"I wouldn't have it any other way. There's a restaurant inside Mandalay Bay, 3970. A friend of mine runs the evening shift there. This probably goes without saying, but wear something nice. See you there around 7:30pm. Bye."

Harry rises from his Chairman of the Board-induced trance to watch an ad...for himself?

"I have a show? A show at the H.O.B.? I've gotta get prepared for this." He gets up, takes off his tie, and heads to the bathroom. "I'm'a shower, and put on a change of clothes, and walk the Strip. Anyone want to come with me?

Gavin grunts an affirmative from his spot in a recliner as Harry walks into the bathroom. Just after the door swings shut, he calls through, "Might as well. We do have appearances to consider, and I wouldn't mind seeing the Strip. Besides, I don't trust you not to get kidnapped."

He pauses for a laugh, then mentions conversationally to those still in the room, "I'd always wanted to visit Vegas. My dear mother back in Ireland swore she'd never visit such a den of vice and sin. At least I don't have to worry about her breaking my cover."

As he showers, Harry treats the sink and hair dryer to a revue of some of the Sinatra's best. Well, it sounds good to him, at least.

"God help us," I whisper mostly to myself.

"Sounds good, Harry!"

"I'm going to check out my cover. I'm supposed to have a shop set up here in the hotel. First though, we should figure out a plan to bug this guy."

I root through my gear bag, producing the tracer card and the bugs.

"Jess, I hate to bring this up, but if you go home with this guy, try to plant a bug or tracer in his stuff. Wallet's probably best for a tracer, cellphone's best for an voice bug. I'm sure we'll all be down for the show, you can signal us with how it's going."

"And for God's sake, don't do what that dumb bitch on 24 did and try to sneak off to do that shit while he's talking to someone else or something. Unless he's taking a dump, a shower, or asleep, it's too risky."

Gavin and Harry hit the Strip for some carousing with the locals. The traffic is awful...with a capital A. They decide it's actually much faster to walk. Compared to Russia, this is paradise. It's about 70 degrees with zero humidity.

...To be continued.

Artis goes down to concourse level of the hotel to check out the front for his alleged business while Jess goes shopping for suitable evening attire.

Sure enough, there's an antique store Alexander & Co. in the mall-ish area. Doing a pedestrian appraisal of the merchandise, it ranges from completely tourist to some actual fine pieces of 17th Century pottery. Working the counter is Brian, his laptop in front of him. The screen is pushed down far enough to keep the customers in view but not to keep him from his computing. He seems throughly engulfed in a game of Warcraft III.

Jess finds a high-end dress store, catering mostly to the wealthy jet-set crowd. Inside she finds an array of dresses running the gamut in price and color. In one corner sits a well dressed man sitting on a plush seat, apparently waiting for whomever is trying on stuff in the dressing room. He's in his late 40's, checking his $2000 watch about every 10 seconds. A sales girl approaches Jess, she's asian...early 20's...probably Chinese.

"Hello miss. How are you today? Is there something I can help you with?"

(Edited by Dieter at 10:09 am on Nov. 8, 2002)

Osprey arrives at Mandalay Bay without much ado. The jetlag from being on a plane for more hours than he cares to think about is catching up with him. He gets his room key from the concierge and heads up for some much needed rest.

The door to room 1402 opens with a gentle click...the joys of keyless card entry. Inside he sees what amounts to mobile Q-branch.

After checking out his room in the usual "what will I trip on in the middle of the night, going for my gun" fashion and filing a request with the Q-branch, trusting his equipment needs to whoever handled these things...the boys at Credin Hill hadn't given him much information about whoever he was " on indefinite loan" to, but he presumed if they needed the SAS, they probably had a pretty tightly run organization themselves.

It felt odd, going through life, formerly one centered in Northern Ireland, without a gun, but the office had decided that would be a bad idea with American security beefing up. So, for the moment, he was unarmed, with nothing but a glorified cellphone and his clothing.

He pulled out the cell phone, dialing his contact number, waiting quietly as it rang.

As Artis takes a look at the store's inventory, his phone rings.

Jess smirks innerly, somewhat satisfied that she doesn't have to act like Kimberly for now.

"Thanks for the offer, but I think I can find my own way around here."

The clerk nods to Jess,

"Of course. Just let me if you need anything."

At this point, Jess notices the pensive 40-something man begin to get slightly irritable. He goes over to the dressing room door and begin talking in a curt and slightly antagonistic manner.

"Samantha, darling. We've been here for over an hour, I have other business that needs attending to. I'm going to leave my credit card with the salesgirl. I'll make arrangements for someone to pick you up when you're finished."

The man takes off, giving his card to the salesgirl. He whispers something into her ear and she giggles slightly with a dubious grin as he leaves the store. A female head pokes out of the dressing room curtain partition. She's all of about 25, having that eastern European supermodel look.

"James, I was just to going to try on more...Hrrmph! I can't believe I'm still with him."

The salesgirl walks over to her.

"Madame, with looks like that and his apparent bankroll, I'd be the first one in line after you left him."

They get a bit catty towards eachother, but go about putting a large hole in James' credit limit.

Jess picks up a few things from the conversation

1. From the accent, James is without a doubt British. Probably from the northern counties...Yorkshire perhaps.

2. Samantha is either the trophy wife or girlfriend of James.

(Edited by Dieter at 4:19 pm on Nov. 13, 2002)

I realize for a second that it's my phone ringing, and then pick it up.

"Hello?"

better let whoever's calling me identify themself first. I don't know whether to answer 'Rufus', 'Artis', or 'Goose'...

A distinctly British accent, bordering on Scottish, emerges from the headset of Goose's phone. Malory sits back in one of the rooms large chairs near the window, looking out of it cautiously.

"Put Buzzard on...it's Osprey"

Now we'd see whether the vague instructions he was given were worth the plane flight over here.

I pass the phone to Brian, shaking it a couple times to pull his attention from the game.

"There's a fowl on line 2 that wants to talk to you."

Buzzard seems mildly afronted by the notion of interrupting his RTS, but reluctantly does so.

"He-hello? Oh yeah, right. Um, you're already here? It's just that...mmm, nevermind. You should come down to the Casino mall. Look for an antique store called Alexander & Co.. Right, see you in a bit."

Buzzard gives Artis back his phone and goes back to his game. A long minute goes by before he re-acknowledges that Artis is still around.

"Oh....the new guy should be down here momentarily. There's a secure room in the back of the store if you need to talk or something."

Malory punched the "End" button on the expensive looking Nokia, probablly harder than the phone deserved. He had taken the red-eye flight from London to New York - late at night and in economy class in order to "minimize potential contact with target", switched planes in New York for the flight to Denver, than once again from Denver to Vegas. He was tired, and this spy nonsense didn't appeal to him.

Yet in the end he did get up, splashing water on his face and scribbling something on the cheap hotel stationary. He walked out onto the strip, yawning softly and feeling odd without the ever present feeling of his handgun. In Bosnia, you didn't go _anywhere_ without a gun.

The shop itself was easy enough to find and, after giving a casual glance to an expensive looking vase, he had already determined the voice behind the phone. The pale one hunched over the computer was this...Buzzard...and the other...must have been the one to answer the phone. He walked over to them, putting the folded peice of stationary down beside the laptop.

"I'll be needing some things, I trust you can see to them?" The way the question was phrased, especially with the unique accent of the speaker, didn't give much room for "no" as a responce. Than he turned to Goose.

"And who might you be?" He smiled, the dashing, classic smile it seems British commandos were trained to have.

...Meanwhile, Harry is showing off some of the traditional Vegas quirks. They get breakfast for dinner at a diner, and stop to admire the slot machines in the lobby. Once they're inside Caesar's Palace, Harry points out the lack of clocks or windows anywhere inside the casinos, and commits himself to finding a slot machine with no electronics involved. After that, he's going to play a little blackjack.

Buzzard gives the Brit the look of, "Hey, be nice to me...I'm new at this" then grabs said paper. He looks up again at Mr. SAS then shakes his head.

Ok, Brian...I think we've learned our lesson. No hacking of foreign government computers on Agency time. Cripes, this mission is going to take forever.

Meanwhile...Harry and Gavin hit the slots at Caeser's.

After losing about $20 in assorted change to the one-arm bandits, they decide to hit the blackjack tables. Harry sits down at a $10 minimum table. His luck seems to be a bit better with the cards, so he goes over to a higher stakes table...$20 minimum. Two hours and $250 of the Agency's expenses lost, they decide to pack it in. Well, it was more like Gavin threatening to beat Harry within an inch of his life if he lost anymore of the team's field money. Suffice to say, they leave and head back to Mandalay Bay.

"Rufus Alexander... I own this little slice of civilization. Why don't we have a seat in the back and discuss that piece you're interested in?"

"A pleasure to meet you Mr. Alexander. That sounds like a fine idea...I'm very interested in verifying the item's...authenticity. Only the finest for my collection and all that."