Mara Jade is SHIELD's ☕ Queen (marajade) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-09-14 23:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, mara jade |
Narrative; Mara Jade
Who: Mara Jade
When: 12 September (slightly backdated)
Where: Hassenstadt, Latvero-Romanian disputed territory
What: Mara Jade the spy.
Rating: Low
Status: COMPLETE.
There were times that Mara Jade wondered if all of the planets in the Republic had been so completely varied in cultural types in the days before space-travel as it seemed to her that Earth managed to be. In her own galaxy there were a myriad of cultural variations, different species, different tribes, different races, and most of them did find places throughout the planets of the galaxy, but at the same time it seemed as if the planets had personalities similar to how the countries and continents on Earth seemed to do. It was a question impossible to determine the answer to, and mostly irrelevant to the task at hand. At face value the variant of skin tones and looks of Eastern Europe was remarkably similar to the variant of Western Europe, but the subtlety was in the details. Fabrics chosen, patterns and colors mixed, cuts of fabric, the choice of lipstick, the tiny, seemingly insignificant details that made the difference between a visitor and a local. They were the sort of details someone that had been the Emperor’s Hand was trained to notice, because they were the sort of details that would make the difference between the important individuals accepting you for who you were claiming you were and them giving you a second look. At the moment, those little details had been made easy with the simple navy blue uniform of a maid of the Curtea Hassenstadt Hotel. Paired with a pair of large glasses, deep red lipstick, and a blonde wig, it was unlikely anyone would give her a second glance and that was precisely the way Mara preferred it. She had passed through the halls, ducking her head in a subservient smile to hotel guests only twice, and now Mara stood in an otherwise empty room on the fourth floor of the Curtea Hassenstadt, the door behind her locked, a service cart blocking the doorway to provide warning should someone enter the room, but considering she had marked it booked for the evening before she had wandered up here - that was unlikely. She had chosen the Curtea Hassenstadt for its location. Here in the bustling and prosperous government and shopping district of Hassenstadt the hotel’s fourth floor windows provided a view of a building that was supposedly postal services, but which was one of three locations she and Nick had marked as possible fronts for the HYDRA cell the informants in Manila had pointed them towards. She pulled back the curtains and slid a chair over to the large picture window. Raising her hand to her glasses she pushed the button on the side, taking several photographs in quick succession for review later. Then the glasses were replaced by binoculars and Mara surveyed the large stone building in front of her. It was a large building divided into three major portions, with a large central clock tower. Made of stone, it had a number of windows, it looked for all the world like government buildings she’d seen in half a dozen different countries around this world, and a fair number she’d seen in other worlds besides. And in this case, from the number of courtiers and trucks that had pulled into and out of the back loading zones, she believed it was likely a postal office as it claimed to be. The types of items unloaded matched simple postal freight. At the same time, this didn’t mean, however, that it wasn’t also a HYDRA base. A postal office with the comings and goings, would make an easy cover for deliveries so long as the local government was willing to overlook such comings and goings. And for a fee? It was certainly possible. A legitimate government operation, particularly if HYDRA was in league with local government - not an impossibility - would make for an interesting, and nearly fool-proof front for a cell. Nearly fool-proof, however, didn’t mean fool-proof when Mara Jade was interested in your operation. She’d been trained by the best in the Galaxy and then she’d had Jedi training, years of experience as a Smuggler, and SHIELD training on top of that. If there was a thread waiting to be pulled -- and there was almost always a thread waiting to be pulled -- Mara intended to find it. The first sign of the thread was two hours later as Mara had been wishing for an en suite coffee maker and the truly terrible hotel coffee that typically came along with it. What appeared to be a typical postal service truck, the markings and logos that had been seen on every other vehicle that had been in and out of the loading dock, pulled in. It looked like a perfect mail truck, which was - a part of the thread. None of the vehicles that had pulled in and out had this level of perfection - an odd wheel, a logo that was scratched and scraped, the wear and tear the government vehicles were absent on this one. By all effects this was a perfect postal service vehicle - a level of detail that might have kept it from being stopped by other government stops throughout the country but which was what pulled Mara’s attention to it now. Mara straightened, and focused in on the truck as it was unloaded. The first smaller crates and boxes looked like the typical postal baskets and crates that had been used throughout the day. She frowned and lowered the binoculars to consider the view in front of her. A local police car had pulled into place in front of the building and was parked on the side of the road. Mara raised the binoculars again and this time she swept a trained eye over the entirety of the building. The foot traffic around the building had increased in the past ten minutes, several people stood apparently chatting outside the front of the building, and as she swept back to the truck, a larger crate - larger than any she’d seen thus far was being rolled out and into the privacy of the unloading docks. Mara used the camera in the binoculars to snap photos as it went past and continued to do so around the perimeter of the building as the truck was being unloaded. As it drove away, she sat back in her seat her eye on the police car and the odd groups of ‘pedestrians’ that had been simply in place around the front of the building. Mara reached out in the Force trying to pinpoint the precise personalities around the building. The distance was too great, and her lack of knowledge of the individuals meant that it was too difficult to pin down any specific individuals’ emotion, but it was no surprise to encounter a heightened sense of watchfulness and alertness, and with that discovering there was no surprise when they all dispersed within the next five minutes. The photos would be timestamped, but Mara made note of the time anyway and settled back into her chair. The first location she had observed had been a tiny little cafe on a back-street, and she’d realised that it was a front for some illegal smuggling, but nothing with deeper ties than local criminals wishing to fill their pockets and make some money on items that were difficult for the locals to purchase legally. She’d watched deliveries, and movements, and found a pattern, but had found nothing on indicate that HYDRA was involved in the operation. But this morning her sense of this place was different. It was a legitimate government operation, but there was something else happening and it would not be the first time HYDRA had influenced government organizations or integrated themselves into something legal. Even outside of the startling audacity of having grown within SHIELD for all those years, Mara had stumbled across such when she and her team had been in Argentina, a blind eye turned to operations for a price. If the plains clothes individuals and the ‘police’ had been security for a delivery, the question then was what the typical security around the building looked like and that was a question that Mara turned her attention to next. Over the next few hours she spent her time watching every person that came in and out, the cars that were parked around the perimeter, every person in uniform, but several that were not. Photos were snapped, mental notes taken, and by the time Mara Jade was ready to pull the draperies across the picture window and return the maid’s cart to the main floor she had an idea of what she would be walking into when she went to deliver a package. The young woman with dirty blonde hair that stepped up to the corner across from the post office was carrying a book bag with several packages addressed to various addresses across the city of Hassenstadt. She wore overly large frames, otherwise unremarkable in every way from the color of her hair, to the cut of the jeans that she wore. The expression was one of boredom as she waited while busses, bicycles, and dozens of cars that were nearly thirty years old rushed past her on the large boulevard she was about to cross. The expression was deceptive, however, and by the time the light had turned Mara Jade had used the Force to identify potential security for the building. A homeless man curled up on the bus stop nearby was sleeping less than he would like to have people believe, and a second man who sat inside a car with a newspaper for all intents and purposes reading and waiting for his partner to come out of the post office. Mara stepped across the street, senses alert as she made her way past the giant statue in the front of the building and began to climb the stairs to the post office proper. The large doors opened easily and she stepped in on marble - or possibly marble - floors, into a waiting room that felt as if it would have been less out of place in a court or other higher government office rather than a post office. Yet, the building had been a post office for decades now and she stepped up to join the lines. As someone stepped in behind her - not someone she was worrying about - she used the distraction as an opportunity to scope the room. A single postal worker stood at a work-space behind the counter sorting male where everyone could see him. A ripple of muscle under the sleeve of his shirt suggested a very fit postal worker, and while he seemed to be intent on his packages… In easy line of sight stood a schoolgirl with a backpack slid over her shoulder, opening half zipped, school-book already half out. The brief nudge it took in the Force to get the book to slide out to crack on the floor was less effort than brushing a hand across her hair. The book hit the marble floor and sent a sharp echo through the waiting area. Behind the counter everyone acted with the sort of startled glances in the direction of the noise that Mara would have expected, but the one who was organizing packages - the sort of work that Mara would have suspected could have been done in a non-public area anyway - had an affected air of curiosity that was hiding an alertness the other two did not have. His hands had moved from the package to out of view under the counter, and as he realized the what and why’s of the noise, and returned to his work, his attention all more alert. Satisfied with the response, Mara shifted her own packages as if she was afraid one of them might fall out and turned her attention to a bored review of the windows. The queue moved forward and Mara moved with it, pulling out a cell phone to review the time and then sliding it back into her jeans pocket, surreptitiously snapping a line of ‘accidental photos’ as she did so. As best she could tell the windows were wired with security, the doors into the back are of the post office were also wired. Outside of the main waiting room was a grand staircase that went up and promised more government offices of various types, and Mara decided to test that particular theory as soon as she mailed her packages. She finished her errand, stuffed the receipt back into her pocket along with the spare change and pulled out her phone as she started walking back across the room. She stopped at the bottom of the steps, staring at a web page on it, and glanced upwards with a falsified uncertainty. She had yet to gather any interest, which for a moment made her wonder if she’d simply mis-read everything. She climbed the stairs, phone still in her hand, address still in her hand, and she’d reached the top, scoped the hallway, and made it halfway down it before a man in a dark blue uniform stepped out from a door behind her. “Pot să vă ajut?” Mara turned offering a smile, and she waved her phone at him. “Îmi pare rău. Caut pentru funcția de judecător Anghelescu?” “Nu este aici. Trebuie să pleci.” The man in the uniform had walked steadily towards her and now placed himself between her and the end of the hall-way. It was a strategic move, and Mara could sense even without the assistance of the Force that any persistence here would end with her being forcefully escorted from the building. She smiled apologetically, with the persistence of someone that simply wanted to find where she was supposed to be. “Nu este aici? Poți să-mi spui unde pot găsi judecătorul Anghelesu? Am primit o adresă greșită?” “Nu este aici. Trebuie să pleci.” Mara accepted this repeated statement with a series of questions interlaced with apologies, and as they reached the steps, she considered whether or not to suggest with the Force that she had not been there at all. But her sense told her that she had garnered no unusual attention and while she hadn’t seen any cameras, that didn’ t mean they did not exist. If they did and he were asked, the fact that he did not remember would raise more alarms than if he remembered, so instead she merely reached out with the Force to reinforce the idea that she was a silly woman, lost, and incapable of following simple instructions. He left her at the top of the stairs, stern, but seemingly already bored with the intrusion. The steps down were traversed without any further difficulty. Mara kept her eyes on the phone, and her senses alert as she exited the building. She took the local bus the opposite direction of where she wanted to go. She entered a shopping center in the center of town, changed clothing, dropped the wig & the glasses, and exited the mall to take the bus back to Fury. |