A/N: so, this chapter is a little bit of a filler, which I know it's not what you want to hear, but, it really is a necessary step to take us to the next one, which I promise will be... EXPLOSIVE! (muahahhaha)
Thanks to my wonderful beta.
Sarah's not entirely displeased with her new assignment. She was given the freedom to go to New York and New Jersey to scope places out and make sure they meet her and Daniel's standards for the meeting with the Russians. The only thing she's not happy about is that she's still in the dark regarding who they'd be meeting. Daniel has refused to tell her, and Sarah, knowing it was best not to push, had seemingly accepted it. But with me, she was much more insistent and even though I want to tell her, I evade her questions and say only that it's imperative we remain in control of the operation. I have instructions to keep Daniel Webster's future business partners nationality well under wraps. I've tried to persuade him that it would be safer and easier to organize the meeting with everyone in the loop, but he won't budge. He's determined to keep it a secret, showing small signs of paranoid behavior, willing to trust Sarah to make the arrangements, but not with vital information.
In the meantime, Felix grows more obnoxious, his ineffective zings an effort to disguise his boredom. Although he was told vaguely of Sarah's new assignment, he was left out, his services not be required, so he knows even less than his sister. Spending most of his time in the pool house turned gym, Felix has become distant, his focus suffering from spending too long being idle. Curiously, he's joined often by William Webster, whenever he's on the Estate.
"Do you think there's anything going on between them?" Sarah asks when Felix rushed out the door after lunch, telling us that he's going to the gym where Will is already waiting for him.
"Wouldn't that be fun after all the shit he's given me because of Delphine," I comment sitting in the armchair. "But I don't think so. Little Willy doesn't seem to swing that way."
Sarah hums and lays back on the couch. Having returned yesterday from her latest trip, she was given the day off. "Still…they're spending a lot of time together," she says.
"If that's the case, let him," I shrug and wave a dismissive hand. "Felix needs to do something to keep him occupied."
"It was a bad idea bringing him along." Sarah raises her legs to the couch and stretches herself. "We could've handled this without him just fine."
"This mission has suffered from poor planning from the start," I say, carefully selecting my words, not wanting to disclose more than I should. "Even S was blindsided. She didn't know what to expect so she wanted all hands on deck."
Sarah peers open one eye to look at me. "There's a lot you're not saying, Cosima. Secrets between partners is bad for business."
"I'm telling you all that I can," I say in a non-combative way. "Probably more than I should even."
"Which is not a whole lot to begin with…" she mumbles with a wary expression. "But whatever… I trust S's judgement…yours…not so much," she adds with a chuckle. "Either way," she continues more seriously, "having Felix with so much time on his hands is a mistake."
I frown and stare at her with intensity. "You think he can turn?" I ask, not believing that hypothesis, but Sarah knows him better.
"No, I don't think so," she shakes her head, closing her eyes again. "Not intentionally, but he could become sloppy and reveal shit that he shouldn't.
"At least little Willy is not as shady as his older brother," Sarah says with a smile. "So maybe the damage won't be too bad."
"Felix knows better than that…" It's all I say.
"Yeah, let's hope he doesn't run his mouth," Sarah says and she sits up a little bit, her eyes set on me. "But he does stupid shit when he's upset. And this business between you and blondie isn't helping."
"There's no business between me and blondie," I roll my eyes and rest my head back with a sigh.
"I only believe that now because she's not around. However, when she returns I'm not so sure I should trust you," Sarah continues to push, but at least she's smiling as she says this. "By the way, do you have any idea when will that be?"
"Why should I know that?" I ask, but my tone is too shaky and her smile grows.
"Because you're so close to her fiancé, of course," she answers in an ain't that obvious way.
"I know as much as you do."
And that's the truth. I've been back more than a week and Delphine has yet to make an appearance. I'm not exactly concerned about her outing me to Daniel, for several reasons, but the biggest of them all is that Delphine can't afford the luxury of pointing her finger at me without fearing retaliation. Her showing up in Warsaw has given me that guarantee. We both have ammunition against each other, but neither of us is willing to fire the first shot, at least for now.
I leave Sarah to take a nap. It's four days until the meeting and tomorrow we'll be heading out. Sarah has reduced the choices of venues to two, both just outside Jersey, but she was undecided between them and went to Daniel for his opinion. He didn't hesitate to rent both spaces for a month. According to him, this would allow the opportunity to freely make our decision, and provide a way to confuse whoever might be interested in his affairs. Our job tomorrow is to decide where the meeting is going to take place based on seclusion, defense positioning and easy access to escape routes.
I return to the office where I've been spending a great deal of time. It took me several days to catch up with the backlogs, which fortunately have shown nothing of interest. After the first and only person who was caught breaking the company's rules was swiftly dealt with, no one made another attempt.
For the last two days, however, I began to split my work: in the morning I work the company's logs from the previous day as always, but in the afternoon my work requires a little more finesse. As Daniel has requested, I began to comb through his younger brother's communications.
At first nothing stood out. William barely has access to any of the organization's more sensitive information. His work, the few times he's given any, falls more in the scope of public relations. William's job is to use his unique charm and good looks to make the company look good. He attends charity events in the name of the Webster's organization; anything that doesn't really require any business savviness he's there. He's the public face of the Company, but anything that's more demanding than drinking cocktails and small talk is left to the older, less charismatic, more discreet brother. So, it's with no surprise that his communications consist mostly of invitations to events and organize public meetings.
I started to develop my hacking skills shortly after Ms. S took me in. I wasn't really all that interested, but she insisted and enrolled me in some IT and system analysis courses. I learned coding in a time when the World Wide Web was emerging and took a big chunk of the course load. Then, it was only a small fraction of what it is today, most services relying on paper, fax and postal services, but the internet was the future. Companies were starting to adopt new communication methods. LAN systems were growing exponentially, AOL became a household brand, and technological advances were a daily occurrence. Siobhan had the foresight to notice this, and kept insisting that I increase my knowledge in that area. Having caught up early on, I only had to keep up with the changes. As the internet grew, and truly became global, security concerns increased, but to those like me, who'd created its growth, these defenses could be broken, with some effort.
I'm not a big shot by all means, I wouldn't be able to take down the power grid, or break into the Pentagon's secret files, but there are some things that I can do. I had administrator access to get into William's email account, so that didn't require any skill, but recovering his deleted emails did. While he was careful to completely erase them from the trash folder, they still existed, fragmented and distorted, but they were there, going back at least four months. The ones that caught my attention had landed directly in his spam folder, but the fact that he replied to them was a huge red flag. I'm currently in the process of recovering and reconstructing the messages as best as I can. It takes time, with each file needing to be recovered individually and pieced together. After that I'll need to break the encryption. It seems like a simple code from what I was able to gather from a couple of files I was already able to open and I didn't expect nothing else. If William has to open it, understand its message and respond, with the little to nonexistent knowledge he has, it can't be too complicated. In a few days I should have in my hands the full content of his communications.
An entirely different matter will be to uncover who he's in contact with. They, whoever they are, were careful to hide the origin of their communications, never replying directly to an email. Unlike William who hit the reply button, they sent a new one, from a different IP address each time, that I suspect is not even the real one. Whoever this person, or group of people are, they were a lot more concerned with hiding their identities than to secure the information itself. If these messages were to be intercepted as they were, William will go down, but he'll go down alone.
All this has put me in a very difficult position. While Daniel's attention is mostly focused on the meeting with the Russians, once that is done, he'll turn his guns on the work that I'm doing. For now he's been satisfied with me saying that I'm working on it, but soon he'll want some real answers. For me to hand over his little brother's head on a silver platter will assure me Daniel's nearly blind trust, but I worry what will become of William after that.
It would be an easier decision to make when I know exactly what is he passing on to others, given that Daniel allows me enough time to find it out before he forces my hand. Even better would be to who is he in contact with, but that information I doubt I can get for myself, let alone give it to Daniel.
The following day, at daybreak, Sarah and I are getting into the car that the Websters have provided for us. The long drive to and from New Jersey will keeps us off the property for two days, and we plan to be back tomorrow evening to meet with Daniel and inform him of our final verdict.
I take the wheel as Sarah describes to me the layout of the places were going to visit. Both of them are warehouses, well away from areas where we're likely to find a lot of activity. The problem is that one of them is located in a mostly active storage area. During the day, Sarah explains, trucks filled with manufacturing goods come and go. Although the traffic is almost nonexistent, there are a few security guards making rounds. The other option is surrounded by abandoned buildings and there's no security, but, and it probably helps explain why it's abandoned, it's further from the main roads that give access to a fast escape.
Either option we choose, we still have to make it presentable for our guests. Also, at Daniel's request, an assortment of beverages needs to be available to make everyone feel welcome and maybe loosen tongues and some tension. All this needs to be taken care of during our trip, and paid for with the company's credit card, registered as company's expenses. The same method he used to pay for my trip to Warsaw and, I suspect, to rent the properties we're visiting.
"Is that even legal?" Sarah asks, turning the black credit card in her fingers.
"Probably not," I answer without taking my eyes off the road.
"I suppose it depends on what this meeting is all about," she continues giving me a side glance. "But the way he's going about it, I seriously doubt it."
I only nod and say nothing. Sarah's too smart for me even try to fool her, well aware that if laws haven't been broken yet, they're about to be. I don't really think she has a problem with it as principle, after all we both built our careers doing stuff that's, at the very least, legally dubious. But, if she knew the type of people we're meeting, she wouldn't be so blasé about all this.
The methods these people employ is exactly what we try so hard to stay away from. To us, it's just a job; we separate our targets from material goods, we hurt them financially, but it's not personal. We do our job, get what we came for, and move on to the next. The mafia, of course, doesn't exactly have the same type of reasoning: you hurt their business and they'll come after you with everything they've got, and if that's not enough, they'll come after your family too. During all the years I've worked with Ms. S, I've seen how she avoided these people. They paid well, but no money in the world is enough to guarantee your personal safety and of the ones who are closest to you. Now, it seems, we've accidentally stumbled across what she's fought so hard to avoid.
The first building we visit is a 30 minute drive away from the highway across broken and deserted roads, past a few abandoned houses along the way that were built in a time when the industrial area was active, probably in the late 40's. To get to the warehouse we have to pass through a gate, barely secured by a chain and padlock to which Sarah was given a key, but even if she didn't have it, we'd still be able to make our way in through a huge hole in the rusted metal fence. I roll the car slowly over cracked asphalt road, some parts completely missing, the main artery of what seems to be a ghost town. A few more houses are inside the complex, probably a way to have workers quickly back to their stations when they used to work the poorest class from dawn to dusk. Large red brick buildings are falling apart, some with entire walls collapsed from decades of neglect. Machinery that was deemed too obsolete to move out or sell still waits inside, providing shelter for rats and cockroaches. The building that Sarah points out to me is the only one that seems to be structurally safe, but just barely.
My feet crush small pieces of glass into the ground when I step out of the car and look around. With no one in sight, the only sound is that of birds that have made this abandoned place their home, and the wind gusting through the dilapidated buildings, whistling its way through the cracks of old bricks.
"I think you've found us a haunted place," I comment, my eyes continuing to scan my surroundings.
"Hey! Daniel said he wanted some place quiet and discreet," Sarah says, her arm extended as if showcasing the area. "It doesn't get any quieter or discreet than this."
"It's in the middle of nowhere, Sarah," I point out as if I needed to.
"Exactly! That's the point!" She answers and moves along, jiggling a ring of keys in her hand. "This place is a little bit further from the airfield where I'm recommending his guests land, but there's hardly any traffic, and we avoid going into the city," she goes on to explain. "I'll show you when we leave."
Sarah approaches a tall, sliding steel door, the military green paint having been chipped away over the years, and brown rust has taken most of its place. She uses one of the keys to unlock a large padlock and releases the latch. Next, she crouches and does the same to a lock near the ground holding a bar to prevent the door from sliding open.
"A little help here," she calls in a strained voice, both her hands trying to push the door open.
The wheels barely roll on the rail, the heavy door slides slowly with both of us pushing as hard as we can, the loud noise it makes startling a few birds over our heads.
An enormous space opens up in front of us, dark and silent, the pungent smell of humidity and mold fills the air, and the temperature drops several degrees when we step inside. Both of us reach for our phones and turn on the flashlight, lighting the place as best as possible. Unlike the other buildings, this one is completely vacant, save for the carcasses of a few animals. The floor is hard, gray concrete covered in dust, and the high ceiling has exposed steel beams. At the ground level all windows have been brick sealed, but above they remain unobstructed and allow some light from the gray day to enter. A flight of metal stairs on each side leads to a platform, half the height of the building, only wide enough for one person to walk over it that stretches through its entire length, which is accessible from the opposite end with two more flights of stairs. Roughly at the middle of the building there's a bridge that surely provides perfect view of the entire floor.
"The only closed space is down there," Sarah says, turning the beam of her phone to the far end. "It was probably used as some sort of office, back in the day," she says of the container looking structure and starts to walk in that direction. "There's also a small division inside that looks like it was used as a bathroom, but it's obviously out of order," she snickers. "Also it hides the only other way in and out of here, a narrow backdoor."
I understand now why she chose this place. If you want to keep someone safe or permanently under your eye, this is perfect. There's no place for anyone to hide and catch you unexpectedly, every single area is out in the open and easy to surveil. The remote location is also very practical to this end; no constant traffic means that any vehicle that comes near will be easily spotted.
"It will be hard to make this place look presentable," I say casually, peeking inside the old office, where a metal desk was forgotten and noticing the door Sarah mentioned.
"I didn't know décor was a priority," she grumps. "But we can go for the decayed industrial era look."
"We'll need to rent a truck to bring everything we need," I say, ignoring her sarcastic remarks. "Table, chairs, generator and lights that we'll need to install…"
"A mini fridge filled with booze, a turntable and sound system and lets not forget the disco ball," she cuts me off. "We'll make this rave work, don't worry about it Cos," she finishes punching me lightly on the shoulder.
"Let's have a look at the other location," I say, not joining her jest and starting to walk to the door.
"Geez! Lighten up, will you!" Sarah's complaints echo in the empty space. "When did you lose your sense of humor?"
"We don't have much time, Sarah," I say, apologetic, annoyed that the stress is starting to weigh me down. "We need to stay focused."
She helps me close the heavy door and then locks it up, leaving it exactly as we've found it.
"I think you need to get laid," she suggests, taking the driver's seat this time. "We can go out tonight and find you a lady who'd help with that mood of yours."
"Considering that we'll need to carry heavy loads tomorrow, I don't think that's the best idea," I answer.
"Right… Perhaps we should've brought Felix with us, we could certainly use his help," Sarah says, driving away and not bothering with the gate that's keeping no one out anyway.
"I don't know…" I reply, relaxing against the seat, noticing that I begin to lose my tension the moment we leave that place behind. "He'd probably be bitching all the time about ruining his nails."
"Yeah, you're probably right," Sarah releases a throaty laugh.
As she promised, it doesn't take us long to reach the airfield. The secondary roads are in bad shape, but as Sarah said, there's hardly any traffic - I counted seventeen cars in as many minutes that it took us to get here. The airfield itself appears to have little activity; a few Cessnas with stencils from a flight school on their tails are kept under doorless hangars, and a red Bell 206 helicopter is out in the open at the end of a midsize airstrip that seems well maintained. To get inside we need to pass by a security booth and just pass it we can see only three cars parked. We don't go in, just drive past the front gate, cutting to the right, and going up a small hill, that gives us a better view of the airfield. Our guests will be exposed when they land, but there's little we can do about it.
To get to the other location we need to drive a little into the city, where we stop to have a late lunch. Sarah explains, that during the day, the drive takes between forty and sixty minutes, depending on traffic, while at night, it will take at least half an hour, even though it's almost half the distance from the other warehouse. However, from there you have quick access to the highway, only a few minutes away.
The moment we approach it, I can see that it's not our best option. The industrial complex is very active, with workers unloading trucks filled with boxes of different sizes. Most of the buildings have security cameras at the entrance, and we pass by several large men in guard uniform who notice our presence. The warehouse is smaller, but perfectly useful for what we need. It has fully functional electricity and running water, even though it's completely empty.
It wouldn't take nearly as much work to get it ready for our guests, but the downsides are too many. We won't be able to go unnoticed, not even at night when the cameras will still be rolling, and security continues to patrol the area. The only redeeming quality is comfort. I say this to Sarah once we're inside.
"Well I had very little time to search and it's not like there are hundreds of places to chose from," she says, but doesn't exactly disagrees. "Next time get a fucking realtor!"
"I know, I know…" I try to appease her. "You did a good job, all things considered."
"So, I guess we'll have to use the other one then," she concludes, already heading out. "I just don't get it why he can't use a hotel's conference room or something like that."
"Our guests don't want to be noticed," I answer, walking out as well and waiting until she locks the door. "And hotels are very public."
"Let me tell you… I'm not excited to spend tomorrow cleaning up that dump," Sarah complains, getting behind the wheel.
"Me neither," I nod, looking at her as I buckle up. "But I think it's the best option. It will take us a lot more work to have that place presentable, but ultimately we'll be safer."
"I sure hope so!"
The next morning we start by renting a large truck for the day and then we start going down our shopping list. Our first step is to get a battery powered generator which set us back a couple of thousand, but it's not our money and it's not like Daniel will have a problem with the bill. Next we buy a long wooden table, that is supposed to be light, easy to transport, and assemble and six chairs to go along with it. We also find a few desk lamps, light bulbs, and we stock up on electric cords that will have to do for lighting. Sarah's determined to get the mini refrigerator and we get an assortment of alcoholic beverages, sodas and bottles of water on our final stop at the supermarket, where we also get mops, buckets, brooms and several gallons of water to clean the place.
At the end of the day, once we've finished putting everything together, we're tired but satisfied with the result. It's not perfect, but it's entirely functional and secure.
On our way back to Boston, we take turns driving and it's after 10 pm when we finally arrive back at the Webster's property, completely exhausted and in serious need of a long bath.
After the long day, the last thing we want is to sit down with Daniel and explain to him all that we've done, and yet, that's exactly what happens. We're still getting out of the car when Alfred comes to us and informs in a low voice that "Mr. Webster is waiting for you in the library," while he looks us over with a disgusted frown.
Daniel, however, doesn't seem bothered by our dirty clothes and disheveled look. He invites us to sit across from him and listens intently while we talk.
"I truly appreciate all the work you've done in so little time," he pauses briefly to look at each of us at a time. "Both of you," he smiles tightly.
"Hey, that's why you pay us the big bucks!" Sarah says, managing a smile of her own.
She can sense it, she knows that she's slowly gaining his trust, and that is great news, not only for her and her position, promising greater access, but also to our team. More access for her means more access for us.
"Money well spent," Daniel nods and leans back on his chair, reaching for a crystal glass with small ice cubes clanking lightly while swimming in an amber liquid. "Anyway," he says after taking a small sip and sitting the glass back on the coaster, "I can see that you're exhausted and want to get the hell out of here, so I won't take more of your time."
Sarah and I nod and say good night with a smile, getting up.
"By the way," he calls back just as we're about to leave, "you're dismissed from work tomorrow. You've earned a day off. But I'd like to meet with Cosima at the end of the day to go over our final preparations."
We nod again and leave, closing the door softly behind us.
Under a cloud filled sky, with the cold night fogging our breaths we walk slowly to the cottage, eager for a good night's sleep. From where we are we can see lights in the living room window, where Felix is more than likely waiting for us, hoping to be filled in on our activities. He won't get anywhere, no matter how hard he pushes. We're simply too tired to engage in any real conversation.
"You'd think Daniel is a contender for best employer of the year," Sarah says quietly, and I don't know if she's genuinely impressed, or making a joke.
"Jury's still out."