Roswell’s estate was located out in the countryside, grand in an old-wolrd-mansion style

Roswell’s estate was located out in the countryside, grand in an old-wolrd-mansion style. It had a walled in perimeter with a security gate, a long driveway passing through well manicured lawns, and old fashioned brickwork mansion was planted firmly in the center behind a grand fountain with angels, and climbing trellises of English roses. The butler who came out to greet them was equally old world style, complete with long snooty nose and posh accent.

The master of the manse in direct contrast to the opulence of his surroundings was an oddly unprepossessing man; short and thin with a balding head and a nervous demeanor, he looked like he would spend all of his time looking over his shoulder. It was when Midii got a better look at him that he understood why it was that such an harmless looking man could rise to a position of such power and influence in the Earth Sphere. Behind that nervous-desk-clerk demeanor was a truly observant and cunning man, who took everything in and obviously stored it away for later; he was exactly the kind of man that Midii would have recommended for spy work, the kind that looked invisible, ineffectual, and were never noticed or if they were tended to be dismissed out of hand as unimportant.

“Good afternoon Senator Roswell,” Trowa said with quiet politeness. “I am Trowa Barton, Agent Smoke of the Preventors, and this is my partner Agent Midii Une. We would like to discuss a few matters alone with you if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“I am sorry Preventors, but I just got a call in from my office, urgent business you understand. Please make yourselves at home and I’ll return to answer your questions as soon as possible.”

Midii knew an avoidance when she saw one, if they let Roswell get away now he most likely had a shuttle ticket and some hotel reservations standing by with the excuse that his “urgent business” had called him away for the foreseeable future. Evidently Trowa saw it too for he firmly yet respectfully restrained the senator when he would have brushed by them both.

“I’m afraid this matter is urgent as well senator. Your cooperation is required,” he said, his face and voice both equally impassive.

Midii immediately fell into her role as if she and Trowa were a seasoned pair who had been working together for decades.

“Please, this will only take a moment. Then you can attend to your business.” Midii tried to make her voice as gentle and placating as possible, and flashed him her most winning smile. Senator Roswell apparently was as old-world as his architecture for he said

“Far be it from me to keep a young woman waiting no matter how urgent the matter. You have my most humble apologies miss; please, let us adjourn to the drawing room and I’ll have Barkwell bring us some tea.”

Barkwell, who had stood silently nearby not drawing any attention to himself immediately bowed and exited the room.

Inwardly Midii frowned. It wasn’t so much the butler’s holier than thou attitude as it was the odd and subtle feeling that she’d seen him somewhere before but couldn’t recall quite where. Maybe it was just her imagination, after all, the butler did have one of those faces; not too round, not too square, not too thin, not to fat, not too anything; he looked so ordinary it was as if her eyes slid right past him. Servant’s were, in effect, furniture, Midii had done a great deal of her own infiltration disguised as a servant simply because no one ever questioned why they were where they were as long as they looked like they were doing something.

“That would be marvelous,” Midii said, flashing him another fetching smile. When she glanced over at her partner she could have sworn she saw a small expression of surprise flicker over his features before they settled into blankness once again.

They were shown to a well lit drawing room done completely in grey-blue pastels with navy and silver as accenting colors, it looked vaguely dreamlike despite it’s perfectly prosaic furniture. Midii and Trowa were seated at a short couch in front of a coffee table as Senator Roswell took his seat on the couch across from them and the ubiquitous Barkwell showed up with a tea tray.

Midii crossed her legs (incidentally catching her intended quarry off guard by an unexpected display of flesh) and supported her saucer and teacup elegantly with one hand as she said

“Now, so as not to waste too much of your time senator I’ll get right down to business. The Preventors have recently been alerted to a possible assassination attempt in collusion with a breach in your security. Because you are key to a number of very delicate situations we have been called in to examine the state of your internal security as well as to guard your life against possible outside threats,” Midii said in as gentle and pleasant a voice as she could manage.

“Who would want to kill me?” Senator Roswell inquired, his voice shaky with anxiety, and his nervousness was understandable.

“You tell me,” Trowa said. “Is there anyone you are aware of who might have an interest in seeing you dead, anyone you have regular contact with?”

There was a moment of hesitiation as Roswell debated internally, is was apparent that he wanted to say something, but didn’t dare, his eyes flicked down to his tea cup as he finally said

“No… No, no-one I can think of.”

“Well that’s fine then and if you should think of anyone you can tell me right away; I’ve been assigned by Lady Une to be your bodyguard for the interim until this gets resolved. My partner Trowa will be reviewing your internal security, trying to patch the breach. We’ll get this resolved as quickly as possible.”

“You’ll be my bodyguard?” he questioned, very obviously eyeing her assets. Midii could see his thoughts as easily as if they were written on a large light up neon sign floating above his head. He was wondering if her “bodyguarding” was going to extend to when he was showering or sleeping and if so wouldn’t it be a shame to waste hot water on two instead of not showering together and he wanted her to be as near as possible during the night just in case…

“I’ll be escorting you to all external functions for the next few days,” Midii said briskly. “The Preventors didn’t just hire me for show you know.”

Roswell smiled his most ingratiating smile at her while Trowa said nothing.

It was a few minutes later while Trowa was setting up his “equipment” for security (that was in reality his system for hacking into Roswells computer and retrieving the data files) Midii walked over to where he was working, glanced around to ensure no one was within earshot and said very quietly

“There’s something I don’t like about the butler, Barkwell. Watch your back.”

Then without another word or an acknowledgement from Trowa, she walked away, her heels clicking softly on the polished marble of Roswells dining room floor. Trowa obliquely watched her retreating form from under a fall of hair, anyone who knew him would almost have sworn he was admiring her figure as she walked away.

<So we’re out to discover the extent of his involvement in illicit activities eh? Hn, shouldn’t be too hard. Trowa can handle his hardware so I guess it’s up to me to hack into his er, software. There’s obviously someone he’s afraid of but given the types of men who work for the kinds of groups that the good senator is likely involved in that’s really not too surprising,> she considered on the limousine ride to the senator’s luncheon with a few of his party supporters.

She looked over the data about the Free Earth League on her PDA, a small group, local in their practices, possibly global in their ambitions, in other words; small fry. The only real reason that the Preventors were watching them was because they had connections with several known arms dealers. She’d looked over the faces of the operatives on the Free Earth League briefly earlier but now took the time to look closer.

<Ah! Hello,> she thought in surprise as she glanced closely at one of the faces on the PDA screen. She recognized it.

Byron McCairrinon. He was Third Level member of the Consortium, part of the watchers as a matter of fact. Midii had had occasion to familiarize herself with the watchers, an intelligent move if she wanted to stay well out of their sights. The Consortium had had occasion to have a person or group of people put under covert or overt watch from time to time just in case they should get the notion to come clean to the authorities, thus the small sub-sect called they unimaginatively called ‘the watchers.’

<Byron however has played both sides of the fence before,> she recalled. Midii didn’t know all of the details seeing as trying to keep out of the workings of the Consortium had been one of her primary goals for quite a few years, but McCairrinon had sold information about one of the men he had been set to watch to a contact for the Alliance about seven years ago. He’d never been caught by his Consortium employers, but that was only because the Alliance contact had disappeared a few hours after the information reached his destination.

She trailed off, it finally struck her out of the blue

Midii began to rethink her situation.

Trowa kept half an eye on the monitors for his careful infiltration of Roswells private files (the one he didn’t want anyone looking at) and half an eye on the screen that showed Midii’s private PDA and palmtop monitors. Nothing interesting was happening on either of them yet. The former held nothing but boring run of the mill stuff; campaign funds embezzlement, corporate kickbacks, pork barrel stuff… the usual, nothing extrodinarily surprising for a politician. The latter held nothing more than Midii re-reviewing her mission data.

Patience was its own reward, but he could have hacked Roswell’s system in his sleep with both hands tied behind his back and only his tongue with which to touch the keys. On second thought falling asleep trussed up like a turkey sounded pretty uncomfortable, it was bad enough being as tall as he always was. He glanced up at the third screen on his system, a divided view of their security screens clicking over every second with a continuous reception to his private camera he had installed outside the halway of the room he was working on. With no other exits, Trowa was reasonably certain that he wouldn’t be getting any surprise visits.

<Midii on the other hand…> he thought darkly. Her room was far less secure. Trowa was damned near certain that there was some kind of secret access from Roswell’s room to hers, not that he didn’t think she couldn’t take care of herself, but Midii had enough to concentrate on without fending off the slobbering advances of the person she had been nominally assigned to protect. As with the rest of her situation, Trowa couldn’t think of a single thing he could do to aide her without causing her even larger problems; frustratingly, it seemed that the only thing he could do was to wait and see what she did.

He glanced at her screen again and his eyes met blankness. That likely meant that she had arrived at her destination and had turned off her PDA.

* * *

Midii kept her senses alert as she scanned about the meeting room. Her sophisticated equipment had yet to pick up any trace of bugs or covertly hidden minature cameras in the pluch oak paneled and leather-lined room that smelled of tobacco and testosterone. None of the other guests looked at all nervous about anything; to them this was simply another social gathering to discuss their party lines or any recent developments in their overall agenda. Likely any of the latest news stories involving any of their party members would be examined in minute detail to figure out what effect it was likely to have on them.

Meanwhile the other half of her mind was busy mulling through the situation at hand.

<If McCairrinon has been assigned to watch Roswell that means he has or knows something that is likely to damage their agenda. Funny, normally the Consortium would just send in someone to remove Roswell quickly and quietly if they already had a more suitable replacement poised to take control. In their book their use for Roswell is over since he has become more of a threat to security than an asset to their cause, so why haven’t they?> She thought in puzzlement. It made no sense; the Consortium had never hesitated before now so why had they taken the time to get and agent like McCairrinon in place within Roswells household and not simly rid themselves of Roswell altogether?

Then there was the matter of Barkwell/McCairrinon himself; was he a watcher only for Roswell or had he been told to keep an eye on Midii Une as well? There was also the matter of Roswells replacement, Lucius Marcceli. He was a covert member of the terrorist group Free Earth League, it wasn’t so much him as the people he worked for that worried Midii Une. Was Free Earth just another one of the Consotiums fronts? If so, then did he know that? I fhe did that meant he was really working for the Consortium.

<Time will tell,> she thought bringing her attention back to the meeting. <For now, I’ll simply have to wait.>

Midii Une wasn’t kept waiting long. Lucius Marcelli himself approached her at the party. At first it looked like he was merely interested in a glass of port and a lovely woman to speak to, but there was something in his narrow-eyes gaze that caught Midii Une. She met his eyes directly, searching, searching for that tiny clue that would confirm her suspicions. He held her gaze, wavering then nodded once.

“I know you play the game,” he said quietly, his tone pitched to carry only to her and then fade into the background chatter. Midii nodded once, barely perceptibly.

“Chesspawns are always undervalued.”

“Whose side are you on?” he demanded quietly.

“The same side I’m always on,” she answered just as softly. “Mine.”

“Who do you work for?” he questioned.

“Rule number one; no names,” she said in the voice of a teacher reminding her student of a lesson so elementary it should be second nature. She would have liked to ask Marcceli the same thing he’d asked her but she couldn’t be certain of getting an honest answer out of him.

She at least got some information from him that he hadn’t meant to give away. For one thing, he didn’t know about Midii Une or her assignment to infiltrate the preventors which meant that there was one less person likely to watch her. Oh, he could have been setting her up but Midii didn’t think so, politician or not he was still too new to the game in her eyes to cover up some of his more obvious tells. She was able to read him like a book after only a few minutes in his presence and everything she read told him that he knew nothing about her. The second thing that he had given away was that he likely didn’t know about the Consortium either, if he did he would likely have been alerted to her status by the code-sentence she had used in her first utterances to him. She knew he didn’t know anything about the Consortium and hence about her because there was no way he would have been able to hide a reaction of recognition from her, nor would he have likely asked the questions he asked her after hearing the sentence.

* * *

Next time on Along the Razors Edge: Midii does some covert information gathering on the Consortium but things just don’t add up. Trowa, monitoring every one of Midii’s moves, reports back to Lady Une and receives a slight change in the Priority of Midii Une. Look forward to it please!