Ends with a Horse, Part 3c
In which we make the acquaintance of a pair of young men in dark suits.
The room they worked in was painted dull grey. It was no different from any of a dozen rooms in the facility, except it was more comfortably furnished than the interrogation rooms and holding cells, and the walls were lined with high-tech communications equipment. The door also opened from the inside, and the Ident Cards they wore displayed on lanyards around their necks—when coupled with their retinal scans, which were registered in the system, and the passwords they had memorized—granted them full run of all but the most exclusive parts of the building.
Both of them aspired to greater things. Each of them had applied to the elite program, only to have their applications returned with an unsigned note indicating that a renewed application at a later date might be acceptable. Rejection stung, but they were both still young and full of themselves, and both were confident that someday, they'd enter the elite ranks of the operative agents, shed their born identities, and don the blue gloves. In the meantime, they wore the suits. Those, afterall, could be purchased in any men's wear store at the shopping triplex, and they wanted to show that they could look the part.
Meanwhile, Anatoly Tse and Boromiro Janiewicz worked the lower rank jobs that supported the operation. Most of their time was spent in the grey room, monitoring the listening and tracking devices. Occasionally, they were called upon to serve coffee or run errands for the agents with the more glamorous jobs. Once in a while, they set up for the confidential meetings of the higher elites who directed the field operatives, and occasionally, they were present when a field operative made his report. Sometimes, they were called upon to use their technical skills, when a ship needed to be remote-flown, or a wave needed to be sent from a disguised or spoofed source.
Mostly, though, they sat and waited, and monitored. "Monitoring" was an elegant way of saying that there was a lot of downtime in their jobs. When an operation requiring their technical skills was underway, they were indeed busy, but in between operations, they waited. And they talked. They made light of not being among the elite, and told each other that it was "just a matter of time, before they accept my application." Such was the life of the Blue Hand wannabes.
The truth was, they knew a lot. They were spook wannabes, and they paid attention to everything. They knew a lot more than either of them let on. And yet they were human, and young men, and they wanted to be able to boast about how "in-the-know" they were to someone. Since they both had the same level security clearances and highly overlapping assignments, they talked to each other, in a perpetual game of one-upmanship.
Their approach to the game was different. Anatoly was the ambitious one, self-important. He liked to make out that he was more in-the-know than he really was—always leaving Boromiro with the suggestion that maybe he really was in-the-know. He liked to make Boromiro think that he knew more than Boromiro knew. Anatoly attended the in-house seminars, and jumped at the chance to serve coffee at the top meetings. He listened. And was thereby privy to all kinds of top secret info. Or at least, so he always let on to Boromiro. And whenever Boromiro asked, "Really, Anatoly, is that the truth, or are you just making this stuff up?" Anatoly would reply, "If I answered that question, Boromiro, I'd have to shoot you." To which, Boromiro would roll his eyes. Nonetheless, Boromiro was unsure if Anatoly was just playing James Bond or if Anatoly was really in the know.
Boromiro was also ambitious, but he hid it. He played the role of the stupid one. He was much smarter than he appeared. He found that if you played the imbecile, the clueless one, people let down their guard, began to be incautious, and said things around you that you shouldn't be privy to. He collected a lot of scuttlebutt this way. Much of it was useless gossip, but he knew he'd been let in on a number of top-secret things in this manner as well, by people who were rendered incautious by his disarming, clueless, harmless appearance. He guarded the secrets he had gathered closely. But you couldn't be overly cautious, either, because then people would suspect that you were hiding something. So from time to time he carefully let slip bits of casual information without fanfare, as if accidentally. This bolstered his clueless image.
One of the pieces of scuttlebutt Boromiro had gathered was that the mercenary agent who'd been hired to set up the operation had found another Blue Sun agent already in place on the ship they were tracking.
This was news to Anatoly, but he hastened to appropriate the information by offering his opinion on it. "Low-level apparently. Probably more of a monitor than an operator. Bet he was put in place to listen and report, or to track the ship's movements."
"Wonder which branch he's working for." There were many, many roots and branches to 妈妈 青日Māma Qīng Rì's network of operatives. The Corporation was vast, and coordination between the different branches was much more fractured than anyone liked to admit.
"Or which agency. Just because he flashed a Blue Sun sign doesn't mean he's working for 妈妈 青日Māma Qīng Rì," Anatoly said smugly. Anatoly considered the possibilities. The guy could be an agent of the Covert Operations Agency or the Bureau of Investigations; and there were other Alliance government agencies as well, that maintained investigators. The Bureau of Taxation and Revenue, for example, and the Illegal Narcotics Interdiction Agency, not to mention various branches of federal law enforcement. Local law enforcement could also be conducting a sting, and one shouldn't forget the far reach of the Parliamentary Operatives, who were given carte blanche to do as they pleased. They had been known to disguise themselves as any of the above, and even as Blue Hands. But Anatoly kept his thoughts to himself.
"Oh," Boromiro said, his face clearly expressing, huh, hadn't thought of that.
"Could be a Fed. Government agents have access to certain Blue Sun signs and codes. Low level ones are more commonly known than you'd imagine." Boromiro couldn't imagine anything. He was so unimaginative.
"Huh. Okay, so some agent of some unknown branch of government or Blue Sun has been tracking this ship or monitoring this ship….Any idea for how long?"
"Can't tell you that. If I did I'd have to shoot you," Anatoly answered with a smirk. Truth was, he hadn't heard that bit of information. He hadn't really heard the other part, either, Boromiro had, but Anatoly had already so thoroughly appropriated the information that now he believed he'd gathered it when he was setting up for a recent elite conference. They'd shooed him out of the room before they got down to brass tacks, but he'd drawn his inferences from what they'd been saying before they banished him. He was smarter than they realized, putting it together for himself. But he couldn't resist the urge to speculate, and yank Boromiro's chain a bit more. "Swear you to secrecy?"
Boromiro nodded.
"Pinky swear?"
"这是什么 Zhè shì shénme, Anatoly!"
"Just messing with you. But you can't tell anyone. I think the guy's been tracking them for months."
"Oohh, like a sleeper agent!"
Anatoly hadn't considered that possibility. Wow. But he played it like Boromiro was being ridiculous. "Don't be stupid, Boromiro. This isn't James Bond. Far more likely the guy is just a monitor. He reports to his handler on a regular basis." This was pure speculation on Anatoly's part; he had no basis whatsoever for saying that.
Boromiro was actually impressed. Anatoly was more in the know than he'd figured. But he didn't let on, and fixed a clueless expression on his face. "I wonder who the handler is."
"Well that'd be pretty simple to figure out, wouldn't it? Just check out who the guy communicates with on a regular basis. One of them is the handler."
"He wouldn't be that dumb, would he? Just call up his handler?"
"Why not?"
"Wouldn't he use a dead drop? Or pass a secret coded message through a third party?"
"You've been watching too many spy shows on the cortex, Boromiro," Anatoly scoffed.
"Don't knock it! Lots of those spy shows are written by ex-agents!"
"Fiction, Boromiro. They make stuff up. They've spent their whole careers deceiving the public. Why should they stop after they retire from service?"
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glossary
妈妈 青日Māma Qīng Rì [Mother Blue Sun]
这是什么 Zhè shì shénme [What the hell]
So here's the first appearance of the Blue Hand Wannabes...let me know what you think.