Dramatis Personae:

• S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
• N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Saving his shoes from the sewer wandering.
• An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker.
• Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with. The Dogfather.

Recap

25-28 April 2011

The agents settled in for a bit of surveillance, given that they had no major time pressures. Using the van, they kept an eye on the Institute. They took photos of people coming in an out, and managed to get a rough estimate of the numbers in the various shifts. They counted three shifts over two and a half days of watching: about 50 people come in during the day, with 15 each on two night shifts. Most of these people are scientists and administrations and similar tasks, but to the well-trained agents a few guards stood out: about 15 during the day and 8 on each night shift.

During the early hours of Tuesday, an unmarked delivery van arrived at the Institute. It was checked at the gate and waved through, coming back out an hour later. Other deliveries seemed to happen during the day, at random. There was a large truck from a catering company, which arrived on Monday and Wednesday, at about the same time each day. Most people arrived on foot via public transit, and they just tapped a card to get in. Vehicles did the same, but any deliveries had to sign paperwork at the gate to get in and out.

Yannis, running the number plates on the unmarked van found it connected to a company named ‘Johnson & Co’. The company operated out of a small office, with a bunch of other companies. Coop and Padraig headed over to check it out. A number of the offices seemed to be closed, just a physical location. Johnson & Co was a simple little office, apparently just manned by a secretary to handle the phones and do some of the invoices and administration. To get in, they pulled a fire alarm and took advantage of the evacuation to quickly raid the filing cabinet. They quickly scanned for some names that they knew, not finding any links to Billington & Sons in Whitby, Isabel Hartley (nor her brother Kenneth), Axel Logistics. The biggest thing that stood out? A delivery to ‘Carfax’ on the Tuesday that the unmarked van was seen. This was apparently from a warehouse in the London dock area. There was also a delivery of something or someone a few weeks ago that came from an un-named naval base in Scotland, via the London Heliport in Battersea. The agents immediately jumped to this being the mysterious HMS Proserpine.

The agents decided to try and get some keycards, by following a few folks from the Institute to a local bar for the Wednesday footie. They could then skim the RFID cards and make their own to get in at some point. This went off pretty much without a hitch, aside from Coop riling up a few of the locals by wondering why the players were not picking up the ball and why they left their protective gear at home. This provided enough cover for Padraig to filch three cards and get them to Yannis to skim before returning them.

The other thing that was set up and done was Padraig dropping some names and getting a viewing of a flat in the same building as Dr Drawes’. He and Coop met Florence, the realtor, and got a good overview of the security in the upmarket building. This included that visitors needed to be buzzed in from the front desk via a call, that cleaning and maintenance needed to be done by approved companies, there was a delivery entry at the back that needed 24 hour’s notice for large deliveries. In general, this was slooking like a pretty tough nut to crack, but they had solid intel for both.

GM Notes and Thoughts

This session ended up being more preparation, but I think that things are going to kick off next session with at least one operation happening. Some ideas suggested are definitely on the silly side (can we train a bat to fly a grappling hook to Drawes’ balcony), but they did a good job of getting enough details to pull off a proper heist in the next session. The consensus has been to go for the flat first, in hopes of it being a softer target, probably by replacing staff of one of the approved companies (possibly in response to creating an emergency like broken windows needing the maintenance company to come in).

The thinking is that if they go straight for the Institute then it is more likely that the apartment is going to be locked down in response, or Dr Drawes will disappear along with anything useful that he knows. There is also still not really a clear idea of what he might have at his apartment.

They are also still planning on making a trip up to Cambridge to check out Isabel’s flat before her brother starts dealing with her effects, now that the coroner’s report is probably filed. That means that her will is probably being executed and her brother will likely be dealing with everything. This is something that they will need to deal with relatively soon or let go.

Notable NPCs

• Dr John L Drawes - Director of an NHS Haematology and Malaria Research Institute in the Plaistow area. Lives in a fancy building.
• Florence Barkley - Realtor for the apartment complex Drawed lives in.

Notable Groups

• Johnson & Co - small delivery company, has made deliveries to ‘Carfax’.