It is really surprising how quickly you get used to this stuff?

Madison set the document on the ever growing pile and moved on to the next one. She was going over the intelligence files on the current rash of terrorism in the United Kingdom. Bombings, assassinations, mass shootings, it was a mess over there. The group responsible for it all was the Irish Republican Army, it had been growing more and more militant over the years. And in 2064, tensions finally came to a head, then the IRA hoisted the black flag, or green as the case may be, and began to slit throats. And it was getting worse, the group had gone from quick hit and run attacks to full scale assaults on government buildings and open gun battles in the streets with government forces.

The first few files had made her want to puke, cry, scream, or some combination of the three. The charred corpses of the children, driver, and teachers in a bombed school bus. After that had been the fifteen year old boy that British soldiers had found and pulled out of a ditch, burns and cuts marred his entire upper body, he was missing four of his teeth, and all of his finger and toe nails had been ripped out. He'd been a runner for the group and someone had thought he was an informer, so they'd snatched him on his way home from a party and spent a few nights putting the screws to him, then tossed him in the ditch to die when they felt satisfied. The last one that had really affected her had been the picture of the bodies that had been pulled out of a mass grave in a bog outside Belfast. Two dozen bodies, all lined up neatly on plastic sheets, some fresh enough that you could still see the terror on their faces, some rotted beyond recognition, male, female, old men and women, children, and one in particular that would haunt her nightmares, an infant with a knife handle still protruding from it's face.

The new leaders of the IRA would go to any means they felt necessary to get their point across, and they clearly had no qualms about killing children.

After she had gotten past the worst, the rest got easier. She was slowly but steadily building a tolerance for the gruesome images.

I'm really not sure whether that is a good thing or not. Practically, she knew that she needed to be able to look past the emotional factor involved in situations like this, but at the same time she knew that it might not be entirely healthy from a psychological point of view.

In either case, her eyes were getting tired. She leaned back in her chair until she heard her spine start popping. Yawning, she looked around her quarters at the Activity's headquarters. She was still undecided on whether or not to decorate the room. On the one hand, it would make it homier and more comfortable for nights like this where she was working late. On the other, it would also make her easier to read, something that did not seem like a good idea in an underground complex full of spies.

She looked over at the pile of homework sitting on the coffee table. Classes had started up again after the break, adding homework to the work the Activity was assigning her. For most, it probably would have caused a drop in grades or an increase in stress. But in all honesty, she was glad for the challenge, she could breeze through her classes with her eyes closed, and the intelligence work she was doing more than made up for it in terms of intellectual challenge.

Despite what she told Ming, she hadn't just been assigned the break in part of the Stradivarius operation. Karen had given her some files on Chinese intelligence to look over so that she could better understand the stuff she was getting from Ming. She'd read the files and noticed a pattern, one of the files had been the transcripts of various debriefings of Americans returning from China. This included the statements from the Boston Philharmonic after the goodwill tour. The violinist had reported being approached by someone about working for the Chinese government, but said that he told the guy 'where he could shove his deal.' A few conspicuous purchases, however, told a different story. The Philharmonic paid fairly well, but not well enough to afford a villa in the Caymans islands, a yacht to get there, and a former model mistress to decorate it.

She'd brought it to Karen's attention and Karen brought it to Payne. Some discreet surveillance showed that he was meeting with people that he had no reason to be meeting with. A background check showed that he'd had some ties with local communist groups in college. Payne had wanted to send a strike team in and snatch the guy. Madison had suggested that instead of grabbing him, they should let him loose so that he could lead them to other Chinese agents. He'd agreed with her suggestion, and the next thing she knew, she was tasked with wiring his apartment.

That must have impressed them, because they kept putting files in front of her for analysis. The IRA dossier being just the latest. In between had been a dossier on some of the Islamic fundamentalist groups that had scattered around the world since the holy land became an irradiated hell hole, a dossier on the cartels merging to overshadow governments in South America, and a dossier on attacks on the Russian oil pipelines. She got the sense that they were throwing everything they could at her to find her weak points.

Haven't found any yet, she thought with a smile. Arrogant, but not entirely undeserved. She'd been able identify which supercartels were likely to be amenable to cooperation. The leaders of the new Medellin cartel, which controlled all the countries in northeastern South America, had all been educated in the United States. They'd all done so under various assumed names, but if one followed the money through the labyrinth of banks and shell companies, it eventually became clear that their tuition had been paid for in drug money. And a similar bombing methodology between three incidents across Europe and two of the attacks on the Russian pipelines had led her to connect the attacks to a demolitions specialist who was a member of a mujahedeen group that had resettled itself in Eastern Europe.

It was actually pretty fun. Like taking eight different jigsaw puzzles, dumping all the pieces on the floor, mixing them up, and then figuring out which pieces went to which puzzle and putting them together. Difficult at first, but if you looked hard enough, the patterns emerged and the pictures became clear.

The picture is getting clear with this IRA thing too.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the feel of cold circle of metal on the back of her neck. Her reflexes kicked in and in two seconds she was up and whirling around, sending a palm strike at the general area where the intruder's head would be. Instead of dislocating the jaw and knocking out her attacker, her hand was twisted into a lock.

"You know, we should spend some time together on the mat, I could show you some very interesting moves."

"Karen, you can let go of my hand." This woman is like a freaking ghost. Of all the people she knew, her case officer was the only one who could sneak up on her like that.

She turned to find Karen standing in front of her in her usual semi-slutty business attire with a cup of coffee and a Nuka Cola Victory in one hand, the other one presumably having been used for the wrist lock. "I just came by to see how it was going with the files."

Madison took the Victory from her and popped the cap off. She felt a mix of affection and suspicion for her handler. On the one hand, she had been there to guide her through the more difficult parts of turning Ming and had been an open source of advice whenever she'd needed it. On the other hand, she was quite clearly an expert liar, a skilled infiltrator, and an incredibly capable close quarters combatant. Not to mention the fact that despite numerous attempts, she had found out absolutely nothing more than what she already knew, and that was just her first name.

"I've found an interesting pattern, and I'd like to run it up the flagpole and get an operation going." The acidic taste of the Victory helped her get her mind out of the world of facts and logical inferences and back into the real world.

"Show me what you have."

Madison turned back to where the documents were spread out over her desk, highly conscious of Karen leaning over her shoulder. Regardless, she shuffled the papers until she found the one that she wanted.

"See here," she pointed to a timeline of attacks in the past year. "All of the attacks are fairly steady, riots, beatings, murders, arson, but the major attacks occur every two and a half months. No one saw the pattern because the attacks take a different form every time. An assault never follows an assault, a bombing never follows a bombing." She pointed to a copy of the logs for the port of Belfast. "All of the major attacks occur within a week of an American freighter coming into port." She shuffled through the papers until she came up with a couple of ship registrations.

"Belfast is a major port, and a lot of American freighters go through, but each of the five freighters is registered with one of three mid-level shipping companies." She dug out a sheaf of SEC filings. "These three companies are owned by a ten year old shell company called Avalon Holdings Group, a company that also owns the Four Leaf Fishpacking Plant, the O'Neil Family Manufacturing Company, and a couple of apartment blocks. That's owned by a man named Shaun Harris" She pulled out a folder with a picture of a blonde man with gleaming white teeth paper clipped on to it. "According to the Avalon Holdings Group official documentation, Harris is a Brown grad with a master's in business administration and fifteen years of experience in high finance."

She opened the folder, revealing a picture of a man with dirty brown hair and a sincere need of some expert dentistry clipped to a stack of papers. "The only problem is that the Shaun Harris in the Brown Alumni database is a different Shaun Harris who works for General Atomics, and the documents for the Shaun Harris in charge of Avalon were appropriated from a stillborn that died in 2034." She tapped the photo, "This is the current owner of the Avalon Holdings Group fifteen years ago, his name is Sean Hannigan, before becoming the man he is today, he was a used car salesman in Providence." She pulled out a police report. "A couple of his cars ended up getting used in various crimes, one was a getaway from an armed robbery, another was used in a hit and run, and a few more were caught running drugs. He booked it when the Providence Police Department rolled up the operation."

She took another drink of her Victory. "The one recurring factor among all those crimes, Eddie Winter." She pulled out another folder. "If you follow the money, you find out that Avalon's startup money was all cash. The serial numbers on the bills used match those on bills stolen in a bank heist in Hartford, Connecticut, twenty years ago." She pulled out a set of court records, "A bank heist that Eddie Winter was indicted for, but the lead witness recanted their statement and the whole thing fell apart." She pointed back to the SEC filings, "The Avalon Holdings Group is a front company for Winter's organization."

"Every time one of those freighters gets back from Belfast, there's a major spike in Avalon's profits, something that shouldn't be happening considering all of those freighters are running standard contracts that should show a steady profit flow, but not spikes." She pulled out another police report. "Three months ago, police raided a warehouse that belongs to an associate of Winter's. They found a hundred barrels of black market oil, the primary source of funding for the IRA."

"So Winter is in the middle of it all, not surprising, Irish gangster profiting off of Irish terrorists. It makes sense." Karen said, sipping her coffee. "The question is where are the weapons coming from? They're using military grade equipment over in Ireland, Winter is bad, but he's not bad enough to get his hands on that kind of firepower."

"I'm getting to that." She pulled out a forensic report on the school bus bombing. "The chemical composition of the C4 used in this bombing matches that used by the U.S. Army. More specifically the kind used by the combat engineer division currently stationed at Fort Hagen." She pulled out an after action report from an assault on a government military installation. "The body armor and weapons used in this assault are the same as the ones used by the infantry division stationed at Fort Independence." She pointed to a set of shipping manifests, "These are the manifests for all the arms shipments to a dozen different military installations." Then she pointed to a set of armory storage records, "These are the internal audits from a week after the deliveries."

"The numbers are different, you think he has someone skimming the shipments."

"I know he does, all of the came through this logistics depot." She pointed to a spot on a map near the edge of her desk. "He has to have someone on the inside there. And the timelines match up, each shipment passed through a few days before the freighters left port."

"Alright, I can see it. What's your operational goal?" Karen turned around and took a few steps away, giving Madison some space.

"Shut down the weapons pipeline, plug the leaks, and possibly get intel on the IRA from Winter."

Karen was quiet for a few minutes, "Alright, get your people on it, requisition anything you need, and get back to me when it's finished."

That took Madison like a double sucker punch to the gut. She couldn't decide what surprised her more, that Karen knew about Ming and Liam, or that she'd basically just given Madison complete operational discretion. Immediately she knew it was another test. "Alright," she said, putting more confidence in her voice than she actually had. She expected Karen to admit she was just jerking her around, but the admission didn't come.

Instead, Karen just looked back at her before she walked out.

"Training wheels are coming off Madison, you've hit every challenge we've thrown at you so far without missing a beat, but all of that doesn't mean anything if you can't plan and execute your own operations. You're greenlit for whatever covert action you've got in mind."

Karen grinned as she said the last part.

"Don't screw up though."

"You're more entertaining to watch than any agent I've seen in a long time."

Hey guys,

This was a pretty dialogue heavy chapter, but I've always heard that it's better to show than tell, so I wanted at least one chapter to show Madison's analytic ability. Not to mention, in the real intelligence business, analysis is a good sixty percent of the job.

So guys, as always, Read and Review.