Coming back to the States was an official transfer. If it had been up to her she would have never come back. But her last mission had been a success. As she walked into the New York field office it was evident in her colleagues faces. She was riding the high of catching the most wanted hacker of all time in Moscow. It had been an undercover operation. She had to live and make a life out in the Soviet nation then get in contact with the mark, make her fall in love and shoot her right in the head. It was upsetting, yes. But its what she did for a living, what she was best at, for what she was getting a medal of honour - here at the CIA field office along with a briefing of her next mission.
She went straight for her operation officer's corner office and opened the door with a slight knock. Everyone was already there waiting for her.
"Here she is. Women of the hour. Come in Chapman." Her Operation officer welcomed her warmly.
"Nice to see you too, Joe." Piper replied smiling. She hugged him briefly. "Director Rawlins, I didn't know you would be here." She addressed the director with a firm handshake.
"I was here on some official business and well, I thought it would be a pleasure to present you with the medal myself, Agent Chapman."
"Thank you, Director."
"If you could step over here." The director requested.
Piper stood next to the director. The office was packed with a handful of special agents and officers with admiration, respect and gratitude in their eyes.
"Special Agent, Piper Elizabeth Chapman, for your outstanding performance and sacrifices made in the field at a great personal risk, it is my honour to present you with the Distinguished Intelligence Medal." A gold plated medal in a velvet box was given to her. "Congratulations. Tell no one." Everyone laughed and applauded.
"Thank you, ma'm. It's an honour."
"No, Chapman you deserve this. Your work took a lot of big targets out of the game. I assume you're ready for your next mission."
"Yes, ma'm. I have a briefing today."
"Well, good work. Keep it up and you'll be sitting at my chair sooner than later." Piper smiled gratefully.
"I shall leave you two to it, then." The director nodded at Caputo and Chapman and left the office with the rest of her colleagues
Caputo took out his laptop and gestured her to follow him.
"The conference room? This case must be big then." Piper said walking with him through the hallway. They got into an elevator. Caputo pressed the button for underground conference room.
"It is a big case. FBI, DHS, DEA... everyone is on it. No one has a lead though. That is why you are here. This can make or break your career, Chapman." Caputo said. Piper was focused on the screen showing floor numbers. She said nothing.
"The director seemed very fond of you." Caputo said again. Piper chuckled.
"It's... she's grateful for my father, William Chapman. He saved her son's life. And they went to Harvard together so there's that."
"You're doing it again, Chapman. Discrediting yourself. You did a great job." Caputo said trying to sound supportive. Caputo was her mentor here at the agency. He always had her back.
The elevator stopped. They stepped out into the dimly lit covert operation section. A selected number of agents, analysts and programmers were waiting for them in the conference room.
"Let's just get this done." Piper said smiling at Caputo.
Piper took her seat beside Caputo at the head of the table. As they turned on the projectors, her co-workers (whose faces she had not seen in a year) congratulated her. Larry Bloom stood up and started the presentation.
"Kubra Balik. Born and raised in the States is the most wanted drug kingpin on DEA's list. He operates internationally and is known to be a violent employer."
"What put him under our radar?" Piper asked.
"We have been monitoring him very closely for the past year. And we have evidence that his focus has shifted from Heroine to illegal weaponry, bombs and terorism in Europe." Larry finished. Caputo picked up after that.
"He is a man seeking power. We interrogated some Afghani locals back in Afghanistan and they said people associated with his cartel has been selling guns and bombs that blew up our army. Somehow, he also gained access to surveillance equipment in the Air Force. We were able to bring it down before he could do any serious damage. He has proven to be a constant threat." Caputo said and stood up pointing at a blurry picture of a bald man. "This is the only picture we have of him."
"So, how do we get to him?" Piper asked, getting excited. Everyone looked lost.
"Well," Caputo sighed. "It's near impossible getting close to him without earning his trust. He is a paranoid man. It is clear that he operates on two fronts. Drugs and terorism. While he is focused on exporting bombs, his drug empire is his weakest side. We are thinking of infiltrating from there. It's the easiest way to get close to him without raising any suspicions. It keeps DEA and FBI off our backs as well if we keep feeding them enough intel about his drug ring"
"What's the catch?"
Caputo changed the slide to a woman's photograph. The photograph showed her in a cafe with a book in hand, sipping her coffee, black rimmed glasses perched on top of her nose. She looked so engrossed in her book that she didn't notice her photo getting clicked. Although Piper wouldn't admit it, she would have really found her attractive if they had met under ordinary circumstances.
"Wow. She's hot." Larry Bloom voiced her thoughts.
"Shut it, Bloom." Caputo scolded. "So, this is Alex Vause. Born and raised in the states. She is our getaway into the cartel. Vause is one of Kubra's personal favourites. She had been working for him since she was 19. She is a smuggler and recruiter. She is second in command in the cartel along with Fahri, who is her recruiter. She's known to living in New York right now. This picture was taken 4 days ago. Our agents also confirmed her visit in one too many bars which means she is looking for drug mules. Alex Vause is your primary target."
"I suppose I am going undercover once again. What's the story?"
"We haven't figured that out yet." Another agent spoke up. "We have been monitoring Vause and in all her time she hadn't stayed this long in one place. She is all over the map. She has an apartment in Manhattan. We have been listening in for any calls from Balik but it seems like they communicate through encrypted mails. Her tracks are almost untraceable."
"I am sorry but what's your name again?" Piper asked politely.
"Poussey. Poussey Washington. I am a tech specialist. I am a fan of your work though." the agent replied. Piper nodded in acknowledgement.
"I should probably introduce you to the team." Caputo said. "Okay, so we have Larry Bloom - analyst. Agent Carlin for backup field support. Agent Washington and agent Benett for tech support. Mrs. Figueroa from legal." Everyone responded to their names by a firm head nod towards Piper. "And team, this is infamous Agent Chapman."
"Its a pleasure working with you all." Piper said.
"Pleasure is all ours." Larry chipped in with a creepy smile then retreated when Caputo glared at him.
"Let's get to work. We have to plant Piper Chapman in Alex Vause's life in less than two days." Caputo commanded.
After eight hours of constant brainstorming of ideas, yelling opinions and risk calculations later, they had outlined a story. To sell the story to someone as experienced as Alex, they kept the story genuine. Piper was going to be just Piper Chapman. From all the intelligence that they had gathered previously, they easily figured out Alex's preferred type.Young, Naive, Sad, Old money girls who have no previous record of crime but are fed up with their families and are looking for a rebellion against their parent's carefully constructed social image.
Piper Chapman is a 25 year old Smith's grad currently working as a waitress and an aspiring writer. She has a degree in English Literature. Her fiancé Larry Bloom just broke up with her after 3 year long relationship. She is now looking for a new job. She is supposed to be very WASPy and naive. She does not have many friends but her father keeps her accounts filled. They build her social media profiles and hacked into the mainframe to make the posts a year or two old. It was all set to be the perfect bait for Alex.
Alex is someone who can easily read people. Piper has to keep certain level of general admiration to get in her good graces. And that wasn't hard at all. Alex had an aura about her which made her sexy and appealing and Piper wasn't blind to it. It certainly made her job easy.
Undercover operations are never predictable but the agency always tries to exert as much control as possible. Piper will be out of any contact for a little while. So, they had to make sure everything goes just as planned. Although the spy work wasn't as cool as they show in movies, it was interesting nonetheless.
Piper was given a very ordinary looking iphone with a hidden switch which turned it into a CIA encrypted phone impossible to hack, track or monitor. A gun which can be mantled-dismantled in less than 5 secs, pens which can record videos, eyeliners with paralysing injections.
Piper left for her new old designated apartment in Brooklyn with a suitcase in tow. There was nothing connecting her to the agency except maybe her skills of observation.
That night Piper laid back in her couch with a glass of wine in her hand and macbook on her lap trying to find out more about the enigmatic Alex Vause. Nothing came up at first, of course. It would take more than insta stalking to find Alex online. After digging a little bit more (with the help of a facial recognition software), she found her. Not much, but there were a couple of pictures of Alex spread throughout profiles of rich, young girls. She seemed annoyed in most of them but sexy nonetheless. A little more research showed that those profiles were abandoned not long after posting the pictures. So, this Alex person may not like social media that much. Piper could not help but compare herself to those girls. She fell asleep drunk, looking at one picture which showed that sexy rose tattoo on Alex's arm. And things just got a little bit more interesting.