Three Days Later
Gotham City, Maryland
"Mind if I ask you something, Eel?"
"Ask." Said O'Brien as he tossed a pound of oranges into the shopping cart and pushed it along.
"You were with this bunch for some time, yeah?"
"Sure, I was part of the Venezuelan cell."
"Right. Did you buy the grocery then too?"
"Heh. You feeling cooped up, Shaun?"
"This is supposed to be the special black-ops super team innit?" asked Shaun as he dragged his feet, "It seems like we've not been doing what we're meant to."
"Come on, we were the first heist crew to rob a bank ever to rob a bank from under the man of steel's nose."
"Right, but then what? Just a lot of skulking around, watching you while you meet white collars in coffee shops, planting bugs, torturing drug yobs in basements, all rot."
"What? Torturing?"
"My Birthday. It was in Baltimore."
"Listen, Shaun, I know you're after revenge, and there's not one in this merry band who doesn't get what you've been through, but you gotta chill."
"I know, it's just... That's it, they know why I'm doing this and they've just let me tag along but won't let me in on anything."
"I don't think the Saudi is the kind of man to do anything outta courtesy. And what are you talking about, anyway? You were in the bank; you backed me up when we were planting the bugs in New York, right?"
"Well, then, why are we buying oranges while the others are out there prepping for the big score?"
"They said they were meeting a guy who is identity must be kept a secret, and the three of 'em are the ones who already know about whoever the guy is. And besides, Lucy is here too, and she went to Georgetown with Priest. Where is she?"
"Bog… Um, ladies room."
"Oh, well, since she's not here, I gotta ask you; have you two talked?"
"About what?"
O'Brien's mouth stretched into an exaggerated smile.
"Come on, you tellin' me you don't know Lucy has got a thing or you?"
"No. What makes you think that?"
"I don't know, it's just a feeling."
"Well, Eel, old man, you are mistaken. Because I think someone else may be the interest of our Teutonic teammate."
"Who?"
"A certain bloke, very old, doesn't tan very well."
"Don't tell me it's Kroenen!"
"More talkative."
"What, Priest?"
"Fuck yeah."
"Come on! That's… That's crazy talk!"
"No, it's clear as daylight. She's obviously hiding something about her and his trip to Washington, and then there are their conversations that seem to stop whenever someone walks into a room. I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out they were as late as they were because they'd slipped a dirty weekend. And Sayid noticed it too, he joked that he was going to plant a bug in Lucy's room to find what was going on."
"Are you sure he's joing?"
"How many people are in your unit?"
"Seven…Six." Answered Mona as she and Sayid set up a folding table in the middle of the empty platform of the old, abandoned subway station. Priest crouched near the rails, taking large whiffs of air, while Bruce Wayne folded his coat and draped it over a folding chair.
"Well, which is it?" asked Wayne as he set up a folding chair by the table.
"Six." Said Mona, who then got a look from Sayid, and said in response to his obvious query, "Kroenen doesn't count, right?"
"And the other three-"
"They don't know a thing about you." Said Mona, "They're reliable, but they don't and won't know you're with the opposition."
"Good."
"There's dead bodies here, I can smell it." Priest stated.
"I can't smell anything buy stale air." Said Sayid.
"Well, you wouldn't."
"I don't anything about any dead bodies. Is that a problem?" asked Wayne.
"No, a proper lair needs a few skeletons. What would the neighbors think?" said Priest as he straightened up and headed to join the other three.
"This station hasn't been used since the depression; there's possibly two people in the city who might know about it, if at all." Explained Wayne, "There's two exits only, one is a metal door that opens into a utility closet in a supply room. The other leads into an adjacent tunnel system, I've left Gotham Metro maintenance crew jumpsuits you can use to slip in and out undetected."
"How did you find it?" asked Sayid as he sat at the table along with Mona, while Priest preferred to stand up next to Wayne.
"I used it until a year ago as a safe house. I don't use it anymore, so the opposition may use it from now on as it pleases. When do you plan on performing?"
"We don't know yet. Ideally, we'd try and take our target when she's being transferred to New York, providing that happens on schedule. Otherwise, we might have to go for the Hail Mary pitch. Seventeen days is a number I like."
Wayne nodded as he pulled a thick file out of his satchel and spread its content on the table.
"Wayne Tech has been developing something for the military, it's called 'RedEye'. It's basically an ultrasound machine in orbit, it produces schematics of any building in its range. The kinks haven't been entirely ironed out, but it works."
"Yeap, that sounds like something the military would like."
"These are what we got a month ago when we used on the Novick Building." Said Wayne as he pointed at the mentioned schematics.
"The Novick Building was built in 1912, when there were only six people in the League. Ever since the eighties, when the League took it over, there had been some minor renovations done, officially."
"But these don't match." Remarked Mona, looking at both sets of schematics.
"Exactly, they've added some news sublevels, among other things. Construction-wise, that's nigh impossible given the circumstances, but there it is..."
"How many?"
"The RedEye gives us three. But it might be more."
"Let's talk about surveillance." Said Sayid.
"The audio has been taken care of, the video equipment is over there by the column; you'll have to set it up yourself.
"I planted a sensor on a gargoyle across the street from the Novick building, the director's office specifically. The sensor sends a laser beam to the window frame and picks up the vibrations, converts the bit stream into sound that made the glass vibrate and transmits it here."
"Really? Sounds so easy we should be ashamed."
"Actually, the technology is not uncommon, and therefore not without technology developed to counter it, and the glass is nearly perfectly sound proof. With filtering and amplification, it's still very difficult to hear anything audible. However…"
"That's where I can be of use." Said Priest with a smirk, "I don't care what the newspapers say about you, Wayne, you're one cleaver son of a bitch."
Wayne smiled in spite of himself, before resuming his emotionless, practical demeanor.
"And speaking of the director… I've tried following her around, but mostly she seems content to shuttle between her apartment and the Novick building. Days pass sometime without her ever leaving her office."
"What about her girlfriend?"
"Mandy Hughes? More sociable, but she barely meets with Josephine outside business hours. I have details of both for the past couple of weeks, and less comprehensive ones for the past two months."
Priest picked up a picture off the table that was obstructed by other documents, eyed it fully and sounded a long, low whistle.
"Goddamn, she's a redhead!"
The other three looked up at Priest, who turned the picture and held the top of it with two fingers so they could see, smiling with glee. The picture was one from a high angle of Mina, having been obviously taken without her knowledge.
"She used to be a bleached blond, but she converted back." Priest explained with a chuckle, "By Woden's tits, I'd hit that so hard that whoever could pull me out would be the king of … What?"
Mona and Sayid exchanged a look among themselves, then with Wayne.
"What?"
"Are you about done?" asked Mona.
"Er, yeah. I'm… I'm okay."
"Well, alright, then." Said Wayne, "Is that it?"
"We got it covered." Said Mona, still looking suspiciously at Priest.
"Good, you need anything at all, get in touch with me through Nemo."
One Month from Now
London
"I'm on my way out." Said Harmony, nervously pouring spoonful after spoonful of sugar into her cup of coffee. Jimmy and Mernae sat around the same table as her in a small café in Soho at an hour past sunset, their demeanor much more relaxed.
"What makes you think that?" asked Jimmy.
"What do you think? The old perv's tired of me." Harmony said, sticking a cigarette between her lips and fumbling through her purse for a disposable lighter, "I'll be transferred by the end of the month."
"You'd said the same quite a few times before. Just get yourself made over, love, we'll do it together." Said Mernae, pulling the cigarette out of her mouth and breaking it.
"He's set his sights on his next target, some Russian slut who has never heard of a bra."
"Heh. Typical."
"How so?"
"You know, his whole Cold War nostalgia. Let me guess, a tall blonde with an accent?"
"Oh, screw you!"
"Hey!"
"I'm sick of your psychobabble bullshit! Why do I care why he's into which women? What the hell am I going to do?"
Mernae sighed.
"How old is she?"
"I don't know, twenty-five or something."
"Is she a vampire?"
"Yes."
"What kind?"
"I don't know, the ones from Russia, their names starts with a C."
"Corvinusian. They're from Hungary, actually, but a small faction had moved to the Ukraine two-hundred years ago."
"I don't care!"
"Look, I'll take care of it." Said Mernae angrily, "Just get me her name and address."
"Yeah, whatever." Said Harmny as she picked up her purse and stood up.
"Wait. What about the meeting we asked you to gather intelligence on?" asked Jimmy.
"I couldn't."
"What?"
"Did I stutter?" said Harmony as she walked out the door. Jimmy stood up and followed her out, catching up to her outside.
"Alright, stop acting like a –"
"Bitch? Wait, we're in England, so maybe the word is cunt. Is that what you were going to say?"
"What? No!"
"Yeah, well, that's what I am? Aren't I?" asked Harmony as she walked away, "The high holy opposition's whore."
"What's her problem?" Jimmy asked himself as Mernae stood by his side and they both watched the vampire hail a Taxi.
"She's cracking." Said Mernae as she hailed a cab of her own, "Her Job for most of the past year has been to fulfill every little wish of an aging chauvinistic arsehole, and she's cracking."
"So what are we going to do?"
"First, we'll kill the Ukranian."
"Jeez."
"Harmony's position is among our most valuable assets, we have to protect it. Second, I'm going to persuade Mason to cut Harmony loose."
"Wait a second, that doesn't make sense."
"I know. Let's get to bed, we'll head to Sandford in the morning."
"Right, the big shindig. So who's coming?"
"Everybody. Have you ever tried Mason's grilled Salmon? Well prepare to have you socks well knocked."
One Week Later
Gotham City
"How can we be sure that's what they said?" asked Eel.
"You can sure because I'm the one with the superhuman hearing and I'm telling you that is what I heard." Answered Priest sharply.
The Minutemen stood around the wooden table, having originally intended to sit around it. The reason for the little gathering was to discuss what Priest claimed to have heard on the wire on the eve of his seventh day of audio surveillance, which was Josephine conceding to Leiter's demands of transporting the prisoner involved in the Kansas City Leak.
A subway train rumbled in the adjacent tunnel, the six were forced to remain silent until It'd had passed.
"I know you heard what you said you heard, Priest." Said O'Brien, "But you said it the sound was distorted, how can we know you didn't just mishear something."
"Because I hear you calling me an asshole under your breath while the train was passing."
"That's fantasticawesome, but still-"
"But still my ass." Said Priest as he turned away and walked down the platform.
"Hey, where the hell do you think you're going?" asked Mona.
Priest jumped across the tunnel to the other side and opened the metal door leading to the adjacent tunnel with a loud clang.
"I've been sitting on my ass with a set of headphones on my head for a week. I'm going up for a beer."
"Like hell, and you've still got a job to do."
"Josephine has gone home for the night. The recorders are on. I'll listen to them sometime when the wire is quiet."
"We're not done talking, now get back here."
"I'm done, what's left for the five of you is to decide if I'm reliable enough. I'm giving up my vote, you decide what to do."
Priest stepped through the door and closed it behind him, just as another train rumbled by.
When the sound went down, it was Sayid who spoke.
"He hasn't slept since we were on the Island. Four or five months. I caught him the other day talking to someone called Lilith, he was all alone."
"I know." Said Mona quietly, "Alright, let's have a show of hands."
R&R
Next Chapter:
The minutemen cross the Rubicon.