QER Project preview: Chapter N1.
A woman with a fake name was sipping espresso in a run-down café.
To call it run-down was a disservice to it’s builders and caretakers, it had been both built and maintained with care and effort. It had also been hit by a car bomb from some ways down the street, a couple years past, and no one in this part of town had the money for a full rebuild.
He decided to walk in, the street badly pot marked and never repaired but for the walk and bike path. It was hot for a January day, almost 30 in the sun, but there was never that much change in a coastal city like this. Even on the sea wall or lowlands, the temperature didn’t vary much but for the breeze off the ocean.
His guide followed behind him, low heels marking her footsteps and silent as she usually was. She hadn’t asked who they were going to see, he had simply mentioned that he had a friend nearby. So soon out of surgery, they had both judged he could probably use a companion, and she had grabbed her purse, sunglasses and pistol and followed him.
He was a company man now, hired on as a ‘technology reporter’. Treatments like he had received were not so available to outsiders, and apparently, he had been judged as a competent asset, if one needing a handler. It was sort of funny in his opinion. He was someone considered ‘dangerous’ enough to be denied entrance to several countries if he used his real identity. It was a joke, had rarely ever hurt someone, and never thrown a punch in anger in his memory.
The café had made the decision to look new and edgy by using building rubble sanded down as chairs. Ultramodern, with waitresses in bright shirts and jeans, and an menu in four languages. None of them were the ‘local’. It was probably a hot stop for internationals looking for lunch, only a five-minute bike from the local tram stop, maybe fifteen minuets in total from the nearby legal offices if one was lucky. The atmosphere of ‘advancement meets lost world’ (as the menu popup proudly proclaimed) probably appealed to the type of internationals that would come to city like this.
With the usual option of sliding into a chair removed by the decor, he simply strolled up and greeted to the woman in French, lounging against the wall next to her table. The language was common enough to be regular here, and thus not stand out, but not common enough for most people to understand what he said. It was also helpful that the woman also spoke the language.
“Marianne, strange to see you in a place like this.” He opened, tone slightly questioning.
“Strange to see you alive in a place like this.” She returned, finishing her drink as her Parisian accent bled through.
“I’m a company man now, an official employee of De Jong – Koroma.” He responded, a wry smile on his face.
The woman he called Marianne raised an eyebrow, looking at the local he had brought in beside him in silent question.
He took out his phone and ordered a coffee, black as he could find, and grabbed one of the questionably comfortable seats. Standing was becoming awkward and he wasn’t about to receive an offer to sit as far as he could tell. It was a power play, probably, to force him to come to her. His guide took a seat as well, no expression on her face. Her phone flashed for a moment, and he saw her order and rate the place out of the corner of his eye.
Undoubtedly, she was using the corporate app for it.
Loyal woman, she was. The Koroma restaurant app was a piece of junk.
“This is Maria De Jong, my guide and camera woman. We’re technology reporters, you see, and we also do international reporting and coverage.” He told the dark-haired woman across from him. You could have melted butter in his mouth, and there was only an ounce of mischief in his eyes.
Marianne went to down her drink again, only to find it gone. She rolled her eyes at her action, then turned to her new companions.
“Right then,” She said with a snap of her fingers, “What’s the offer? You mentioned a job in the Dee Em. I know you need legal help, and translation I’m guessing.” She drew out the slang for direct message until it sounded ridiculous. He ignored it.
“Right you are, and there aren’t that many French polyglots with legal experience around here.” He started his pitch with a touch of flattery. While probably true, a French polyglot with ‘legal experience’ wasn’t precisely what he needed anyway.
“There might be more then you’re expecting Lee, but not many that wouldn’t shoot you, no. What’s the offer?” His contact fired back.
“470 US, plus company benefits.” The man responded.
“Has anything you ever published made half that?” She asked in response.
“No.” Maria broke in to respond. “The company will be paying the salary directly.”
“This sounds like it’s going to be risking my hide. I would want more for that, way more.” She countered.
He just looked back at her.
“One point four mill.” She responded, without hesitation.
Lee scoffed. “You have a linguistics degree with a minor in language and worked in law offices, no matter how many languages you speak the only time you’ve seen that much money was in your university parking lot.”
“The company would be willing to give you a flat 500 if you pay for your own flights.” Maria offered.
“…When would we leave?” Marianne questioned.
It was a fast fold, and more negotiation might have taken her salary higher. He wondered for a moment if he was missing something, but it was probably the most money the woman had ever been offered. He had avoided lowballing her to help sooth the anger when one of their ‘reporting trips’ inevitably went south.
“Two and a half weeks, I’m not allowed to fly yet. I was in surgery.” He informed her.
“I know.” The girl responded.
A waitress arrived with their drinks, smiled at them, and walked off.
They sat in silence for a few moments.
“I sort of like Freetown, you know? It feels more honest the most places, but people are still friendly.” Marianne broke the silence to say.
“We need your real name to sign the contract.” Lee told her.
“Fine, I will join you.” The dark-haired woman sulked for a moment, her accent making the words sound a touch huskier then normal. It was absolutely something she had practiced. Sharp makeup and smooth features emphasised the expression.
“Right then, Maria, could you order a couple bikes?” Lee asked the local. Freetown had a thriving bike exchange service, and they could just move quickly back to the trains. Unlike most other African cities, biking wasn’t risking your life, it was just the best way to get around that wasn’t the tram. Partly owed to massive tax on foreign cars, gas prices and the state of roads, Freetown had very few cars and almost none in a place with roads as broken as the ones outside the café. De Jong – Koroma payed for the bike paths, like most developed infrastructure in the city.
The hover boats, over the swampy region between the core city and the airport, were just about the only old-style transport left in the area. Though the bike-sharing services were only nominally owned by the company, they wanted them around badly. It was part of the corporate vision of a truly modern city.
He had watched a lot of corporate promo videos while he was laid up the past couple weeks, reading had still made his head hurt. He got a sick sort of amusement from them.
“Already done.” She responded, drawing him back out of his moment of contemplation.
The woman he knew as Marianne was reviewing the contract on her phone, and made a few decisive taps. He couldn’t help but note she was still using the insecure fingerprint lock, but remained quiet.
He would fix that later, it wouldn’t do to get robbed blind the first time she stepped into… a lot of places, really.
She looked up at him, removed her sunglasses and nodded, her blue eyes cool and striking.
Her eyeshadow was perfect enough that it couldn’t have been done by a human. That was an interesting detail.
“Cosette Champlain.” She greeted him. He expected that was fake too, but she might have the papers to back it up. People like her, like him, lose a name every once in a while, and most governments still had bad protection of birth registries. Some fake data profiles, a backdated birth certificate and a few fake records were enough to create a ‘person’. Government would never look twice, swamped by data collection as they are.
“James Lee.” He responded, his accent suddenly Irish. “I even have the papers to prove it.”
She laughed. Union citizenship was still a valuable commodity when traveling, and she caught his implication.
Maria sat forward. “I have our first job.”
The rest of the table looked at her, all business.
“We received a tip that a Moscow-based company in Dushanbe is using Chinese corporate money and Iranian scientist to try and jump their embryonic tech, against treaty. We’re going to go investigate it, and there are some local rebels willing to help smuggle us in and out.” Maria informed him.
A story like that would spook the Americans, he reflected. It would be a great story. Best of all, it didn’t even have to be particularly true. Stories that had evidence and played to preconceived biases were the ones that could really catch fire.
Tajikistan had been a geopolitical hotspot for the past ten years, with mineral and water resources contested between Russia, China and India. With a few western corporations thrown in for good measure, it was a flashpoint. Civil War had not even managed to stop the growth and foreign interests.
“Right then, I will brush up on my Tajik.” Cosette responded, with an eye roll.
“I will handle Uzbek then?” Maria offered.
“It was a joke. I don’t speak Tajik, who the hell does. I do have Russian though.” Cosette answered.
“It will have to be good enough.” Maria answered, looking troubled for a moment. Probably trying to figure where to get a trustworthy translator.
Cosette wasn’t joking, Tajik wasn’t a particularly common language.
Lee was silent for a moment.
“I have a plan.” He told the other two, looking up from his coffee.
“I hate those.” Cosette answered.
