd vanished.
The small-time hood had actually vanished.
But it couldn't be forever... could it?
~oOo~
ATF Briefing Room, 11th Floor, Federal Office Building, Denver, Colorado
{Friiiiing...friiiiing...}
{click}
"Mother -?"
"My darling boy! How absolutely lovely - and how unexpected - to hear from you... and if I might ask, how did you find me?"
"Don't overly concern yourself, Mother, it was almost as difficult as even you could wish. You seem to be uncommonly well hidden at the -"
"Hidden? My dear Ezra, I am hardly hiding, that would be so undignified. Just..."
"Lying low?"
"Resting."
"Hiding, out of sight, holed up, temporarily concealed, avoiding the lengthy arm and weighty hand of officialdom -"
"Thank you Ezra, that's more than obliging of you. Simply in between engagements will suffice. And don't imagine I didn't notice how smoothly you did not answer my question, -"
"Why thank you, Mother, I did learn from the best."
"I taught you that?"
"Ahh, no, so sorry to disillusion you, but I learned it from -"
"MAUDE!"
There was a silence.
"... him?" Over the speaker phone, the creamy sweet voice of one Maude Standish (aka Sauveterre aka Sharpe aka Skillicorn aka at least sixteen others that her loving son knew of) sounded as if it had suddenly and seriously curdled.
"...him." Her loving son agreed, rubbing one ear and blinking artlessly at his superior.
"And a delightful day to you too, Mister Larabee," the voice went on. "So thoughtful of Ezra to alert me that this was not a... private conversation. How did you locate me, Ezra, and what is it that can I do for you both? Though if it's anything to do with your loweringly respectable occupation of law enforcement, you needn't -"
"It is," Chris snapped.
"An' it isn't," Ezra added.
"Just tell us," Chris Larabee leaned forward and spoke with the flat, feral calm that intimidated the hell out of nearly everyone in all but three states of the Union (the three he'd never been near, to be fair). "What the hell have you - or rather Maude de Saussure - done to annoy the Air Force lately? Because they just damn near got your son killed."
~oOo~
Briefing Room, Stargate Command, Cheyenne Complex, Colorado Springs, Colorado
"Ezra Simpson was a small-time hood," Colonel Makepeace repeated for what may have been the twenty-third time - no one was counting. Or listening, for the most part. "He just wasn't that good, he can't vanish forever."
His fellow Colonel just gave him a sour look. Sure, O'Neill would have said the same but only a dozen times before even he got sick of hearing it. On the other hand, O'Neill wasn't the one with the rattled brains. This time.
"He has certainly managed to vanish for now," General Hammond gazed severely at his teams, "and as efficiently as his lady friend did in the first place."
"I suppose..." Daniel spoke up, in the gently reflective tone of voice that the entire base dreaded. They all looked at him, and he frowned back at them thoughtfully. "It would hardly be a coincidence, would it? That the woman completely vanishes, then the only person who seems to know her..."
O'Neill honestly didn't realize he was humming the theme from Jaws until everyone looked at him, with various, vanishingly small degrees of indulgence.
"Obviously they are," the General's lips twitched, "confederates of some sort."
"By all accounts, she's older than Simpson, late forties, maybe fifties," Daniel said. "I'd have put him at thirty, maybe a bit over. Jack -?"
Makepeace shrugged. "Doesn't mean they weren't... well," with a glance at Hammond, "you know."
"The endearment she used," Teal'c observed, "was, I understand, meaningful."
"Darling." Jack rolled the world out as if it was vaguely poisonous. "So they're close. Still doesn't mean squat -"
"They're both crooks," Makepeace snarled; to be fair (not that O'Neill was even slightly interested in doing that) the man still had a concussion and it wasn't doing his temper any favors.
The rest of SG1 and SG3 didn't have that excuse. It was, O'Neill bitched to himself, at least a bit different from the normal kind of screw up.
On the plus side, they weren't dead yet. Always a plus.
On the minus side, there was a probably Goa'uld bomb disguised as crap-ugly Ancient Egyptian jewelry somewhere in the country. Powerful enough to blow up most of the planet, if Carter and Daniel and TweedleTok'ra One and Two were right, and at least some of them ought to be, especially about stuff like that.
Somewhere. And they had no idea where.
Plus side, they knew the woman who had it, an intelligent (evidently), charming (apparently) and damn gorgeous (by all accounts) woman by the name of Maude de Saussure.
Minus side, she'd swindled it out of a rich but gullible collector - intelligent, charming and damn gorgeous she might have been, honest and law-abiding she clearly wasn't - and promptly, totally disappeared.
Plus side, they'd tracked down a syrupy sweet phone conversation between this Maude and an equally honest (not) second-rate crim in Denver, one Ezra Simpson. And they'd managed to trail him to a dive outside Denver, Charlie le Gurch's, where he was meeting other crims.
Minus, they'd managed to start a major brawl and wreck the joint, attract the police from two cities, damn near get arrested, screw up an ATF surveillance of the same dive... and all without the faintest idea how they'd managed it.
Oh, and lost Simpson in the bargain.
Triple minus, the Pentagon, the Chiefs of Staff and more importantly the General were not happy.
"I'm still waiting, Colonels," Hammond spoke with his patented dust-dry and unnervingly not happy calm. "As I understand it, you were sent to this..." He made a show of consulting the papers in front of him. "Charlie le Guerch's to locate our only lead to the alien threat and initiate contact - which was, I own, successful - and thereby obtain the current location of this threat - which was not successful. And to do this without attracting attention." He stared down at the photos showing the remains of Charlie's, and the copies of at least five police reports. "At which point you took the definition of unsuccessful to a level previously unheard of in the entire SGC."
A veritable ripple of winces ran around the room, only Daniel (who had never quite gotten the hang of being reprimanded anyway) refraining. Even Teal'c's eyebrow micro-quirked in the Jaffa equivalent of a wince.
"Hey," O'Neill spread his hands and tried to look innocent, "we didn't start it!"
"Simpson did," Major Warren of SG3 muttered, just loud enough to hear.
"Major -?"
"I think Simpson started it. Deliberately, and pretty much as soon as Doctor Jackson approached him. Sirs," he added, for the sake of decorum.
"And why would he do that?"
"Maybe he felt intimidated," Carter offered.
"By Doctor Jackson?"
There was a silence as they all looked at Daniel, who seemed to be trying to look as unintimidating as possible - and doing it brilliantly - while mildly insulted that he couldn't be intimidating.
"...Maybe not," O'Neill said finally. "And given he managed to get most of the guns, and yes, sir, we still don't know how, maybe not by the rest of us either."
"Then... I am still waiting for an explanation, people."
Silence.
Personally, O'Neill had an idea the General was going to be waiting for a hell of a long time, but his always shaky sense of self-preservation kicked in just before he said that aloud. "Daniel," he turned to the person who'd started this whole mess with just a translation or two, "are you sure it's that big a bomb? Maybe it would just blow up... a little of the whole damn country?"
"Uhhh... exactly what part of 'death and fiery despair to worlds without end' sounds little to you, Jack?"
"Hey, this Muffie -"
"Mafdet."
"Yeah, her - like she could be laying it on thick, or even lying? That's what Goa'ulds do, right? And we don't even know it's gonna blow soon."
"Or ever," Carter piped up, trying to be helpful, then wincing again as both Daniel and the General transferred their stares to her. "Though," she added hastily, "we can't assume that it won't, of course. "
"Correct, Major," Hammond went on in that this-side-of-sardonic tone, "which is why the matter of finding it was deemed to be urgent. And therefore, so is locating - without public notice - two minor but surprisingly elusive criminals." He sighed. "We're contacted other agencies who might have an idea - the FBI, CIA, DOJ -"
"NID?" Daniel piped up.
This time, even Hammond joined in the ripple of winces. "Not... yet, Doctor Jackson."
"Needs to be a bigger emergency than just the end of the world, for that, Daniel," O'Neill offered.
"It would appear that Ezra Simpson is not the man's true name, true?" Teal'c asked.
O'Neill rolled his eyes in his specific 'ya think?' roll. "Which helps us... not at all," he griped.
"I understood," Hammond said, "that it was agreed Maude de Saussure was also a pseudonym."
"There's no one by that name on any records in the entire country for the last thirty years." Carter shook her head. "There are about seventy Ezra Simpsons, but only three of which are unaccounted for. One was ninety-six when he last surfaced, one was last recorded as in a hospital in 1998 having..." She blinked. "A hysterectomy. And the third might be our Simpson. Not much in the way of police records, he seems to have been better at avoiding arrest than he was at, well," she shrugged, "actual crime."
"Known by any other names?"
"Not that we can find."
"Which is odd," Jack said, "given his profession. He's gotta have at least a handful, and I'll bet the one we have is one of the fakes."
"So," Teal'c offered calmly, "we should be seeking these two humans under alternate names."
That made everyone stare at him.
"Uhh... yeah," Daniel spoke finally. "Exactly. Not that there are more than a few... million of those in the country."
"And the rest," Makepearce muttered.
"What did the ATF agents you spoke to have to say?" Hammond looked across at the two Colonels. "Perhaps they have some information that could help us on that."
O'Neill couldn't help wincing yet again, and mentally editing the rather less than politic reaction of half a dozen very very angry Federal agents to the fuck up. "They don't seem to know much - they were keeping one of the other guys at this 'meeting' under surveillance, some illegal weapons transfer."
"And they... are somewhat upset that we blew their operation," Carter added. "There were two teams, Denver Teams Eight and Seven, and Colonel O'Neill spoke to both of their team leaders."
"Had to shut them up, sir." O'Neill smiled thinly. "They didn't appreciate the 'national security' angle I threw at them, but I got what I could out of the Team Eight leader; they seem to have only known him as Simpson, and are pretty sure their mark - the one that also got away when we blew the operation and yes, I heard all about that - did too. Simpson's really a minor player, minor crim with delusions of becoming major -"
"And smarter than he would seem," Daniel murmured. "Much, much smarter."
"Daniel?" Carter looked blank.
"Doctor Jackson?" Hammond looked bemused.
"DanielJackson?" Teal'c looked inscrutable, which was much the same thing.
O'Neill snorted. "Daniel, just because he called everyone in sight - what was it? - feculent -"
"Fecaloid," the linguist corrected blissfully, "and ephemeromorphous. And creodonts, and even blattoid."
"Yeah okay, but that doesn't make him smart, just over-educated for his place in the world - his place in the underworld," Jack amended with a smirk.
"And the fact that he outsmarted two elite teams?" Daniel said sweetly. "Four actually, if you include the ATF."
"Well, don't, because those guys aren't elite."
"Yes, they are."
"No, they're not."
"They are."
"Not."
"Their records say -"
"Daniel, they acted like we'd screwed up a world-shattering crisis." Jack saw the obvious words on his linguist lips, and went on quickly. "And then threw a joint tantrum that even I couldn't have matched on a good day. That foul-tempered team leader from Team Seven..." He scowled, unwilling to admit that he'd been bested in yet another war of words. Even if the agent's words had been way easier to understand and be insulted by than the criminal's.
Carter, who had arrived in time to hear the ATF leaders, sniffed in agreement. "He and his men really didn't like us, sir, and made sure everyone there knew it."
Hammond arched a sandy eyebrow at his second-in-command, not quite as elegantly as Teal'c would but just as eloquently.
"Oh yeah," Jack sighed, "less talkative but every bit as abusive as Simpson. Just not as quite as... creatively so,"
~oOo~
ATF Briefing Room, 11th Floor, Federal Office Building, Denver, Colorado
"I was polite."
Ezra, having heard the details from the others, and an admiring Team Eight, simply looked at his usually fairly truthful leader.
"Only called them fuckwits once," Chris growled. "And blundering assholes," he added after a pause, "but it was Buck who said shi-"
"Yes, Mister Larabee," Ezra's hand had flown over the speaker, "we can guess."
"Ah, sorry Maude," Chris bit down on the rest of his definition of politeness. "I get a bit unfriendly when some shi- brainless fu- idiot puts my men at risk." His eyes narrowed. "Or anyone else does, as you know."
"Don't be," the voice was a little sharper, and both men knew she'd heard the unspoken warning, "they are obviously utterly disagreeable and dangerous people, who could have got my baby boy hurt."
Chris huffed. She did sometimes surprise them.
"And I therefore do believe I myself should avoid any contact with them, in the interests of my own safety."
And then she sometimes didn't.
"So enlighten us." From his eyes, Ezra was thinking exactly the same thing. "Why exactly was the late unlamented Maude de Saussure exhumed from her illusory grave, Mother?"
"That is hardly a nice way to -"
"MAUDE!"
"Ezra, you really must do something about Mister Larabee's temper, darlin'."
"Oh, I do," Ezra murmured, "every chance I get."
"Can it Ezra, I spent the whole morning helping to make sure the reports from Team Eight saved your cover..."
~oOo~
Briefing Room, Stargate Command, Cheyenne Complex, Colorado Springs, Colorado
"We're having the police and ATF reports examined," Carter said finally, pulling up details on her laptop. "Only the preliminary ATF reports at this stage, and mostly Team Eight. It appears that the other criminals meeting Simpson know about as much about him as, well -" she pursed her lips, "- we do."
"Great way to run a racket," one of SG3 growled. "Didn't they even check him out?"
"If they did, they weren't admitting it to the authorities."
By some superhuman effort, O'Neill didn't actually say "well, duh," but he thought it loud enough for half the base to hear. Hammond clearly did.
"The consensus is that he is - was - very persuasive."
"Very convincing," Daniel nodded firmly. "Very, very smart."
"Daniel..." Jack held up a hand. "Give it a rest, will you? The man was a perfect example of a two-bit hood with too much education and pretensions of adequacy."
"Exactly!" Daniel looked around triumphantly, clearly waiting for everyone else to grasp what was so blindingly obvious.
The silence was deafening.
"Exactly... what, Doctor Jackson?" Hammond said patiently.
"A perfect example. Maybe too perfect?"
"Daniel," O'Neill pointed out what he knew the rest of the room was thinking, "we all know that from your point of view anyone who uses weird language -"
"Correctly!"
"- Correctly, has got to be a mastermind, but the -"
"Did I say that?"
The silence was even more deafening.
"I didn't actually say that, General." Daniel appealed.
Hammond met his favourite scientist's eyes, and instantly, firmly, decisively... prevaricated. "Not in so many words, son."
"Is it likely that Simpson has any idea why he is being hunted?" Makepeace interjected before Daniel could argue the point.
"No," Carter gave him the wide-blue-eyed look that she and Daniel had perfected for when they wanted to look and sound utterly certain. "Wherever he is and whatever he's hiding, he certainly has no idea who any of us were."
~oOo~
ATF Briefing Room, 11th Floor, Federal Office Building, Denver, Colorado
"Colonel Robert Makepeace, Major Carl Warren, Captain Alex Baker and Captain Jae Cho, all U.S. Marines." Ezra said placidly, flicking up details on his computer. "Major Doctor Samantha Carter, PhD, and the somewhat semi-legendary Colonel Jonathon 'Jack' O'Neill, both Air Force. All of them attached to NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs. The cover story is deep space telemetry but no one in Colorado Springs who actually thinks about it believes a word of that. Fortunately for them, the number of people in Colorado Springs who think is minuscule.
"The young man with the excellent grasp of linguistic abuse is a Doctor Daniel Jackson, PhD in archaeology, anthropology, and philology, who is also attached to NORAD in an... advisory capacity. A rather unique one, given that it seems to involves quite a startling measure of injuries and illness, but he is apparently paid right royally for his trouble."
"Yeah right," Larabee eyed his least respectable agent. "You an' JD been hacking military records again?"
"Good Lord no, that would be far too obvious," Ezra said. "Not to say mildly illegal. At least," he added after a pause. "I just set some feelers around the less respectable parts of Colorado Springs, you would be astonished how much gossip is spread by the military."
Larabee grinned.
"And of course law enforcement. Carter and O'Neill were arrested a while back, which always helps."
"Arrested."
"A pub brawl. It would seem to be their specialty. What did O'Neill have to say?"
"Not much beyond 'classified' and 'no comment'.. oh, and 'back off, for chrissake'. And a hell of a lot of fu-"
"And what did you tell them, may I ask?" Maude's voice was light and just slightly too careless. Chris's grin widened. "Mister Larabee -?"
"They didn't ask me, Maude, as far as they knew we were there supporting Team Eight and after someone else entirely. Which neither I nor the boys denied... or confirmed. I let Kelly and Buck handle it, they're experts at taking the verbal offense to the point where questions get buried."
"And you are not, of course," his loyal subordinate murmured.
"Then I fail to see -"
"Mother." All trace of humour left Ezra's voice. "This is no longer one of your cons, and no longer The Game. I'll be with you by tomorrow evening, we are going to sort this out and please don't make me have to follow you elsewhere. Trust me, you won't care for the fuss I'll make if I have to."
"Ezra!"
"I mean it, Mother. The other thing I discovered about all these unpleasant people is that they deal in deeper and more snake-infested levels of government than you want to deal with. The word is, a single phone call got the arrests dropped without question or argument."
"He's right, Maude. Buck isn't the only one who'll hate the level of ugly this could turn into."
The sigh that came over was superbly overdone, even by Standish standards. "Very well, I'll see you then... just leave your officialdom in Denver, darlin'."
{click}
"Officialdom?" Ezra put a hand to his mortally offended heart. "Me?"
Chris frowned. "Think she'll run?"
"But Mister Larabee, of course she will and yes, I know where, and yes, I'll be there. So with your permission, I'll take my leave -"
"Like hell you will."
Ezra blinked at him.
"I'm comin' with you."
"But -"
"No buts, Ezra - the others can run the show for a while, I've got a feeling about this."
"A less than sanguinary one?"
"Lot less."
"I'm afraid... I have to agree. You know we really should feel obliged let the Powers That Be in Colorado Springs know the truth."
"Not yet, not after they damn near got you killed once already." Larabee sighed. Of course, given you an' Maude will be in town, they'll know soon all too soon anyway."
"Chris, you really believe Mother and I cannot blend in? Whereas you..."
Chris scowled, then grinned. "I'll be there lookin' for Simpson, given how he helped the Air Force fuck up our operation."
"Wonderful. He is shaking in his shoes, I assure you."
"Think the Air Force'll work out who he works for in a hurry?"
"The military -? Please, Mister Larabee, they have never been known for their leaps of insight." Ezra sniffed. "The chances of them linking Ezra Simpson with Team Seven are about as slight as... let us say, aliens landing on Cheyenne Mountain."
~oOo~
Briefing Room, Stargate Command, Cheyenne Complex, Colorado Springs, Colorado
"He's in Team Seven," Daniel appeared at the General's doorway the next morning, startling both Hammond and O'Neill into spilling their coffee. "The ATF deliberately didn't tell us, but he's got to be a member of Team Seven."
Jack scrubbed at his uniform and scowled at his civilian. "What?"
"Simpson. Here." Daniel, with one of those leaps of insight that were as annoyingly unpredictable as they were irritatingly priceless, was brandishing a printout like a Holy Grail. "I was curious -"
Well yes, Daniel was always curious.
"And I just thought -"
Yes, and always thinking.
"And so I checked the two teams that were there that night, to see if we'd missed any eyewitness accounts. One of Team Seven wasn't there - or rather he was - Ezra Standish, undercover operative.
"And get this, General - his mother's name is Maude."
The General flicked through the pages quickly, then nodded. "Good work, Doctor Jackson. Colonel, you leave at once for Denver."
~oOo~
ATF Offices, 11th Floor, Federal Office Building, Denver, Colorado
Five ATF agents stopped what they were doing as one, and gazed innocently - with wildly varying degrees of success - at their visitors from the Air Force.
Finally, the youngest of them spoke up, altogether far too eager to be helpful to be of any help whatsoever.
"Well actually... he left last night."
-till next time...-