Date 23/01/2060, Location 40.36133, 49.83675

The target building was at the other end of the harbour from the restaurant – so Aswon and Shimazu went to scout it out on foot, arranging for Tadibya to catch up with them for an astral flyby once they had arrived. It didn't take long to walk around the harbour, and they got to see some more of the town, for what that was worth. Down on the waterfront, much of the old and perhaps more charming and characterful parts of Baku had been decimated, and replaced with newer high-rise buildings in chrome and glass, covered in huge displays advertising NERPS. The illuminated displays cast light shows onto the water, strangely distorted by the lapping waves but with just enough detail to spot the more well-known brand names.

The target building was one road back from the waterfront – a reasonably upmarket-looking fifteen storey tower block, with a large glass atrium, set back slightly from the road. The atrium was a double height affair, and was slightly unusual in that the front windows were clear glass, rather than polarised. Inside they spotted what looked like a pair of security guards sitting behind a desk, both with eyes downcast – whether they were watching security monitors or the game was an interesting question. Aswon hit the speed dial and then after a ring, hung up – knowing that Tadibya would be on her way to them and would spot them easily out on the main road. Then he and Shimazu slowly meandered past the building, glancing at it out of the corner of their eyes as they passed.

Security seemed proficient, but not over the top. The cameras were well sited, and covered the entrances well, and the devices themselves seemed to be reasonable quality – though they didn't have all the bells and whistles. In fact, the opinion they both came away with was that someone had opened the catalogue to the "professional" section, but then gone with the cheapest and most basic option there – good gear, but nothing fancy or complicated. The locks on the doors looked to be similar, a good brand name but without anything special about them. There were no defensive planters or anti-ram mechanisms, but the streets were patrolled relatively often by ground and air units, and the surveillance coverage was as expected for a central business district – pretty omnipresent in the main streets.

As they glanced around they could see plenty of buildings surround their target which were taller – some a good ten stories or so taller – which offered some interesting options for a rooftop assault. The bad news though was that each of these buildings looked to have security just as good, if not better than the target. It was unlikely they would offer a shortcut for them – and neither was the sewer system. Looking downwards they quickly realised that the planners of Baku had some challenges to take into consideration – such as the city's elevation of -28m below sea level. The sewers were very shallow and flat, and looked to include non-return valves to stop sewage water backing up into the street at key locations.

There was a promising side alleyway that was fairly dark, and that led to a small service area with the bins and delivery area for the surrounding buildings. Their target had a single fire escape door into the area, but it was a panic door – there was no external access at all, it seemed, so that too looked to be out of the question except for a noisy smash and grab option. Whilst they were slinking through the shadows in the service area, dodging the cameras set up to watch the area, Tadibya manifested and grabbed their attention.

"Wards up over the whole building – patchwork though. Main area has a fairly weak ward over the whole thing – looks very basic to me. Had a quick look up the tower, and the top office is our target, yes?" She waited for them to confirm her understanding, then continued.

"Well, that one is at least twice as tough to get through. The one underneath is even stronger, mind. The rest of the tower is a real mish-mash of different strength and design wards. They've obviously been subcontracted out to different security firms, or renewed at different times. But, the roof – that's interesting. There's a parapet all around the outside, and a ward that stretches across the roof from about halfway up the parapet. Cuts right through some of the machines and such like. That ward is pretty weak. I think we could possibly do something through or across that. I mean, it would still alert the mage who put the ward in place if you smash it down, but it's really not that strong."

Aswon and Shimazu nodded as they listened, and asked Tadibya to check the roof top for other security measures – cameras, vibration sensors, pressure mats and such like, and to meet them back at the van.

Meanwhile, back at the truck, the others had been doing some basic research on their terminal, hooked up via the sat-phone.

It looked like Zeta Imp Chem had the entire top floor of the building, with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic – SOCAR – having the floor just below. Other tenants of the tower included Baku Exploration, Interpipeline, Transneft and Unev pipeline – it was a who's who of exploitation and extraction industries in the area. Whether this was a leftover from the one time Soviet style control of the country, or something to do with zoning and planning laws they didn't determine – but it put all the companies together – including Dekita, Maersk and Espirit as well. All three of those companies had a floor, though it appeared to be more an official registered office rather than a place of work, given their sizes.

They were able to pull up detailed street maps of the area though, as well as get some information on the local police patrols and the camera density. Baku was not rich, so their protection lagged behind cities such as Seattle, Tokyo or Singapore – but it was also much smaller than such sprawling city-states, so the police coverage was actually pretty good. They might not be as technically competent as some of the "first world" nations, but they made up for it with some good old-fashioned enthusiasm and cheap labour, it seemed.

They even managed to dig up some information on the painting – an abstract work by Gerhard Richter. Made up of coloured triangles and quadrilaterals on a white background, it had apparently been purchased a few years ago at auction – for just over a hundred thousand Nuyen. The picture didn't seem to reflect a painting worth that much, but then the world of art was a strange one. The artist was still alive, and still producing work of a similar nature – seemingly reasonably well regarded in the art world.

Once they had gathered the information they could, Marius switched to his internal communications suite, and set up a long distance call to Istanbul, making sure his encryption gear was fully engaged – calling his friend Milo Aramkis. Milo and he went back a few years, and Marius had managed to do a hot extraction that had saved not only Milo, but his family as well, and since then they'd kept in touch. Crucially however, Milo was in the business of arranging for new identities for people...

When he got through, the first five minutes was spent going through the same song and dance routine as with Georgi Kolarov – yes he was alive, no really, yes he was fine, thanks for asking. No, please don't let anyone know you've spoken to me. No, especially not my family. Milo even asked him the name of the restaurant they'd last met in – just to make sure it was really him. Once he'd established his bona-fides though, Marius quickly got down to business.

"Right Milo – I'm in the market for a set of IDs. Got myself a couple of friends, and none of us have solid SINs for what we're doing. So, we're looking at getting ourselves set up with some new ones. Something decent, that means we can move around no problem and get things sorted without hassle."

"Depends what you're after of course, Marius – but I can hook you up. Just how good do they need to be – I can make them solid enough to go to the moon, but that's gonna cost you a wagon load of cred – even for you, my friend."

Marius thought for a moment, about the sort of things that would be needed, and what they would need to use the IDs for.

"I think, we need something good enough to get us onto an internal flight in a country – not a full up international border, but solid enough for travel bookings, hotels, general banking – that kind of thing. And yes, I know, that will mean some serious work on them, and it's going to cost."

"Wow man, someone must have been hard at work – because yeah, that won't come cheap. We're talking about hitting twenty or thirty top tier systems to get that kind of detail edited and cross-referenced, and scores of minor systems. Going to take me some weeks to pull this together, and I'll need to see you to get the biometrics sorted."

"That's not a problem – we're not that far away, all things considered. We can drive over to come see you, in a few weeks time, if that's acceptable?"

"Ok, that sounds like a plan. If you can get me some pictures of your guys though and a general description, I can start trawling the files and find some matches. As long as you ain't got no trolls, we should be fine. Once you get here, though, and I get the rest, it's likely to be a few weeks before they're ready – maybe as long as a month?"

"That's no problem, Milo. I'll get some shots over to you in a few hours. Speak to you soon."

When the team was all together, he outlined the conversation and got them to pose for a quick photo, sending it though to his contact with notes on height, weight, sex and general description to help his friend narrow down the possible matches in his database of scavenged and created IDs. With that done, he moved into the back of the truck and joined the conversation about how to get into the building to get at the artwork.

Their first plan involved a fairly brute force affair – levitate someone up to the roof, with one of the drones in attendance. Drop the spell when they reached the parapet, so they didn't touch the ward and set off the magical alarms. Then it was a case of kick in the door on the roof to gain access to the stairwell, and race down a floor, using a shotgun or some other breaching mechanism to gain access to the offices. Hit like a whirlwind, into the office and grab the painting, then back out and up to the roof – before the security on the ground floor could even make it up to the fifteenth storey. Once on the roof, hand the painting off to the drone which would evade one way, and Tadibya would levitate them off the roof and away in another direction. If they went hard and fast, they should be able to keep ahead of the guards, and slip away into the night.

The plan felt a little crude though, and could easily be upset by wandering patrols, so they explored other options. Getting a spirit into the building was possible, but only if Tadibya got in and summoned one there – otherwise it would have to cross the ward, and set off the alarm. Because of the wards in fact, she was very limited in what she could do to help inside the building – it looked like she was mostly going to be used as over watch for this one.

After an hour of spit-balling ideas, they came up with a modification of the plan that might serve better. Kai would get into the building using his social skills, following a bit of research – taking in with him some smoke grenades and a simple timer. He'd find somewhere to plant them near a smoke alarm, and then leave. Sometime later, the grenades would go off, triggering a full fire alarm and evacuation of the building. At that point, with all the alarms going anyway, and hundreds of people using the fire doors, it was likely the security team would be overwhelmed and would not notice a forced entry through the roof.

Shimazu would be levitated up, and would wait for the top floor to be clear, and then would go as previously planned – grabbing the painting and getting back to the roof to escape, with a drone taking the painting away and him being covered by Tadibya. The rest of the team would be waiting nearby in the truck, ready to assist with the escape or to delay the police or security teams as needed.

Satisfied that they had the workings of a plan, they decided to bed down for the night, and to do some internal recon the following morning, seeing if they could actually infiltrate the building along with the morning crowd, to enact their plan.