The Recurrance

[Batavië]

Southport-on-Sea
Borough of Westridge
Cornavia

Harold Litton had made it a habit many years ago to swing by the post office on Andrew Street once a week and check his mailbox. Well, it wasn't actually his and there was usually nothing in it, especially in the last six or so months. Today was different. He could tell before unlocking the box that his planned end of summer holiday to the northern Cornavian islands would have to be cancelled. The letter had a return address handwritten on the back of the envelope for a P.O. box in Danzig. He stuffed it into his blazer pocket before continuing on his way back home.

His flat was nothing special. Small, but comfortable and right in the city centre. He also had a great view of the harbour. Litton turned on the coffee maker, set his briefcase down in the entry hall and kicked off his loafers as he made himself comfortable on his sofa. He stared at the unopened envelope lying on his coffee table. He didn't touch it until he had his coffee cup in his hand. Finally he opened it very cleanly with a letter opener and read the contents.


Southport-on-Sea
Airport

The author of the letter, which Agent Harold Litton was currently finishing, cleared customs with ease using an Arendaaler passport. He purchased the top three morning papers in the terminal before boarding the train to take him into the city of Southport, specifically the Borough of Oldtown. He was a man of a respectable age, yet still completely mobile. His grey hair was actually something that he was proud of and he always dressed impeccably. He carried only a brown soft leather attaché case and an old suitcase, not one of those ugly and newer types that had wheels. Despite his handsome salary he avoided unnecessary expenses, such as taking a taxi from the airport. And besides, he enjoyed travelling by train, whether it was for twenty minutes, such as today, or twenty hours.

His hotel, however, was not something that he personally was paying for. His secretary back in Vlaanderen had arranged that for him and, due to his rather high rank in the Veiligheidspolitie, he received more than adequate accommodations. A room with a view, within walking distance to all of the main places in Southport and a very modern feel to the building. Despite being in many ways a traditionalist, the handler indulged in expensive hotels that he himself never paid for.

He checked in using a Wieser passport and spoke German with the porter. His room, located on the tenth floor, pleased him after a long journey. His flight lasting over three hours, the handler wanted to do nothing more than undress and fall asleep. But it was only 3 in the afternoon and he still had not made contact. He ordered coffee and biscuits from room service and hopped in the shower while he waited.


Southport-on-Sea
Borough of Westridge

The two men arranged a late afternoon rendezvous in the Westridge Borough and decided upon a place other than their usual meeting spot. Agent Litton suggested Café Nyland. Feeling as though he could now make use of his expenditure privileges the handler took a taxi to Westridge from Oldtown. He did not feel like navigating the city's public transportation options and he hadn't been in Cornavia's capital for many months. After paying his fare he stepped out to see before him a modern and trendy looking café. At least it looked quiet.

Litton was sipping some iced coffee type drink that probably cost him double his bus fare to get here. He curtly acknowledged the arrival of the older gentleman who sat across from him by the window.

'Good to see you Andrik.' Litton said quietly in English as they shook hands as though they were any two friends or business partners having an after hours drink.

'You know better than to use my name in public, my friend.' Litton gave a small smile knowing that it was unlikely they were being watched or followed any way. At least not yet.

Andrik Voort was definitely the old-school type of intelligence worker. He had been recruited by the then Staatsveiligheid at the age of 24 and had slowly risen the ranks to become a handler of his own. His superb fieldwork, mostly in Arendaal and later Cornavia, made him an expert in terms of cultural and political knowledge. Yet because he still had not gotten used to the fact that he was no longer working for a communist paternal state, he often remained paranoid these days. More than usual.

He ordered a plain coffee and added the cream and sugar himself.

'You read the news so you know what's going on.' Andrik was pleased with Litton ever since they recruited him in 1994. Right in the midst of the chaos when Tyskreich went democratic. It had made it easy to get a reliable field agent and a native Cornavian at that undetected.

Litton was still rather curious. Since the elections in March and the end of communism in Batavië he hadn't been contacted and for a while he thought that his high-paying side work was over. He got into the routine of writing for the weekly magazine, his main career, and forgetting about his espionage activities. He still sent his monthly reports in and still checked the P.O. box on Andrew Street, but no word until now.

'The Claridge House Mole issue is definitely going to be the topic that every newspaper in Scandinavia and Germania will cover soon. The Cornavians want files and documents and Vlaanderen is probably going to hand them over to show them goodwill.' Andrik said this with distaste and sipped more coffee to cleanse his pallet.

'How does that involve you and I exactly?' asked Litton.

'SV...or Vepo rather, is by nature reluctant to comply. But the Prime Minister's Office sent in a formal request for certain documents today. 1980s stuff. Claridge House stuff. So I made those particular files disappear for a while.'

Litton almost choked on his frappé whatever drink upon hearing this. He saw the headline on the morning news that certain documents at Vepo archives could not be found today, but he had no idea that Andrik Voort was involved.

'What are you going to do?' Litton managed to ask.

Andrik finished his coffee and took out a few Cornavian Sovereign coins to cover both their bills.

'It's not what I'm going to do, dear boy, it's what you're going to do.' he slid a folded piece of note paper across the table. On it was scribbled an address in Northwood Borough.

'Go there and get our mole friend to meet me in Oldtown tomorrow. Make it clear that this isn't optional.'

Andrik left Café Nyland before Litton could ask any redundant or unnecessary questions of him and decided that today he would walk back to Oldtown and his hotel. There was still plenty of sunlight.

 

[Confederal Republics]

27 Commonwealth Colonnade
Sears House, Cabinet Intelligence Committee
Cabinet Hall Complex
North Park, Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

When agencies of the Cornavian intelligence community were conducting an operation with the eventual aim of carrying out arrests and sufficient prosecutions, they most commonly worked with the Public Security Wing. Though nominally a subdivision of Greater Southport Metropolitan Police, the 800-strong PSW held significant responsibilities as Cornavia's premier national security police, including counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism roles where it worked alongside the Cantonal Anti-Terrorist Branches that had been founded under the Terrorism Act of 1986.

Though the Cabinet Intelligence Committee was officially made up only of the Cabinet Chancellor - or rather, her Chief Security Advisor Christine Collins - and of the heads of the three agencies that made up Cornavia's intelligence community, meetings could be joined by senior officials in relevant fields of intelligence and security. As such, Detective Deputy Chief Inspector Francis Kearny was a man used to the interior of the Committee's meeting room in his capacity as the head of the Public Security Wing's Counter-Espionage Branch, being called to its meetings whenever issues of counter-intelligence were at hand.

Right now, Kearny was listening with lukewarm interest the presentation being held by his counterpart in the Security Service - Director of Counter-Intelligence Brian Rickman - dealing with the topic at hand, which was the Batavian government and the connections of its former Communist regime with espionage in Cornavia during the Cold War. A veteran spycatcher, Kearny had transferred into Public Security in 1989, and he'd been around first-hand to witness some of the investigations carried out by the Cornavian security services against Communist infiltration in the 1990s, before transferring into the Security Service as a liaison officer between 2001 and 2006 before accepting a post at the head of Counter-Espionage. And, at least from his own point of view, this gave him the right to consider Rickman as a desk agent trying to lecture people more experienced than him.

"...so, we're drawn to conclude that there's a potential cover-up being place, and that the seriousness of the situation is highlighted by the fact that whoever is behind it apparently moved in the moment the Batavian government acted upon Mrs. Lewis's public statement. A second alternative is that the documents in question were destroyed by SV officers during the collapse of the De Graaf junta."

"So you're of the opinion that we should pursue the reopening of the Claridge House case among others?", Christine Collins asked.

Jonathan Wilcox answered on behalf of his subordinate before Rickman got a word out, "Yes". Kearny noted that Michael Drake, Wilcox's special assistant, wasn't around, but shrugged it off as inconsequential.

Pig's bollocks, Kearny thought. The case of a suspected Communist mole in the Ministry of External Affairs had been the darkest chapter in the history of Cornavian counter-intelligence, for they'd never caught the mole. Too much evidence on the existence of such a mole had been seen to write it off as a false alarm, but the investigation jointly conducted by the Security Service and Public Security had yielded only false results. More than a few careers had been ruined by the failure in finding the mole.

"Could be the mole's retired on emigrated", Major General Thor Henriksen from Military Intelligence commented. "Hell, he could be even dead given the time frame we're dealing with."

"True", Wilcox replied, "But alas, espionage as a crime never expires. Furthermore, it's something of an issue of redeeming our collective posteriors what with the original failure in the case. And as my collague in the junior service suggested, we've got ourselves an opening in here."

He remembered that Security Service folks loved to call their Intelligence counterparts the junior service, for whereas the former had been founded in 1951 almost immediately after the Great War an Intelligence Service as a separate government department had been founded only in 1974.

"Aye", General Director Alexandra Lewis from Intelligence said, though he briefly glared at Wilcox before doing so. Interservices rivalries were no new thing to Kearny, though in this case he supposed it had more to do with personal ambition rather than the system. Hell, Cornavia fared pretty well in avoiding actual structural issues through systems such as the Intelligence Committee.

"Mind you", the woman continued in her distinctive Iron Islands accent, and it occured to Kearny that she was probably a Northener, particularly given her blonde hair, "The services need to take care of this carefully so as not to encourage our relations in the Northern Council, though if the Committee wants to go all the way down it could turn out that it's just elements in the SV, ahem, Vepo..."

"New name, same old service", his boss, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Pearce whispered to Kearny. The man chuckled in response.

"...doing the cover-up."

The Chief Security Advisor fell quiet for a moment, then viewed each of the attendants in succession as a contemplative frown descended upon her face.

"Fine, then", Collins finally said, raising her voice, "As of this moment I'm authorizing a full reopening on the Claridge House case. DDCI Kearny?"

"Yes, ma'am?", Kearny replied, his body instinctively stiffening as the Chief Security Advisor caught him off-guard.

"I'm putting you in charge of a joint task force in this one. Take the people and resources you need from your department and the Security Service, and liaise with the Intelligence Service's Scanian desk on anything you might need in that regard."

 

[Batavië]

Veiligheidspolitie Headquarters
Main Conference Room
Government District
Vlaanderen, Batavian Capital Territory

The last time that an all department conference was in January of this same year, over six months ago. The communist government was in the middle of a collapse that none had expected and Duits was lucky to have made out so well. Formerly an assistant department leader he had replaced Adriaan de Bruin as Director General, in charge of the entire Veiligheidspolitie, or Vepo. Mikael F. Duits took his job very seriously. The last half year had been uncomfortable for everyone. There were still many loyalists to communism in the agency, still believing the religious cult crap that the De Graaf regime had spewed out non stop. Yet there were also fresh newcomers. No one trusted each other and that was made ever so clear by the three department heads.

Afdeling I, Afdeling II and Afdeling III (departments) had three new leaders. Hans Telends lead Afdeling I in charge of foreign intelligence. Erika Barhydt lead Afdeling II, which dealt with domestic intelligence (still the largest department but losing ground to I). Finally Afdeling III was headed by Nils Vandenhoff, in charge of counter intelligence, a vital component to the agency.

Each department had their respective leaders and aides and Duits went right to the point in typical Batavian manner.

'As you all are aware by the bulletin sent out yesterday we have an internal situation.' Duits was standing while everyone else sat around the table.

'It is against the agency's very nature to disseminate classified information, regardless of which regime or government such information was acquired under. Of course politics always gets in the way of our work.' An IT technician lowered the projector screen from the ceiling and a photograph of Alexandra Lewis, General Director of Cornavian Intelligence, appeared.

'Mevrouw Lewis informally requested any and all documents relating to Cornavia that may include operatives from the distant and recent past. PMO bent over and submitted a request directly to my office for Afdeling I to hand files over. I would have held a firmer stance had it been any other period in time. De Jonghe is adamant that Cornavia joins the Northern Council without glitches hence my acquiescence.' Duits suppressed the urge to stare out the window to the city streets below.

'Alas someone with a very high clearance level made it to archives in the western outskirts, all the way down to level K7.' Duits noticed a few aides murmur to each other. The 'K' in K7 stood for Kelder, basement. Only the most sensitive files were kept so far beneath the surface.

'Highly classified documents, of which no other copies exist, went missing. To top it all off this person who removed them left no surveillance evidence behind either, meaning that he or she had an insider with internal security. The video was altered or disrupted. I've ordered a probe into internal security, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that those files must be recovered and soon. I don't want to turn over the files in their naked form, but at least censored versions have to be made available to PMO and then De Jonghe and his aides can decide what to sent to Southport-on-Sea.'

Duits was interrupted by Hans Telends, the Director of Afdeling I, foreign intelligence.

'What was contained in these missing files and how many files are we talking about?'

Duits responded calmly, 'I cannot discuss the content at this time. It's at top secret classification level double 'a' one.'

The room was filled with the sound of whispers and muffled gasps. AA1 security was the absolute highest level. The only person in the room with clearance was Duits himself. Prime Minister de Jonghe and perhaps half a dozen other senior officials also had access, but no one else.

'As for the amount of files no longer in the archives, we are talking about something in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand pages.'

This time everyone began talking at once.

'Impossible, this person must have had a dozen guys with him to haul the stuff out of there!' shouted someone.

'This is the largest breach of the agency in history!' another proclaimed.

'What the fuck!?' was another one that Duits stifled a laugh after hearing.

He raised his left hand demanding silence.

'Yes, I am aware that this means more than one person was involved. We have no leads as of yet and I am assembling a special team of which the members will be given access to the named contents of the file in order to facilitate a full investigation. Someone doesn't want this to come out and they are going to great lengths to succeed in their little mission. But we will find them.'

After the meeting adjourned Erika Barhydt of Afdeling II, domestic intelligence, caught up with Duits in the corridor. He was walking briskly but she managed to keep up. They spoke in hushed tones.

'Give me full access, Duits. My department is the only one capable of smoking out this guy. We've been doing it for decades and this isn't the first time that we'll be looking for someone from within.'

Duits turned the corner into the main hall. It was tall and wide and on either side were rows and rows of cubicles. Men and women were clicking away on typewriters, the only official means of memo and report writing in the agency. It was an odd decree but no one complained. Typewriters were still common in Batavië and computers were used only when necessary. The ringing of phones and conversations filled the air and pairs of people, from the lowest ranked receptionists to the highest ranked agents and officials were walking past one another in different directions. Duits was handed a memo from PMO (Prime Minister's Office) by a passing secretary and he slid it into his briefcase as he continued walking towards the main exit and entrance of the building.

'I'll think about it, Erika.' No one used Mikael F. Duits's first name. In fact very few people in the agency used first names. So Erika Barhydt was surprised when he used hers.

'This isn't some regional guy selling old 1970s street maps to the Franconians or Arendaalers. This is bigger.' They exited the corridor to the majestic staircase outside. The marble columns flanked them as they skipped down quickly onto the gravel courtyard. Vepo headquarters was in the shape of an 'E' without the centre line. Where that line would have been was a large gravel courtyard where guests parked and a few top officials, including Duits and Erika Barhydt, could have cars brought up to them.

A black Wirbewegen sedan and two National Police Trabant station wagons pulled off from the road and into the courtyard. As they approached Duits stopped walking and leaned into Barhydt's ear.

'It's the Claridge Mole case, Erika.' The rotating blue lights of the police cars reflected off his face as he pulled away from her. 'This could ruin us.'

He got into the car when Erika called out to him. 'Where are you going?!'

'Archives!' the three car caravan pulled out onto the street leaving Erika Barhydt to stand in the centre of the gravel courtyard, thinking.

 

[Confederal Republics]

Aldringham Market Place
Landing, Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

The skeletons in one's closet, Edmund Fairmont had now realized, had an unfortunate way of showing up when you needed them the least.

He'd carried through with his double burden with dignity, or at least he thought that he'd had. The double burden of serving both Southport-on-Sea - first as a civil servant in the Diplomatic Corps, then as a First Secretary and an Ambassador in numerous postings, then in charge of the Political Department of the Ministry of External Affairs, and finally in the Parliament - and Vlaanderen - as a collaborator of the Batavian secret service - had been difficult at times, but he'd thought that he'd pulled through. Alas, it now seemed that his hopes of peaceful retirement and academic life at the Scanian University were coming to an end.

When the Cornavian contact had approached him outside of his home on yesterday and introduced himself as an acquaintance of an "old friend of his", Fairmont had instinctively known that this had to do with his former association with the Batavian security services. Still, he'd been caught by surprise: The Batavians hadn't contacted him since the end of the De Graaf regime, though they'd retained him as a contact due to his position as a Research Processor in the Faculty of Civic Sciences in the Scanian University and due to his contacts to the Parliament and the ministries up in North Park.

Even more, Fairmont was afraid that this had to do with something else other than a re-establishment of contacts. He knew that the intelligence community wanted to reopen old cases now that Batavië and Tyskreich could theoretically be interested in taking part in overcoming the legacy of the Scanian Cold War, and that the Claridge House Mole case of the 1980s was high in their list of priorities. They hadn't found out about him the last time, but Fairmont was afraid that they'd be more successful now.

As he walked into the Aldringham Market Place - a square that, even in an August Thursday, had invited many Cornavians to visit the small shopping stalls and cafés the square in the Southern end of the Landing Ward and along the Sandels Bay was known for - he realized that gazed upon ordinary people leading ordinary lives. And Edmund Fairmont wanted a return to his ordinary life as soon as possible, wanting the skeletons in his closet to return there as soon as possible.

He hoped that no one was watching as he approached the apparent Batavian contact, seated in a bench next to a relatively inconspicuous ice cream stall, as the Cornavian man who'd contacted him had told him.

 

[Batavië]

Aldringham Market Place
Landing, Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

Harold Litton put away his newspaper when Fairmont approached and sat beside him. They were just two gentlemen enjoying a chat in the square after a long day's work.

'Andrik sent me, you probably gathered that by now.' Litton broke his stare into the crowd after saying this to the clearly troubled men sitting to his left.

'To sooth your nerves, old bean, Andrik isn't exactly on the same page as the SV- er, Vepo, rather.' he was still making that mistake.

'No, in fact he is doing you a favour. He relocated some files and by doing so bought you valuable time. Vepo might have put up some resistance for a while, but eventually they would hand over the files to Southport and...well you would not like the outcome.'

Litton took out a pack of Fulani cigarettes, a mistake if he was trying to avoid catching anyone's eye. Fulani tobacco was popular in Batavië, its former colonial master, but its sales remained stagnant in most other places. Litton's choice of smokes labelled him in a bad way, but it was unlikely at this stage for anyone to be following him yet.

After lighting his cigarette with a match he put the pack back into his sports jacket pocket and exhaled the acrid smoke.

'You have a choice. Leave Cornavia and find a life elsewhere. You can't go to Batavië, that is certain. Your other choice is to stay, but I cannot guarantee your safety. Vepo has by now most likely opened a full investigation into the relocated documents and they will follow my idiotic handler to Southport and then find you.'

He let the thought sink in for a while before moving on.

'You have 24 hours to think it over. If you want to leave, call this mobile number.' he discretely pointed his folded newspaper to Fairmont and shook it lightly causing a slip of paper to fall out into Fairmont's lap.

'We can send you anywhere you please and we'll ensure that your assets here follow you and your affects are taken care of. Unfortunately, because this is strictly off the books, we can't offer you money or future assistance. It's a one-time thing.'

Litton rose from the square bench and took one more drag on his cigarette before dropping it to the floor and stepping on it.

'If anyone calls you or visits your flat, let us know. And I wouldn't answer the door. Vepo may be struggling recently with the regime change, but they can still muster up their best when needed. Cornavian Intelligence is also on the lookout, but luckily for you they still have no idea whether you exist or not.'

Litton lingered for a moment to see if Fairmont had anything to say or ask.

 

[Confederal Republics]

Aldringham Market Place
Landing, Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

"Between a rock and a hard place, then, alas", Fairmont replied quietly as the full seriousness of what Litton was saying sunk into his head.

If the Intelligence and Security Services had indeed decided to reopen the Claridge House Mole Case, and were seeking the aid of the modern Batavian intelligence as Fairmont feared and as Litton seemed to insinuate, things looked very grim indeed. Spies tended to have a very long memory, especially if they were Cornavians. And what he remembered of Alexandra Lewis from his own time in the Ministry of External Affairs, the woman who now headed the Intelligence Service was a hard rock indeed. If he recalled correctly she'd been in foreign intelligence at the time, but had anyway been affected by the fallout those events in the 1980s had rendered to the Cornavian intelligence community.

And he didn't like the prospect at all. What Edmund Fairmont had done during the Cold War years would, by the very least, warrant an espionage and treason conviction of a life without parole. The prospect that he dreaded the most was that they'd end up deciding that his crime was serious enough to warrant a conviction from high treason, in which case he'd be eligible for the death penalty. A lethal injection wasn't a prospect he was looking forward to.

"Bloody hell", Fairmont spat out, then stared long and hard at Litton. What the man was suggesting was, more or less, a Catch-22. He had a life here, and a family, but if the Security Service would be getting a decent lead they'd come after him. Then again, if he'd just disappear into thin air they'd definitely know that something was up. He gazed around him in a stress move, then replied, "My family needs to come with me if I end up doing this. But, but, how the hell do you suppose I can just disappear at the blink of an eye without anyone suspecting something?"

 

[Confederal Republics]

51 Ravenwood Lane
New Police Hall, The Docklands
North Park, Southport-on-Sea
Canton of Western Crownland
Commonwealth of Cornavia

Technically speaking, New Police Hall was a Commonwealth government building, as the majority of its six floors and four subterranean levels were occupied by the headquarters of the Commonwealth Specialist Crime Agency, and thus subject to those restrictions on smoking inside Commonwealth government buildings. However, so far DDCI Kearny had been successfully able to argue to any complainers that the two floors housing the headquarters of the Public Security Wing were in fact in municipal possession, and thus exempt from those regulations as Southport-on-Sea had been yet to ban smoking inside of their offices.

Thus, Frank Kearny was always able to light up a fag during briefings, regardless of the complaints this occasionally received from junior subordinates. Alas, Kearny was firmly of the opinion that when those junior ones would reach the position where they'd have the same rank and experience as he had, then for all he cared they could institute whatever smoking policies they wished. Right now, those health-fanatic leftists had nothing on him.

A diverse lot crowded the briefing room that Kearny and his closest subordinates in the Counter-Intelligence Branch usually used for their briefings: He'd had a free hand from Chief Security Advisor Collins to choose members for the task force that would be reopening the Claridge House case, and any possible other espionage cases they could look into. He'd taken in his best subordinates from Counter-Intelligence and added to them people from the Security Service he knew would be reasonably competent. Though the Intelligence Service wasn't supposed to do domestic investigations, people from its Batavian desk had been called in as well.

"Now that we're all here...", and that, Kearny noted to himself dryly, meant a lot more than just the people seated around the briefing room's table. He'd wanted most members of the task force in the New Police Hall, so the wing in use of the Public Security Wing was getting quite crowded. "Let's begin. DI Morgan?"

Detective Inspector Nicholas Morgan, a slim, brown-haired Whitehavenite in charge of the Counter-Intelligence Branch's Special Subjects Team - an euphemism used for the unit which handled the surveillance and investigation of foreign diplomats believed to be spies and their Cornavian contacts - nodded.

"We've got extra pairs of eyes on the Batavian embassy and their guys, just in case anyone's in the cover-up, and if what we've been hearing is because they're trying to reopen their old assets or something else in that direction", Morgan explained, briefly gesturing in the direction of his Security Service counterpart Steven Canning. Kearny remembered that most of Morgan's team was actually Security Service, as you could hardly bring foreign diplomats before a court. However, the team did bring in Cornavian contacts for foreign spies, which was the reason why it was a joint unit. "Also, we've told the boys detailed to perimeter security from Protective Services to get on the horn in case there's anything fishy up."

"Canning?", Kearny asked, glaring at Steven Canning, who had been studying his notes. The man looked up, having briefly been caught by surprise.

"We've got nothing about yet at the embassy, alas".

"Bollocks", Kearny grunted, then inhaled smoke from his cigarette, then puffed the rest out. The smoke spread out in a cloud and Kearny watched it float upwards towards the ventilation hatches. "Well, then, stick on it. As for the Batavian angle, the Intelligence Service needs to get the desk officer in our Batavian embassy on the horn and to start asking Comrade's New Clothes what the fuck is up with those documents, and for real."

Comrade's New Clothes was a somewhat mocking nickname for the Batavian security police that one of his junior Detective Sergeants had passed around in the Counter-Intelligence Branch's internal e-mails. A few of the PSW officers present chuckled in response.

Frank Kearny even caught a brief smile at that from Wayne Johnson, head of Intelligence Service's Batavia Group. Alas, with the Batavian shift in government having occured not even a year ago, there wasn't a lot of trust in the Cornavian intelligence community for the new government. To a large part, Kearny thought the same.

"Will do", Johnson acknowledged.

"Alright", Kearny replied with a nod, "Now to the rest, did we get all the old case files yet?"