Memorabilia

“That little shit!” Will shouted at his phone, realizing that Ethan had hung up on him. Ethan truly could be a stubborn bastard. As if the near decade Will had personally known the man hadn’t proven that already. He glanced up from the phone in his hand, now only seeing his own exhausted face in the reflection in the dark glass.

He quickly put the phone in his jacket pocket and stood up from his desk. Will had taken over Hunley’s office for convenience's sake as he was more or less acting as the secretary. He was still in the process of getting himself or another agent legitimized as the secretary but he frustratingly faced a lot of opposition. Without an official secretary, the I.M.F. was weak compared to other agencies and was at the risk of being controlled by higher ups from other agencies. People like Sloane could easily override Will’s orders, just based on their ranks. The I.M.F. was truly at its weakest and it suited others just fine. Looking through and checking all possible candidates while running the I.M.F. at the same time was exhausting.

He knew getting himself instated as the secretary was an uphill battle. Higher ups knew he was too damn smart and untrusting for him to be usable for them. They fed him some bullshit about it not looking good on his record for two secretaries to have died while he was around. They also told him he worked just fine as he was. Indirectly of course. Officially it was framed as some type of conflict of interest for having such a close relationship with his own team and some other crap about his skill sets not matching with what was expected of the secretary. So he spent less effort on that route. Instead Will had to sort himself a new secretary out of the pool of suitable candidates and fast.

But Will had quite a lot on his plate to deal with and the search was taking a while. As if his job couldn’t be harder, the investigation around Benji, no, agent Dunn couldn’t be leaked without the wolves gleefully declaring him a liability on the account of agent Dunn being a member of his dear team. That would leave Will being compromised. No, that would be a disaster. He did have some goodwill amongst the government, saving the world, including the U.S. tends to do that, but Dunn’s situation would sour it. The situation was handled publicly and with the local PD as a break-in gone wrong with Benji, no dammit, agent Dunn having the right to shoot. It wouldn’t last, that was for damn sure.

He walked out of his glass office door with Dunn’s case files in hand and moved through the corridor full of other, smaller offices. He had pulled an all-nighter and the amount of caffeine he had consumed was making him want to throw up. Stansfield and Street had warned him to go home, but he was too wound up to stop working.

Agent Dunn had been tracked down to Europe. He was moving erratically and with a passenger. Will knew it would all come crashing down but for now he needed to stamp his emotions down and be a professional. He needed to distance himself from the Benji he knew, at least for the sake of the I.M.F. No need for him to give Dunn special treatment and to prove the assholes right.

Stansfield had come and given him the files regarding Benji’s movements in Europe and he had immediately called Ethan. He would need to inform the rest of the team also. Will checked his watch. 9:00 AM. Everyone, except Ethan of course, should be here. He changed his course and moved to the training center down in the bowels of the building. Jane would be there, probably mapping out some training courses for recruits and Ilsa, who was getting antsy also, keeping her company. He could probably snag Luther on his way over there.

He moved four stories down via the elevators and headed in the direction of the I.T. department. He walked through the wooden double doors and had to squint his eyes. It was much darker in the huge room compared to the bright hallway. Luther wasn’t the leader of the department but pretty much everyone looked up to him as the most senior and skilled of the bunch. His desk was near the department chief’s for that very reason. That meant navigating through the entire room full of computers, smaller servers, hubs and wires just to get there.

Luther was seated lazily in his leather swivel chair, seeming a bit tired. Luther’s desk was situated in a way that Will could catch a glimpse of his screen as he moved closer. He looked as if he was reading through some codes. What little Will understood of it, programming was very much trial and error and hours of combing through error messages to find out which bracket is one letter off.

“Luther? I need to talk to you, Jane and Ilsa.”
The man in question abruptly looked up and contemplated for a second. He seemed to expect Will coming in and peered at the case files Will was holding in his hands.
“It’s about Benji, right?”
“Yes. We have a few sightings.”
“Can I see them? I could comb through some possible destinations. Big airports and the like?”
Luther saved and closed his current work and started up something new.
“That would be great. I meant go fetch you to Ilsa and Jane, but we can look through the results together here, if you can get anything new. So I’ll get them if you’ll start whatever it is you’re doing,” Will said a bit haughtily, but jokigly. He knew the importance of Luther’s work but he also knew he could get a lecture on the specifics on how whatever he made worked if he stayed for too long.

“Yeah yeah, Mr. Wolf better get down there, this won’t take me long,” Luther snarked back at him. It was half hearted, but Will gave him a grin and quickly maneuvered his way back out of the department and speedwalked down the hall.

Peeking his head into the giant open space, he immediately could see that Ilsa and Jane weren’t there, at least not the main part of the giant room. The lighting was dim as the space wasn't in use and he could see the shapes of workout machines on the right side of the gym with the rest being open space. Jane would, predictably, be in the office doing her paperwork and planning, but Ilsa didn’t have anything to do. Will expected her to be training but maybe she was just hanging around Jane. Ilsa did have her “cheat days” if working in an office could count as a cheat day. Ilsa was quite a lot like Ethan, if that hadn’t been repeated enough times. Truthfully though, Ilsa got along with Jane quite well, maybe even better than with Ethan. Especially on the “normal” side of life.

He began walking to the slightly ajar clear glass door on the far left side of the room. The lights were on and he could hear the chatter originating from that office echoing on the walls of the large room. The chatter became clearer the closer he got.

“...let himself be way too confident, look at these results! And Daniels didn’t do any better! She, no scrap that, both of them should’ve just retook it instead of bulldozing their way…” Jane’s agitated voice drifted to Will’s ears. Seems like the newcomers were a bit too cocky for her liking.
“Surely they can’t be that bad?”
“Well take a look!”
“Oh goodness, they are that bad,” Ilsa’s mournful observation could be heard. Jane gave a short snort at that.
“Yeah, you see what I’m working with? How are they…”
“Ahem.”
Will had made it to the door and cleared his throat to announce his presence. Jane and Ilsa both looked at him. Jane was at her desk while Ilsa was seated at a sofa with a couple of papers in her hands.
“Do you have a minute? Luther and I are looking through some leads on agent Dunn,” Will said, matter of factly. Jane’s eyes darkened and Ilsa seemed to deflate, as much as she was willing to show. Will suspected they didn’t like him referring to their teammate as just another agent.

“When?” Ilsa said, raising her eyes to meet Will’s.
“Right now, if Luther's done. It shouldn’t take too long,” he answered. It sure as hell didn’t take long to track down Ilsa, but then again, they had gotten lucky when she had needed to use the airport. In Europe Benji could just drive around and avoid major cities or other areas of dense population, as he had already done. They had only gotten glimpses of him heading North while in France.

Jane and Ilsa shared a glance. Then Jane turned around, shut off her computer and stood up, Ilsa doing the same.

Will, flanked by the two women reading the same report that was given to Luther and that he had given verbally to Ethan, walked back to Luther's desk, where he seemed to be intensely staring at the screen.

“Luther?” Will questioned him.
“Found a sighting. Oslo. He rented a car under the name “Bennett Dawson” and left the city afterwards after that. I’m waiting on some results from more remote locations. This “Jennifer Bevis” was there also so I did some digging on her in the meantime.”
“You-okay dammit, how quickly do you do this?” Will sputtered out. Seriously, he sometimes thought Luther superhuman. To be fair, he had called others in that field of work “mere mortals”, so Will had the right to theorize a little bit. Will leaned in to look at Luther’s screen and continued:
“Did you manage to find anything of use about her?”
“She has been hopping around the world for as long as I could find sightings of her. Some time ago she started hiding much more as the sightings lessened quite a lot.”
“Correlations to anything of significance happening?”
“You see this date? She also started being seen with “Day Lee” at the same time that the sightings lessened. They seemed to have started traveling together after a meeting in Morocco that happened on that date.”

Will glanced back at Jane and Ilsa, then back at Luther. They all seemed to have the same idea.

“Rogue agents, maybe?”

The thought was amusing to Will, as much as it could be. Maybe even hilarious.

“Looks like it. But then what does that have to do with Benji?” Luther inquired. Will was at a loss. It truly didn’t make sense. If the two women, at least one of which was a Widow, were rogue, then what did that have to do with agent Dunn running off with this “Bevis”? The confirmed Widow was dead.

“I…don’t know. Maybe blackmail? Maybe Lee had something on Dunn and passed that off to Bevis.”
“It would make sense, but what could be bad enough for Benji to not trust us?” Ilsa piped up. She knew that Ethan at least would understand and the rest of the team would follow. Benji and Ethan had known each other for years! She had been accepted with open arms after just a little bit of suspicion and even that was due to her actively working against them. What on Earth could be bad enough?

At that point, Jane, having leafed through the report on the way there, said: “The report confirmed the connection to the Red Room, right? So the blackmail could be about that?”
“That would be the best explanation we have at this moment. The only reasonable one connecting most of the dots, really.”

They stayed quiet for a minute, with only the sounds of keyboards clacking and some seemingly distant noise of other techies doing their jobs bringing in any sort of sound.

“So what do we do?” Luther asked.
Will answered to that by telling them about his conversation with Ethan.
“He wants to get to agent Dunn before an official mission is launched.”
“What!? Wait, dammit, that sounds exactly like something Ethan would actually do,” Ilsa groaned out. Luther and Jane looked equally done with Ethan’s antics as he and Ilsa were.

“I assume you would help him if he gets on with this ‘un-official mission’?” Will asked tiredly. He very well knew, regardless of how exasperated they appeared, the team would support Ethan. He had moved a bit away from the team, pacing. Looking up he could see Luther at his desk looking upwards at the two women who were throwing glances at both each other and at Luther. Finally they looked at him, all with varying degrees of smiles and renewed mirth in their eyes.

“Fucking dammit with you.”

_______________

“Fucking fine!”

Benji jumped a little as the door to the little dwelling was thrown open. Natasha stood there, glaring at him.

“You, inside, now.”

After those words Natasha turned around and went back inside. Jeez, they sure went at it. He had been sorta right, it had only taken two hours. He stood up and indeed moved back inside.

He had taken a walk along the empty forest roads. The warm smell of pines and spruces mixed with the overwhelming, almost chalky, if a smell could be described as such, stench of the sandy road in the humid air had made Benji wrinkle his nose. The roadsides were filled with different colorful flowers and plants. Some had already been familiar to him like fireweed and yarrow, but others were new like reedgrass, heathers and knapweed. Hell, he finally had a use for the knowledge of what “chickweed wintergreen” was and it had been an underwhelmingly small flower for how damn hard the name was.

He had even seen a noble male capercaillie on the top branches of a pine tree. Then it had started to make that ridiculous sounding, low pitched clucking and screeching noise, like someone taking turns tapping their a cane against wood quickly and doing a cross between a Donald Duck impression and a demonic child whispering with occasional pig oinks thrown in between.

He had stayed looking at the bird for a while but eventually Benji had taken his leave. The bird hadn’t seemed to have cared and flew down into the mossy and lichen covered undergrowth. A cold wind had picked up, but the sun had still been in the sky. This far up the sun wouldn’t set until around 10 pm and even later during the middle of the summer. Blackout curtains must be a built-in feature in every home, he had mused to himself.

Now back inside Natasha’s safehouse, he could definitely see the aftermath of a “friendly row” between the “siblings”. A few smashed mugs, books all over the floors, the loveseat was overturned and a few oranges mashed on top of the counter and on the wall above the tv that was broadcasting the first episode of some type of crime show with subtitles in what he assumed was norwegian. He stared at it. The main character appeared miserable, like a depressed Sherlock Holmes running around the forests of Northern Europe or wherever the hell the show took place.

Benji was yet again shaken out of his stupor when Natasha started speaking.
“We,” and at that Natasha threw a fury filled glare Yelena’s way before continuing to speak in a honey sweet voice that promised a swift kick to his balls if he interrupted, “have decided to let you come with us. Yelena helpfully explained your plan and I agree that the Iron Maiden is our best chance to kill Dreykov. As I don’t know where she is either or how to locate her, I also have to reluctantly agree that we need to break out the Red Guardian, as he is the only way we could get to know her location.”

Natasha finished her speech with a tilt of her head and a subtle widening of her smile, ever the picture of professionalism.

Benji remembered talking about the specifics with Yelena, even if only briefly when she was in a good and not-sulky-like-a-woman-just-rediscovering-her-teenage-years -mood. While yes, Shostakov could know, he’d been in prison for decades so he was not willing to bet on it at all. Vostokoff was a gamble, as they didn't know who she would side with, but she would without a doubt know where Dreykov was located so the gamble was worth it. Without Vostokoff they would have to spend dear god only knows how long pursuing random agents in the hopes that they could piece together something. So Vostokoff it was. Hopefully Melina was in a motherly mood.

Benji hesitated for a moment before speaking up, staring nervously at Natasha:
“So, do we leave, like, right now?” He said, while gesturing animatedly at both the ground and his wrist watch. Natasha looked at him oddly for a second, a combination of besument, nostalgia and incomprehension glittering in her eyes.

“So plan is get Shostakov, get Vostokoff, get the location of where Dreykov is and kill him? That’s it? Just so we clear?” Yelena interrupted their staring match.

“That’s the plan! Your plan precisely, I just need to talk to her,” Benji corrected her.
“Talk? Why?” Natasha asked him suspiciously. Her eyes hardened at hearing his words and something akin to hatred flashed in her eyes before it turned to suspicion.
“That’s between Vostokoff and I,” he responded and ending his piece with a lopsided grin, ”it’s not important to our problem now, so don’t you worry about it!”

Natasha frowned at him, but dropped the subject. She’d most likely had her fill of arguing for the day.
“But as for the plan, we need to contact someone who will provide the equipment to break Shostakov out of prison, located in Siberia.”
“Mason?”
“Vho else.”
“So that’s settled. As I assume we’ll want to get this over with as soon as possible, I’ll contact Mason immediately. I don’t exactly have a guest room but seeing as it is getting dark I’ll allow you to stay.”
Natasha didn’t seem to mind Yelena staying, even despite their earlier animosity, but the “allow” in her sentence was quite clearly directed towards Benji.

Fair enough.

_______________

The sun had started settling and the forest surrounding the little residence had turned shadowy and dark. It wouldn’t go completely dark for a while, but it was dark enough that any animals could safely lurk in the shadows.

Benji looked out of the window. Even with most of the lights inside the home turned off, he still couldn’t clearly see outside. The glow of the TV made that impossible.

He looked out of the corner of his eye the “sisters”. They were sitting together on the couch, not close but still at ease in each other’s company. Their argument had bonded them, let them expel some steam and problems.

Suddenly he heard a grinding noise and the TV went dark. Benji, immediately alarmed, crouched down away from the window and started drawing his pistol. As he moved down he saw Yelena do the same, jumping from the couch to a safer position inside the home.

“Wait wait, it's just the generator!” Natasha yelled, to calm them down.
“The generator?” Benji said, settling down a little.
“Yeah, it’s gasoline powered, it sometimes runs out if I don’t refill it,” she explained.

Benji, while still having his hackles up, was content enough with the explanation, especially with it happening multiple times already.

“I’ll refill it,” Natasha said, as she moved to put on her coat.

Benji looked at Yelena, who also looked at him.
“We’ll come too,” he said, with finality.

Natasha looked as if she was going to protest, her eyes betraying that she thought them too cautious over something she considered routine, but gave up and turned, opening her front door.

Benji and Yelena followed her out and moved to the generator at the back of the abode. The air was crisp in the fading light. He stared into the dark forest, still not at ease, and felt some kind of foreboding. Something was wrong, he knew it. The forest swallowed up the surroundings and he felt like a kid, wanting to run to his bunk and under the covers when the lights were shut off even when he knew there were no imaginary “monsters”.

Natasha was still trying to start up the generator, without luck.
“Dammit.”
“Vhat is it?” Yelena too sounded alarmed.
“I’m out of fuel.”
“Take some from your car,” he said, not wanting to be out here, where he felt exposed.
“Wrong kind, it won’t work,” Natasha said, frustrated.

Benji’s agitation started to make him angry. He switched his gaze from the forest to Natasha and said:
“Well where can we get more, then? The nearest gas station, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said, as he threw his arms into the the air.
“Someone is going to have to drive,” Yelena pointed out, “if ve vant to have any electricity:”

Benji looked at the two and decided they would all be more comfortable with him going, even if going alone made his skin crawl.

“I’ll go,” he groaned out while the women shared glances and nods. He went inside, took the keys to the rental and went to the car. The women just stayed outside whilst he turned on the engine and began the journey back to town along the dirt road that would later change to asphalt, his car's lights and the last rays of sunshine lighting his way.