LogDead Drop Vienna-Jason-9

Game log for the 2020-10-11 session of Dead Drop: Vienna, as taken by Jason

Winston and Angel attempt to infiltrate the Center for Supercomputer Applications. Winston will pretend to be the owner of the stolen access card, and Angel a coed who's tagging along. The security guard doesn't even look up as they enter, he's too busy watching TV.

The center of the area is all computers, tape drives, and other devices. There's a row of terminals all along one wall, and the one in the middle is occupied by a nerd who's trying and failing to grow a handlebar mustache. He turns around to greet them as they walk in, and is immediately alarmed to see two people coming in who he doesn't recognize. He tells them they can't be here. Winston assures him it's cool, he's newly arrived to do Arpanet work after being in the Oxford side, but he's there just right now to impress a girl, so be cool. The guy's a little rattled but he completely understands the imperative of being cool when a computer nerd somehow gains the attention of an actual girl.

Winston grabs a terminal and tries to log in. Flashback: Winston talking to his geek friend and asking if he can hook him up with temporary access at Stanford. He's got a non-privileged account for a few hours. The other guy in the computing room visibly relaxes when Winston logs in, since that shows that he really does have some reason for being here. Now that the scrutiny's off, he fires up the program, and hears a whirring, rumbling noise. The other guy stops and looks at Winston and the room behind them, where there's a tape robot. The program seems to be dumping all sorts of stuff to a nine-track tape.

The other guy starts getting pissed at Winston's showing up late and hogging the processing power. He won't drop it when Winston tells him that he has to run the job tonight because he's leaving tomorrow. Angel starts flirting with the guy and asking him about how his work, but that only buys them a few minutes. Eventually the guy tells Winston that his girlfriend is annoying and he has shit to do. The guy comes over to bluster at close range, so Winston kicks him in the nuts and then rabbit-punches him, then poses him like he's asleep. The job runs for another hour after that.

This is a lot of waiting for the team in the car. The guard changes, and the new security guard is obviously an ex-Marine. Ditch radios in to let Winston know to expect a hardass guard.

Sure enough, the guard comes into the lab and asks Winston who Angel is. Winston passes her off as his date, but the guard isn't happy that she didn't sign in, and of course there are no unauthorized visitors allowed. Angel's passively uncooperative, so the guy comes over to drag her out. She pulls a pistol on him and tells him to go into the supply closet. This guard was taught some combatives at some point, and he immediately spins and punches her on the inside of her gun arm, to try to knock the weapon loose. She holds onto it, but she's in a fight now.

Winston gets on the radio and reports that she's gone sideways. Ditch gets out of the car to intervene. Flashback: Wilmer tells Ditch and Maribelle what frequencies the guards use, and they build a pretty tasty little portable jammer. Back in real time, Wilmer flips on the jammer.

In the computer room, Angel tries to turn up the sweetness and tell the guard that there's no reason for all this fuss, but if he keeps being a dick, he's gonna get hurt. This is so weird that the guy decides this is some sort of security audit. Ditch breaks squelch on his communicator, at which point Winston says he needs to hit the head, opens the door, and lets Ditch in, muttering, "don't kill him unless you have to." As Ditch walks in, terminator mode engaged, the guy has a brief moment to realize this may not be an audit before the new arrival shoots the guard in the face. This guard will not be testifying.

That noise wakes up the grad student, so Ditch points the shotgun at him. The poor nerd wets himself. The nerd then asks, "Aren't you going to help him?" Ditch looks at Angel, then the guard, and says, "Take care of him." Angel puts a pistol round in the guard's head. The nerd asks, "Jesus Christ, who are you people?" Ditch says, "Shut. Up."

The job finishes and Winston takes delivery of four tapes. As he and Angel pack up, Ditch motions to something behind the grad student and asks what it does. When the nerd turns to look, Ditch executes him.

In the van, Wilmer slaps new masking tape labels on the tape carriers, then begins removing all their identifying information, checking them for bugs, etc.

We decide that this is going to be a cache score and it will be used to upgrade our Vatican ally. All this intel will give them promising new leads.

After we get back to Vienna, we hear about some trouble. Father Thomas has been asking the wrong questions of the wrong people, and we have to spend a little money to smooth things over.

We find someone who can decode the tapes, and start going over what we get. One of the big things is some medical computing tied to B Braun Pharmaceuticals. They're working on vampire blood. That's not what the Arpanet is for, so someone is going to a lot of trouble to steal compute cycles for the work. We discover, from reading about their research, that vampires have regenerative powers and can move incredibly quickly. B Braun is in the process of building a new facility in Sabana Grande, PR.

Ditch commits a random killing to make it look like someone in California is killing computer nerds, so that maybe the cops won't like the murders to our counter-conspiracy.

Wilmer starts a project to build a set of fake dossiers that will be useful to the Church and help build our relationship with them, but fake enough not to be useful if the Church turns against us.

Maribelle catches up with Gunther Spier, a bastard German she recalls from the war, at a party at the French consulate. She slips him a laxitive in his drink. She has to execute a little sleight-of-hand to keep his companion from drinking it, but she pulls it off. She slides into the men's room after him, kicks the stall door open, and goes for him with a knife. Unfortunately he's not sanding where she expected, so she may not have made a fatal strike. There's also an attendant in the room. She addresses him and says, "Kill the Nazi. I'm out of here." She stabs Gunther again, but his wounds are still not mortal. She stabs him a few more times until she gets an artery, and while she's pretty well covered in a fine red mist, she's confident this guy is not going to make it.

The looks for the attendant and sees he's left the vacinity. She towels her hands off, takes a hard right, and heads for the service door to get out. She makes it out but she's caused some wee spot of trouble, and there may be difficulties. She tries to compensate by making nice with her buddy at French intelligence. He's still talking to her but she's never getting into the embassy again.

Angel makes a call on some cops in Regensberg and convinces them that she's giving an accurate description of some men she saw fleeing the scene. This misleading "clue" reduces the heat on the crew.

Maribelle finds time to have a coffee with Ditch and suggest that maybe he should dial down the murder a bit. She acknowledges the hypocrisy of this statement but makes it clear she thinks it's important. Ditch says he'll talk to someone.

Winston looks to see what he can find out about Emilio Pucci. Pucci's a member of an old noble families. He's a former Olympian and has studied in the US. He joined the Italian air force and flew torpedo bombers. He was also close with Mussolini's oldest daughter. Winston also finds out that some of his models have brief, flashy careers and then vanish completely. As an Olympian skiier, he was known for his strength and speed, and recovered surprisingly quickly from an injury many thought would have ended his career. A magazine photo spread enables Winston to construct a map of the guy's entire house.

Wilmer analyzes Picci's money, especially with an eye to what sort of security the guy pays for. Turns out he gives enormous amounts of money to the U of Georgia alumni association, and a Demosthenic law society at UG. He invests in mining in South America. He's paying for security from some outfit in Naples, which after going through a lot of shell companies turns out to be the mob.

Maribelle tries to do some socializing to see what this guy's schedule is, but there's an assload of traffic to and from the mansion, in preparation for a party, and people are too busy to talk. Security is checking everyone coming in.

Ditch gets a Capri thug drunk and gets some information out of him. Pucci's having a party in three days to celebrate the release of his fall collection.

Angel leverages her fashion contacts to get more data on what Pucci's up to. She finds a photographer, Rodrigo Salvini, who offers to get her into the party and make an introduction. He gives her a number to call in order to get people put on the guest list. She gets Maribelle, herself, and Ditch onto the list. Winston also comes up with some caterer's uniforms he and Wilmer can wear. We're going to go in, socialize, and identify someone we could compromise, who will then become the target of a long-term project. Our engagement roll is a partial success.