I assume my readers are fully satisfied with the action in the last chapter, so here's some more background in the Narcotic State. The tough banditos are coming soon, but I'll showcase a more pacific setting in the country, and I'll let Zechs opine on the world order his sister created.
Columbia
'The dandiest part of a super-secret need-to-know mission his decidedly NOT the shortage of trusted manpower,'
Zechs decided, riding out alone in the previously mentioned jeep with Noin to Bogotá.
'But the choicest individuals aren't available in these more slackened times. Ideally, this would be a three or four man operation, with a rescue team available if it hits the fan. I'd like to have someone at the wheel while Noin and I do the takedown, but this time, we'll just have to make a more difficult extraction.'
The entire operation is to take place at night, so the coed team assembled the canvas top on the puny utility vehicle, so Earth's flying parasites wouldn't suck out their blood, but Lucrezia Noin insisted on some exposure to fresh air, so they also installed the special mosquito net option, which won't be necessary once they reach the mountainous area around Bogotá.
"About that area," Zechs argued, 'they don't have a mosquito problem- certainly not in November, so we need to remove the nets, for the reason that a keen detective in the Bartista pocket might do a proper deduction, and figure out we're from the valley.'
Noin saw the point, and further suggested that they approach from the East, to further cover their tracks. Zechs agreed that might be necessary, and they whipped around the loop for that approach.
"Noin,
we'll need to refuel at that Cuban National station. No use buying
fuel with too much watered down additive."
Cuban National
gasoline is 50 sugarcane or sorghum ethanol alcohol (agriculture can
be risky business, so the crop is diversified) and petrol synthesized
from coal or shale milled by turbine windmills catching the trade
winds. The gas comes in from the Trans-Caribbean Pipeline. Zechs is
thinking about taking Noin to Havana once the mission is over.
"I'll fill up both tanks," he added, "Cubans will accept real money, right? None of that hard currency nonsense?" Of course, the Cubans aren't cut off from the wider world market.
They'd
been itching to use their Preventer expense account for a while, and
this is a fine time to stock up.
Zechs accepted full service,
rather than self-service, for a start.
"Fill up both tanks, will you? And wash up the jeep while your at it," he told an enterprising employee in the Cuban national jumpsuit. As silly as it is, this nationally endorsed fuel consortium is one of the few remaining vestiges of national sovereignty, a disturbing and humiliating circumstance within the greater Earth Sphere United Nation. All states, including the Sanc Kingdom, are limited to the same embarrassing status that the many Indian Nations carried in the United States from the 1830s into the twenty-first century of the Christian era.
Zechs shook it off. His own sister is responsible for this travesty, but he promised himself to make the best of it, even though he's still convinced the arrangement will never work. He bought some locally produced chocolate bars and other things to stop thinking about it, but he knows that the nationalism moratorium won't last forever, and if he's already taking the issue up with himself again, others all over the world must be doing the same.
"Hola Senor. I'll take everything I have in this basket, and I'd like the basket, too," he said to the clerk, adding, "and don't forget the full fuel service, esta bien?" Rule one of espionage: if everyone knows you're a foreign national (which no one is anymore, at least formally), you play the role of one that isn't fully versed in the native language or culture.
Zechs greeted the man by saying hello at the beginning of his conversation, and using a different greeting at the end, in effect sounding less than fully immersed in the culture, a sign of incomplete education, something unheard of in the intelligence community.
"Gracias, Senor," and the clerk named the price after sweeping Zechs' card. "Y Tu, doyarme un Buenos Noches," Zechs hopes he said "you too, have a good night." If not, so much the better for his role as the inept gringo tourist.
Hoping he's properly sensing the right sentiment from Noin, he took her arm as they walked back to the jeep.
"The guys will like seeing some of this stuff, right? Let's go, uh?"
