LogDead Drop Vienna-Jason-3

Game log for the 2020-08-23 session of Dead Drop: Vienna, as taken by Jason

Retcon: the kids rescued last session were mummified in strips of surgical latex. The kids had some odd stories to tell. One of the boys, and the girl, are from the Croatia region of Yugoslavia. Both are runaways; the girl was promised a modeling job. None of them really remember how they got to the spot where we found them. They have vague recollections of weird dreams, or events that feel like they were in a dream.

The girl is about 16, but looks older. There's a nightclub in Zagreb called The Hot Spot, and the owner, Ivan Mladic, saw her doing runaway things, and pitched the idea to her. Italy was supposed to be where she'd get an education and an agent. He dumped her in a Catholic boarding school three months ago and hasn't been heard from.

The younger boy is 13-14 and was a bottom-tied street criminal in Zagreb. The last thing he remembers is scavenging from a dumpster behind The Hot Spot.

The older boy, about 16, is an orphan who came in from Paris. He lost consciousness in the orphanage and woke up in the back of a van. He was trafficked to Father Umberto's parish school. The only clue he offers is that the van said Bartolo-Vivendi. He looks younger than he is.

The girl tells us a story about how she used to have a vial of holy water on her necklace. An older man came to the church, and Father Umberto presented the class to him. She heard them speaking German. When the older man came closer and saw the holy water on her neck, he tore Umberto a new one.

Wilmer deals with these exciting relevations by getting blind drunk. He's so drunk that he can't live with the hangover and spends the next day drunk too, then slowly tapers off.

Ditch calls his surgeon friend Grace to see if he can score some morphine, because that's even better than heroin. She's also an addict and knows how this game is played. Then he trains playbook.

Winston trains technique and playbook.

Betts loses herself in a trashy novel, or tries to. There's a lot of building activity on her street, and it just keeps ruining her mood. She trains playbook.

Mirabelle lays low and starts working on getting off the police's metaphorical radar. She calls around and tries to get the car chase blamed on random international criminals. People aren't really biting on that story, but it creates a little confusion.

We decide to go investigate Zagreb. Yugoslavia is a non-aligned state, which means there's a surprising amount of international activity there. It's also the global capital of spying. Mirabelle tracks down an old colleague, Jacques Sur la Mer, and asks him what he knows about The Hot Spot. He immediately asks what angle she's working, and she tells him it's about human trafficking. Jacques brings up Mladic's name before Mirabelle does and confirms he's into human trafficking. His nightclub and the lure of "the big city" ensures that ready candidates drift in to the club all the time. Betts goes to the local library and does area research. She tries to make friends with the librarian, hoping for some help with the local question, but the woman's a harsh case and just says "ssssh." She does point Betts to the Russian-language newspapers, in which she finds advertisements for The Hot Spot. Winston surveils The Hot Spot, but it doesn't go well. Someone walks over to his car, raps on the window, and makes it clear that he's been pegged as a foreigner, possibly a spy, and definitely unwelcome. This guy flashes Winston some Yugoslavian intelligence credentials. Winston goes in, has a few drinks, and keeps an eye out for any intelligence-related activity. He sees a handoff take place. One guy, obviously Western, meets with a stereotypical Slav and makes a deal that includes something the Westerner pockets. The middle stall of the men's room has cipher written on the walls. Ditch works to the best club in town, Mesto, and tries to find out what people are saying about The Hot Spot. He hears that it's a dive, it's sleazy, maybe a good place to score drugs, only a good place to score cheap drugs, and, last, a place for pedophiles. That last comes with an accusation that Ditch must be a pedophile, which closes out the possibility of anyone else talking to him.

We decide to hit the club in the morning, when it will be deserted, but people won't be expecting crime. We'll disguise ourselves as repairmen. We go to the rear / service entrance and Mirabelle's trying to pick the lock when Winston's new friend from Yugoslavian intelligence comes around the corner, talking in Croatian. Betts, in Russian, says that we're here for a plumbing repair. Behind her, out of site, Mirabelle opens the door and makes it look like she did it with a key. The intelligence officer immediately switches to Russian and asks who sent for them and where they're from. She admits to being new in town. He asks for ID, and while she admits she doesn't have ID, Wilmer hands over his ID and also the business license. Meanwhile, Mirabelle and Winston go inside, followed by Ditch. The intel guy grudgingly admits the paperwork is in order and asks how long the work will take. Betts says it shouldn't be long, but they can't be sure, since they haven't inspected the premises. The guy goes back to wait, but Betts has the feeling he'll be waiting for the team to come out.

Inside, the place is dead. Wilmer and Winston split up and photograph all the documents they can find, Mirabelle cracks the safe, and the other two go on overwatch. There's a loaded Makarov in Mladic's desk, and a dressmaker's model in one corner of the office. It's got a haute couture dress hanging on it, sized for Twiggy's little sister. It's got no tag, suggesting it's a custom-made bit of fashion. Mirabelle pops open the safe without seeming effort. It's not a huge safe, but it's full of stuff, including another Makarov, papers, a stack of cash, fake IDs, a German passport, a Russian passport, and an Italian passport, each with the same photo, presumably of Mladic. There's also a bar of silver and a bar of gold. For fun, she then leaves a bug in the lava lamp. As she plants it, she finds a bug in the lava lamp. She warns Wilmer that there place is bugged and they should go, but Wilmer wants more time and wants her to make plumbing noises. Quick flashback: a team meeting before the score to come up with agreed-upon ways to make it seem like plumbing work is happening, including Betts talking in Russian and Wilmer muttering misogynist insults in Polish.

Key things we find: one of Mladic's desk drawers include surgical tubing and a syringe, but it's not right for a hype kit. The syringe doesn't have a plunger, it has vials. It's a sampling kit. There's a bunch of photos of girls, all young, and every photo has a number. Every photo was taken in this room. This place is too small to stash anyone on site. The crew then settle in to wait for Mladic. We put Betts plumbing the seltzer water dispenser behind the bar, Mirabelle watching the back, Wilmer behind the bar out of site, Ditch in the kitchen, and Winston by the front door.

Mladic arrives in a bit, but he's not alone. He comes in through the back door. Our friendly wet worker can hear at least two voices. Ditch bends down and pretends to be working on the sink. Ditch sneaks a look and it's obvious that the second guy, with his cheap suit and fedora, is a cop, presumably dirty. They say something in Croatian, sounding unpleasantly surprised. When he sees Ditch at the sink, Mladic starts barking out questions in Croatian. Ditch loudly says "Eh?" and Mladic kicks the bottom of his foot. Winston goes over to the bar. Wilmer hops over the bar to hide on the other side of it from the voices. Betts goes over to the sink to stand near Mirabelle, then slips into the kitchen with Ditch.

Ditch pulls himself out from under the sink and slams his wrench in Mladic's crotch. The cop steps forward and cocks his hip like maybe he's going to draw. Betts touches the tip of her pistol's silencer to the back of his head. The cop pulls his gun with two fingers and drops it. Ditch KO's Mladic. The cop jabbers in Croatian. Ditch KO's him with the wrench too. We secure the two prisoners, with the cop also sort of deafened by having cocktail napkins duct-taped to his ears. We throw the prisoner into a big crate of plumbing supplies. Betts goes out to pull the car around. As she gets in, the Yugoslavian intelligence guy taps on her window. She tells him everything is going fine. He outright asks if she's KGB or GRU. She denies it. He complains about the rudeness of trying to pretend that she's not operating here, and the pointlessness of acting like he's not going to arrest her and she's not going to get sprung the moment someone from the consulate arrives. Winston starts to tell Wilmer what's going on, but before they reach a decision, Ditch says, "I got this." Wilmer calls out, "Don't kill him."

Ditch goes outside with his toolbox, opens it, and starts rooting through it. The intel agent steps backward, taking some cover behind the truck. Ditch closes the lid of the toolbox and walks over to the passenger side of the van, toolbox in hand, staring at the agent the whole time. He then goes around and opens the back, puts his toolbox in, and closes it. Then he walks back to the passenger side, puts his forearms on the sill, and stares at the agent some more. The agent finds that disconcerting. The guy's so focused on the threat Ditch poses that he doesn't really pay a lot of attention to the rest of the crew coming out with their enormous crate of plumbing supplies. Once the back is loaded, Ditch climbs in to the passenger seat, never looking away, and and Betts drives them away.

Mirabelle calls Jacques to see if he has a place they can lay low and do a little field interogation, and Jacques is happy to set them up. After the interogation, we slit Mladic's throat and dump him by the roadside, Russian mob style.

The silver and gold bars have a simple H stamp on them, amd they're accompanied by a certificate of purity from Solomon Shapiro, fine jewelers, Paris. That name shows up in other things as well. If we turn Solomon Shapiro into a source, it will give us a gather intel bonus.

Betts dives so deep into her romance novels that she's going to go to a book signing and miss our next op.