Operation: Godhand - Team Bucharest

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

Chasing cover-ups, rumors and shadows, Emma and Marie-Ange piece together where Natasha Romanova was and follow her tracks.



Emma didn't wince for anything other than tapered pants, cheap whiskey or crimped hair, but a small and slightly displeased moue touched her lips asshe settled into the back seat of her hired car. Visiting Dmitri and his wife was always an exquisite pleasure but Tatiana had once been a trapeze artist and the strength of her grip was always surprising. Emma shifted slightly in the seat to relieve the pressure on a particularly tender spot and then reached out with her mind to the hotel at which she had dropped Marie-Ange. The redhead had obviously completed whatever tasks she'd needed to leave the hotel for, because Emma was able to identify her distinctive mind quickly.

#I'll be at the hotel in twenty minutes# Emma dropped the thought neatly past Marie-Ange's barely rudimentary shields. #Dress for travelling on foot.#

Marie-Ange had been going about her regular traveling habit of picking up several magazines and cheap paperback novels for Doug in the hotel's gift shop, so it was only a matter of paying for the books and then going back to her room to change.

By the time Emma appeared in the lobby, Marie-Ange was in comfortable, warm clothes and a pair of boots with her coat and scarf draped over her arm, ready to leave. "I think..." she said, after greeting Emma. "That Natasha Romanova likes to cause trouble."

"Considering who her friends are, I believe that goes without saying," replied Emma. Anyone who could call on Betsy had to be exceptionally good at causing trouble. "What have you found?"

Marie-Ange didn't answer until they had left the hotel lobby. No sense in being accidentally overhead - even with Emma there and the added protection of having a telepath who could spot if anyone was eavesdropping, it was better to keep good habits. "There have been reports of 'random shootings' and 'gang violence' that the police thought were very suspicious but were told not to investigate further." The club's bouncers, as Mark's friend had said were off-duty policemen, and quite happy to complain about the red tape and 'bullshit', and the chance to supplement their incomes. "I think whoever is after Natasha has someone keeping the police away from her."

Emma's hand settled on the car's door-handle but she didn't open it and her voice was pitched low. "They seem to have a general idea of where she is," she said. "I trawled through both Dmitri and Tatiana when they were - particularly distracted. Dmitri's been told to get out of Bucharest in the next day or so by a contact who took particular pains to remain anonymous. The glove's not on the market yet, not openly, but he's to keep an eye out on news reports on Ferentari. Apparently something will happen there that will demonstrate the power of a new weapon that will shortly be on the market at a considerable price. I don't suppose you happen to have taken note if that's the district where these mysterious, not to be investigated shootings are taking place?"

Instead of immediately answering out loud, Marie-Ange nodded, and concentrated on her mental map of the city, focusing on the areas that her contacts had said the shootings had taken place. "I can draw it out on a real map to double check, but I think it is the same place. The gang violence is not entirely out of place, but for that district, it is usually much less lethal."

"We'll drop the car off at the edges," said Emma. "If we follow the trail of the shootings, I can scout out the minds of the people living there; we may be able to track Natasha that way. Thankfully, Dmitri speaks excellent Romanian, otherwise we would have had to do that whole irritating talking to the locals thing. Considering the assassins don't seem to have found her yet, it would seem that it's not a particularly helpful way of going about the task." She opened the car door and gracefully gestured for Marie-Ange to precede her.

********

Marie-Ange refused to acknowledge the scant number of people that they passed. She wasn't entirely sure they were aware of her, they seemed not to be, and it seemed somehow rude to ask Emma if that was her doing, or a side-effect of the district's decay. She paused only briefly to check street names, where signs were available and still legible, and the only again to point out a warehouse. "The first shooting was there, at the loading dock. And I have to wonder if someone saw Natasha that she did not want them to? Because shooting someone at a warehouse loading dock is so very cliche, no?"

"Indeed," murmured Emma. She sent her mind out, aware that she could use the totality of her psychic powers. It seemed strange to her that she need waste no energy on distorting anyone's image of her and Marie-Ange, but whatever had gone down here in the last day or two had taught the locals not to look at strange foreign women and not to notice anything that may happen to them. Emma's mind quested outwards, tasting fear, tasting ennui, tasting pain and suffering until it found what she needed. A witness.

"Romanova was here," she said quietly. "And shot - a man. She was seen. A boy. Saw a woman with a distorted shape. A hand that was not right. She shot a man that was pursuing her. I do believe you've found her trail." Emma's tone was almost approving.

"Yes, but from here, where did she go?" Marie-Ange asked, voicing an obvious question. "She could not have gone far, not on foot, not with that glove attached to her." And they had limited time to find Natasha and get the glove off her, or to decide to get out of the city as fast as possible to avoid being blown up as well. "Vazhin said that Natasha reported back to him, she must be somewhere she could have secured. She cannot be moving around, someone would have noticed by now."

"But she had to get there," said Emma. "Against, it appears, considerable opposition. The police reports should have approximate times of incidents; find me the next shooting in the chronology and I'll find you a witness. They may not be talking about what they've seen," and Emma's mind roved out briefly, touched and savoured the thoughts around her, "but they can't stop thinking about it."

Following the timeline of police reports and rumors led them past blocks of abandoned buildings, obviously relics of cold-war underfunding, the concrete crumbling enough in places to leave gaps, the chain-link fencing around the buildings rusted and useless. Anyone could have gotten inside the buildings if they had wanted.

Marie-Ange stopped at the front entrance of what had once been a cannery. The doors and windows were boarded over, and the outside walls were covered in layers of peeling grey paint and graffiti. "Two here, the last two deaths. They were told to file them as drug-related shootings. It is ironic, my contacts said that if whoever was trying to cover this up had not called it drug-related, they might not have even thought twice about it. This area is too derelict even for that."

"Let us hope she's nearby," replied Emma. "Living in the Soviet splendour she so adored." Emma's chill blandness underscored the irony of Romanova's situation. Emma sent her mind out again, letting her power drift quietly through the remains of the derelict industrial zone, searching for anyone who was or had seen Romanova. It was a small child that gave Emma the clue she needed; girl, she thought, though its thoughts were insufficiently formed for her to be certain. Touching its memories, following them back, Emma forced the child to draw out the memory of the strange lady silhouetted against the open door, her hand deformed like Uncle Vanya's after the accident when he had broken his wrist, holding the ball the child had been chasing. The lady shouting something, shooting at the ball, a gun pointing, away away, don't come back, don't tell and then running through the complex, looking back at the building, the shape of it.

Emma almost started at the child's memory of the building, matching it with her own of a building they had passed, no more than two hundred metres away from where they stood. She sent her mind out again, sharpening her focus, a needle-sharp probe into the dark interior of the apparently abandoned building.

"There," breathed Emma. A mind, hunkered down, small and dark behind heavy shields, hiding itself in the dark.

~Emma, this is David.~ Unexpectedly, Maverick's telepathic 'voice' was unaccented and almost cheerful in tone, a sharp contrast to the German's spoken words. ~Morgan and I believe we've identified the mercs that are after Romanova. Our timetable is suddenly much shorter than we anticipated. We'll meet you at the safehouse.~

#Bring a plan# replied Emma. #Because we've found her.#