As I drove along the road up to the old surveillance building, I glanced across at the Jeep's two other occupants. Andrew Davenport, of the British intelligence services, was still apparently fast asleep, lanky frame sprawled out across the back seat. Beside me, Detective Bobby Goren was apparently off in a world of his own, staring out of the window and occasionally gesturing fiercely at an imaginary opponent, as if carrying on a conversation in his head. He had surprisingly graceful hands. I wondered whether if you got to know him well enough, you'd be able to interpret them, like sign language. Not for the first time, I wished his partner, Detective Eames, was there. Aside from the fact it would have meant I wasn't the only woman involved on this operation, it might have meant he wouldn't have noticed me acting like some stupid kid earlier that day. I winced, flashing back to my being sat in the stuffy room earlier that day…

…In my defence, the meeting to plan out the surveillance operation we were all involved with had gone on for over two hours, and so far my biggest contribution had been answering a couple of dummy questions my boss had slung at me in a desperate attempt to remind the rest of the room why I was there. Tim Whitefield, Senior Liaison Officer between the NYPD & Interpol, was a decent guy, whose patience was visibly fraying as he tried to keep the meeting on track. With five different organisations in the room, he was fighting a losing battle. The really annoying thing was, we all knew why we were there. We all knew what we had to do. Unfortunately, as so often happens, we had gotten into a wrangle over the details.

Along with everyone else in the room, I'd been involved for the past month in a surveillance operation on the head of an Eastern European criminal gang, one Ivan Shorokogat. We'd been called in after the NYPD Major Case squad encountered him on the trail of a seemingly unrelated case involving the death in suspicious circumstances of the wife of a wealthy Russian businessman. Their investigation had linked him to a series of deaths following illegal abortions among poor Eastern European immigrants over the past few months. Unbelievably, it seemed that beauty treatments using stem cells from aborted foetuses were the current in-thing among some sections of Russian society. The trend was spreading into Russian emigrant communities worldwide, and Shorokogat was not one to ignore a growing market. As he wasn't a US citizen, and several European police forces had been trying to nail him for drug and women trafficking across the continent, Interpol had been called in. We were co-ordinating the investigation, providing back-up information and providing translation services - in the form of yours truly, Sienna Tovitz, Interpol Russian-English and Ukrainian-English translator and interpreter.

We were also attempting to prevent the investigation becoming a free-for-all. So far we had got the list of organisations involved down to four; ourselves, the NYPD, the CIA and the British intelligence services. Andrew Davenport had been sitting on my left and attempting to look interested, a fight I'd given up on when I realised that my only reason for being in the meeting was to ensure that Tim Whitefield wasn't outnumbered. And, it seemed, to provide something for the two CIA guys, Smith and Timkowski, who'd arranged the actual surveillance, to look at when they got bored with arguing with the fifth organisation present at the meeting, the US Army. The NYPD detective who had originally alerted us to Shorokogat's presence in New York, Robert Goren of Major Case, was seated on my right, doing what looked suspiciously like doodling on the notepad in front of him. To judge by the way he was sprawled in his chair, eyes half-closed, he was as bored with listening to Whitefield wrangle with the CIA and the Army over who exactly was going to pay for all of this (and who'd be responsible if it didn't work out) as I was. Like myself and Davenport, he was there primarily to help interpret any information received.

Also, as Goren's six-foot-plus presence couldn't help reminding us, if this operation didn't come off, he'd be the one to make the arrest. If we couldn't get Shorokogat for trafficking and funding terrorism, we'd at least get him for illegal beauty treatments. Every so often, he'd look vaguely around the room, frown, and then return to his doodling. My best guess at why was the absence of his partner, Alexandra Eames. During the course of their investigation into Shorokogat, one of his bodyguards had attacked her and Goren when they'd been attempting to enforce a search warrant at his house. Shorokogat himself hadn't been there, and the bodyguard was now awaiting trial for assaulting a police officer - he'd broken Eames' arm whilst she'd been trying to cuff him for interfering with their search. I'd gleaned from Whitefield that it wasn't a bad break and she was actually back at work, albeit behind a desk. Also, that shortly following the bodyguard breaking her arm she'd kicked him hard enough to dislocate one of his knees; I had a feeling I'd like her if we met. She wasn't, however, recovered enough to manage the six-hour round trip up a narrow road with giant potholes which we were currently discussing, so Goren was here on his own.

I got the impression that he was not happy with this; also that, to judge by the rumours that he'd picked up the bodyguard and slammed the guy into the wall whilst at the scene (dislocated knee and all), Shorokogat would be a very unhappy man if he found himself being interrogated by the NYPD. Goren didn't look especially violent – he if anything looked half-asleep – but given that he had to be at least six-foot plus with broad shoulders and huge hands, I could easily see where the rumour had come from. We'd spoken occasionally on the phone whilst I was doing the translating; he had an oddly hesitant manner of speaking for someone with his reputation for successful interrogation. This was the first time I'd actually met him in person.

At present we had enough intelligence to nail Shorokogat for the illegal stem-cell treatments, but that was relatively minor compared to everything else he was involved with; the trafficking, extortion in his home state and possible links to terrorist organisations. We also needed to do this swiftly as he was planning to fly back to the Ukraine in three days' time for his brother's wedding. Luckily for us, one of Shorokogat's hobbies was sailing, and he was planning to take a trip in his latest acquisition out along Long Island Sound. The plan was that we'd head up along the coast to an old building on Army territory near the route Shorokogat was planning to take, from whence the CIA guys, Smith & Timkowski, would be able to listen in on any conversations he might be having whilst out on the boat with his friends. If the information received confirmed what we'd already gathered, we'd be able to contact our colleagues back in New York City, and have a welcoming committee ready for Shorokogat when he returned from his trip.

In order to do this, we'd need to pass through an Army training base further up the East Coast in Connecticut; the building we were planning to use was only accessible via a single track road from the base, which occasionally used it for training simulations. The plan was that we'd simply pass ourselves off as regular US Army (no need for several hundred loose-mouthed recruits plus whoever they might talk to off-duty to know about what we were planning), and then head up there under cover of being on a training exercise. I had tried to understand why in an era of satellite communications, Smith and colleague needed to be physically near the guy, or at least within a range of one mile, in order to listen in. The explanation had made my head spin, and I'd finally admitted defeat.

It wasn't actually important that I understood how the bugging process worked anyway. All I needed to do (all!) was translate the intelligence received into English with sufficient accuracy that we could be confident of planning the arrest and getting the result, with a view to later on using it in court. I'd had help during the earlier stages, but it had been decided to take only one translator along on this operation, and I was the most fluent at translating Shorokogat's mixture of Russian & Ukrainian conversations; the legacy of a childhood spent growing up in Russia with Ukrainian neighbours. So, here I was. Spies to the left of me, policemen to the right, there I was, trying desperately to stay awake. Seriously, this was a waste of time. The only reason Smith was dragging out the discussions was that he thought the CIA should be in charge, and determined to turn the whole thing into a pissing contest. He was now implying that the CIA shouldn't be paying for himself and Timkowski to come along on the surveillance operation. Whitefield was doing his best not to lose it, but I could see he was seriously annoyed after two hours of this. I sighed.

I should really have been more excited; this was the biggest operation I'd been involved with since I joined Interpol, and certainly the most responsibility I'd ever undertaken. It would be my first time on an active operation, 'out of the office', as we liked to say. After two hours of listening to Whitefield argue with the CIA & the Army, I was almost ready to admit defeat and go to sleep at the table. Inspired by the ongoing arguments, I'd decided to try translating "Why do men always turn every discussion in a testosterone-filled game of who has the biggest penis?" into every language I knew in a desperate attempt to stay awake. So far I'd done Ukrainian, Russian and French. I'd picked up a smattering of Western European languages during a year's travelling following my graduating college, and I'd deliberately picked a difficult sentence to increase the challenge. I was stuck on the German.

I was frowning over the German word for 'testosterone', when I suddenly realised that Goren had roused himself from his stupor and was pacing round the table. Apparently he'd decided to join in the ongoing whose-is-biggest argument, as if we needed another participant. An inner evil voice muttered He's six foot four and must be at least a size 13; what do you want to bet he doesn't have to worry about losing that contest? I told the evil voice to shut the hell up and go away. There's a time and a place for scurrilous speculations about co-workers, and that time and place is not in the middle of a serious criminal investigation. Goren was now arguing with Smith about his (Smith's) view that, to put it crudely, since Shorokogat wasn't a US citizen and what he did didn't affect US citizens at present (apart from the illegal stem-cell treatments, but that was a domestic law-enforcement issue), funding the extra surveillance operation should not be a CIA priority.

Goren appeared to be taking the view, punctuated by much flailing of those large hands, that it should be a priority on the grounds that Shorokogat was a potential threat, and that in any case we had a moral duty to arrest him if we possibly could. I reminded myself that he'd interviewed some of the illegal abortion victims, several of whom were seriously, possibly irreversibly, injured, which could explain the way he was leaning over the desk and glaring Smith in the eyes. Whitefield took advantage of the distraction to press home the point that if this was going to work, we needed to get started within the next few hours. I took advantage of it to sneak a glance at Goren's notepad, which he'd left temptingly near my chair. If I just leaned over and scanned it carefully… I could give myself a near-coronary by noticing that he'd written neatly, in German, "It's 'testosteron'. And we don't ALL do that."

Oooohhshit.

I'd just managed to make myself look like a complete idiot in the eyes of someone I was going to have to work with for the next day and night, on the most important project I'd undertaken in my career. Really good going, Sienna! Damn damn damn damn damn. How the hell did he know German? I realised I was blushing and staring at the notepad, and covered quickly by looking up and pasting on a 'bright and interested' look. Unfortunately, I managed to time my looking up with Goren's pacing round the table so that I made eye contact directly with him. He grinned, just faintly, and raised an eyebrow. I blushed even more. Damn, damn, damn!

Finally, he returned to his chair, having won his argument with Smith, who gave way grudgingly and agreed that he and Timkowski would join us on the surveillance operation. Whitefield wrapped up the meeting with a relieved sigh and instructions to be ready to move out, Army uniforms and all, in three hours' time. As I headed out of the room, hoping to avoid making myself look even more stupid, I could sense Goren looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and smiling very faintly.

This did not look set to be the most enjoyable 48 hours of my life. Not at all.

Author's Notes: I repeat my earlier disclaimer about my lack of knowledge about the inner workings of the CIA, Interpol, the Army, the British intelligence services and the NYPD…. Having decided to write a Criminal Intent fic, I realised fairly quickly that I was going to be hampered by the following facts; a) I've never been to New York, b) I didn't want to duplicate every other 'Bobby and Alex' fic out there, c) it's really hard to write dialogue for Goren when he's in full-on "screw with the suspect's head" mode, because so much of it comes from Vincent D'Onofrio's acting, and d) I'm terrible at writing mysteries. Plus, I needed a reason for Goren to be in army fatigues, because I wanted an excuse to look at lots of pictures of Vincent D'Onofrio in army uniform and call it research. (Yes, I am that sad.)

So, this is the result. I thought it would be interesting to take Goren out of New York and get away from the 'solve the mystery' scenario. Don't worry, he's going to say something in the next instalment. Quite a lot, in fact. And Andrew is going to wake up.

Lest it be thought I'm being unduly gruesome in my imaginings, I should point out that the illegal stem-cell treatments really do exist. You can find out more about them (should you wish to) online on the UK 'Guardian' newspaper's website.