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:
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer
