Hit and Run

Participants:

hana_icon.gif

Also featuring:

carmichael_icon.gif

and various minor NPCs

Scene Title Hit and Run
Synopsis Hana sneaks into Carmichael's office while following up on the ideas Teo presented in Wake Up. She doesn't quite pass unnoticed.
Date February 20, 2009

Homeland Security Offices, Manhattan


It isn't often she assumes the guise of normality — and with her hair pulled back in a bun, wearing a three-piece mocha suit and ivory blouse, complete down to the authentic-seeming namebadge (stating her identity as one Leah Avram) clipped to a lapel… Hana Gitelman looks very normal.

Even walking down the corridors of Homeland Security's Manhattan office building.

It's a few minutes into the lunch hour — ten, fifteen. Long enough for most of the busy bees to have cleared out for whatever plans they might have; the hall is quiet. Low heels click against the floor tiles as 'Leah' walks. She carries a handful of envelopes, mixed manila and letter, along one arm; the purse on her other is a bit unusual, but presumably she also intends to go for lunch after finishing her errand.

She checks the name on a series of envelopes, pauses beside a cubicle. Deposits all but two there. Those two, 'Leah' has left for last.

Only legitimate secretaries, and new ones at that, have the unwanted task of delivering mail to inboxes. And she has a namebadge. The two suited agents 'Leah' passes in the hall don't think twice about her presence, just exchange cordial smiles.

Anyone who knows Hana would probably be shocked to know she really can smile — and pull off the meaningless polite form of the expression to boot.

Her destination now is an office. An office whose occupant is out to a lunch meeting, one which will undoubtedly run longer than the two hours allotted for it, as meetings tend to do. The mail is left where it belongs, in its box on the desk. Then Hana ducks into the room next door, the actual place of interest.

Carmichael's office.

It's a small, cramped, closet of an office. The cheap aluminum desk is centered by the door, its faux wood top covered with the barest minimum of office setup; a phone, a cup of pencils, a flexible-necked lamp and a pad of fresh lined paper. Not even a computer has been afforded to the agent yet.

No photographs line the room, no signs of family or friends, it is for all its ways Spartan in the most strict definition. Only one thing truly stands out to Hana in the room, and that is the black coffee mug sitting on the corner of the table, a pair of tea-bag strings dangling over one side.

Out in the hall, a pair of men in suits walk past the office, quietly conversing with one another. Neither of them spare a second glance to the technopath that has snuck her way into Jonathan Carmichael's office.

Exactly as planned.

The two men in the hall are just as ignored by 'Leah' as she by them; the coffee cup is her victim of choice, the tea bags stripped out and dropped unceremoniously into File 13. The remainder of the liquid within is an inconvenience, but a minor one; when the suited men have passed, Hana dumps it out into a potted plant just beyond the door, someone's idea of a nod towards giving the workplace a comfortable and relaxing ambiance.

A manila envelope is produced from the purse; already addressed, it awaits only contents and sealing before being sent on its way, though there are planned complications to this sequence of events. Coffee mugs are not the usual subjects of any mail delivery service, but such is the order of the day.

The cup, and the traces of DNA on its rim, are all Hana wanted, deposited safely back in the concealing purse. But Agent Carmichael would never believe that; cannot be allowed to suspect her purpose. So the technopath makes a slight detour, takes the time to rifle through the papers on the desk (albeit in a fashion that is as unobtrusive as possible) and extract a single file folder.

Then Hana leaves the office.

She walks down the corridor, past a secretary's desk. Pauses in the associated copy room to drop the file folder in a recycling bin, one handful of papers amongst many; faceless, nameless, unremarkable. No one will give it a second look.

Carmichael will never find it again.

From there, the plan is simple. Get out the doors, down the street. Deliver the envelope by courier to Teo for benefit of his psychometrist — and then get well away from here. Down the hall is easy. So is out the doors, with most people gone to lunch and 'Miss Avram' presumably on her way to doing the same. But Hana has one last box to tick off the to-do list before she goes.

The sound of footsteps approaching from around the corner gives her an ideal opportunity.

'Leah' stops, studying the directional placards on the wall with a small, puzzled frown. <— 525-548; Washington. 501-524; Jackson —>. Apparently none of them are quite what 'Leah Avram' is looking for.

The young man who comes around the corner and finds the tall Israeli suddenly standing in his field of view asks the inevitable question, after the requisite two seconds needed to adjust to the unanticipated encounter. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

'Leah' turns to look at him; her smile is there and gone too quickly for its attitude to be very well evaluated. Probably a good thing; Hana Gitelman is not the world's best actor. Just better than most people would expect, when she has a mind to act. "Yes, please," 'Leah' replies, allowing a hint of Hebrew to color the inflection of English words. "Can you tell me where the Jefferson meeting room is? I am afraid I am already late, and I cannot find anything here."

"Of course." It's an easy request, and the man — an office worker, not an agent; an administrative cog in the great bureaucratic machine; his badge reads 'Samuel Janes' — turns to point back the way he came. "Take the elevator to the second floor, then come back around this way. It's over by room 237."

Another flicker of a smile; a bob of brown-haired head. "Thank you," 'Leah' replies, before striding out in Janes' wake, heels clicking on the tiled floor of the otherwise empty corridor.

He watches until she pushes the button for the elevator, then shakes his head and walks back towards his office.


Homeland Security Offices: Carmichael's Office


It's a little later that the offices return to their usual busy state; the workforce returned from lunch, from various meetings that lasted through lunch, everyone at their desks being productive little beavers.

Except Janes. He takes the time to wander over to Carmichael's office, casually leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. He's new enough, and young enough, not to have realized yet that Jonathan Carmichael isn't really the best partner for workplace gossip.

"Hey, Jonathan — what's going on in Jefferson today?"

Looking up from a Styrofoam cup held in one hand with tea bag tags dangling out of one side, Jonathan peers up to the young clerk at the door. One eye squints, and he peers back down into his cup, before looking back up again, "Nothing is going on in Jefferson today…" His head tilts to the side, "Why?"

"Oh — Nothing." Janes shrugs one shoulder, waving a hand distractedly at the air as if to wipe away the conversation, "Someone new was asking where Jefferson was, says she had a meeting there, poor girl seemed pretty lost." As Janes speaks, Carmichael squeezes that cup just a bit more, and walks over with a slight limp — thankfully no longer needing his crutch — still showing signs of injury from his encounter with Julian Kuhr. "Who?"

The intent expression on Carmichael's face brings a mildly perplexed expression from Janes, "Oh ah — Leah…" He searches, lips pursed together, "Avram? Yeah — Avram. She was obviously from out of town, little accent, something — I couldn't quite place…" One brow raises as Janes watches Carmichael move over to his desk, looking down to where his coffee mug was, then to the cheap one in his hand.

He settles down, moving past his chair with a visible grimace as he bends his knee, withdrawing the file drawer in his desk, noticing a gap between reports where a whole document folio has been removed. "Jesus Christ." The agent's eyes open wide, and he sits up to look at Janes, "Call security, tell them we may have a breach!"

Panicked by Jonathan's reaction, Janes rushes out of the office, even as Carmichael picks up his phone, pressing one of the speed-dial extensions, tucking the phone under his chin, "Jenkins, it's Carmichael. I need this building locked down immediately, and tell the men in the security center that I'm going to need surveillance footage from the second and third floors immediately."

He pauses at the response on the other end, then quickly hangs up the phone with a slam, rushing with a slight limp towards the door to his office, swinging the door shut with a loud slam the moment he's out. But by the time Jonathan Carmichael finds out just who the woman that slipped past security was…

…it's too late, and the damage has already been done.


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February 19th: Russian In The Rusted Cage

Previously in this storyline…
There Is A Time For Everything


Next in this storyline…
Whatever The Case May Be

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February 20th: Women Don't Perspire. They Glow.
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