Post by The Mouth on Jul 4, 2014 11:32:45 GMT -8
3rd May, 2013
The Sabbat in the County Cork are an odd bunch. Years of fighting the Camarilla has made them a small compact group of operators, no more than three packs, each run as a cell, and each having no more than five members. One of the Pack is run by someone called the Russian; he is their ops and intel director.
And, for my sins and a favor the Russian owed to Corbin, I am getting to meet him. Or her. Things are less than clear on that regard.
I’ve taken a train some three hours down to Cork. Travel in Ireland is exceedingly tricky; cars are too easily tracked with cameras and cops are a much more curious lot. Trains are right, but they run on nice predictable schedules, makes an ambush easy enough to since the telegraph took off. Boats are nice but highly regulated and licensed… Not even going to mention air travel.
I’ve gotten spoiled in America.
I go with the train hoping that all my skills will be of use if I have to escape and evade, it’s easier to bail from a train and urban development and the rail expansions were pretty much hand-in-glove when it all got laid out in the 1850’s.
So, there I am, relaxing in the dining car, 12:30 am, gently rocking back and forth as the train rushes through the dark. The car is still lit up, but the only other person in the room is the bartender who is looking a bit morose at the beer I am not drinking. His tips are going to be low tonight, he is thinking to himself - I know this because every time he looks at the tip bowl placed on the counter he breathes out a little harder.
I hear the door slide open, a slight rush of air/train noise and a man and a women enter. He is a plain looking fellow in a nice suit wearing a vintage tie and fedora. Pretty sure some WWII punter of a Ventrue creamed himself when that style of hat came back. The woman though… She is stunning; latin extract with afro-carib splash if I have a guess, she is smiling a wide and generous smile and laughs as the man whispers in her ear.
Her laugh. My hands start to shake, slight tremor, which given my Kindred state would be the equivalent to stripping naked and screaming out of the car. I know her laugh.
Hell, I know her.
She is Margritte DeSoza; Cuban revolutionary and Soviet Agent. Mother was Cuban national, father Haitian fruit exporter. She had a knack for finding lonely middle aged Americans travelling the world and seeing to it they shared many things they should not have; seduction followed by torture followed by murder. Always in those stages; subtle, explicit, and final were her three phases of communication. She was quite fond of having local militias and leftist groups do parts 2 and 3 of her agenda.
And I was pretty sure I’d planted four bullets in her lungs in 1964.
As the couple walks by I catch a glimpse of the man’s right hand. He is missing his pointer finger and has a ten years KGB service ring on the ring finger below.
Oh. Oh shit.
It’s Grigori Boulesceau.
Grigori, known because he always wore gloves, even indoors. His face was an unknown at the time, but the story of his hands… He was a Romanian communist who was known as a communist due to his associations at university in 1940. With Europe falling apart fascists seized control of Romania and rounded up some ‘examples’. For Grigori this was rumormed to have been a lye bath so severe that he could ‘never use a pen to write his Marxist poison.’
He could still shoot, an error the fascists were unable to correct as Grigori became a pro-Soviet partisan. While being tortured he successfully lied about being right handed; turns out that he was a regional pistol champion and managed to get a gun and get some payback for the working man. The KGB liked his initiative and ability to plan operations and set him up as an independent contractor handling other contractors for hands-off ops.
Like Margritte. Rumor was that he and Margritte were lovers and they had set up operations in London. Casterly got orders that the pair were proxies for a Sabbat incursion and it was tasked to me to handle the issue. I never saw Grigori directly, but I learned that he was incredibly proud of his ten year KGB service ring and always kept it on him, terrible trade craft but we all have our foibles. I also learned that the fascists took off his right pointer finger and his firearm skills were fine; that only because he shot me after I tried to top his girl.
I am, to this day, probably the only agent who learned what Grigori looked like and that the reports of him being right handed were a sack of lies. Bastard clearly had the Makarov in his left hand.
The shaking? Well, a lovely couple, woman in her early twenties, gent in his thirties, having a lovely chat back and forth? Looking just like they did 50 years ago? That’s a world of hurt for a bloke like me.
Back then I had staked myself out as a tempting target; former government intel man gone private practice as a military contractor. I had access to all sorts of good tech intel; they had a band of Provos ready to move in for the torture/kill section. So long as the pile of arse biscuits I’d been feeding them as intel on a new radar system kept coming the Provos were in the wings.
Margritte showed up at the hotel lobby, calling herself Carmen Cesar from Spain. We went to dinner, saw Mary Poppins, and went back to the hotel for a nightcap. After some vigorous lovemaking she started to quiz me and I true to my job let slip a few details of my facility’s research and that I was transporting a trivial parts list in my briefcase.
I’d made the locks hard to pick but not too hard. According to the intel she should have been through them in five minutes.
My miscalculation. She took seven.
I gave her the opportunity she needed by taking a shower. I stepped out, naked and drying my hair off with a towel, her in a tableau frozen over the contents of my briefcase. Seconds passed before she snarled, cursing in Cubano Spanish and diving for her purse. I hit the release button my briefcase, the bottom section sprung open with a Walther PPK with a supressor attached and I managed to get off a shot before she cleared her little .22 from the hand bag.
Naked, standing over a woman in her lingerie, who was calling me all sorts of nasty names, “Don’t reach for it, give it up!” but she didn’t. Three more times I shot her, the soft nose slugs making neat circular incisions on breasts I had caressed an hour earlier, she didn’t move or react, she just slowly went limp as shock sunk in and blood poured into her asperating lungs.
I hadn’t realized until now how much this incident had stuck with me. Perhaps it is why I hesitate to kill directly or without orders even 50 years later.
The hotel door flies open, and I see a plain faced man in a suit rush in to the room. He gives a cry at seeing Margritte on the floor and rushes to her. I shoot, once, twice, three times, click. The man grunts, clasping his side with a hand missing his pointer finger, the left magically conjures a Makarov. I’m already out the door when the bullets start flying. I’m hit twice but the adrenalin is surging so much that I don’t even notice until I’m in the laundry room stealing an employee uniform to break contact.
And that was the first time I ran into Grigori.
He knows me. We were both Cold War intelligence operators, him the spy and me the spy hunter. He knows me.
Margritte leans over and whispers something to the bartender. He gets a little glassy eyed, holds out the tip jar while Grigori drops a couple of high denomination Euros in it. Once the bartender is gone I know the game will begin; I just don’t know which game it will be.
I hear the shhhp-sksksksks-shhp of the door at the end of the car cycling.
Everything is calm. I smoothly set down my newspaper and stand up, my back being to them is making me nervous.
I turn and the are both leaning against the bar, totally relaxed in the pose of predators looking at prey with two broken limbs. No hurry, no need to rush, this one isn’t getting away. That easy confidence is probably the most intimidating thing they could possibly do to me. But I can see the lie. They are alone. They usually have two more with them, their orientation indicates they are used to have more flank coverage than they actually have but in an irregular motion; as though they are trying to force their muscles from long trained stances into something more conventional. Trained martial artists have this issue; anyone with a lot of physical training will move in a precise and prescribed way if you know what to watch for.
These two move as part of a pack. Not as part of a couple.
“Grigori. I am amazed to find you in good health. Last I saw you it had appeared to have been a lethal case of lead poisoning.” I take the lead edge, trying to own this space. This will have three phases to the conflict. Conversation, threats, violence. Given that we are clearly not entirely mortal, that will be the plan…
“Reginald Royce, as I live and breathe,” Grigori slid out, oily and slightly accented.
Margritte giggles laughs a little too loudly.
Now why would that be so funny…?
They aren’t breathing, so not ghouls. But I am. And I’m warm and wear cologne mixed with a little sweat…
And I have my answer. And how I’m going to survive.
“How did you find me Grigori?” Got to keep up the bravado.
“Strange. I was told to meet with a fellow from Minneapolis, and instead I find you… Up to your old tricks Reggie?” the smile curves a little too wide and I note that he has a row of smaller teeth behind his ‘human’ looking ones. Even better: Tzimisce.
“Wait. You’re the Russian?”
Grigori’s smile contracts to a rictus of confusion. “You’re Corbin’s friend?”
We manage to get our ‘Oh, fuck this’ comments out at the same time.
Margritte just looks confused because the meal just got taken off the menu and no one has told her why. She used to be much smarter than this…
Softly, to avoid further tension, “What happened to her?”
To his credit Grigori doesn’t even look at her. “Lack of oxygen. Some British prat put two bullets in each lung.” So much for reducing the tension.
“I can see that you have had some life changes, as it were. You’re the magical Sabbat agent running three crews out of Cork?” Grigori is controlled, smooth, beyond what he wants to project not much gets out. Margritte on the other hand is an open book; a wealth of tells and micro expressions. And her slight look of contempt tells me alot.
“Da! You speak a little Russian slang, draw on a few tattoos and suddenly you are the mysterious ‘Russian’. But what are we going to Reginald? I assume you are up to your old tricks as well? Still working for the Casterly house?” He’s reading me too. But I know that I am as good a liar as he is and thinks I’m still mortal.
“Well, clearly. The Casterly’s have been good to me. Not nearly as good as your patron, but well enough. So now you know enough about me to get me killed and scotch my mission. And clearly I know too much about you to live, as well.”
Grigori laughs, large and bellowing. Margritte titters. “Clearly. So what do we do Reggie? What do we do?”
“How about a wager?”
“A wager? Neither of us can let the other go! You know how it must end Reggie…”
“Bullshit Grigori. We both know I’m on ops. Which means I’ve the sun, the moon, and the stars so long as it gets my work done. You get paid, you get to hold some blackmail over me, I get some on you. Besides, I know the three packs is complete bollocks.”
“Oh, and how is that Reggie? You’ve been in country for all of 10 minutes.” Grigori’s inner set of teeth move slightly side to side as he smiles. Internal bone structure, allows for linear shearing, like certain insects, clever Grigori; a bite like a buzz saw.
“Because you’re playing the same game. Everyone at MI5 and MI6 thought you had a massive network of agents and really what you had was a massive rolodex and a checkbook; it made you a real bastard to break because everyone came together for a job then split. You had no set crew beyond Margritte - Which is why I went for her instead of the other blokes you ran. Corbin’s your EOD guy, I bet you have a series of independent contractors who probably aren’t even licks acting as strike teams with Kindred tactics; smuggling ‘em in from Sierra Leone and other African shithole rebellion armies for the fucked up shit. You have one pack. One crew.
You’re just a fixer with an ideology. Again.”
Grigori’s mouth drops; and I see the the rage come over him as the Beast reacts to his shame; he’d given up his whole game just like he had 50 years ago - Because of Margritte. He could hide his thoughts. She couldn’t. He was a fog bank. She was the park map at Disney Land.
The pity and loss that hits Grigori; his control is gone and he looks at Margritte with a trickle of blood running down his cheek. I’d been in a room with him, outnumbered, outgunned, and I’d forced him to know, to bloody fucking know in his bones that the woman he loved through death was a walking security leak. In under thirty minutes.
He has to kill her, because now she is much a weapon against him as weapon for him.
“A wager Grigori.” I speak softly because I am now a stranger in a room with two lovers, one of whom is going to die at the hands of the other.
“Work with me. 12 months. You’ve heard of Netchurch? Well, I’ve got his published findings; all of them. Something in there might help. You give me the intel. You work with me, act as my crew, and you get a huge prize.”
“Margritte, I…” He’s lost in her, lost in the images of his mind what he must do.
“All I have to do is get out of the car. You win, and I die. Terribly. Slowly. Because you just have to keep me in the car until the next station. Five minutes.”
Talking of my death brings Grigori around.
“It will be done in three...” he hisses.
Great. Homicidal suicidally despondent Tzmisce, totally focused on rendering me in a flesh bag of pain. I can roll with this.
Margritte is totally confused, but understands that her packmate/lover wants me deader than the buggy whip industry. She responds by ripping her little black skin tight dress in half. The rational side of me notes the bullet scars are still there, and from somewhere she pulls a couple of bone knives.
And then I fall in love with her.
Fuck. She’s a Toreador. Can it get better?
The two Sabbat charge.
The Sabbat in the County Cork are an odd bunch. Years of fighting the Camarilla has made them a small compact group of operators, no more than three packs, each run as a cell, and each having no more than five members. One of the Pack is run by someone called the Russian; he is their ops and intel director.
And, for my sins and a favor the Russian owed to Corbin, I am getting to meet him. Or her. Things are less than clear on that regard.
I’ve taken a train some three hours down to Cork. Travel in Ireland is exceedingly tricky; cars are too easily tracked with cameras and cops are a much more curious lot. Trains are right, but they run on nice predictable schedules, makes an ambush easy enough to since the telegraph took off. Boats are nice but highly regulated and licensed… Not even going to mention air travel.
I’ve gotten spoiled in America.
I go with the train hoping that all my skills will be of use if I have to escape and evade, it’s easier to bail from a train and urban development and the rail expansions were pretty much hand-in-glove when it all got laid out in the 1850’s.
So, there I am, relaxing in the dining car, 12:30 am, gently rocking back and forth as the train rushes through the dark. The car is still lit up, but the only other person in the room is the bartender who is looking a bit morose at the beer I am not drinking. His tips are going to be low tonight, he is thinking to himself - I know this because every time he looks at the tip bowl placed on the counter he breathes out a little harder.
I hear the door slide open, a slight rush of air/train noise and a man and a women enter. He is a plain looking fellow in a nice suit wearing a vintage tie and fedora. Pretty sure some WWII punter of a Ventrue creamed himself when that style of hat came back. The woman though… She is stunning; latin extract with afro-carib splash if I have a guess, she is smiling a wide and generous smile and laughs as the man whispers in her ear.
Her laugh. My hands start to shake, slight tremor, which given my Kindred state would be the equivalent to stripping naked and screaming out of the car. I know her laugh.
Hell, I know her.
She is Margritte DeSoza; Cuban revolutionary and Soviet Agent. Mother was Cuban national, father Haitian fruit exporter. She had a knack for finding lonely middle aged Americans travelling the world and seeing to it they shared many things they should not have; seduction followed by torture followed by murder. Always in those stages; subtle, explicit, and final were her three phases of communication. She was quite fond of having local militias and leftist groups do parts 2 and 3 of her agenda.
And I was pretty sure I’d planted four bullets in her lungs in 1964.
As the couple walks by I catch a glimpse of the man’s right hand. He is missing his pointer finger and has a ten years KGB service ring on the ring finger below.
Oh. Oh shit.
It’s Grigori Boulesceau.
Grigori, known because he always wore gloves, even indoors. His face was an unknown at the time, but the story of his hands… He was a Romanian communist who was known as a communist due to his associations at university in 1940. With Europe falling apart fascists seized control of Romania and rounded up some ‘examples’. For Grigori this was rumormed to have been a lye bath so severe that he could ‘never use a pen to write his Marxist poison.’
He could still shoot, an error the fascists were unable to correct as Grigori became a pro-Soviet partisan. While being tortured he successfully lied about being right handed; turns out that he was a regional pistol champion and managed to get a gun and get some payback for the working man. The KGB liked his initiative and ability to plan operations and set him up as an independent contractor handling other contractors for hands-off ops.
Like Margritte. Rumor was that he and Margritte were lovers and they had set up operations in London. Casterly got orders that the pair were proxies for a Sabbat incursion and it was tasked to me to handle the issue. I never saw Grigori directly, but I learned that he was incredibly proud of his ten year KGB service ring and always kept it on him, terrible trade craft but we all have our foibles. I also learned that the fascists took off his right pointer finger and his firearm skills were fine; that only because he shot me after I tried to top his girl.
I am, to this day, probably the only agent who learned what Grigori looked like and that the reports of him being right handed were a sack of lies. Bastard clearly had the Makarov in his left hand.
The shaking? Well, a lovely couple, woman in her early twenties, gent in his thirties, having a lovely chat back and forth? Looking just like they did 50 years ago? That’s a world of hurt for a bloke like me.
Back then I had staked myself out as a tempting target; former government intel man gone private practice as a military contractor. I had access to all sorts of good tech intel; they had a band of Provos ready to move in for the torture/kill section. So long as the pile of arse biscuits I’d been feeding them as intel on a new radar system kept coming the Provos were in the wings.
Margritte showed up at the hotel lobby, calling herself Carmen Cesar from Spain. We went to dinner, saw Mary Poppins, and went back to the hotel for a nightcap. After some vigorous lovemaking she started to quiz me and I true to my job let slip a few details of my facility’s research and that I was transporting a trivial parts list in my briefcase.
I’d made the locks hard to pick but not too hard. According to the intel she should have been through them in five minutes.
My miscalculation. She took seven.
I gave her the opportunity she needed by taking a shower. I stepped out, naked and drying my hair off with a towel, her in a tableau frozen over the contents of my briefcase. Seconds passed before she snarled, cursing in Cubano Spanish and diving for her purse. I hit the release button my briefcase, the bottom section sprung open with a Walther PPK with a supressor attached and I managed to get off a shot before she cleared her little .22 from the hand bag.
Naked, standing over a woman in her lingerie, who was calling me all sorts of nasty names, “Don’t reach for it, give it up!” but she didn’t. Three more times I shot her, the soft nose slugs making neat circular incisions on breasts I had caressed an hour earlier, she didn’t move or react, she just slowly went limp as shock sunk in and blood poured into her asperating lungs.
I hadn’t realized until now how much this incident had stuck with me. Perhaps it is why I hesitate to kill directly or without orders even 50 years later.
The hotel door flies open, and I see a plain faced man in a suit rush in to the room. He gives a cry at seeing Margritte on the floor and rushes to her. I shoot, once, twice, three times, click. The man grunts, clasping his side with a hand missing his pointer finger, the left magically conjures a Makarov. I’m already out the door when the bullets start flying. I’m hit twice but the adrenalin is surging so much that I don’t even notice until I’m in the laundry room stealing an employee uniform to break contact.
And that was the first time I ran into Grigori.
He knows me. We were both Cold War intelligence operators, him the spy and me the spy hunter. He knows me.
Margritte leans over and whispers something to the bartender. He gets a little glassy eyed, holds out the tip jar while Grigori drops a couple of high denomination Euros in it. Once the bartender is gone I know the game will begin; I just don’t know which game it will be.
I hear the shhhp-sksksksks-shhp of the door at the end of the car cycling.
Everything is calm. I smoothly set down my newspaper and stand up, my back being to them is making me nervous.
I turn and the are both leaning against the bar, totally relaxed in the pose of predators looking at prey with two broken limbs. No hurry, no need to rush, this one isn’t getting away. That easy confidence is probably the most intimidating thing they could possibly do to me. But I can see the lie. They are alone. They usually have two more with them, their orientation indicates they are used to have more flank coverage than they actually have but in an irregular motion; as though they are trying to force their muscles from long trained stances into something more conventional. Trained martial artists have this issue; anyone with a lot of physical training will move in a precise and prescribed way if you know what to watch for.
These two move as part of a pack. Not as part of a couple.
“Grigori. I am amazed to find you in good health. Last I saw you it had appeared to have been a lethal case of lead poisoning.” I take the lead edge, trying to own this space. This will have three phases to the conflict. Conversation, threats, violence. Given that we are clearly not entirely mortal, that will be the plan…
“Reginald Royce, as I live and breathe,” Grigori slid out, oily and slightly accented.
Margritte giggles laughs a little too loudly.
Now why would that be so funny…?
They aren’t breathing, so not ghouls. But I am. And I’m warm and wear cologne mixed with a little sweat…
And I have my answer. And how I’m going to survive.
“How did you find me Grigori?” Got to keep up the bravado.
“Strange. I was told to meet with a fellow from Minneapolis, and instead I find you… Up to your old tricks Reggie?” the smile curves a little too wide and I note that he has a row of smaller teeth behind his ‘human’ looking ones. Even better: Tzimisce.
“Wait. You’re the Russian?”
Grigori’s smile contracts to a rictus of confusion. “You’re Corbin’s friend?”
We manage to get our ‘Oh, fuck this’ comments out at the same time.
Margritte just looks confused because the meal just got taken off the menu and no one has told her why. She used to be much smarter than this…
Softly, to avoid further tension, “What happened to her?”
To his credit Grigori doesn’t even look at her. “Lack of oxygen. Some British prat put two bullets in each lung.” So much for reducing the tension.
“I can see that you have had some life changes, as it were. You’re the magical Sabbat agent running three crews out of Cork?” Grigori is controlled, smooth, beyond what he wants to project not much gets out. Margritte on the other hand is an open book; a wealth of tells and micro expressions. And her slight look of contempt tells me alot.
“Da! You speak a little Russian slang, draw on a few tattoos and suddenly you are the mysterious ‘Russian’. But what are we going to Reginald? I assume you are up to your old tricks as well? Still working for the Casterly house?” He’s reading me too. But I know that I am as good a liar as he is and thinks I’m still mortal.
“Well, clearly. The Casterly’s have been good to me. Not nearly as good as your patron, but well enough. So now you know enough about me to get me killed and scotch my mission. And clearly I know too much about you to live, as well.”
Grigori laughs, large and bellowing. Margritte titters. “Clearly. So what do we do Reggie? What do we do?”
“How about a wager?”
“A wager? Neither of us can let the other go! You know how it must end Reggie…”
“Bullshit Grigori. We both know I’m on ops. Which means I’ve the sun, the moon, and the stars so long as it gets my work done. You get paid, you get to hold some blackmail over me, I get some on you. Besides, I know the three packs is complete bollocks.”
“Oh, and how is that Reggie? You’ve been in country for all of 10 minutes.” Grigori’s inner set of teeth move slightly side to side as he smiles. Internal bone structure, allows for linear shearing, like certain insects, clever Grigori; a bite like a buzz saw.
“Because you’re playing the same game. Everyone at MI5 and MI6 thought you had a massive network of agents and really what you had was a massive rolodex and a checkbook; it made you a real bastard to break because everyone came together for a job then split. You had no set crew beyond Margritte - Which is why I went for her instead of the other blokes you ran. Corbin’s your EOD guy, I bet you have a series of independent contractors who probably aren’t even licks acting as strike teams with Kindred tactics; smuggling ‘em in from Sierra Leone and other African shithole rebellion armies for the fucked up shit. You have one pack. One crew.
You’re just a fixer with an ideology. Again.”
Grigori’s mouth drops; and I see the the rage come over him as the Beast reacts to his shame; he’d given up his whole game just like he had 50 years ago - Because of Margritte. He could hide his thoughts. She couldn’t. He was a fog bank. She was the park map at Disney Land.
The pity and loss that hits Grigori; his control is gone and he looks at Margritte with a trickle of blood running down his cheek. I’d been in a room with him, outnumbered, outgunned, and I’d forced him to know, to bloody fucking know in his bones that the woman he loved through death was a walking security leak. In under thirty minutes.
He has to kill her, because now she is much a weapon against him as weapon for him.
“A wager Grigori.” I speak softly because I am now a stranger in a room with two lovers, one of whom is going to die at the hands of the other.
“Work with me. 12 months. You’ve heard of Netchurch? Well, I’ve got his published findings; all of them. Something in there might help. You give me the intel. You work with me, act as my crew, and you get a huge prize.”
“Margritte, I…” He’s lost in her, lost in the images of his mind what he must do.
“All I have to do is get out of the car. You win, and I die. Terribly. Slowly. Because you just have to keep me in the car until the next station. Five minutes.”
Talking of my death brings Grigori around.
“It will be done in three...” he hisses.
Great. Homicidal suicidally despondent Tzmisce, totally focused on rendering me in a flesh bag of pain. I can roll with this.
Margritte is totally confused, but understands that her packmate/lover wants me deader than the buggy whip industry. She responds by ripping her little black skin tight dress in half. The rational side of me notes the bullet scars are still there, and from somewhere she pulls a couple of bone knives.
And then I fall in love with her.
Fuck. She’s a Toreador. Can it get better?
The two Sabbat charge.