‘Well good news, bad news and what you’d expect news,’ Alice said to the assembled.
‘Do you want us to guess or is the question pick which one you want first?’ Cindy responded.
‘All books on the subject say you should end on good news, leaving everyone with a happy thought as
they leave the meeting. Personally, I find that’s crap, so I prefer just to go in the order you mentioned but
I bet by the end of the bad news we can guess the last one,’ Allison replied.
Very well. The good news courtesy of the United States Navy, no activity as of the last six weeks in the
Antarctic. They have SOSUS buoys on the water, they scanned underneath the shelf and nothing is
there which means TRIDENT’s plan is still in the works. The CIA, NSA and MI6 have all given us
intelligence they have on steel production and what they believe the munitions would have to contain
and be made of. I synthesised it down to a page you have before you. The bad news is they want us to
keep this quiet, they will deal with the sub once it sails. They don’t have to get anymore than thirty miles
to the sub before torpedoing it. No one will know. The thinking is if they spend the resources and
failure occurs that’s as good as a victory for us and I, we,’ Alice said looking at Claire, Cindy and Susan
agree.
‘Now for the what you’d expect news,’ Alice said and looked at Allison.
‘They want us to not stop anything but find the people, companies and resources behind this for a later
strike, because they want to keep their hands clean, should something go wrong or this takes one of
them into unfriendly areas of the world which may or may not cause embarrassment or even, heaven
forbid, an international incident,’ Allison answered.
‘Well, it's worded somewhat more diplomatically, but yes,’ Alice smiled.
‘I know we’re not traditionally data gathers, we’re more action, but that will come, better to have a good
idea of the entire sphere of operations before we begin. Besides, I had certain parties pick up the entire
tab, so pad those expense accounts,’ Claire offered.
‘We’re working on the data right now, we should be able to start in several weeks. Each new piece
changes the parameters with regard to who and what we should be looking at. Besides outside data
I’ve had Tina make use of her extensive contacts to pass along anything else they may find. I’m afraid
we had no luck from the other TRIDENT associates we rescued even with the additional clues from
Miss Van Camp and MIss Wescott,’ Jacob explained.
‘Well, business as usual until further notice then. Let’s get into it,’ Susan said, opening her portfolio.
^^^
‘I realise I’m not an expert on this, but there is no way all of these boxes can just be cosmetics,’ Lucas
said with disbelief ringing in his words.
‘Of course not, some are toiletries, perfumes, powers, etc. A female spy has to good her best and
deadliest. You wouldn’t want me any other way, would you?’ Joanne questioned a smile forming on her
lips.
‘You know that’s an unfair question, because you’re always at your best,’ he answered as they looked
at the boxes.
‘I’ll pay you back for that compliment later, but I have to get this organised which means you need to
leave me alone,’ she said, giving him a small peck. ‘And remember, my clothes and shoes are coming
tomorrow.
‘I can hardly wait for that’, Lucas exasperated as he left.
^^^
‘I have all the reports on your training or refreshment, if you prefer, but I would like to know how you
thought it went?’ Allison Janney, Head of Recruitment asked.
‘I was nervous at first, being older than the others. It became clear after several days that I knew more
than I let on, even though I tried to conceal it, previous training kicked in. That relieved our instructors as
they could use me when needed. I learned much, much more than I thought I ever would, picked up a
myriad of new skills and built back my confidence. I noticed by the second week that a small number
of trainees had started to coalesce around me. When I brought this to the attention of my instructors
they seemed pleased, told me to keep them informed, but encouraged me to continue. Of course, I was
all over the place in terms of the training tiers, so my time and most likely my influence was and will be
limited on anyone.’
‘Miss Wescott has a penchant for the unexpected, no doubt learned on the job, but I suspect, like all
excellent agents, she always had it’ Miss Wescott magnetic attraction drew five new recruits to her,
all the trainees, outliers from the classic recruit they began to perform way above the baseline after
several days orbiting her.’ ‘Miss Wescott constantly pushed herself to be better. The result being all the
others followed, she is a leader.’
‘There’s more, you can read it all in your file which brings me to this. Normally Claire would do the
welcome package, as she calls it, but she’s on a mission, so you get me,’ Allison said.
‘Claire’s on a mission?’ Virginia said. ‘Why, she’s the head of the entire operation. I mean this is hers.’
‘Precisely why. What respect would she have from all of you if she just suddenly retired asking agents
older than she was to do missions. FORCE is bigger than one person, even her, but respect cuts all
ways. She needs to be able to look agents in the face.’
‘Sorry, it's all still so new. I never knew most of the other parts of TRIDENT, that was all in the shadows,
we were simply given an assignment. You of course knew other agents from some team assignments,
but that was all. I’m still getting used to this approach. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I will on
occasion, out my foot in it,’ Virginia offered.
‘I still do, don’t be bothered by it, a different perspective is always needed, keeps things from going stale,’
Allison smiled.
‘You came from TRIDENT as well?’ Virginia asked, her voice lowered as she moved forward.
‘Oh, no. Something much worse. I was an Analyst.’
They shared a laugh over that while Allison picked up a leather bound box off the floor from beside her
chair and put it on the table next to her, patting the seat next to her on the settee for Virginia to join her.
‘This is your welcome package,’ she explained and opened the box. ‘Your passports are here, various
names and countries all corresponding to the languages you speak, which I believe in your case are,
Italian, French, German, Dutch and of course English. These are yours, but there are others located in
Safe Deposit boxes around the world. Each mission would give you access to those if you needed them.
There are duplicates of these or course, but others, same countries with different names, should that
need arise. There’s also guns and money in there as well. These are your credit cards, unlimited
amount, your cash card, also unlimited, good anywhere in the world for both of what I just mentioned
and finally, this is for you, Claire calls it a signing bonus,’ Allison explained.
‘This is a million dollars,’ Virginia said looking at the paper.
‘Your salary, on this paper here will be deposited each week into that account. We can help with
investment opportunities, this is all tax free, another perk of the position.’
‘I don’t know what to say, this is a great sum, I’ve never seen this much before,’ her stunned voice said.
‘Well, you were behind the eight ball, so to speak, when you signed on, financially speaking. This takes
care of that, lets you focus on doing the job. One more piece of news, all the clothes you picked out, the
accessories, the cosmetics and others will be delivered tomorrow. Does Ashton have any idea of what’s
coming his way?’ Allison questioned with a smile.
‘No, men never understand a woman’s needs. He has four pairs of shoes, well five if you count his
trainers. Black, Brown, Oxblood and Tan. No man understands, classic white, pearl, off white, cream,
etc. All they know is we look good in them.
^^^
David Jacob’s rested his head in his hands trying to compose himself and keep his temper as he was
asked the same question he was asked the day before.
‘You know I don’t know how many different ways I can say this. We’re looking for one needle in a
thousand haystacks that points to another needle in another those haystacks then multiply that by
another million and then that by a million again before we have any connection and then from that we
need to write a whole new set of algorithms just to ensure that data actually is connected then when it is
you can start to pull useful intel. We’re talking about global data points, one line of information among
trillions and trillions of lines then seeing if that can be connected to another point and so on. As you try to
connect each point the computational number of possibilities actually goes up, not down. In layman’s
terms, its going to take some fucking time, how much I don’t know. We have the NSA, CIA, MI6, MSS,
hell the CIA used time on Roadrunner, the NSA even took time from the NASA supercomputer, even the
fucking Russians are helping and who knows how many of those bastards are actually on the other side
of the fence as well, helping TRIDENT, but we need the resources. What do you think all those floors in
the Pentagon are for?’
‘I know, Analysts.’ Claire said ‘I have been there.’
‘So have I,’ he shot back. There are people working 16 to 18 hours a day on this, but not everyone can
work on just one project, the world has other demands and resources must be allocated. The longer
this goes, the longer it is going to go, frustration sets in and besides, the US Navy has the access point
bottled up, that alone tends to diminish the urgency. Sometimes, you’re not the centre of attention or
priority, he offered, then waited a few seconds before speaking again. ‘You think I like having meetings
like this, but this is volume computational mathematical analytics and it takes time. I’d love to be the
golden boy all the time but there are times, such as now, where reality doesn’t allow that to happen.’
‘It is what it is,’ Claire said in a resigned manner.
‘Fuck, I hate that expression, don’t use it please,’ David answered, then gathered up his papers and left
her office. ‘I’ll be in the dungeon, if you need me, stirring up a new magical potion, maybe this one will
work,’ he added at the door.
‘Wow, he’s pissed,’ Susan said through the speaker. ‘Glad you wanted the meeting in your office, I don’t
like my room temperature that high.’
‘You’re not helping any,’ Claire answered.
‘If you wanted someone to blow sunshine up your backside, you picked the wrong person. Besides,
he’s really not mad at you, he’s upset at the lack of results, but you’re not helping with these constant
updates. When he has something he’ll be in your office like a shot. Remember how you felt when you
were the focal point for COIL, he feels the same right now, the pressure only gets worse each day, until
it doesn’t. My advice, don’t roll your eyes, give this to Cindy, a person who understands his situation.
She and her ladies saved the organisation in the beginning, she ran the entire thing, never said a word,
never complained, just got the job done. Different situations require different leaders Claire, you can’t be
and do everything and frankly you shouldn’t for all kinds of reasons I’m not going to go into because I like
my job here,’ Susan stated.
‘That is helping,’ Claire said.
^^^
David has given me several excellent updates recently and as I a result, in consultation with him and the other concerned parties involved, we collectively have decided to stop the project and let things play out. No, don’t put your tea down to speak, this is my meeting, you listen then you have the opportunity to reply. Remember, you gave me this project with full autonomy’
Claire raised her tea up with a faint smile. She trusted all her Heads, but Cindy she trusted most.
‘The US navy will handle the sub, if and when it sails, no question about that. That only leaves the question of why we should be pursuing all this data to find out how they are getting the materials to retrofit an old sub. In the end, is that the important goal or is it simply to allow them to do it, expend the time, material and resources, money included only to have the conclusion be the same. Why would we want to do that, we want them to almost get to the finish line, then strike as we have already set up. By us doing nothing we are in fact weakening them, the perfect strategy. By us doing what we were doing TRIDENT had us chasing our tail, so I stopped it and went back to normal operations. Now you can talk,’ Cindy smiled, picking up her tea.
Six months later
‘Chief, make your depth 020.
‘Aye Aye sir.
‘Captain to the Comm.’
‘Sir, flash traffic on the VLF.’
Commander Wayne Suffield took the message and went to navigation.
‘Mendoza, plot us an intercept course that puts us ten miles away at ninety degrees of the alpha in this
area,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir’
Mendoza had the calculation within the minute and showed the XO.
‘Chief new course, 087, depth 100 ahead ⅓’
‘Aye, Aye,’
‘Sonar, Comm, alert for new contact identified in last VLF transmission, designate TR-1’
‘Sonar, Aye, Aye’
‘Now we just wait,’ Suffield said to his XO’
10 Hours Later
‘All stop. Battle Stations. Load and flood tubes one and two,’ Suffield ordered.
‘Tubes one and two loaded and flooded sir, outer doors are closed.
‘Sonar, Comm, where are they?’
‘Twenty miles ahead bearing true at 350
‘Give me a firing solution and lock it in. Open the outer doors.
‘Sir firing solution locked it TR-1 still bearing true at 354
‘Fire 1’
‘One away sir,’
Suffiled and his XO watched the clock count up begin.
‘Torpedo has acquired target, range to target 9 miles.’
The Comm was silent as the miles ticked off, each reduction heightening the operations room.
‘Torpedo still tracking true, range to target 600 yards, 500, 400, 200, 100, impact. Hull collaspe, multiple
secondary explosions stern and aft.’
‘Close the outer doors, clear tube two, bring the torpedo back in. All ahead 1/3 . Sonar begin active
scanning of seabed advise when completed. Secure from battle stations. Chief, you have the boat for
the scan. When complete advise, then make depth 020 for VLF transmission.’
‘Aye, Aye captain.’
^^^
‘Nothing travels fast like bad news, fortuitous for us it also travels faster than people can think! There is
chat everywhere about the sub, most of it couched in poorly coded talk and to use another cliche, loose
lips sink ships or subs in this case. We have a volume of names, companies and locations. I will need
several days to give a functioning workable list to plan with. More data is still coming in and we are
finding links to others not mentioned specifically, but the data points to them,’ David said as Cindy smiled.
‘When you have it all assembled we’ll have a meeting and begin planning how to move on it. Excellent
work as usual David.’
‘Listen, if it hadn’t been for you pumping the brakes on this whole thing this would never have turned out
as well as its going to. All the credit is yours, I just add up the numbers, which I like to do,’ he replied.
No comments:
Post a Comment