[Continued from first post] That’s basically my life, in a nutshell. Exciting, you might say, but really it’s not. Yes, I’ve been spotting ten times, but that’s over a span of five years. What do I do in between? Well…
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“Is that tea almost ready, Aria? We have important things to discuss, so if could please hurry up…”
“Yes sir,” I respond through the walkie talkie, pouring the steeped tea into a delicate china teapot, and placing several cups and saucers on a tray. I carry them down the hallway and up several flights of steps to Vincent’s main office, steeling myself for the inevitable boredom that was about to come my way.
After every “mission”, Vince holds a debriefing session with the members of the hit team. He claims it helps cement the team together, though all I think it cements is my brain, really. These supposedly “quick” meetings always, without failure, turn out to be several hours long. The only relief I get during them is when Vincent orders more tea, and I get to leave the room, which doesn’t happen enough in my opinion. The other members of the teams (I’m not set into one particular team, as it were) seem to get into the discussions rather readily, almost excitedly.
Today’s discussion is cut short for once, however, and Vince dismisses the team early. He seems a little bothered; disturbed, even.
I turn to leave, but then, “Aria, we’re going to have a staff meeting now. Bring up some more tea and sit down.”
“Yes sir,” I reply, annoyed, but relieved that at least I didn’t have to hear the team members gush on about how their helicopter piloting skills are so great.
As I walk down the hallway back to the kitchen, I hear Vince’s voice on the PA system, “Potter, Simmons, Williams, and Kawasaki, come to my office now.” Vince was never one for “please”s or “thank you”s.
I fill up another pot of Earl Grey, the only kind of tea Vince drinks, and expects to find in his teapots. I place the old cups and saucers into the dishwasher, and take out a new set. I refill the sugar bowl (Vince also puts a lot of sugar in his tea, though why one would put sugar in Earl Grey is beyond me), and take out a small pot of milk, remembering that Simmons always puts milk in her tea, regardless of the tea.
I’m carrying the tray back up to Vince’s office, and as I approach the door, I can hear the five of them talking loudly.
“Who the hell is he anyway?” asks Pete Potter, the head spotter. He’s the person who gets to set up the motion-detecting equipment and hides on the ground rather than in a tree on missions. All of his equipment is made by himself and he programs them to work. And yes, he’s Peter Potter the Mobile Spotter. He hates it when we call him that though. “How did he know about the thieves?”
“Our intel must have leaked it somehow,” replies Dahlia Simmons, the intel expert. She created the software that automatically and continuously searches all around the world for large, organized heists, as well as news about random hit and runs. The software’s programming is beyond me, but the accuracy of the machine has so far been 10 for 10, so I’m not complaining. “Though, unless he was an extremely proficient hacker, he couldn’t have gotten into my system, and especially couldn’t have gotten out undetected.”
“Maybe you’re due for an upgrade? I never trusted that thing anyway,” retorts Bruce Williams, our heavy weapons expert. He organizes the armoury, though I’ve never actually seen him do anything. From my perspective, he drinks a lot and buys bullets, and lends out guns to team members.
“You’ve never used it, Bruce,” replies Simmons angrily, “It’s a state of the art piece of technology and is still being constantly updated.”
“Quiet down, you two. Cease arguing amongst yourselves. Let us return to the problem,” I hear Kawasaki’s quiet voice cut through the conversation. Kawasaki is a bit of an enigma to me, to be honest. He arrived here approximately three years ago with Vince from one of Vince’s solo missions in Japan. No one calls him by anything else except Kawasaki, though I’m not sure this is his real name. What he does in his laboratory is beyond me, since he never orders anything from the kitchen, and only leaves his lab to eat. “Who is this man, exactly?”
I walk in to see everyone looking expectantly at Vince, who seems to be distracted by a visible stain on the window. I’m pretty sure I’d cleaned it thoroughly the last time I was here. I don’t know where that stain came from.
“…Oh, Aria, you’ve returned with the tea. Can you do something about this stain? Kawasaki was a little excited and spilled some chemical or another on the window,” Vince addresses me, apparently ignoring the other four people in the room. Somehow, in the twenty-odd seconds between my departure and the four staff members’ arrival, he had managed to change out of his mission outfit and into a white suit that must’ve cost at least what we’d earned on today’s mission. “I believe it’s hydrogen chloride.”
“Yes it is. Observant as usual, Master Vincent,” Kawasaki replies smoothly, “If you please, the situation report?”
“Hmm…” drones Vincent, still distracted, “Someone knew the intel we knew about the thieves’ escape route. He determined the optimal hit position, as we did, and would have performed the hit at the exact spot we chose. Rather than having people lie in wait as we do, he shadowed them instead, following them for an unknown duration, but most likely since the heist was performed.”
“Following that logic, couldn’t he have simply have been waiting for a pause in their run?” questions Bruce, “I mean, all he had to do was wait for them to stop…”
“No,” responds Vince immediately, “That’s not plausible. First of all, the heist took place about two hundred miles west of the hit location. I don’t care who the thieves were, but I seriously doubt they ran for two hundred miles straight.”
“Oh…” is Bruce’s rather weak response. Vince 1, Bruce 0.
“Assuming this, that means they needed to rest at least once, more likely twice. In addition, the heist went completely unnoticed,” Vince continues on, ignoring Bruce, “It was performed two days ago, but the bank didn’t report it until today. About two hours ago, actually. The reported losses were… Simmons?”
“Two hundred million US dollars, sir,” finishes Simmons quickly.
“Which means we only obtained ten percent of the targeted value,” Vince’s disappointment is visible, “And the stalker gained the other one hundred and eighty million.”
“One hundred and eighty million that we needed to finish the Project 1923,” reprimands Kawasaki, “We will be delayed significantly if we do not obtain those funds within the next month.”
“Yes, I know,” sighs Vincent wearily, “Which is why we’re gathered here. I need some suggestions on how to obtain one hundred and eighty million dollars without actually risking a bank robbery.”
“Well if he stole that money from us, why not steal it back?” suggests Potter, “I doubt any bank would accept two hundred million US dollars in cash without questioning the client.”
“There’s more banks in the world than you know, Potter,” snaps Simmons. I think she’s on her period; she seems pissed off at everyone. Then again, our little group just lost almost two hundred million bucks. I guess I should be a little mad as well.
“Some of them illegal. They live on their underworld recognition and front as legitimate banks, and can transfer funds discretely into a Swiss vault, with no questions asked. If you remember, we do the same thing,” Dahlia elaborates, “It’s common practice.”
“I’m not in charge of funding transfers,” pouts Potter, “That’s the butler’s job.”
The butler is Michael Alonzo, a permanent hire that is apparently clueless about Vincent’s day job. He’s ridiculously tall, somewhat good looking, and attended a professional butler-ing school since he was five. He’s thirty five now, and has impeccable manners. I like him.
“Yes, yes, can we get back to the topic,” growls Bruce angrily, “Kawasaki needs his money, and I want this meeting to end. So let’s make a hundred and eighty million bucks.”
“For once I must agree with you,” agrees Kawasaki, “Our current funds will hold us for the next month of research, and I must be getting back to my lab.”
“How about we get some sponsors?” I ask, stupidly, “I mean, we look pretty legit from an outsider’s view.”
Everyone glares at me and I decide it’s a good time to refill the teapot.
I'm about to leave when Vincent speaks. “Well, if Simmons’ machine doesn’t pick up on a big heist anytime soon, I could always ask a few of my siblings for some funds,” digresses Vincent thoughtfully, “It’s not like I’m an only child, and my father had plenty of money to throw around.”
“You have siblings?” comes the incredulous response from five people at once.
“And how come I didn’t know about this?” Simmons asks, her pride as an intelligence expert apparently hurt, “Nothing like that showed up in your record.”
“My father disowned all of his other children right before he died, in his will. As such, they’ve had their surnames, birth records, and all manner of information changed. He was… an influential man, to say the least,” Vincent explains, “I was his favourite.”
“What the hell? Why would he disown all his children?” Bruce says, stunned.
“He had a lot of mistresses, and he fathered many children, or so he thought, anyway,” Vincent continues, “None of my siblings had any similarities in looks to my father, except myself. Rather strange, no? Especially considering I have fifteen siblings.”
“Fifteen siblings?” Potter squeals, “What?”
“Yes, fifteen siblings, sixteen including myself,” Vincent answers calmly, “Father thought this was odd, and requested a DNA check on my eldest sister. She wasn’t his.”
Ouch. That’s got to suck.
“Needless to say, he flew into a rage and disowned all of my siblings, sparing me because I looked similar to him. Then, apparently in regret, he evenly divided his assets amongst us and died,” finishes Vincent, “In any case, they’re doing quite well, and we’ve kept in touch. I’m on relatively good terms with most of my siblings, though a few of them hate me still.”
There’s a stunned silence among everyone here. I’m not really stunned, per se, but I guess it’s a little bit of a surprise. Personally, I couldn’t care less about Vincent’s family.
“Well then, I’ll begin calling them immediately. Simmons, please report any heists as soon as your system discovers it, and refrain from upgrading any further until we secure the funds. We cannot afford any more delays.”
“Of course,” replies Simmons, and leaves.
“Kawasaki, please continue researching until our current R&D funds run out. When we have less than ten million left, please notify me personally.”
“Understood,” Kawasaki bows, and departs as well.
“Williams, I need a weapons report, and I need you to re-create the armoury… underground.”
“What? Why?” It seems a little ridiculous to me as well.
“Because what’s most likely going to happen is that my siblings will send their children to the mansion for summer break in exchange for any money, and I don’t want them telling their parents that I have a football field’s worth of weapons in my back yard. Hop to it, and quickly please.”
“Hrm… alright then,” grumbles Bruce, pulling out his cell phone as he leaves. I hear him in the hallway, “Yes, that’s right, take a full inventory…”
“And Potter… Please triple check our spotting equipment. Aria’s sling tore in the last mission and she nearly fell out of her tree. Once you’ve finished mending any equipment that requires it, I need you to devise a list of summer activities that we can entertain my nieces and nephews with. They range from the age of five to their late teens, and it’s probable that we’ll get every single one. My siblings despise having children, which is the main reason I am single and do not have any. If you’d please.”
“Right away. How much am I allotted?”
“Unfortunately, we are tight on funds, as I’ve had to divert part of our mission funding to R&D. As such, please create a three month schedule for twenty seven children for under fifty million dollars. I will have Alonzo send you their names and ages. Also remember that these children have been pampered their entire lives and we must entertain them all, lest one of them report unhappy tidings to their parents.”
“Fifty million for thirty spoiled brats? Damn…” curses Potter, “Well I’ll see what I can do.”
“Your help is appreciated.” And thus Potter leaves the room as well.
“And Aria,” continues Vincent in his brisk, business like tone, “I need you to collaborate with Alonzo and hire a personal maid or butler for every child. Maids with the females, butlers for the males, of course. You will have to be head maid until they leave and the maids have been dismissed. They are temporary hire, but by no means pick second rate servants. You have as much funding as you need for this, as I will not be allowing them to bring their own personal servants.”
“Um, why not sir?” I nervously ask, “It would save significant amounts of cash if they were to pay for their own servants, master.”
“Yes, but unfortunately, my siblings are not as trusting with me as I am with them, especially with their children. They will say they are sending personal escorts, but will most likely end up sending a party of five or more for each child. This house is not built to accommodate more than one hundred people, and no more than fifty guests. I also suspect they will send some sort of private investigator as I never quite explain what I do for a living,” Vincent smiles a little.
“That is quite troublesome indeed, sir.”
“Indeed. Hire the maids at once, and have them begin refurbishing the rooms in which the children are to stay. Then begin calling the local produce farms so that we will have fresh ingredients every day. Once you secure a food plan for the three months of occupation of this house, you must then help Potter organize the activities. If Alonzo has finished his duties by then, he too, will help with the activities. And lastly,” Vincent pauses for breath, “Please send up another pot of Earl Grey."