It was two months before he received the call.
Arthur had found it customarily easy to slip back into 'normal' life. His skills as a point man were usefully close to that of a personal assistant, and he could always rely on finding something administrative and legitimate during the intermittent months. But he always expected the call. Someone, somewhere, with work. Real work. The kind he lived for.
This job was, relatively, a return to the norm. Extraction for a company who had found a mole and needed to find out who had placed them there. Arthur had standard procedure, but it was tailoring to the specifics that brought the excitement. That, and pulling it off.
For a moment, Arthur considered calling Cobb. He has become so accustomed to their working style, it seemed unnatural to be approaching this without him. But there's no way he'd take it. He hadn't even heard from him in over a month. As far as he could tell, Cobb was finally getting back a bit of his own 'normal' life he'd missed for so long. Arthur was fairly certain he'd be back one day, but it would be wrong to pressure him so soon. In that case, maybe he wouldn't use a specialised Extractor. Arthur was an accomplished extractor himself, and the balance was more about finding the right team and establishing a plan. He would avoid bringing in new people where possible.
Yusuf was experienced and reliable, and wouldn't need to go into the dream itself unless the job proved particularly complex. The same would go for the architect. Ariadne was in the middle of a college term back in Paris, but something told Arthur she would be more than happy to skive a couple of weeks. He had seen how she'd taken to it; as everyone did. The draw, that really wasn't like anything you could experience in reality. Arthur thought back to that moment on the last job, on that second level. He knew he'd taken a liberty getting her to kiss him. He'd taken advantage of the moment, and her trust in his experience of the dream state. But really he'd kissed her just because he wanted to. She was nice, and gifted, and had the wide-eyed fascination of a novice. It was light, and fleeting, and didn't really mean anything. Which was nice.
Finally the last, most irksome appointment. He knew the mission could use a forger, and a talented one at that, as the mark would undoubtedly be trained if they had been working undercover themselves. He would need someone highly skilled and experienced; someone he could trust. Well the first part he had down. He was fairly sure Eames would take the job. They would nitpick at each other constantly, but Arthur knew that they worked well together. Professionally. They had something.
Arthur sighed. Paused. And resolved. Time to assemble the troops.