The job comes to you from a regular contact, 'Harker'. You've never met Hopkins personally - they communicate solely through encrypted emails, voice scrambled telephone calls and dead drops - but they've sent you a number of jobs previously and while they have never been the greatest payers the money arrives on time and the job is what is says it is.

This time it's an extraction. Olivia Liu is an investigative reporter for one of the United Kingdom's more reputable papers. She's been looking into a story about corporate corruption and managed to stir up a hornet's nest - someone is not happy with her, someone powerful. Now there's a team out to silence Ms Liu on a permanent basis and Harker is keen for that not to happen.

Olivia has fled to Marrakesh, Morocco but Hopkins is pretty sure she's been tracked - Olivia's a journalist and not experienced in making herself disappear without professional assistance. Therefore you're tasked with finding Olivia Liu, protecting her and getting her out of Marrakesh. If Olivia can be successfully extracted Hopkins has a fake identity and safe house waiting where she can lay low until it can be sure she's safe.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:53, Thu 19 Aug 2021.

Felix settled in behind his desk at their non-descript offices.  One day, maybe, he would retire from all this and settle into a descript office.  That could be decorated with personal touches.  Name plaques on the doors.  Real names.

Ah well.

Not yet.

Work to do.

He brought the computer online.  While it ran its diagnostics and security software, he began going through the file "Hopkins" had provided.  It wasn't a long file.  He'd need to work on that before the others arrived.  When the computer was ready, he'd start with Olivia Liu's financials.  Not being experienced and without more circumspect resources, she might be using her own funds and credit cards.  Felix rather hoped it would not be that easy.  If it was, it would be that easy for her enemies...

Starting with Accounting...  The moving into travel papers and such documents with Bureaucracy?

Not quite a block away from the nondescript offices, Sidney sat down at a table in a little coffee shop (creatively named "Das Café"), opened her laptop, and ordered herself a cup of coffee as she prepared to do her part to prepare for the extraction. Dressed in wrinkled khakis and a plain polo shirt, she could be any generic IT professional on her lunch break. She counted on that generic look to hide her activities from scrutiny as she typed the commands to reach out through a dizzying array of proxies and anonymizing VPNs toward Marrakesh, seeking security cameras and other surveillance tools, anything she might be able to use to find and follow Olivia Liu. The earlier she could put digital eyes on the target, the less likely the team was to lose her before they even got to Marrakesh to extract her.

While she worked at gaining access to whatever surveillance mechanisms may be available in Marrakesh, Sidney's coffee arrived. Surreptitiously, she added a splash of cheap liquor from a flask she produced from one of her pockets, then made the flask disappear again before offering a quick salute (in absentia) to Hopkins, their ever-mysterious employer. As always, she'd put out the usual half-hearted feelers and inquiries with the usual selection of darknet message boards and hacker groups, and as always, she'd come up empty-handed. Hopkins remained an enigma, and as long as the checks cleared, Sidney wasn't willing to push the issue much further.

OOC: Trying to set up the groundwork to justify using Electronic Surveillance to track Olivia. Let me know if I need to roll Digital Intrusion for that. Sid's not trying to make any real noise yet, so no poking around at secure government surveillance systems, strictly civilian security cameras with digital access, misinstalled and unsecured police equipment, and the like.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:41, Wed 17 June 2020.