Participants:
| Scene Title | Pest Control |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Fedor wants Alec's head on a stick. Teo doesn't want to give it to him yet. They are also discussing taking a fancy vacation with the rest of Fedor's kids! And drinking hard liquor. It's highly companionable. |
| Date | April 22, 2009 |
Some part with buildings and people in it.
Fedor eases the Volvo to a stop, peering in his mirrors for a moment before he kills the motor. Its a short walk from there, two blocks and then a pause. There he takes time for a cigar, watching to try and catch any would be tails. That sorted, its another two blocks and a Taxi. Then another two blocks, and another taxi, and another taxi before ending up just 3 blocks away from where he originally started. This is why, being a spy is pretty overrated right?
Fed could pass for a math teacher, or some guy sent to fix your computer. Thin, pale, just barely six foot and dressed in a finely tailored green and charcoal suit and vest. There's no fedora today, but there is a small pelican suitcase on a strap that's along for the ride. Ducking into a small Russian eatery, he gives the pretty waitress just a wave before heading into the back partition without another word said.
This is where the bad guys come, not muggers but the sort've guys you call red fellas. Track suits and finely tailored suits, Cuban cigars and vodka so fine it combusts in direct sunlight. Fedor slips into a quiet sidebooth, before finally setting his briefcase down. He'd wait, and ponder if that big guy behind the bar had been KGB. Fedor couldnt help but wonder, where the hell he recognized the big guy from. Oh well, goodness whatever. Right?
If not right, then at least not wrong. Teo's method of evading tails is somewhat less elaborate — today, anyway. Anne had been kind enough to give him a lift over, in the midst of running supply circuits for the Ferrymen. Martial law still holds its chokehold on the comings and goings of the underground pro-Evolved subculture here, keeping the teleporters, drivers, cyberpaths, and sundry other Ferry organizers busy.
Not Teodoro, though. He's remained with a conspicuous shortage of things to do besides think and talk to priests lately. He needs only walk a block from where Ms. Williams hiccuped him back into existence to the eatery. He does not really fit in, in here: old jeans, sweater, jacket with an almond-sized hole burnt through the elbow, incipient beard scruffing his jawline. He had fit in outside.
"Interesting venue," he says, slinging himself into the seat opposite the old man. He thinks better than to ask after Ingrid; smiles. "Buongiorno. You look well. I'm glad."
Fedor smiles softly "Its good to have balls again."comes an unusually foreward reply. "My countrymen dislike homeland security even more than I do, so it works to our benefit."He proceeds to pop open his case, and from it produces a small VHS tape sized block of circuitry and titanium. "The flight data recording. As you provided me with the finest combat aircraft on the planet earth, and I was able to destroy eight aircraft for the sake of my own ego I thought it proper you gain some. You can destroy it, watch it, upload it or do whatever you want with it. "and then a cough, as a waitress just brings by a pair of glasses and a tall clear bottle. "I also have reason to believe, you have been severely compromised."
The block is taken with only a slight squirm of Teo's eyebrow on his forehead. All right. Where he's going to find a DVD player that can play this, he doesn't know, but there's no argument from him as he stows the unit on the inside of his jacket. Always one to defer to his elders, he keeps his trap shut, listening to the cheerful summary of aerial destruction and the sequitur without segue. That surprises him a little. Severe compromise. If it hadn't surprised him at all, that might have been as bad a sign. His forehead creases. "Okay," he says. "Please explain, signor."
Fedor's smile creases down just a touch, a fine poker face for the moment. "His name is Alec, he contacted your people to compliment you on your work? He's a spy, or so incredibly stupid that he's just as dangerous. Tell me everything you know about him, and I'll try to help you untangle yourself from this."
Oh. Right. That.
The trace shock fades instantly out of Teo's expression, replaced by flat ill temper and a downward seize of brows too dark to have ever betrayed the towhead he sports during brighter summer months. Yeah; apparently he'd heard of that. "I've heard of him. Just recently. I don't have a particular plan of what to do with him yet— there was an original idea floating around a few months ago that we could actually use him. He— excuse me." Teo glances at the glasses and bottle that Fedor had requested. "He contacted you to compliment you on your work?"
"No, he wouldnt have survived such a mistake had he come to me first." The bottle is unmarked, and the glasses are crystal. Fedor takes a moment to pour a pair of shots out, before getting back to the matter at hand. "Dont worry about him, worry about how he found you. Its one thing, when I find you because lets face it I'm very good at this game. When a man like that, can find you and strike up a dialogue you have a significant security leak. If its that easy for a no talent hack to find you, do you think it would be any more difficult for law enforcement? Are you certain they haven't already?"
There's a thoughtful pause which Teo spends looking at the shotglasses without actually perceiving what is in them with any measure of interest whatsoever. "He got lucky," he decides, finally. "Some convenient coincidences, and frankly, we found him first— thinking about hiring long before he flipped the fuck out with the espionage bullshit.
"Actually," Teo glances up, his regard as featurelessly flat as a cloudless wintry sky— and just as expressive of cold ill humor, none of it directed at Fedor himself, "I'm pretty sure law enforcement has already. Exhibit A: Moab. As for finding us, last I recall, you had a nice exchange of give-take with us and that's how this is going to fucking work if we don't leave him dead.
"Fortunately, he's operating alone and driven primarily by the paranoia of a man who knows it." The width of Teo's shoulders relaxes fractionally, which isn't to say he's calm. Anything but. He's restless, shifting. Thinking.
Fedor waves a hand dismissively, sliding a shotglass towards Teo as he claims the other for himself. "Your looking at the wrong signs, look to the trees no the clouds for sign of breeze. When law enforcement finds you, Teo they can potentially find me. When they find me, they can find my people. They are like my children Teo, I'll let you imagine what I would do if a security breach within Phoenix got one of them hurt or arrested."was it a threat, goodness certainly not. Fedor wasnt one to make threats it seems, because a threat carries the notion that it may or may not be carried out.
"I'm entirely self centered, in my motivations. Thats how you know, my concern is genuine. I will have my people follow him, and you will go hands off and perform an exhaustive self audit of your security situation. I will postpone my next operation, and if need be make this fine fellow my number one priority."and then, Fedor slams said shotglass like it was so much water."Does this sound like a gainful course of action, Teo?"
"Your people will be safe, and there isn't a lot I wouldn't do to protect mine." Frank as a legion of jackhammers, as ever. "Sometimes, the tree's rustling because some fucker's beating it with an axe, not a breeze," Teo responds. He still looks annoyed, of course; he rarely looks anything else if he is.
He closes a forefinger and thumb around his shotglass, drinks. He doesn't manage to do it without flinching, but it doesn't come back out on reverse or with a cough or splutter. Exhaling, he lifts his eyes back to Fedor's thin and pointed face. "We might feed him to you and yours. We may decide to do different. You'll know before the week is out. How did you find out about him?"
"I'm a spy Teo, I find out about things. You'll forgive me if I refuse to go into more detail, but old men have their secrets."No they dont, old men have Cardinal. Well, Fedor does anyway. "Anyway, when do you want to go on your trip? We made plans to do so after this latest unpleasantness and so here we find ourselves. I must say though, with all due honesty you have utterly ruined me. Its going to take me a long time to find prop aircraft quite as attractive as I did before the flanker." He offers a thin smile, the sort any grandfather is apt to provide to a young man.
Cardinal's involvement stays two parts secret. At least for now. Teo concedes the point with a shrug, his mouth going lopsided with grace that doesn't come quite as easily to him now as it had once. "Could do it some point soon. Next week, maybe. I have to sort out some shit, our friend Alec among them, and then I can probably fuck off out of here." He places a forefinger on the rim of the shotglass, drops a touch of pressure against the glass.
tIt doesn't tip over at his touch. He glances up in time to see Fedor give him grandfather vibes, which makes him grin around the eyes and smile at his mouth. "I'm sorry." Always. "I don't mean to be difficult. Jake, Zuleyka and Richard are good people. They're lucky you care for them."
Fedor smiles softly, pouring another shot first for himself and then for Teo. "Your one of my people too Teo, dont think yourself such the outsider. Your conviction warrants respect, even from an old man. Your a good man, fighting a battle you could have walked away from. So even if you dont work for me, or run in my little circle I would be very upset if anything happened to you."Punk kid or not. "We'll aim for next week then, Jake and Zu are very eager to go up. Cardinal needs it pretty badly I think, same reason you do I think."
"Si?" It isn't exactly skepticism that colors Teo's features, hearing himself balanced against the shadowmorph in question. Fedor didn't have to say 'punk kid' aloud for him to hear it. Despite that Fedor doesn't look ninety years old, the variation of shapes and display of prowess that he has seen between the sky and the espionage has modified Teo's understanding of Fedor accordingly.
Sometimes, Fedor is Fedor. Other times, he's Ingrid. He might also be a little girl or giving cause-effect death scenarios or inviting him on vacation to God knows where. "What reason's that?"
"Your both drowners, you dont know how to swim. You jump into these things with both feet, and sink like a stone. If you were a machine, we'd call it: A catastrophic mechanical failure which impares flight survivability. Pilots say those sorts of things when they're exploding or a wing falls off in midflight."Fedor repours alcohol as soon as he's swilled whats before him. "You need somone to haul you out of the drink, and let you catch your breath every so often. Your incapable of taking a vacation on your own, because you feel guilty when you do so of your own accord. So you just bottle things up, and turn into a wicked alcoholic or become drunk on religion as salvation from your inability to breathe."
If Teo were exploding, he probably wouldn't have time to say eight words, some of which have six fucking syllables. His eyebrows go up, somewhere between incredulous, amused, and obscurely flattered. He pulls the empty shotglass away from his mouth. "I d'no about Richard," he says, "but people think I'm a lot more complicated than I am. I don't need fancy vacations. A nap, stupid barfight or a little bit of the two vices you'd mentioned work just as well for opportunities to breathe."
I'm fine, insists the Boy Wonder. No stress. See? Completely and utterly relaxed. Floating. Or close enough. There's a beat's pause, then. "Hope your boy Cardinal's going to be okay, though.
"Not to pry, just didn't know he had problems." Like viral apocalypse problems or Moab Federal Penitentiary problems, space-time backdrafts. Not to measure his own pain against anybody else's— Teo merely knows that that that speaks of a shitty time.
"He's as bad as you are, and you will both come to my oversized symbol of excessive capitalistic wealth and I will spoil both of you with expensive alcohol and automatic weapons. When we're done, everything will be just square."Theres a shrug, as Fedor wallops the last of his Vodka. Sliding it aside with narry a wince shortly afterward. "Besides, you need training. A weekend with a spy and a merc will be good for you, learn some things about unconventional warfare against a western nation."
Bleehhh. Teo would rather be fixing the plumbing at Ferry safehouses or staring blank-eyed at optimistic pro-Evolved podcasts constructed by the lovebirds' team, Kinson and Catherine. Possibly, occasionally punching a cop or having sex with a Federal agent.
Instead, he gets to spend a week learning about unconventional warfare against a Western nation, while half his boatload is still MIA, precognitives promise him a brutal kind of darkness, and the usual variety of communication problems wait for him at home. "Sounds like a Hell of a weekend," he acknowledges, with a grin; sudden, not disingenuous. He turns his head fractionally, watches the waitress strut past to meet an order across the room. "Maybe someday you'll get another metal bird out of us too."
Fedor hmmms "Maybe, but next time there will be an ABL and F-22s I'm certain. I was fortunate, I had both convient cover and a distinct lack of the ABL. Supposedly, its in Japan right now if you believe the rumors. Either way, I dont know if its wise to attempt another operation like that with the ABL in the field somewhere."
"Understandable. You're better in one piece," Teo says, inclining his head, in that hapless and woefully inadequate way that a Sicilian is wont to when fluency deserts him, even after Fedor has made grand statements about his induction into a relatively exclusive circle of fiends. "Okay. I'll let you know by Saturday where the pieces fall with signor Alec.
"Any idea what I need to bring for the bit vacation?" It's only a little absurd that he's asking after a luggage list, after the week he's had.
Fedor waves a hand dismissively, peering back towards the bartender. "Just bring clothes for like three days, pack for cold weather. Though if you'd like, theres a ton of cool super old settlements scattered around. Far older than anything back home in Italy, if you want to go see it."
Cold weather. Teo's aversion is instantly and childishly apparent, a show of teeth from underneath the disdainful curl of his lip, oddly kittenish for a young man as tall and rough in manner as he's often wont to be. The expression fades, however, when Fedor starts to get historical. "Yeah. That sounds worth looking at," he acknowledges, showing a smile that looks, for once, an invention of actual good cheer. "Whatever you want. I'll bring my clothes.
"For now," there's tacit apology in the drop of his eyes, before he rights his head out again. "I should probably get going."
"Me too," comes his admission, almost sheepish there for just a split second. Fedor nudges his briefcase shut, and slips the waitress a fifty as she passes. "Keep yourself well Teo, you know how to find me."
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