(Blake tests against Infiltration to sneak out. Luc spends 1 point from his pool to piggyback on Blake's result. Because Blake and Luc have positive Trust with each other, Blake adds a +1 to his roll.
Blake's Infiltration = (3)+5+1 = 9)
It takes approximately two minutes for the car to circle its route. Blake watches from behind the blinds of the houseboat while Luc goes through yet another change of clothes. When they're both ready - and having made extra-sure that there's nothing incriminating in plain sight at the boat - Blake and Luc get out the door the moment the car disappears around the corner. Gangway, lock the door like nothing's wrong to any casual observer. The two stroll along the canal, Luc following in Blake's footsteps while the Navy man keeps his eyes peeled for any potential shadows. They make it to a little roadside truck selling pickled herring with ten seconds to spare; Blake casually orders two rolls (but easy on the onions!) and hands one of them off to Luc just as the car drives behind them, whoever's inside obviously thinking nothing of what they're seeing. Blake keeps up a quick chat with the proprietor -
Ajax is playing Feyenoord this weekend, we're gonna smoke those bastards 3 : nil, right? - until the car is out of the way again, then the two proceed into a small back alley. Luc barks a quiet pardon to a cyclist who has to swerve to avoid them, but speaking of avoiding, they seem to have shaken their pursuers. It's a half-hour hike through the quiet parts of Amsterdam then to make sure - not exactly the full
surveillance detection route Blake would have preferred, but it'll have to do.
A taxi ride, three stops on the tram, a quick ride on the free ferry service between Centraal and Noord and, of all things, two rented bikes later, Blake and Luc are only a few more minutes out from the safe...barge.
---
Didn't take much doing to convince Abbing that they had to go out - retrieve Luc now before he can talk to the cops, help Tim out with whatever hoops Fractal's making him jump through - it's a "all hands on deck" kind of situation that easily explains why they're all going out again. Only, it's not quite true. Sure, they all get in the van and drive away, but the van parks just outside the office building, out of sight from the barge, and then Mason gets to work.
(Mason Athletics to sneak onto the barge = (5)+2 = 7)
Getting 90% to the barge was easy, the last 10% could be tricky due to the security cameras - Laith's dialed in from the van, but Abbing's probably smart enough to know that any "glitches" in the feeds are to be taken as proof that something's wrong. The old-school way, then: Mason finds a dumpster and a fire ladder that get him onto the warehouse roof, then carefully walks across the roof to the poles. There's one holding up a thick cable strung from the side of the warehouse over to the barge for the data connection. Mason gets his commando on and works himself up the pole, then hand-over-hands carefully along the steel wire the actual cable is fixed to. Not exactly a breeze, but easy enough for Mason, and it puts him right on top of the barge out of view of the cameras. He drops silently to the weather deck and positions himself above the bulkhead door that leads in and out of the barge interior.
After what only feels like a few seconds of waiting, Mason gets a call from Laith to his earbud. "Picking up an outgoing call from Abbing's phone," he says. "Encrypted. Block or let it through?"
"Degrade it. We need her to want to take it outside," Mason says.
"Got it," Laith says. After a moment, he speaks up again. "Spoofed a handshake fail." Pause. "Okay, she's moving, I got her on cam 4. She's dialing again, coming up on the exit in 3...2...1.5...1..."
As the countdown finishes, the door under Mason's perch groans open and Abbing walks outside, nearly putting her thumb through the phone when she mashes the redial button. Mason draws his pistol and waits for her to connect her call. While Abbing holds the phone to her ear, she also fishes a PDA out of her jacket and taps a few controls on the screen. "Just lost cameras," Laith says over Mason's earpiece. "Hard shutdown of the whole system."
Below, Abbing starts talking. Mason speaks enough Mandarin to tell that Abbing's not speaking Mandarin; at a guess, some of the phonemes sound like they could be Wu, though. Mason focuses in. It's clear she's talking about
more of something, and she mentions "the package". Whoever's on the other side apparently says something she doesn't like, because the next thing she says is a very, very Dutch series of cursewords. She starts to look around - not upward, but around - and draws back her jacket, reaching for a weapon. The next line she says is in the Chinese dialect again, but Mason gets the message from that one loud and clear: "clean up".
Mason waits for her to hang up before sliding off the roof between her and the door, pistol already pointed at her back. "
Hands up," he says in Mandarin.
"
Perfect," Abbing says in Dutch. She slowly raises her hands, pistol in her left and phone in the right. "Here's how this works," she says. "I give you the phone, you let me go, I call in the unlock code in half an hour. You try to trick me, you will not get the code. You attack me - this thing goes in the canal. You get nothing. So, what's it going to be?" As she lays out her proposal, Laith pulls the van back into the lot in front of the factory building.
"You mean the phone call you were placing to the MSS?" Mason asks, and produces his own phone. "The one to these guys?" He shows her the pictures that were taken from when they tailed him earlier today.
"I was just making a table reservation at my favorite Chinese restaurant," Abbing says. It's not even in the same zip code as a plausible lie, but the implication is clear - she's playing this as if you
need a smoking gun to take her down.
Mason sighs - then pistol-whips her square in the face, taking advantage of her being stunned to try to take the phone.
(Mason's Hand-to-hand = (3)+4 = 7)
Mason's pistol slams into Abbings face like a bus into the cocky last survivor of a Final Destination movie. She unwisely attempts to pitch the phone into the canal instead of letting it drop over the railing, and Mason catches her throwing hand in the nick of time. As she falls over, Mason is able to snatch the phone from her.
Mason levels his pistol down at her as he slides the phone into his pocket. "So now that that's over, why don't we come inside and have a chat?"
"Okay, okay," Abbing says. "You have...made your point."
(A sense of danger permeates the air! Mason's Sense Trouble = (2)+2 = 4)
As she tries to sort herself out on the ground, Mason catches a glint of something from her sleeve. In any other kind of situation, he'd have registered it as the reflection off the faceplate of a watch or something, but Mason's the kind of guy who can tell you how many people in a room are wearing watches on which wrist - and Abbing hasn't worn a watch at any point since he first saw her the day before.
Well, nothing to it but eliminating the threat. Mason puts a bullet through her wrist. "Apparently not," he quips. Abbing howls in pain and rolls onto her back, holding her wounded arm. Fresh, slick blood covers what Mason recognizes as a small knife sheath strapped to the inside of her lower arm.
"Hands!" Operations calls out, approaching the gangway with her own pistol aimed at Abbing, while Laith trails behind her. "Show me your hands!" she shouts at Abbing.
Abbing has no witty response; she just tries to remove her good hand from her bad wrist.
"Well, she can talk, that's good enough for me," Operations comments. "Get her inside and stop the bleeding. I'll clean up out here and join you in a few moments."
Mason hauls her to her feet and back inside - while Laith gets the safe house back up and running, Mason strips the jacket off her shoulders, handcuffs her uninjured hand to a table bolted to the floor, and jams a hunk of clotting gauze into the new hole in Agent Abbing's other arm. Abbing grits her teeth through the manhandling and doesn't fight back - she knows she's just gonna get hurt worse if she tries to dance again with Mason - but once she's sitting down, she seems to find her voice again.
"You fucking - argh - savages," she spits at Mason. "I'll bring you down. You go too far. You think Wildcard allows everything? You just shot a
station chief. They will shut you down, you and your team, and then you will disappear like all the other wild animals!"
"A station chief selling a laptop so hot it should glow in the dark to the Chinese," Mason replies, tossing Abbing's phone to Laith. "How long?"
"Out of my league," Laith says. "But I can find a contractor. Give me three hours."
"You idiot," Abbing spits. "You want to give a secure CIA phone to a hacker on the internet? That thought alone means you should be in jail."
"- or we express it to the next CIA field office and have Tech Services deal with it," Laith says.
"You are bluffing," Abbing says. "Only I know the code. You will get nothing."
"They haven't built an unhackable phone yet - didn't your Chinese friends teach you that?" Mason asks.
"Get cancer," Abbing says, just as Operations walks in. "You will not get away with this," Abbing tells her, but Operations hardly deigns to look at her.
"Outside is clean," she says to Mason. "Where are we on the phone?"
"Laith says either three hours for a contractor or we turn it over to Tech Services," Mason says. "Normally I'd not be a fan of turning over sensitive tech to people I don't trust, but since that now includes the CIA in Amsterdam..."
"I need to make a call first," Operations says. "So,
Agent Abbing," she says, turning to the injured woman. "You like deals, don't you?" Abbing says nothing, so Operations continues. "The deal is you now have ten minutes to tell Mason everything you can think of that might interest us. When I come back in here, he'll tell me if it was enough or not. You'll be traveling in a box via diplomatic baggage either way, but if Mason likes what he hears, you get the box with air holes."
"Fuck you," Abbing says.
"Nine minutes 55 seconds," Operations says, then turns to leave.
Mason just sits back and stares at Abbing as Operations walks out of the room, saying nothing. Abbing stares right back at Mason.
"Do you need me for this?" Laith asks.
"Nah, not really," Mason says, waving Laith off. "You're good."
"Later," Laith comments, then leaves the room, too.
After being locked in with Abbing in an interview room, Abbing takes a few moments to get her breathing back under control. Quikclot or not, the bullet really did a number on her arm, and it's clear she's struggling to stay lucid against the pain. Still, she finally looks up.
"It will take...a few minutes to...bring the security...system back up," she says, then takes a deeper breath. "Tell me your price."
Mason says nothing and just stares at Abbing.
Abbing takes in Mason's silence, then scoffs. "A good soldier," she says. "You will get...a white cross, someday, if you are lucky. Is that...what you want?"
Mason shifts his seat around to the other side of the table and crosses his legs, checking his watch as he does so.
"I won't talk," she says. "I know I'm not getting out...without your help. So what is the price?" Another breath. "Money? A new life?" One more breath. "Her name?"
Mason press checks his pistol, then looks at his watch.
"Fine," Abbing says. "Fuck you. What do you know? What proof do you have? You will all burn for this."
Mason clears his throat before getting up to check the mirrored window for smudges.
"Aargh!" Abbing howls, tugging at the restraints, trying to tip over the chair -
anything at all to change up the situation or grab Mason's attention. Can't fault her drive to escape, but there's nothing much she can do, and finally she slumps back into the chair from exhaustion. After a few more breaths, her head goes from hanging back to tilting forward, and she faints onto the table. Over her breaths, Mason can hear the quiet drip-drip of blood - she must have reopened her wound with the escape attempt.
"The lady was pretty clear,” Mason finally says.
Abbing doesn't respond to that; she's too busy being passed out, apparently. Whatever the case, that's the way she runs out the rest of the clock, and by the time Operations enters the room, there's maybe a half-pint of fresh blood on the floor. Operations seems exactly as concerned about that as Mason is.
"Did she say anything?" Operations asks.
"Apparently she thinks she knows who you are," Mason replies.
"Uh huh," Operations says. "Did she give you a name?"
"Don't care, didn't ask," Mason says.
"Let's file that under
trivia, then," she says. "The Director asked nicely that we keep her in one piece for the night, they're vectoring a new team to take over the station and transfer her into custody. Can you take care of the bleeding?"
Mason pulls another package of gauze out of the kit bag and some wrap to go with it. "Watch my back."
"Always," Operations says.
Taking position besides Mason with her pistol at the ready, she watches as Mason uncuffs Abbing's injured arm and renders some second aid. Weak pulse, GCS 7 - she'll need someone to check on the wound through the night, probably an IV with some fluids, but nothing that can't be done with the safehouse's supplies.
"Not that it matters for us, but she's probably not going to say shit," Mason says. "MSS is in town, we already know that, and now we know why. Unless you want to do a snatch and grab on a PRC spy, we can stick her in a hole until backup arrives."
"Tempting as as catching the MSS with their hands on the cookie jar sounds," Operations says, "we have what we came for. You take care of Abbing, I'll have Laith scrub the system while I go search this barge for...surprises."
Mason nods, and tightens the wrap around Abbing's arm before starting the tourniquet for the IV.
---
Tim's just about made it to the safebarge on his own when the Fractal phone rings again. Surprise, surprise, it's deSilva(?).
"Well, Agent Barstow, I made some calls and I think I have an arrangement that works for everyone," she says. "Tomorrow, for the Liberation Day ceremonies, the King will be in town and will be giving a speech from the Royal Palace. I can arrange to have a few names added to the press whitelist - you'll need to provide your own press IDs and other accoutrements, but I don't think that will be a problem for you. This will put us inside a
very secure perimeter - no guns, no bombs, no other surprises. Besides, I have a feeling you and your friends might want to be on location around Dam square anyway - while you took care of RoI's Plan A, there's still the possibility that they might try something a little more...old-school." Pause. "I'm sure you'll want to confer with your superiors first. But if you're going to show up, I'll need those press ID names by 10 PM."
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