Dramatis Personae:

• S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running.
• N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back.
• An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker.
• Al, playing Petros - The Dogfather. Asset-sitting Cassandra (player unable to attend)

Recap

04 May 2011

Since Cassandra Irving is clearly someone of interest to some organisation, the agents decided to use her as bait. She would go and draw some cash at St Pancras and buy a ticket on the train to Brussels. Hopefully that would get someone’s attention, but she could hop off before the train actually left and so stay safe. Petros would keep an eye on her, while Coop watched for any action at St Pancras and Yannis and Padraig headed to Brussels. The plan was for Coop to possibly follow them.

The first part of the plan went off smoothly, with Cassandra (nervously) buying the ticket from the desk. She was able to get off the train before it left the UK, shadowed by Petros. Coop, lurking in the station, saw two police officers arrive about 15 minutes after the train left (so about thiry minutes after the ticket was bought). Lurking on the edge of a US tour group, he was able to overhear them introduce themselves as DCI Smith and DS Young. They showed a printout of Cassandra. The photo was good, looking like an ID photo of some kind.

The police (or ‘police’) moved down the row of tellers, asking each if they had sold a ticket to Cassandra, eventually finding that one did. Coop was not willing to get too close, but managed to overhear part of a phone call ‘D says that you have the Indulgence’ from one, and ‘Is Jatheth involved?’. This last was said with annoyance. Both of these did not mean anything to Coop (or the others). The two then headed for the exit, Coop electing to let them go unmolested and head to Brussels instead.

Meanwhile, Yannis picked a sensible hotel on the outskirts of Brussels and Padraig, in disguise, checked in as ‘Kim Philips’. This was a cover that Cass mentioned she had used in the past. Yannis booked the room next door. They settled in to wait overnight in Yannis’ room, joined by Coop after a few hours on the next train.

At about 23:00, being keyed up, they heard someone in the corridor of the hotel. This turned out to be a couple of Brussels police officers knocking quietly on occupied rooms and speaking to the occupants. When they got to Yannis’ room they asked him to please remain in his room for the next while because of a security threat. Yannis readily agreed, but did put a small endoscope camera under the door to watch the corridor. The police skipped ‘Kim Philips’ room, and then stayed at the end of the corridor.

A short time later, a team of four heavily-armed men started moving down the corridor. This looked like a counter-terrorism or similar team. They stacked up on the ‘Kim Philips’ door in a very professional manner before going in, fairly hard: leading with a flashbang and shouting to get down. This was followed by some annoyed sounds at there being no one.

Padraig decided to push his luck, and poked his head out in faux alarm. Doing so got him a number of guns to the face, and a bunch of questions from the leader. Notably, those questions were in a UK accent. All that Padraig got was that the woman in the room was wanted in connection to terrorist activities. He suggested that he had seen her entering earlier in the day, but not seen or spoken to her since. Following that, the ‘police’ left, and the locals came back down to reassure the guests the the emergency was over.

“Kim’s” luggage had a tracker, which went to Brussels Airport (in particular Melsbroek, the military part of the airport) for a while. Shortly before daybreak, the tracker was shown moving rapidly west, in the direction of the UK. Yannis reached out to a couple of colleagues and monitored local radios, but they just talked about a ‘special operation’ in the area with no additional details, and he did not want to pry too much more. The immediate threat appearing over, the agents decided to head back to London.

GM Notes and Thoughts

The purpose of this session was to drive home that there are some heavy hitters in the background: they can get co-operation from the Brussels Police outside their jurisdiction. The plan to keep Cass safe was sensible, as was the stuff while in Belgium.

From my side, the idea was that there was going to be some sort of reaction to Cass using her account to draw cash in a train station. That also dropped a few important bits of information, from the overheard conversation. Jetheth in particular has them confused, although it is a really useful one. They are also speculating about who ‘D’ might be, jumping to the conclusion that it is Dracula himself, but not really being sure.

The tracking of the bag to somewhere in the direction of the UK has also been useful, although it will be up to them whether they try and track it more closely. The tracker will almost certainly be found in relatively short order though, even though it was not found at Melsbroek before takeoff. There is definitely some high-level stuff going on in the background!

Notable NPCs

• Cassandra Irving - Analyst on GCHQ’s Romania desk. Currently in hiding, protected by the PCs.
• D? Jetheth? - Person or group or thing, names overheard by Coop.