Episode 1: Countdown To Disaster!

Episode 1: Countdown To Disaster!

Gare Du Nord — Paris, France



Thursday, January 13, 1967…

The Gare Du Nord train station in northern Paris is an ocean of movement. Travelers from all over Europe converge here, just as Parisians use it to leave their homes for business or holidays in nearby countries. Clouds of different languages swirl above the crashing masses, French and English and Italian and Polish and Dutch, among others, a fluid mismatch of words and tongues caught up in broad waves of movement, wide currents that threaten to take the weak or powerless off in directions they cannot help. Even in the low tide moments of the late evening the station is a confusing storm of travelers, porters, and valets, but in the center of it all Colonel Lennox Conroy stands motionless, an island of a man, not any taller than the rest, but so powerful, so sturdy, the currents sway carefully around him instead of crashing directly into his stocky frame.

Colonel Conroy isn’t wearing his uniform. Instead, he dons a brown tweed suit, one that doesn’t fit him well, a suit that seems to wear the man instead of the way he usually inhabits his Army dress uniform. He grimaces in it, frowns at the way it is tight around his shoulders, the way it squeezes his midsection, but his eyes brighten when he spots Friday Williams, then Maxime Weis, and finally Laura Taylor in the crowd. Ms. Taylor, it seems, is invisible until she appears in front of the man, her appearance making him smile slightly, amused he didn’t see her sooner.

He gives the approaching agents a little nod and then lifts his hands to breathe into them, rubbing his warm breath into his fingers. The Gare Du Nord is enclosed, but in mid January, is almost uncomfortably chilly.

"Where the hell is Commander Murray?" the Colonel mutters as the team approaches, then spots him making his way through the crowd.

He nods, to himself, his seemingly rhetorical question answered.

"I got us a private room on the 2305," he grumbles. He tilts his head in the direction of the train that is already boarding. "Sergeant Gagneux is getting us set up for the overnight trip to Berlin. Let’s go. I’ll brief you onboard."

He isn’t a man accustomed to waiting. He isn’t a man used to waiting for agreement and consensus. He just turns and starts to march toward the train, the crowd breaking around him as he moves, leaving an open wake for the others to follow, confident that they are following him.

The group had been working with Colonel Conroy since each member of the small, elite group had been recruited into J.E.T.S.E.T. The Colonel was a gruff, barrel-chested man who wears a constant expression of annoyance. He was only supposed to be a temporary handler for the team, but like a number of Americans who came to Europe to fight in the war, he never seemed to have had an opportunity to leave. There was simply too much to do, especially while NATO and SHAPE were in the middle of moving their headquarters from France to Belgium, setting up a series of logistical puzzles that have made everything more difficult and more confusing than necessary.

As Conroy pushes through the crowd, occasionally he runs into groups even his width won’t let him part, offering a clumsy "Excusez-moi" to try to break through. His voice is French pushed through a cheese grater, an accent so terrible, so graceless, that according to the faces of the people he passes, it may have been more polite to push them to the ground than try to speak to them. He meets each horrified expression with a simple smile, repeating himself, "Merci. Excusez-moi."

Colonel Conroy leads the team through the crowd that fills and moves through the train station, and after some awkward maneuvering in the cramped confines of the train car, gives the elite agents a few moments to get settled into their private room. Thanks to a few clever cabinets and drawers, the agents can stow most of their stuff in their room, the exception being Friday's steamer trunk, a piece of traveling luggage that is simply too large, too bulky, to fix comfortably in their room, but the car attendant assures will be well taken care of until they reach their destination.

"Right, so let's get started," Conroy starts, shutting the cabin's door, but Sergeant Gagneux stops him with a light clearing of her throat. He raises a fuzzy eyebrow at her, watching her for a moment, and when she doesn't say anything else he lets out an annoyed, "What?"

"We should be good hosts, shouldn't we, Colonel?" she chirps, her French accent making her question almost more of a song than words. There is a bulky, black attaché case at her feet with clunky brass fasteners and reinforced brass corners on each pointed edge. She reaches down and works the clasps, the bulky case popping open and revealing what looks like a tiny bar set strapped inside with the kind of precision most of the people present would expect to hold pieces of a rifle instead of a shaker, spirits, and strainer. "Can I offer anyone a martini?"

Conroy rolls his eyes, behaving more like a teenager than the gruff military man of more than 30 years that he actually is, but he still waits patiently while Gagneux collects everyone's orders. He lifts his watch while we waits, looks out the window as the train and station staff finish up their tasks, readying the train for its departure. It is a time when the man could be indulging in chit-chat with the team, but he is silent, waiting, checking their progress as best he can, working through a timetable he has stored in his own head. He doesn't seem to relax even after Gagneux hands him his own drink which he holds in front of himself awkwardly, as if he had been given a vial of nitroglycerin.

"Are we ready?" he asks, when there is a lull in conversation.

The train lurches forward, its sudden movement making the Colonel teeter on his feet where he stands at the cabin's door, letting the men and women of J.E.T.S.E.T. relax in their seats as they sip their cocktails. He carefully holds his drink, trying not to spill it, as the train rocks into forward motion.

"As you already know, several N.A.T.O. countries have electronic listening posts positioned up and down the Iron Curtain. Our friends in Belgium," he starts, lifting his drink towards Taylor in a salute, "were the first to pick up on increased activity from an East German Numbers Station just inside Berlin."

"Normally it's a fairly easy thing to figure out what the Russians are up, but we decoded their last message as," he said, his voice pages of sandpaper scrapping against each other, "what was it again, Sergeant?"

"Blue rhubarb under glass," she answers, snapping pieces of her mobile bar back into their case. "Cowboy notepad seven."

"Right," Conroy says, repeating glumly, "Notepad seven. Wonderful intelligence work. Top notch."

He hands the young woman his untouched drink, crossing his arms in front of himself, seriousness falling over his face.

"We are in tight spot here, team," he says. "We think the Russians might be up to something big and with the improved code book the Eastern Bloc is using, we have no idea what that might be. We need to get into East Berlin, find their new code manual, and get back out again, ideally without them knowing we've gotten our hands on their cipher. A few intelligence offices have already tried, but they haven't had any luck, so it looks like it's up to us. Now ,before Sergeant Gagneux shares the intelligence we've collected for all of you, do you have any questions?"

---

Colonel Conroy nodded as he listened to the agents share their theories and ideas, answering, "You’re exactly right, the bigger ruckus you cause, the shorter time that code book will be of any use to us. If you can manage it, I want this mission to leave zero fingerprints."

To Friday’s suggestion that they adjust the mission to go after East German agents working in West Berlin, he mumbled, "Good thinking. We have another team doing that very same thing, but given the escalation in message frequency we’re not sure we have the time to wait for a more traditional influence campaign."

He listened to Maxine and Laura offer their theories about "blue rhubarb" and if the jumble of decoded words might actually mean something, a bemused smile on his face, not sure if the agents were putting him on. It was possible, but Conroy had gotten to where he was by listening and accepting input, rather than insisting he had all of the information.

"Our eggheads and Poindexters came to the conclusion that the decoded version we currently have is nonsense," he explained, "but that’s interesting. Blue Danube…"

He let his gaze drift for a moment, perhaps working that theory himself, or recalling some other fact, some story none of them had time to share, then he seemed to come back. Conroy looked from face to face, knowing the men and women sitting in front of him understood the stakes, looking to see if they were done, then he motioned toward the young Parisian sergeant that always seemed to be accompanying him.

"Gagneux?" he asked.

For her part, the young sergeant was already preparing for her piece of the briefing, a leather document pouch already open on her lap, her nimble fingers flipping through its contents, pulling out a series of photos.

"We think the Numbers Station is contained in this tenement building," she explained, passing around the photo she had retrieved from her pouch. The image showed a nondescript apartment, a building typical of post war Berlin, stark and utilitarian in its architectural style. She followed it up with an image that was likely taken from a spy plane, a laundry line circled on the rooftop. The next image looked nearly identical, but the date stamp showed a few days later. The third image, like the other two, looked the same, the date even further back in the past, but the laundry on the crisscrossed lines barely visible from the high angle view from the spy plane appeared to be unchanged. "We narrowed it down to this building. Our…"

She looked puzzled for a moment, trying out the word for herself, not happy with the way it fit in her mouth, "… eggheads… think they may be using the laundry lines on the roof as a kind of transmission antenna. It’s a clever bit of subterfuge, actually."

She smiled. She was too young to have seen any action in the war. That had been decades ago, but the whisper network in J.E.T.S.E.T. suggested that Gagneux was the daughter of Chloe Gagneux, the famous fighter and spy in the French Resistance. She had this work in her blood.

"We think the building is under surveillance by the Stasi," she continued, pulling out a series of additional images that looked like they had been taken from street level, a handful of faces visible again and again despite changing light and weather conditions. "Either that or some of the East Berliners are very strict about their dog walking schedules."



Gagneux smiled again, a sly grin, like she expected a laugh. Then, rather than wait for one, she continued:

"Unfortunately, what intelligence we have been able to gather has been primarily external," she added, getting back to work, her tiny joke fading. "We don’t know what’s in the building, but based on the coming and goings, we think the tenement is a functional apartment building with a number of civilians living there, perhaps unaware that they have a transmission antenna nestled among them. We cannot afford to assume that everyone you encounter inside its walls is Stasi or German intelligence."

She leaned forward in her seat, pushing aside the bulky briefcase that contained their travel bar and pulled out another one, seemingly identical, handing it to Weis.

"We have field kit of items that might be helpful for you," she explained. "Inside you’ll find some Deutsche Marks, a camera if Ms. Taylor’s doesn’t work, and a transmission signal strength meter to help you confirm the location of the Numbers Station. We also have a van waiting for you in West Berlin. It is outfitted to resemble a work van from East Berlin, but I’m sure to Ms. Taylor’s delight, our technicians have given it a little boost under the hood if you need it."

"I think our boys at the lab have also packed you a new toy," Conroy adds, trying not to interrupt, but still appearing very much like a bull in the proverbial China shop. He doesn’t enter or exit conversation easily. "It’s a compressed air grappling hook gun. It’s not as quiet as we’d like, not yet, but we thought it might be useful."

Team Status

Girl Friday - Current Impact Die d20
Temporary Detail / Starting Complication: Social Insecurity

Henry Murray - Current Impact Die d20
Temporary Detail / Starting Complication: The Tarantula is at large, his target is unknown, and there's this pretty blonde American...

Laura Taylor - Current Impact Die d12

Maxime Weis - Current Impact Die d20
Temporary Detail / Starting Complication: Nervous and Distracted

---

Temporary Details - Shared/Group
- Intelligence: Suspected Number Station is found in an East Berlin tenement building. Address provided.
- Intelligence: Faces and data on a handful of suspected Stasi agents patrolling the building.
- Deutsche Marks : Useful for purchases and bribes. You’ve been given enough for 2 uses. +1 to a Difficulty Check per use, can be used as a single bonus for +2.
- Transmission Strength Meter: Used to measure the strength of a nearby radio signals.
- Micro Camera: Can be used to capture close document images.
- Service Van: Old, rusty, and with faded paint. While it looks like a junker, there is more under the hood than most would assume.
- Grappling Gun: Using compressed air, this short rifle-like gun can fire a grappling hook and rope several stories making a sound like a loud cough. This is experimental tech so it may be useful multiple times or it may "run out of gas" after just one or two uses. There is no way to be sure.