xp_logs | Operation: A Roving Commission: After Hours Study

Sarah and Amanda do a little trepassing to isolate Bulat's likely shipments.

The harbour at Costanta opened up into the Black Sea, and by day was an impressive sight from the city. Up close, it was marred by ugly navel and industry docks, warehouses, and the other bones of a major shipping port. Half of Romania's exports left by sea, and most were funneled through the commercial marinas.

As Betsy had once explained, intelligence work wasn't just finding out where things were, but also looking at information to determine where things weren't; a sure sign that something hidden was happening where something open should have been. That was why they'd been sent to scout the docks area that they'd traced Bulat's accounts being connected to.

"Dock workers or whores?" Amanda asked, looking down onto the scene. She was referring to the potential covers they would need to use, and given women, especially young and attractive ones, were seldom seen in dock areas, the choices were limited.

Sarah shook her head. "We might look scrappy, but nobody's going to take a look at our hands and believe we're dock workers." A group of men stood loitering in the doorway of one of the warehouses, waiting on a truck shipment. Sarah stuffed her bony hands in her pockets. "Not that plan on letting any of them get close enough to see my hands."

Amanda mock-sighed. "Prostitute again. I swear, 'm being typecast here." Although her top did convert to 'slutty' pretty easily, by virtue of undoing some vital buttons. "I distract while you get in the back? I can 'port in once you're clear."

"I owe you beer later. Give me five minutes to pick the lock." Sarah hung back then, sliding behind a couple of crates stamped in languages she didn't understand. She would give Amanda a minute to get their attention, and slide back in between the crates and the warehouse to the back entrance while they were occupied. Hopefully, the dock workers would still be arguing about who got to take Amanda home while the girls left with all the info they needed to take these assholes down.

Flicking buttons open with a sigh, Amanda strolled towards the workers, hips swaying. "Hi there," she said in her best American accent, which had improved markedly since she'd been merging regularly with New York. She gestured with the unlit cigarette in her hand. "Anyone got a light?"

With the dock workers' attention diverted, Sarah slipped around to the back of the warehouse, and up the stairs to the port offices. Whoever was in charge had spared no expense on the deadbolt, but the wooden door frame was weak. Sarah considered just forcing her way through, before deciding that picking the lock quietly was going to buy her more time to look around.

Unlike the warehouses below, the offices were air-conditioned, each window fitted with old industrial window units to keep the offices pleasant for the people that mattered. Along the wall sat a row of filing cabinets, with the keys hanging in the locks. Somebody had really trusted that deadbolt.

There was a stirring in the air and Amanda abruptly rose up through the floor, rubbing her wrist irritably. "It sucks not being able to break their faces when they get grabby," she complained, mostly out of habit than any real injury. "Wow. Someone is really bad at security."

Sarah snorted, looking up from the open cabinet drawer. "That's why you were out there, and not me. I'd have broken somebody, and we would have never gotten out of here." She gestured at the line of cabinets. "I can't tell if these people are completely inept, or if they are really that scary around here that nobody in their right mind would try and break in. Either way, it's probably a better idea if we don't meet up with security."

"I'm with you on that one," came Amanda's reply. "I'll start this end and you start that end and we'll meet in the middle?" She punctuated her words by opening the first filing cabinet. "Shipping records. Joy. Boring but bloody informative."

"Just think, we could be fishing this information out of those guys downstairs." She flipped through the folders, pulling one out to take a closer look. "I bet they're screamers when you hit them."

"And then letting someone fish them out of the bay," Amanda added, almost wistfully - they'd been really grabby. She was probably going to have bruises on her arse for days. "Got anything?"

Sarah scanned the paperwork. "I have invoices for a trucking company that makes a stop here every Monday. The cargo coming in is well-documented, but right here is a record of something unspecified going back out."

"Any invoice numbers or similar?" Amanda asked, shuffling through her wad of shipping manifests. "I might be able to match it with a shipment and the destination."

"I have a range of them. They all start with '01876' and then each one has a different combination of letters and numbers after." She flipped back and forth between the first few pages. "The first one with unspecified cargo is '01876H024'."

One thing about being raised by an evil magic user and reading magical texts from a young age - Amanda was good at skimming through paperwork to find matches. "Hah! Got it. Left last week on the "Carpathia" heading for..." She squinted at the handwriting on the manifest. "Africa, I think." She looked up at Sarah. "Too bad neither of us has a photographic memory. Is there a copier around? We're going to need all of these."

"Wait." Sarah pulled a hastily folded piece of paper from the back of the folder, handing it over for Amanda to take a closer look. "This says there's another truck coming in tomorrow, is there a ship meeting it?" She grinned. "Any chance we can catch them in the act?"

"There is." Amanda mirrored Sarah's feral grin with one of her own. "Looks like we get to crash a party."