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Enter the Naked Mole Rat	By : kwh Category: Kim Possible > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 18153 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
7. The Wolsberg Concordat
"Compartmentalise... compartmentalise...", Kim continued to talk to herself sternly, as she entered the elevator on level 4, after a rather self-absorbed lunch in the Global Justice canteen, en route to Dr Director's office.
Her legs were still a little wobbly.
Compartmentalising was the story of Kim's life. Normally she was brilliant at it, though she said so herself. How else could she so easily concentrate on history homework or designing page layouts for the school yearbook while en-route to tangle with some mad lunatic bent on taking over the world? But now she had two big compartments stuffed with things relating to Shego. One firmly locked compartment was full of the way Kim had just completely 'lost it' for a minute or two, on the roof of the Bueno Nacho HQ, and deliberately and maliciously done something she never would have believed herself capable of that could have killed Shego. Definitely would have killed anybody else. And pretending it hadn't happened just wasn't working for her. And now after her shower before lunch there was another compartment chock full of Shego... and she didn't even dare think about that at the moment. And she was going to have to think about all of it. And deal.
On her own.
The first because what she had done had terrified her so much when she later thought about it that she hadn't had the courage to articulate it clearly to herself yet, let alone talk to Mon or Ron or Mom about it. And the second... well, no. Just… No. If she could have talked to anybody about it, it would have been Ron. There was nothing they couldn't have talked about, when he had been 'just' her best friend. They had shared everything. They had even literally been inside each other's skin for a few days, once. But now they were dating, it really wasn't a subject she could imagine discussing with him. She suddenly remembered Ron's reaction when he had first seen a still from video footage of Shego in action; that predatory lust-fuelled growl. She felt a pang of irrational jealousy as she mentally paired Shego with her boyfriend. "Stop it, right now Kim!", she scolded herself.
She forced herself to think about the upcoming briefing. That would probably help take her mind elsewhere, she decided. In due course, she found herself outside the door of Dr Director's office and pushed the button, looking at the camera focused on her. A DNA scanner and fingerprint reader in the bell-push confirmed her identity via a display built in to Betty Director's desk, and seconds later the door hissed open to admit her. She strolled into the room, about to say "Hi", when she was surprised to see Wade's wide-eyed face on the giant wall-mounted view screen. "Hi Wade, what's the sitch?" she asked, cheerily, noticing only then that Dr Director had a somewhat stern face.
"I was just about to ask how you penetrated four levels of NSA certified firewall and evaded several intrusion detection systems to get into my private A1-secure video conferencing terminal, Mr Load. However, I'll settle for 'the sitch' for now..."
"Sorry Dr Director, but it was important", Wade apologised. "Kim! Your Kimmunicator was turned off, I tried to reach you. I thought you'd want to know."
"Know what, Wade?", Kim asked warily.
"It's Shego. She's presumed dead, Kim!" , said Wade.
"Oh god, no!" exclaimed Kim, tearing up as a rush of completely unexpected emotion struck her; followed by the sudden stab of icy fear. Had Kim killed her? Had she been more injured than she seemed when Kim had last seen her?
"Indeed. A clear breach of the Concordat." said Dr Director, icily, seemingly having missed the nature of the emotion behind Kim's outburst. Kim for her part didn't trust herself to try and speak. Betty
Director pushed a button on her desk and said "Agent Simpson, have the CIA responded to our official query yet?" "Yes", came an electronic voice from speakers throughout the room. "They are claiming that some of their agents were attacked by Shego during an unrelated intelligence operation in Africa, and that they killed her under the self defence provisions of the concordat, Doctor Director."
Kim was completely wrong-footed by that. "The CIA?" she muttered, in a confused tone.
"Yes they would say that, wouldn't they. Thank you Simpson!". Betty Director pressed the button again to kill the link, and then said "So, does that tally with what you know, Mr Load?"
"No.. no, not at all. I'm uploading you everything I've got from their systems. It should be with you... now. It looks like they convinced the state patrol to hand Shego over by impersonating Global Justice agents, then they took her to an abandoned air force field, drugged her and put her on a plane to Uzbekistan. Then it seems something went wrong mid flight, and they had to shoot the plane down."
"Uzb... idiots!" said Dr Director, vehemently. Then she looked at Wade on the big screen. "Is there any chance she might have survived?"
"I don't know", said Wade. "I do know they have recovered a lot of wreckage but haven't found her body yet, and that they have had three naval underwater search teams on station looking for it. But I have found some gun camera footage from the incident. Do you want to see it?"
"Please and thank-you, Wade" interjected Kim, who had managed to get the rawest of her emotions back under some semblance of control.
Wade vanished to be replaced by the image of a glowing aircraft HUD, overlaid on fluffy clouds and blue sky, and in the middle of the picture a medium sized executive jet, with a boxed diamond icon superimposed on it. The soundtrack was a cacophony of odd beeps and darth-vader breathing noises, and then a voice drawled "Hammer one - seven, nothing heard...". A second voice, presumably the RIO, said "Claw, does that mean we have to take them out?" "I'm damned well gonna get confirmation of that" responded the pilot, who then got on the radio again. "AWACS
Alpha Echo, this is Hammer One - Seven, have you been monitoring radio traffic between ourselves and Boxcar Seven, over?"
"AWACS Alpha Echo, Affirmative, we have been monitoring and have notified COMAFAIR, over!", responded the AWACS operator, hunched over his radar screen in the back of a far off Boeing 707.
"Hammer One - Seven, please advise, over!", the pilot asked, plaintively. Kim got the impression that he knew what he had to do but wanted somebody else to make the call. There was another pause, more beeping and heavy breathing, and then a voice came back over the air, slightly wobbly. "AWACS Alpha Echo, COMAFAIR confirms that Presidential Order Victor-One-Five-Two-Seven-Alpha does apply. Execute with extreme prejudice most urgent, over!".
"Hammer One - Seven, Roger, Out!" said the pilot, sounding slightly less cool and professional than he had earlier in the film.
"Shit!" said the RIO sharply. Then, in a more business-like tone of voice, he added "Master arm switch to on. Sidewinder selected. Pickle is hot!" A clear tone came from the speakers, mingling with the heavy breathing noises.
"Good tone!" said the pilot. Then there was a burst of static, and the screen filled with smoke for a moment as a missile streaked away from the camera's viewpoint towards the cruising jet. "Fox one!" said the pilot, almost mournfully. Seconds later, the screen filled with a huge bloom of flame as the left hand rear engine of the executive jet exploded spectacularly and suddenly the images on the screen were rotating wildly, as apparently the pilot felt the need to dodge chunks of debris.
Seconds later, the screen stabilised again, this time with the burning executive jet off to the right of it. The video showed an engine missing, and the tail full of big holes, with smoke and flames streaming from the rear fuselage. "Sidewinder selected" said the RIO, and the continuous tone started again.
"Fox 2" said the pilot, even less enthusiastically than before, after another burst of static as the screen filled with smoke again. Suddenly the RIO said "Woah! Boxcar has gone evasive!", as the burning aircraft flipped up and to the right, straining to get out of the path of the missile that was tracking it, and the pilot of the F14 had to be quick to keep the jet in the field of view of the gun camera.
"That's Shego..." said Dr Director, almost under her breath.
A second or two later, the plane just seemed to fold up in the air and hang there for a second, followed immediately by a large explosion as the missile caught up with it. A millisecond after the missile blast, there was another much bigger detonation and a fireball that almost filled the screen, with pieces of aircraft being flung in all directions, as the pilot of Hammer One - Seven pulled massive G forces that had him grunting in order to avoid the edge of the expanding fireball.
"Fuel tank..." muttered Dr Director, redundantly...
"Splash one." said the pilot, once the fighter had regained some equilibrium, but in a voice that sounded like somebody delivering a eulogy. Then the film cut and Wade was back on the screen, looking impassive as always.
Kim just stared wide-eyed, an anguished expression on her face. She'd just watched the brutal, fiery death of her nemesis. She hadn't expected to feel like it was somebody she really cared about. Once again, she didn't trust herself to speak. So much for compartmentalisation!
Fortunately, Dr Director filled the void. She hit a button on her desk with some venom and barked "Get me the Director of Central Intelligence on the hotline, right now!". "Err... please, Janice" she added more softly, realising that she had unintentionally barked at the woman on the other end of the intercom. "Normally, I'd ask you to step outside while I made this call, but I know that you'd just ask Mr Load to play you a recording of it afterwards if I did that". Wade had the good grace to look sheepish at this point. "So you can stay. But not a word!" she said, looking at Kim.
A few seconds later, a disembodied voice emanated from the main speakers. "Dr Director! To what do I owe this pleasure?"
Dr. Director snatched a handset from her desk cutting off the speakers. Apparently, Kim was only going to hear one half of the conversation.
"Ah, Mr Director. I trust you are settling in nicely?" she asked, her pleasant voice belied by a facial expression that might melt granite. "Glad to hear it." she said, soothingly. "Now, there was just one little thing actually..." Her voice took on a steel edge as she continued. "I'm sure that when you took up your new appointment, you felt that a Harvard MBA and a copy of 'The New American Century' were entirely sufficient to properly equip you for its many challenges, but somebody should have mentioned that there was some required reading; starting with the treaties and obligations that bind you, and specifically the Wolsberg Concordat."
Kim heard the righteous indignation pouring out of the telephone earpiece, if not the individual words, from the other side of the room.
"No, Mr Director, Shego is on the Y-list, and that puts her in Global Justice's jurisdiction, and out of yours. Had you read the concordat, you would know that. Had you read the background brief your staff prepared for you when you took your new post, you'd know exactly why the USA, and the CIA, signed and have continued to participate in the concordat."
There was more outraged sounding barking from the earpiece of the phone.
"Well, Mr Director" said Dr Director, softly at first but building to an angry crescendo, "there are several reasons, but one major one is that it AVOIDS THIS KIND OF UNFORGIVEABLE FIVE-STAR OCEAN GOING CLUSTERFUCK!"
Kim was shocked; she had never heard Dr Director use profanity before. There was a longer pause, as Kim surmised that a slightly chastened director of the CIA was plaintively defending his position.
Dr Director listened impatiently but then continued, quietly but icily. "Well, Mr Director, from the top. Our analysis of security camera footage and the memory cores of several damaged synthodrones has confirmed that Shego did not plan or have prior knowledge of the nature of the operation that you are referring to. In fact, she was deliberately kept out of the loop. If you had read the psychological evaluations and threat reports we routinely send you as a member of the concordat, you would know that any involvement in a scheme on her part with so much potential for death and destruction was extremely unlikely.
"Secondly, if you had read the threat reports on Shego, you'd never have made such an ill-judged, amateur attempt to render her. It was pre-planned to fail. The deaths of your agents, the flight crew, Shego and the other detainee are your responsibility.
"Thirdly, if you'd read any of those after action reports we've sent to you in recent years - and I heartily recommend number 40317 - you'd know why the Uzbeks wanted Shego. And again, if you'd read her psychological evaluations – I recommend particularly the section starting on page 38 - you'd know that having done what you've done, in the way that you have done it, then you'd better damned well hope that she really is dead. And if I was you, until I had the body on a slab in the mortuary, I'd not be sleeping too well; or at all".
Kim's heart did a little back-flip. "Alive? Is that even possible?" she asked herself.
Meanwhile, Mr Director had obviously asked a question, and Dr Director was keen to answer. "Because Shego would take what you just tried to do to her very personally indeed. And she would undoubtedly retaliate violently against you and the Agency. And frankly, that scares me. But it should absolutely terrify you. And after she has finished reducing your Langley campus to a smoking ruin, and dismembering your organisation, I expect she would be looking for you personally. And then... well, I really wouldn't want to be you. So keep looking for that body. But you may want to put your affairs in order, just in case."
Betty Director's smirk told Kim that she had made the Director of Central Intelligence sweat a little bit.
"Please tell me that Shego might have really survived..." thought Kim.
"No, Mr Director. Global Justice will not intercede on your behalf in that eventuality. Because, under the terms of the concordat, which we are as much bound by as you are, you are guilty of at least five clear breaches of your obligations. Starting with impersonation of Global Justice agents, moving through operating against a Y-list entity, and ending with lying to us about your involvement. Your membership is therefore summarily suspended pending a full report to the wider membership. The CIA is now officially on its own.
"After this call, I will be speaking to the chair of the Senate Intelligence Select Committee, to brief him on exactly what the CIA has done, what the consequences may be, and on our response. I will also asking him to show just cause why we should consider only your agency in breach and not the USA as a whole.
"I'm sure that he will be pleased to hear that you sanctioned a flagrant breach of the National Security Act, have got the CIA thrown out of the concordat of which it was a founder member, which has helped protect the USA for the last half century, and have exposed the nation to the risk of retribution from at least one dangerous Y-list entity if not others. I wouldn't be at all surprised if your next federal government appointment is cleaning dried gum off the underside of benches in the capitol building. Good day!"
With that parting shot, Dr Director slammed down the phone. "Amateur!" she spat, vehemently.
Kim couldn't contain herself. She had to ask. "Could Shego be alive?"
Dr Director looked at her strangely before replying, as if noticing Kim's somewhat emotional state for the first time. "Well, you saw the footage. At the same time, this is Shego, and there is no body yet, so anything is possible. I'll have the lab analyse anything we get. But if she did turn up alive, then we really would have a problem! I'm afraid we'd almost certainly need to take her out ourselves".
"Take her out? You mean kill her?" asked Kim, aghast. "But why?"
"To protect the concordat, which would never survive a Y-list entity brazenly attacking the foreign intelligence service of the world's only superpower, especially if she does significant damage. And the end of the concordat would put the safety of the whole world at serious risk."
"If I knew what 'the concordat' was, or 'the Y-list' come to that, I might have understood that. What are you talking about?"
"This is all highly classified, Kim..." admonished Dr Director. Kim cynically applied the puppy-dog pout, but Dr Director held firm, shaking her head.
"Oh well", shrugged Kim with a grimace, "I'll just have to ask Wade later".
"Oh alright!" said Dr Director, testily.
"Please and thank-you!" said Kim, sweetly.
"First, a history lesson. During the Second World War, various individuals with... special abilities and a.. unique outlook on life... were co-opted by all sides to form part of their respective war efforts. After hostilities, many of these individuals and groups went independent.
"Some took names like 'The Green Flash' and 'The Ghost', others were scientists who continued their bizarre, dangerous, sometimes macabre wartime projects for their own purposes. Still others were wartime special operatives who just couldn't hang it up when the shooting stopped, and continued, for good, evil or just for the hell of it.
"In the community... the intelligence community, I mean... these people and organisations were lumped together under the banner of 'freelance entities'.
"As the cold war replaced the world war, and former allies became implacable enemies across the iron curtain, these freelance entities were a frightening variable for all sides. Everybody could count divisions, tanks, nuclear bombers, submarines. Nobody knew how to measure a mad scientist's death ray project, for example, to work out what was an appropriate balancing force. And at a stroke, that balance could shift, bringing instability to the delicate balance that was stopping each side from blowing the other to bits.
"In addition, attempts to either harness the power of these entities to your own side or destroy them to prevent them working for the other side were fraught with risk. Risk of betrayal, or risk of an operation backfiring and driving your target into the arms of your enemy.
"For example, the British Government once had to declare a Scottish Island had been 'contaminated by wartime weapons tests' and would be uninhabitable for 50 years after an attack by MI6 on a mad scientist's lair there resulted in an Anthrax release, the deaths of 12 agents and 30 soldiers, and the target going to work for the Soviets designing nerve agents in order to take his revenge.
"But the real wildcard that scared all parties was that one of these independent freelance entities - villains, heroes, business operations – would launch some scheme that would be mistaken by somebody else as an attack from the other side of the iron curtain, accidentally triggering World
War III. To counter this, intelligence agencies from both sides of the iron curtain used to attempt to pool their intelligence on the freelance entities, and share information about them. The trouble was that it is very hard to be spying on and deceiving your mortal enemy with one hand, and getting together secretly to share information with them in a spirit of trust and honesty with the other. There was too much mistrust, and it just wasn't ever going to work.
"Given what was at stake, the intelligence services of the post war great powers agreed that a permanent solution to the problem was required, if the world wasn't going to be accidentally destroyed by one side retaliating for something the other hadn't done. At the time, Vienna in Austria was the espionage playground of the world, so Austria was the obvious country to host the conference, and they convened in the small town of Wolsberg. Initially, it was the foreign intelligence services of the big players, so the CIA, MI6, the DGSE, and the MGB. They agreed that the domestic intelligence services should also be involved - so the FBI, MI5, the MVD, the RG and the DST were also invited to attend, and also representatives of the relevant governments. Everybody present agreed that certain individuals and organisations were a global problem, and needed a global solution. So they drafted an agreement, a concordat, which established a list of people and organisations that were to be dealt with pan-nationally by a new organisation formed specially to deal with the threat. This list was called 'the Y-list'. I've no idea why."
Wade cleared his throat loudly at this point, interrupting. "Actually, 'Department Y' in Stalin's pre-world-war-II NKVD intelligence agency was responsible for dealing with what they called super-criminals. The Russians suggested calling it the 'Y list' for that reason."
Dr Director paused and looked somewhat grumpily at Wade on the big screen. "I might have known that you'd know the answer, Mr Load." Wade blinked, but was otherwise apparently unmoved. Dr Director turned back to Kim. "Anyway, they also decided that the organisation would be called 'The permanent committee for the implementation of the Wolsberg Concordat'. That lasted about 6 months, and then we were renamed 'Global Justice'. We were to be a completely independent organisation, with no national or agency affiliations. We would have sole global jurisdiction over Y-list entities, and no jurisdiction outside the Y-list.
"Today, as always, Global Justice shares all its intelligence and analysis on Y-list entities equally with all of the concordat's members. Members cede their jurisdiction and sovereignty to Global Justice, but in return get the benefit of our expertise and experience, and the knowledge that the Y list entities are being properly managed to their mutual benefit. One difference now, apart from the fact that the cold war has ended, is that the number of countries, intelligence agencies and law enforcement organisations who are members of the concordat has grown massively."
"I had no idea..." said Kim, her head spinning. She'd never really thought about how and why Global Justice existed. "So... who pays for all this?" she asked, waving her hand around to indicate the enormous underground complex, the hundreds of agents, and she presumed, the many other bases and thousands of other agents all over the world.
"That's the beauty of it, it funds itself!", said Dr Director, proudly. "When it was first set up, Global Justice was a small organisation paid for by the taxpayers of the great powers directly. But one of the clauses of the concordat referred to who would benefit from technology seized by Global Justice on sovereign soil. It was agreed that it would be the country the technology was found in. But if the technology was found in international waters, nobody could agree who got to exploit it. So in the end they decided that Global Justice should have it.
"And then nobody thought any more about it. Until a mad scientist tried to launch an EMP weapon from a submarine in the 1960's. And then we didn't need external funding any more. And since Professor Dementor started a trend for deep sea lairs full of lucrative technology in the middle of the world's oceans, we've had something of an embarrassment of riches, and Global Justice is a much, much larger organisation."
"So why aren't all these.. entities... locked up in jails by now?" asked Kim, somewhat confused at the image of almost invincible scale that Dr Director was projecting.
"Oh, believe me, many are. We monitor study and analyse every Y-list entity in great detail, using every one of the many tools at our disposal. And then for each we devise a plan of action that is designed to further the collective common interests of all the members of the concordat. Then we do a full risk analysis of every alternative course of action. Of the 93% of Y-list entities who we define as an active threat, 62% are incarcerated in jails around the world. In a very small number of cases, more... robust... action has been required. Global Justice maintains a paramilitary capability to cope with imminent threats to humanity or the concordat from a Y-list entity or entities. In the remaining cases, our risk analysis says that the risks of direct action outweigh the rewards. Shego has always fallen into that category."
"And by robust, you mean...killing? Like you would want to kill Shego if she was alive? But why?" asked Kim, shocked but also more confused than ever.
Dr Director sat back in her chair and put her hands behind her head. "How much do you know about Shego, Kim?"
Kim consciously decided to ignore the uncomfortable reality that her nemesis was probably dead. "Uh... ex hero with Team Go, superpowers from being hit by a comet, best Wing Chung I've ever gone toe to toe with, turned evil, now tries to take over the world?" said Kim, mentally suppressing the strange urge to add 'great body, eyes that look straight through you' to the list.
Dr Director pursed her lips for a moment and then said "No!". "
No?" queried Kim, surprised.
"No, Shego wasn't evil. That's what made her so dangerous. And she wasn't trying to take over the world, either."
"Not evil? I would have noticed! Dr Drakken would have noticed! And she does so keep trying to take over the world! Remember, I keep having to stop her!" said Kim, pointedly using present tense.
"Kim, trust me. We have a very large and competent analysis department, and some very eminent psychologists on the staff, and they do nothing all day but study and write reports on the activities, personalities and psychology of people on the Y-list. Shego was not evil, by most measures. And if Shego ever had decided to take over the world... well, I don't want to think about what might have happened. At that moment they were both simultaneously treated to the same fleeting mental image of an older Shego, white streak in her hair, standing astride the world and laughing maniacally.
Kim shrugged it off, while Dr Director shuddered momentarily.
"Shego had serious anger management issues, and a self-esteem problem. Both may well have been directly connected to her familial relationships, if you believe our analysts. The short version is that spending a day with Hego could easily be pretty unpleasant, but spending ten years growing up with him belittling your every achievement and criticising your every move, well, it made Shego the woman she was. Angry and in need of a feeling of accomplishment in her own right."
"Hego said that she fought evil so much she started to like it..." commented Kim.
"Hego never stops talking, and most of what he says is rubbish. Global Justice was evaluating Shego just before she left Team Go as a possible agent, but we decided not to pursue the option because of her anger issues. She left Team Go to save her sanity. She left the hero business a little later. Working alone, she invariably blew her stack with somebody when she was trying to put right some wrong or other, and 'shot from the hip' a lot. The end result wasn't always good, or as she would have intended. She started to feel like a failure and the harder she tried, the angrier she was and the worse it got. Eventually the cycle of failure, anger and self-loathing got too much for her, and we think that she subconsciously decided that if she wasn't going to be able to feel good about being a hero, she'd try being a villain.
"She found it suited her temperament better, and gave her back her self-esteem. She has an acquired contempt for the law and those who enforce it, but she was never evil, in any objective sense. The first guy she did a fair bit of work for, she was his private pilot, bodyguard and did a little specialised burglary for him on the side. Until she found out that he made his money trafficking young girls from the third world to brothels and pimps in the first world. Then the very next day the guy decided to retire.
"We later ascertained from his PA who was also on the plane that Shego had hung the guy upside down out of the doorway of his own jet at 10,000 feet and told him he could retire the easy way or the hard way. Then she stole a few million dollars from him and donated it to charities working with victims of people trafficking.
"Wow..." said Kim, eyes round with surprise. "That doesn't... sound... evil. But it doesn't sound good either. You can't go hanging people out of aeroplanes just because they have done bad things."
"Or, indeed, to pick a random example, go around kicking people into high-voltage communications towers just because they've managed to push your buttons on a bad day?" asked Dr Director, reproachfully.
"You... know about that?" Kim asked, her eyes wide with shock and her voice an octave above its normal register.
Betty Director held up a manila folder. "After action report." she said, by way of confirmation.
"And I won't hold it against you. It's the first time you have ever lost your self-control in a fight, according to our analysts, and they also suggest that you will have been feeling extremely guilty that it happened at all. They also say that now that you know that it can happen they expect you to take steps to make sure it will never happen again.
"I haven't even begun to get my head around what I d.. what happened" said Kim, unhappily. She was conscious and slightly disturbed that Dr Director's analysts seemed to know more about how she was going to deal with her loss of control than she did.
"I only mentioned it because it may have given you an opportunity to understand Shego a little better. Almost everything made her angry. And when she got angry, her judgement suffered. She did many things in anger that we believe she bitterly regretted. And it’s that anger that makes Shego so dangerous. Attempting to neutralise her would have carried a high risk of failure, and of serious collateral damage. As we have seen. However, the real risk we faced was that Shego was potentially very easy to manipulate, if you were intent on real evil. If you could lie to Shego, and fill her with righteous anger at your enemies, then you would have a fearsome weapon at your disposal. Imagine what terrorists could have done with that weapon. Which is why Shego is identified as a particular threat on the Y-list, and why we manipulated events to ensure that when Drew Lipsky was looking for an enforcer, he got to meet her."
Kim gasped. "You put Shego together with Dr Drakken? Why?"
"Because they are a moderating influence on each other. Shego gets to implement Dr Drakken's insanely unworkable plans for world domination, thus giving her that sense of accomplishment she is looking for, while also being unavailable to work for somebody with a less transparent agenda. In turn, we hoped that Shego would moderate and... well, quality control... some of Dr Drakken's less well considered plans, to prevent any unintentional catastrophes. It mostly worked - Drakken's most recent plan got away from Shego, but generally she kept him from accidentally causing the extinction of humanity. “
"You mean... but I've nearly died foiling some of Drakken's plans to take over the world, and... but... I mean...” stammered Kim, almost speechless.
"Yes, you have unwittingly proved to be a vital component in our strategy for managing Shego and Dr Drakken. Without your involvement, we would have been forced to intervene directly to foil Drakken's plans. The risk of failure or of antagonising Shego into retaliation would have made that an unwelcome development".
"So it's been alright for me to antagonise Shego for the last year and some, while you watched from a safe distance, then?" asked Kim, her voice matching her expression in betraying distinct irritation.
"Actually, yes Kim. Our analysts have determined that Shego has... err... respect for you which she wouldn't have for, say, a Global Justice assault team. We estimated that there was an 11% chance that Shego would have declared a personal war on Global Justice in retaliation for any occasion where we were forced to get directly involved to foil one of Drakken's plans. By contrast, when you saved the world, we estimated that there was a 0.0037% chance that Shego would declare a personal war on you."
"Respect?" asked Kim, sceptically. Dr Director looked a little uncomfortable at this point, Kim noticed, but she couldn't work out why. "Yes, we believe that Shego regarded you as her equal, a worthy opponent, win, lose or draw. It was a little more complicated than that, but that was the gist of it."
Kim decided to leave the topic of 'respect' there for now and ask Wade for a copy of Global Justice's analysts’ reports on Shego later, if and when she remembered. "OK, but I still don't understand. Why would you try to kill Shego now if she is still alive?"
"Because after all of our careful management, the CIA have succeeded in doing exactly what we have been trying to prevent a lunatic, a rogue state or a terrorist organisation from doing. They have primed Shego with a great deal of righteous anger against an organisation; in this case, themselves. And if Shego is still alive, then the fact that she hasn't already retaliated is an even greater cause for concern," said Dr Director.
"Why?" queried Kim.
"Shego's psychological profile. When she gets angry, her judgement is compromised. The angrier she gets, the less she thinks and the more she acts. But there's a tipping point, like a mental switch flipping, where her anger turns to pure distilled rage, and at that point she becomes utterly cold, calculating and ruthlessly rational in her course of action. And since Langley isn't already in flames, we can deduce that Shego is either dead, incapacitated, or she's gone past that tipping point and is holed up somewhere rigorously planning a terrible revenge against those who she holds responsible for what happened to her. I don't think she could have wiped out the CIA, let alone defeated the military might of the world’s most powerful nation. But she could easily have caused great damage to the CIA, its infrastructure and its command structure. And if Langley burns, so does the concordat. And in due course, so does the world. So we would have to stop her."
"And your only option is to kill her?" asked Kim, eyes blazing.
"Regrettably, yes. We would need to stop her, and from our pre-canned what-if scenarios, I recall that an assassination operation would have a 65% chance of success, all be it with high risk of collateral damage. The next best scenario would only have a 25% chance of success, and then we are down in single figures," explained Dr Director.
"65%... and if it doesn't work? What is it that has a 25% chance of success?", asked Kim.
"Then we would try again, and again, until we did succeed. Once we had made an attempt to kill Shego, there would be no way back. It would be her or us. Really, we'd need to make very sure that we got her the first time, otherwise it would necessarily get... extremely messy..." "And that second option? The one with the 25% chance of success?", asked Kim again. "Ah... actually, that's you." said Dr Director, again looking almost imperceptibly uncomfortable.
"Me?" asked Kim, incredulously.
"Umm... we believe that you would have a 25% chance of talking Shego down from doing something extreme and suicidal," said Dr Director. Kim just stared, wide eyed.
"As I said earlier, she... respects you. It's a long shot, but the analysts believe there is a good chance that she would at least hear you out, which makes you pretty much unique," explained the one-eyed woman.
"I find that very hard to believe" said Kim, "but I do have one more question. Why did the Uzbeks want Shego?"
"Believe me, you really do not want to know, Kim." said Dr Director, and Kim got the feeling that she was sincere.
"Sorry, but I do. You know I can always ask Wade..." said Kim, firmly. But she was shocked by the reaction of the normally relatively brusque head of Global Justice.
"Kim, no, you mustn't, you just can't inflict that on anybody at ten years old", said Betty Director, sharply, emotion raw in her voice. Then, as quickly as the mask had slipped, she was back under control. "No offence intended, Mr Load, but I would feel very uncomfortable if I'd asked you for information about this, and so should Kim." Wade merely blinked, impassively.
"Well tell me something, at least!" said Kim, wondering if she really did want to know.
"I'll tell you this much. A little over a year ago, Shego was in Uzbekistan stealing for Dr Drakken. There was... an atrocity. A massacre," explained Dr Director.
"Shego?” asked Kim, afraid of what the answer might be.
"No, Uzbek security forces, but Shego just happened to be passing as it was happening. And she reacted as we would have predicted, emotionally and violently. Let us just say that the final outcome was poor for all concerned, and the Uzbeks have been after her ever since. In fact, they later sent an SNB hit team after her, and although we intercepted them, that led directly to Uzbekistan's expulsion from the concordat", said Dr Director. "And trust me, you really don't want to know any more."
Kim decided she believed her.
************************************************************************
Mike Jones had a terrible sinking feeling; the feeling that his careful and considered career choice was coming drastically unravelled around him and was instead going to haunt him for the rest of his days. Up until right now it had seemed like he'd made exactly the right move. At the annual university 'public service' career fair, they'd all been there, trying to woo him. He'd been much in demand. Anybody with a brace of Cambridge Firsts in Astrophysics and in Political Philosophy perhaps would be, especially if they were also fluent in Arabic, Farsi, Spanish and French. So it had been something of a beauty contest.
GCHQ were very keen to secure his services. They wanted to make him a junior on the Middle East desk, translating intercepts. In time - maybe ten years -there might have been an opportunity to move up to be an analyst, actually interpreting intelligence, using his scientific knowledge to provide crucial insight into the state of development and capability of a foreign power's next top secret weapon system. But by then he would probably have topped himself out of boredom.
MI6 wanted to train him as a field officer and then post him to an embassy in some Middle East hotspot as a 'Junior Trade Attache', so he could set up and run a network of agents in local businesses and government offices. Far more challenging and exciting in some ways, but far less intellectually stimulating. And anyway, he wanted to be a scientist, not James Bond.
MI5 had only wanted to speak to classics graduates, which had pretty much confirmed everything he had ever heard about them.
And then there had been the little stand in the corner of the hall, with 'Global Justice' written on it. And they'd promised him the opportunity to work in one of the best equipped laboratories in the world, solving complex scientific conundrums one day, and developing new weapons and forensic techniques the next. The salary and benefits package was pretty stellar as well. And they'd promised to sponsor his Phd research.
Sold.
He'd been on a plane across the Atlantic within the month. And here he was now, two days into his new life, standing in a fifty-three million dollar underground laboratory (complete with its own particle accelerator), and being asked quite the stupidest question anybody had ever asked him. GCHQ looked quite attractive in hindsight.
He turned and looked despairingly at the senior Global Justice scientist who had been assigned to help him get his feet under the table. "What the hell do they want me to do with that?" he asked.
"Investigate it, mate" said Dr Callum "Digger" Hawk, drily.
"You are kidding, aren't you?" he said, pointing expressively at the plasma screen which was repeatedly showing the 10 second segment of the executive jet exploding in a fireball on a loop. "No, actually, mate" admonished the Australian thermodynamicist, "and believe me, there is no such thing as an obvious answer when you're talking about the Y-list. That's Shego. Case in point. 18 months ago her boss screwed up a research project, accidentally blew up his lair, and dropped a whole mountain on their heads. She managed to survive the unsurviveable, keep her boss alive, and bore her way out through 200,000 tonnes of solid rock. Less than 24 hours before that video clip was taken, she was the human earthing spike for a close to 2 Megawatt discharge. So just because she was flying a plane that was blown to kingdom come ten thousand feet up in the air, I'd certainly not be quick to declare her dead without positive proof!"
"So you think they really believe that she could have survived that?" asked Mike, incredulously?
"I'd say so, mate. And even if they don't, they know they can't afford to be wrong," commented ‘Digger’.
"OK, so how do you recommend I go about scientifically proving that she's dead?" asked Mike.
"Wrong way round, mate! Assume that she survived, then work out how the hell she could have done it. Because odds are, if there was a way out, she would have found it, and if there wasn't she would have died trying to find one anyway. If nothing else you might be able to work out where they should be looking for the body," said ‘Digger’.
Mike sighed. "OK, I think I'll start with the CVR tape, and those photos of the wreckage they've lifted so far. Where did we get this stuff?"
"Straight from the CIA, mate. Only, they don't know we've got it..." said ‘Digger’.
"Oh, that's a bit cheeky. Hmmm..." said Mike, as he turned his mind to the task at hand. "OK, why don't I rig up a digital filter matrix to clean up this cockpit audio and then run it through a spectrum analyser. Maybe that will tell us something more..."
"Sounds like a plan, mate! Give me a shout if you need any help!" responded ‘Digger’.
"Oh, yeah, thanks..."said Mike, vacantly, his mind on the job already. Perhaps this was going to be an interesting investigation after all, he decided...
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