(I'm sorry sir, but, are you Alfred? A gentleman at the bar bought you this Guinness)
(What gentleman... What, when?)
(Last night at 10pm sir. He asked that you are to be served by me specifically at precisely 2am and that you'd be standing here, waiting. Looking over in that direction, at nothing in particular)
(Andre!?)
(Andre!?)
(He's gone sir. His seat's empty...)
(Attention, attention, all passengers. Ladies and gentlemen, would the passengers of flight BA 445, who have boarded, during this simulation please..., if anyone can hear this announcement, call in or radio in? We seem to have a system malfunction of sorts.)
(She's lying isn't she Alfred, they have just let her know they can't find the plane, or the soldiers, didn't they? Oh, before I forget, how ironic is it, the waiter's name, ask him for the meaning...)
(Andre! Where are you!?)
(You know Alfred, 'you' my friend really need a rest. Bonne Chance!)
(What!?)
(Silence...)
(He said good luck, sir.)
(Shut up Duncan! I know what he said!)
*I'm sorry sir. Sir, is Svetlana with you?)
(No, she is not. Why are you asking?)
(She said she had something to tell you. Something she noticed that didn't make sense when she flew us in with the Sikorsky. She left in a flurry)
(When did she leave the helicopter to the airport building?)
(Twenty minutes ago already sir)
(Young man that brought me a Guinness, you're hovering around still. Can I help you?)
(Yes sir, the man who bought you this, he said you're going to have a question?)
(What? No. OK what the hell... What is your name and what does it mean? And then be off please, we're busy)
(Strange that you should ask that. But it's on my badge... over here. My name is Hermes. In Greek mythology, he's amongst others the God of boundaries, travel and I think, communication. As the son of Zeus and Maia, he acts as messenger of the Gods, and leads the souls of the dead into the afterlife. Will that be all sir?)
Alfred, I'm not going into the details as I don't know the facts. But records show that the military volunteers on that plane, as experiment led by MI5 and André, were all reportedly killed in combat a week after this strange disappearance? I just copied the classified military files and the insurance payouts to the beneficiaries for the death claims. Interesting...? There were no married people on the plane but one couple... all were single and... the beneficiary in every instance, was this odd little shop in France, registered under the name of Merci?A non-profit organisation and one of the funders of Doctors Without Borders... Do we need a break or shall I continue?"
"Actually Sam, a break for us to absorb what you relayed now, may be a good idea. If you could keep tracking the individuals on screen as well as the others, who you are tracking with or without our permission in any event I'm sure?" Olaf looked to his left to a perplexed Alfred, noticing Elize was shaking her head at Alfred after Sam's revelation - Alfred in the meantime had buried his face in his hands as he leant back into his chair.
"So, Emil... I see you're making notes over there. I can assure you, you're going to make much more. Here, help yourself to my and Elize's note pads. Zach, if it's fine with you, mind if Emil has yours too? I think Mossad wouldn't mind contributing some paper to this IMF report?" Olaf winked and shared a smile with his long-bearded old friend from Tel Aviv, on the other side of the table.
"Gladly. Catch" Zach precipitated Olaf's wink, nonchalantly slid his A4-notepad to his left without looking in Emil's direction, and picked up a small opened pocket knife from the desk, and carried on cleaning his nails.
"Where the hell!? Are you serious? How did you get that in here?" Alfred looked up and demanded.
"Oh please, grow up. The cutlery over by the snacks are more dangerous than this" Zach pointed out a most obvious piece of information that had Alfred, Elize and the rest of the boardroom turn to the far back where Olaf's men apparently enjoyed the reinforced concrete encased, bottomless-coffee shop many levels under mother earth's crust.
"Sam, would you mind, my girl, when we convene... actually no. Maybe now... please refresh the members' minds, exactly what it is that MOTLEY stands for?" Olaf stood up and signalled to Elize and Zach whether they wanted coffee.
"Of course Olaf. Then a fifteen-minute break?"
"Yes please Sam. Elize?"
"Yes, yes that's fine. Thank you, Sam. Most considerate darling. Olaf, where do you hide your Vodka? Come out with it..." Elize smiled and hinted him to the dimmer back where his men stood up as they all offered her a chair.
"I take it Olaf, Elize and Zach are monetarily excusing themselves? Shall I still continue Olaf?"
"Yes please my girl"
"Good then.
MOTLEY
M - This donates 'Master'. And there is a good reason for this, as I shall later explain during the virus and antivirus instruction.
O - The uppercase 'O' notation is used in computer science to describe the performance or rather the complexity of an algorithm, specifically for 'our' purpose. It does for the outside world, describe a worst-case scenario, and execution time required or the space used. Obviously not at the significant scale we need operating.
T, on the other hand, would be for typecasting, or conversion. This is a method of changing an entity from one data type to another.
L - Load Balancing. You would appreciate that computer networks are complex systems, routing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of data packets every second. Obviously, in order for networks to handle large amounts of data, it's imperative that the data is routed efficiently. Should ten routers within a network have four doing five percent of the work, another four, five percent more, and only the remainder, the two of them, do ninety percent, the network is not running at optimum efficiently. As one can imagine, this network would run much faster if each router was handling about ten percent.
E - Enum. Abbreviated from 'enumerated'. This is a data type that consists of predefined values. A constant or variable defined as an enum can store one of the values listed in the enum declaration. It's used both in source code and database tables. For example, an enum that stores multiple colours may be declared in C# as follows: Eenum Colour { white, red, green, blue, black };
Y - A yobibyte is really a unit of data storage that equals 2 to the 80th power, or 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes. While a yottabyte can be estimated as 10^24 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, a yobibyte is exactly 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes. This actually avoids the ambiguity associated with the size of yottabytes. A yobibyte is 1,024 zebibytes, and is 'the' largest unit of measurement.
That in brief, is how the name MOTLEY came about.
Any questions?
Emil had been lost at the announcement of 'a fifteen-minute break' and looked up again at screen, at the remainder of the formulas Sam hadn't even got to read out to board yet, and who were all seemingly staring at Emil as a curiosity that entered their world.
"Without that as as base, you're going to have an interesting time when she discusses the need for viruses to hide her identity behind - when she shows us what she's really capable of my friend" A gauntish eighty-something Sheik, whose small eyes had been inspecting Emil's odd tie, adjusted his turquoise turban, and proceeded tapping his fingers next to an ashtray he half-filled since Olaf barged in earlier - and for good measure, struck a match for his next treat.
Chapter 4 - Convo With Anne
"Sam, thank you for that. You've had someone on the line for a while, who's been kind enough to have agreed to be pulled away from her duty, just for an hour, of beautifying your new home" Olaf looked over to Zach, then to Elize, and winked in turn over to them both, as he pushed himself away from the large polished oak boardroom table, deep into his chair then swiveled it slightly to face Emil.
"Says who! With whose permission!? Who says Sam
is moving, and how... to where!?" Alfred was busy making an unwanted habit of almost pouncing on the table, and again slammed an echo into his diary and let it reverberate through the top of the boardroom table.
"But of course Olaf... and members. Say good day to Anne" Sam had ignored Alfred point blank and carried on.
"Well, you all did agree to travel as part of this week's final stage of formulating a strategy to attempt curbing André's recruiting of additional hands to influence the last of the governments that he hadn't managed to get on board with MOTLEY yet, so to speak. Have you forgotten how small the group around that table is? The industries and governments absent, cannot be trusted and are all up for grabs. Ladies and gentlemen, time is of the essence. Inside your prospectuses in front of you, since we... or rather 'none' of you can afford to be a loose end..." It was the authoritive but soft-spoken and slightly creaky voice of a much older woman, who was used to being obeyed and she had put the facts down with the flare of a chest master, in a manner that demonstrated her knowledge in her field as veteran navy intelligence officer. That she was open to alternatives, was merely an act and a carefully processed strategy of stroking the ego of whoever thought differently, and she would lure anyone into a check mate position within short few bold moves. After a lifetime in her dark world, she found wisdom in allowing people to speak their minds, adding value to their positions of prominence, then like a bear-trap, at the ready to shape plans to coincide with hers. She agreed beforehand with Sam, that the secret location Olaf and Anne had chosen, would not be divulged. All that was needed from them, was the authority to sign off available funding. Without prior knowledge of this, and Alfred, not knowing how to make peace with the evident likelihood that he was kept out of the loop, had to intervene and pause Anne mid-sentence.
"I'm sorry Anne, but did you just display a colossal helping of disrespect!? Calling us loose ends!?"
"Alfred relax. What I meant to explain, is that none of us can afford to be traced back to a project of this magnitude. Inside the IMF prospectuses are what they are willing to offer. And no, we're not about to hand Sam over, but it has become time for a more secure and secluded home. We invented passports that you all will have to travel under to where I am. It's a three step program, and I'm not about to be interrupted again.
The only pilot we can trust to get you all here, is in Oymyakon, Russia. She has one condition, that she brings her father with as his life is possibly in danger due to a planned coup de tat in Russia, we believe this is part of MOTLEY'S design.
André has been spotted in Heartville... Sam managed to track him down. Hiding in plain sight, he's decided to try his hand in the food and beverage industry, buying up small guest houses and battling dinners in a small town - or so it would seem. What we suspect is that the forty separate closed-up buildings he bought up thus far will be utilised as a storage division for the multitude of drives to be connected. It will officially be 'the' largest of its kind prior to having MOTLEY go online, permanently. Thanks to Zach, we have two Mossad assets en route there now. As dangerous as what André is, the agents are however not to interfere, but merely let nature takes its course... no pun intended. All I can say is that our hand has been forced by fate to look the other way just once, as we cannot let the world know about André. So it's 'desperate measures' time. If you need to know the finer details, I will explain however.
So, back to the travel arrangements, what else could you have you possibly imagined the travel was for, other than your careful inspection and combined approval for Sam's new home? Funding up to now; other than the logistics of 'moving' Sam, had been the main obstacle. We can't trust any of the other countries who aren't represented here, nor can we approach any of the central banks. The natural financial due diligence, how we allocate and the funds, for our security - a compromising site visit and inspection? And finally who Sam is, and what Sam represents, would - in the case of any of the normal financial institutions - flag Sam instantly onto André's and MOTLEY's radar. Unlike MOTLEY, we have a responsibility... The possibility of siphoning-off much needed funds from unclaimed deceased estates at various international insurers - who we all know South Africa and Russia excelled at in the not-too-distant past, or emptying vast funds from so-called black ops sanctioned intelligence programs, are still traceable with even the capabilities of average government paid hackers - so, let us agree that those two avenues are exhausted."
Chapter 5 - Iris - Twenty-sixth February
Iris... "In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods."
Iris... "A genus of praying mantis found in Africa, Asia, and Southern Europe."
Iris... "The thin, circular structure in the eye, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil and thus the amount of light reaching the retina."
Iris.. "The adjustable diaphragm in modern cameras."
The land of the 'Rus', Russia.
For eons, Iris had always been many things to many people. Carrying on a lengthy and obscured tradition as obedient servants, her kind had been serving their masters since before 988 AD's frozen few days prior to the death of the two warlike brothers Boris and Gleb's father, Prince Vladimir. Russia was the land of Turks and Slavs, Mongols and Finns. It was never a single country nor did the land of 'Rus' represent a single race. Prior to his death, having sent out emissaries to both the Muslims, Jews and Catholic Christians at the time, he finally and forcefully decided to unify his petrified subjects under the banner of Orthodox Christianity. History was wholly and carefully written, erased and re-written by the power-hungry for 1,030 gruesomely religious orbits around the sun. Strewn along the dusty downhill-spiraling road of travelling fragile mortals, were bloodthirsty self-appointed men who vainly fell in love with their reflections in the mirror and saw neither army generals nor pirates, but worse... They saw God's representatives on earth. The likes of Iris had dug deep into the snow after clothing themselves in shadows, and had patiently witnessed the horror of greed that had been forced on simple people. All the while adapting for 1,030 years between 988 AD and 2018.
"63.4608° N, 142.7858° E latitude"
"What's this?"
"Her home town"
"How do you know?"
"Pardon?"
"That she's there?"
"I'm her father... this time..."
"This time...? Never mind that... All along, no one could find her anywhere on the planet...! And you knew!?"
"No one said please. No one had manners. Plus I needed to know why they need 'her'. Now that we know... now that I know what the threat is, it changes things, somewhat. Do I need to explain myself more or are you going?"
"Why me?"
"You're one of the few that still goes to church"
"What does that have to do with...?"
"Are you going or not?"
"I'll go, yes"
"Give her this"
"A key?"
"She'll know. If you want her to come back to Moscow, it will help. I'm not guaranteeing, but it will help. Also, take something warm. Have you ever been out to visit that part of the world?"
"I have not. No. How much colder can it be than Moscow? Did you see the weather outside?"
"I have, and I had a swim this morning before my run. Take something warm. It's an order, not a suggestion"
"Of course, I forgot. You love your swim..."
A Motley Crew Page 5