Chapter 2 - The Mission Briefing
Notes: See Chapter 1.
[LOS ANGELES – Early morning – SD-6 mission briefing room]
She makes it to the mission briefing room with a minute to spare and immediately takes her seat. She scans the room and sees only Sloane and Marshall. As soon as she sits down, Sloane begins the briefing.
"This mission is a simple one really, which is why you're going in alone." He walks around the table and slides a black folder towards her.
He picks up a remote and turns the briefing screen on. An email transmission appears on the screen.
"As you may well know, we have recently shifted our focus away from finding Khasinau, The Man, to discovering the entire reach and extent of his organization in the hopes that we can infiltrate it and recover additional Rambaldi technology. We are already at a disadvantage as it is; we still cannot find the right solution to expose the blank page that you recovered from Khasinau's vault in Paris 3 weeks ago."
She tears her eyes away from the contents of her folder to look up at Sloane. He is clearly not pleased to disclose the fact that despite the success of her mission in Paris, it has still not yielded the results he had been expecting. She remembers the conversation she had with her father when they discussed how she would break into the lab in Santa Barbara to get the page and make a switch.
[A few weeks earlier—Sydney and Jack in a van discussing how to get into the Santa Barbara lab]
"Dad, where are we going to get a counterfeit page on such short notice?"
He produces a blank page from his coat.
"A backup contingency, in case you couldn't do the page switch at Sloane's residence a few months ago. I was given a duplicate counterfeit page by Kretchmer. My orders were to attempt to do a switch if you couldn't. I…wasn't allowed to disclose my mission to you so you couldn't have known of this page's existence." A pause. "I wasn't asked for the page back after you completed the switch, so I…kept my copy."
In her initial haste and panic to get the original page she had forgotten to leave the counterfeit in its place and almost left the password-secured area before remembering to return and complete the switch.
She comes back to attention as she sees Sloane cross her line of sight as he paces in front of her and begins to talk again.
"A few hours ago we received some intel from a reliable source claiming that there exists something called the Master File."
"What is the Master File?"
"This file supposedly contains Khasinau's entire organizational network of contacts, shell companies, bank accounts, cells, agents and suppliers. We believe that the file is housed in the sub-basement of this building…"
The briefing screen changes, now showing an old, stately building with tall stone columns resembling a courthouse.
"Hartley House, located in London. We have reason to believe that this building houses a server farm in the sub-basement and that the Master File is in one of those servers. If we can get this Master File and determine the extent to which his organization works, we may be able to recover some of the Rambaldi technology that he has, and when we are done, render him and his organization…useless.
"In 36 hours there will be some routine data backups performed on those servers. Your mission is to get a copy of the Master File with the help of a data extraction device and get out of there without raising any alarms. Since we don't know in which order or how many of the servers are taken offline at a time, you could be out of there in as little as 5 minutes or as long as an hour. Marshall?"
Marshall shoots straight up from his seat.
"H-hey…" he bobs his head at Sloane, and then at Sydney. "How's everyone this morning?" She smiles at him, which makes him fidget a little more as he fishes a device from his pants pocket. He places the device on the table next to his apple fritter (ever present at morning mission briefings). It's a PDA, a Handspring Visor model by the looks of it. He picks it up.
"This is your standard Handspring model, or so it seems. But really, this is my latest improvement on your average run-of-the-mill data-extracting device I've got. This baby can receive 50 Gigabytes of data up to 30 feet away from any single computer hard drive or tape drive in under a minute. Now you don't have to put the device right on the hard drive to extract it."
She takes the device and is surprised to find it light in weight.
"That's quite the data-extractor," she says, impressed. Marshall is equally pleased and flustered to hear her praise his work.
"And the best part is that with the range if you can find a nice spot to camp, you can probably extract data off of maybe 6 to 8 servers by aiming the device at one, then picking the data off the server next to it, then the one next to that…like boom, boom, head shot, double kill… just like playing that UnrealTournament game heh…ah…and…it works just like a regular PDA. Why, you can download all kinds of PDA stuff off the net, like that Star Trek tricorder program…you can use your stylus and click on this Star Trek looking console and have it beep and blip like the tricorders on the Star Trek shows…so cool…heh… Engage!" he says, in a pale Gallic imitation of Captain Picard.
Sloane's not-so-polite cough brings him back down to reality.
"Ahem…yes, well it is quite the data-extractor. Just a few things to remember when using the device. Place it face side up, and make sure you are in a direct line of sight with the hard drive, the closer the better, and make sure to press the up button to set it in receive data mode. And of course, press the down button to set it in transmit data mode." Sloane nods at him.
"That will be all. Thank you Marshall."
And with that Marshall leaves the room, apple fritter in tow.
She looks at Sloane expectantly. Sloane sits down on the edge of the table, looking at her, smiling down at her with his dark serpentine eyes.
"I don't need to tell you how dangerous, and important this mission is to the organization…and to you personally…" (he has no clue that she has already met her mother at last in Taipei…with disastrous results) "but I want you to know, that if you complete this mission successfully, you will be offered a promotion for the 7 years of exemplary service you've done here at SD-6. Agent Ryerson is due to retire next month from SD-6 as an assistant director of Operations. And I can think of no better person to take his place than you.
"You will probably spend less time in the field, but you will likely be co-ordinating and strategizing missions with your father…and myself."
Grinning now, eyes crinkled, he looks expectantly at her, thinking she will leap at the opportunity.
She is stunned. Sloane stands up and leans over to pat her on the shoulder, almost patronizingly.
"I know I told Jack a few days ago I was merely considering you as a potential candidate, but I wanted you to know, from me, that the work you do day in and day out makes a difference here. And that this promotion is the organization's way, and my way of letting you know how much it is appreciated. So let's just keep this a secret between you and me, all right?"
She shoots him a brief, shaky smile, and nods…
"We'll talk more when you get back. You'll be leaving tonight." And with that he steps out of the briefing room.
She gets up then, and leaves the mission briefing room. She makes her way into the open area of the office, looking for Jack.
Their eyes meet and he nods, and he then glances at the meeting room across the office.
[SD-6 meeting room]
As soon as they are both in the meeting room with the doors closed, he pulls out his pen and twists the cap to jam all nearby radio frequencies.
When the pen stops beeping, after 3 seconds, he speaks again. "You've got 2 minutes."
"Sloane's sending me to London tonight to get a copy of something called the Master File. He believes an email transmission sent by an anonymous source and received by SD-6 mail servers a few hours ago is proof that this file exists."
The look on Jack's face tells her that he still has not completely regained Sloane's trust. He is surprised he was not briefed on her mission.
"Tell me more about this Master File."
"He claims it contains Khasinau's entire organizational network as well as details about all the Rambaldi artifacts collected so far. The file is located in a building called Hartley House and in less than 36 hours servers in the sub-basement will be taken offline, several at a time, for data backup. One of them contains the Master File. I'm supposed to get in there and get the data."
Now Jack is clearly alarmed.
"Sydney, there are about 25 people including myself who know about the significance of Hartley House. Hartley House is where the leaders of the Alliance meet to discuss and vote on issues. Only half of those people have the clearance to know about the server farm in the sub-basement.
"Sloane isn't sending you to retrieve organizational information on Khasinau, he's trying to get you to break into the Alliance's own server farm. He must have had the email transmission doctored to make it look like it referred to the existence of a Master File of Khasinau's organization, not the Alliance's."
"But why?"
"So that nobody would think anything of the mission other than what it is; data extraction." He pauses, thinking quickly. "There has to be something on one of those servers that Sloane wants badly enough that he would mislead you and violate the Alliance's rules of conduct. And the only possibility I can think of is that there exists a Master File containing the Alliance's entire organizational work, including SD-6's and he wants it because he can use it for leverage to further promote his standing and SD-6's within the Alliance. And possibly as payback for Emily's death. "
"Does such a file really exist?"
"I don't know. But if it does…" Their eyes meet.
"…the CIA could use it to take down the Alliance, and SD-6."
"Yes."
Despite herself, she feels the faintest stirrings of hope bloom inside her. She sits straighter in her seat now, determined.
"Then let's hope the file exists and I don't leave there empty handed."
He nods curtly. "I know I don't need to tell you to be careful on your missions…but for this one...with the stakes so high, and the margin for error so small…I…would want to get backup."
She knows what he is suggesting, and she bobs her head in acknowledgement.
But before she passes him to exit the meeting room he clears his throat, causing her to stop in her tracks.
"I…also heard from Sloane that he is considering you to be the next assistant director of Operations."
She clasps her hands behind her and turns to look at him. "Yes. He told me in the briefing room. I'm a little surprised. I never would have thought I'd be doing anything else other than field work at SD-6."
"The best candidates for a position like that *should* have prior field training so they know the kind of missions they'll be sending agents out on," he begins matter-of-factly, but stops. Given what they really know about SD-6, it would probably not be the ideal way for her to be getting ahead. Knowing that, he permits himself a small smile. "Though I'm sure you'd do an excellent job, under the circumstances."
"Thanks," she says, catching his meaning, "but let's hope I don't have to make the decision to accept or not."
Jack's pen beeps again and quickly he shifts gears. He clears his throat. "—and if you can get that report to me by the end of the day I'd appreciate that," he says.
"I will. Thanks."
She leaves the meeting room and makes a beeline for her desk, checking her watch.
Time to go for a quick run for coffee at Starbucks, and to do a drop.
Notes: See Chapter 1.
[LOS ANGELES – Early morning – SD-6 mission briefing room]
She makes it to the mission briefing room with a minute to spare and immediately takes her seat. She scans the room and sees only Sloane and Marshall. As soon as she sits down, Sloane begins the briefing.
"This mission is a simple one really, which is why you're going in alone." He walks around the table and slides a black folder towards her.
He picks up a remote and turns the briefing screen on. An email transmission appears on the screen.
"As you may well know, we have recently shifted our focus away from finding Khasinau, The Man, to discovering the entire reach and extent of his organization in the hopes that we can infiltrate it and recover additional Rambaldi technology. We are already at a disadvantage as it is; we still cannot find the right solution to expose the blank page that you recovered from Khasinau's vault in Paris 3 weeks ago."
She tears her eyes away from the contents of her folder to look up at Sloane. He is clearly not pleased to disclose the fact that despite the success of her mission in Paris, it has still not yielded the results he had been expecting. She remembers the conversation she had with her father when they discussed how she would break into the lab in Santa Barbara to get the page and make a switch.
[A few weeks earlier—Sydney and Jack in a van discussing how to get into the Santa Barbara lab]
"Dad, where are we going to get a counterfeit page on such short notice?"
He produces a blank page from his coat.
"A backup contingency, in case you couldn't do the page switch at Sloane's residence a few months ago. I was given a duplicate counterfeit page by Kretchmer. My orders were to attempt to do a switch if you couldn't. I…wasn't allowed to disclose my mission to you so you couldn't have known of this page's existence." A pause. "I wasn't asked for the page back after you completed the switch, so I…kept my copy."
In her initial haste and panic to get the original page she had forgotten to leave the counterfeit in its place and almost left the password-secured area before remembering to return and complete the switch.
She comes back to attention as she sees Sloane cross her line of sight as he paces in front of her and begins to talk again.
"A few hours ago we received some intel from a reliable source claiming that there exists something called the Master File."
"What is the Master File?"
"This file supposedly contains Khasinau's entire organizational network of contacts, shell companies, bank accounts, cells, agents and suppliers. We believe that the file is housed in the sub-basement of this building…"
The briefing screen changes, now showing an old, stately building with tall stone columns resembling a courthouse.
"Hartley House, located in London. We have reason to believe that this building houses a server farm in the sub-basement and that the Master File is in one of those servers. If we can get this Master File and determine the extent to which his organization works, we may be able to recover some of the Rambaldi technology that he has, and when we are done, render him and his organization…useless.
"In 36 hours there will be some routine data backups performed on those servers. Your mission is to get a copy of the Master File with the help of a data extraction device and get out of there without raising any alarms. Since we don't know in which order or how many of the servers are taken offline at a time, you could be out of there in as little as 5 minutes or as long as an hour. Marshall?"
Marshall shoots straight up from his seat.
"H-hey…" he bobs his head at Sloane, and then at Sydney. "How's everyone this morning?" She smiles at him, which makes him fidget a little more as he fishes a device from his pants pocket. He places the device on the table next to his apple fritter (ever present at morning mission briefings). It's a PDA, a Handspring Visor model by the looks of it. He picks it up.
"This is your standard Handspring model, or so it seems. But really, this is my latest improvement on your average run-of-the-mill data-extracting device I've got. This baby can receive 50 Gigabytes of data up to 30 feet away from any single computer hard drive or tape drive in under a minute. Now you don't have to put the device right on the hard drive to extract it."
She takes the device and is surprised to find it light in weight.
"That's quite the data-extractor," she says, impressed. Marshall is equally pleased and flustered to hear her praise his work.
"And the best part is that with the range if you can find a nice spot to camp, you can probably extract data off of maybe 6 to 8 servers by aiming the device at one, then picking the data off the server next to it, then the one next to that…like boom, boom, head shot, double kill… just like playing that UnrealTournament game heh…ah…and…it works just like a regular PDA. Why, you can download all kinds of PDA stuff off the net, like that Star Trek tricorder program…you can use your stylus and click on this Star Trek looking console and have it beep and blip like the tricorders on the Star Trek shows…so cool…heh… Engage!" he says, in a pale Gallic imitation of Captain Picard.
Sloane's not-so-polite cough brings him back down to reality.
"Ahem…yes, well it is quite the data-extractor. Just a few things to remember when using the device. Place it face side up, and make sure you are in a direct line of sight with the hard drive, the closer the better, and make sure to press the up button to set it in receive data mode. And of course, press the down button to set it in transmit data mode." Sloane nods at him.
"That will be all. Thank you Marshall."
And with that Marshall leaves the room, apple fritter in tow.
She looks at Sloane expectantly. Sloane sits down on the edge of the table, looking at her, smiling down at her with his dark serpentine eyes.
"I don't need to tell you how dangerous, and important this mission is to the organization…and to you personally…" (he has no clue that she has already met her mother at last in Taipei…with disastrous results) "but I want you to know, that if you complete this mission successfully, you will be offered a promotion for the 7 years of exemplary service you've done here at SD-6. Agent Ryerson is due to retire next month from SD-6 as an assistant director of Operations. And I can think of no better person to take his place than you.
"You will probably spend less time in the field, but you will likely be co-ordinating and strategizing missions with your father…and myself."
Grinning now, eyes crinkled, he looks expectantly at her, thinking she will leap at the opportunity.
She is stunned. Sloane stands up and leans over to pat her on the shoulder, almost patronizingly.
"I know I told Jack a few days ago I was merely considering you as a potential candidate, but I wanted you to know, from me, that the work you do day in and day out makes a difference here. And that this promotion is the organization's way, and my way of letting you know how much it is appreciated. So let's just keep this a secret between you and me, all right?"
She shoots him a brief, shaky smile, and nods…
"We'll talk more when you get back. You'll be leaving tonight." And with that he steps out of the briefing room.
She gets up then, and leaves the mission briefing room. She makes her way into the open area of the office, looking for Jack.
Their eyes meet and he nods, and he then glances at the meeting room across the office.
[SD-6 meeting room]
As soon as they are both in the meeting room with the doors closed, he pulls out his pen and twists the cap to jam all nearby radio frequencies.
When the pen stops beeping, after 3 seconds, he speaks again. "You've got 2 minutes."
"Sloane's sending me to London tonight to get a copy of something called the Master File. He believes an email transmission sent by an anonymous source and received by SD-6 mail servers a few hours ago is proof that this file exists."
The look on Jack's face tells her that he still has not completely regained Sloane's trust. He is surprised he was not briefed on her mission.
"Tell me more about this Master File."
"He claims it contains Khasinau's entire organizational network as well as details about all the Rambaldi artifacts collected so far. The file is located in a building called Hartley House and in less than 36 hours servers in the sub-basement will be taken offline, several at a time, for data backup. One of them contains the Master File. I'm supposed to get in there and get the data."
Now Jack is clearly alarmed.
"Sydney, there are about 25 people including myself who know about the significance of Hartley House. Hartley House is where the leaders of the Alliance meet to discuss and vote on issues. Only half of those people have the clearance to know about the server farm in the sub-basement.
"Sloane isn't sending you to retrieve organizational information on Khasinau, he's trying to get you to break into the Alliance's own server farm. He must have had the email transmission doctored to make it look like it referred to the existence of a Master File of Khasinau's organization, not the Alliance's."
"But why?"
"So that nobody would think anything of the mission other than what it is; data extraction." He pauses, thinking quickly. "There has to be something on one of those servers that Sloane wants badly enough that he would mislead you and violate the Alliance's rules of conduct. And the only possibility I can think of is that there exists a Master File containing the Alliance's entire organizational work, including SD-6's and he wants it because he can use it for leverage to further promote his standing and SD-6's within the Alliance. And possibly as payback for Emily's death. "
"Does such a file really exist?"
"I don't know. But if it does…" Their eyes meet.
"…the CIA could use it to take down the Alliance, and SD-6."
"Yes."
Despite herself, she feels the faintest stirrings of hope bloom inside her. She sits straighter in her seat now, determined.
"Then let's hope the file exists and I don't leave there empty handed."
He nods curtly. "I know I don't need to tell you to be careful on your missions…but for this one...with the stakes so high, and the margin for error so small…I…would want to get backup."
She knows what he is suggesting, and she bobs her head in acknowledgement.
But before she passes him to exit the meeting room he clears his throat, causing her to stop in her tracks.
"I…also heard from Sloane that he is considering you to be the next assistant director of Operations."
She clasps her hands behind her and turns to look at him. "Yes. He told me in the briefing room. I'm a little surprised. I never would have thought I'd be doing anything else other than field work at SD-6."
"The best candidates for a position like that *should* have prior field training so they know the kind of missions they'll be sending agents out on," he begins matter-of-factly, but stops. Given what they really know about SD-6, it would probably not be the ideal way for her to be getting ahead. Knowing that, he permits himself a small smile. "Though I'm sure you'd do an excellent job, under the circumstances."
"Thanks," she says, catching his meaning, "but let's hope I don't have to make the decision to accept or not."
Jack's pen beeps again and quickly he shifts gears. He clears his throat. "—and if you can get that report to me by the end of the day I'd appreciate that," he says.
"I will. Thanks."
She leaves the meeting room and makes a beeline for her desk, checking her watch.
Time to go for a quick run for coffee at Starbucks, and to do a drop.