A dimly lit room filled mostly by a large glass desk greeted Anthony Miller as he reached the bottom level of the Pentagon. He took a seat around the desk with Daniels and was left alone, their guide quickly scurrying away. The room had charcoal walls that looked to be made of sponge but were hard to the touch. The ceiling was reflective so that looking up gave Miller a giddy feeling of hanging upside down.
“Doesn’t make sense,” said Daniels, sitting back in the chair across from Miller, “Armed Frenchmen in a villa in the Austrian alps, yet the place looked like the holiday house for an accountant.”
“Yeah,” Miller agreed, “We go there on intelligence that suggests a large black-market cartel and then, this?” The whole absurdity of the matter had kept Miller awake during the trip from Austria back to Virginia. He couldn’t make sense of it, but then again he didn’t have the whole picture and he was hoping the techies from Intelligence could make some use of the computer they had salvaged.
As if on cue, the door swung open and two men walked in. One Miller recognised as Admiral Beckett, the commander of the United States Special Operations Command. He was of solid build and had greyed, thinning hair that sat atop his head like a horseshoe. A dark, thick moustache dominated his face and made his mahogany brown eyes look almost black.
The other man was a mousy looking youth, no older than 25, who wore glasses and a comical comb over. He was noticeably tense as he entered the room after the Admiral.
“Gentlemen,” said the Admiral, who shook both Miller’s and Daniels’ hands with a little too much force. He took a seat at the head of the table and the other man, who Miller had dubbed ‘Mouse’, sat next to him.
“Firstly, I’d like to congratulate you two on your efforts in Austria. SOCOM can’t conduct covert ops, so we’re always very appreciative of the CIA’s contribution.”
“Not a problem, it’s our job,” said Miller. As part of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, Miller and his colleagues were often asked to conduct missions that conventional military units didn’t have the authority to perform.
“This is Alec Baldwin, he’s from Intel,” said Beckett, motioning towards Mouse. Miller shook his hand, forgot his name, and decided he was Mouse from here on in.
“I’m the one who analysed the data you recovered,” said Mouse.
“And?” asked Daniels, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table.
“Well,” said Mouse, straightening his glasses, “The documents on the computer obviously showed that whoever owned it was taking investments from multiple people, 16 in total. They would deposit into an offshore account which was emptied weekly, probably to another account, or several, for privacy.”
“Okay. What about the expected returns info we found, mean anything?” asked Miller.
“Well yes. You see, I did some research on some of the names and most of them came up with nothing. I suspect the majority are pseudonyms. Of the three that gave me a lead, two had something in common.”
The room was silent. Mouse was a little excited that all the attention was focused on him and darted his beady eyes around the dark space. Beckett cleared his throat to urge to techie on.
“Well, their expected returns were either a week or more overdue, and they were both dead.”
The startling blankness of Mouse’s statement caught the full attention of both Miller and Daniels.
“Dead?” Miller asked, “When?”
“A few days after the returns were late. One guy, a corporate business man in Brazil, was found dead in his bathtub. Seems he slipped getting out and knocked himself on the rim before drowning to death. The other, a CEO in London, died a little less subtly. He was shot four times in the chest at point blank range.”
This new information added a whole new dimension to the proceedings.
“So, these investors put money into a company we haven’t identified yet,” said Miller, “And when they coming looking for their profits after the date they’re promised, they wind up dead.”
“That’s right. It looks like these guys are getting scammed well, and if the scammer has managed to swindle black market personalities then the ones he kills probably won’t be missed,” said Mouse, who Miller was rather beginning to like.
“Hold on,” said Daniels, “You said three gave you a lead, what about the other guy?”
“Oh, of course. Stephen Evelyn, CEO of Siwa-Tech Industries, a US scientific research firm based in New York, he was the third guy. He’s alive, seeing over the opening of some new offices in Rio de Janeiro.”
“He’s alive?” asked Beckett, piping up for the first time in the meeting, “When is he expecting the return of his profits?”
“Two days’ time,” said Mouse. Miller and Daniels looked at each other.
“You two,” said the Admiral to the pair of CIA operatives, “How soon can you have an extraction team prepped and ready for deployment?”
Miller looked at his watch.
“By 1730 sir,” he said with confidence, knowing in his mind already which soldiers would fill the team.
“Good, there’ll be a chopper waiting to take you to the airport at 1800; you’ll be briefed en route.”
“Roger that.”
“Dismissed.”
All the men stood from the table and Beckett left quickly, leaving Miller and Daniels alone with Mouse. As they spoke of who they would choose to fill out their extraction team, Mouse attempted to sneak from the room.
“Mouse,” said Miller, looking directly at the Intelligence Officer so he was aware of his new name, “You ever run logistics on the ground for an operation before?”
“No way, only ever been behind a desk,” he said, half hiding behind the ajar door.
“Well, welcome to Cypher Actual, you’re going to run this snatch and grab.”
Mouse’s face lit up, and Miller could tell that it was not often that Mouse was given an opportunity to take on responsibility. He beamed back at them.
“Cool.”
Haha, oh wow. The Alec Baldwin thing was totally unintentional. I have a teacher called Mr. Baldwin so I used his last name and threw the first name that came to my head in front of it. I wonder why Alec came :S
Thanks for pointing that out.
Ahh...I always wanted to write about the CIA. Bravo for actually doing it. You pulled it off better than I would have. You grabbed the reader's attention early on. Nice.
Alec Baldwin is in the CIA? I didn't know that....Seriously, I read that and thought I'd heard the name before. I realized he's an actor. You should try to stay away from well-known names when you write fiction.
When you start talking about Stephen Evelyn being alive, it gripped me. It was kind of exciting. Now, I knew where the story was headed.
I enjoyed reading it,
McMourning
First things first, I wouldn't post your work in spoilers. I don't know why, it just bugs me :/
This is A LOT of listing. The description has the potential to be really good but what you've done is more along the lines of:Nitpicks
The walls were like this, the ceiling was like this etc. It becomes very list-like.
This is a bit of a run-on sentence. Maybe you could shorten it or split it into two?
As for the rest of the first section - the grammer and punctuation was good but you used 'said' and 'asked' as pretty much the only two verbs after speech throughout the entire thing. Try for some variation.
The two sections highlighted in red seem to form a contradiction.
Again, you have only used said and asked and I'm not overly keen on the ending sentence of your chapter. Perhaps add one more to do with the reaction of the people?
You have a good story here, just remember to vary the way you tell it.
Icy.