[PART TWO] - CLOSED
THE SOCIAL NETWORK KINK MEME
ASK THE MODS * FAQ * DISCUSSION * RESEARCH * FILL LIST * PART ONE * PART ONE (OVERFLOW)
GENERAL RULES;
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ASK THE MODS * FAQ * DISCUSSION * RESEARCH * FILL LIST * PART ONE * PART ONE (OVERFLOW)
GENERAL RULES;
♥ post requests and responses in the comments to this post ( Read more... )
"You have no idea," the first recruitment agent says.
Eduardo figured that out a while ago. But he doesn't say anything.
When the sales pitch is done, they give him a card with a number Eduardo's not even sure Dustin could get his hands on and they tell him to call it.
The whole song and dance doesn't really mean anything. They did it before. Eduardo remembers a similar agent in an almost identical suit sitting himself down in the seat next to Eduardo's on his flight to Massachusetts and how the guy had told him how he was on their radar.
"Not every teenager makes 300 grand over the summer," the guy had said between drinks.
Eduardo remembers shrugging. "Not every kid my age likes the weather channel as much as I do."
He remembers saying that. But mostly he remembers his childhood in Brazil. Most kids in Harvard just were taught to look each way before crossing the street. Eduardo - his parents had taught him other things, and that's why, when the agent pushed, he had merely shrugged.
Now it doesn't seem to matter what he does. It's not like one more dotted line can screw him over more than the last one. So he signs it. He probably would have signed it without all the effort they put into wooing him. But it was something, he supposed. He could have done without it though.
They send him to basic training. He thinks his instructors spend most of their time laughing at him. But he gets better. He's always been good at recognising what has to be done and making sure it gets taken care of. Learning to run faster, shoot properly and lie with ease are just new job requirements. Not that much different than learning how to make coffee to his boss’ taste during the handful of days he spent interning in New York. He survives everything they throw at him and when they run out of tests to give him, they send him out into the field.
As it turns out, in the field, the ability to lie is most useful.
After managing to convince three North Korean scientist to defect, his first case manager tells him he's got a gift for it. He doesn't. He - he always had an honest face. Now he's only got that. Instead a matching backbone, he has business cards that say he works in international financing (free-lancing), a dozen passports with a dozen different ID's, a dusty apartment, and a ticket to - Eduardo squints.
"Tokyo?"
His case manager, Ivan, grins, "Subcontracting. You're popular."
For three months he works as an energy analysis within Tokyo’s burgeoning nuclear industry. He arrives to work on time, attends company meetings and has a wide and varied social calendar. He is polite and charming and really, it isn't too difficult to cultivate sources and eventually, help managed spies. He copies files and hard drives (not that difficult either, now he knows what to look for and how to find it) and when the CEO's son invites him out, Eduardo accepts.
It isn't that difficult. Not really.
He still gets to work on time, still attends company meets and all the social events he used to. Now he just wakes in a penthouse paid for by one of the people he's investigating with an arm slung across his waist, has dinners with the CEO and his family on the weekend, gets a promotion after his second month on the job, and has sensitive information handed over to him instead of having to spend time hacking the companies servers for it.
It's that information which gives the CIA the grounds for Eduardo to do something other than present pie charts and data. When he gets back to Singapore for debriefing, the CEO is dead and his son is now an informant. Ivan is pleased. He says the branch is pleased too. The give him a week off. He spends most of it picking at the cuts on his knuckles and trying to re-familiarise himself with his apartment.
"You need to relax," Ivan says when he sees Eduardo again.
Eduardo's sparing partner, Loren says pretty much the same thing. But that might just have been because he managed to deck Eduardo with a punch he should have been able to duck.
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On the freight plane out, for some reason he runs into that first recruitment officer.
The guy breaks into a crooked smile when he sees Eduardo.
"Not as dumb as you look, eh, Bambi?" he laughs. "I never should have doubted you."
"No," Eduardo replies.
Eduardo thinks his record speaks loud enough. But sometimes that isn't enough.
It should be, but it isn't.
He's better with financial and trade related espionage. Other than knowing figures and being able to work out what they mean in the scheme of things, there is something about him that always appears efficient, competent, but not overly so. Never threatening. Nor to memorable. Just good, but not too good at what he does. Maybe it’s just his face or maybe it’s the fact in the right suit, or any suit, he looks younger than he really is. Younger and - he doesn’t know. It just works. He’s able to slide in and out of the corporate sector with ease.
But after his first stint in Jordan, he starts being sent on different missions. Ones where he doesn’t just track money or investments while smiling prettily. A month in Taiwan becomes three in Burma, or five in Pakistan. Information is still information, and Eduardo's always been good at getting a hold of it. Especially now he has learnt not to take thing at face value.
Within the course of an eighteen month period, he is promoted twice.
After the second, he is placed on a team and the missions change again.
Links between one assignment and the next start to become visible; paper trails of money and influence. Ivan, once his case manager and now his team leader, tells him to keep his nose to the ground. He tells Eduardo not to draw straws. To wait and to watch. In comparison Loren spends most of his time talking about banks financing terrorism, while Elsa, their new wrangler just talks about the bigger picture - because that’s what they’re dealing with. Eduardo thinks about all the hedge funds and tax havens he’s seen in his lifetime.
There are patterns.
He is starting to see them.
“I think we could be onto something big,” Loren says.
Eduardo doesn’t say anything.
Not yet.
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A few months later they are sent back to Afghanistan so it all feels like a moot point anyway. Embedded with a squadron of Marines, those fake business cards feel so far away as does his farce of an apartment.
"It can always be much worse," he says, when one of the marine's he's riding asks what he's thinking.
The marine nods.
Eduardo thinks most of the squad know what he and his team mates are. How could they not? Nothing is said though. Not to their faces. A fortnight later they are dropped off in Bagdad and Eduardo becomes someone else. Different name, accent, even a different walk. He still knows how to hold a gun like someone who knows how to use it. He uses it like a person how knows how to, when push comes to shove.
"You look so thin," his mother says when Eduardo visits her after he gets back.
Sitting out by the pool in the sun, the back of Eduardo's neck prickles; sun burnt and raw under the crisp white dress shirt. He shrugs and lets his mother feed him seconds and complain about what he's done with his hair ('You have such beautiful hair. Why did you cut it so short?').
Ivan doesn't say anything. They concentrate on writing up reports, attending branch meetings, briefing the relevant personal and prepping for the next mission and - Eduardo is good at this. He knows how to say the right things in order to get his hands on what he wants. He gets the job done. He is good at that. One of the best. What he does means something. Something more than the amount of zero’s in his bank balance or the ones that are added to that totally every financial quarter.
He - he’s in Kuwait working as a P.A to an oil magnate when out of nowhere he is extracted and told to report to Washington D.C. When he asks why - why, when he was so deeply embedded in his cover and so close to discovering the evidence the CIA needed they pulled him out, ruining months and months of work and setting the investigation back at least a year - they tell he they need him for something more important.
When he gets to the bureau though, he finds out they don’t need him at all.
They need Mark. Mark fucking Zuckerberg. And apparently Eduardo’s the only one that can get him.
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And you did and so for it is awesomesauce. I can totally see Eduardo being all efficient and badass, while still looking innocent and innocuous. This is going to be amazing. :D
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This is going to be SO good!
I love it. It's about to get deceptive and angsty and gorgeous and SEXY and I cannot WAIT.
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YOU ARE MY HERO. SO MUCH. SO SO MUCH.
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