Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ Tristan Blume, Representative ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: For Christmas, I asked Santa Claus for a complete set of Gundam pilots, or if that was too much trouble, just Heero and Duo. Santa coughed loudly, muttered something about copyright infringement and unlawful confinement, and gave me a CD instead.

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 5

By danse

Trowa whistled softly as he walked down the corridor of the secret Mediterranean base. The hollow sound of his footsteps mixed with the tune he was whistling to create a deafening and haunting echo that reverberated off of the stainless steel walls endlessly. He ignored it, and nodded a greeting at another agent who passed him, carrying a briefcase and an armload of file folders.

Trowa had been called to go meet S in his office. He would probably be given a new assignment. It had been three weeks since he'd last had one, and he was looking forward to it. He increased his pace a bit and started whistling a little louder.

S was probably best described, and most politely, as odd-looking. He had a long head, crowned with spiky gray hair. His ears stuck out a bit. Most noticeable, though, was his nose--or rather, the thing that covered it. S insisted on wearing an absurdly large, black, fake nose that was strapped to his face so that you could see the strings. Once, when he was younger, Trowa had asked him why. S had looked at him cryptically and replied that the nose is a person's most distinguishing feature, because it sticks out the most and is hard to alter. If he wore the fake nose all the time, then if he ever needed a disguise, he could simply take it off and no one would be the wiser.

Other agents whispered that he really had no nose, for it had been cut off as a form of torture, or because he had leprosy. Trowa didn't really care, and suspected that it was none of his business anyway, but he didn't really believe any of the stories.

Trowa pushed open the heavy steel door that led to S' office, smiling nervously at Catherine behind the desk, who waved him through without looking up from her paperwork. There was a security monitor on her desk with a lovely view of the hallway outside the office door.

He couldn't help but notice the viciously low cut neckline of her white silk tank top as he walked by. A silver necklace with an amethyst pendant rested against her skin, just above the curve of her breasts. He swallowed hard and trained his eyes on the door in front of him. They hadn't seen each other at all in the three days since their encounter in the Playroom. He wasn't sure if he liked it that way or not, as the images of the shirt she was wearing and of her tigress-like grace with the throwing knives superimposed themselves on each other in his mind.

With a start, he realized that his hand was resting on the door handle to the inner office, without any prior consent from his brain. He pushed the heavy door open to reveal S, eating a submarine sandwich at his desk. The older man's eyes widened and he looked at his watch while still holding his sandwich in the other hand. "Look at the time," he said as he cleared away his food into a desk drawer. "You're early."

"Am I?" Trowa shrugged and sat down in one of the two wooden, cloth-upholstered chairs in front of the desk.

"Well, right to it, then." S got up and crossed to a gray filing cabinet, opened the second drawer from the top, rifled through the files, and at last removed a thick one. He brought it back and opened it as he sat down. "This mission is undercover reconnaissance." He removed a glossy blue brochure from the folder and pushed it across the desk for Trowa's inspection.

Trowa studied the brochure, then looked up at S through his long, brown bangs. "A LOPEN conference?" he asked. The League of Petroleum Exporting Nations, which included countries in the Middle East, South America, Asia, and Africa, was a conglomerate of oil producers that greatly influenced the price of oil on the world markets. A few oil shortages in the past had been caused by LOPEN, and the member countries knew just how much sway they held in a world dependent upon fossil fuels. Every two years, they held a conference to be attended by delegates of all of the member countries, who gathered to discuss the future of the industry and the organization's plans for the next two years. The brochure declared that this year's conference was to be held at the Royal Arabian Hilton in the city of Hofuf, Saudi Arabia.

S nodded and removed some photos from the manila folder. "These," he said as he handed Trowa the pictures, "are the people who I want you to keep an eye on. They are all very rich, very politically powerful, and very important to my purposes. Collectively, I imagine that they control five to seven percent of the world's wealth. Not that I want to scare you or anything."

Trowa raised his eyebrows and nodded slowly as he examined the pictures. There were ten of them, and they were all men. Mostly they all looked the same: old and portly, with bushy dark hair and mustaches. One of them, however, stood out. He was young, possibly in his early twenties, and clean-shaven. His most peculiar feature was his eyebrows; they were forked at the ends like a demon's might be. He stared at the picture for a moment, and then held it up for S to see. "Who's this?" he asked.

S squinted at the photograph, then nodded. "That's Treize Kushrenada. He's fairly new to the political scene. I'm not too sure what…" he trailed off, distracted, and consulted his filing cabinet again. He came back to the desk a minute later with another file folder. Flipping it open, he started reading a report with a smaller photo of Kushrenada stapled to the front. "Ah," he said after scanning the page. "It says here that he is an emissary of the Romefeller Corporation, hired from university two years ago. He's twenty-four." He looked up from the profile and contemplated Trowa. "Probably at the conference to do some business dealings. With all that going on, hobnobbing, window-shopping, and making partnerships on behalf of the company. Very important to business."

Trowa nodded and tossed the pile of photos back on the desk. "So what's my cover?" He needed to play a part, to keep suspicion away from him.

"You'll be doing much the same thing as Mr. Kushrenada," S replied, digging through the rather thick LOPEN folder some more. Finally he found what he was looking for: a passport, an identification card, and a security pass meant to clip to a jacket. All of them bore Trowa's picture and the name 'Tristan Blume.' S handed him a pad of blank paper and a pen, and after two practice tries, Trowa signed a piece of paper with the name Tristan Blume, and then signed the passport. The signature would have to be scanned from the paper onto the ID and security pass, which would be done later, before he left.

S smiled with satisfaction and cleared the articles away, and then showed Trowa a business card. It was plain white, and the neat blue type said: Cinq Enterprises, Inc. Tristan Blume, Representative

"Cinq Enterprises exists on paper," S said, "so that should be enough to throw the curious off of your trail for as long as you need. The company has interests in plastic, hence the need for a secure oil partnership." He leaned back in his black swivel chair and stretched out his arms. "You'll be shaking hands and kissing asses, and don't forget to hand out those business cards. Behave yourself and try to act refined. It's an upper-class crowd. Make a lot of chit-chat and listen to conversations; you're looking for references to a large upcoming merger that probably won't be directly named, as well as just about anything these ten men," he gestured at the skewed pile of photographs, "will have reason to talk to each other about."

"I'll provide you with voice recorders and such to use. Dump the info at night onto the laptop you'll be issued and encrypt the file before you send it, via satellite, to the base." S sat up and leaned forward a little. "If you can find a way to bring back a hard copy of any reports or invoices that might be of interest to the mission, do it. Remember above all, though, that your cover must remain intact. I want no risks of your life or your security, as you are wont to take, Mr. Barton. Please use some discretion this time."

Silence draped itself like a comfortable friend on the shoulders of the two men for a while. Trowa suddenly realized that he was dismissed, and got up slowly to leave. S obviously didn't really trust him to lay low and just do the job. The man didn't understand that the risks Trowa took were for the sake of the mission, and were always calculated.

The office door shut with a soft click behind him, and Trowa was left standing alone, in the empty corridor. Today was April 14th. Four days…