Chapter two [this
section could use a lot of work. Not only are there pretty major show-don’t-tell
violations, a lot of the tradecraft and military jargon sounds like I don’t
know what I’m talking about. Have actual spy or spy expert review chapter
later???]
It had been five years
ago. Moone, coming home late at night, had been contacted by a man identifying
himself as Smith. Entering his house, he had found Smith in his living room,
sitting in the dark. Being used to supernatural attacks coming without warning,
Moone [hadn’t thought much of it,] until he sensed the aura of the man, which
exuded from him as stench exudes from powerful cheese.
Moone would come to
realize, later on, that Smith was no man, that Smith’s true form was probably
unknowable; as for now, Moone took Smith to be of earth, if perhaps from the
elder days. The aura is what gave him pause, and allowed Smith enough time to
speak, and even make a deal. Deals themselves weren’t that uncommon in Moone’s
life either; throughout the years, he had answered a thousand riddles, signed a
thousand crossroad contracts in his own blood. Smith’s offer to Moone was
unusual, however, for two reasons [one and two.]
Moone came in contact
with creatures from every spectrum of the magical realms, and encountered a lot
of privileged information. If he thought any of it actionable, he was to pass
it on if at all able (occasionally he had to resort to roundabout ways, as
contractual obligations bound him magically to tight clauses. There was the
story of [research!], who was once bound from telling any living soul of the
nature of his curse, but this did not prohibit him from discussing it loudly
with a wall, which happened to have people on the other side of it.)
At the same time, Moone
was to do asset recruitment of his own-- usually not recruiting those who came
to attack him, although some of his most trusted agents had been [recruited]
from such a medium.
[something else in here]
Smith had given Moone a
choice, and to this day Moone wasn't sure if his contract with Smith counted as
a genuine danger to him, and thus capable of [avoiding it.] The missions that
Moone was sent on, and the agents that Moone was sent to recruit, Moone
suspected of genuinely serving the greater good; however, Moone knew enough of
people to know that those sending him out on these missions were flawed human
beings (for the most part) with agendas of their own [show, don't tell?]
As far as he knew, the
company Moone now worked for and had been working for for the past five years,
had no real name. Moone just referred to it in his head as Tetragrammaton. The
Unknowable, the Unspeakable Letters, the Alphabet Soup. Moone wasn't even sure
if it was an official branch of the CIA, though that seemed to be the
organization that Tetragrammaton most closely resembled.
It was a tight line that
Tetragrammaton walked: information was his job, gathering it receiving it and
disseminating it, but every secret that Moone knew he'd probably be able to
find a way to weaponize if the situation called for it. Possibly even turn
against his own agency, if the situation called for it.
It was what he and Lovecraft
had in common; perhaps she enabled his paranoias too much, but there was a
familiar point of reference between them, which the other members of his team
wouldn’t begin to understand.
Still, the willingness
to provide Moone with the very tools that he would need to escape his
[servitude toward Tetragrammaton] was the second reason Moone suspected Smith
to be an ally rather than a threat; the longer he stayed in his job, of course,
the more he came to realize that those two could very often be one and the
same.
[maybe an anecdote of
that in here, to SHOW better, and also to segue:]
As far as anyone knew,
the Cold War would be continuing indefinitely. But the [Eastern Bloc?] did
fall, not too many months ago, [maybe something else in here too,] and there
was even already talk about disbanding the CIA now that the threat seemed to be
over, now that the west had no true superpower standing against it. In the
supernatural world, however, it does not take a superpower to develop and use a
superweapon.
A few months ago, in January
immediately after the Soviet Union had dissolved, one of Moone’s assets had
received a coded message, over the internet, claiming that there was still a
conspiracy taking place holding the union together, not of a secular nature,
but of a supernatural one.
[give paragraph-long
explanation of Usenet as it stood in 1992- still only available to colleges,
still one of the biggest networks on the internet. Act informative, but act as
though this is present-day, high-tech technology being discussed.
[Bring up the in-joke
and explain its origins, “there is no cabal.”]
Over the next few months
more details were revealed, and independently corroborated:
The Jewish Pogroms had allowed
sectors of the Cabal to grow [establish that earlier, in the Usenet thing, also
sound less anti-Semitic], undetected, under Russia’s nose; now, wrangling power
for themselves, they sought to subjugate all local folklores under them,
disempowering the local myths and allowing their own to [have the power.]
Belief in folklore was a powerful force, and in many places of the world local
legends and boogiemen were dying out. The overthrow of a major secular state
was the perfect opportunity to fill in an officially atheist vacuum with [a
power structure of one’s own.]
Something had apparently
changed within the structure of the cabal, however, and now the message read
that their informant [needed to] defect. It was the old, unspoken assumption of
cold war espionage, now taking one final form: the west received their
intelligence only from defectors, while the east had agents in place, stationed
all over and even in the highest levels of government. Everything in tradecraft
needs to be taken cum salo granis, so
there would need to be a thorough debriefing of the agent to vet that they
weren’t replacing one kind of spy with another one, but the urgency of the
message was enough such that Moone had requested, and been given permission, to
lead an immediate [dust-up] team to extract the target.
The asset had given the
time and place where he was to be extracted, and provided a specific marker to
identify him by. The time was this morning. The place was here, at this
compound where the cabal had [holed up.] Specifically, the room that Gef and
Cloud were outside of right now.
Outside of, awaiting the
signal [to extract the package.]
MacBeth crouched into a
snowless sheltered area underneath a tree where a limb had fallen against it,
making a natural lean-to, and put his psychic bubble back up over each member
of the team, Moone covering him, the demon-possessed phylactery slipped into
his jacket pocket and his pistol out. They were far enough along in the mission
that guards wouldn’t pose a real threat during extraction [establish reason earlier],
and Moone suspected anyway that being exposed out here was the real danger, now
that their previous position had been made. [establish earlier that the bubble
also makes you invisible to cameras maybe, or else otherwise explain disabling
the cameras inside the compound or looping/tricking them somehow.]
Lovecraft was covering
Gef through another method entirely, a direct link between the two that didn’t
require MacBeth’s telepathy to operate [sending out psychic spikes to cover in
case of danger? Maybe that took the guard out last time.] She had taken backup
command when MacBeth’s psychic links had gone down, but now that the bubble was
back up, Moone regained control.
Alright, [Lovecraft.] They know we’re here. Let’s get this done
quickly. Extract the target, pull out; Gef, Lovecraft, Mushroom, you extract to
Charlie point while MacBeth and I go bravo, and [if nobody’s tailing us] we
regroup at alpha point in 0300 hours. Moone felt the others over the link give the affirmative, and gave
the signal.
Moone went back to
covering MacBeth, giving the area around them wide coverage. A few minutes
later, there was a series of muffled explosions from the direction of the
compound- Gef’s handiwork (paw-i-work?) having placed explosives around the
compound during his initial infiltration, not only to provide a distraction and
therefore cover during their escape, but also to deflect suspicion off of the fact
of the asset’s defection. The plan from the beginning was to disguise the whole
extraction operation as enemy sabotage; their agent wouldn’t have been able to
disappear without raising suspicion of his activities.
Moone and MacBeth
encountered no more guards or cabal agents, and could [extract themselves]
normally. They proceeded to their designated [fallback point] with caution, and
from there to the regroup point. [provide physical and sensory description.] The
other members of the team, women, mongoose, and asset, arrived [time period]
later.
[how is asset being
transported? Is he walking? Are they carrying him? Does he have a headbag on?
Is there anyone injured, and how badly?]
The asset turned out to
be a thin and wiry man; he would have been feeble-looking but for the fact that
he carried himself unshakingly, and the gait of a man with very strong core
muscles. His cheeks had lines parallel to the jaw, which ran up into deep bags
underneath his eyes. His dark hair was thick and wiry, curled relatively
tightly and matted to the top of his skull.
He was called the
Pontifex, which Moone understood to be meant not in its ecclesiastical sense
but in its literal one. Latin for maker of bridges, a medium between men and
the gods. Moone could sense his aura, and his proximity to MacBeth gave the
aura sense an unusual degree of nuance- there was something strange about it,
layered like an onion. Any aura could be bestowed upon another, for a limited
amount of time, and usually requiring tools or other magical assistance to
accomplish, but the power of this one, and the slick way it seemed to float
just off of the Pontifex’s body, made it clear to Moone that this was a man
used to bestowing his aura onto others. The aura had an intrinsic magical
ability, one that the Pontifex never seemed to use on himself. Moone got closer
to the man…
And could feel his own
aura grow slightly, subtly stronger as it intersected with the Pontifex’s. Was
he imagining it? He retreated back a few steps toward MacBeth, and stuck one
hand in MacBeth’s aura (and I must look
ridiculous, he thought to himself, though knowing full well that MacBeth would
also be able to hear him)—and reached out, sticking his other hand toward the
Pontifex’s aura. Sure enough, with MacBeth’s psychic aura enhancing Moone’s own
aura-detecting power, he could see in his third eye the aura of his
outstretched right hand brighten. Both bane and boon in that hand, specifically
grow stronger.
And the Pontifex looked
up at Moone like he was one of the most delicious steaks that he’d seen in his
life. Hm. Maybe I shouldn’t have done
that, thought Moone.
