FicWad

It hadn’t been too bad of a sleep for Alpha providing he had only taken one of his pills before going to bed. The long trip and the good meal had done him wonders and he felt fresh for the first time in a while, with only minimal medicated assistance to sleep. There was a lot to think about today, and his mind clicked into gear when he realised what they were doing today. There seemed to be unanswered questions coming from everywhere and he hoped the crime scene would provide some help to him. There was a knock at his door, and he opened to see Boreas ready to go. They went downstairs together and ate breakfast before heading outside to see a taxi already waiting for them.
It wasn’t a regular taxi, but looked like a gangster car or government car. It was completely black with tinted windows-the very cliché government car that everyone knew was but pretended it wasn’t there. The car was much bigger than the other kinds of vehicles people drove around Lefkosia and although their driver was dressed to look the serious part, he had a big smile across his face. “Good morning,” he said in English. Both Boreas and Alpha answered back with, “Kali-Mera”. They got into the car and it was here Alpha began to feel uneasy. He felt the pressure from everyone around him, trying to suss out who he was and why he was so important. Alpha looked around, they were pretending they hadn’t noticed him, they would be walking casually, or drinking their coffees-but he felt it. The air around him felt like it was squeezing him in and he shook it off telling himself it was only his mind and now wasn’t the time for his problems. Boreas gave him some reassurance it wasn’t his paranoid side speaking, “Is it just me or do you feel like we really stand out right now?” Alpha didn’t answer, but it made him feel better it wasn’t just him feeling that way. When they got into the car, Alpha asked the driver, “Why is everybody pretending not to see us?”
“Because they do not know who you are and why you are being escorted by the government. With the upcoming ceremony and the assassination of the Ambassador, the people of Cyprus are very worried about the future of this country-seeing an outsider like you associating with us only confirms their fears.”
“Then why didn’t you take us in a regular car?”
“The image of our car going through Cyprus at least shows we are getting things done. You may notice a UN car driving around Lefkosia and as a people we despise the UN-they have done nothing for our people despite us having lost so much.” A very valid point, the UN hadn’t proven useful to Cyprus at all and Alpha looked back out of his window.
It wasn’t long before he had another question. It was rather serious and Alpha had a bad feeling in his stomach but didn’t want to alarm Boreas next to him so he asked the driver in Greek, “How come we are not heading out of Lefkosia? The Ambassador was killed in his house outside the city; I do not know this city well but I am fairly sure you are not taking me to where the Ambassador was killed.”
“You are very perceptive Mr Alpha,” the driver replied. “I was asked to bring you to the House of Representatives first rather than to the crime scene sir. The request for your meeting with the Cypriot government in the afternoon wasn’t a good time so it was put to the morning.” Why this made Alpha nervous was beyond him. Even though the House of Representatives was the most important people in Cyprus-they were still people. Just because they made all the parliamentary decisions the state should take didn’t make them unapproachable.
Soon enough, they reached the House of Representatives and his partner only just realised they were not heading to the crime scene. Alpha knew his partner would have to be more aware and it shouldn’t take till they were going through checkpoints with armed guards before knowing their life could potentially be in danger. Boreas looked quite alarmed for a second, but Alpha made sure to calm him down. Alpha had never calmed anyone down before and even though his insides were flurrying around-it made him a feel better to be making someone else feel better. They looked at the building and how it was quite beautiful showing the Greek architecture. Its importance was fairly obvious clearly displayed with the armed guards out the front in various locations guarding the perimeter and interior. They were approved to enter and as they went in they could see the guards turning their heads to see who it was. Surprisingly though they all smiled and seemed welcoming rather than serious and intimidating. Alpha could pass as if he was a local if given the opportunity, but there was no way Boreas could pass. Before they got out of the car, Alpha looked over at his partner, “Remember, you are Detective Boreas.” Boreas nodded and got out of the car.
The whole identity thing that Alpha did was clearly a part of his antisocial and paranoid personality traits. Any psychologist or psychiatrist would tell him that but he didn’t care, in the end he felt like people were after him and being put on his assignment by some kind of intelligence agency higher than the government proved it.
They walked up to the front door of the building where a small man was waiting for them with a big smile on his face, “Hello there,” he said in English. Alpha nodded his head and introduced himself and his partner also in English by their alias names and followed him inside. The halls were quite big with framed pictures and memorabilia from Cyprus’ history with some of the most influential figures in its time including a staff wielded by Makarios, the man that united Cyprus from British rule. They passed ancient artefacts that they had also managed to keep despite constant efforts from museums around the world to have them. Alpha looked at plates, cups and utensils that were thousands of years old and couldn’t even comprehend how they were still here with them for the present. He wished they had more time to look around, but unfortunately they had a meeting they had to continue on to. They were escorted through and up a stairwell to a very private but large room. Before they entered their room Alpha looked over at their escort, “May we please have a minute alone before going in to see everyone?” The man bowed and turned around entering the room-most likely to prepare the people for their entrance. Boreas looked at Alpha and wondered what was going on, “What is it?”
“Listen there are a few things we need to go over. Firstly, when we go in there-do not worry about them being dressed up nicely and looking important. Do not worry they are the leaders of Cyprus but make sure you are not too relaxed. A Cypriot person is often very friendly and if we are not careful and let our guard down we could let them know more than we should, we could even fall into one of Anarchy’s traps if there is one. We will go in there, smile as we introduce ourselves to everyone and sit down. Once we begin talking business we keep as serious as possible. Try not to let your mood or attention sway and listen to what is happening. I need you and your talent to remember as much as what is said as possible as I will not always be able to take notes.” Boreas nodded, understanding everything Alpha said. “One more thing, if I start talking in Greek and you understand no word that is going on-keep the straight face like you are supposed to, so they are unsure whether you understand Greek or not. I will only use it if I have to but do not ask me what it means inside.” Boreas nodded and then smiled. It was the kind of smile to show how pumped he was for the meeting. This guy was loving it, everything about it and it was making Alpha excited to see how enthused he was. They turned around together and walked into the meeting room.
In the room were well dressed men waiting for them to get there. Alpha noticed even the Greek Cypriot President had also come to hear what they had to say. This showed how much of a priority the Cypriot government had given them and what they had to say. Alpha and Boreas were introduced to many of the people individually in the room, and Alpha immediately noticed there was an empty seat at the table. The President noticed Alpha looking at it and cleared his concern, “It is where Petra sat at the meetings, and we haven’t been able to move his spot away just yet as we are still grieving.” Alpha and Boreas gave their condolences for their losses. Alpha looked around the room at the other officials. He wanted to see if the mention of Petra’s murder got any interesting reactions, but it seemed there was no leads he could go off by this.
The meeting wasn’t as simple as what Alpha once thought. He had to try and tell the government how serious things were without giving away too much as Beta had asked him too. Once he was able to convey how much of a criminal Anarchy was-he needed to get over possible things that Anarchy may have in his plan. Boreas was looking around the room while Alpha was talking about Anarchy and making a mental note of anything people said about him. If someone were to say something they shouldn’t know-then they would become a suspect. It seemed everyone here just listened and if anyone did know something, they had restrained themselves quite well. Alpha soon mentioned the thought of a terrorist attack, which obviously bothered them all. Alpha once again withheld the idea of a mass shooting to see if anyone would slip up, but once again they were not successful. When Alpha asked them for any ideas as to their national security threat-a man in the back raised his arm, “What if we were to get the details of every person coming into Cyprus, and putting down where they are staying for accommodation? It would be hard but for national security we could pull it off.” It was a good idea, but there was a major flaw in the plan that Alpha mentioned. “It is a very good idea, but a couple weeks too late. Anarchy and whomever else he has allied with is already in the country and operating at several bases to make sure this plan comes off. So this would only be a waste of man power and we should be concentrating the resources we have on finding someone as difficult as this. For example, keep a close eye on the border between Northern and Southern Cyprus. Anarchy would need to travel between the two sides a few times to check out and ensure his plan is going well.”
The President was deeply concerned by the idea of someone this clever, “So you think Petra’s murder is linked to this possible attack?”
“Yes I believe it is definitely connected. Who are you sending Petra’s stead?”
“I will be going,” the President said. “It is the least I could do for my friend’s death; he would have wanted it this way.”
“I would ask you to reconsider,” said Alpha. “Have you told the public about this yet?” said Alpha. The President shook his head. “Good. Keep it that way for now. I don’t want you committing to anything yet, I will have to let you know in future what I would like you to do-is that ok?” The President nodded, showing his faith in a man he has only just met. If the President was going to go in place of the Ambassador, this may have been part of Anarchy’s plan all along. The President being killed was definitely a reason for war and Alpha realised it leant a little more suspicion to both the Turks and the Greeks. The Turks may have been a part of this to get rid of the Ambassador in hopes the President would take his place, however it was a gamble as the ceremony may possibly have been cancelled. Could it be that only a Greek Cypriot, someone in the government who knew they were friends know what the President would do in that situation? There were many questions and the President seemed to have somehow known what he was thinking.
“It seems you suspect somebody within our government do you not?”
“Anarchy allies with anybody he can use to his advantage. Anybody can be affiliated with him if they benefit from it.”
“But that is the thing,” the President said. “I cannot see how it would beneficial for anybody. War would be the worst thing for us right now with the economy picking back up again.” Alpha knew what he was talking about as he had read it in the information. The Greek Cypriot side usually done much better than the Turkish side. It was heavily reliant on tourism, which meant if things were shaky between the two sides, tourism would die down. Off the top of his head, there was no reason the Greek Cypriot government would ally with Anarchy and go for a war-however it may benefit someone individually rather than on a whole. Alpha hoped he wasn’t being affected by bias. There was a lot of evidence showing the Greek Cypriots had a lot to answer for and he found himself not wanting to see it. After a couple of hours of talking, the meeting had finally come to a close and he and Boreas packed their things before heading towards the exit of the room.
Before he left the room, he had one more thing he wanted to try. He turned around to everyone in the room and called them to attention. This time he spoke in Greek, “I should all let you know that I have marked every single one of you as suspects. I have been following you for some time now and I have your phones tapped so if I do find anything in these ploys of mine, rest assured I will be back.” The men in the room began yelling in disapproval at this and Alpha took a step back in intimidation but tried to remain calm. In that moment his mind began to race and he felt like he wanted to vomit. He pictured all of them surrounding him and beating him down. He wasn’t handling it very well at all and his breathing became heavier. He tried to keep eye contact with them for confidence, but it soon couldn’t be done any longer. Alpha dropped his gaze to the floor and the instant he did-he felt Boreas come from behind him to stand alongside him. He was standing tall, with his gaze fixed on all of them not showing a single amount of emotion in it. Alpha in his mind thanked Boreas and he too attempted to look confident and stare at the members of the room. Alpha wished he had some medication to calm his nerves at a time like this. After all the anger and confusion, it was the President who calmed them down, “Everybody be quiet. We shouldn’t forget we need Detective Alpha on this, if we have nothing to hide it shouldn’t be a problem. But Alpha, I cannot allow you to keep the phone taps on as there are matters discussed here on a daily basis we cannot risk getting out-especially to a foreigner. I hope you understand.” Alpha exited the room agreeing to these conditions. He had found out a little piece of information in that meeting and their escort man took them downstairs for lunch. He seemed to be the only one with a sincere smile, “Well that was a way to get things heated wasn’t it?” He said in English. “I didn’t know you could talk Greek-but now that I look at you, I can see it.” Alpha smiled and didn’t reply. The man left them to have some food and it was rather good. As they were eating, Boreas asked him, “What did you say in there that got them so riled up?” Alpha didn’t want to tell Boreas his trick he had come up with just yet so he said, “I told them all that I suspected each and every one of them for possibly being aligned with Anarchy-they weren’t very happy.”
“Being accused of treason I couldn’t imagine they would be. But would they get that angry if they were innocent?”
“We will soon find out.” While they relaxed for a little, Alpha opened the laptop to see another email from Beta, it seemed another one of these meetings were about to take place sometime soon and this email was beginning to let him know what went on in them.

Dear Alpha,
Glad to hear everything is to your comfort so far. Your partner Boreas as you call him has been chosen with the best intentions to aid you. You see I do know what faults you have in the field and it has only been from incredibly hard work that I have kept it a secret from the other country representatives. They are all great minds and knowing this would give them an excuse to doubt you. However, the skill Boreas has shown will definitely fit in with catching Anarchy. He is still young and at times stupid-but you will find him as an incredible resource to your investigation. The mass shooting idea is a new one, nobody here could have thought of that. Someone mentioned an assassination-but that seems rather quick doesn’t it. As assassination usually involves one person getting shot so I cannot see how they expect to remain blameless if only one of the representatives is shot. But a mass shooting could take down numerous people-indeed a very scary but relevant idea. I am not sure I am going to release this to the others right away. If anyone else brings it up, we know we have a lead on anyone that may be linked with Anarchy.
The next meeting in a couple of hours from when you get this. I will jot down the login name and the question of anybody that asks anything related to you as I have also deduced a person linked with Anarchy is interested to know how you are progressing. But also be aware that many countries want to know how you are doing. You are out there to stop a threat to the world-their country may be at risk if he is not stopped. I have attached a document on everything we have on the freedom fighters of Cyprus. It is probably not that much better than what you had though as things are kept very quiet.
If the Ambassador’s death is indeed an accident, it would definitely mean that we have more of a lead than if his death was part of the plan. It is hard to believe anything he does can go wrong and if his death wasn’t meant to be, the plan he had has probably been changed.

Rules of the L.E.M’s

1. Only one rep can be in the vicinity of the room where the network meeting is taking place and take part in the meeting
2. Login names can be anything, and change from session to session
3. Private messages between reps are not allowed
4. You must answer a question that has been asked at you, unless there is a reason to believe the answer may be a security risk or that by answering will be of delicate matters concerning global alliances
5. You can only ask questions’ that will provide relevant information

The monitoring of these rules is very strict so it is almost impossibly to break rules 1 and 3. We govern the rules 2, 4 and 5 ourselves in the meeting.

Regards,

Beta


Back at the location of the secret meetings, Beta couldn’t help but feel with the new information he had got, some people would be more interested to find out what he knew than they were letting on. It seemed Detective Alpha had kept in contact so far and backed up everything they believed about the plans for the peace ceremony. He had also come up with some new ideas which none of them had mentioned. He couldn’t be sure who was behind it as there was a heavy reason to suspect the Greek Cypriots so far and other reasons that there was no possibly way they could be involved. The way things are sounding, it could somehow be the Turkish Cypriots are involved and making it seem like it is the Greeks but only time will tell. Alpha would be meeting with the Turkish Cypriot government soon as well and keep them posted.
Beta had worked out how much information he was going to release at this time to the other reps about Alpha and his investigation. He had to be careful about every question as something innocent sounding could in fact be endangering Alpha’s and Boreas’ life.
The meeting was called into session and everybody readied themselves for then proceedings. It wasn’t long before the first topic came up, “What is the update on Detective Alpha in Cyprus?” Beta noted down the login name ‘UAE’ and readied his answer. Everybody was waiting in anticipation while Beta had already knew what he was going to say to what he thought sounded like a blurred Middle Eastern accent. “He has arrived safely in Cyprus and we have received some feedback from him. He has not visited the crime scene yet and meeting with the House of Representatives now. Thus far he has only backed up our suspicions of a terrorist attack at the peace ceremony between the two sides of the country. In terms of involvement, he has no conclusive evidence as to who is aligned with Anarchy just yet.”
A person with the username of ‘Motherland’ spoke up, “So this Alpha has done nothing that we haven’t done already.” It got everyone else stirred up and the Beta smiled. Nobody could see his face so he could smile at how things were going so far. Once again, someone else would wreck his fun-this time a login name of ‘StarsNStripes’ where last time it was ‘UncleSam’, Was it actually the American rep? Or was it a fake? If the real one came out and accused the fake one of not being real then he himself would be found out of being the real one. These meetings were indeed complicated at times. “This Alpha has only been there for a day after an extremely long trip. It is wrong to judge him yet and we can also assume we are not being told everything by the Australian rep.”
Beta couldn’t believe it. Once again after getting everyone hanging on his every word, this same guy had made sure people didn’t trust him again. Beta may not be completely at a loss yet, “Besides I wasn’t allowed to finish, Alpha believes the Ambassador’s death wasn’t an accident and all apart of Anarchy’s plan-none of us ever thought that before.” Everyone got a little stirred up again and the American sounding login rep was also quiet which was good. Beta continued, “So in the meantime-there is no Turkish Cypriot rep in these meetings so to the Turkey rep I trust you can make sure the meeting with their government officials goes well?” Questions were a good tactic in these meetings of getting people to talk and find out which login names coincided with country they belonged to. Many people chose to remain silent and listen to what others had to say, they had to answer a question if asked according to the rules-even if it wasn’t entirely the truth. A man with a Turkish accent from the darkness with the login name of ‘Haddin’ answered “Yes it will be done.”
‘StarsNStripes’ tried to take charge again within the meetings, but was interrupted by another person with an American sounding accent by the login name of ‘US-5017’ with an impatient comment, “Why should we trust this Alpha? We noted some of his personality traits and took it to a trained psychiatrist and he believes Alpha to have personality traits of a paranoid sociopathic person with a possible mental disorder.” Beta winced at this. He had to try and not show it in his response, but the pressure had just very quickly been put on him. Everyone started talking again and Beta waited for it to get quiet, “It doesn’t help anybody for you to be doing your own investigations on Alpha-especially if he is risking his life to help out things in Europe. Alpha isn’t a very trusting person and has his own secrets like any of us here-he is on prescribed medicine for an illness but rest assured he is the right man for the job.” ‘StarsNStripes’ jumped in on the band wagon again to take control, “Right now that we can move passed that…but to ‘DownUnder’ if there is a change in his health that will affect the outcome-we wish to be notified.” Beta agreed to it and listened to him go on. “Would it be useful if we suspend the ceremony altogether-if there is no ceremony there can be no plan and no plan means no war.”
‘Hijak’ spoke up with a European accent of some kind but to tell where exactly was difficult, “Cyprus is the only divided country left in Europe. We have been working tirelessly for things to improve and if we suspend it now, we are only showing mistrust between the two sides and may lead to war anyway.”
‘US-5017’, “You will also let Anarchy know what he is up to and if we stop his plan here, he will plan something else and we are back at square one. At least now we know where people who have had contact with him are going to be.” These were two major flaws in the argument that ‘StarsNStripes suggested, but very maturely and suspiciously he admitted his mistake and they moved on to another topic.