Marshall Rescues Sophie’s Cat
Michael
I figure there are plenty of SANDMAN protocols for events like Sophie's 90-day "administrative transfer." Like having her rent paid remotely, her civilian cover and other affairs taken care of by Granite Peak, etc. And Marshall knows it's perfectly reasonable to assume that some goons from GP have already been through her apartment as part of last weekend's likely interrogation and security check when Sophie arrived at Granite Peak; Marshall would expect nothing less. But these protocols also probably mean that Livermore has a copy of her apartment keys and the proper cover to go into her apartment without running into problems from the building manager or anything. And, in turn, GP would expect URIEL to make a trip out to the apartment after things had cooled off and Sophie had been officially taken off the "suspect" list insofar as being compromised or an enemy dupe.
Sophie lives in a recently-built apartment complex (mid-'60s by the looks of it) in Castro Valley. Marshall's eye deduces that the inhabitants are mostly young people in their 20s employed in either the City, the East Bay, or some outliers who work in Silicon Valley. A mix of blue- and white-collar types, bachelors and singles. A few pensioners. Good "protective coloring" as Mitch might say. Marshall walks into the apartment vestibule, uses the keys on the front door of the complex, and goes up to unit 24 on the second floor. When Marshall unlocks Sophie's apartment door, he is immediately met with a black cat, with a collar, who looks healthy and in good shape but is very yowly and loud upon seeing Marshall. (I'm keeping the somewhat ludicrous detail that the GP black-baggers didn't know what to do with the cat and didn't want to bother killing it so they just ripped open a bag of cat food and hoped for the best. It might be implausible but I just like the idea too much.) Marshall checks the collar: the cat's name is "Lena" and its tags have Sophie's home number on them.
Marshall can give me an Observation roll at an 18: +2 to your usual skill because of Psychology and knowing Sophie. This will be the first roll to sort of case the apartment.
>>> SUCCESS
Brant
Marshall brought a traveling pet crate with him, as well as a can of tuna. He had Dave wait in the car outside.
Michael
Someone's obviously been through the place. There are just the slightest signs of it—a pot-holder out of place here, a crooked framed print there—but they're unmistakable to the tradecraft professional's eye. Marshall treads lightly to get around little Lena and get a bird's eye view of the place.
Sophie's apartment is a very modest 1-bedroom, with living room separated from kitchen by a half-wall and a little breakfast island with two stools on the living room side. No kitchen table. The living room is actually pretty spacious and has a modest collection of bookshelves, mostly low, two-shelf ones that look scuffed and like they were picked up at yard sales. No television, but a fairly nice sound system with about 80 LPs; a quick look at the spines reveals they're nearly all classical music with some very middle-of-the-road jazz from 15-20 years ago interspersed. A retail copy of Mansa's Ikenga is in there too. The radio's grey-green dial is tuned to KPFA, our friends at Pacifica Radio in Berkeley.
I'm not sure if Marshall would go to the books first but hey, considering her job title and duties... the books seem to be largely separated into three broad groupings: 1) dry European histories from a variety of the best Oxbridge minds of the past 50 years or so, mostly focusing on mass politics, cultural history, and the history of the Middle East (both ancient and contemporary), and a sizable portion of American histories of, again, mass politics and mass media; 2) linguistics texts and foreign language dictionaries; and 3) Some Weird Shit, mostly recent pulp-ish texts from the last 5 years on ancient pseudo-history, modern reinterpretations of ancient myth, etc. That Carl Sagan book about intelligent life in the universe with the bit on Oannes is a good example of the kind of stuff in the third grouping: ancient Weirdness with a patina of scientific and historical rigor. There are a number of Bay Area newspapers, national news magazines, and cryptic crossword puzzle books on the glass coffee table. Also a mug with an old teabag and the residue of a half-drunk cup of tea now evaporated. The art on the walls is preppy college dorm/doctor waiting room stuff: Impressionism prints and bland artsy photography. (Kitchen and bathroom and bedroom to come but I want to pause here to give you a chance to take it all in.)
Brant
Lena. Currently in Charley’s care.
Before he delves too deep, Marshall will lure Lena into the crate and lock her inside. "Here kitty kitty ... want some tuna? Let's get you out of here. A life spent in Castro Valley is a life not worth living." Once she's secured, he'll wander around and thumb through the things you listed -- the books and records, the old papers. He takes the Ikegna album. He adjusts the wall art so that it hangs straight. Then he goes to the bedroom.
Michael
Marshall has a look through the media in the apartment for notes, clues, anything that might be out of place. Sophie's handwriting in the cryptic crossword mags is neat (and in pen!) and as Marshall does a brief spin through for messages—classic way of embedding cryptography going back to World War II, that—he doesn't note anything out of place on a quick read-through but does "bag and tag" the books for further crypto-analysis at Livermore (will likely need to approach Charley for that). Most of Sophie's library is un-annotated; she observed operational protocols and didn't take any SANDMAN-related notes on any of this stuff, although it's clear some of the books are pre-owned and have (grad) student notes scribbled in the margins: not in Sophie's hand. The newspapers are an array of about a dozen random issues from the past 6 months; again, no pattern evident on first glance in choosing to preserve these particular issues, but this would also be something to use some Intelligence Analysis on back at the ranch. Assume Marshall will bag and tag those as well.
As Marshall picks up the Ikenga LP he carefully checks out inside the LP sleeve and gatefold, eyeing Sebastian Keiner's Afropsychedelic art on the cover with a wary glance. One more Observation roll please (at 16).
>>>> SUCCESS
Nothing fishy about the Ikenga LP at first glance but Marshall has a weird instinct that given how much it stands out in Sophie's record collection it should go in the bag for deeper analysis.
The bedroom is cluttered, small, and the queen-sized bed is unmade. Lots of old-fashioned bedroom furniture, an old, scuffed but solidly-built vanity with a vintage mirror, its surface cluttered with more accessories (earrings, pins, necklaces) than makeup. On the vanity are a couple of portrait b/w photos that look to date to the 1950s of a young girl in pigtails with a broad, well-dressed, middle-aged couple: the fashions and hairstyles scream postwar Britain. Clothes in a wicker hamper, unsorted clean laundry on a plush side chair and in piles near the closet. Marshall checks the usual places for stashes: under the bed, the top of the bedroom closet, with secret compartments being unlikely in an apartment like this one. Marshall does find a fairly small lockbox at the top of the closet, gives it a shake: sounds like there's papers and a bunch of heavy objects inside. It's got a key lock on it and Marshall would guess that it's already been attended to by the black-baggers and anything interesting is gone. The lock appears to have been previously jimmied and Marshall turns the knob to open it.
Inside the lockbox are all of Sophie's important documents: her (real) UK passport, birth certificate, immigration records, etc. Also in the box are what looks like nearly a hundred gold Krugerrands: present-day value, Marshall estimates, at around $100/troy ounce, about $10,000. Not a bad little purse of portable getaway money, Sophie. That'll get you far and keep you afloat awhile pretty much anywhere in the Free World.
Pasted onto the inside lid of the lockbox are two small scraps of paper: one is a faded snapshot, with the crenellated edge of a photo from the 1920s or 1930s. It appears to be a landscape shot of a mitteleuropean village of some kind. Next to that is a piece of paper carefully cut from what looks like a Hebrew Bible including three verses:
Brant
Marshall closes the lock-box and stuffs it in an empty suitcase or duffel bag — presumably there something like that stuffed in the closet — and takes that, as well. Then he lays down on Sophie's bed. He lights a joint, and takes a deep hit. A clock ticks in the other room. Then he says out loud, to himself, quietly: "I am Sophie Edelstein. I am a child of the Holocaust. I am a former spy. I have been three-times traumatized. I am lonely and alone in an alien land at the edge of the world. This is not my home. It is just a place where my body rests. I live in the world of my mind." With that, can I make some kind of Psychology roll to deduce if there is some thing to this apartment that would reveal Sophie's thinking? Why did she leave the cat if she knew she might never come back? Why did she not store the cash and the photos at an anonymous bank somewhere? Anything he can surmise?
Michael
Oh, lovely. Can you actually do a Meditation roll first? And then we can take a look at Psychology.
>>> SUCCESS
Okay, let's do Psychology now. I'm gonna give you a +4 to this, +3 for the Empathy ability which even though you're not conversing does apply here, and a +1 from the Meditation. That won't be the only use of the Meditation, of course, but it also applies to this roll. Psychology-22?
>>> SUCCESS
Marshall has nothing as crude and blunt as a "vision" here; cannabis itself isn't sufficient for that, psychopharmacologically, especially for someone with Marshall's kind of tolerance, he knows deep down. But he does very quickly slip into a theta state that allows him to try radical empathy to understand what Sophie's final few days in Castro Valley involved. And all he can sense is... pain. Emotional, psychic, and physical. Attachment to poor innocent Lena leading Sophie to not give her away to either friends, acquaintances, or authorities, not trusting any of them in the face of a possible suicide mission. Psychic pain concentrated in memory, in the photos in this bedroom and the memories of coming to America in her lockbox: the entire stretch of Sophie's life from Theresienstadt to Dugway, Utah: getaway money never used, adoptive parents never seen again, biological mother never known, who all Sophie knew of her was her home village in Moravia. And... some kind of physical pain, yes. Marshall sinks deeper down into the radical empathetic experience, letting the rich Mendocino skunk do its work. He turns his head on the pillow and sees, at the edge of the crumpled bedsheet, little drops of dried blood on the edge of the bed nearest the nightstand. Marshall is no blood spatter expert, of course, but it seems like the drops are far too small to be from, say, a bloody nose or a serious wound. More like the tiny dots that come from someone cutting themselves shaving, or pricking themselves with a pin.
As Marshall considers this, underneath the telephone on the nightstand, which Marshall can see under thanks to the rubberized non-slip pads that keep the phone a few millimeters off the nightstand surface, Marshall can see what looks to be an antique sewing pin.
Brant
Marshall sits up; he finds this genuinely bizarre. He moves the phone and takes the pin. Then he goes to the bathroom to check out what's in there.
Michael
The bathroom is, like the bedroom, a tight squeeze. It has modern fixtures, the tub is tiny (which I'm sure was a mortal offense to a Britisher like Sophie) and all of Sophie's hygiene products are still here. The medicine cabinet shows no prescription bottles, just OTC stuff. The litter box is in here and it's pretty foul. There's a Kotex box here on the sink with some odds and ends in it: coins, rubber bands, hair ties and clips, and a disassembled cheap retractable ballpoint pen: its shell has been cracked open and inside the box are the nib, head, and spring, but no evident ink tube.
Nothing else of real note. No reading material by the toilet, no suspiciously clean areas, it's obvious from the state of things that Sophie didn't bring much, if anything, from this bathroom with her on the flight to Utah.
Brant
Marshall picks up the pen and stares at it for a minute. “The fuck were you playing at, girl?” He tries to jostle the medicine cabinet to see if it comes off the wall — presumably this would’ve been tested by the GP team but old habits.
Michael
Yeah, it's removable. Nothing back there behind the cabinet.
Brant
Marshall goes outside with the cat crate and bag. He tosses them gently into the car. He tells Dave to go inside and start moving the books into the trunk of the car. Then he goes back inside to see if he can find the building super’s office.
Michael
Yeah, place like this likely has an on-site super. Especially in 1973, I would imagine.
Brant
He’ll knock on the office door and put on a big smile.
Michael
"Howdy there. What can I do for you?" An old-school California okie greets Marshall at the door to the office; he's seen his like up in Sonoma, old farmers or general store-owners: weather-beaten, probably about 65 or 70, casting a wary eye at this young-ish longhair type. The little black-and-white TV is on in the super's office, sounds like a mid-Saturday afternoon war movie is on.
Brant
The very first words out of Marshall's mouth are in The Voice: "Stop. Listen." In-game terms I wanna use Rapier Wit to stun him, then Hypnotism to entrance him.
Michael
whaaaaaaaaaa yes ! ! It's been a while, I gotta look all this up!
Brant
(my head-canon is that neurolinguistic programming gives the speaker's voice a weird, extremely deep reverb in the mind of the listener, and like causes their vision to go blurry at the edges for a moment, etc.)
Michael
(agreed)
Okay, so that's Public Speaking-19 vs. the super's Will to start with the Rapier Wit. Actually, make it 20 for the cool description.
>>>> SUCCESS
>>>> SUCCESS
The superintendent's consciousness is pierced by the generic conversational ariktu that Marshall uses in non-mission-specific situations like this one. The super stops, and listens. Hypnotism roll please. Give you a +2 for the use of Rapier Wit, so Hypnotism-20.
>>>> CRITICAL SUCCESS
That is a crit.
In his exploratory hypnotic urgings, Marshall finds that the man, named Harold, is actually pretty strong-willed; it seems like he's been through a lot and doesn't suffer fools or manipulators gladly. Marshall can sense resistance and strength at the center of him, but ultimately all humanity bows down before the almighty Source Code. (CORRUPTION ROLL: 1d6-2)
/roll 1d6 - 2 = 4
oof, but also I kind of love it
Brant
Hell yeah, this is def a Corruption situation.
Michael
The crit will basically allow Marshall to do any array of present or post-hypnotic suggestions he wants.
Brant
Marshall gestures "step aside" with his hand and then moves into Harold's office. He closes the door behind him quietly after looking up and down the hallway to make sure there isn't anyone around. Then, using all his neurolinguistic skills, the clicks and echoes in the back of his throat, the Source Code:
"Tonight you will replace the lock on apartment [Sophie's apartment number]. You will also place a piece of tape at the base of the door, between the door and the frame. Like this. Watch me." Marshall grabs the tape dispenser from the old man's desk and demonstrates. "Confirm that you understand."
Michael
Harold nods, pushes up his glasses. "Yeah. I get it."
He looks tired, his eyes are just sort of drifting in their sockets, but Marshall can tell: he's old but physically fit and dextrous—he'd have to be for a job like this—and he can be trusted to do this well and carefully.
Brant
Marshall nods. "Every day you will check the tape on the door. If you ever see the tape broken or not correctly attached as you left it, you will call the number I am about to recite. I am not going to write this number down. You will remember it like you remember your own birthday. Are you ready?"
Michael
His voice isn't robotic, but it does lack inflection. He's speaking carefully, moderating his accent so he can be understood, speaking a bit slowly. "My birthday is April 14, 1907, sir. Born at 2:55 pm in Enid, Oklahoma. It is burned in my memory 'coz my mama told me when I was but a lad. Give me the number, I'll keep an eye on that door and remember that telephone number like my life depends on it."
Hypnotism does make some people loquacious, Marshall knows. The source code is making this man take pains to let Marshall know he will do the job right. He responds well to Authority.
Brant
Marshall nods. He then recites the number for Sunshine's line at the Mission, twice. He asks Harold to recite it back. Then: "When the person answers the phone, say the following: 'Confirming Dr. Redgrave's reservation for tomorrow at the Castro.' Then hang up. Confirm you understand."
Michael
Slowly, Harold nods. "'Confirming Dr. Redgrave's reservation for tomorrow at the Castro.' Yes. I understand and will remember that, sir."
Brant
Finally: "I am going to leave now. You will not remember I was here. If anyone asks, the brother of the tenant in [Sophie's apartment] came by to pick up her cat. Now sit down and watch the TV." With that, Marshall lets himself out. Assuming Dave is done loading up the Caddy, Marshall gets in back, tells him to brings him to Livermore, and lights a cigarette.
Michael
Beautiful.