As they rushed to prepare him for his new assignment, Shahim had shocked all of the teachers appointed to him with the speed with which he picked up the skills he would need. Of course, the truth was that Agent Shahim Al Khazar could easily speak any language on earth, and master any technique they chose to teach him in seconds, but he had to maintain a pretense of being human, and so slowed his uptake to a more believable pace. Being sent to America was an unfortunate detour, but delaying it with a feigned inability to learn English would only have postponed the inevitable, while also frustrating the very people Shahim was trying to impress.

He had arrived in New York as a stowaway on an Oil Tanker from Saudi Arabia after being smuggled across the border from Pakistan with a group of refugees.

Security was tight after the attack in Pakistan, and he had told his superiors that he would need to lay low and plan his next mission more carefully. At this particular moment, however, he was literally lying flat on the roof of a tenement building in Queens, staring at the sky. His weapons array was folded out of its niche in his left eye socket and he was using a low-power, focused beam from its laser to send a signal to the satellite ranging above. Though it was not high bandwidth, and had a slight delay to it, he would be able to participate fairly effectively in the Council meeting that was about to start.

<Welcome.>

The eight avatars stood in their circle. John Hunt had just made it back to the HMS Dauntless waiting in Hawaii after his supposed conference in San Diego. Despite Shahim’s not being fully connected, his avatar appeared just like the others, but the limits of his connection would not allow a full range of expression to be expressed on the virtual Agent’s face.

<The Agenda has been created, and supplemented by two items from Agents: first for discussion is the reassignment of Agent Shahim Al Khazar to America. We need to discuss strategies for getting him redeployed to Pakistan.>

Mikhail Kovalenko spoke first, “It seems pretty clear to me that he must either fail in America or be discovered in order to have him sent home. It also seems clear that failure may bring some unwelcome consequences, so instead we should look to engineer Shahim’s discovery and subsequent escape to force his leaders to bring him home.”

“I agree,” said John Hunt, “surely Lana can easily arrange for his identity to be discovered. Have him arrange a low-level attack, and be caught on video. The image would make him a liability to their cause in America and force them to bring him home.”