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.

"Nature of the boost?" the Colonel asks, looking amused. It's not an expression the team is used to seeing on his face. Even in those rare moments when someone shares a joke with him, Colonel Conroy typically looks either annoyed or nervous, a perpetual state of exacerbation at the world around him, at the many things he seems to be working on at the same time, but at that moment he seems genuinely delighted by the question. "I expect you'd know more about that than I would, but the technicians just assure me that most vans in East Berlin won't be able to compete with our van's acceleration or speed."

The smile persists, but starts to fade as the rest of the team speaks, the Colonel taking in everyone's ideas, considering them, using them to build a bigger picture in his mind. Eventually, he gives a decisive nod and then gestures toward the young woman sitting among the agents of J.E.T.S.E.T., pointing at her and saying, "Call ahead, sergeant. See if we can have city plans waiting with the van. And, check to see if our techs can get the appropriate gear for that heterodyne unit Friday is talking about. The team isn't going to have time to locate an appropriate demodulator once they're in."

Gagneux nods and stands up, flattening her skirt over her hips, then pushes past the Colonel to find a place to make a call outside of their private cabin. Whereas the Colonel looks uncomfortable in his civilian clothes, like he has never worn anything other than a uniform, Gagneux looks both serene and stylish, every movement smooth and practiced whether in uniform or her off-duty clothing.

"The sergeant and I will be getting off before we reach Germany. You'll be continuing on alone," he grumbles, "but you know our faith goes with you. We need that new code book, but we need good agents even more. Don't take any unnecessary risks. Better for you to come back empty handed..."

He doesn't say the next thing, doesn't say out loud, "... than not come back at all." The team are too new to working together to know if Conroy is giving in to some old superstition or some bit of uncharacteristic tenderness, but he makes himself clear enough in his briefing. Priority one is the safety of the team. Priority two is getting the code book. And, the third priority, is doing it without leaving any trace of their having been there.

This wasn’t an op. Intelligence agencies and hardened soldiers performed ops, taking on tasks in careful, predictable actions with skills that had been honed over years. This was something else. This was... jazz.

First it was a light touch with a brush on a snare, steady, hisses of static played over silence as the team stepped off the train into the early morning sunrise creeping over the grey buildings of West Berlin.

Henry Murray unleashed a few low notes of a standing bass as he orchestrated his contacts on the other side of the wall, their explosions even deeper notes, a chest rattling thump of blunt energy. He brought higher sounds to play over those static snares as Hank brought his hand down on the necks of the unfortunate guards left behind at the checkpoint, a little more dazzling drums has the Commander dragged their limp, unconscious bodies out of sight, Laura revving the van’s engine in anticipation for the former military man to be finished.

The van was a piano and Laura was a virtuoso behind its wheel, the traffic laid out like the rigid lines of sheet music, her nimble hands playing notes up and down each gap. It wasn’t so much that the van moved from lane to lane, from line to line, so much as it drifted over them, between them, up and down the keyboard the same way it rolled up and down the snowy, frigid streets of East Berlin. Laura didn’t play her instrument — she let it sway and drift, finding its own time, finding its swing.

The surveillance, or more accurately, the act of cutting through that net of cameras and sweeps by guards, was a horn, each note pulled long and lonely over the rest of the music, with plenty of gaps between each soulful blow of air. That was where Friday worked, in those gaps, those spaces between, those pauses to pull in more air for that sorrowful, crying saxophone. The others seemed to play their instruments, but Girl Friday slipped into their gaps, their spans that didn’t overlap, plotting courses and timing in a song that was thick with activity, finding the spaces that were empty.

Maxime stepped up to the microphone when it was his turn, swaying to the music the others played, then offering his own voice, trained and precise, spinning tales and stories that couldn’t be anything but truth. That was the talent of a good singer, the ability to spin something incredible, but make the audience have no doubt, no questions. The building didn’t have guards in the traditional sense, only nosy neighbors with hidden walkie talkies, and each one of them nodded along to Weis’ tales of sewer lines that had never been made right again after the war, another monument of haste and disinterest that plagued the Gemini city.

The song was almost over too soon. Everyone played so well, so masterfully, it seemed like they could go on for hours, but each agent... each musician... had their moment to shine, before they took a moment and allowed the music to fade. As those last few notes drifted into silence again they found themselves standing inside the tenement building, coming in through one of the washroom windows, so assured, so confident, they may as well have been invited in.

The building beyond the washroom was like so many others rebuilt in the rubble of Berlin. The tenement apartment was split with strangely wide halls, like a hotel, with narrow doors on each side. The doors must have been thin, because music could be heard through them, the low murmurings of disinterested conversation, or maybe the occasional news broadcast droning over the AM band, finding boxes of drab German engineering, not fancy, not shiny, but dependable.

It was five floors of these sorts of halls, slow seniors carrying groceries up and down the halls, shuffling over thin carpet past those same thin doors. The J.E.T.S.E.T. team would likely be seen in those halls, either by the residents who were out wandering them or by people nosily looking through the peep holes in their doors to watch them pass. They had their Transmission Strength Meter. That would help, but it would still take time to find the source of the numbers station in the building. The needle on their meter jumped when they got close, swayed like they were still spinning a sweet, careful tune. They knew they were in the right place.

Even with the transmission signal strength meter leading the way, searching the tenement building was going to be tricky. It was fairly large, with five floors, and a likely basement beneath them, but common sense would narrow their search. For example, with the laundry line antenna stretching over the roof, it was likely that the numbers station would be on one of the top floors. It would take too much work and create too many questions, to stretch wires from the roof down to lower floors or into the basement. And, while the photos they had been given wouldn’t contain the faces of every Stasi agent at the building, even a cursory glance at the stack of suspected agents made it clear that despite being "undercover" they shared a common enough appearance that it would be fairly easy to identify them. Most of the photos showed larger men, broad shouldered, with sharp eyes and grim lips. The little old lady that was pacing by the washroom where the team had collected, moving at a snails pace up and down the carpeted hall, probably wasn’t East German secret police.

Still, moving from floor to floor, taking a moment to check the meter for jumps in signal strength, would likely attract attention. A building like this one was a close knit neighborhood inside of its own walls, with everyone inside being able to recognizing each one of their neighbors. The J.E.T.S.E.T. team was small, but they were strangers to be people that lived there and strangers often inspired questions. If Maxime decided to continue presenting himself as a maintenance worker, that would be enough, but what about the others? Maybe they would attract less attention if they split up? What if they sent a couple of them back outside to create another diversion to draw attention and Stasi away? It was hard to tell what would be their best plan of action, but the team were professionals and had done this sort of thing before.

The clamor of their arrival in East Germany seemed to be dying down already. They could hear cars passing on the wet, snowy roads outside, no longer hearing sirens or emergency vehicles. Pausing in the bathroom they heard the muffled sounds of radios, of slow footfalls, of a vacuum cleaner being pushed over carpet a floor above them. Already East Berlin was getting sleepy again, everything muffled under the cold and snow of mid January.

A layman would assume that the job of a spy should involve being as quiet as possible, inconspicuous to the point of becoming little more than a whisper, a deep, long shadow cast along a darkened city street at midnight, but people who were actually in the business, who had spent some time doing the work, understood that sometimes being loud could be just as useful as silence.

As Laura laid into Hank with a verbal barrage, the kinds of accusations and threats that were only ever passed between couples, figures could be seen moving behind the glass windows of the tenement, drawing closer to the glass, pressing against it. As Hank tried to explain himself, curtains were pushed aside, necks stretched into window frames to try to spot some of the drama. A single window, then another, raised despite the frozen air that hung outside of the building.

"I've got a baby sleeping!" came out from one of the newly opened windows, a soft protest at first, getting louder with each word, perhaps getting louder as that infant's sleep seemed more and more threatened.

"Cheat on someone else's doorstep!" came from another window, each word loud, as riotous as the display at the building's foyer, the shout at the couple spotlighting their attention-getting display and doing a fair amount to draw its own.

As Maxime Weis moved through the building's halls, winding his way to the basement, he could hear some radios going silent, being made quiet so more of Laura and Hank's fight could be heard.

Maxime was an actor, more used to the stage than grimy, dusty basements, but the industrial electricity of an apartment building wasn't entirely dissimilar from the wiring and fuseboxes one might find on the back wall of a theater. Electricity, regardless of where it eventually ended up, was electricity after all, whether it was being sent to warm an iron or power a halogen spotlight.

The bank of fuse boxes were impressive, carefully laid out and almost compulsively labelled. The reconstruction of Berlin, both on the east and the west side of the wall, created an unparalleled opportunity for careful order and planning. In the past, wires may have been pulled along whatever easy pathway that could be found, each run documented if there had been time for it, but rebuilding entire blocks allowed for everything to be neatly aligned and uniform. Even the doors that covered the fuse boxes opened easily, revealing their hidden jumpers placed in careful, neat lines that the actor-turned-spy began to explore and unravel.

That left Friday.

The building was too new for the kinds of creaks and groans that might be expected, the stairs leading to each floor exceptionally solid and stable, rather than fatigued and loose. Still, the lighting above those same stairs was soft, dim in a few places, as if it were trying to force the kind of complaints that only an older building might offer. Their lack of complaining or cooperation only helped Friday as she crept up them, moving silently from floor to floor, until she was able to find the narrow stairs giving access to the roof. She was almost surprised when the door onto the roof offered a soft squeak, the cold having hardened its hinges, making them less compliant, but it was nothing a gentle push couldn't overcome.

The roof looked a bit like the streets below, thick with slush, that mix of snow and melt that grew heavy, thick, and stubborn. Friday's earlier theory that the number station would put out more heat than other units still seemed plausible, but as she stood on the roof, it wasn't quite so easy. There were patches of snow that had melted at different rates, perhaps thanks to cranked thermostats or empty units, but one large rectangle was nearly bare of the collected, heavy flakes. That was the likely unit. Or, so it seemed.

Meanwhile, on the sidewalk below, the feuding "couple" realized they had attracted more than just the attention of the building tenants. A man walking past with a disinterested looking dog, turned and started toward the entrance of the building, marching up the short sidewalk. He was a large man; not a mountain of a man, necessarily. He was more of a collection of impressive hills clumped together, the gentle slope of his forehead continuing its same angle as it ran down the length of a nose that looked as if it had been broken in the past.

"Is this man bothering you?" he asked. His mouth stumbled over his words as if his jaw, like his nose, had been broken years before. He didn't ask Laura. His eyes were pointed squarely at Hank, the big man pointing at him as well.

The dog, looking bored, took a seat at the man's feet, his leash having gone lax. Apparently the dog had sat through a few encounters like this one in the past.

Henry Murray...

The man standing at the front of the building twisted his mouth into something that looked like a scowl, but might not have been. His frequently broken nose interrupted his expression, broke it into a few jagged pieces, enough that it was almost impossible to understand as a single, useful expression or intent.

"Time, eh?" he mumbled back at Hank, suspicion filling the expression he gave the man. He reached up with his free hand and pushed on the deep creases that stretched over his forehead. Those deep, heavy lines, remained despite his efforts. "If you have your fights in public, they become my concern."

He pointed to the handful of open windows.

"They become everyone’s concern."

As he lowered his hand, a useful expression was left on his face, one that wasn’t broken up by his dislodged features: a glare for the commander.

The dog yawned.


Laura Taylor...

Inside, Laura Taylor’s faux outrage clung to her like the cold she had just left, making her skin prickle, her eyes having to adjust to the dim light of the building’s foyer. She was used to maintaining calm in even the most stressful situations, a talent developed after countless near misses on the track, but the adrenaline needed for her fabricated fight with the commander still rattled inside of her.

Back inside of the building she found the same space she had travelled through to go outside with Hank, a wide hall lined with mailboxes, leading to the main hallway that bisected the entire span of the building, apartments on either side. She could hear that same slow, steady sound of slippered, elderly feet moving over the stiff carpet, an exercise routine that might have lasted years thanks to the East German sidewalks being to slippery and treacherous. But, there was also an open rectangle of light over to the left, further up from the restroom the team had used to sneak inside. A woman stood in the open door, her baby held against her chest, gently bouncing the infant.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes like her voice, low and soft. "These damn men."

It was obvious she was adding to a conversation that had started a long time ago. She almost spit on the ground when she said it.

"They think they can do whatever they want," she continued. "Despite their responsibilities."

She looked down at the baby she was holding, then back up to Laura.


Girl Friday...

On the slush-covered roof Friday found her theory about melted snow uncovering the location of the transmission unit to be sound, but a little tricky in practice. Thin and thick patches of snow covered the roof like a patchwork quilt, squares of various "fabrics" here and there ,so rather than revealing an obvious location, the bright young woman realized she had several she could check. The good news was that nothing in the melted snow patterns suggested her original theories had been wrong. The transmiter location was still likely on one of the topfloors, the heat from its electronics rising to the snow above, but there were several spots where that heat might have done its work, a few other places where long, hot showers might have been the culprit, or perhaps just steam heat twisted to its highest.

Aside from the snow, there wasn’t much else to the roof, just the tiny protrusion of the stairs that led up to it, and the hidden antenna array that was made to look like a clothesline. It was an interesting design, its back-and-forth design more obvious as Friday was able to inspect it in person. She realized that it might have gone hidden for years if the intelligence agencies had thought to switch the laundry hanging from it a bit more often, the perpetual load hanging limp and frozen now, providing a dreary frame for the long, grey span of the Berlin Wall in the distance. If the Stasi had swapped out the trousers and button up work shirts for other styles, other colors, their secret might have been kept for years.


Maxime Weis...

The banks of fuze boxes, as organized and well-labelled as they were, proved to be a larger mystery than the team originally thought they might be. Each apartment in the tenement bulding had its own fuses, of course, but each individual box had a dizzying array of them. No doubt some fuses powered lamps in bedrooms, lit incandescent bulbs hung over sinks in bathrooms, but bulkier fuzes were littered among the smaller ones, heavy duty fuses that might strong enough to handle the load of radios or record players or electric irons, perhap even the occasional, energy hungry television. From the looks of it, each unit may have also been equiped with an electric stove, massive fuses found in each fuse box to handle still more electricity.

When they had first started to formulate their plan, Friday had made the suggestion that Weis could start pulling fuses, almost at random,just to see what the reaction might be. That was still an option available to him, but would create chaos as various tenants would come stomping down to the basement to see what the issue might be. On the other hand, it would also create an opportunity for some impromptu character work. The bumbling laborer was an easy, but sometimes fun favorite.

Laura Taylor...

Laura could see something pass through the woman and then leave her, like she had been holding it inside of her, a long held breath trapped in her lungs and finally let go. Her shoulders drooped slightly and then she offered Laura a weak smile. That expression stayed there a long time, that fragile smile, that embarrassed sort of grimace, then she lowered her lips to give her baby a quick kiss on its head, grazing its soft hair.

"<There is not much to tell,>" she eventually answered, her eyes meeting Laura's again, a lingering kindness there. "<It is mostly a quiet place. A little far from the shops, but I don’t mind the longer walks now, even in the cold.>"

She offered her baby a smile that it didn't seem to understand.

"<What floor are you on?>" she asked. "<They tend to put the younger people on the top floors, because the stairs can be a lot to manage. I'm still not sure how we were left down here with all the old people. Maybe so no one would complain about the crying. None of my neighbors can hear anything.>"

She smiled like she had made a terribly clever joke. She reached up with her free hand and pushed away a strand of chin length hair from her face, holding that smile, almost as if she were waiting for some acknowledgement of her humor.


Girl Friday...

Spycraft was always about the details. It was the smallest things that could give away a careful plot or hidden intention, trip up even the most experienced field agent. It was so strange that a lesson that Friday had been able to learn during her various adventures as a teenager and pre-teen would be the key to her newly adult life as well.

There weren't many useful landmarks on the grey rooftop that would be useful in tracing the cable to the apartments below. Standing there, it was impossible to count windows, for example, but using the tiny shack that surrounded the staircase as a kind of "home base," as well as understanding the location of the antenna array, made things easier. Assuming the transmission cable didn't veer off in some strange new direction when it dropped out of sight, Friday shouldn't have much trouble narrowing her search down to one or two apartments, her search no doubt made even easier with the signal meter they had been given.


Maxime Weis...

Fuses were meant to stay put. They were designed to fit snugly in their craddles, waiting patiently, sleepily standing guard for a time when they might be needed. Weis spent his time on the stage, not busy with the various tasks that took place behind the curtain, but the large fuse he grabbed came free easily, even in his unpracticed fingers.

Nothing happened. It didn't make a popping noise, sparks flying in all directions like frightened fireflies. The building didn't shutter and go still. There was no sound of buzzing power that quickly faded into silence. Maybe the movies had all been a lie, the way every action had an obvious and noisy reaction. In the basement of the building, blocks behind the thick, concrete resolve of the Berlin Wall, there was only silence as Weis held the glass and metal cartridge in his hands.

How long would it take before someone travelled down to investigate? Would they even come at all? The size of the fuse made for an educated guess, but what if Weis had simply just stolen power from a distant laundry room? What if he had only just plunged an emergency staircase into thick, inky darkness?

As solidly built as the building was, heavy with stone and new lumber, sounds were muffled and seemed far away, but Weis thought he could hear footsteps overhead moving through the hallway. They seemed faster than the elderly person who he had seen doing laps, but it was hard to know for sure.


Henry Murray...

Just as some languages had words for concepts that couldn't be expressed in other tongues, some things transcended words completely. It was as if some expressions were universal, a shared thing that all humans understood, regardless of where they grew up or how they were raised. The huge German, tilting his head a little to the side, provided the universal expression for "Would you get a load of this guy?"

He dropped his leash. The dog didn't react.

"<Maybe you want to make me regret it now, huh?>" he growled, that last word rising in pitch as he pushed it out between his teeth. What was left on his face was a snarl and a look that did nothing to hide his intentions. He gave Murray a little shove, the palm of his hand pushing on the other man’s shoulder, a challenge that wasn’t even thinly veiled. "<Maybe when we are done I feed you to my dog instead of walk him. Maybe he gets his supper a little early today. How do you like that? Big, strong man who pushes around women.>"

Laura Taylor…

Left in Laura’s wake, the young mother’s face moves through a series of expressions that the agent doesn’t see as she moves back into the hallway: surprise, annoyance, then a kind of inevitable, airless resignation. Eventually, she replaces that last look with a frown and then goes inside of her apartment, softly pushing closed her door, turning her attention back to her wiggling baby.

Laura moved between pools of weak hallway light, passing through a yellow dome of illumination, then into a shallow, brief shadow, before moving into the faint brightness of light again. To her right was the slow moving elderly woman who had been pacing in slow arcs over the long rug, the woman offering a little nod as Taylor passed. Ahead of her, ahead of the senior struggling to stay active in the cold months of winter, the staircase door swung open revealing...


Girl Friday...

Pink and stiff from her labors packing and shaping snow, Friday’s hands eagerly accept a quick exhale of hot breath, before enjoying the deep, warm darkness found inside of her coat pockets as she returns to the stairs she had previously ascended to the roof.

It was a simple idea, an almost obvious one, but her experience had been that it was often the simplest ideas that were the most successful. By counting the doors on either side of the hall and then doing a quick count of the windows outside, Friday should be able to deduce how many windows were matched to each door. Spotting her snowman landmark from below, peering down on her like a gargoyle, she figured she could easily work out which apartment contained the transmission gear she had guessed was warm enough to melt the snow on the roof.

Moving down flight after flight of stairs she started to hear heavy footsteps above her, pairs of feet first moving through the hallways, and then dropping heavily on the plain stairs she had already passed over. Those heavily footfalls, the steps of men, came like the distant rumblings of thunder following her own, crisp, sharp foot steps as she moved down. Her pace was quick. The footsteps of the men above her, were just as speedy, but not so rushed that they would overtake her. Still, it was a relief to step out of the stairwell and into the first floor hallway where she could see Laura Taylor moving toward her.

Friday’s investigation had been successful, or at least seemed poised to be a success. There was still the matter of strategic power interruptions in the basement, trying a different method of locating the transmitter, a task taken on by her teammate…


Maxime Weis...

If he were on the stage, Maxime Weis might pull out an oversized handkerchief to dab at imaginary beads of sweat over his brow, an exaggerated motion to telegraph his efforts, his hard work. Sometimes it helped to try out those motions anyway, those broad motions of an actor, to think through plans, to consider options, but in the dim basement of the tenant building it wasn’t necessary as Weis pulled one large fuse loose, then another.

The building should have shook as he removed power from one section and then another, the buzz of its lost electricity fading into silence, but the basement was still even with the changes he spurred in the floors overhead. All her heard was the soft click of the fuses coming free, their tight connections fighting him at first, then giving up, giving in to his gentle tugs.

Success would mean attracting the attention of the Stasi in the transmitter unit, agents suddenly dropped into darkness, forced to investigate the interruption of the power that feed their machines. His German was impeccable, his uniform and tools perfect, so it would be easy to talk his way out of it. Unless he wanted a conflict. Unless he decided to tackle things head-on like…


Henry Murray...

"< Lucky for you, I also like it rough, >" the man growled, trying a smile, but he taunting expression was cut short by Hank’s punch, a blow that crossed the space between them like a lightning bolt, so fast he couldn’t react.

"< Gruunccakk, >" he spit, choking on the sound, staggering back from surprise and pain. His eyes went wide. His dog, sitting at his feet, unbothered, yawned again.

Laura Taylor and Girl Friday…

There wasn’t much room inside of the closet. A collection of clumsy mop and broom handles swayed and bumped, rattled, threatening to fall if they were only given the space to do so, instead caught by the quick hands of the woman who had ducked inside.

Their timing was perfect. Just as they pulled the door closed, leaving a thin crack to peek out of, just as they settled the quiet racket caused by ducking inside of the cluttered space, the door to the stairwell swung open. Two men came out, the first one tall and lean with a predator’s gaze, the second one shorter, a bit more stout, following closely behind. Their footfalls were nearly indentical, the lanky man’s coming down hard with an intensity to his steps, the second making the same sounds with his own feet, but thanks to his increased girth.

They marched passed the closet, muttering in their natural German, the shorter man saying, "< Five marks says its the idiot in 322 again with that imported hair dryer. >"

"< Shut up. >"

The door they had used to enter the first floor’s main hall drifted closed behind them. They appeared to be the only source of the footsteps Friday had heard pursuing her downstairs.

"< All I am saying is this happens once a week… >"

"< Shut up, Joachim. >"

They left behind a wake of stale cigarette smoke and bad aftershave as they passed, heading toward the stairs that would take them to the basement. They moved quickly, taking a practiced path that lead them through the main hall of the building, moving as if they had taken that trip multiple times before. Their clothing was crisp, a relaxed style, but new enough that they still held creases in some places along their slacks and in the long sleeves of their shirts. The shorter man had a light jacket that covered his arms, open in the front, the kind of thing you might wear inside in the winter. Their outfits matched what anyone might find in East German shops, but there was something *off* about them, like they were either a little too large or too small. Neither was true, but there was something about the man that seemed peculiar as they passed, marching down the hall. It wouldn’t take them very long to find the basement and then…

Maxime Weis…

His palm was filling up with a collection of fuses, their glass and brass bits softly clanging together to make sounds reminiscent of a series of tiny toasts, as he moved between each unit’s stiff metal fuse box.

"< Just you watch, the whole north side will be out again because of that damn thing, >" came down the stairs, followed by heavy, annoyed steps.

"< Joachim, I said to shut up. You know I don’t like to repeat myself, so why do you make me? Sigmar doesn’t make me repeat myself. I think I like Sigmar better. >"

"< And yet, you took me, >" the other voice answers.

Clunk.

Clunk.

Clunk.

The stairs leading down into the basement aren’t as finished as the ones found on the ground floor and above, just bare wood when the flights above are covered with rectangles of carpet or thick plastic runners that the stairs wear like the skin threatening to come loose from a snake. These stairs are simple planks of wood, each one shaking loose only the faintest bit of dust as heavy footsteps drop onto them, each bass drum thump bringing the pair of men deeper into the space where Weis has been working.

It is the furthest thing in the world from a rising curtain, from the click of electric buzzing that comes from a stage light coming to life, but it’s not entirely dissimilar either. Weis, it seems, was suddenly *on.*

Henry Murray…

"< You made a big mistake, friend, >" the burly man grumbled. He dropped his hand from his face, a streak of blood painted across the back of his hand. "< A *big* mistake. >"

He tried on a smile, but it didn’t stick, didn’t quite seem as believable as he intended, then he turned his head and spit a bit of blood into the snow.

"< Do you have any idea of how long I can have you put away for what you just did? >" he said, getting some of his swagger back. He took a small step toward Murray, so small it wasn’t a challenge, wasn’t an effort to engage, more like he was only finding his balance, trying to shift his weight over his feet until they settled in the way he expected. "< You make a *big* mistake. >"

He reached up and unzipped his coat, letting it fall open, his weight finally under him, his feet finally grounded. That newfound balance, the confirmed solidity of his footing, put even more steel in his spine, but none of that stopped the blood that dribbled out of his nose and over his lips, down his chin.

Murray thought he saw a holster inside of the man’s jacket, but the large man didn’t seem to be reaching for a weapon, didn’t seem interested in anything inside of his jacket. Unzipping it was just preparation, maybe caution.

Laura Taylor and Girl Friday…

It was impressive how easily the women slipped into the tiny space, how quickly and efficiently they were able to steady the rattling brooms and mops. They simply disappeared, letting the pair of men that had followed Friday down the steps walk passed them, completely unaware that either of the women were there.

Laura eyed them as they passed, trying to place their faces among the various photos that Sergeant Gagneux had provided them during their overnight train to Berlin. The men looked familiar to her, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was angle, the narrowness of the tiny crack the women used to peer back into the hallway, or perhaps it was the indistinct features of the man, the way they both looked as if they could be… anyone.

Friday was too engrossed in her own thoughts to even attempt to match the men to their surveillance photos. It should just be simple math. Two men had been lured to the basement by Weis’ careful destruction of the building’s electricity. They had seen the building’s blueprints, the size of each unit, and there were limits to how many people could be crammed inside such a tiny space. There could be a third, perhaps even a fourth as she told her fellow agent, but many more than that would be unlikely. With five or more they would be sitting on top of each other, not to mention drawing more attention than they’d probably like from their neighbors. Even four adult men, coming and going in one apartment, was bound to attract a few raised eyebrows or two.

Maxime Weis…

The first man to make it to the bottom of the stairs made a face as if, instead of finding Weis standing in front of the bank of fuse boxes, he had stumbled across a terrible, foul smell.

"< What are you doing? >" he asked. He lifted his hands and planted them firmly on his hips, waiting impatiently for an answer from the worker standing before him.

Before he could answer, the shorter man behind him came down the staircase, lifting himself onto his tiptoes to see over his partner’s shoulder.

"< You pulled out fuses for the fourth floor, >" he offered. "< Those are the ones over at the end, there. Fourth floor. They are organized in reverse order, the fourth floor on the left down to the first floor positioned on the right. >"

The man standing in front of him turned his head slowly to shoot an annoyed look at his partner who wilted under the heat of his glare.

The man couldn’t be more helpful in displaying his features to the actor. Starting with a direct look at him, then rotating his head slowly to the side to provide a profile, the man gave Maxime Weis more than an eyeful of his appearance, making it easy to recognize him as one of the suspected Stasi agents found in the surveillance photos that they had been provided. The shorter man behind him? Also Stasi, but from the way he quickly answered Weis, perhaps not much of a threat.

Henry Murray…

The bulky man squinted at Hank Murray, trying to read him, but coming up short. Or, perhaps he was just put off balance from the wild swings of emotion in the moment, the argument and sucker punch, then the quick apology, the man backing down after his sudden violence. It didn’t look like he was keeping up with the rapidly changing moment, like he was struggling to keep up, as the emotion of the moment moved on without him, sprinting ahead.

He reached up and wiped at his nose, collecting more of the rust colored liquid on the back of his hand, eyeing it with suspicion or maybe shock.

"< Move along? >" the man eventually glowered. Even he wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question. "< You think you can just move along after you punched me? It’s not that easy, friend. >"

He turned to look down the sidewalk that brought him to the tenement building and swept his arm in the dark, a big, dramatic, obvious arc. Hank could see someone nearly a block away spot the angry man standing in front of him, that distant man nod his head, and fold his open newspaper, tucking it under his arm. He started toward the two of them, not rushing exactly, but his stride definitely telegraphed purpose.

Maxime Weis, Being Joined By Laura Taylor and Girl Friday…

Behind the first man, the second one raised his hand again, gesturing towards the boxes, towards the fuses that bounced and clinked in the actor’s hand, as if to offer advice, his mouth opening to speak. And, just like before, the man in front of him stopped him with an angry glare over his shoulder.

It was a funny look. It seemed positively brutual, but the second man just shrugged, lowering his hand and closing his mouth, but not chastised enough to keep from rolling his eyes. Clearly these two have played this particular game before, maybe multiple times, so the rules had already been set, the anger muted, despite the way it might look to outsiders.

"< It looks like you owe me five marks,> " the scowling man said to his companion, before turning his attentions back to Weis. There was a momentary twinkle of amusement in the man’s eyes, one that barely lasted, then he fixed his gaze on the faux electrician standing before him. "< We were not told a worker would be out today. I trust you ou have a work order you can show me? >"

As the man waited for a reply from Maxime the room was filled with the sound of additional footsteps coming down the rough wooden steps as the two women from J.E.T.S.E.T. descended into the basement. The shorter man, the one behind the man lightly interrogating Weis, looked over his shoulder, trying to shuffle out of the way of the two women that were descending. His movements were, to be polite, graceless, as he bumped his companion, the shuffling man throwing his arms out and then knocking the hanging bulb that lit the basement, the light beginning to gently sway on a pendulum of thick, hearty wire. The moving light stretched and shrunk each shadow as it moved.

"< Oh, sorry, >" he grumbled, this time summoning an eye roll from his more serious companion, a shake of the man’s head.

"< Your work order, >" he repeated as his companion reached up to try to stop the swinging bulb, letting out a hiss as his pulled away his hand, the tips of his fingers burnt by the hot glass. He shook his hand, trying to blow on it, wincing in embarrassment again and again, offering a new version of that same look first to Weis, then to Friday, then finally to Taylor.

Henry Murray…

The thing about combat is that it rarely went as planned, so when Hank swung his leg up to catch the dog walker unaware, even with years of experience in hand-to-hand combat, fate seemed to have other plans. The dog walker turned, just when he needed to, in the direction of the other man who was approaching, Murray’s kick meeting the man’s thigh instead of something far more sensitive.

"< Hey! >" the man grunted, perhaps just as surprised as he would have been had Murray’s strike been more on target. "< What do you think you’re… >"

But Murray was already moving, sprinting away. The men instinctively gave chase, the dog walker hobbling a bit from the kick, but not nearly as slow as Murray had hoped. The other man was moving faster, a quick jog that made his round glasses bounce slightly on his thin nose, quickly passing the bored dog that was left sitting in front of the tenement building. They weren’t able to match Hank’s sprint, not yet, but seemed to be picking up speed quickly.