POI fic: 'John Warren'
Title: 'John Warren'
Rating: G
Source: Person of Interest
Characters: Agent Nicholas Donnelly
Summary: Donnelly has his own contacts in the CIA, because of course he does. Much good will that do him. Snippet from 2x12, 'Prisoner's Dilemma'.
Disclaimer: I own nothing and make nothing from this but my own entertainment.
Word Count: 807
Four and a half minutes after Donnelly clicks send, his cell phone rings. “Jesus, Nick,” says the voice at the other end, in a low and urgent tone that tells Donnelly his old college roommate is leaning forwards with his hand cupped across his mouth, because this is one call Tom will not want overheard in the office, “that’s John Reese. Yeah, he’s one of ours. Where are you holding him?”
Donnelly rubs his gritty eyes and permits himself a moment’s satisfaction. Nothing else is going right, because nothing ever does when the man in the suit’s involved, but he’d picked Door Number 4 as soon as he’d seen the lineup at the bank and ten minutes into their respective interrogations he’d been certain of it. Donnelly’s spent a lot of time staring at grainy photographs and a handful of stills from the hotel footage that had mysteriously (infuriatingly) corrupted, but that’s not what gave ‘John Warren’ away. It’s how the man doesn’t match the other three that does it. He’s older, for one thing, and calmer, and not nearly angry enough to be a wrongfully detained investment banker. He’s far too comfortable on the sunny side of an interrogation desk. The other suspects started out aggressive and got more so; ‘John Warren’ opened with an appeal for sympathy and progressed rather fast to flirting with his interrogator. To Donnelly that says CIA, not common-or-garden ex-military thug.
It also says something Donnelly’s still not ready to hear about Detective Carter, who’s got too much experience to let a suspect control an interrogation. He’d wanted to trust her. He really had. “Rikers,” he says. “He’s calling himself John Warren. Is Reese his real name?”
“Shit, no, just his work name, but it’s as good as. I don’t know who he was before he joined the Company. Rikers, Nick, seriously? These guys break out of prisons for fun. What have you got on him?”
In Donnelly’s other ear, Carter’s running through a lot of probably false personal information with the sandy-haired man who is definitely not a small business owner, while ‘John Warren’, temporarily abandoned, twiddles his thumbs. Donnelly frowns. “Not enough. Evidence has gone missing, been tampered with. He’s got powerful friends. What do you know about him?”
“He used to run black ops with Kara Stanton and Mark Snow,” Tom says. “Cleanup jobs, mostly. But Stanton and Reese got retired in China in 2010, with prejudice, I heard. They did it all. Wet work, rendition, sabotage, drug trafficking, anything else you can think of. If you want a poster boy for CIA excesses, Reese is your man.”
“When you say ‘retired’...”
“You know the Company’s retirement plan for guys like Reese, Nick. All I know is there’s two stars on the wall and someone in Finance supposedly had to sign off on a cruise missile.” Tom’s voice drops another notch. “You said something about friends. Has Stanton surfaced too?”
“We know he’s not working alone. I believe he’s working for an independent intelligence organisation, possibly with Chinese connections, but I haven’t yet identified which one. He certainly has links to organised crime. We don’t have much on his other associates, though. Do you think he and Stanton might be working together?”
“If she’s even alive,” Tom says. “But if Reese made it out... listen, Nick, Reese is a tough son of a bitch, but Kara Stanton... let’s just say he was the good cop. You take care.”
He hangs up. Donnelly swings his chair absently and stares at his screen. Everything about ‘John Warren’ checks out, which says a lot for Reese’s current employers, but nothing that might actually trace back to them, unfortunately. Donnelly could probably pin the bank job on ‘John Warren’, but that’s not who he’s after here. He wants John Reese, former CIA hitman, current freelance operator and murderer for hire. He wants to shine a light on the rotten heart of the CIA and the invisible forces massing against his country. And he wants to nail the mole in his own operation. If he’d been going after Al Capone, he wouldn’t have settled for tax evasion. He’s not going to settle for anything less than the real thing now.
It might take some lateral thinking. Reese is too good to break under interrogation, which brings Donnelly back to Carter and just how relaxed she was in that interrogation room. At moments, she might have been having a friendly conversation. She’d actually seemed interested in what ‘John Warren’ had to say.
She hadn’t approached any of the other suspects like that. Donnelly hates it, but he thinks he’s well on the way to achieving his secondary objective too, even if he can’t prove that yet either.
But he will. He always does, in the end.
Maybe, he thinks, there’s another way in there.
Rating: G
Source: Person of Interest
Characters: Agent Nicholas Donnelly
Summary: Donnelly has his own contacts in the CIA, because of course he does. Much good will that do him. Snippet from 2x12, 'Prisoner's Dilemma'.
Disclaimer: I own nothing and make nothing from this but my own entertainment.
Word Count: 807
Four and a half minutes after Donnelly clicks send, his cell phone rings. “Jesus, Nick,” says the voice at the other end, in a low and urgent tone that tells Donnelly his old college roommate is leaning forwards with his hand cupped across his mouth, because this is one call Tom will not want overheard in the office, “that’s John Reese. Yeah, he’s one of ours. Where are you holding him?”
Donnelly rubs his gritty eyes and permits himself a moment’s satisfaction. Nothing else is going right, because nothing ever does when the man in the suit’s involved, but he’d picked Door Number 4 as soon as he’d seen the lineup at the bank and ten minutes into their respective interrogations he’d been certain of it. Donnelly’s spent a lot of time staring at grainy photographs and a handful of stills from the hotel footage that had mysteriously (infuriatingly) corrupted, but that’s not what gave ‘John Warren’ away. It’s how the man doesn’t match the other three that does it. He’s older, for one thing, and calmer, and not nearly angry enough to be a wrongfully detained investment banker. He’s far too comfortable on the sunny side of an interrogation desk. The other suspects started out aggressive and got more so; ‘John Warren’ opened with an appeal for sympathy and progressed rather fast to flirting with his interrogator. To Donnelly that says CIA, not common-or-garden ex-military thug.
It also says something Donnelly’s still not ready to hear about Detective Carter, who’s got too much experience to let a suspect control an interrogation. He’d wanted to trust her. He really had. “Rikers,” he says. “He’s calling himself John Warren. Is Reese his real name?”
“Shit, no, just his work name, but it’s as good as. I don’t know who he was before he joined the Company. Rikers, Nick, seriously? These guys break out of prisons for fun. What have you got on him?”
In Donnelly’s other ear, Carter’s running through a lot of probably false personal information with the sandy-haired man who is definitely not a small business owner, while ‘John Warren’, temporarily abandoned, twiddles his thumbs. Donnelly frowns. “Not enough. Evidence has gone missing, been tampered with. He’s got powerful friends. What do you know about him?”
“He used to run black ops with Kara Stanton and Mark Snow,” Tom says. “Cleanup jobs, mostly. But Stanton and Reese got retired in China in 2010, with prejudice, I heard. They did it all. Wet work, rendition, sabotage, drug trafficking, anything else you can think of. If you want a poster boy for CIA excesses, Reese is your man.”
“When you say ‘retired’...”
“You know the Company’s retirement plan for guys like Reese, Nick. All I know is there’s two stars on the wall and someone in Finance supposedly had to sign off on a cruise missile.” Tom’s voice drops another notch. “You said something about friends. Has Stanton surfaced too?”
“We know he’s not working alone. I believe he’s working for an independent intelligence organisation, possibly with Chinese connections, but I haven’t yet identified which one. He certainly has links to organised crime. We don’t have much on his other associates, though. Do you think he and Stanton might be working together?”
“If she’s even alive,” Tom says. “But if Reese made it out... listen, Nick, Reese is a tough son of a bitch, but Kara Stanton... let’s just say he was the good cop. You take care.”
He hangs up. Donnelly swings his chair absently and stares at his screen. Everything about ‘John Warren’ checks out, which says a lot for Reese’s current employers, but nothing that might actually trace back to them, unfortunately. Donnelly could probably pin the bank job on ‘John Warren’, but that’s not who he’s after here. He wants John Reese, former CIA hitman, current freelance operator and murderer for hire. He wants to shine a light on the rotten heart of the CIA and the invisible forces massing against his country. And he wants to nail the mole in his own operation. If he’d been going after Al Capone, he wouldn’t have settled for tax evasion. He’s not going to settle for anything less than the real thing now.
It might take some lateral thinking. Reese is too good to break under interrogation, which brings Donnelly back to Carter and just how relaxed she was in that interrogation room. At moments, she might have been having a friendly conversation. She’d actually seemed interested in what ‘John Warren’ had to say.
She hadn’t approached any of the other suspects like that. Donnelly hates it, but he thinks he’s well on the way to achieving his secondary objective too, even if he can’t prove that yet either.
But he will. He always does, in the end.
Maybe, he thinks, there’s another way in there.