Chapter 6
In Which the Title of This Fic Actually Comes Into Play
"…is thinking outside the cubicle! Everyone, put on your dancing feet and follow me into a world of creativity!"
What a throw pillow. Helga resisted the urge to yawn. She was supposed to be setting a good example by paying "rapt attention to our guest speaker", as the CEO had put it, but increasingly the only example she wanted to make was of the guest speaker. She thought the employees of Ical would pay much more attention if the his head were stuck on a pole. Or perhaps a barbeque spit.
The entire work force of Ical was stuffed into the basement this afternoon because the CEO had suddenly decided that they weren't "happy enough." Instead of attributing this to Ical's less-than-average wages, he opted to bring in a motivational speaker. So rather than getting any work done, for an agonizing three hours they were expected to sit on uncomfortable folding chairs in a room with no windows listening to why they should be happy. Helga had attempted to keep herself awake by stabbing her pen into her thigh at random intervals. She had a sneaking suspicion that the two guys sitting behind her were taking bets on how many minutes she allowed between stabs.
"Look at the rainbows! Listen to the birds!" Helga's mind began to wander.
She was getting frustrated, not only with her job at Ical but also with her current CIA assignment. It had been over a week since her and Gerald had teamed up, and still they hadn't made any progress. Moria had really started getting on her back about it.
"This is a simple thing to do!" she had burst out angrily just that morning, "I have three agents in three companies. One of these companies is smuggling. Find out which one! Would you mind explaining to me what is taking so long?"
It's not my fault, Helga ground her teeth together thinking about it. We've been taking turns watching the office every night, but there's just nothing to watch. Face it Moria, Ical's just another boring company. The smuggling has to be happening at one of the other two. Or else at the shipping docks somewhere. Now if only I could convince her to switch me to one of those, then I could get something done!
Her cell phone began to vibrate, jerking Helga back into consciousness. She flipped it on and glanced at it. Someone from a number she didn't recognize was sending her a text message.
BORED?, it asked.
Of course I'm bored. Helga looked up and scanned the crowd. Aha. On the other side of the room she could see Gerald innocently putting what looked like a text-enabled pager of some kind in his pocket. Well, two can play at that game.
A minute later, the first few bars of "Men in Black" beeped loudly across the room. Several people looked disapprovingly in Gerald's direction as he scrambled to turn it off. Helga held in her laughter with difficulty. Guess he forgot to set it to vibrate. Whoops.
Gerald finally managed to cut the sound and read what Helga had sent him.
NEED SPITBALL. Typical.
"I am happy! Say it with me! I am HAPPY!!"
Helga was about to resort back to her pen when her cell went off again.
SIMMON'S NEW JOB?
She snorted, causing the rather uptight assistant manager to her right to jump. She could just see their long-time teacher picking this as a future career. She was about to respond when she heard what the hated speaker was saying.
"I am happy! I am unique! I am special in my own special way!"
The CEO shifted in his seat at the front and frowned. There seemed to be an unusual amount of giggling going on in the room today.
************
The man blended in with the shadows, which was not an easy task considering it was afternoon. The sun shone brightly in the sky above, but when Mr. Smith needed shadows, he made his own.
Today he needed them even more than normally. It's here. I know it is. His intuition was screaming at him, and he knew from experience that such feelings were rarely wrong. He watched the docks carefully as the various ships rode up and down on the waves.
Then it was there. He was certain he hadn't even blinked, yet it had appeared as if by magic on the edge of the pier, just as the steel met the sidewalk. Mr. Smith didn't hesitate. He moved quickly, knowing he would only have a few seconds.
He approached the small, non-descript wooden crate with caution. No one had seen him yet he was sure, but someone would be coming to pick the crate up very soon, and then he could hardly go unnoticed. Placing a metal object on the lid, he twiddled a few dials and looked into the lens on top.
At first, he saw only darkness. A few more turns of the dial and the contents of the crate came into focus. A dark cylindrical object nestled in the wooden shavings. Smith drew in a sharp breath. His intuition had been right again. He moved a tiny dial on the right-hand side of his metal device and focused on the innocent-looking white label near the bottom of the cylinder. After reading what it said, he immediately unhooked his equipment from the box, turned and walked away, melting once again into his self-made shadows. If he had glanced over his shoulder, he would have seen that the crate had already disappeared.
************
WHAT HANGS ON A WALL, IS GREEN, WET AND WHISTLES?
The Mr. Simmons wanna-be had almost wrapped up for the day. Helga and Gerald had been exchanging jokes and riddles for the past hour, Helga having given up being a good example long ago. She frowned at Gerald's latest. Green, wet and whistles? What is he on?
NO IDEA, she sent back, and waited for the answer. The throw pillow was talking about rainbows again.
A HERRING, came the reply. A what? A red herring? I don't get it.
NOT HUNG ON MY WALL, she informed him.
After a few minutes, HANG IT THERE THEN appeared on her screen. Ugh, fish on my wall, that's what I need. This still doesn't make any sense.
HERRING NOT GREEN. Pause.
PAINT IT GREEN. This is getting ridiculous. The CEO had stood to say a few closing words.
HERRING NOT WET!
IT IS IF PAINT IS STILL WET, her screen flashed. The CEO dismissed them, and Helga left the room, hardly noticing the people around her as she typed a reply angrily.
HERRING DOES NOT WHISTLE!! Talk your way out of that one, Tall Hair Boy.
"I know," came a voice behind her, "I just put that in to make it hard."
Helga spun around and glared at Gerald, who was standing behind her smirking.
"How can you call that a riddle? There's no possible way to guess the answer!"
"That's why it's a joke, not a riddle."
"You're tempting me to bring Old Betsy out of retirement," Helga growled at him.
"Old what?" came yet another voice, forcing Helga to turn around again.
Moria was standing there, a testy expression on her face. "Never mind. I need to talk with both of you."
"But—"
"NOW."
**************
"So you just waltzed into the office and picked them up?!" Simon's eye was twitching even more than normally.
Moria was looking very irritated. "I called both of their work numbers and no one picked up. Ms. Pataki's cell was busy, and Mr. Johansson didn't answer my page."
"Yes but…what if someone saw you? You're the one who's always going on about how the FBI doesn't follow simple security—"
"We needed them here now. And their cover may be a moot point by tomorrow if all goes well anyway."
"But what if it doesn't go well?" Moria choose not to answer this, and instead glared holes in the dusty floor.
The four of them were in an FBI auxiliary building which was little more than a rarely used warehouse. There was exactly one desk and one chair on the concrete floor, and since Moria had appropriated the chair Simon was seated on the desk, leaving Helga and Gerald standing.
"Is someone," demanded Helga, "Going to tell us what's going on here?"
Moria and Simon glanced at each other and seemed to come to an unspoken truce. Moria sighed and spoke.
"We've had a bit of a breakthrough."
"You've found out which company is smuggling?" asked Gerald.
"No," answered Simon, "it's still between the three. But we have more of an idea of what to look for." He picked up a folder he had sitting next to him and handed it to Gerald. Helga leaned over so that she could see also.
It contained line drawings of a cylindrical object, a crate with approximate dimensions, and a short description of the entire package. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it.
"What is it?"
"We're not sure. It's a weapon of some sort, but probably not biological after all. Right now research believes it's for some kind of chemical warfare." Simon wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "This came into the States this afternoon. All three of the companies on our hit list had ships in port when this arrived, and our surveillance teams were unable to find out which it came from. Right now they're trying to figure out where it's going."
Helga had picked up one of the drawings and was reading the label. "Hot Air?"
Moria nodded. "We believe that's the code name for the weapon."
"They're smuggling the contents of Gerald's head?" Helga quipped, "Must be a small container."
"Least there's something in my head. Let me see that." Gerald took the paper from Helga and looked at it carefully. "So this is what you expect us to find? Maybe lying around the office somewhere?"
"Of course not." Moria was back to being irritated. "We're expecting you to find out who knows about this. This smuggling was authorized somewhere in the ranks of the company…or one of the others. You can't bribe everyone on a ship for this long without generating a leak. Someone thinks they're just following orders. We need to know who this traces back to. And why."
Helga shook her head. "I seriously doubt we're going to find anything, Moria. I've been there six months. I'm in charge of the whole shipping department and I don't know anything about this." Gerald nodded his head in agreement, though he felt a tiny nagging feeling that perhaps he had forgotten something.
Moria was unimpressed. "I've heard the same exact thing from all my other agents, Ms. Pataki. One of you is wrong."
***********
Gerald had returned to Ical to find that Phil had once again left a huge stack of paperwork on his desk. Joe leaned over the top of his cubicle and told him that when he was done with that he could help out with the committee for choosing the next motivational speaker. And once again the break room was out of coffee.
Great, he thought as he picked the first piece of paper out of the stack, all I need now is a trip to the media room and my day will be complete. Then he read the first line on the paper and groaned.
MEMO: To be printed on the IE666 and distributed.
Twenty minutes later he was standing in front of the evil printer, staring at it as if it might begin to work properly through the power of his gaze. He heard footsteps and looked up to see Helga enter the room. She looked rather miffed.
"Whatever it is, I didn't do it." Gerald told her automatically.
"It's not you. This time." Helga made a quick check outside the door and when she was sure no one was listening added, "I just went through all my files. Nothing. Moria's on crack." She headed to the copy machine and began changing the settings for whatever it was she was doing. Gerald caught himself desperately wishing they could switch places. He resisted temptation to kick the printer again – the paper tray had turned out to be more expensive than he had thought. After a moment, Helga glanced over her shoulder at him.
"You really can't handle technology, can you?"
Gerald felt insulted. "I can handle it fine, Helga. It's just evil medieval-aged laser printers that hate me I don't like. What the heck does 'ERROR 33' mean anyway?"
She rolled her eyes and came over. Gerald was somewhat satisfied to note that it took her an entire 30 seconds to fix the thing this time. A small victory, but one nonetheless. Helga went back to her copying.
"Just try not to damage it this time."
"I won't damage it if it actually prints my document instead of the shipping account."
Helga pressed the copy button. "It won't do that."
"Don't be too sure," intoned Gerald darkly.
"I am sure. Ical doesn't use hard copies of shipping reports. It's all electronic."
"Whatever you say, Helga. I know what I saw."
There was a pause, then Helga suddenly turned from her copying and looked at him, hard. "What you saw? You mean this actually happened?"
"Of course it happened. Why do you think—"
But Helga was pulling him out of the media room and down the hall to her office. She practically threw him inside, closed the door and sat down at her computer.
"Helga, ow!" Gerald protested.
She ignored this. "Look Geraldo," she pointed at her screen, "This is the shipping account. Is this what was printing?"
Gerald leaned over and scanned the words. It was the same format, though not the exact page he had read. He nodded.
"What day was this?"
"Whatever day you came in and yelled at me for abusing your precious printer."
Helga thought a moment and apparently remembered which day that was, because she brought up a document on her computer.
"Did you read any of it?" He nodded again. "Do you remember any of it?"
"Um, sort of." Helga looked at him expectantly, so he tried to recall what had been on the page he had scanned. "It was a list of supplies on a ship—"
"Imports or Exports?"
"Imports. I think the ship was named "Reba" or "Rebel" or something like that."
Helga checked the list. "How about the USS Revel?"
"Yeah, that sounds right. It was on page 3, I remember that."
"Well that helps. Here, was this it?" Gerald looked at the screen.
INPORTS, USS Revel, con.
BANDAGES, cotton
500 crates, CA
SPLINTS, wood
145 crates, NY
EXPORTS expected, USS Cardinal IV
COTTON SWABS
DISPOSIBLE GLOVES
"Yeah that's it…except…I think there's something missing, maybe."
Helga sat back in her chair and stared at the screen for a few moments, thinking. Gerald tried to remember what else had been on the sheet.
"I think there was another import listed for the Revel. I wish I could…" suddenly it clicked, "Morphine. It was morphine, I'm sure of it."
"Can't be. We don't ship morphine. We're a smaller company and there's not enough call for it with our regular customers. Could it have been something else starting with 'M'?"
"No. I'm positive Helga."
"Well which docks was it slated for, New York or California?"
"Um, same as the one before it," he checked the list again, "So New York."
Helga did a search on "M" imports for the Revel at the New York docks, but came up with nothing that could be mistaken for morphine. Gerald however, was adamant that that was what he had seen. Then Helga's eyes brightened.
"Wait Geraldo, who was trying to print the shipping report anyway? Do you know?"
"Sure. It was my boss, Phil."
Helga grinned. She got out of the report program and logged onto the network. In a few moments, she was searching through Phil's files.
"How'd you do that?"
"I'm the shipping director. I have root privileges on all the computers in the building." Seeing Gerald's confused look, she explained, "That means I can get into anyone's computer from this one. It's not doing me any good right now though, looks like Phil was smart enough to erase the file after he printed it. Let's see…if I get onto the server backups, maybe they backed up the printer spool files from…" Helga typed happily, mumbling to herself as she went through file after file. "Got it!" Gerald wasn't sure he'd ever seen Helga grin that wide. She pressed a button triumphantly and turned to Gerald.
"This, my Luddite friend, is exactly what Phil sent to the IE666." The file appeared on the screen, and Helga scrolled to page three.
MORPHINE, canisters
100 crates, NY
"Told you." Luddite, smuddite.
Helga didn't say anything. She did a quick search and came up with three other imports of morphine, all bound to New York. Then she raised an eyebrow at Gerald.
"Well Tall Hair Boy, it looks like we've found our smuggler. Up for a trip to New York?"
"I'd better call Simon." Gerald started towards the door, and then realized all at once what had been bothering him for the past few days.
"Helga, if you can get into anyone's files from your office, why did you need to put a keycatcher on my computer?"
"A keycatcher?" Helga's brow wrinkled. "I didn't put a keycatcher there."
Gerald's heart sped up a few beats. He moved back to Helga's computer and reached around the back. With a few deft motions of his hand, he brought out a small white object identical to the one installed on his computer. They both stared at it.
"Helga," said Gerald, "I think our cover is officially blown."
A/N: Ha, I did it! Only a few days to write this chapter, amazing! I'm terribly impressed with myself, grin. The joke Gerald tells is an old Yiddish classic, one of my favorites. You have to tell it to the right type of person though, because it's no fun if they don't ask the right questions. Next chapter should be up next week…or tell you what. I'll make ya'll a deal. I was going to take a break for a few days, but if I get say, ten more reviews by Sunday, then the next chapter will be up Monday, I promise. If not don't worry, it will still be up by a week from Saturday at least. How's that sound? :) ~PJ
Sennical: Heh, I love writing interaction between Gerald and Helga, it's just too fun. As for length…well, I'm about 7/12 of the way done right now, as far as I can tell. I think. :) But keep in mind that this is the first book in a series I have planned out…
pokey: I felt bad for Phoebe too, I felt Helga needed yelling at for that one!
Miss Matched: Thanks! Yes I'm sure it's not Phoebe, but congrats, you found one of my red herrings I stuck in to conceal who it actually was, lol. And here I was thinking I hadn't fooled anyone…another thought was that Gerald's boss's initials are also PB, btw. *munches on kudos*
DropsofJupiter: Arnold may actually be back next chapter, depending on how long it looks. :) Phew, I'm glad the CIA thing worked, I was a little worried about it but it's really important to the story so it had to be done. And as for romance…I'm not saying a word…just remember this is a series…