Incarna

12 - Episode 4 Five Eyes

“Thank you everyone for dropping everything and making yourselves available so quickly.” Commander George Deitmann adjusted his chair so his image appeared in the middle of the little screen showing him what everyone else saw! Like Skype, only better, he always thought to himself when these video conferences started. Given how much the data stream had to be encrypted to make it secure, it wasn’t Skype, these were very expensive calls and his screen was divided into a window for each representative and for the Council. George smiled at the thought of how expensive it was. He liked being expensive. But hey, it was Five Eyes and budgets were never revealed, no matter how much the Snowdens of the world stole or how hard they blew their whistles.

“Now then, you will have all reviewed the documentation. Any preliminary thoughts?” Deitmann listened distractedly as the pommie chick spoke about the interventions in the desert against the executions. He read her dossier summary as she listed details and locations of each intervention so far. Maeve Wintergarden, he smiled, how quaint, pretty too! George liked pretty things.

The aussie guy piped up about their SAS boys rescuing a couple of them. A Captain Ploughwright, he was new, just flown back to Canberra for this job. Good people the Aussies, pity he had no time for their sense of humour. They made fun of everything, and that George wouldn’t tolerate. Ploughwright replayed part of a voice interview with one of their rescued persons. In a british accent of some sort Deitmann couldn’t understand, but he had the transcript in front of him. Fresh in this morning from whichever NSA section thought it was important for him to have them; so he just read what the weird voice was saying.

Ploughwright added that no-one had done any field scans so he could not comment on possible scenarios to explain the mechanism of the interventions, and that was a major weak point in the data collection so far. Deitmann frowned at the technical competency on display. Have to be careful of you, he thought looking through PW’s dossier as George had labelled his notes on the man.

The canuck spoke up and went on and on about two bankers that had been found dead after their complete portfolios had been raided and PW then added his information about one ‘bloke’ as he called him, doing the same in Sydney. George frowned and reread that part of his report. The canuck was making no mention of the USA boys who’d been targeted. He would correct that when humiliating the canuck was going to be the most effective.

Deitmann relayed the summary of what his people had observed in Yunnan China, and he had their attention on this one. He smirked to himself, it’s always the sex and the drugs that gets peoples attention. He always reveled in this part of operations. The way they all laid out their hands and the way he always trumped them. It may be Five Eyes, but hey the good ‘ol US of A still had the best eyes and ears around. He let the pause drag on a little too long after he had finished then just as he was about to ask for summations …

“Florian Berg here, German observer prior to Germany’s full admission and expansion to Six Eyes status.” Shit the krauts, thought Deitmann, they were supposed to just observe not participate. “It is obvious from our satellite intercepts that the weapons used to disable the sex trafficking vehicles were the same as those of the desert interventions. The ones used to break open the containers appeared to have specific surface contact explosive mechanisms whereas the others were penetrators!”

Jeeezuss, and he’s contributing information unknown to me. Fuck it, someone will fry for this. Now wait and regain momentum George boy!

Deitmann was the grandson of german emigres, but he hated Germans. Whether because of the stories his grandparents had told of Prussian repression or because of the effects of the wars on his family, he didn’t care. Hatred was hatred and he wore this one on his lapel.

“Good onya Florian, we concur here,” added Captain Jim Ploughwright. “I’ve just been seconded to this intelligence unit from the Special Operations Task Group ops I led in retrieving the survivors and we found no residual weapons material whatsoever. Your description fits the situation but we have no idea of the operational capability of the penetrator weaponry.”

“Now that’s very interesting!” commented Maeve. “Certainly makes sense if it is the same organisation responsible,” chimed in the canuck. Major Claude Renoir, was frowning and nodding into the camera at the same time.

Deitmann fumed at all the nodding faces on his screen, each in its own window, but nodded distractedly along with them. What a shit fuck, all of a sudden his superiority was gone and now the aussie was raving on about pulling surveillance satellites out of position to scan the sites of the interventions. George looked around his magnificent wood paneled office with its floor to ceiling glass doored book shelves and mentally winced. He’d had the room specially built to ooze power and dominance, all the more so to dominate meetings and conferences like this. Fat lot of good it was doing him now!

“You right there George mate?” asked Ploughwright. Deitmann made hand signs to indicate an important phone call and turned away from the screen momentarily. He came back to the screen smiling and ready to run over anyone who got in his way.

“I’ll see what assets we have to spare given the Ukraine and Israel situations and if you can each do the same we can decide who is are best suited for this agreed upon analysis. In the meantime I will arrange for some forensic teams to drop in on the sites via Stealth Wolf helos so forward me any names of operatives you would like to be involved. Now please excuse me, an urgent call …” and he cut his connection but kept the others open so he could watch how they organised themselves without him. This debacle wouldn’t happen again.