Ben stared at the men sat next to him round the table. They'd picked the same pub as the one he and Wolf had last time, mostly for the sake of convenience rather than any real desire for the lackluster food and the bare minimum of service. On a Monday night, things moved at a trickle, drawing very little local custom and only a handful of tourist groups. Despite the steady music and the loud laughter of the large group of Americans six tables over providing decent noise cover, the men sitting around the booth stared at their pints and offered little to one another.
Eagle was the first to break. "So this reeks of utter horseshit," he said, taking a neat swallow of his drink. "Operation Nannycam. Seriously."
Wolf grimaced. "Why make ourselves known to them? Alex is in Moscow. We should go get him. Sic some lawyers on them, at least. Not… play house."
Ben sighed. His own briefing had been separate and short, but from what he understood, his old SAS team had gotten the distilled version of their orders from their sergeant and been sent on to London to rendezvous with him. No doubt it was up to Agent Daniels to fill in the missing pieces. "There's reasons for all of it, but I won't lie: it doesn't get much better. Horseshit isn't far off."
Snake picked at his crisps, but didn't actually eat any. "For being on the front lines, this feels incredibly shady. We're just supposed to live across the street from them and make a point of being seen? What good will that do? This is the least viable recovery mission I've ever seen, as it doesn't actually involve any intent to recover him and seems geared towards frightening them into bolting again. I suppose this all rather par for the course for this spy stuff, but I have more questions than I started with."
Ben tilted his head. "You're not wrong. The truth is that we can't just grab Alex since he and Gregorovitch have managed to strike some sort of deal with the Russian government for protection. Given Alex's charges against MI6, siccing our lawyers on him-"
"Charges?" Wolf demanded as Eagle choked on his pint. "What charges?"
Ben pressed his fingertips against his forehead, as though he could physically pin his thoughts in place. "I suppose I'm to brief you on that as well." He cleared his throat and took a long couple of seconds to gather his thoughts. It was complicated, but Ben really wanted to rip this bandaid off quickly. "Alex has been utilized by MI6 several times, at great personal risk, with extremely dubious consent. As in, reading through the charges leveled and the proposed evidence, I can quite confidently say that he was blackmailed into service on more than one occasion and not once properly compensated for his injuries, suffering, and effort."
Wolf was the first to speak. "You mean to tell me that every time we ran into him since camp-"
"Even in camp," Snake muttered. "He wasn't happy to be there either, but we just thought his parents-"
"He was in prison," Eagle reminded them, seemingly unable to rip his eyes from his glass. He groaned and took another large swallow. "He shot some kid and wound up in prison, sick in the head. After being blackmailed into that situation in the first place."
"Well, now we know for sure where he got his PTSD," Wolf snapped, folding his arms. "It all certainly explains why he's so damn crazy. And the drugs. And his utter refusal to cooperate with anyone remotely connected to MI6 in Kingman."
Ben nodded slowly, gaze transfixed on his own fingertips for some reason. Definitely not guilt. Definitely not the endless miasma of growing discomfort and horror as he replayed every interaction he'd ever had with the kid, every situation he'd encountered him in, with new, less forgiving eyes. "There's a lot I don't know. A lot I've had to put together myself."
"What are the charges?" Snake asked, leaning forward. "Do they include those mystery drugs we were never able to properly identify? I've been looking into it from time to time, but I still can't find a single hint of what they-"
"Those were hormonal suppressants designed to keep him from aging into suspicion so that they could continue using him as an undercover agent," Ben allowed. He couldn't tell his teammates about Smithers- yet- but he could share what was already on record without concern, even if it hadn't been provided in relation to the mission. "Allegedly. According to the charges, they are experimental, fairly unsafe, and produce a number of serious psychiatric side effects, many of which can present similarly to sudden schizophrenia. Hallucinations. Violent, erratic behavior. Delusional thinking. I'll show you the full list on the first plane. We leave tonight on the same flight for the first leg of the journey, pending further information. Once we land in Germany, we'll be split up and sent on our way separately. They haven't quite nailed down their exact address, but they will soon."
Eagle cleared his throat. "Delusional thinking explains his 'Yassen is my mum' ramblings. What's the assassin's game in all of this? Using Alex as his pawn to get the Russians to offer him a deal?"
Ben shrugged. "I have no idea. As far as I know, Alex is still voluntarily with him. That's where we come in."
"We kill the guy."
"No, Wolf."
Wolf gave him a flat look. "Kill the guy discreetly?"
"We have extremely clear orders to not attempt anything of the sort," Ben told him. "Not Gregorovich. You saw his list of charges- he's way beyond our paygrade. No. Our mission is essentially the same as in Kingman, minus taking Alex into custody. Be there, be familiar. Make sure he knows he can come to us in a pinch. Entice him to agree to return to Britain and drop the charges, if possible. Otherwise, we are to surveil them as much as possible without running afoul with the authorities. Provide any evidence possible that Alex is being mistreated or unsafe."
Snake's lips thinned and his lips tightened. "Does anyone here really think that would be best for him if we succeed? They wanted us to still give him those injections in Kingman even after he'd run away from them."
Ben winced. "I don't think it would be best for him, no, but I also don't know his situation at the moment. His current circumstances might be worse. We really don't understand the nature of their relationship, or exactly what Gregorovitch is getting out of this arrangement. At any rate, we have our orders. We go out, we play friendly neighbors, we make our presence known. We can evaluate the situation ourselves when we get there and have more information."
Wolf glowered at nothing in particular. "I hate this. This can't be anything good and we're being weaponized against the kid. What's next? New orders to stab him with more of that dodgy hormone stuff?"
"Absolutely not," Snake snapped. "If the side effects are even one tenth as bad as Ben says, there's no way we can risk that. Not with Alex already unstable and abusing god knows what else."
Eagle crossed his arms. "I know we have our orders and I don't like them, but what else can we do? Ben said he has no family to contact. He's stuck in Russia with a crazy, murderous, possible pederast for all we know. Somehow, impossibly, going home might even be worse for him. What options does the kid even have?"
Ben shook his head. "I don't know. I wish I did. Either way, we'll just have to play it by ear. With any luck, we'll be able to establish some kind of contact with him and figure out what he thinks of all this. He may even know some things we don't."
It was only after they'd gone their separate ways- the rest of the unit back to headquarters, since they'd been transferred immediately and had been provided with everything they needed, while Ben needed to run back to his apartment to pack before he was equipped with any specialized gear- that Ben finally found a free minute to pull out his little electronic planner and update Smithers. He had mere minutes, leading him to give the mostly chicken-scratch version of his mission orders and a quick note that he'd update the man again as soon as he was able to. He'd probably be in Russia by then, but that was almost beside the point. He couldn't wait to unload all of his suspicions on the mysterious gadget master who seemed to at least have his priorities in the correct order.
So much of this mission stank of treachery: he'd barely scratched the surface with his team members. For starters, why send in specialized soldiers if combat was absolutely off the table? Why not more than one agent? Ben was also the only one in the group who was even trained in urban surveillance to the degree that would be needed. It wasn't even their primary goal, being seen and enticing the boy to come home was. None of them had any understanding of child psychology. Their main skill sets were useless, comparatively speaking, so why incur the cost of keeping all of them on payroll to sit around a flat in Russia and do essentially nothing? The mission had no official end date, which meant it had just been waved past the penny pinchers as too important to downgrade.
But why?
They didn't even know the boy particularly well. If they were trying to tug at his heart strings and lure him back into their grasp, wouldn't his actual friends be better suited to the job? Now that he thought about… did Alex even have friends? Probably. At least Ben hoped he did. Even some letters or phone calls from his schoolmates would be more effective. Unless the kid was a social outcast, the assholes who'd picked on him in basic training were hardly the best choice for this job.
While Ben felt like his and Alex's relationship had at least improved somewhat from that initial impression, he couldn't exactly say that there was more than a passing amount of trust or familiarity between the two of them. Hell, Ben would actually say he knew Smithers better than he did Alex. They certainly didn't know much about each other. Most of what Ben knew about the kid, while not shooting his godfather in the head or pulling him out of horrible situations, had been gleaned from MI6's dubious files or gathered from Smithers.
What was MI6 playing at?
He might not know the exact answer, but all signs pointed to some sort of covert action that had yet to be finalized. Some sort of tactical move in the future that would almost certainly require violence at the right moment. Their mission had been presented as simple, but it would certainly be anything but once Jones made up her damn mind; Ben could feel every instinct within him screaming it. He had to let Smithers know as soon as possible, though something told him they had at least a few weeks before anything happened. Not that it made him feel much better: the board had been set, the players were just taking their sweet time evaluating their moves.
Hopefully, someone would be able to cover Alex through all of this. Daniels wasn't entirely confident it would be him, though.
