“So,” she answers slowly, a sly smile spreading across her face. “I think the best way to answer that might be to demonstrate. Show you a bit of the old modus operandi.”
The Handler stands up abruptly.
“Pick anyone. Anyone at all,” she instructs Medic, pointing to the crowd around them. Medic takes a few moments and finally selects a tall man sidled up to the bar. A cocky confidence oozes out of every part of him, from the top of his perfectly styled coif to the bottom of his leather Italian loafers.
Swaying mildly, The Handler laughs out loud before responding. “Those kindsa guys are the easiest! Okay, great. So how much money should he give us?”
“So you work for some government?” asks Medic, partially amused and partially irritated, feeling like he’s being pranked. Or worse.
“No. No governments. No corporations. No large groups of any kind, really. Unless it suits our purposes,” she explains flatly. “There’s just the agency and our little cell. I don’t know if there are others because, as I said, the organization keeps a pretty tight lid on things.”
“Wait. So what is it that you actually do?” he asks with an incredulous frown.
She pauses briefly as a stern expression creeps across he face.
“I should’ve told you off the top,” she says firmly, “that there are many things I simply won’t be able to tell you. Some are classified, some I just don’t know. Of the things I can tell you, some you’ll find out later and some you never will.”
A quiet ding interrupts the amplified audio, telling her that a text message has just arrived from Dmitri. “No go. Too exposed,” it says. That means that she has about twenty minutes to idle here before moving on to the next destination.
She closes her eyes again and listens intently.
About ten minutes later, a few quiet but discernible words echo into her ears. She grins with satisfaction, not because she understands any of it but because she got a recording.
His first search is for “The Handler” which pulls up over forty pages of results. None of them seem right. He revises the search by adding a few digits from one of the random-looking lines on the business card. There’s exactly one result.
The sequence of letters and numbers on the website seem to match those on the business card. Beneath them, only the words “GET ME HOT” appear on the otherwise empty page. He waves the mouse cursor over the page looking for hidden links but finds none.
Just then, three shapes emerge onto the path from the shadows.
The two large men instantly attract his attention. One looks like a mountain, maybe a boxer with a shiny bald head, cauliflower ears, wildly crooked nose, hands that look like anvils, and shoulders to lift them. The other one is a little shorter, has a paunch, brush cut, and a Burt Reynolds mustache suggestive of someone who spends too much time watching 70s action movies. Both men are dressed in long black overcoats exposing casually unbuttoned dress shirts. The look is professional.
Following close behind them is a petite woman wearing sunglasses. She’s dressed similarly to the men but her clothes are tailored to suit her compact frame. It’s hard for Medic not to notice the gentle sway of her body as she walks, the warm and smooth glow of her tan complexion, the way the straight line of glossy black hair frames her face.
As a responsible “citizen journalist” I do my best to research a topic before I post about it. Usually I’ll focus on a subject for a few days, sometimes a week, occasionally longer, but there’s one area of research that I’ve pursued incessantly for years.
It’s all based on a collection of loosely organized documents, images, and recordings; a series of semi-anonymous recollections and first-hand experiences that expose the methodology, technology, and clandestine operations of a very unusual organization.
Given this context it wasn’t surprising that much of the dossier was unclear if not outrightly opaque. Nevertheless, I could at least authenticate the bulk of the information, which can be found in its entirety on the web – if you know how and where to look.
Since I’ve taken some liberties with the source material I thought it best to repeat the same disclaimer that the collection opens with, namely, a warning that not everything contained within is 100% accurate for reasons of security, secrecy, privacy, etc. At the same time, however, a lot of it is.
Mostly it’s a matter of corroboration.
Without any additional preamble the dossier dives straight in…
These past two years have been an eye-opener, huh?
In the aftermath do you find that you’re more apt to question if you’re being lied to? Do you find yourself doubting “the truth“™? Have you uncovered new allies? Discovered new adversaries? Can you even trust yourself?
And now with China’s looming presence and Russia’s overt reemergence, doesn’t it all suggest some sort of literal / literary neo-noir, neo-cold-war espionage thing? Moreover, what if there’s something larger at play?
Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I’ve spent a fair chunk of this time doing a bunch of research, jotting down copious notes, and running some experiments. Without going into blatant spoilers I can say that what emerged from the effort was interesting. Like, really interesting. Enough so that I felt a need to spin it into what I hope is an interesting and entertaining yarn.
There’s definitely going to be a lot of fiction but there’s also going to be a whole lot of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Fiction too. Sometimes it’s “speculative” but sometimes it’s just established fact. Look it up.
But if you stick around everything will eventually be explained. Probably. Anyhow, here’s the main dossier:
Last July I wrote a post about Doug Ford’s assumption of dictatorial powers in the province of Ontario, “because Covid”. I noted that the powers granted under the “Reopening Ontario Act”, which Dougie clearly and obviously demonstrated he wasn’t willing to abuse, were set to expire at the end of 2021. I recall that my reaction at the time was something along the lines of, “yeah … sure.”
A few short months later it was revealed that – SHOCK! AMAZEMENT! – the non-emergency-emergency powers that the government magically granted itself will be extended until March 28 of this year, “because Covid.”
Should we be worried about a literal dictatorship that has repeatedly put people out of work, shut down the economy, driven families and large chunks of society apart, filled people with dread while making their lives miserable, maybe even had a hand in killing a few of them?
Of course not! The real and proven threat to “democracy” is … truckers!
I spoke with Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau this evening about the ongoing occupations in Ottawa and Windsor. We will continue working together to support our police forces as they manage these situations. We both agreed this must come to an end.
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