Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom
Page 14
Chapter Six
Ally sat uncomfortably at the table, not being used to the type of humidity that North Carolina had to offer in the dead of summer. The first of the three Blue Team representatives at the table, and the only man present, spoke: “Is this your first time in Asheville?”
“No. I stayed here once when I was a kid,” answered Ally. “My family was going up to the Great Smokey Mountains. It was soon after we were forced to move east. But I remember it being nice and cool.”
“Well, this is our first time here as well. And this is far less humid and hot than where I live. Anyways, locals are telling us that it’s unseasonably hot right now… So, now that we’ve narrowed down the regions that we may or may not be from, let’s get to discussing a few things,” said the man.
The first woman spoke to Ally, in a friendly but business-like manner, “Can you update us on the situation with the Larson guy?”
“Sure, Mick…or rather Michael Larson, he’s cooperating, but possibly only out of fear. He’s not unsympathetic to our cause, but he’s not anywhere near being supportive in any significant way. He’s quite cynical and accepting of his fate within the system. That sort of thing…”
“Your plan?” asked the woman.
Ally pushed her chair away from the lunch table slightly and spoke, “We think that The Executioner feels at home in Indonesia. He has done a lot of work there – everybody knows that. He may even be based there. If not, then he must live nearby. My plan is to take Larson to Indonesia and then lure The Executioner there. I have a well developed plan for that.”
“Will that look too much like a trap to The Executioner? Going straight to a country that may be home for him?”
“Lots of foreigners go to Indonesia. It’s friendly to Americans, and it tolerates runners and debtors. It’s actually a really good choice for a runner. I’m betting that The Executioner won’t be too suspicious that Mick has chosen Indonesia as a place to flee to. Anyways, his greed will blind him. Greed blinds most people, in our experience,” said Ally, hoping she didn’t sound like she was trying to sell a product.
The second woman cut in and said “We agreed before you arrived that we would give you lots of leeway. You’ve made many aggressive decisions, and they’ve always been on mark. It’s a thin line between a calculated risk and a reckless move. But you’ve proven yourself plenty of times. There was no way we were going to reject your plan, unless you lost your mind and proposed something insane. But this is fine. We don’t need the exact details.”
“Of course,” said the man, “we didn’t invite you here to interrogate you about a proposed operation. You’ve been approving most of your own work for quite a while now with no oversight.”
The man paused briefly and then continued, “We were told that you lost your partner. I’m sorry. I was also told that you paid for a service to recover and repatriate her remains. Is that right?”
“Yes, I paid from my own pocket while I was in Cuba. The service I contracted had to pay off the local coroner in Mexico for her body. And then they flew it to her family in Arizona,” added Ally, matter-of-factly.
“Did it cost more than $100,000?” asked the first woman.
“No. Commercial flights often carry remains between countries, so it wasn’t too expensive.”
“OK,” said the first woman. “Withdraw from whatever account you want and pay yourself back.”
The second woman leaned back in her chair and said, with no small amount of sympathy, “Listen, we are not supposed to know these sorts of small details, but we do. It’s obvious that you’ve been working with the same person for quite some time now. We don’t know her; we don’t know her name. But we know that you two were close. We are truly sorry. Do you want to take some time off?”
“No. In fact, I want to get to Indonesia as soon as possible. The longer Mick sits in Havana, the more likely he’ll change his mind and run off,” said Ally.
“Right,” said the first woman, “then that takes care of all operations issues. But again, that’s not why we invited you here.”
“I’m cycling out of the committee position,” announced the second woman. “I’m taking a new job in the government. It’s a position from where I can help Blue Team more than I can while sitting here on the leadership committee. So we want you to take over my spot. That will make you one of three equals at the top of Blue Team.”
Ally sat silently for a few seconds, and then spoke softly, saying “You know that over on the Insurrectionary Anarchist side of things, that we’ve killed a lot of people, right? And that we will continue to kill? I’m fully committed to that.”
“You know,” said the man, “when I joined the committee, there was an anarchist who had been on board for quite a while already. And he was about ten years your senior. His body count was far and above anything that you kids come up with these days. So don’t worry, we’re not squeamish. We don’t faint at the sight of blood. There are torturers and murderers occupying every sort of post in our government, so why shouldn’t the opposition have a few dangerous people?”
“How soon do you need an answer?” asked Ally.
“We would have liked one now,” said the man. “But we can wait a few months. For now, you deal with the operations group for this Indonesia thing, not us. When you want to give us an answer, you know how to get us a message.”
Ally thought silently about how much she did not really want to serve on the committee. The idea bored her. But the next thought that came to her mind did not bore her; she was now free to find and meet up with her anarchist cell.