Monday, October 23, 2017

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: P is for PURLOINED PLANS


P is for PURLOINED PLANS

The unremarkable green sedan stopped at the mouth of the alley, then pulled away and drove on, after Agent Q stepped out of the car and headed down the narrow passage, past the overflowing trash cans and rain soaked refuse. He slowed his pace as he approached the angled base of a fire escape, and using the fingers of his right hand, pushed an L-shaped bracket on the side of it as he continued on.
A small section of the brick wall behind the fire escape swung inwards. Q passed through the dark aperture. The wall closed behind him with no trace of a door for any who might’ve followed.
Q moved down a dark hallway, stopping when he reached the single door at the end of it. He fished a keychain out of his pants pocket, and found the small, round-headed silver key that opened it. Flipping on the light, he stepped inside and closed the door behind himself, pausing to hear the locking mechanism click into place.
By all outward appearances it was simply a cramped maintenance room. There was a grubby mop bucket off to the side, some mops and brooms stacked in one corner, a floor drain framed with a lip of concrete about an inch and three-quarters high, and a large water main pipe bulging out of the far wall with a bright red valve wheel on the side. He twisted the valve wheel ten degrees to the right, and waited. He heard the faint his of hydraulics activating, and the room descended.
When the incognito elevator reached its target level, three floors sub-basement, Q stepped off and into another hallway; this one a brightly lit corridor walled with teak paneling and padded with plush alpine green carpeting. There were office doors intermittently spaced on either side, but the one Q wanted was at the end.
“Sit down, Q,” Reginald said. He looked considerably older since the last time Q had met with him face to face. “Another bit of bother that needs clearing up. This time the client is…well…us.”
“Us?” Q said, trying to make himself comfortable in the stiff-backed chair that sat facing the agency director’s desk. It was small and hard and made one feel like they were back in grade school. Q fought the urge to run his hands under the seat to look for waxy blobs of old chewing gum.
“Yes. A madman calling himself The Bronze Panther has stolen a number of dossiers from out intelligence office in Paris and headed back to Ceylon. A great deal of our personnel have been compromised.”
“Including me, sir?”
“Impossible to tell,” Reginald said with a sigh. “The office was a mess. We still don’t have all the pieces put back together, and even when we do, it’ll take some time and lucky guesswork to know exactly what he got away with.”
“And I’m to go to Ceylon and retrieve these documents and tie up any loose ends regarding the spreading of said information.”
“Correct, Agent Q.” Reginald dropped a manila envelope on his desk. “Everything you need is in there. The usual passports, papers, intel we were able to glean on this Bronze Tiger.”
Q grabbed the folder and stood. “Is there a deadline?”
“Success,” Reginald said in a quiet and firm tone.
“Understood.”
With that, Q was gone, back to the top level and the green sedan that would be waiting in the parking lot of a restaurant three blocks west.




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