Quote:

Quote: from admiralducksauce on 11:52 am on Jan. 19, 2005
Artis fishes his phone out, leaving Sasha to the great white north.

"Zdravstvuite?"

(Zdravstvuite, while Russian for hello, doesn't have the same ring to it that Bonjour has)

At first, Brian questions the person answering Artis' phone; but is relieved to hear that it is, in fact, Goose talking to him instead of some drunk Russian.

They give each other progress reports, neither of which shedding alot of light on where the hell Jess is. It would seem that she is somewhere between Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, perhaps on one of the trains heading west enroute to Novosibirsk.

Artis watches his current suspect spit up a dangerous amount of blood out onto the truck's passenger doorstep. The man's face looks like....well, like someone just crushed it with a 150lb steel door. He starts shaking at the sight of probably a half a pint of his own blood in front of him.

(Edited by Dieter at 12:23 pm on Jan. 19, 2005)

"Hold on for a sec, will you? I think I need to ask this guy some questions before he passes out."

To Mr. Broke-Face: "Come on, stay with me. If you let yourself pass out you'll wake up as dead as Sasha, ok? Where did you get the crates and what were you and Mr. Icicle doing with them?"

Peter looks at all the blood spilling on his rig.

"And I was actually planning to put carpet in here. Silly me."

*spit*

"Lrike I terll you alwready. I don't knowr anyshing abou' d'cratesh. Sarsha is an..."

*spit*

"...an armsh dealer. He buysh the schtuff from arll over Ashia n'Europe."

*hack*

"Ash for me...I am jusht twying to get out of Shiberia beforrr the Ef-Esh-Bee findsh me!"

Peter's brow perks up on that last bit. NO ONE lies about being followed by the FSB. It's like openly admitting you're on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

"I'm going to rattle off some names. Let me know if you recognize any of them. Mikhail Noveselic. Jessica Spiner. Samantha Illiavic."

(the first one is a made-up name, if he perks up at that one then things will go poorly for him)

Broke-Face lifts his head up at Artis with that Small World, ain't it? look on his face.

"If thish is shome short of joke, I am not laughshing."

(wiping his mouth and sitting up)

"Ok. Beforwe I passh out. Readersh Digesht vershion..."

Broke-Face says that his name is Anatoli, telling Artis and Peter his horrific tale of being woken up early this morning by his friend Elena and some crazy bitch named Jess. Fast-forward to about three hours ago when they parted ways. Elena and Jess took the Trans-Siberian heading eastbound towards Moscow. Anatoli decided to get out of dodge with his friend Sasha, who was heading to Novosibirsk "on business."

*spit* *wipe* *twitch*

"And thatsh...ish...how you Amerwicansh shay...ish thatsh."

Peter nods.

"Interesting. Now, we're going to continue talking...after I give you some painkillers."

Ayumi snaps pictures of the two men's faces with her phone and then excuses herself to the restroo, where she places a call to HQ.

"...and now there's going to be SMP at the next crossing," she finishes. "Our mission paperwork's going to hold this time, right?"

HQ doesn't appreciate the fact that Ayumi brandished her weaponry, especially in the manner that she chose to do so. It can't be undone, so the plan remains the same.

She and Carla are college students (Tokyo University) taking the semester off and travelling abroad. Ayumi has a Japanese passport while Carla has one from the Phillippines. Their stories will check out as far as their travel visas and the fact they entered Russia in Moscow with the notion of departing in Vladivostok (end of the Trans-Siberian railway).

Explaining Ayumi's picksticker display is going to be an entirely different issue. You'll have to play that one cool if/when the SMP decide to investigate. HQ says to maintain their covers and proceed on the train as ordered. In the meantime, they are to follow up with Agent Goose and Osprey.