xp_logs | Operation: зимний солдат

X-Force goes digging into Aleksandr Dmitrovich Lukin, General Karpov's protege in Directorate X. Emma and Sarah go to the offices of the Kronas Corporation for a meeting with the man himself.

The offices of the Kronas Corporation were near the top of Tower 2000, the first completed structure of the Moscow International Business Center. The affluence of the company was clear in the location and size of the offices. The logo of the company, the letter K circumscribed by a red circle that was the largest portion of a stylized fireball, was blazoned floor to ceiling on the metallic wall behind the reception desk at the entrance. Several young, sharply dressed secretaries, both male and female, manned the desk area, and the low buzz of conversation in an office hard at work filled the area.

"Look carefully, Sarah," said Emma, her voice low. "A Russian business this successful is either paying an awful lots of bribes or has about a year to go before its plutocrat gets tucked into jail on a tax evasion charge. There's a number of very good reasons Frost Enterprises doesn't have offices in Moscow and at least half of them relate to not letting some grand-nephew of the President get his sticky little fingers on it after I get arrested."

"I grow extra bones, not eyes," Sarah muttered, yet took Emma's advice and kept her attention on the office around them. Several people took notice as they approached the reception desk, and Sarah wondered if they were really employees, or just undercover security.

At least one of the more athletic-looking young men was likely both, but regardless, once their bona fides were established, Emma and Sarah were treated with professional courtesy and quickly escorted to a small conference room, where a middle-aged man in a well-tailored suit sat. He stood as the ladies entered, and smiled invitingly, though the expression never quite reached his eyes. "Emma Frost. How good to finally meet you. I would call you Emma Winstonevna, but patronymics sound so awkward when names do not translate well to Russian, no? Besides, Grace is such a fitting second name for a woman of your beauty and poise." He indicated chairs with a sweep of his arm. "Come, please, sit. May I offer you something to drink? Water? Chai? I even keep vodka on hand, if you would prefer."

Emma smiled, her wintry charm matching Lukin's own. "Thank you, but no, Mr Lukin. I prefer to keep the pleasures of fine Russian vodka separate from business." She sat down gracefully on the chair indicated, her posture almost turning it into a throne. "Perhaps some Russian Caravan tea, if you have some available?" She reached out carefully with her mind, a delicate feather-net of drifting power that tasted the air in Lukin's office for other telepaths. Only when she was sure that Lukin didn't have a telepathic guard dog secreted nearby did Emma narrow her focus to the mind in front of her. It did not surprise her that she met the standard heavy and complex shields typical of a mind trained by the Soviets. Even as she and Lukin continued their inconsequential chit-chat while waiting for the tea, Emma tapped her power gently against the locks and blind alleys that enveloped Lukin's mind.

#He's well-shielded,# Emma sent to Sarah. #Non-psi but difficult to get through without making an annoyingly obvious fuss. I'll keep working on him. Have you seen anything that would suit the data tap?#

Sarah looked around the conference room with a vaguely bored expression. #There's a desktop out on the main floor with USB ports in the front. The desk looked pretty bare, so I'm hoping that somebody just got fired and the space is vacant. At least long enough for the data link to do its thing.#

#Then best we make this meeting short,# replied Emma. #I'll see if I can get anywhere through the shields, but I suspect the data tap might provide us the information we need in a far more discreet fashion than leaving Mr Lukin bleeding from his ears.# It wouldn't come to that if Emma had more time, but the scheduled meeting with Lukin was far too short to let her weave through all his defences without trace.

A fuctionary had brought the tea Emma had requested, and Lukin made a point of having a cup as well. Lukin folded his hands and gave a brief precis on the Kronas Corporation and its subsidiary businesses, as though Emma hadn't done her research very thoroughly. That was how the game was played at their level, though. "The name comes from the town in which I grew up," he replied to a casual question. "It saw some of the fiercest fighting around the siege of Stalingrad - pardon, Volgograd. Old habits die hard," he said deprecatingly, though it was clear he would have preferred the old name. "The town itself no longer exists, as there were too few survivors, and so much devastation. When I created the company, it seemed a way to honor my home."

He went on to describe the work Kronas did - primarily construction, but moving into the electronics business - in vague terms. His ebullience about a potential partnership with Frost Enterprises was similarly vague, and he seemed to think calculatingly about each statement from Emma, measuring his responses to hers.

Emma finished the very last of the tea and placed her cup politely but quite pointedly on the table. "I think, perhaps, the information I got from my staff members may have been a little premature. The work you're doing in electronics sounds like it has potential, but it is, at this moment, potential. Frost Enterprises tends to work with companies that have carved out their niche and need a larger partner to drive them into more commercially viable spaces." She smiled at Lukin, a carefully calibrated and flattering smile to temper the sharp edges of her words. "I am interested in developing partnerships with Russian businesses, of course. Perhaps I can provide some people to talk to your people and when your products are a little more market-refined, we can talk again?"

Lukin's expression was carefully contained, but he nodded and gave a polite smile. "I look forward to it," he said, reaching across for a firm handshake. "If you will excuse me, I have another appointment I must prepare for." The secretary who had escorted Emma and Sarah in appeared outside the room to lead them back out.

"It was a pleasure, Mr Lukin," said Emma. Their handshake was brisk and firm, entirely businesslike but Emma took the time it gave her to make a few tweaks in Lukin's shields, small strokes of the equivalent of telepathic acid to eat away at carefully selected sections of them. If she needed to deal with the man again, it should be much easier to break through into his mind.

The pleasantries concluded, Emma followed the secretary out of the door, Sarah following closely behind. They made their way through to the main floor again and Emma felt Sarah's interest spike as they passed the desk she had noticed previously. With a mental apology to Christian Louboutin, Emma very deliberately dug the heel of her right stiletto into the deep carpet and, with a twisting motion, snapped it off at the top. With a graceful flurry of limbs, she stumbled to a stop and looked down in feigned dismay at her broken shoe. The secretary she'd been following had stopped as well, alarmed at the thought that the visitor could be injured while under her supervision. Emma reassured the woman that she was okay and smiled disarmingly. "My driver," she said. "He's waiting for me in the parking basement. I have more shoes in the car. Could someone go and get another pair from him and bring them up to me?"

The woman nodded and flapped and flustered for a moment and then decided that she would go herself if Ms Frost would just be willing to wait, she could organise a room... Emma cut the flow of panicked words off with a quick gesture and a smile. "I'm happy to wait here," she said. "I imagine you won't be long." It wasn't quite an order, but the secretary fled as soon as she had escorted Emma to the nearest chair, forgetting Sarah even existed in her haste.

#Well,# send Emma to Sarah, #I suspect this is your chance.#

Sarah didn't need to be asked twice. Pulling her hands from her pockets (with the USB drive hidden in her right hand), she dropped to the floor, to dig in her shoulder bag, muttering "I know that cell phone's in here somewhere.... we'll have to call the office and tell them we're running late." She plugged the USB drive into the computer port with her left hand, all the while seemingly rummaging in her bag for a misplaced phone with her right.

#Done.#

While Emma and Sarah cover the shiny corporate tower, Amanda and Wanda go down into the underbelly of Moscow to ask some more direct questions of more direct people.

The driving bass of the ubiquitous Euro-techno beat was amplified enough that Amanda and Wanda could feel it in their bellies. The entire club was lit by lurid red bulbs, leaving even the brightest areas of the dance floor oddly shadowed.

Under the lights of the club, Wanda looked oddly amused as she side-stepped a gentleman who looked bound and determined to become her newest friend. She'd spent a good chunk of her youth in horrid little holes such as this and, from the looks of it, nothing seemed to change. Her tastes in clubs, drinks and company had matured with her but she couldn't help but feel slightly nostalgic as she and Amanda pushed their way around the dance floor. She could easily imagine her younger self out on the floor, being the center of attention, and loving every minute of it. Looking around, she was suddenly confused as how she'd managed to never contract any sort of disease. It must have been a miracle. Wanda glanced over her shoulder at Amanda and tilted her head in the direction they were headed in. They were heading towards the right people.

For her part, Amanda was in her element, and dressed for the part, also. She'd gone with the leather pants instead of the mini - her leg was still healing and the scar was obviously bullet-related - but her top was skimpy enough to make up for the lack of leg showing. She hung onto Wanda's arm, playing up the role of plaything to Wanda's sugar-momma. "The group over in the corner," she suggested, reaching up on tip-toe to be able to talk directly into Wanda's ear. "Russian mafiya, by the looks."

"Russian mafiya that is currently appreciating the view," Wanda said, grinning slightly as she maneuvered Amanda around yet another crush of drunken dancers. The booth they were heading towards had two very obvious guards standing on either side of the seats but when Wanda turned her smile on the man in the center of the table, he waved them further towards the table. "Mind if my friend and I join you?" she asked in Russian, giving Amanda's arm a slight squeeze.

The man waved to his guards to indicate the women were welcome to come and sit at his table. He'd been expecting someone like them, but he had to admit that whoever had sent the pair of women had sent two who were worth the bother, as they were both extremely easy on the eyes. "Vodka?" he offered, indicating a bottle of very expensive spirits and a group of crystal shot glasses next to it.

"Why, thank you!" Amanda beamed, every inch of her the happy clueless party girl. Nothing like disarming your target from the start.

Smiling, Wanda accepted the shot glass as she slipped into the bench on one side with Amanda on his other. It might be a bit dangerous to crowd him but, between their powers and training, they'd hurt him long before his guards could figure out what was going on. "You," she said, tapping the side of the glass with a long finger, "have the look of a very important man, yes?"

He knew they were intentionally flattering him, but that did not make it any less flattering. They were quite attractive, especially the blonde. "Important, perhaps. Very important? Perhaps not. But I do know things." Which was why they were in his club, after all.

"I bet you do," Amanda replied, giving him a naughty grin as she knocked back the shot and put the glass back on the table. "All sorts of things about all sorts of people."

"And what sorts of things do you wish to know about what sorts of people, koshechka?" he asked, matching her shot and grin.

Amanda raised her eyebrow at Wanda. "Should I ask him? Maybe it's too big for him," she suggested coquettishly. "Too big and scary."

Tilting her head, Wanda pretended to study the man sitting next to her for a moment - enough to be 'teasing' without making him angry. An angry Russian mobster was not someone they wanted to play with at the moment. "Mm, I think he just might be up to handling it," she responded, quirking an eyebrow at Amanda. "Why do we not try him out?"

Running her finger around the edge of her glass, Amanda appeared to consider the gangster, weighing him up. "All right, then," she said, leaning forward to lower her voice intimately, with the 'unexpected' side effect of her cleavage showing even more. "Lukin," she breathed. "We want to know about a man called Lukin."

"Him." The mobster grunted. "Not one you want to cross." He knocked back another shot with a grimace. "Oh, he's legitimate now, with his fancy office and corporate logo, but underneath..." He shook his head. "Still the same man. Anyone in his way...gets out of it. One way or another."

Ah, that was interesting. "So he went legitimate but left so many of you behind?" Wanda asked. "I bet that made him many enemies. What does this Lukin do these days now that he is out of the business?"

He shook his head again. "No, Lukin is not the sort you wish to be enemies with. As I said, those who get in his way are...dealt with. Dead, blackmailed, bribed, it does not matter how to him, only results." The man rolled his shot glass between his fingers. "These days, he wears a suit, runs a company. Construction, mostly. Good business for graft."

"It's not so easy to change your spots," Amanda remarked, toying with her shot glass. "Even if you have the suit and the company, it doesn't change the rep."

The man nodded. "Precisely. Oh, there are things that you can do to look good for the news reporters - Lukin seems to have made refurbishing hospitals his pet project. Sign one of those enormous checks, smile for the cameras..."

"Charity - for every good samaritan there seems to always be someone stealing his wallet," Wanda said, tossing back her vodka. She set it down gently on the table, thinking through the thoughts running through her mind. "A man like Lukin must get his start from somewhere. Was he an up and comer or was he someone's right hand man?" Names were powerful, even if someone connected to Lukin turned out to be dead already, there was information to be hand.

"In mafiya? He answered to no one, not even when he was a nobody. Before that?" Their contact shrugged. "All I know is that he was KGB. He was, eh, RIF'd, as they say - reduction in force. Around the same time as the Wall fell." He shook his head. "He may be a businessman now. But there will always be those who know what a man truly is. And Lukin - he will always be a shark, no matter how much he plays at being a regular fish."

Based on the information from the mafiya contact, Marie-Ange and Cammie go looking around hospitals being refurbished by the Kronas Corporation. And hit an unexpected snag.

The Andros Memorial Clinic in St. Petersburg was a bizarre blend of old and new, clearly in the progress of being refurbished and converted into a more modern facility. Scaffolding covered a fair portion of the building, and ubiquitous trailers were scattered around the grounds. Despite all that, there was a remarkably small number of people and equipment in the area, giving the hospital a somewhat spooky abandoned look.

If you knew the right people, you could get keys to anything, even to the electronic locks keeping the doors to the unused parts of the hospital closed off. Marie-Ange palmed the thick keycard once the lock clicked open, and slipped it into the inner pocket of her light jacket. She eased the doors open, and slipped in, and once Cammie was inside, eased them closed again. The abandoned hallway - with signs that said it had once been a obstetrics center - was unlit, and their flashlights made the tiled walls shine in an eerie fashion.

"And here I wanted to throw a chair through the window," Cammie muttered, actually keeping her flashlight on and pointed in front of them, despite the urge she had to open it up and start sucking on the battery. That could get interesting if it was still charged, "But no. No WWF moments for me today."

"There are endangered animals who throw chairs?" Marie-Ange asked. Cammie made no sense sometimes. She pulled out the folded paper with the layout of the building. "There is a sub-basement that contained the waste disposals. We should start there. Any equipment would not have been in a used area of the clinic. Can you detect toxins, or are you simply immune? Is the air going to start smelling delicious to you if we come across anything that would make me sick?"

"Yeah, the rare chair throwing black bear of Vermont. We totally only have them there. I saw them all the fucking time when I was a kid," she said, keeping the sarcasm off of her voice, for the lolz.

"And depends on how much of it there is. Trace amounts, I won't. If there's a lot of it, I'll know before we get there, because it will smell like tasty," Cammie said simply, which was true. "But, you know, I'm not a fucking bloodhound. I can't stick my nose to the floor and be all like 'bad shit, that way!'"

"Bugger." Swearing like Amanda made Marie-Ange feel better, just this one time. But there was nothing to be done about it - hopefully the decay of the building did not mean there was medical waste somewhere contaminating the air.

They made their way down the dim hallway and Marie-Ange unlocked another set of doors that led to a stairwell leading down. "Are you sure we cannot train you to be a bloodhound?" It was just that it would be so very useful. Point Cammie in a direction and use her like a Geiger counter for any number of toxins.

"Look, I'm somewhat aware of the fact you don't care much for me, but I'll spell this out for you very slowly, I. Am. Not. A. Bloodhound/Toxic Tracking Device/Coal Mine Canary/Interesting tool of choice," Cammie said dryly. "I hate to disappoint, I really do. My sensors detect no large, unattended, open source of toxic waste down there.

"Too bad," she mused, "Because I'm fucking thirsty and open buckets full of mystery needles are FUN to play with."

As they descended the stairs, Marie-Ange dug in her bag and handed Cammie a bottle of water, and then a plastic single-serving packet of that hot mustard from chinese restaurants. "I came prepared." She always came prepared. "And I do not hate you, I just think you are unstable and violent. The latter of which is ideal for our sort of job, the former of which is not. Even if I liked you, I would still have seen if we could train your powers to, as you say, be a Mine Canary." Everyone was an interesting tool of choice, they just did not know it yet.

"Yeah, well, no tweet-tweet-die here, kthnksbye," Cammie said, taking a few seconds to open the mustard and shake it into the water. It wasn't as good as drinking a bottle of the stuff but a lot less awkward and obvious than carrying around a bottle of mustard and she wouldn't care if she had to leave it behind, unlike one of her flasks.

Yeah, she was so unstable. That's why everyone that annoyed her was still very much alive.

"I thought it was tweet-tweet do not die?" Marie-Ange asked, wryly. "Wasting useful people on one instance of poisonous air is not at all efficient." She paused at the end of the stairs and dug out the paper with the layout again. "Sub-basement. Waste disposal and possibly secret government experiments." She dug a set of lock picking tools from her bag, and offered them to Cammie. "How is your lock picking?" She asked. Never too early to start, if she needed to learn it, and it would make a decent evaluation of her basic skills.

"For me, maybe. Not so much for you," Cammie said taking the picks, "Pretty good. Spend more time jimmy car doors than actual padlocks though, so this could go either way. It really depends on the lock." Locks were like people, some loved to be treated rough while others would clam right up if you didn't do things just right.

It was a decent lock, all things considered, Cammie thought as she knelt to start working on it. She was still preferred jimmying car doors to actual lock picking, but when you had to do it you had to do it. It took a few minutes of poking until there was a click and it opened, "Yes, I am that awesome."

"Awesome would be if you had done that in under thirty seconds." Marie-Ange commented. "Good enough for now though, you can practice later." She was not quite under thirty seconds for a lock that sturdy, but then she was also not declaring herself -awesome-. "And at the risk of further comments about how you are not a bloodhound or canary, is your blood acidic? Can it melt metal?" Once Cammie had pushed the door open, they went in, flashlights cutting the dark.

"No, put I can use it to cause extreme pain by bitting myself and spitting in the eyes of bitches," Cammie returned, "That's always fun." Four years ago she would have done that already. With no warning.

Behind the pair, a soft-footed shadow had been trailing them ever since they'd made the turn for the subbasement. It was almost too easy, as they were too busy chattering inanely to check six. Didn't anyone teach operational silence and awareness anymore? The figure slowly drew a Graz-Burya pistol from a holster, clearing it silently and smoothly and bringing it up to frame the redhead. It wasn't even sporting. But then, nothing in this line of work was.

A flash, grey and clear amber and red spots overlapped Marie-Ange's vision. If they hadn't been using dimmed flashlights, if there had been any light in the rooms at all, she would've dismissed it as a reflection, and the spike of pain in her right eye would have been a warning a second too late. It was instead just in time for Marie-Ange to hit the ground, taking Cammie with her. The bullet missed, she heard it and the ringing in her ears said it was close. Close enough that she'd have been dead without the warning.

"Jesus Fucking Christ!" Cammie swore as they hit the floor, the bullet whizzing over their heads, she looked over her shoulder trying to get a look at who was doing this and where they were because if nothing else, they were going to be eating a fist to the face soon. At least if she had anything to say about it.

She'd missed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd missed - whether it be with pistol, rifle, knife, grenade... She continued shooting methodically, but the two women managed to get behind a metal table, and her pistol clicked open on the end of the clip without hitting either of them. That click was followed by the distinct ping of the pin coming out of a grenade.

"Run!" Marie-Ange half dragged Cammie to her feet, and ran blindly. Four, maybe five seconds, at the absolute outside and they needed to be as far away as possible, and it was still going to hurt if the thing went off anywhere even remotely close to them.

One hundred feet. She could sprint that far in four seconds, easily. They lost a second getting to their feet, maybe they could get seventy-five. Marie-Ange didn't let go of Cammie's arm, and ran, letting instinct and a vague sort of knowledge about how buildings were made, the architectural classes finally, finally paying off for once.

The boom wasn't earth shattering, though the building seemed to shake with it. They went flying to the floor again, Cammie tasting blood in her mouth, likely from accidentally biting her lip. Shit, she thought swallowing as much as she could and hoping the cut was minor. Someone was honestly trying to kill them. She supposed she really shouldn't be surprised. She gave Marie-Ange a look that plainly said 'Now What'?

After the blast cleared, the thud of boots on the concrete floor could be heard pursuing them. A brief glimpse through a doorway revealed their pursuer - a woman, in Russian-style fatigues and a blonde short military-style haircut. Her hands had thin gloves covering them. Her expression was cold, almost completely devoid of emotion, except the barest trace of frustration. She cleared the empty clip and slid a new one in with a practiced motion, trying to get a clear shot at the fleeing women as she chased after them.

Marie-Ange swore. Female, blonde, fatigues, they had most assuredly found one of Lukin's stashes where he'd hidden whatever equipment he'd "inherited" from Karpov, including the brainwashed assassin. "Run. Stay behind me, leave a bloodtrail." She whispered, and hoped Cammie would understand and that it would slow the blonde woman down. There was a emergency exit on the building plans, with luck it would be open and would not be a dead end.

"What?! Fine, what ever," Cammie swore to herself. It saved her fumbling in her pockets for superglue for the wound anyway. She stayed a couple of steps behind the French tart and spat on the floor. It wasn't enough to really stop anyone so she bit her cheeks again, this time on purpose. The second spit on the floor had quite a bit more blood in it.

"Poisoning for fun and profit," she muttered.

The first whiff of the blood spatter sent the Winter Soldier reaching for a compact gas mask in one of the pockets of her fatigues. She wasn't sure what it was. What the hell was running through the veins of the green-haired woman? She skirted the spatters as best she could. It slowed her up, but the blood also provided her a very convenient way to track their trail.

The trail led up a back set of stairs to an emergency exit door. The Soldier ripped her gas mask off, looking to see which way the women had gone. Finally, she spotted them, about fifty meters away and running for their vehicle. She was fast, but she couldn't outrun a car. She spotted a tiny compact Fiat, likely the supervisor's, parked next to the trailer right by the exit. She flexed the fingers of one hand, curled them around the bumper...and with a grunt sent it flying and spinning towards Marie-Ange and Cammie.

Marie-Ange had almost hoped that the woman - soldier - following them would be stopped by Cammie's blood, but she knew better - never count on luck, being 'lucky' got you killed. She ran, Cammie at her heels outside and it was only the grunt that gave her any kind of warning.

They must have both heard it because Cammie hit the ground right next to her, and they felt, rather than heard the car sail just over them and collide with the ground. Neither woman waited, they were back on their feet, and in the rental car without even a word of conversation

Cammie opened the door, slammed the key in and hit the gas without even taking a moment to buckle up, "Holy Fucking Shit!! Bitch threw a fucking car at our heads!"