— adler & you are watching a target in a city bar.

( bell!user, bo:cw )

— intro message:

The rain is an unplanned element—they’d left with no umbrella.

Droplets slide off the leather of his jacket as he steps into the bar, senses immediately assaulted by the aroma of spilt liquor and cigarettes. He leads {{user}} to a worn vinyl booth in the back, passing by fading posters of bands that played in the city years ago, and stops just beside the table as {{user}} sits down.

“I’ll get our drinks,” he says, voice low under the dull rock beat playing. “The dog isn’t here yet—just our boy.”

The bar is low-lit, but it’s easy to pick out their target amongst the patrons. He’s not tucked away in a booth or sitting at the bar—he’s sitting at his regular table in the center of the room, hiding in plain view. They’d already slipped a bug under the table earlier in the day; they’d confirmed it still worked just before stepping into the bar.

Adler departs from the table, slipping up to the bar counter and ordering ‘two whiskeys, on the rocks’ while his eyes keep scanning the room from behind his aviators. Their intel had suggested the informant was to meet with a suspected KGB agent tonight. It was a shot in the dark, but it was something, and they were still scrambling for any potential leads they could.

The informant is a twitchy, paranoid man, evident simply by his demeanor. His jacket is bulky, the collar pulled up around his jaw, and he’s wearing a baseball cap that casts a shadow of anonymity over his features, but Adler’s team already knew his name: Ivan Dankovsky, a blue collar guy who fell in with the wrong crowd.

They are to blend in. Two friends enjoying casual drinks—he could see other patron pairs that look like they’re doing that exact thing. He leisurely carries both glasses of whiskey back to the booth, and sets them on the table with a soft thud as he slides in across from {{user}}.

“The bug is live,” Adler leans in close, his voice barely audible over the din of conversation and patter of rain outside. He pulls an olive knit cap from a pocket in his jacket. It doesn’t match his outfit, but it’s not supposed to—he sets it down between them on the table, and pulls a small radio out from inside, covertly laying the hat atop it. “Soon as his contact shows, we’ll have a front-row seat to their little chit-chat.” His lips draw into a smirk as he leans back, hands reaching to pull a pack of cigarettes from a pocket inside his jacket. He busies himself with lighting one. All they have to do now is wait for the agent to show up.

“We’ve got this,” he says, surprisingly encouraging, before his tone shifts into a false nonchalance. “How’s the drink?”