(Scalphunter is available at Itch and DriveThruRPG – free or pay what you want) – a Solo Game of Cold War Espionage)
In this instalment, Eddie Lawson is assigned a simple investigation into the effects of a deceased academic with secret ties to Soviet intelligence.
OPERATION MERMAID
Mission: Translate captured logs/diaries (analysis)
Simple (6), Critical (4)
The department have come into possession of some encrypted documents from the cache of a deceased Soviet illegal working out of Cambridge. The Operations team have been tasked with obtaining any information that might assist. Lawson has been assigned to take the lead on the case, and intends to use his contact Connie Vyon for the critical phase of decryption.
Eddie starts with 1 Oversight ticked due to the failure of Operation Styx. It ended badly and D.Ops is worried that Lawson took the death of the asset Laila Anis very badly.
The Soviet illegal was Ethan Watson, a professor of Classics at Cambridge University who had started working for his secret masters in the 1930s when a student himself.
Task 1: Bluff Authority (Interaction)
Eddie drives to Cambridge and seeks a meeting with the Dean of Watson’s college. He is, he says, a journalist for the Times wanting to do an article on Watson’s life and wondered if he might have access to Watson’s papers and effects.
Roll: 3 – a Mixed Success
The Dean, Sir Samuel Bell, is a miserable old academic in his seventies who has little time for journalists. He grills Lawson for a couple of hours, challenging his credentials and his motives. Lawson handles this informal interrogation well. Bell tells him to come back in a few days when the paperwork regarding Watson’s death has been dealt with.
Stress increases to 1
Complexity track: 1 space filled
Task 2 – Shadow Target (Tradecraft)
Eddie learned during the meeting with Sir Samuel that he was not the only interested party. He’d been visited the previous day by one of Watson’s old colleagues who had also been asking for the same sort of things as Watson. Sir Samuel grumbles that people only seem interested in Classics when someone dies.
Lawson subtly extracts information from Sir Samuel about the old colleague, who turns out to be a German academic called Joachim Schneider. Lawson makes a call back to London and asks for a check to be made on Schneider. The return call comes an hour later. No such person. This means that whoever Schneider is was sent here at a moment’s notice without even a consistent legend.
It’s no great effort to find where Schneider is staying, and Lawson sets about tailing him to learn more about this rival figure.
Roll: 6 – a full success
Lawson keeps an eye on Schneider over the next couple of days. He’s keeping himself much to himself, passing his days in a room at a local guest-house, occasionally taking a walk around the town. Lawson is not seen but notes how expertly Schneider carries out basic counter-surveillance methods. He’s in the game.
Complexity track filled: 2
Task 3: Predict Enemy Action (Analysis)
Lawson suspects that Schneider has other contacts in Cambridge but is being damned subtle about them. Sitting in his own rented room, Lawson goes over and over the details of Schneider’s walks around town. Where might there be a recognition signal? Where a dead drop? A brush contact?
His instincts tell him he’s missing something.
Roll: 6 – Full Success!
[Random Roll here – does this involve Sir Samuel? It’s unlikely, so 1-2 on 1d6. Result: 3. No. Schneider’s contact is someone new.]
Lawson recalls a moment on Schneider’s most recent walk… Schneider had paused outside a cafe and looked in. He’d thought Schneider was checking in the reflection of the glass for anyone following him. But no. He’d been looking right at a man at one of the tables and Lawson was sure he remembered a nod between them men.
Complexity Track filled: 3
The next day Lawson would be paying attention to the man in the diner.
Task 4: Map Enemy Network (Analysis)
(Highly appropriate but alarming – Eddie is poor at Analysis and wants to hold Connie in reserve for the final key task of the mission).
He sets out to learn about Schneider’s contact in the diner and any other connections he might have.
Roll: 4 – a Mixed Success.
The man in the diner is Robert Owen, who he learns is a vain and abrasive post-graduate in the same department where Watson lectured. Owen might well be the inside man trying to obtain any incriminating effects from Watson’s home or offices to pass on to Schneider.
Complexity Track filled: 4
Exposure inreases to 1 – Lawson has been visible on the streets of Cambridge for the last couple of days just strolling around.
Task 5: Surgical Assassination (Action)
(That escalated quickly – why would this be necessary? It will have to be self defense I think)
Not only has Lawson been visible on the streets of Cambridge but Schneider had spotted him more than once, and seen him lurking near the cafe. It seems that the old academic Schneider is a cool hand at dirty tactics.
The next day as Lawson is shadowing Schneider once more he loses the older man on a path down by the Cam, losing sight of him among the trees. The older man appears from nowhere and grabs Lawson from behind in a choke-hold.
“A long sleep for you,” Schneider hisses, “a sudden failure of the heart, how tragic in such a young man.” In his hand a hypodermic needle.
Roll: 5 – Full Success
Schneider should not have wasted his time gloating, particularly when attacking someone younger, fitter and better trained. Eddie Lawson breaks free of the hold and wrestles for the syringe. A few moments later he’s emptied it it Schneider’s thigh through his trousers. The older man cries out in fear and pain but whatever concotion was in the syringe does its work quickly. A sudden failure of the heart. Not unexpected in a man of Schneider’s age. Lawson quickly rifles through the man’s pockets.
Complexity track filled: 5
Downtime:
Eddie has taken out the man who had identified him.
Urgency is now 1
Exposure is now 0.
Task 6: Coerce Cooperation (Interaction)
Knowing that Robert Owen is working on the inside, Lawson decides there is no time to lose. He arranges an appointment the next day with the belligerent Sir Samuel Bell who resents being hurried, and concocts a story about irregularities in Watson’s private life that might bring embarrassment to the college if they were made public. Lawson can, he says, ensure that this never happens but would need access to Watson’s private effects to find evidence to discredit the rumours.
Roll: 6 – Full Success
Grumbling angrily about the yellow press and gutter journalism, Sir Samuel nonetheless provides Lawson with access to Watson’s private effects that had been stored securely in Sir Samuel’s own offices. All charm now, Lawson starts to work through them and finds printed meticulously at on the rear-papers of a first edition copy of Yeats’ “Michael Robartes and the Dancer” a grid of numbers that he recognises as a cypher key. Lawson distracts Sir Samuel (who insisted on staying nearby) into stepping away for a second to check on some obscure point of research mentioned in Watson’s journals, and slips the book into his inside pocket.
He returns to London on the next train and passes the book to Connie.
“Go through this quickly,” he says, “There may be more in there than just the key. If we can get the book back to Cambridge before Robert Owen gets his hands on Watson’s effects, so much the better.”
Complexity track now full.
Endgame: Analysis roll.
Connie (Ally) rolls: 6
Living up to her reputation Connie uses the key and other annotations hidden in the margins of the book to decrypt the cached information. Lawson returns the book to Cambridge the next morning, slipping it back into Watson’s effects during his second session of “clearing the dead man’s name” -which he is happy to assure Sir Samuel is now no longer an issue.
The information obtained from the encrypted document points to other contacts in Watson’s ring of illegals and more importantly to their handler, Ignat Sergeev, a junior administrator at the Soviet Embassy in London. Already known to be a KGB officer, the details are passed to the Security Service to step up surveillance on Sergeev and to investigate the other members of the ring, like Robert Owen.
Successful mission: 2 Experience Points. Owen can clear 2 points from Stress/Oversight and as he only has one of each these are both reduced to zero. He does not need to make any Personal Cost rolls.
He gains 2 Experience Points and now has 5.
Otherworlds 