Debrief
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jemhouston
- Posts: 3837
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Debrief
It's not all the Russians, too many in the UK want Chaos.
Re: Debrief
I'll be finishing up this story before the week is out.
I've been ghastly ill yet recovered, and so will be back writing ASAP.
I've been ghastly ill yet recovered, and so will be back writing ASAP.
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Drunknsubmrnr
- Posts: 333
- Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:35 am
Re: Debrief
Glad you’re feeling better.
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jemhouston
- Posts: 3837
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Debrief
Eighteen – The Truth
Three women met for lunch on Kilburn High Road many months after the general election. Their get together had been arranged for the previous week but cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances. They were together today, sitting down in a fancy Persian restaurant over in a private booth.
Sophie had turned up late, almost being responsible for cancelling the lunch for the second time. Her friends, her former colleagues, Harriet and Jasmine, were waiting when she showed up. Harriet gave her a smile while Jasmine pulled a face of mock surprise.
“Oh, my. You’re actually here!”
Starting to put down her bag and her brolly, Sophie was about to give Jasmine a sarcastic reply. The woman hugged her though, throwing Sophie all out of sorts.
“I’ve missed you,” Sophie assured her, “but will you let me go?”
Jasmine let her go. “Harriet,” she looked over at where the third of them was still seated, “appreciated the hug I gave her.”
“That’s because Harriet is a lovely person: she’s kind and warm.” Sophie was sitting down now. “I’m not!”
The waiter appeared. It was sparkling waters all round.
Before the election, before Alicia Manningtree had died, and before they’d all gone their separate ways, Sophie had been their team leader. There’d been others – Louise and, of course, Mike and John too – as well, all of whom Sophie had directed the activities of while they all worked for NISS when the former prime minister had been forcibly returned to the UK from Russia. That was all in the past now.
Sophie, as she was sure her friends wanted to as well, purposefully avoided mentioning any of that.
They sat in the restaurant talking and laughing about anything but that one issue. There were upcoming holidays to discuss, gossip to be shared and Harriet’s wedding plans for later in the year too. Jasmine had a couple of awful jokes to share, ones certainly not-safe-for-work. Sophie sniggered when hearing them while Harriet buried her face in her hands.
All three of them were no longer where they had been beforehand within NISS. Jasmine in fact wasn’t even with that organisation any more. She had a new job.
“I walked past the Citadel the other day.”
“They don’t call it that.” Jasmine shook her head. “You’d think that they would, but, no.”
Harriet arched her eyebrows. “Citadel Place, yes?”
“Don’t mind her, she’s playing catch up!”
The National Crime Agency had its headquarters not very far at all from one of the main NISS sites. It was an organisation dedicated to fighting organised crime and taking on criminals who were a threat to the country. Jasmine was working there after leaving NISS. What her tasks were though she didn’t go into them.
“Harriet’s being a bit slow,” Jasmine explained in what Sophie knew was jest, “because she’s been working for Dumbo and that has rubbed off.”
“Aren’t you going to defend your boss?”
“Nope.” Harriet shook her head. “It’s an apt name.”
Harriet and Jasmine were doing a double act. Sophie had a sneaking suspicion that the two of them might have had something proper to drink before she showed up.
“It’s not just the ears on Matthew that give him that name either!”
The two of them were laughing again. Sophie smiled politely but had nothing to add.
Matthew – Dumbo – was doing Sophie’s old job. He had Harriet with him, she being absent when Manningtree was murdered and Sophie eventually got the blame for that. They all knew him. He was an unlikeable guy. It wasn’t very professional at all for his subordinate Harriet, Sophie to do so too, to be running him down yet that was just the way it was.
“I’m so glad,” Jasmine put her hand on her heart, “that I got out rather than work there for someone like him!”
As her friend said that, Sophie tried to read how accurate that was. It didn’t look like Jasmine really meant it. Yes, she had a new job, but the National Crime Agency wasn’t NISS in any way. It didn’t have the responsibility, it didn’t have the importance… and it didn’t have the glamour that being a real intelligence officer would bring when with NISS either.
Jasmine may not have wanted to have to work for Matthew but, really hand on heart, Sophie knew that she’d rather still be at NISS.
They didn’t talk about what Sophie was up to with her new role in NISS. Her friends knew where she was at and what she was doing but it wasn’t discussed here today. Anti-terrorism and dealing with the aftermath of Leicester was what Sophie was now involved in. There were no longer any troops on the street in that British city but it was full of police and intelligence operatives. Her tasks there, ones which paled in comparison to the national security work she’d been doing beforehand, were important because they dealt with tracking down those who filled that city with guns, yet Sophie knew her career was over with. It was in zombie mode.
Nothing could be done about that though.
She picked up her glass and held it over the table.
“Girls,” she looked at them both, “to those that aren’t here. To those we lost.”
Her friends chinked their glasses against hers.
“For John.” Jasmine said.
“For Mike and his wife.” Harriet added.
Sophie smiled at her friends, pushing away the sadness of just a couple of people in a very long line of those who either had had their lives ruined or were no longer still alive because of Manningtree.
As to that particular woman, Sophie wouldn’t mention her at all. She and her friends had toasted the colleague who’d died and another who had seen his wife murdered but the woman responsible for all of that wouldn’t be spoken of at all.
Jasmine told another dirty joke a few moments later and the friends got back to their get together. They had some lunch, talking no more of work and what it had cost them.
*
MacDonald insisted that they take a drive. He had a car with him – not his, someone else’s: Caitlin didn’t ask – and said that he’d prefer that. It would be too damn hard for anyone to listen in, so he said, as long as Caitlin left her phone behind as well. He drove them to the Blackwall Tunnel and then towards the North Circular with MacDonald seemly pleased at the traffic in the tunnel too, which was keeping them underground.
“The stuff that they put on drones now… well… you’d be amazed.”
“I see.” Caitlin let him have that. Yes, he’d proved many times that just because he was paranoid there were still those with bad intentions out there, but that didn’t mean he was always correct about every single act of counter-surveillance he took.
“Have you spoke to anyone else from your old ‘paper?”
“A friend of mine,” she told him, “got a job at the B.B.C. Tasha’s lucky there: staff from the National are persona non grata almost everywhere. When the place got shuttered, everyone, naturally, scattered. There weren’t many people there I liked in the end.”
“A good number of people, me included, Caitlin, were glad when we heard. You got out of there ahead of time, but it’ll always be on your C.V.”
She gave him a rueful smile: “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
The National, previously one of the country’s biggest newspapers, was no more. Advertisers had killed it in the end, not the new government. One by one, a trickle turning into a cascade, they’d pulled their business: most doing so with press releases made to make sure everyone knew too. Without any advertising revenue, the National had been finished. While Caitlin had quit ahead of time, she’d be associated with what happened there for the rest of her career.
It wouldn’t be a good association either.
“So, what’s the plan for a job then?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh, yeah?” A little laugh. “How’s that then?”
Caitlin took a deep breath. She was going to ask something a lot from MacDonald, something that he knew ahead of time he’d push back against. Nonetheless, she plunged forwards with it.
“I’m going to write a book, one about Manningtree. I need your help with it, Neil. You know a lot. You know more than you’ve let on to me too. Without you, it doesn’t get written and, considering my situation, that’ll leave me homeless in the end.”
“I’m one of those people who you cannot guilt trip.” He turned to her to smile briefly. “You aren’t going to end up on the street with all of your possessions in black bin liners. Anyway, you don’t need me.”
“I do.” She implored him for help. “You were there when it all started, when the first investigation happened, when all of those people died during the first go round. You still have your sources and there is plenty that you haven’t told me. But you can, and that can go in my book.”
“Off the top of my head, there has to be at least a dozen books on Manningtree already. A couple are probably being written at this very moment considering what just happened. There will be lawyers all over you. In addition, N.I.S.S will be all over me, trying to shut me up. That sounds like a lot of aggravation for me and the crowd is too full for you too.”
Nothing he said dissuaded her. Caitlin had expected more denials of knowledge than he’d given her, something she saw as a willingness despite what he said to help her. As to the competition, she already understood that. A couple of serious political journalists had already composed and released books about Manningtree. There were other efforts out there that were only good for wiping bottoms.
She’d write something different, something that would make an impact.
“C’mon, you know you want to.” Caitlin played to MacDonald’s ego. “You are the only one who can make sure that this gets done. Let me do that thing that you spooks do, Neil: the debriefing thing.
There’s no book without you. I’m sure that you want to see the truth out there. So much of it isn’t but with you helping me, that can happen.
Whatcha say? Don’t say no again.”
Caitlin waited for his final answer as they drove onwards.
Finally, after a wait, he had a reply: “Okay. We’ll do it.”
She gave a little cheer!
*
“It was right here in this park. Over there by that lake to be honest. But, still, in this park where it all started to go wrong for David Morris… or whatever his real, Russian name is.
I’d given him the latest picture book, the one of faces of N.I.S.S employees. He saw her, Harriet Spencer, and gave the danger signal to the chap from Downing Street he was supposed to meet for an exchange. That was too late though. What happened afterwards led David, his wife and all of their team to get rolled up in the end to be shipped home to Mother Russia.
This park is pretty cursed and I’ll be honest with you, Yuri, I’d rather be somewhere else.”
Walking beside Matthew, Yuri, the Russian with whom he was with this afternoon, said nothing in reply. He was enjoying his ice cream and looking around at the various other people in London’s St James’s Park.
“I’ve got her working for me now. She’s right where I can keep an eye on her because she’s a sneaky little so-and-so who has caused all sorts of trouble beforehand, upsetting the Americans especially.
You can see the little gears turning in her head, the suspicious ones I mean, with everything still going on wrapping up the mess left over by Manningtree. Harriet cannot see the trees for the forest though. She looks outwards rather than inwards. She doesn’t like me nor think I’m very bright, but that’s okay. I know that that will cloud her judgement if there was ever a hint of a finger pointing at me: she’d tell herself that I’m stupid and that she’s seeing things that couldn’t possibly be there.
It’s a good first line of defence. Of course, not having her on my team would be best, but I’m working with what I’ve been handed.”
“We,” Yuri spoke quietly, pointing as he did so, “should go that way. Over there.”
That was all that he had to say. All that Matthew had said appeared to have not been paid any attention to by Yuri.
Matthew ground his teeth in frustration. “It’s all finished anyway. There is no danger at all to anyone on your side involved. I’ve made sure of that. There are some people who have their suspicions, but none of them are anywhere near getting at the truth.
We’re completely safe.
N.I.S.S is staying as it is too. The government has too much on its plate, too many more pressing issues to deal with. Of course they wanted to get rid of the whole organisation before they were elected, but how things turned out left them with no other choice. N.I.S.S and all of its flaws stay as they are, which means that the truth stays hidden for good… and I control that as well.”
“You have long shown your worth.” Yuri was getting towards the end of his ice cream now. “Everything we have asked of you, you have always done. It has all been noted, it is all appreciated.”
Matthew smiled at the praise. “You can rely on me.
I’ll be getting a promotion before the year is out. Higher and higher I’ll go. N.I.S.S keeps on getting rid of failures, those who disappoint, but those others like me, people who not just bring in results, but do so in line with what the politicians want too, will only go higher.
A promotion will mean more responsibility. It will mean more access to information which I can share with you too, those detailing operations rather than administrative matters as has been the case in the past.”
Yuri stopped them next to a bench and sat down. The sun was on him and he looked happy in it, his ice cream now gone. Matthew silenced himself to wait for the expected reply to come.
“You will be compensated adequately for all that you provide, Mister Walsh. You are valued and the reward will be what you deserve.”
Matthew heard what he wanted to hear.
More money. That was all that he cared about. More money for nicer things, more money to enjoy himself. That was the truth of the matter when it came to why he did what he did.
Russia’s current seniormost spy in the UK’s intelligence services remained where he was sitting next to the SVR’s director of operations in Britain, pretty pleased with himself. Manningtree was dead and buried, people like the Morris’ were long gone. He though was still in-play, still doing what he did, betraying his country as thoroughly as possible, all for cold hard cash.
That would continue for as long as he was able to do so.
THE END
Three women met for lunch on Kilburn High Road many months after the general election. Their get together had been arranged for the previous week but cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances. They were together today, sitting down in a fancy Persian restaurant over in a private booth.
Sophie had turned up late, almost being responsible for cancelling the lunch for the second time. Her friends, her former colleagues, Harriet and Jasmine, were waiting when she showed up. Harriet gave her a smile while Jasmine pulled a face of mock surprise.
“Oh, my. You’re actually here!”
Starting to put down her bag and her brolly, Sophie was about to give Jasmine a sarcastic reply. The woman hugged her though, throwing Sophie all out of sorts.
“I’ve missed you,” Sophie assured her, “but will you let me go?”
Jasmine let her go. “Harriet,” she looked over at where the third of them was still seated, “appreciated the hug I gave her.”
“That’s because Harriet is a lovely person: she’s kind and warm.” Sophie was sitting down now. “I’m not!”
The waiter appeared. It was sparkling waters all round.
Before the election, before Alicia Manningtree had died, and before they’d all gone their separate ways, Sophie had been their team leader. There’d been others – Louise and, of course, Mike and John too – as well, all of whom Sophie had directed the activities of while they all worked for NISS when the former prime minister had been forcibly returned to the UK from Russia. That was all in the past now.
Sophie, as she was sure her friends wanted to as well, purposefully avoided mentioning any of that.
They sat in the restaurant talking and laughing about anything but that one issue. There were upcoming holidays to discuss, gossip to be shared and Harriet’s wedding plans for later in the year too. Jasmine had a couple of awful jokes to share, ones certainly not-safe-for-work. Sophie sniggered when hearing them while Harriet buried her face in her hands.
All three of them were no longer where they had been beforehand within NISS. Jasmine in fact wasn’t even with that organisation any more. She had a new job.
“I walked past the Citadel the other day.”
“They don’t call it that.” Jasmine shook her head. “You’d think that they would, but, no.”
Harriet arched her eyebrows. “Citadel Place, yes?”
“Don’t mind her, she’s playing catch up!”
The National Crime Agency had its headquarters not very far at all from one of the main NISS sites. It was an organisation dedicated to fighting organised crime and taking on criminals who were a threat to the country. Jasmine was working there after leaving NISS. What her tasks were though she didn’t go into them.
“Harriet’s being a bit slow,” Jasmine explained in what Sophie knew was jest, “because she’s been working for Dumbo and that has rubbed off.”
“Aren’t you going to defend your boss?”
“Nope.” Harriet shook her head. “It’s an apt name.”
Harriet and Jasmine were doing a double act. Sophie had a sneaking suspicion that the two of them might have had something proper to drink before she showed up.
“It’s not just the ears on Matthew that give him that name either!”
The two of them were laughing again. Sophie smiled politely but had nothing to add.
Matthew – Dumbo – was doing Sophie’s old job. He had Harriet with him, she being absent when Manningtree was murdered and Sophie eventually got the blame for that. They all knew him. He was an unlikeable guy. It wasn’t very professional at all for his subordinate Harriet, Sophie to do so too, to be running him down yet that was just the way it was.
“I’m so glad,” Jasmine put her hand on her heart, “that I got out rather than work there for someone like him!”
As her friend said that, Sophie tried to read how accurate that was. It didn’t look like Jasmine really meant it. Yes, she had a new job, but the National Crime Agency wasn’t NISS in any way. It didn’t have the responsibility, it didn’t have the importance… and it didn’t have the glamour that being a real intelligence officer would bring when with NISS either.
Jasmine may not have wanted to have to work for Matthew but, really hand on heart, Sophie knew that she’d rather still be at NISS.
They didn’t talk about what Sophie was up to with her new role in NISS. Her friends knew where she was at and what she was doing but it wasn’t discussed here today. Anti-terrorism and dealing with the aftermath of Leicester was what Sophie was now involved in. There were no longer any troops on the street in that British city but it was full of police and intelligence operatives. Her tasks there, ones which paled in comparison to the national security work she’d been doing beforehand, were important because they dealt with tracking down those who filled that city with guns, yet Sophie knew her career was over with. It was in zombie mode.
Nothing could be done about that though.
She picked up her glass and held it over the table.
“Girls,” she looked at them both, “to those that aren’t here. To those we lost.”
Her friends chinked their glasses against hers.
“For John.” Jasmine said.
“For Mike and his wife.” Harriet added.
Sophie smiled at her friends, pushing away the sadness of just a couple of people in a very long line of those who either had had their lives ruined or were no longer still alive because of Manningtree.
As to that particular woman, Sophie wouldn’t mention her at all. She and her friends had toasted the colleague who’d died and another who had seen his wife murdered but the woman responsible for all of that wouldn’t be spoken of at all.
Jasmine told another dirty joke a few moments later and the friends got back to their get together. They had some lunch, talking no more of work and what it had cost them.
*
MacDonald insisted that they take a drive. He had a car with him – not his, someone else’s: Caitlin didn’t ask – and said that he’d prefer that. It would be too damn hard for anyone to listen in, so he said, as long as Caitlin left her phone behind as well. He drove them to the Blackwall Tunnel and then towards the North Circular with MacDonald seemly pleased at the traffic in the tunnel too, which was keeping them underground.
“The stuff that they put on drones now… well… you’d be amazed.”
“I see.” Caitlin let him have that. Yes, he’d proved many times that just because he was paranoid there were still those with bad intentions out there, but that didn’t mean he was always correct about every single act of counter-surveillance he took.
“Have you spoke to anyone else from your old ‘paper?”
“A friend of mine,” she told him, “got a job at the B.B.C. Tasha’s lucky there: staff from the National are persona non grata almost everywhere. When the place got shuttered, everyone, naturally, scattered. There weren’t many people there I liked in the end.”
“A good number of people, me included, Caitlin, were glad when we heard. You got out of there ahead of time, but it’ll always be on your C.V.”
She gave him a rueful smile: “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
The National, previously one of the country’s biggest newspapers, was no more. Advertisers had killed it in the end, not the new government. One by one, a trickle turning into a cascade, they’d pulled their business: most doing so with press releases made to make sure everyone knew too. Without any advertising revenue, the National had been finished. While Caitlin had quit ahead of time, she’d be associated with what happened there for the rest of her career.
It wouldn’t be a good association either.
“So, what’s the plan for a job then?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh, yeah?” A little laugh. “How’s that then?”
Caitlin took a deep breath. She was going to ask something a lot from MacDonald, something that he knew ahead of time he’d push back against. Nonetheless, she plunged forwards with it.
“I’m going to write a book, one about Manningtree. I need your help with it, Neil. You know a lot. You know more than you’ve let on to me too. Without you, it doesn’t get written and, considering my situation, that’ll leave me homeless in the end.”
“I’m one of those people who you cannot guilt trip.” He turned to her to smile briefly. “You aren’t going to end up on the street with all of your possessions in black bin liners. Anyway, you don’t need me.”
“I do.” She implored him for help. “You were there when it all started, when the first investigation happened, when all of those people died during the first go round. You still have your sources and there is plenty that you haven’t told me. But you can, and that can go in my book.”
“Off the top of my head, there has to be at least a dozen books on Manningtree already. A couple are probably being written at this very moment considering what just happened. There will be lawyers all over you. In addition, N.I.S.S will be all over me, trying to shut me up. That sounds like a lot of aggravation for me and the crowd is too full for you too.”
Nothing he said dissuaded her. Caitlin had expected more denials of knowledge than he’d given her, something she saw as a willingness despite what he said to help her. As to the competition, she already understood that. A couple of serious political journalists had already composed and released books about Manningtree. There were other efforts out there that were only good for wiping bottoms.
She’d write something different, something that would make an impact.
“C’mon, you know you want to.” Caitlin played to MacDonald’s ego. “You are the only one who can make sure that this gets done. Let me do that thing that you spooks do, Neil: the debriefing thing.
There’s no book without you. I’m sure that you want to see the truth out there. So much of it isn’t but with you helping me, that can happen.
Whatcha say? Don’t say no again.”
Caitlin waited for his final answer as they drove onwards.
Finally, after a wait, he had a reply: “Okay. We’ll do it.”
She gave a little cheer!
*
“It was right here in this park. Over there by that lake to be honest. But, still, in this park where it all started to go wrong for David Morris… or whatever his real, Russian name is.
I’d given him the latest picture book, the one of faces of N.I.S.S employees. He saw her, Harriet Spencer, and gave the danger signal to the chap from Downing Street he was supposed to meet for an exchange. That was too late though. What happened afterwards led David, his wife and all of their team to get rolled up in the end to be shipped home to Mother Russia.
This park is pretty cursed and I’ll be honest with you, Yuri, I’d rather be somewhere else.”
Walking beside Matthew, Yuri, the Russian with whom he was with this afternoon, said nothing in reply. He was enjoying his ice cream and looking around at the various other people in London’s St James’s Park.
“I’ve got her working for me now. She’s right where I can keep an eye on her because she’s a sneaky little so-and-so who has caused all sorts of trouble beforehand, upsetting the Americans especially.
You can see the little gears turning in her head, the suspicious ones I mean, with everything still going on wrapping up the mess left over by Manningtree. Harriet cannot see the trees for the forest though. She looks outwards rather than inwards. She doesn’t like me nor think I’m very bright, but that’s okay. I know that that will cloud her judgement if there was ever a hint of a finger pointing at me: she’d tell herself that I’m stupid and that she’s seeing things that couldn’t possibly be there.
It’s a good first line of defence. Of course, not having her on my team would be best, but I’m working with what I’ve been handed.”
“We,” Yuri spoke quietly, pointing as he did so, “should go that way. Over there.”
That was all that he had to say. All that Matthew had said appeared to have not been paid any attention to by Yuri.
Matthew ground his teeth in frustration. “It’s all finished anyway. There is no danger at all to anyone on your side involved. I’ve made sure of that. There are some people who have their suspicions, but none of them are anywhere near getting at the truth.
We’re completely safe.
N.I.S.S is staying as it is too. The government has too much on its plate, too many more pressing issues to deal with. Of course they wanted to get rid of the whole organisation before they were elected, but how things turned out left them with no other choice. N.I.S.S and all of its flaws stay as they are, which means that the truth stays hidden for good… and I control that as well.”
“You have long shown your worth.” Yuri was getting towards the end of his ice cream now. “Everything we have asked of you, you have always done. It has all been noted, it is all appreciated.”
Matthew smiled at the praise. “You can rely on me.
I’ll be getting a promotion before the year is out. Higher and higher I’ll go. N.I.S.S keeps on getting rid of failures, those who disappoint, but those others like me, people who not just bring in results, but do so in line with what the politicians want too, will only go higher.
A promotion will mean more responsibility. It will mean more access to information which I can share with you too, those detailing operations rather than administrative matters as has been the case in the past.”
Yuri stopped them next to a bench and sat down. The sun was on him and he looked happy in it, his ice cream now gone. Matthew silenced himself to wait for the expected reply to come.
“You will be compensated adequately for all that you provide, Mister Walsh. You are valued and the reward will be what you deserve.”
Matthew heard what he wanted to hear.
More money. That was all that he cared about. More money for nicer things, more money to enjoy himself. That was the truth of the matter when it came to why he did what he did.
Russia’s current seniormost spy in the UK’s intelligence services remained where he was sitting next to the SVR’s director of operations in Britain, pretty pleased with himself. Manningtree was dead and buried, people like the Morris’ were long gone. He though was still in-play, still doing what he did, betraying his country as thoroughly as possible, all for cold hard cash.
That would continue for as long as he was able to do so.
THE END
Re: Debrief
Yeah, not sure if that would have helped!
I had Covid, which I never had during the pandemic, then scaled myself in an accident with kettle water. Bad times.