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Vauxhall Cross, London, United Kingdom, 08:43, 16 July 2012
The SIS Building, the headquarters of MI6, is located besides Vauxhall Bridge, and colloquially known as "Babylon-on-Thames" within the intelligence community. It always struck Emily as quite ironic that Britain's most secretive agency occupies one of the most striking buildings in London. A vast and imposing edifice of aluminium and glass, reminiscent of ancient Ziggurats, it looms like a large, ominous ghost over the Vauxhall Cross.
This morning, as usual, the streets smelled of diesel fumes and the river. Cling onto her umbrella while braving the rain-charged wind, Emily hurried up the steps towards the main entrance. With a slight hesitation, she pushed open one of the specially designed doors to the lobby. She shot a quick smile at the front desk, where a young man in a dark blazer, neat flannels, smart shoes, and a posh blue tie, the regulation uniform of the service, awaited her. An anonymous man, thought Emily, who looked far too neat to have just got up. Emily Prentiss showed him her identification. The young man handed her a pass and led her towards the door without saying a word.
She slotted her pass into the barrier. A small light flashed green as the front of one of the security capsules opened, and she took a deep breath before stepping inside. She felt as if she'd travelled light years in the brief instant while enclosed. When the rear door slid open silently, she stepped out into another dimension, and another era. Vauxhall Cross is a temple, a fortress of glass and steel, much like the DGSE Alliance Base in Paris, and Emily felt a subtle shift inside her as crossed its security threshold, and was borne upwards to the eighth floor.
The elevator jumped slightly as it stopped to a hold, and the doors slid open noiselessly, exposing a maze of corridors before her. The labyrinthine in a state-of-the-art Aztec temple, mused Emily. The anonymous man escorted her through the outer office and into what must be Clyde's inner sanctum. The heavy wooden door opened, revealing a small reception room, where a young woman glanced up and smiled: "Emily Prentiss? Welcome, he's expecting you."
She didn't mention anything about being late, breathed Emily, the damned Jubilee line, don't understand how can the train just stop. Relaxing slightly as she glanced at the inevitably out-of-date copies Time Europe and the Economist. Then she stole a glimpse at the small baroque mirror on the wall to quickly check her appearance, and it returned an image of unexpected composure. Her straight, slightly damp black her fell more or less evenly around the pale oval of her face, although it has gotten longer compared to the last time they met in DC, under circumstances that are still painful for her to recall. Her dark eyes were a little bruised by fatigue, perhaps, but the overall result could serve, after all, he'd seen her in much worse. Encouraged, she followed the young woman to the office next door.
'Thank you, Lois." Clyde stood up, and waited for his secretary to leave the room and close the door. Yet not offering her one of the comfortably stuffed wingback chairs as Emily had expected, he strode across the room and enveloped her in a tight embrace, planting a kiss on each of her cheek as he so often did in Paris.
Emily smiled. With the coveted agent look no longer needed; Clyde is back to his sophisticated self, from the well-pressed suit, the polished shoes and the pale blue shirt that subtly brought out his eyes.
"Well someone has certainly moved up in the world," Emily commented as she noticed the antique maps that graced the oak paneled walls and the large Turkish carpet with intricate red and blue patterns on a muted green base, "when I first met you in Paris, if I remembered correctly, you had a desk in the same room as the three of us. Queen Anne style? This is a little decadent, even for you."
Clyde raised his eyebrows in mock offense: "Don't be quite so critical, love. I've only been here for a couple of months. The maps, carpet, books and files are mine, but most of the furniture, and décor, for this matter, are sort of inherited from my predecessor, whom currently enjoys her retirement somewhere further up along the river. I considered about moving my things over, but then thought you might not particularly enjoy an office space with only a spare desk, a grey terminal, a touch tone phone and a FBI mug, which is flanked on one side by a combination-locked cupboard. So I left most of my stuff in my old workplace on the other side of the river, where, from today on, you will preside. Figured you might be more comfortable that way. And," he added before she can inject an opinion, "My profiling skills might not be as exceptional as Agent Hotchner's correct me if I'm mistaken, when we first met in Paris, you weren't particularly fond of me."
DGSE Counterterrorism Intelligence Centre, Paris, France, 08:53, November 19, 2001
Emily Prentiss jogged across the polished floors of the Alliance Base, dragging a rather large suitcase behind her. Her cheeks are still red from the chilly november air, but she couldn't be more bothered about it as she pressed on upwards.
The Joint Task Force number twelve, abbreviated simply and blandly as JTF-12, of which she is now a member, is an organization coordinated by interpol to which the western agencies supposedly contributed their best and brightest. She's not sure if she's supposed to feel flattered by the nomination. Perhaps they thought it was convenient that I spoke all four of interpol's official languages, she thought bitterly, or perhaps they no longer want to deal with me.
And now she's late for their first meeting together.
To her great relief, Emily saw that although the doors to the conference room were open, no one has sat down yet. Thank goodness! She would not have to endure all the patronizingly patient glances that she has seen much too often at long oval hardwood tables. Just inside the doors stood a bullish man who talked quietly to a dark haired young woman, who listened with obvious attentiveness. The beginning of a pas de deux, perhaps? Emily thought with a smirk. She's also quite pleased to discover that one of her future team members are still missing, which means that she is not the last person to arrive.
Sean McAllister, the Interpol agent with whom Emily has already met in DC, assumed an expectant attitude by the window: "We're waiting for Six. Your team leader, in fact, if he manages to show up eventually. It wouldn't hurt for you to catch your breath and adopt an attitude of saintly patience"
Emily attempted to do so. She looked out of the massive windows onto the busy Parisian streets, still congested with cars spilled over from the morning rush hour: "So what's the whisper on our new Unit Chief?"
"Besides the fact that he's apparently a perfect specimen of the Vauxhall Cross genus? He's also an old Harrovian."
Emily groaned inwardly, "Remember the joke about a lady walking into a room occupied by three former public schoolboys? The Etonian asked her if she'd like the sit down, the Wykehamist pulls up a chair, and the Harrovian..."
"...Sits in it" Sean replied with a thin smile, "Precisely."
Emily had just turned her attention back to the street, when Sean looked over her shoulder and proclaimed happily: "I think we finally have a full house!"
The MI6 portion of JTF-12 is represented by Clyde Easter. Tanned and blue-eyed, his flannel suit murmured unmistakably of Savile Row, he cut a glamourous figure in this otherwise nondescript gathering. There's something funny about him, and she can't quite describe what it is, until the large man by the door took one look at him, and drawls, in a rather convincing Russian accent: "I vas vandering ven ve meet again, Meester Bond!"
"You won't be able to get away with it this time," Clyde managed with an accent worse than Sean Connery's, "So I see you haven't lost your delicate sense of humour, Agent Wolff."
Clyde is then welcomed into the room and introduced to the team. Hands were shaken and Sean moved smartly across the room to close the door. To Emily, imbued as she was in a serious and restrained culture back at the CIA, Clyde appeared slightly preposterous. For a man of his age, and he looked no more than thirty-four or -five, he was much too expensively got up. His good looks- the dark blonde curls, the level blue gaze, the sculpted nose and mouth- were far too emphatic. This was an individual, and every ounce of her professionalism rebelled against the idea, whom people would remember.
With pleasantries done, Sean informed the team that besides from graduating at the top of his class at Cambridge, Clyde was also a Royal Marine decorated with the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, a fact that is later referred to by Garcia as "as Oh hello as it gets", he saved three of his men in Bosnia.
Clyde raised his hands in modest demurral, "Welcome to JTF-12. As all of you are very well aware, this team is formed in response to the World Trade Centre Atrocity. Our respective government agreed that there must be no question of terror-related intelligence being compromised by the lack of communication or turfs wars of any kind. Interpol proposed the creation of this special task team, composed of Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst, represented by Agent Jeremy Wolff, the French Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur, by Agent Tsia Mosely, and the American Central Intelligence Agency, by Agent Emily Prentiss. I myself, as all of you have already know, is British SIS. Besides from working closely with each other, we liaise with Agent Sean McAllister here from Interpol, as well as various local police office where we operate. In addition to our main mission to profile terrorists, we are also responsible for the coordination of operations relating terror networks and the setting of intelligence targets. These are immense responsibilities in challenging times, but I am nevertheless exceptionally honoured to lead a team of tremendous talent."
Despite Emily's acute irritation that Clyde pronounced the names in such a way that it became abundantly clear that he at least spoke German and French like a native, he made a point that she was in no mood to argue with. In her years with the CIA, she had never felt such an unflinching unanimity of purpose.
Or at least until Tsia, the young frenchwoman with serious brown eyes, inquired rather pointedly: "With all due respect, sir, before you finally managed to make an appearance we were all quite curious: how did our CIA counterpart here make it all the way across the Atlantic before you even crossed the Channel?"
Clyde Easter's Office, Vauxhall Cross, London, United Kingdom, 09:30, 16 July 2012
"So why were you late for our first team meeting in Paris?" Emily asked, silently delighted to notice that Clyde still wore the watch she'd given him as a token of thanks in Prague. After, all She has been quite curious for many years.
"Ah, well, that. I recall telling Tsia, in arrogant, typical Legoland fashion, that I was otherwise occupied," Clyde smiled, and a slight twinkle reached his blue eyes, mesmerizing Emily as it did so many years ago, "But if I tell you now that the Eurostar just bloody stopped in Waterloo station, would you believe me?
Notes: So what do you think? Do you like how the story's going? Please let me know, all advice and criticism are highly appreciated! The BAU will also make an appearance soon, in the next two chapters according to how things look now, when Emily and Clyde request their help working on a very serious case ;)
