The Orchestration

Chapter Eight

The cloud-cover had masked the sunset, and now that darkness had enveloped the area, Michaels decided he had waited long enough to complete the next step in his undertaking. He picked up the key for the metro station locker on his way out the door, and very quickly drove out of the area.

He enjoyed living on a cul-de-sac because of the lack of traffic and noise, but he overlooked the fact that there was only one way into and out of the area, and that access could be monitored from a position quite a distance from his house.

The route took him past a dirty, white, panel truck parked along the access street to the housing area, and one of the two people concealed in the rear of the vehicle announced the passing to alert nearby surveillance team members that Michaels was on the move.

A tech team poised to enter Michaels’ house to implant a number of monitoring devices, and to search the residence for anything that might indicate why he had met with a known Russian agent, received the same notification.

The driver was not a very challenging target for the team, but that was good news since it made their job a lot easier. The route driven by Michaels turned out to be the most direct one to the Vienna Metro Station, but before he could even get his car parked, an agent from one of the surveillance vehicles got out of his own car and walked toward the station.

Michaels had been trained to use the metro system when he conducted mission activities, because it was easier for him to determine if he was being followed, and it was supposed to cause confusion among those who might try to tail him.

The surveillance team often practiced this scenario, so confusion was not the problem; getting surveillants to every stop and transfer point along the line was. As soon as Yoda was convinced Michaels was about to take the metro somewhere, he issued orders for the vehicles in his team to be driven to points along the route so surveillants could be dropped off or picked up while they kept track of their target. One surveillant would always have Michaels in sight, and that individual would keep the rest of the team apprised of their quarry’s actions.

It didn’t take long for the train to show up, and Michaels and his tail quickly boarded it. At about the same time, the entry team gained access to Michaels’ residence and implanted the devices that would monitor his activities while inside the dwelling. As a bonus while in the house, the team found and photographed a small magnetic box that may have been the one Michaels had removed from the park bench earlier.

As the train neared the Metro Center, Michaels stood up and walked toward the exit door so he could disembark, and the agent on board immediately transmitted this information to team members.

After he exited the car, Michaels looked around before he boarded a different train. He gave no indication that he felt he was being followed, and once aboard, both Michaels and his new tail relaxed until the train neared Union Station where Michaels once again stood and walked toward the exit.

After he left the train, Michaels once again looked around, and then walked toward a bank of lockers unaware that his every move was being observed.

Michaels removed the key from his pocket, opened locker 263, and removed a package that barely fit into the right-hand pocket of his jacket. With the packet in his coat pocket, he returned to the passenger platform and positioned himself to board a westbound train, along with one of the team members who was waiting there just in case this was Michaels’ next move.

Since the D.C. night life had started to pick up, Michaels decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe, which was just a short walk from the second stop his train made on its way west. As he exited the train, he didn’t even look at the three people who departed with him, but it was very unlikely he would have recognized anyone of them as someone who scrutinized his every move.

Although the team didn’t know where Michaels was headed, the Hard Rock and nearby Planet Hollywood had already been considered as possibilities, and some of them had already changed into appropriate attire. They were always prepared for just such a contingency, because they each packed several changes of clothing to fit different scenarios.

As Michaels entered the Hard Rock, team members quickly exited their vehicles and followed him inside, while the drivers circled the area until they settled into positions where they could observe and control every route out of the area.

In less than two minutes, there were four team members inside the building, and they had taken up posts where at least one of them could observe every move Michaels made. They kept up a running commentary among themselves on their body comms so each of them knew what was going on, and their conversations, along with video from small, wireless cameras, were being sent electronically to not only the team members waiting in the cars, but also back to the Cave. There the transmissions were being monitored, recorded, and evaluated in case additional resources needed to be sent, or if the current situation had to be analyzed at some future date.

As the team members prepared themselves for what might prove to be a long, uneventful evening, the Duty Officer (DO) at headquarters considered an attempt to insert a special asset into the situation. He knew that only Penny or Darque could authorize the use of such an individual in any operation, and even though he didn’t approve of the fact that the people he considered using were prostitutes, he knew the value of their work. He finally made his decision and called Penny.

When she answered the phone, the DO explained the circumstances of the ongoing surveillance, and Penny agreed that one of her assets might be able to be inserted into the situation to enhance the investigation. She told him she would call back once she had made arrangements, but knew she had to act quickly if the plan was to work.

After she broke the phone connection, Penny made a call to one of her assets, a woman named Cheryl Hagen, and explained the assignment. As luck would have it, Cheryl had once met Michaels at a Christmas Party hosted by a Congressman and his wife who were into sharing their acts of marital bliss with invited guests. Cheryl had been one of those guests. Michaels had made a lewd pass at her during the party, and although she referred to him as an “obnoxious, sleazy, little prick” in her report that covered the evening’s activities, she looked forward to the opportunity to approach him as a target.

Cheryl described what she would be wearing, to include a distinctive necklace, and then hung up the phone to get dressed for her appearance.

Penny called the DO to let him know that Cheryl was on her way to the Hard Rock, and described what the woman would be wearing. After that, she curled up behind Darque and went back to sleep.

It was almost 10 P.M. by the time Cheryl entered the club, and the noise was way beyond the comfortable level.

All the members of the surveillance team had been advised that a female would show up on the scene and attempt to establish contact with Michaels, so they were not surprised when Cheryl put in an appearance.

One of the females on the team got up from her chair to depart the place, but as she passed Cheryl, she announced Michaels’ location loud enough for Cheryl to hear her, then walked out of the building.

Cheryl gave no indication that she heard the message, but she glanced around the room before she focused her attention on the upstairs area, and even though Michaels’ features were partially concealed behind the neck of a large replica of a guitar, she immediately recognized him.

She walked toward the staircase, passing beneath the front end of a pink Cadillac emerging from the ceiling, and continued up the steps to approach Michaels from behind. A quick glance around the area revealed what she suspected: there were no empty tables, but there was an empty chair at the table where Michaels sat.

Cheryl had decided on two separate approaches to get close to Michaels, and the one she used would depend on whether or not Michaels showed any sign of recognition.

She walked up behind him and bent over, and with a bit of her perfume filling the space between them, she spoke in a voice that could only be described as seductive, but in an innocent kind of way.

“It’s a bit crowded this evening,” she said. “Do you mind if I sit at your table?”

Michaels turned in his chair and found himself staring straight down Cheryl’s blouse at her breasts, and proceeded to drop his drink on the floor. Cheryl smiled, and was pleased to see that his only reaction was the dropped drink. As he gave no sign of recognition, Cheryl decided to play the role of a stranger rather than a vague memory.

It didn’t take Michaels long to size up the woman and see her as someone with whom he would like to spend more time, so he invited her to sit, and recited what he felt was a clever opening line to break the ice between members of the opposite s*x. It was one of those ‘witty’ lines that caused most discerning females to want to puke, but Cheryl just giggled and blushed a bit; a deception she often practiced in front of a mirror so she could get it just right.

Michaels found her demure reaction refreshing, and they exchanged names while he sized her up as an easy conquest. It never entered his mind that she had hooked, landed, and gutted him without him ever knowing that he was the catch of the day. They discussed life in D.C. and exchanged small talk about trivial matters, but he got nowhere attempting to elicit information from Cheryl about herself. On the other hand, she played on his ego, and learned more about him than she really wanted to know.

After she learned he had used the Metro to reach the Hard Rock, she mentioned how interesting it was that both of them had taken the Metro to reach the club. She mentioned that it was probably because of an obvious concern they both shared for the environment, because they saw its use as a way to eliminate auto-emissions that polluted the very air they breathed.

He laughed inside. This was too easy.

Michaels suggested that they take the Metro to his place together, and that she spend the night with him. She appeared to struggle with the proposition, and finally agreed to go with him, but only because he seemed like such a nice, caring person.

She laughed inside. This was too easy.

They left the building together, and, according to the surveillance report submitted by the team members who accompanied the two on the Metro back to the Vienna Station, they spent the ride “giggling, and holding hands during the length of the trip”.

After they departed the train at its terminus, Michaels led Cheryl to his car and, believing the action to be very cavalier, he opened the door on the passenger side for her. Something Cheryl instinctively knew, and Michaels had no reason to suspect, was that his car was now equipped with several recording and tracking devices which had been installed while it was parked in the station lot.

As Michaels’ car passed the white panel truck parked on the dead-end street leading to his house, the time of the passage was transmitted to all the surveillants.

“I think we’re in for a long night,” commented the driver of the white van. “Tell the tech van we’re shutting down.”

That having been said, the other agent in the van notified the monitoring team, and then flipped a switch that would cause an alarm to sound inside the van if Michaels started the engine of his car. After that, it was just a matter of the van’s occupants trying to get some sleep. With the monitoring devices now implanted in the house, it was the job of the personnel inside the tech van to keep track of what went on inside the residence.

Once inside the house, Michaels hung his and Cheryl’s coats on a rack near the front door, then immediately started to fondle Cheryl’s breasts and try to convince her to remove her clothing while he watched.

She suggested that maybe they could share a little wine and then undress each other, a comment which found Michaels racing to the kitchen in search of two glasses, then going to the refrigerator to fill both of them from the cardboard container of wine on the upper shelf. He thought of it as his lucky carton of wine, because Cheryl would be his third conquest since he opened the box, and there was plenty left for a few more successes in the future.

After he walked back into the living room with the two glasses of wine, he set them down on an end table next to the couch, and once he was seated, she immediately began to hug him. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t notice her drop a small white pill into the glass she picked up and handed to him. While they gazed at each other across the rims of their wine glasses, she reached over and unbuttoned Michaels’ shirt and rubbed his chest. He reacted by gulping down the contents of the wine glass, and returned it to the table as he reached across the intervening space to begin unbuttoning Cheryl’s blouse. He got as far as cupping one of her breasts in his hand before getting a glassy look in his eyes, and then passed out.

She had expected this response, and pushed him back into the couch before he slid to the floor or imbedded his face in the glass-topped coffee table in front of the sofa. She checked his pulse and respiration, and wedged a throw pillow under his head. She then reached into her purse and removed what appeared to be a small in-the-canal hearing aid that she inserted into her right ear. It was the same type of audio receiver used by the surveillants, and because of the bugs that had been installed throughout the house, she now had two-way communications with the technicians in their nearby truck, and someone gave instructions almost immediately.

“There should be a packet in the right-hand pocket of the jacket he removed when he entered the house; we need to look at the contents,” said the voice in her ear.

She walked over to the coat rack and smiled as she felt the packet, and after she removed it from the jacket, she held it up in the air.

“Is this what you want?” she asked.

“That’s it,” came the reply. “There will be someone at the back door to pick it up shortly, but include his wallet and any pocket litter he may have.”

She located Michaels’ wallet in his pants pocket and removed it, but found nothing more of interest during a search of the rest of the pockets in his trousers, shirt, and jacket.

A soft knock coming from the rear of the house caught her attention and she found the door leading into the back yard from the kitchen. After she turned off the light in the room, she opened the door and handed the items she had found to a figure dressed in black who immediately turned and disappeared into the darkness.

After her silent visitor departed, Cheryl returned to the living room and took the wine glasses to the kitchen sink and washed them out, then dragged Michaels into his bedroom and dropped him on the floor with an audible thud. She removed all of his clothing and tossed the articles on the floor like men in a s****l frenzy usually do. She pulled down the sheet and blanket, and struggled a bit as she lifted his limp body onto the bed, then shoved him over into a reclining position; she was thankful that Michaels didn’t weigh as much as some of the people she had dealt with in this manner. She once again checked his vital signs, and then looked at her watch; he would be out for another four hours. Having nothing more to do until the packet was returned, she walked back to the living room and turned on the TV.

It was going to be a long night.