RolePlay onLine

Appointment in Samarra

Located in the heart of Paris, the Hôtel de Talleyrand faces La Place de la Concorde, very close by the Louvre museum. For many years this grand private residence has been one of the three buildings that house the American Embassy in Paris. It is currently under major renovation and closed to the public, but the underground complex that houses one of the CIA's largest data centers in Europe is still a busy place, generally accessed these days by an underground lobby that is part of the Metro station at Place de la Concorde or through a direct tunnel that connects to the administrative offices of the embassy at Avenue Gabriel three blocks away.

The underground complex is isolated and maintained at a steady 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The hum of thousands of solid-state disc drives provides a white noise background that mutes conversations beyond a few feet. The offices of Clandestine Operations within the European Union are four levels below the city street and identical to facilities in Virginia, Nebraska, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo. It is here that new agents assigned to the Paris branch of the Company are briefed upon arrival.

"Agent Kelly, welcome to Paris. Hope you haven't had time to unpack yet. You'll be leaving by train for Lisbon first thing in the morning."

Her Handler has introduced himself as Peter Haynes, a tall, heavily built black man in his mid-forties. He places a package of documents on the table between them in a bland tiny conference room of the type often called Huddle Rooms in today's corporate speak.

"There's a train ticket in there for the 8:30 am train from Gare du Nord to Lisbon, arriving in Spain at 10 am the following day. You'll be traveling under the name of Amanda Weber, posing as a courier. There's a locker key in the envelope for a locker at the train station. Open it thirty minutes before you board the train and carry the contents to your contact in Lisbon. He or she will meet you at the station in Lisbon and let you know who they are using the code phrase: "I miss pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving" Your countersign will be "With vanilla ice cream. The best."

"Note that while you are indeed carrying documents that need to be transported and passing yourself off as a courier, that is not your real assignment. We believe that we have a mole in the organization who has been leaking the identities and itineraries of our couriers to the other side, specifically the Russians. We fully expect yours will be leaked and there will be agents on the train trying to locate you and find out what you are carrying. The advantage we have with you is that no one knows what you look like. So even though the other side may have a general sense of who you are, they are going to have to work to try to identify you, and that will give you a chance to make them.

"Understand that the job is not to kill them, or even evade them. Your job is to catch them. We need to interrogate the unfriendlies so we can catch our mole. You can be certain that other couriers are being sent to other cities at the same time, and we are controlling who knows what about each of them to help us narrow down who the bad apple is on our end.

"Any questions?"