Torchwood: LA
Chapter 3: Gambits
"His name is Adam Mitchell," said Ryan. "British national, age twenty-six. Green card expired as of seven months ago. Security camera footage has him hanging around the coffee shop across the street for the past few days, but it was 6:45 this morning when he tried the lock on the front door. So we let him in and detained him before he could draw any attention to us."
"Is he an alien?" asked Jack. They were looking at the man in the interrogation room. The young man did not look like any alien Bauer had ever seen; of course, the sample size which Jack had to draw conclusions from was in the neighborhood of slim and none, with Slim having decamped at some time in the recent past.
"Space alien? No," said Ryan. "We tested him: he's human. However, I did say his green card has expired, clearly placing him in the 'illegal' subset of aliens, Jack. Try to keep up."
"What's he doing here?" asked Gwen. "What does he want?"
"I was not able to get that yet," admitted Ryan. "However, he has been liberal about several other things. For one, and this is where it gets interesting, he claims to have worked for Henry Van Statten at his compound in Utah."
Jack almost did a double take. Gwen did. Henry Van Statten was not a name to be dropped lightly. The powerful billionaire's disappearance and subsequent discovery – wandering the streets of downtown San Diego with a genuine case of clinical retrograde amnesia – had dominated the news cycle for weeks, right up until the 456 Crisis. Even Jack, who had been on the run at the time, had been able to follow the story as details were revealed night after night on newscast after newscast. There had been multiple conspiracy theories, of course: a secret base, rumors of dozens of dead private military contractors, supposed government coverups, etc. Some had even suggested that Van Statten's "amnesia" was nothing more than a clever ploy to escape justice for whatever had actually happened in Utah.
"Does he know what happened in Utah?" asked Jack.
"Daleks," said Gwen as a quick aside, with an unmistakable undertone of Shoosh!
"Turns out," continued Ryan, "there was an Adam Mitchell on Van Statten's Salt Lake City payroll. Under the heading 'Miscellaneous Research Support.' Was listed as officially missing after the incident at that facility, and then suddenly turned up in Manchester a year later. Made no effort to conceal his whereabouts in England. Bank records all point to normal transactions: groceries, bills, music, rent…not the kind of things one puts on a credit card if one is trying to stay hidden, especially after he managed to successfully drop off the grid for the entire year previous." Ryan's voice went quiet as he listed the next item of interest: "Served as the executor of his father's estate, after he died of cancer."
The major handed Gwen a folder. Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Gwen spoke.
"You were going to interrogate him again?" she asked.
"Ma'am, I was going to wait for you and give you the opportunity."
"No," she said, and then she turned and handed the folder to Jack. "Bauer, you're up. Let's see what you can get out of him."
Bauer strode into the interrogation room and sat down across from Adam. The young man was clearly nervous, but not overly so. He proved it by casually wiping a cowlick of black hair off of his forehead and saying, "Great, another one of you."
"Mr. Mitchell, my name is Jack Bauer. I am the second in command of this facility and I have some questions for you."
Adam became agitated at that, to the point of breaking his slouch and sitting up to the table. "'This facility?' Why don't you call it what it is? It's Torchwood! Torchwood! And where is Gwen Cooper, anyway? Ms. Cooper! Oh, Ms. Cooper!" He looked into the one-way mirror, which was actually not a one-way mirror, but a decoy, and thus he looked silly talking to an empty wall while Gwen, Ryan, and Caftan watched him on the hidden camera monitor.
"Mr. Mitchell, you will answer my questions," said Jack, this time a little forcefully. That got Adam's attention, and quieted him down. But he remained sullen and defiant.
Jack had quickly reviewed Mitchell's file before going into the interrogation room. He had mapped out several questions that were of prime importance to get answered in this session, and he had prepared several approaches for how to get his subject to talk. Part of the skill of interrogation, however, as Jack well knew, was being able to adjust one's approach on the fly based upon how the subject presented himself. And Adam was presenting himself in a way that Jack thought he recognized. Quickly, with a calculus done entirely at the subconscious level, Bauer came up with a gambit and tried it.
"How do you know about Torchwood?" There. Still a question, not giving up the power of the situation, but giving the illusion that the interrogator had slipped up infinitesimally.
"I've been searching you for some time," said Adam, "even before the 456 Crisis. Mostly in Britain, with the Torchwood Three team, but I had gotten close enough to know when you guys moved your operation to the US." Adam's demeanor changed; his eyes flashed. "Aren't you going to ask me how I found this place?"
Paydirt! thought Jack. In fact, possibly the mother lode. He had gotten Mitchell talking. Jack had thought that Adam would be a bragger, wanting to rub it in to Torchwood's face how he had gotten past their security screens. His gambit had paid off. Now I just need to keep the sluice flowing.
"How did you find this base?"
"Oh, it wasn't hard. See, as I told your friend Mr. Ryan, my job with Henry Van Statten was pretty much as a…curator, of his rather unusual collection. Van Statten liked to collect alien artifacts, very much like you. So it seemed only logical that, after what happened at Salt Lake, those artifacts would fall into the hands of the only quasi-government agency specifically tasked with recovering alien technology, vis-à-vis Torchwood."
"The artifacts were that easy to trace?" asked Bauer, not so much for Adam's benefit as that of those watching behind the hidden camera. I really need to talk to these people about security protocols.
"No," continued Adam, "but I still had the names and addresses of other collectors of alien paraphernalia all over the West Coast. Mr. Van Statten liked to send me along whenever he purchased a new piece, to verify its authenticity. I contacted some of them, to see if they had heard what happened to the Utah artifacts. They were more than happy to share what they knew. By the way - the Local 502 Pipefitters and Alien Collectors wants me to pass along how very, very unhappy they are about the way you lot have been using eminent domain to seize their alien stuff. FYI."
He's starting to feel stronger. Time to change to a different line of inquiry; keep him off balance. "So you went to the US to follow us," led Jack. "How did you get into this country? Your green card has expired. Are you aware that you are here illegally, and as such are subject to US immigration law?"
Adam laughed. "Seriously? I break into one of the most secret bases in the world, and you're threatening me with a deportation hearing?"
You didn't break in, hotshot, thought Bauer. This was going to be easier than he thought. After the wild success of his initial salvo, the one thing that Jack had been worried about had been that Mitchell would feed him disinformation designed to distract from truth. But so far, Jack had not detected any subterfuge on Adam's part. The young man was turning out to fit Bauer's preconceived notion of an arrogant amateur to a 'T.' All he had to do was stay out of the way and let Adam's diarrhea of the mouth run its course.
"How did you get into this country?" repeated Jack. It was not one of his critical questions, but it would open the door to one that he did need an answer for.
"The brother of one of the mercs who worked for Van Statten lived in Birmingham," said Adam. "I'd met him once, when he visited. He owns a transport ship. I looked him up when I got back to England. No one had told him what had happened to his brother in Salt Lake. He returned the favor by letting me stow away to Veracruz. From there, I snuck across your border into Texas. Really easy to do."
Yeah, I know, kid. Bauer's professional mind took back over. Seems logistically feasible, and not a rehearsed story. He's not lying to me. Now to find out what Ryan wanted to know.
"Is that how you got back to England? Did you stow away on a ship?
"Huh?" asked Adam, and he seemed genuinely taken off guard. His off-putting manner seemed to be down. Bauer sensed the change, but also sensed there was something behind it. Careful, but no choice other than to press on now.
"Because there's no record of you going through British customs anytime in the past eighteen months. And you certainly wouldn't have needed to sneak into your home country, even if you'd lost your passport."
Adam hesitated, and Jack could tell it was more than just trying to avoid being caught in a lie, or the sudden realization that Torchwood's surveillance and investigative assets were more formidable than anticipated.
"Yeah, I hitched a ride with someone," said Adam, and Jack could tell that the young man had suddenly become strangely distant. Shit!
Jack found a ray of hope to latch on to, however. He's not resisting; he just doesn't want to talk about this, for some reason. Jack decided to table that line of inquiry, and go into his next critical question. He had to get Adam talking again, so he resorted to an attack on the man's ego.
"How do I know any of this is true?"
"Excuse me?" said Adam.
You heard me. "How do I know that you worked on alien technology? You have an engineering degree but, for all I know and in today's economy, you could have been Van Statten's janitor. What proof do you have?"
Adam, his momentary reticence gone, began to speak angrily in defense of his story. "I found you, didn't I? The fact that I even know about the Utah artifacts' existence should tell you something. I studied those artifacts for years. I could describe some of them for you. Or better yet – did you happen to find among the artifacts a brown notebook with technical notes and the phone number of a rather homely Mormon girl on the back cover? That's mine."
(In the other room, watching on the hidden camera monitor, Gwen and Ryan both turned to Roy. Roy shrugged, and then, when he realized the other two were still staring at him expectantly, he sighed and left the room to go search through boxes upon boxes of alien tech.)
Back in the interrogation room, Jack was listening as Adam offered to provide a handwriting sample of exactly two words. Time to ask the big question, thought Jack.
"Mr. Mitchell, why are you here?"
Doot…deet…doot…deet…
Mostov and Barin's safehouse turned out to be almost twenty kilometers away from the building Yuri had followed Bauer to. It was a small ranch house in a middle class neighborhood, the lawn kept up just well enough to blend in. The inside of the house was spartan, as would be expected for two professional assassins who just used it as a place to rest and take meals.
They hadn't discovered the significance of that building, thought Yuri. Otherwise, they would have set up their base closer.
"Sit down and relax, Malinin," said Barin. "We have to report in to Director Chuikov." He and Mostov went into another room, leaving Yuri sitting on a couch. As Yuri looked around, he saw a pair of assault rifles stacked against the fireplace. He went over and looked at the guns. In addition to the rifles, there were grenades, body armor, and boxes of submachine gun ammunition.
This is not a surveillance operation, he thought. This is gear for staging an assault.
Yuri had been examining the weaponry and ruminating on these thoughts for about ten minutes when the other two men came back into the room. They strode with purpose, and began to gather up the guns and supplies.
"What's going on?" Yuri asked.
Mostov stopped and turned to him. "Chuikov's ordered the next phase of our mission," the young assassin said. "We are going in."
"Going in? To do what?" demanded Yuri.
"We are taking that building," said Barin as he donned a bulletproof vest. "And you are helping," Barin added, tossing Yuri a spare vest.
"Wait! Taking the building? Why?"
"Chuikov's orders," said Mostov. "He's assigned you to us."
"No, I mean why are we risking a war to raid a building?" asked Yuri. It made no sense; Bauer was contained, and there were easier ways to eliminate him than invading an American government bureau.
"There are certain…items… inside that building," said Barin. "Technologies that Moscow has deemed to be vital to Russian interests."
"What sort of items?" asked Yuri.
Mostov and Barin looked at each other. "British items," said Barin after a pause.
"But what about Bauer?" asked Yuri.
Barin shrugged. "Chuikov didn't say," he said, and then went back to gearing up.
Yuri considered what the two men had told him for a moment, and then, with a speed they apparently did not realize he still had, he grabbed a pistol from a box by the couch and pointed it at Barin. "Stop!" he shouted.
The other two men froze. "Yuri," said Mostov, "what are you doing?"
"We are doing nothing!" said Yuri. "I want to talk to Chuikov, and find out where this madness is coming from."
Mostov looked to Barin, who simply shrugged again and gestured for the younger man to hand over his phone to Yuri.
"Fine," said Barin. "Call Chuikov yourself. Though you may have to wait for an answer; the line will not be monitored, as we have gone to operational silence since the 'go' code was given."
"Then we will wait," said Yuri, settling down into a chair and keeping his gun pointed at the two men.
Doot…deet…doot…deet…
"He wants what?" asked House, as he sat back down with his coffee. The six Torchwood members were all seated in the conference room, watching the video playback of Adam's interrogation.
"He wants to be your coworker, Greg," said Roy derisively. "He's heard about what a great team player you are, so he wants to sign up to work next to you in the medical bay and listen to conservative talk radio for hours on end."
Bauer ignored the interruption. "That's essentially it," he explained to the team, making note of the informal nature of Torchwood Seven's staff meetings. "Mr. Mitchell came here because he feels he is uniquely capable of discovering the secrets behind the Utah artifacts. He came to us to offer us his services."
A couple of laughs and at least one snort were heard from around the table. Even Gwen was unable to keep a straight face, but she did get right back to business.
"Roy, were you able to find any evidence to support Mr. Mitchell's claims of expertise?"
"I didn't find any notebook, no," said Roy. "But I did find a box full of internal shipping receipts. Almost all of them are signed 'A. Mitchell,' and the descriptions given on the attached memos do match some of the items we've already cataloged."
"Okay, so he had access to the artifacts and rarely missed a day of work," said Ryan, "but we already knew he was in their research department. That doesn't prove he was Van Statten's head science guy. He could very well have been their janitor," he said, with a nod in Jack's direction.
"Why not give him a test?" said Lois out of the blue. "Give him one of the artifacts, one that we've already figured out what it does, and see if he can tell us what it is?"
"I'm not giving him access to alien tech," said Gwen.
"I'm not saying give him something dangerous," countered Lois, "Why not one of those never-ending torches, or that thing that blocks out radio waves -"
"The question is," said Jack, raising his voice to be heard, "and the question remains, what do we do with him? I agree with Gwen – this guy turning up here and finding his way to Torchwood is very suspicious. Plus, there are still elements to his story that we have not gotten yet. I think we need to keep interrogating him, until we have the full picture of how he got here and what his intentions are, and then we will have to decide what to do with him."
"Well, he won't go for retcon," said Lois. "He's already paranoid about eating or drinking anything. If we try to retcon him, we'll have to pour it down his throat."
"Of course he knows about retcon," said Gwen. "Van Statten was manufacturing his own retcon, using it on former employees who had held sensitive positions. Makes what happened to him damned fitting, if you ask me."
"What's retcon?" Jack whispered to House.
"A drug that we use," answered House. "Makes you forget…whatever we want you to forget. It's like a 'space rufi.'"
"Greg?" Ryan was saying, continuing once he'd gotten the doctor's attention. "Can you aerosol-ize the dosage? Pump it into his holding cell?"
"No," said House. "Retcon via aerosol doesn't work. The amount of retcon we'd need to deliver a sufficient airborne dosage is so large that it would affect us, too. We'd all be walking around for the next three weeks wondering what the hell we did with our keys."
The room was quiet for a moment, and then Gwen spoke up. "Okay, we can't make any decisions about our guest until we know more." She turned to Bauer. "Jack and Ken will continue to interrogate him. For now, though, let's put him back in holding and let him stew. Maybe he'll think that we no longer find him useful, and that will scare him into talking more." She pushed herself up from the table, with the rest of the team following suit.
"Who else is hungry?" she asked.
Doot…deet…doot…deet…
Contrary to what Barin had said, Yuri did not have to wait a long time for a response from Moscow. The phone rang, and he picked it up.
"I take it Malinin is being difficult," said Chuikov's voice.
"That's right, Nikolai, I am," he said.
"Malinin? What is the problem there?"
"Why are you ordering this…this madness?" asked Yuri.
"Yuri, there are things going on at the highest levels which you are not aware of," said Chuikov. "The Americans have gained possession of technology that could be used against us. We cannot allow that to happen. We must have that technology. That is why I am ordering you to go into that building and obtain it for Mother Russia."
"For Russia," repeated Yuri, somewhat dubiously. He knew some of the men in Subarov's administration were out for their own gain as much as for the home country.
Chuikov seemed to ignore any subtext behind Yuri's comment. Instead, he attempted to put an end to the discussion by giving the former assassin a direct order. "Agent Malinin, you are to assist Agents Barin and Mostov in the retrieval of the technology from the Americans. The three of you will take that building, clear it of all opposition, and acquire the technology."
Yuri was not taken aback by Chuikov's order. He knew that an order to "acquire" something within a building meant to eliminate anyone they encountered inside of it. However, he also knew something that Chuikov did not.
"There is one thing that you are not aware of, Nikolai," said Yuri.
"What's that?"
"Jack Bauer is in that building."
There was not even the briefest of pauses. "Fine," said Chuikov. "Kill him too. I really don't care." And then he hung up.
Doot…deet…doot…deet…
As Yuri stood watching the other two Russians load up their truck, and Lois was going from one Torchwood member to another collecting money for a late lunch run, Ryan was walking Adam down to the holding level.
"When do I get to speak to Gwen Cooper?" asked Adam.
Ryan said nothing, just opened the door to the stairwell with his keycard.
"I can help you people," Adam reiterated. "Don't discount me."
"Yeah, whatever you say, sir," said Ryan as he opened the door to the holding cell.
Adam hesitated, and then, when he saw that Ryan was not going to change his mind, he walked into the cell.
After Ryan had shut the door, Adam laid down on his cot. He was thinking about the sequence of events that had landed him in the custody of an organization so secret that most people did not know it existed.
But he was also thinking about the now-obsolete Senex XT-200 security system that he had noticed powering all of the internal door locks in the facility, including the one to his holding cell.
Doot…deet…doot…deet…