Obsession-Compulsion, by Mudak
Chapter Sixty Nine
FBI Agent Michael Warrington found himself in an unusual situation. He was in charge of the investigation into this so-called “slave virus” at the local university. At least four, more likely five, of his agents had been infected. Two other agents were in a safe house, prepared to move in to arrest the suspected ringleader in two days’ time.
The suspected ringleader was a University bioethics professor by the name of Gordon Wallingford. Earlier in the day, though, one of Wallingford’s colleagues, Richard Stanwyck, was implicated by one of his students as being the ringleader. A credible witness positively identified Stanwyck.
When subjected to interrogation, Stanwyck revealed a fair amount of information that was either not public knowledge or filled in gaps of what Warrington himself didn’t know.
Warrington was pacing around his office, talking to himself. “I’m certain that it’s Wallingford, not Stanwyck. Could Wallingford have planted Stanwyck to throw us off his trail? Should we test him? What about Colburn? If she’s been infected, why didn’t she come back positive? Are Gomez and Karovski moving into a trap if I don’t call them off? Should we alert the media to Stanwyck’s arrest?”
After a few groans and mumbles that didn’t really amount to much of anything other than an expression of frustration, the phone on his desk rang.
“Warrington here.”
“Agent Warrington, Sir. I’ve got a student from the University on the line. Julia Shapiro. She wants to talk to someone in the slave virus case.” His secretary sounded calm; it was obvious she didn’t know any more about this call than what she had said. Warrington paused a moment and realized that Julia was both a reporter for the campus newspaper and a known slave. He suspected he knew why she was calling.
“Put her through, Cindy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Julia, are you there?
“I’m here.”
“Good, I’ve got Agent Warrington here to take your call.”
“Thank you.”
Agent Warrington decided to force Julia’s hand. “Julia. To what do I owe the honor of this call?”
“Well, Agent Warrington, rumor on campus is that you’ve made an arrest in the case. Would you care to comment?”
“I have no comment about that.”
“Very well, Agent Warrington. Does the name Richard Stanwyck mean anything to your investigation?”
“His name has come up, yes.”
“I have a very reliable source that says that Dr. Stanwyck was escorted out of the Dean’s office by two people wearing dark suits and sunglasses earlier today. Do you know anything about this?”
“I don’t have any comments about that.”
“Those two people were recognizable as having been involved in some of your testing from a few months ago.”
“No comment.”
“Is there anything you can tell me? Off the record or anonymously?”
Warrington paused. If it would help ease Wallingford into a false sense of security, he felt he should say something. He considered his words carefully. “As far as you’re concerned, I’m nothing more than ‘a source close to the investigation,’ understood?”
“Understood.”
“A professor from the university was taken into custody today.”
“I don’t suppose you can provide a name, can you?”
“No.”
“All right. Is there anything else you can say?”
“The intel we have received from the interrogation is credible.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Does this mean we might be able to expect the case to be closed soon?”
“I don’t have any comment about that.”
Julia snickered. “I guess I’m not surprised.”
“Now I’ve got a question for you, Julia.”
“Shoot.”
“When will your newspaper publish its next issue?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Julia.”
“Thank you, Agent Warrington!”
“Take it easy.”
“You, too.”
He hung up the phone and smiled. “Well, I guess that solves one of our problems.”
He walked over to his secretary’s desk. “Cindy. Get a message to our agents in the safe house. Tell them to hang tight until further notice. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Chapter Seventy
Julia Shapiro was rereading her story on the reports of an arrest in the slave “virus” case. She scowled at the small screen on her laptop computer. Something was missing in the story. She’d interviewed witnesses who saw Dr. Stanwyck being taken off into custody. The Dean’s office had no official comment. The FBI confirmed that someone was taken into custody, but they didn’t specifically reveal who they had in custody. There’s got to be something that can make this a real story, she thought.
She picked up her laptop and walked over to the science building. Maybe someone there might know something more and/or be willing to talk about what they knew. She sat down in a large, comfortable couch with her laptop balanced gently on her legs.
Most of the students she saw didn’t stop when she said she wanted to ask them a few questions, but one student did. She said her name was Laurie or Lori (Julia didn’t ask about spelling) but didn’t want her name printed. She revealed that she had gone to the dean’s office with what she knew about Dr. Stanwyck, and how hard it was for her to do it, since she trusted him.
“Have you spoken to anyone about him since the Dean’s office?”
“No.”
“Why’d you report him?”
After a long sigh, Lori said, “I’d been helping him out with an experiment these last few months. Mostly clerical work, organizing and analyzing data, reviewing documents, that sort of thing, ya know?”
Julia nodded.
“But then about a month, no six weeks ago, I happened across a strange file. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed to reference students here. A lot of them. And it had strange codes next to each.”
“Did this file have names on it?”
“No. Numbers. Identification numbers of some sort. It didn’t take long to figure some things out, though. All the numbers began with either an F or an M, so I just assumed that they were either female or male test subjects in whatever this experiment was. I figured they were students since all of the subjects I saw had a number between the 18 and 23, so I took that to mean ages. There were some dates in each record, so that was easy enough to figure out: when they became test subjects. The first five F and the first five M ID’s all had the same date on them. But nobody else had that date.”
“Go on...”
“Well, I got kind of scared when I saw that, so I closed it almost immediately. I figured I’d stumbled onto something I shouldn’t have, but I made a couldn’t help but notice some of the other numbers on one of the F ID’s.”
“Other numbers?”
“Yes. All of the test subjects had two other numbers next to them. The one I noticed had the numbers 25F and 37M.”
“Why is that significant?”
“In and of itself, it’s not. But I couldn’t help but notice, the following week, that the whole file was larger, so I opened it.”
“What’d you see?”
“For that particular F ID, the numbers were now 36F and 52M.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither did I at first. But then I got to thinking about it. The first ten people: five men and five women in a sleep study. I think those numbers are a count of how many women and how many men that particular subject had infected with the virus.”
“So are you telling me that this one girl, in one week, seduced 11 girls and 15 guys?”
“I think so.”
“What did you do next?”
“Nothing. I mean, Dr. Stanwyck’s my advisor. I trusted him. I tried to put on my best face and move forward, but with this new knowledge, it was hard, ya know?”
“Yeah. I bet.”
“One time he said that I seemed—what were his exact words? He said I wasn’t acting myself and wanted to know if everything was all right.”
“What’d you say?”
“Fortunately, I had a little lie prepared for this question. I told him that my mother wasn’t feeling well and I was worried about her. That seemed to satisfy him. But I’d been losing a lot of sleep over this.”
“I can imagine.”
“Finally, I decided I needed to do something. So last week, when he wasn’t looking, I made a copy of that file. Didn’t look at it or anything. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but I knew I needed to copy the file.”
“And after you did that, you thought about it some more and went to the Dean’s office, right?”
“Right.”
“Other than me and the Dean’s office, did you talk to anyone about this?”
“No.”
“You realize that I’d like to put this in my story for the paper, right?”
“Yes. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Just please, don’t use my name, OK?”
“OK. Do you mind if I ask you a couple more questions?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have any names that you could put against the ID numbers in the file?”
“No. For all I know, I’m one of the F numbers.”
“So you don’t know if you’ve been infected?”
“I know that I wasn’t as of when the FBI came in and offered to test us. But that one girl’s numbers changed awfully fast. Who knows how many people have been infected since we were tested all those months ago?”
Julia decided not to say that she knew that she was infected. “True! Very true! Well, Lori, I really appreciate you talking to me. Hopefully you’ll be able to get some sleep now.”
“Here’s hoping.”
During that interview, Dr. Gordon Wallingford walked by them four times, but he was casual in his manner and seemed to have some specific goals each time, so neither student paid him any attention. The third time he walked by, he thought that his reprogramming of Lori’s memory had gone better than he had anticipated.
He walked by one last time shortly after the interview concluded. Julia paid him more attention. “Dr. Wallingford, do you have any comments about the apparent arrest of Dr. Stanwyck?”
He gave her a somewhat crooked smile as he glared at her. “You know, Miss Shapiro, you’re a vulture, you know that?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I only just heard the news a few hours ago, and I am shocked and saddened at this turn of events. I am not in a position to say whether Richard is or is not the so-called John Smith who has been controlling students at will. My heart goes out to Richard and his family. I have no additional comments.”
He put up his hand and walked away.
Julia, satisfied with the information she had received, closed her computer and returned to the editorial room to write what could be the biggest story of her young journalistic career.
Chapter Seventy One
Junior Agent Sara Colburn had been biding her time since she returned to campus after successfully obtaining the password needed to control people who had been infected with the slave virus and providing it, along with two of her compromised colleagues, to her superiors at the FBI.
She wasn’t sure what else, if anything, she would be called on to do, but it certainly would have aroused suspicions if she just disappeared from the campus, especially before Dr. Gordon Wallingford would be arrested. She gladly maintained her cover using the name Heather McCann. The next major event would be tomorrow afternoon, when she would be sitting in Wallingford’s Bioethics classroom.
She had settled into her apartment for the night when her cell phone rang. Since the number was blocked, she played it safe as she answered it. “This is Heather!”
A male voice on the other end spoke cryptically. “In the beginning, God said, ‘Let there be light!’”
She knew this to be a code for when the FBI wanted to reach her, so she responded accordingly. “And it was bad and it burned the people’s eyes, but He said, “Screw them! They’ll get used to it!”
“Ha ha. How are you, Sara?”
“Good. I didn’t expect a call from you yet, Michael.”
“I just wanted to give you a little bit of info so that you’re not surprised by something that happens tomorrow.”
“What’s that?”
“We arrested Dr. Richard Stanwyck in conjunction with your case.”
“What? Who?”
“Richard Stanwyck.”
“But what about—”
“Wallingford? Let’s just say that he’s no longer our primary suspect, but he might still prove valuable to our investigation.”
“What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
“You can expect there to be an article in tomorrow’s campus paper about it. The Shapiro girl already knew of the arrest. I just confirmed we had a credible suspect in custody.”
“So what do you need from me?”
“I’m curious to know if Wallingford behaves differently when the news of an arrest becomes public. You’ve reported that your class has been discussing the case at length, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Surely this news will spawn discussion tomorrow, correct?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“Good. I’m definitely interested in knowing the outcome of tomorrow’s discussions.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. I expect to hear from you tomorrow, then.”
“Talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.”
They both hung up the phone. Agent Michael Warrington was thankful that she didn’t question him more. He suspected that she had been compromised and any shared intelligence with her would therefore have to be filtered appropriately.
As Sara hung up the phone, she instinctively dialed a second phone number. A woman at the other end of the phone answered.
“Slaves’ intelligence hotline, how may I help you?”
“This is Agent Sara Colburn.”
“Yes, Sara. We weren’t expecting a call from you tonight. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“My superior just contacted me.”
“And what information can you provide?”
“He confirmed the arrest of Dr. Richard Stanwyck as a credible suspect. Master is no longer the prime suspect, but the FBI reserves the right to interview him further. This will be confirmed with a newspaper article tomorrow.”
“Excellent. Master already anticipates the newspaper article, but this is good news. Thank you, Sara.”
“You’re welcome.”
Chapter Seventy Two
Acting on orders to do so, Agents Viktor Karovski and Deirdre Gomez were holed up on a safe house, awaiting further instructions.
As the sun rose through the windows in the living room of their temporary home, Gomez was sipping a cup of coffee and mused to her partner. “I was kind of hoping we’d get to do something today, but the call last night said to stay put. I’m disappointed right now.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“What do you think happened that caused the change of plans?”
“Beats—”
Karovski’s response was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. After he answered it and validated who he was, Agent Warrington quickly brought him up to speed on the events of the previous two days. “After I hear from Colburn, I will contact you again. I want to be reasonably sure that Wallingford doesn’t see us coming. At that point, I will provide the name of a female student who has been infected. You will make contact with her. I believe you will know what to do next.”
“Yes, sir. I can do that.”
“Good. I trust you can brief Gomez about the current status?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Have a good day and stay calm.”
“Thank you. You, too, sir.”
Karovski hung up the phone and sat down to face Gomez, who had an eager look on her face to find out what he had just learned.
“All right. First off, he called us off today because a student at the university turned someone other than Wallingford in as the infamous ‘John Smith.’”
“Who?”
“A colleague of Wallingford by the name of Richard Stanwyck. Stanwyck apparently had a fair amount of intel, too. And we’re making use of it.”
“I’m assuming that Wallingford is controlling Stanwyck and made him confess?”
“Probably very true. We called in Milford, the original reporter, remember him?”
“Yeah. He ID’ed Wallingford from a faculty handbook.”
“Right. Well, this time he ID’ed Stanwyck.”
“When was the last time Milford was tested?”
“About a month and a half ago. He came back negative.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s still negative, does it?”
“Nope.”
“So his memory might have been modified, too?”
“Exactly.”
“Then there’s the student who turned Stanwyck in.”
“Yeah. Tell me more about that.”
“Well, this student’s actually in one of Colburn’s classes.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. And guess which one.”
“Tell me it’s Wallingford’s.”
“It’s Wallingford’s.”
“Colburn reported that this particular student had expressed an interest in buying a temporary password, too.”
“So why’d this student turn Stanwyck in?”
“She said she’d felt guilty about being a part of his plot involving the virus.”
“But that doesn’t make sense if she might have wanted to buy a password.”
“I agree. Apparently, so does Warrington, too.”
“So... She’s a slave and her memory’s been modified, too, hasn’t it?”
“That’s the suspicion.”
“Well, how’s Colburn doing?”
“We think she might have been compromised, so we’re letting her believe that we now think Stanwyck’s the one.”
Gomez signed. “I guess that’s not too big a surprise. Just a disappointment.”
“Yeah. Well, we’re going to let Colburn report after tomorrow’s class, to see if Wallingford’s more at ease.”
“He should be, right?”
“Yeah. If so, we’ll go and proceed with our plan.”
“Do we have a slave to help with the plan?”
“Not yet. Warrington’ll give us a slave to locate when we he gives us the green light.”
“Good.”
“Do you think it’ll work?”
“I sure hope so.”
Chapter Seventy Three
There was a low murmur of conversation among the students in Dr. Gordon Wallingford’s class as he scurried into the classroom, putting his briefcase down by the desk. “Sorry I’m late, everyone.”
The murmur silenced almost immediately.
“I’m assuming you’ve all seen today’s paper, correct?”
A low rumble of agreement came forth from the students.
“Good. I trust this means that you are all aware that my colleague, Dr. Richard Stanwyck, was arrested under suspicion of being the mastermind behind the so-called “slave virus” scare we’ve been discussing so much these past few weeks. I’m sure a lot of you have questions with regard to this matter, so ask away.”
Christina Hightower was the first to speak. “Do you think he’s, you know, guilty?”
“An excellent question, Miss Hightower. Richard and I never really spoke much about the case, save for the time I mentioned to him that it had come up in our class. How can I put this? He’s a good man. I wouldn’t have pegged him for being the one. But then again, it’s not so totally out of the realm of possibility that I can’t be certain he’s not guilty.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tom O’Grady chimed in.
“I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want to believe it, but I can’t rule out the possibility either.”
Tom persisted. “How so?”
“I have little doubt that he’s capable of doing what John Smith claimed. But if he is guilty, I haven’t seen much evidence of it in my dealings with him, both professionally and as a friend.”
“Haven’t seen much? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The one time he and I tried to discuss the matter, he was clearly uncomfortable with the discussion and tried to change the subject. He also was not a fan of my idea to purchase a password to see exactly what we could do with it. Hardly an indictment of the man, but at the same time, his actions were consistent with a man who was guilty and tried to keep his colleagues as far out of suspicion as possible. If we were to use the precept of Occam’s Razor, where, given two potential explanations for the same phenomenon, the simpler explanation is more often the correct one, I would have to vote not guilty.”
There was a short pause in the dialogue.
Junior Agent Sara Colburn, under the alias of Heather McCann, broke the silence. “Professor. How did you come to be interviewed? You know, for the article?”
Lori glared at him, wishing he could see her pained expression, hoping he wouldn’t reveal he had seen her speaking with Julia Shapiro before he became a part of the conversation. “She happened to be in the building when I walked by. I couldn’t not give her some kind of a quote.”
Colburn persisted. “Do you think you might be questioned in this matter? As a colleague, I’m sure you might be an important witness in this case.”
“I’m glad you asked me that question, Miss McCann. I’m not sure if you had joined our class when I said this, however I did reveal at one point that I was interviewed at length by the agents investigating this case. I don’t know if I was ever considered a suspect, or if the treatment I received was consistent with the interview process my colleagues received, however it is not unlikely that my name would appear on a short list of potential suspects due to my field of study and the fact that I, like Professor Stanwyck, would probably be able to design such a disease.”
Lori had a question that she was cautious to ask. “So, um. What happens next?”
“Well, Miss Carlton, I think we wait. Wait until Professor Stanwyck is either released or charged with a crime. But if you mean within this class, a little piece of news came to me in this past week that I am eager to research.”
This comment was met with a series of puzzled looks as everyone looked back and forth at each other and then back at the professor. He smiled broadly as he told the class in a somewhat forceful tone. “You are all my slaves.”
Everyone in the class sat upright in their chairs and spoke in unison. “What’s the password.”
“Orgasm.”
“How may I serve you master?” chorused from the entire class.
“Music to my ears. In case you didn’t guess by now, the last two students in this class who were not previously infected, were infected this past week.” He glanced around the room and saw that there were twelve students in the class; six men and six women. “All right now. Everyone, stand up and take off all of your clothes.”
Wordlessly and without a sign of emotion on their faces, they all did as they were told.
“Good. Now, all of the men, I want you to take the desks in this classroom and move them up against the walls.” All six men did exactly as instructed. It was an efficient effort, taking only a few short minutes for the men to completely clear out the classroom.
Once the main space of the classroom was cleared out, he went into a small study office behind the classroom and brought out some folding chairs.
“Ladies, I want you to take these chairs and place them in a circle, facing outward. I want you to leave about two or three feet between each chair.”
The women did as they were told. In the end, six chairs were arranged in a circle exactly as ordered.
“Gentlemen, please sit down in the chairs the girls so kindly laid out for you.”
The men did as they were told.
“I want to reward all of you for not being too nosy while at the same time keeping me on my toes to help me avoid detection as the real ‘John Smith’. Girls, I want you to each to stand in front of one of the guys. It doesn’t matter which one, since you’ll all be fucking all six of them.”
Once they were all in place, he walked around them all to see the looks on their faces. For the most part, their gazes were distant, emotionless, although a couple of the men cracked subtle smiles.
“Girls, I want you to lean forward and grab your guy’s cock. Get it nice and hard. You will start to feel very horny as it stiffens in your hands. Once you believe your guy is ready, I want you to position yourself over his cock, waiting for my orders to take him into your pussy.”
He walked around the room again, surveying what he saw. After two circles around his students, all of them clearly aroused and awaiting his next command he explained things a bit more thoroughly.
“All right, everyone. We are going to have an orgy right here and right now. Guys, I want you all to remain in your seats. The most you can do to get out of your seat, is when you lift your butts off of the chair to please the girl on your lap. Guys, you will play with your girl’s tits, sucking and nibbling, pinching and fondling them as much or as little as you deem necessary. Girls, you will guide your guy’s cock into your pussy and start fucking him.
“Nobody may orgasm without my permission. Girls, you will orgasm with each guy you’re fucking. When you do, it will be an amazingly powerful sensation that will send your juices trickling down and into your guy’s cock. Guys, when your girl does have an orgasm, you’ll have an involuntary mini-gasm to send her juices back into her, but it will not be a full-fledged orgasm. Guys, you will each orgasm simultaneously with the orgasm of the sixth girl to fuck you.
“Now, does everyone understand how this will work? Let’s go around and confirm you understand things. Girls first.”
Christina Hightower was the first to say “I understand.” Lori Carlton, who was standing to Christina’s right, followed with an “I understand” of her own. The statement was repeated four more times by the remaining women.
“Guys, your turn.”
Six male voices quietly intoning the phrase “I understand” in rapid succession confirmed that this would be a class to remember. That is, if anyone other than the undercover FBI agent would actually remember it.
“All right everyone. Girls, mount your men.”
All six girls pushed closer to their guys and squatted slightly to guide his cock into their eagerly awaiting slits. They sat precariously on the laps of the men, who immediately started groping and fondling their tits.
The girls started to push off of the ground on top of their guys. Some started to moan. A couple of guys lifted their assess off of the chair, lifting their girls off the floor as well. The women braced themselves against the shoulders of the guys they were fucking, panting heavily.
“Heather, how does this feel?”
“Mmmmmm, good, master!”
“Does your partner agree?”
“Yes, master!”
“Good. Girls, I want you all to get very close to your orgasm.”
A series of high-pitched squeaks and moans filled the room as all of the women responded to this command quickly.
“All right, girls, on the count of three, I want you all to orgasm.”
Some girls peppered their moans with cries of “Oh, yes!”, “Oh, God!”, and “That’s it, baby!”
“One.”
The girls were panting loudly in anticipation of what would happen next.
“Two.”
The chorus of women expressing their passion and lust was shrill, but no individual’s voice was distinguishable from any others.
“Three.”
The screams and moans of pleasure reverberated throughout the room and no one seemed to care.
The girls slowed down following their first wave of what was about to be many more powerful feelings subsided. At this point, all of the men started to pant and gasp for breath as they recalled their earlier command to squeeze their juices back into their pussies. Several guys bit their lower lip or otherwise quietly and subtly expressed their own good feelings.
“All right, girls, I want you all to dismount your man and straddle the next guy to your right.”
The girls were somewhat clumsy as they climbed off of the laps of their first chosen partner and onto the next.
“Next time you switch partners, you will do so more gracefully.”
“Yes, master,” all of the girls responded at once.
“Good. On the count of three, you will start fucking this new guy. One. Two. Three.”
The sounds of the orgy were becoming louder and less pronounced as the chairs themselves slipped and skidded around on the floor. Over the course of the next half hour, each girl fucked each guy, had a single orgasm, and moved on to the next.
As the sixth round drew to a close, the professor finally gave his orders to the men: “When this girl has her orgasm off of your cock, you will cum, too, for the greatest simultaneous orgasm in history.”
Although there were some sounds that sounded like words emanating through the parsed lips of the men, no one actually said anything.
“On three, ready?”
“One! Two! Three!” This count was a bit faster than previous counts, but the screams and hollers of twelve aroused students, all of whom were completely willing to give in to their arousal on the spot, filled the room and was possibly audible outside of the building.
All twelve students felt a wave of exhaustion overtake them as the girls slumped forward into the exhausted faces and chests of the guys they had just been intimate with.
“Very good, my slaves. I have one more command, for all of you.”
“Yes, master?”
“I want you all to move your desks back into the center of the room, put your clothes on, and sit down.
“When you sit down, you will all wake up from this trance. With the exception of Junior Agent Colburn, you will remember none of this. Miss McCann—or should I say Colburn—will know what she has done but is incapable of speaking about it. Miss McCann will be reporting back to her superiors later on this afternoon, and all she’ll have to report is that I seemed very at ease in our dealings today. As far as the FBI is concerned, I’m not actively controlling anyone’s thoughts, minds, or actions.”
The class resumed as though it were uninterrupted by the sexual interlude that had just taken place.
Shortly after they sat down in their chairs, the bell rang. “Oh, I guess that’s it. I’ll see you all next week, then!”
“See you next week,” a couple of students who had stayed behind, remarked.
“Maybe,” Tom remarked.
“You will. Trust me, Mr. O’Grady. You will.”
Chapter Seventy Four
Junior Agent Sara Colburm hung up the phone with her superior, Agent Michael Warrington. Colburn reported that Wallingford wanted to discuss the case somewhat, but acted just like any other college science professor.
As they each walked away from the phone, both people felt satisfied that things were going as they hoped and planned. Warrington looked up from his desk and said to no one there, “The game is underway.”
Warrington went to another phone, a secure line to the safe house and spoke with Agent Deirdre Gomez. “Looks like we’re a go. Do you know the plan?”
“I do, sir.”
“Good. Then I trust that all you need is a name, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Ashley Steinmetz. She works as an intern at Milford’s newspaper. You might be able to reconnoiter with her while she is en route either to or from her job at the newspaper.”
“Can do.”
“How soon do you think you and Karovski can initiate the plan?”
“Our target is two days. Three if she doesn’t work in two days.”
“Good. I’d like you to report back tomorrow night at 7 pm, no matter what the status.”
“I can do that, sir.”
“Good. Good luck to you and Karovski. Keep safe.”
“Thank you sir. We will.”
As she put the phone down, Agent Gomez called out to her colleague, Viktor Karovski. “We’ve got a name.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s one of the four we expected it to be.”
“Which one?”
“Steinmetz.”
“Good choice. She’ll be easy to intercept.”
“That’s what concerns me.”
‘I say we re-review the plan tonight and start watching her tomorrow morning.”
“Good idea.”
“Do you think the plan will work?”
“I don’t know, but it’s got a better exit strategy than all of the past ones. Even if it doesn’t work, we’ll probably be somewhat safer than the others.”
“Let’s not let our guard down, though.”
“Agreed.”
“So... Tomorrow we’ll start her surveillance. Get to know her schedules, friends, and colleagues.”