Part 10: Where in the World is Birdsong?

– Where in the World is Birdsong?

Let’s press on!



Back at the office, we get another message from Max:





Gromchevsky here. My friend, you wanted to meet Churbanov? I have arranged it. Meet me in Vilnius.



Here’s the video of the meeting. Yuri hates Churbanov, and accuses him of being in the Mafia’s pocket and involved in the murder of Dubansky. We meet Churbanov’s campaign manager Nina, who claims Yuri is the untrustworthy one.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp...-ch8_videogames

So, again, we’re not sure who to trust. It’s becoming a theme.

More bad news:



Thorn, it’s Max. I just got a call from Birdsong. He’s running scared. I tried to reason with him but he wants no part of it. I’ll put Birdsong’s dossier and the recording of the call up on Intelink. And you’ll want to check out his apartment for any clues. You’ll be discreet, I’m sure. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks, Thorn.



We return to Pearson’s office to find a strange bird on the desk.









The Cryptic Note Delivery Service in this town must be raking it in.





Viruses be damned, we’d better have a look at this.





There are a lot of posts here, so we click through to look for something unusual. If my childhood is any indication, newsgroup viewing usually leads to running command line uudecode to find topless pictures of Star Trek actresses.

















American political discourse is a beautiful thing. But the next one is unusual.





Another Beale code!





Hey, it worked last time.



Damn.



Remember the book of the month club? Maybe there are some answers there.









Uncle Sugar is good to me.



These are the new books. The Khan and I yields nothing.





The Rabid Hound is more successful.





I’m very glad this is automated. I wouldn’t want to be stuck paging through The Rabid Hound picking out letters.



I sure hope I’m wrong about this, but it sounds like this message is referring to a nuclear pit. You know, the part that goes boom?



DCI Sterling weighs in.





We’ll quickly go through the Onyx casefile. There’s not enough information yet to track him down, so it’s one more thing we’ll have to keep an eye on.















Once we get a little more info on Onyx, we’ll be able to match his habits with the flight records. For now, we concentrate on finding Birdsong.

We head over to his apartment to look for clues.







It’s time to finally use that lockpick set that we’ve been carrying around all game.



Let’s poke around.









A lot of Western stuff lying around. Birdsong must have some kind of weird Karl May-esque obsession with the American West.

Also note the calendar has the Cyrillic months, but Solzhenitsyn’s book is in English translation. Probably not important, but interesting.



Suddenly, Lange bursts into the room.

Thorn! Thank God I found you. *looks at PDA* Damn thing isn’t working; I had to go by the safe house and see Max Foster. He said you’d be here. So, talk to me. Any new leads on Procat?



Let’s recap. Lange’s PDA was cut off because he went missing after he had set up a meeting with Harmonica. His partner turned up dead. He apparently thinks Max is a man, which means he hasn’t been to the safe house. And who would have told him about Procat? He’s been out of the loop. Under the circumstances, we shoot first and ask questions later.









Now Parker and Lange are both dead, and we have no real clues on Birdsong’s location. Time to check out that phone call.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp...call_videogames

This is the sound analysis tool. You may remember it from a few chapters ago when we eavesdropped on government workers. The batcomputer will pull out the background noises from the call Max recorded. Then we can plot that information on the map next to the locations of Birdsong’s known contacts. Once we identify the confluence of those factors, we’ll have our man.





The first sound is a 10 Ton church bell.





The next is an IL-176 aircraft.





Luckily, Uzbeki Mountain Sparrows are non-migratory.





The last sound is an electric tram.





Let’s check the map:



We can enable each of the four factors to find the correct location.











So no location exists with all four factors. Dushanbe has no streetcar.



However, brilliant CIA case officers know that birds exist in zoos as well as in the wild. So let’s evaluate the other cities with 3 of 4 factors.

Erevan is possible, but the sparrow would be difficult to hear from the Barkhin Residence.



Rostov has no zoo.



The zoo in St. Pete is even farther from the residence.



The Moscow zoo is way out in the burbs.



Novosibirsk looks promising.



The Suvorov Residence is right next to the zoological gardens. That’s our best bet.









Foster contacts us immediately.



Good job finding Birdsong. I’ll have some of my people pick him up.

So that wraps that up. One more loose end; we need to contact John Blake about Procat.



He has the most annoying phone number ever.





John Blake here.



Yes, Thorn. How can I be of assistance?



Procat? I thought the Agency closed the books on them. Why the new interest?



I just talked to David Holt about Operation Paw Print.

Yes, David Holt. An excellent tracker. But alas, the boy lost his nerve at a key point in Paw Print, nearly compromise the mission I’m afraid.



Really? Hmm. Let me guess. Korean woman known by several names: Marie Cho, Ying Chungwang, and Debbie Gibson come to mind. She’s an acquisition specialist, used to be with Korean Intelligence before Procat recruited her.



I’ve quite a bit more data, but I can’t share it over the phone.



Any time would be fine. I’m at home more or less all day, except for the odd trip to town for groceries or a new musical release. I’d welcome a chance to chat.





How the hell could Blake know about Ying? My contacts at MI6 say he’s out of touch. Let’s check him out.

So the opportunity arises to go to London. On our way out of the building, a mysterious voice comes from the lobby.

Thorn, come into alley…

Since it’s always appropriate to meet strangers in a dark alley, we head out there.



We find Churbanov’s lovely campaign manager waiting behind some garbage.



I cannot be seen with you, but take this. It should be interesting reading. Things are not what they seem. Think – who benefits most from Dubansky’s death? Polyakov. And who are Polyakov’s cronies? Things have not changed as much here as everyone thinks. The hammer and sickle still weighs heavily on our lives.

She presents us with a file on our good friend Yuri.





Apparently Yuri went by the name Reaper and has a history of betraying American agents. Is there anyone we can trust?

Next time, we’ll head off to London to meet Blake.