Congress of Behram: Needles in Haystacks
Apr. 5th, 2009 11:55 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsLaurie and Doug combine their powers to ferret out one of the bad guys.
At first glance, the hallways of the conference looked like any other--the same drab walls, the same press of people wandering and loitering, the same tote bags and laptop cases and notebooks that conferred Academic Interest. Some people were hurrying through the crowd, trying to make it to their next panel on time, some were meandering through, noses stuck in a conference schedule, and others were standing in clusters talking. It was only once one started to pay attention to the anonymous faces that it became apparent that this was a conference on mutant issues, and while some were more obvious than others, the mutants had come out in force.
Laurie moved through this crowd with an air of confidence, entirely feigned on her part, admittedly. She was nervous, it was only the fact that she knew Doug was nearby that allowed her to relax even slightly.
"Hi." Laurie said, stopping by a group of people chatting quietly. "Didn't I see you guys in that 'Mutation and Business' seminar?"
She hadn't, obviously, but it was an easy conversational starter, and it gave her a reason to stop beside the particular man Doug had wanted her to test. It was the work of moments to release the constant hold on her power that she had learnt to maintain, allowing her own nervousness and tension to spread outward from her body. At this level it shouldn't even show on her skin, which was good considering giving herself away would be bad.
The first and second people Laurie stopped to chat with reacted to the touch of Laurie's power with what seemed like normal nervousness. He shook his head minutely at her, and they continued on through the crowd. The third one, though, radiated a difference that Doug couldn't have possibly described in words, except to say that it was there. A negligent flip of his hand pointed the man out to Jake Gavin, wherever he was in the crowd nearby.
"Not our guy," Jake said quietly from where he loitered against one wall, poking at the buttons of a cell phone. "That one works for the government of Malta, of all places. I doubt they've loaned him out. Try again?" he requested as Laurie moved down the hall past him.
Laurie tucked her hands into her pockets, stopping to take a look at a coffee stand before shaking her head at the inquisitive barista and moving on. She really, really wanted this entire thing over with. She was already imagining the amount of trouble she'd get in if anyone even suspected she was deliberately influencing people here.
"Hi, um, would you be able to tell me the time please?" she asked a woman who appeared in somewhat of a hurry. "I really don't want to miss the seminar on policing methods, but I forgot my watch."
This was maddeningly imprecise. People could be nervous and secretive for any number of reasons, especially in a politically charged environment like this. Still, the combination of Laurie's power, Doug's reading of body language, and Jake's knowledge helped to slowly trim the crowd. He indicated another likely candidate with a flick of his eyes. Jake nodded.
A man in a trenchcoat bumped into him slightly in the lineup, and walked away with his coffee. As he passed Jake, there was the faintest whisper of movement against his jacket, and the man was gone with nothing more than a faint memory of his passing. LeBeau turned as he left the area, preparing for his own work.
Inside Jake's jacket pocket was an electronic lock keycard, for the room of the man Doug had indicated.
Jake searches the room and realizes he's just the man for the job.
Despite the Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the doorknob, Room 847 was immaculate, Jake noted as he let himself in. If it weren't for the closed suitcase in the corner and the laptop on the desk, he would've thought the room unoccupied. He took a moment to glance around, making a mental note of exactly where everything was, then crossed over to the laptop and opened it.
And smiled. The laptop had a fingerprint scanner for security. Even better, it was a capacitance scanner, and an expensive one, to boot. Rather than reading an image of the finger like an optical scanner, capacitance scanners worked from an image generated by an electrical current between microscopic conductor plates--in short, a completed circuit was read as a fingerprint ridge, and an uncompleted one as a valley between the ridges. The better ones, like this one, also checked for warmth and a pulse so that they couldn't be fooled by molds or dismembered fingers.
Shapeshifters, however, were another matter entirely. Especially ones with control on a cellular level.
Jake left the computer booting up and searched the room quickly, finding what he was looking for on the mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom: a nice, smudge-free fingerprint. Carefully, he lined up a smoothed index finger over the print, closing his eyes as he felt the oils of the print against his skin. Morgan had described his power as a switchboard, but it was more like a computer--things could run along just fine in the background on their own, but when he needed something he could call it forward and change things as necessary. Some things were harder than others; a simple fingerprint was easy enough to trace, if he focused on it.
There. He opened his eyes, examined his newly-printed finger. Perfect. He returned to the laptop and placed his finger on the scanner, waiting patiently while it logged him in.
After a few minutes of poking around, Jake realized that his luck wasn't going to hold. Either the target wasn't one of their assassins, or he was very dedicated to his cover story--the computer was full of shipping information, including records of transactions and clients. The records, like the state of the hotel room, reflected a man who preferred everything to be in meticulous order, however, which was helpful. Jake opened a search box and typed in the word SIROCCO.
The computer hummed along for an agonizing minute, during which Jake took the opportunity to search the room. He came up with nothing of interest--a few suits in the closet, a box of bullets in the suitcase, a book of Buddhist scripture tucked in a drawer underneath the Gideons' Bible. He flipped through the pages of the latter two but came up with nothing.
The computer, on the other hand, had returned a result. The file was located in a folder titled 'Invoices' and appeared to be a bill for a shipment. The invoice was curiously vague, noting only that a container had been delivered to Erfurt on Friday for an A. Hassan. Jake frowned; it was suspiciously lacking in more than the basic information. He searched for Hassan and came up with another file, this one in the 'Clients' folder.
Jackpot. The file contained a name, an address in Syria, some other information that confirmed that this was a likely target...and a grainy picture of a man that Jake had seen in the hotel bar last night. Jake smiled as he plugged a jump drive into the USB port and began transferring over directories that might be of interest.
Ten minutes later he was back in the hallway, the USB drive tucked away safely in his pocket. He dropped the stolen keycard in a trashcan before he stepped onto the elevator.
At first glance, the hallways of the conference looked like any other--the same drab walls, the same press of people wandering and loitering, the same tote bags and laptop cases and notebooks that conferred Academic Interest. Some people were hurrying through the crowd, trying to make it to their next panel on time, some were meandering through, noses stuck in a conference schedule, and others were standing in clusters talking. It was only once one started to pay attention to the anonymous faces that it became apparent that this was a conference on mutant issues, and while some were more obvious than others, the mutants had come out in force.
Laurie moved through this crowd with an air of confidence, entirely feigned on her part, admittedly. She was nervous, it was only the fact that she knew Doug was nearby that allowed her to relax even slightly.
"Hi." Laurie said, stopping by a group of people chatting quietly. "Didn't I see you guys in that 'Mutation and Business' seminar?"
She hadn't, obviously, but it was an easy conversational starter, and it gave her a reason to stop beside the particular man Doug had wanted her to test. It was the work of moments to release the constant hold on her power that she had learnt to maintain, allowing her own nervousness and tension to spread outward from her body. At this level it shouldn't even show on her skin, which was good considering giving herself away would be bad.
The first and second people Laurie stopped to chat with reacted to the touch of Laurie's power with what seemed like normal nervousness. He shook his head minutely at her, and they continued on through the crowd. The third one, though, radiated a difference that Doug couldn't have possibly described in words, except to say that it was there. A negligent flip of his hand pointed the man out to Jake Gavin, wherever he was in the crowd nearby.
"Not our guy," Jake said quietly from where he loitered against one wall, poking at the buttons of a cell phone. "That one works for the government of Malta, of all places. I doubt they've loaned him out. Try again?" he requested as Laurie moved down the hall past him.
Laurie tucked her hands into her pockets, stopping to take a look at a coffee stand before shaking her head at the inquisitive barista and moving on. She really, really wanted this entire thing over with. She was already imagining the amount of trouble she'd get in if anyone even suspected she was deliberately influencing people here.
"Hi, um, would you be able to tell me the time please?" she asked a woman who appeared in somewhat of a hurry. "I really don't want to miss the seminar on policing methods, but I forgot my watch."
This was maddeningly imprecise. People could be nervous and secretive for any number of reasons, especially in a politically charged environment like this. Still, the combination of Laurie's power, Doug's reading of body language, and Jake's knowledge helped to slowly trim the crowd. He indicated another likely candidate with a flick of his eyes. Jake nodded.
A man in a trenchcoat bumped into him slightly in the lineup, and walked away with his coffee. As he passed Jake, there was the faintest whisper of movement against his jacket, and the man was gone with nothing more than a faint memory of his passing. LeBeau turned as he left the area, preparing for his own work.
Inside Jake's jacket pocket was an electronic lock keycard, for the room of the man Doug had indicated.
Jake searches the room and realizes he's just the man for the job.
Despite the Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the doorknob, Room 847 was immaculate, Jake noted as he let himself in. If it weren't for the closed suitcase in the corner and the laptop on the desk, he would've thought the room unoccupied. He took a moment to glance around, making a mental note of exactly where everything was, then crossed over to the laptop and opened it.
And smiled. The laptop had a fingerprint scanner for security. Even better, it was a capacitance scanner, and an expensive one, to boot. Rather than reading an image of the finger like an optical scanner, capacitance scanners worked from an image generated by an electrical current between microscopic conductor plates--in short, a completed circuit was read as a fingerprint ridge, and an uncompleted one as a valley between the ridges. The better ones, like this one, also checked for warmth and a pulse so that they couldn't be fooled by molds or dismembered fingers.
Shapeshifters, however, were another matter entirely. Especially ones with control on a cellular level.
Jake left the computer booting up and searched the room quickly, finding what he was looking for on the mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom: a nice, smudge-free fingerprint. Carefully, he lined up a smoothed index finger over the print, closing his eyes as he felt the oils of the print against his skin. Morgan had described his power as a switchboard, but it was more like a computer--things could run along just fine in the background on their own, but when he needed something he could call it forward and change things as necessary. Some things were harder than others; a simple fingerprint was easy enough to trace, if he focused on it.
There. He opened his eyes, examined his newly-printed finger. Perfect. He returned to the laptop and placed his finger on the scanner, waiting patiently while it logged him in.
After a few minutes of poking around, Jake realized that his luck wasn't going to hold. Either the target wasn't one of their assassins, or he was very dedicated to his cover story--the computer was full of shipping information, including records of transactions and clients. The records, like the state of the hotel room, reflected a man who preferred everything to be in meticulous order, however, which was helpful. Jake opened a search box and typed in the word SIROCCO.
The computer hummed along for an agonizing minute, during which Jake took the opportunity to search the room. He came up with nothing of interest--a few suits in the closet, a box of bullets in the suitcase, a book of Buddhist scripture tucked in a drawer underneath the Gideons' Bible. He flipped through the pages of the latter two but came up with nothing.
The computer, on the other hand, had returned a result. The file was located in a folder titled 'Invoices' and appeared to be a bill for a shipment. The invoice was curiously vague, noting only that a container had been delivered to Erfurt on Friday for an A. Hassan. Jake frowned; it was suspiciously lacking in more than the basic information. He searched for Hassan and came up with another file, this one in the 'Clients' folder.
Jackpot. The file contained a name, an address in Syria, some other information that confirmed that this was a likely target...and a grainy picture of a man that Jake had seen in the hotel bar last night. Jake smiled as he plugged a jump drive into the USB port and began transferring over directories that might be of interest.
Ten minutes later he was back in the hallway, the USB drive tucked away safely in his pocket. He dropped the stolen keycard in a trashcan before he stepped onto the elevator.
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