The X-Project

While observing a potential contact in Berlin, Jake and Sarah's stake-out takes a new twist.



The waiter dropped off a pair of drinks – steins of dark Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier that they’d discovered during their last trip over – and nodded towards the man who had just walked into the kneipe. The waiter leaned over to polish the table and spoke quietly so only they could hear.

“That’s your man. He has had a companion the last few times; a dark haired woman, very elegant. Drinks expensively.” He straightened up and left, having used the cloth to sweep up the bills that they had placed on the table.

Jake nodded at him, watching the monies disappear. One thing he could say for the blandness of American money--it was much easier to overtip without the possibility of being overseen. The bright orange of the 50 Euro note was particularly hard to camouflage, but if the banknotes were crisp enough and properly folded inside the more reasonable 20, it was nearly undetectable, even when laid openly on the table in apparent disregard.

Out of the other corner of his eye, he watched their target take a seat. "He didn't even look to see if she's here," he relayed the man's actions to Sarah, "so if they're meeting tonight, they've planned it out down to that level of detail."

"All signs point to bad shit going on in Berlin." Sarah took a sip of her drink, glancing at the man from across the top of her glass. "A guy like that doesn't get a rich drinker unless she wants something. He doesn't look loaded, so I'm guessing it isn't money."

It was the nature of intelligence gathering that information tended to come from unexpected sources, such as the new factor of a woman involved with the very man they were trying to get information from. What had been a quiet surveillance on one man turned into some entirely different as an elegant, dark haired woman stepped through the door, and walked over to the booth where the man was seated. She greeted him in a casual way, more of that of an acquaintance, as opposed to a lover or a partner. As she sat, they noticed that she slipped an envelope from her purse into her lap, so fast that anyone not watching them intently would have missed it.

"I'm guessing it's not se--" Jake cut himself off as the woman entered and approached the man's table. "No, definitely not sex. Not that he wouldn't like to take it there either, I'd guess. Oho, what do we have here?" he wondered as the envelope was passed. He pulled a pen from his pocket and quickly sketched out a tic-tac-toe board on the napkin under his drink, and placed a big X in the center square before passing the napkin and pen toward Sarah. "There's a camera opposite the clip, click twice to take a shot--see if you can get her face any better from your angle?"

Sarah looked down at the pen, back to Jake, and shrugged. "Why is it..." she muttered, twirling the pen in between her fingers till the camera pointed at the table they were watching, "that I never get to play with the cool toys?" She watched the woman look up at her companion with a personable smile, and clicked the pen twice. Then she tilted her head in a nod to Jake scribbling an O in an empty square. "You are so going down."

"Because only boys get the cool toys?" Jake shrugged as well. "Perfect. We can compare against his phone records tonight. With any luck, she'll be there. If not, someone back home can comb through security tapes to figure out who she is." He slashed an X onto the paper and slid it back. "And not a chance. I'm a master."