Chapter Text
"Because of the movie, Agent. It's the name of a movie in which everyone is looking for the-"
"Excuse me," Agent Phoenix huffed in not-so-mock offense, "I am fully aware of the plot of the The Maltese Falcon, thank you very much. My problem is that the whole plot hinges on the falcon being a fake."
Reginald Crane, about two miles away in a heated van with an electric kettle full of tea and his portable transceiver radio on his lap, paused to consider this.
"They never find the real statue," his agent emphasized. "Sam Spade's partner and the rest of 'em are murdered for nothing."
"...Oh."
"I mean, it's not like I'm not superstitious or anything," Phoenix continued, "but if you're gonna call it 'Operation Maltese Falcon', then you shouldn't be surprised that I can't find shit out here."
"I do see your point now, Agent," Crane admitted. "Perhaps it's less fitting a name than I'd first imagined..."
Phoenix heard the sound of hot tea being sipped over his earpiece, but only briefly, before the wind drove another volley of snowflakes into his ear.
"More importantly," Phoenix puffed through the scarf wrapped around his face, "which one of us is Sam Spade?"
"Oh, you can be Sam," Crane sighed, "you're more Humphrey Bogart than I am, anyway... wait, does that make me Archer?"
"Personally, I've always thought of you as Miss Wonderly," Phoenix offered.
Crane choked on his tea.
Phoenix grinned at the sound of his spluttering, careful not to laugh over the radio. He was just winding his handler up, of course; making Crane a bit sorrier for sending him into the bitterly cold European winter on a wild goose chase. Maybe he wouldn't be so vengeful once he was back in the van and got the chill out of his bones, but in the moment, blinded by driving snow with his boots soaked through and his fingers numb, Agent Phoenix felt justified making life just slightly less comfortable for the man who'd volunteered them both for this mission.
"Agent, I must confess something."
"Is it your feelings for Miss Wonderly?"
"N-no, Agent. It's... it's just that I never did get to watch the end of that movie, you see."
"What? But you-..."
"They did screen it at various ENSA affairs, mind you," he reminisced, a smile in his tone. "Gracious, I must have seen the first half-hour at least a dozen times... but with my luck, there was always an interruption before the end. Air-raid siren, mortar attacks, fuel rationing killing the generator, those sorts of things."
That shut Phoenix's mouth for a moment. He occasionally forgot that his handler was a war veteran who'd gone through a hell of a lot worse than wet socks and some snow in the face, and he really didn't have the right to complain. In their eternal war of banter, this was an masterful counterattack on Crane's part.
"Ah, fuck," the agent said, recognizing his defeat. "Sorry, I didn't mean to spoil it it for you."
"And I'm sorry for naming the mission inappropriately," Crane replied cheerfully, loudly sipping his tea again. "I'll try harder with the naming, you try harder with the finding."
Phoenix gave a grunt of frustration as he trudged forward through the snow. He was using his feet to carefully track rows back and forth over the frozen ground as he searched, plowing the snow aside off his shins. At the end of each row, he took one step sideways, turned around, and began shuffling forward to plow a new row.
It was just like minesweeping, he thought to himself, although minesweeping was rarely this boring.
The "mine" he was looking for was a round metal hatch, rusted with age, to an underground bunker hidden in the woods. Long abandoned, then possibly made into a very secret safehouse for Zoraxis to store assets of unquantifiably high value. It was supposedly somewhere among the patchy groves of denuded trees on this windy hillside outside of Wrocław.
At least, that's what their source had said before taking the 200 złoty reward and vanishing without a trace.
It wasn't entirely implausible. Dr. Zor had a known habit of keeping hidden caches in places just like this all across the world. They were generally stuffed with money, weapons, ammo, fuel, and other equipment for the sleeper agents that Zoraxis called out of the woodwork in droves whenever a new scheme shifted into gear. The most remote locations generally contained the most sensitive intelligence. It had been a while since a new one was discovered, and the Agency was eager to improve their leverage against Zoraxis after the recent madness of a worldwide Kinesium destabilization attack.
Blizzard conditions be damned, every lead was worth following now.
Crane had equipped Phoenix with a pitifully tiny trench shovel before shooing him out of the van into the Polish countryside. It proved useless for clearing snow, but it made a serviceable probe. The agent carefully tapped it down through the snow beside his right boot with every step, listening intently for the sound of metal on metal.
Every so often the clink of a teacup in his earpiece tricked him into thinking he'd hit something, but alas, he was only ever mistaken. After the fifth time, he began to suspect Crane was doing it on purpose; either trying to keep his hopes up, or trying to drive him crazy.
They'd started at noon. Now it was getting dark -- or, at least, darker than it had been all day. The sky had been packed full of heavy grey snow clouds since they left the café in town. The paths Agent Phoenix had trudged from his starting point on the crest of the hill had long since vanished, buried beneath fresh snowfall.
"I suppose it's no use," Crane finally sighed. "Agent, I'm coming along to fetch you now. I'll be there in a moment."
He must be out of tea, Phoenix thought wryly.
The agent had just reached the end of a row at the top of the hill. The incoming snowflakes had diminished somewhat in size and frequency, and the wind was momentarily busy elsewhere. A fortuitous gap in the clouds let the orange glow of the setting sun through, setting the hillside alight with glittering sparks as far as Phoenix could see. From here it was easy to observe the small dirt road along which Crane would soon be driving.
Phoenix paused to brush the snow off of his head and shoulders. His thick knitted cap was caved-in at the top; a small collection of snowflakes had gathered there and frozen together in the shape of a little nest. He tugged the hat off and shook it, but the literal 'ice cap' stuck stubbornly to the yarn on which it had formed. Phoenix thrust the shovel like a spear into the ground beside him to free up his other hand.
*CLANG*
The shovel, failing to embed itself in whatever it had struck, toppled over in the snow.
The agent stared at it, incredulous.
"You have got to be shitting me."
He hastily pulled his hat back on and dropped to his knees, eagerly clearing away the spot. Red streaks of rust began to appear in the white snow, staining the fingertips of his gloves.
"Agent Phoenix?" his earpiece crackled, "What was that sound just now?"
There it was, just as their informant had said: a round hatch in the ground in the middle of nowhere, rusted to hell.
Phoenix pulled the microphone pinned to the collar of his coat closer to his face to be sure Crane would hear him right:
"Captain Jacoby just turned up!"
"Wow... uh... damn."
"I... I did bring flashlights, but..."
Phoenix and Crane stood on either side of the open hatch, gazing straight down into the deep, dark, narrow hole that led underground.
Neither 'deep' nor 'dark' would have been an issue. Elated by their sudden good luck, both operatives were fully committed to their mission.
'Narrow', however, was most definitely an issue.
"You aren't claustrophobic, are you, Agent?" his handler teased.
"No," Phoenix snorted, "but I'm not a toothpick, either."
Phoenix untied his scarf from around his face. Using it like a measuring tape, he copied the width across his shoulders, then knelt to the open hatch and held it end to end. The scarf overran the opening by several inches.
"Well, I'm out. Let's try you."
Crane's measurement was even wider.
"Damnation," Crane grumbled, rubbing his mustache, "I don't think we've anyone in the whole Agency small enough to wiggle down into that pipe."
"How much cash you got left? We could probably hire some kid in town to-"
"AGENT!"
"I'm just kidding. Kidding, get it?"
Crane rolled his eyes.
Phoenix stood up with a grunt and brushed the snow off his gloves, letting his vision wander over the hills surrounding them. There was nothing but gentle slopes and barren groves as far as the eye could see, all snow-covered and quiet. The thickly overcast sky blocked out the twilight and whatever moon there may have been above. Their only light was the headlamps of the van, aimed directly across the opening.
"Y'know, I don't see any grips in there," Phoenix noted, "no steps or anything to climb down."
"Sure enough. You suspect its not an entrance, then?" Crane stepped back from the hole and joined Phoenix surveying the hills.
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, deep in thought for a while. The cold wasn't quite biting yet, but it was starting to snarl. The wind whistled now and again as it caught the edges of broken branches. The snow, satisfied with its work on the hills, had moved on.
Crane sighed.
"Well Agent, you were right again."
"Was I?"
"Our Maltese Falcon," Crane nodded to the hole, "appears to be a fake."
Phoenix chuckled in spite of himself. It was certainly starting to look like the Agency had misspent 200 złoty for the information that dragged them out here, but something still bothered him.
"Other than a bunker entrance," he pondered aloud, "why would there be a pipe in the ground all the way out here?"
"Hmm. Now that is suspicious," Crane agreed, "if we were closer to a farm or a railway passing through, I might expect it's for drainage, or a vent. There's certainly no reason for it otherwise. Perhaps something to do with a gas pipeline...?"
Phoenix stuffed a gloved hand into his pocket and came up with his lighter, a twinkle in his eye.
"EXCEPTING the fact that there are not any farms or rail passages here, Agent," Crane continued, arching an eyebrow disapprovingly, "and there's certainly no transnational gas pipelines running across this stretch of Poland..."
"Relax," Phoenix laughed, "I'm not gonna blow anything up. You said 'a vent', right?"
He squatted beside the pipe and flicked the lighter open. Crane kept his distance, but observed with interest.
The flame blazed up brightly for an instant, flickering in protest at the sharp wind that rode over the hilltop.
Phoenix lowered the lighter into the mouth of the hole to shelter it. Almost immediately, the flame bowed over to burn upside-down, pointing into the dark pipe as it was drawn inside.
"It IS a vent!" both men said, simultaneously, with equal surprise.
"An intake," Phoenix grinned, snapping his lighter shut.
"Which means there's an outlet somewhere," Crane said, clapping Phoenix on the shoulder. "Excellent work. I've got another shovel in the van, and headlamps. Give me a moment to update headquarters on our progress, then we'll do the rest of the hill."
"Wait, we'll WHAT?"
"We can't waste time, Agent. Zoraxis is very likely to have noticed us in the area by now."
Phoenix, forlorn and regretful, stared after Crane's retreating form as he disappeared back into the van. He was not up for another several hours of trudging up and down through the snow, let alone in the dark. This wasn't spycraft, he pouted to himself, it was grunt work.
"Agent?" Crane's head popped back out of the door.
"What," Phoenix said, less of a question and more of a declaration of displeasure.
"Come along, I have hot tea and sandwiches for your supper. And dry socks."
"SIR YES SIR!"
They found the true entrance to the bunker in short order, only some ten yards away on the opposite slope of the hill. Crane had unfortunately been the one to find it, stumbling over the uneven surface and twisting his ankle. His boots saved him from a mission-ending injury, but there was now a noticeable limp in his gait.
This, Phoenix thought to himself as he jimmied the second lock on the large valve that served as a door handle, was probably the "hatch" that their informant had actually been talking about. It was a vault door like the ones that divided submarine compartments, set into the ground between two outcrops of stone to hide its unnatural shape from prying eyes. Its surface had been painted recently in camouflage colors -- streaks of green and brown, with hits of yellow -- but the crunch of rust underneath the coat of paint spoke to years of wear and weather gone by.
Crane squatted to his right with a trench shovel jammed between the edge of the door and its frame, ready to pry it up when Phoenix killed the lock. He rubbed at his ankle ruefully as he waited.
"Fuck," Phoenix muttered as he lost tension on his pick for the umpteenth time. He put the small metal tool between his teeth for a moment to yank off his gloves.
It was nearly 20:00 now, and the night cold was harsh, but lockpicking in gloves had become intolerably difficult. It was one of the few dexterous tasks that didn't get any easier with telekinetic powers. Try as he might, Agent Phoenix still couldn't grab things he couldn't see. The pins inside the tumbler of a lock, for example.
"No hurry," Crane consoled him, "headquarters reports no movement of any known Zoraxis operatives in our area. We're beneath their radar for now."
"I'm about ready to trade our cover for a block of C-4," Phoenix muttered. "Nine pins and serrated chambers... who the fuck makes these stupid locks, anyway?"
Crane picked up the first lock, the one Phoenix had already solved, and examined the casing. It was engraved with a familiar looking Z over a globe.
"Oh, you'll never guess," he sighed, tossing it over his shoulder.
About ten minutes of swearing and gritted teeth later, they were in.
The valve, rusty though it was, turned with minimal effort. The heavy iron door swung open without a sound on well-oiled hinges.
Agent and handler exchanged knowing looks as they stood before the open corridor, a wide pipe leading horizontally into the hillside. The floor was dry and surprisingly clean. There was no dust hanging in the air, no insects or debris to suggest the place had been left vacant for any length of time.
"Active facility," Phoenix whispered.
"Most certainly," Crane replied.
They didn't need to discuss their plan of attack. After years of teamwork, it was second nature.
Phoenix would take point. Crane would provide cover.
In they went.