#OSS agent

[liebgotts-lovergirl]

Fire On Fire: Chapter 15

(Ch. 14) ... (Ch. 1)

II Gallery II Tag List Application II Symbol Guide II

Summary: Tackling a mission meant for a team all by herself, Alix goes head-to-head with her most dangerous opponent yet. But perhaps this time, she's bitten off more than she can chew.

WARNINGS: VIOLENCE, ANGST, SEVERE INJURIES, Implied Substance Abuse, Death, the usual espionage stuff

A/N: Sorry this took so long, y'all! I've been on a trip! Here, have a holiday cliffhanger before I disappear again🤭💖

Taglist: @softguarnere @latibvles @mccall-muffin @lieutenant-speirs @brassknucklespeirs @parajumpboots @vibing-away @emmythespacecowgirl @hxad-ovxr-hxart @holdingforgeneralhugs @bellewintersroe @wwhatev3r @ax-elcfucker-blog

Contemporary: September 20th, 1944. Oosterbeek, Netherlands.

As soon as Lieutenant Kruger exited the Hendriksen Hotel, Alix was ready for him. 

Opening her issue of Modes de Paris to a random page once more, she began to study the page on upcoming winter clothing trends, gradually increasing her pace until she "accidentally" collided with the young SS officer, causing him to stumble. 

Most targets would apologize for knocking her and check to see if she was alright, but when the Lieutenant recovered his footing, something in him snapped.

Whirling around in a fit of fury, Kruger seized the spy by the throat, swearing in German as he slammed her against the wall of the Hendriksen hard enough to elicit a choking cough as the air was punched from her lungs.

Alix knew she couldn't put up true resistance or she would risk blowing her cover so she struggled weakly, one hand gripping his wrist and the other pushing him away from her as she fought for air. 

The urge to break his arm was growing stronger with every second but Alix had committed herself to the civilian role and she would have to play it, even to her own peril.

Horrified townspeople saw the confrontation but scurried by, hastily avoiding the scene so as not to catch the SS officer's eye. 

No one wanted to be next.

Tears involuntarily sprang to the spy's eyes as Kruger's hold tightened. When he lifted her off the ground, her ears began to buzz loudly as her vision began to blur and narrow.

Desperately fighting to remain conscious, Alix began to claw his hand and Kruger finally released her, yelling in pain, his voice seeming far away. 

Gasping for breath like a fish out of water, Alix sank to her knees, the magazine slipping from her hand and falling limply to the cobblestones below.

The world seemed to be spinning like a children's top and Alix sat dazed. Kruger looked like he might come at her a second time but before he could, she saw another pair of boots approaching with the sharp clip-clip-clip that meant business. 

As she coughed, leaning against the wall for support, the young woman could hear voices arguing above her in German. Blinking blearily upward, she could see a dignified-looking older man also in an SS uniform with the name “Schwarzkopf” emblazoned on the breast pocket.

A panoply of medals sat proudly on the opposite side of his chest, including what Alix recognized to be the Iron Cross. 

This must be SS Captain Schwarzkopf then, she surmised through the haze. Werner Schwarzkopf. 

She vaguely remembered his file.

Schwarzkopf was engrossed in a near-shouting match with the short-tempered Lieutenant, waving his hands as he gestured to Alix, to the street, and then jabbed an accusatory finger back into Kruger's chest. 

All the fight seemed to have left the younger officer now and his body seemed to sag as he hung his head guiltily like a child being scolded by the schoolmaster.

After a few more minutes of back-and-forth, the row seemed to come to an end and the older officer knelt to pick up Alix's magazine before extending a hand politely down to her which she accepted.

Once she had gotten to her feet, Alix let the tears run down her cheeks and sniffled, hoping to seem more sympathetic. 

It worked. 

The older officer glanced over the title of the fashion catalog with a fond smile.

"Modes de Paris," he read out loud, his German-accent almost disappearing, making his French surprisingly comprehensible. "My wife is subscribed to this. Lisette has a weakness for capes." 

"Well she's in luck because they appear to be all the rage this coming winter," Alix assured, returning the smile weakly as she rubbed her sore neck in with a gentle hand. 

"I should hope so, with all of the money we’ve spent on them!" 

The man let out a booming belly laugh that set Alix's ears ringing again and she winced, clinging to the wall of the bookshop with her left hand in a bid for balance as she slowly straightened up. 

"I am truly sorry for my carelessness," she uttered softly, keeping her head lowered as a sign of her deference. "I sometimes get too immersed in my reading." 

"No need to apologize, Mademoiselle, no harm done," the older man stated broadly but Lieutenant Kruger huffed like a spoiled child before shooting a suspicious glare in Alix’s direction for less than a second. 

Strangely, the youthful SS officer couldn’t maintain eye contact to save his life.

Alix couldn’t even tell what color his irises were because they were dwarfed by his dinner-plate pupils and darting every which way as though distracted by a million different things that only he could see. 

Lieutenant Kruger was muttering under his breath, seemingly speaking more to himself than anyone else as he rocked back and forth on his heels.

The agent glanced over to the older man with concern, lowering her voice to avoid triggering Kruger’s ire again.

“Is he… alright?” 

The graying man grimaced. 

“He is functional. Mostly.”

 

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, making sure to keep her body language open and non-defensive to emphasize her earnestness. 

The key was seeming politely concerned, not overly curious.

Schwarzkopf shook his head, seemingly mystified.

“Overwork perhaps? Who’s to say?”

“S-She’s a spy!” Kruger burst out suddenly, extending a shaking finger toward the agent.

Alix’s eyebrows shot skyward with a bemused laugh but the older man beside her merely frowned, his forehead creasing. 

“You said the same thing earlier about 4 men in the bakers regiment, Klemens." Captain Schwarzkopf's voice was rising. "Is this your idea of a joke?" 

Kruger was completely ignoring him, seemingly too immersed in his own paranoia to notice. 

This was not a joke, Alix thought as she watched the troubled young man begin pacing anxiously back and forth along the same path.

Something was seriously wrong with her target and it wasn't trench fever. 

"So many spies," the young man mumbled, his movements becoming more jerky in his distress. "So many…So many." 

The lieutenant was becoming more and more agitated by the second, scratching frantically at his neck and face like a dog with fleas, raking his fingernails up and down the pockmarked skin feverishly as if trying to dig his way down to the bone.

Kruger's erratic behavior was causing Alix some serious trepidation.

 The young SS officer was sweating excessively but there were no other symptoms, meaning the Intel she was acting on was incorrect. Whatever his affliction, it was most certainly not trench fever and Alix wondered if it might be better to take him out from a distance instead. 

She might risk losing the chance to nab vital documents he was carrying but if his affliction was contagious, she didn't want to risk any more exposure because she could potentially infect others she came into contact with after.

Deciding to try one last ruse, Alix turned glanced over at Kruger, whose hands appeared to be twitching as he shifted restlessly from foot to foot.

"I really should get going," she excused herself breathily.

"Papa will be expecting me after Monsieur Pètain has gone, I'm sure." 

With all the practiced coyness of an actress delivering a throwaway line over her shoulder, Alix turned to leave when she was stopped, as she knew she would be. 

Kruger was slack-jawed, his huge pupils boring into her like black holes.

 “Your father knows The Marshal Pètain? The Lion of Verdun? But how-” 

"Papa was his roommate at Saint-Cyr," Alix lied effortlessly, cutting the babbling young man off. "And when they left the military academy, they served together in Artois. As you can imagine, they are quite close." 

“What did you say your father’s name was?” the older man asked, a hint of skepticism in his gravelly voice and Alix forced her expression to remain neutral, hoping to God that her cover had been properly backstopped. 

“Antoine Duchamps,” she replied, keeping her tone even, and Kruger’s ghostly face brightened immediately. 

“I know that name!” He piped up eagerly and Alix resolved to thank Nixon later for properly planting her cover when Kruger began chattering twice as fast to the man next to him, leaving Alix blinking as she struggled to follow along.

The Lieutenant's French wasn't bad for a German but the faster he spoke, the more his words began to slur, running together in a muddled mess and on top of it, he hardly seemed to breathe!

"Philippe Pètain! My God, can you believe it? Do you think he would meet with us? Perhaps-" 

But the older officer held up a hand to silence Kruger, who was starting to pace again in his excitement. 

"I'm sure the Marshal is a busy man, Klemens," Captain Schwarzkopf began but Alix shook her head, tossing her curls airily like the airheaded socialite she was supposed to be. 

"Don't be silly!” she chirped brightly, her tone syrupy-sweet. “He'd be honored to meet with some of our valiant German allies! If one of you could escort me to the nearest phone, I'm sure I could ring Papa and arrange it!" 

The young agent paused for a moment, watching as Lieutenant Kruger began scratching vigorously at his neck and cheek again, angry red lines beginning to trail down the irritated skin.

"It can't be a party line though," Alix hinted, twirling a strand of her raven hair around her finger flirtatiously. 

"The Marshal is very particular about who has access to him, I'm sure you understand. One can never be too careful these days. It should be somewhere…private.” 

Kruger had ceased his clawing now, too distracted by the sight of Alix’s fluttering eyelashes and suggestive tone to focus.

“I know the perfect place,” the young man blurted out, seizing her by the arm rather suddenly and practically yanking her towards him in a sudden burst of virility. 

Good, Alix thought as the notorious ladies' man led her back inside the hotel, leaving a confused Captain Schwarzkopf behind them. This should be quick. 

But it wasn't. 

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

An impromptu SS Headquarters on one floor and a rented love nest on the other, it seemed the Hendriksen made good money from collaborating with Nazis because the place was crawling with them.

 

As the pair made their way through the lobby into the elevator, Alix kept her head dipped low, making sure that her thick, Veronica Lake-style waves were obscuring at least half her face from passersby. 

Beside her, Lieutenant Kruger was still trembling like a leaf; his short, shallow breaths coming out in pants as though he’d just run a marathon. 

A part of her wanted to ask if he was alright but she thought better of it; Alix knew if she set him off again, she wouldn’t be able to hold back from killing him and she was fairly certain that the noise would attract unwanted attention from the multiple Nazis milling about downstairs. 

In the elevator, the young SS officer pressed a shaky hand to his chest, the feeling of his racing heart starting him rocking on his heels once again and Kruger’s anxiety coupled with the groaning of the rusted cables made Alix grit her teeth.

He better not drop dead before we get to the room, she thought bitterly. Because I’m not dragging him there myself.

Fortunately, the ding of the elevator signaled their arrival and the young spy allowed herself a quiet exhale of relief as they exited onto the plush, patterned carpeting of the hall. 

It was showtime. 

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Common courtesy dictated that a gentleman should offer a lady a drink upon inviting her in but Lieutenant Kruger was certainly no gentleman. 

Alix had barely sat down by the bedside telephone when the young officer plopped down beside her, his leg bouncing vigorously, practically shaking the whole mattress with it.

"My, my,” he marveled and Alix could feel his bony fingers boldly caressing her upper arm. “Aren’t you a stunning creature?” 

It took all of her strength not to break his hand.

 

“Thank you, sir,” she simpered but when she reached for the phone, Kruger’s other arm shot out like lightning to stop her, clutching her wrist painfully tight.

“What’s your hurry, Fraulein?” he inquired and Alix felt a chill run through at the sight of his crocodile grin. “I’m sure the Marshal can wait until we’re through.” 

The agent played dumb, wincing at his vise-like grip.

“U-Until we’re through…?”

 

“Until I’ve had time to properly enjoy…your presence.”

 

Good luck with that, Alix wanted to remark but she lowered her eyes to the carpet instead, feigning shyness.

"Forgive me, sir,” she murmured breathily, doing her best impression of a bashful ingenue. “But being alone with a man as…” She swallowed her disgust. “As handsome and well-respected as yourself…” 

Beside her, the Lieutenant dropped her wrist and straightened up at her words, puffing his chest out like a strutting rooster and Alix bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. 

“You needn't be coy, Fraulein," he assured her with a pompous wave of his hand. "We're finally alone."

With that, he made a daring swoop toward her, attempting to hook an arm around her waist but Alix shied away, scooting closer toward the phone instead.

"Perhaps a drink first?” she insisted quickly, followed by a tight-lipped smile. "For both of us, to calm the nerves." 

"I'm not thirsty," he countered, continuing to lean in and Alix kept her expression neutral, tolerating his advances as her mind raced through possibilities. 

She needed him to ingest the cyanide somehow but she knew she couldn't push the subject or she'd risk blowing her cover.

 

So she played hard to get, ducking away from his arms again and hoping desperately that her attempts at coyness would pay off but they didn't.

The SS Lieutenant was like a machine. 

He didn't need to eat, drink, or sleep; he seemed to run on desire alone and he was vibrating as though there was lightning coursing through his veins. 

She tried several times to engage him in conversation but the Lieutenant wasn’t interested in talking. Once he’d reached out and groped her breast, Alix decided she’d had enough. 

Swallowing her pride, the spy leaned in, keeping her lips just inches away from Kruger's as she slowly eased the F-S fighting knife from the waistband of her skirt. He was so near that she could smell his putrid breath and as soon as his eyes closed, she seized her opportunity and thrust the blade deep into his abdomen.

The force of the stab alone would probably have killed the average soldier but it seemed almost as though the SS officer was superhuman.

He let out a single, strangled noise and looked down at the knife embedded in his torso before his eyes shifted up, black with unspeakable rage as he leapt to his feet and took a swing.

Alix blocked his first strike with one hand while yanking the knife from his bloody ribs with the other, eliciting another bloodcurdling scream from her opponent. 

Heart racing, Alix swiped at him with the blade like Nix had taught her but the Lieutenant was faster, catching her wrist and clamping down between the tendons, forcing her to drop the knife like a hot coal.

 

She hissed in pain and managed to land a blow to the side of his face before he struck back, his fist flying over her head as she dropped to the floor. Panting, she managed to sweep his legs out from under him and he came crashing to the floor with a loud thud. 

But just as she straightened up, reaching again for her knife, the bastard latched onto her leg and dragged her back down onto the carpet with him, bellowing the only word in German that Alix recognized at the top of his lungs: 

“Spionin! Spionin!” 

Spy.

Rolling over, Alix rushed to clap a hand over his mouth but the damage had already been done. 

She could hear the clamor of approaching footsteps, the squealing hinges of doors swinging open, panicked voices shouting in French and German. 

The officer caught her dominant wrist before it reached him, bending it backwards with such force that Alix swore she heard a sickening crack and a hot pain shot up her arm just as he swung again with his opposite hand, this time connecting squarely with her jaw in a stunning uppercut that sent her head snapping back like a flipping switch.

Reeling from the dull throbbing in her skull and spitting blood, Alix managed to tug her pistol from its hidden holster and fired two shots, one after the other, into the man’s head, dropping him instantly.

The sudden cacophony of German coming from just outside the door spurred the agent to struggle to her feet.

Cradling her injured wrist, Alix was seeing double but she managed to stagger her way to the window overlooking the hotel’s back. The deafening jingling of room keys set her ears ringing and she leaned against the windowsill for support as the world seemed to spin.

Her heart thundered in her chest, her racing pulse causing blood to gush steadily from her split lip, dribbling down her chin in a warm stream.

Despite the pain, the young agent still managed to shove the window open and shakily clamber onto the sill. Staring down into the shadows of the alleyway, Alix felt nausea creeping in, her fear of heights making her stomach churn as her vision blurred.

The ground below seemed to undulate like an ocean tide and Alix had to lean against the wall, each time she blinked in the streaming sunlight feeling like a hammer slamming down onto her skull.

Hearing the deafening click of the door unlocking, the OSS operative swayed unsteadily for a moment as the world slowed to a crawl.

Standing on the ledge, Alix found herself in a fog, wondering thickly how long it would take for her case officer to be informed of her death.

It wasn't your fault, Nix, she wanted to tell him. You were a great handler. I wasn't a good enough agent.

"Too many risks, kid." Alix could hear him now, scolding her like he had during training. "You take too many risks."

Suddenly, several uniformed men burst into the room, interrupting her hazy contemplation. The resulting commotion sounded so far away, as though it was all happening underwater.

Holding a hand to her pounding head, Alix squeezed her eyes shut.

I'm sorry, Joey, she thought groggily, her aching head beginning to loll. I love you.

Then with a last shaky breath, she leapt from the ledge, sending herself plummeting downward onto the unforgiving bricks below.

#cliffhanger [jazz hands lol] #Band of Brothers #Band of Brothers fandom #Band of Brothers fanfic #Joe Liebgott x OC #Joe Liebgott x reader #Joe Liebgott #BoB #Ross McCall #Joelix #Alix Martinelli #OSS agent #mutual pining #established relationship #my girl really just launched herself from a building #god bless but also OUCH #lets hope she survived the fall #HBO War #HBO Band of Brothers #Lewis Nixon #Espionage fic #WWII #spy fic #spy fanfic

[bens-things]

OSS 117: Double Agent (1968) dir. André Hunebelle, Jean-Pierre Desagnat, Renzo Cerrato

#OSS 117: Double Agent #Niente rose per OSS 117 #André Hunebelle #Jean-Pierre Desagnat #Renzo Cerrato #oss 117 #movie night

[eilidh-eternal]

Mobster/Gangster!141 but like in the 20’s, fucking shit up with Al Capone (Graves and the shadows???) and going toe to toe with the mafia, the prohibition and the birth of organized crime syndicates

Price runs the speakeasy (it’s called 141) Ghost is the muscle, Soap and Gaz are rum-runners, and FBI agent Laswell (bc the cia/oss wasn’t a thing until wwii so just roll w it) makes a deal with them and uses the speakeasy to gather intel and lay low

#tf141 #tf 141 #cod 141 #task force 141 #simon ghost riley #simon riley #kyle gaz garrick #kyle garrick #gaz #john soap mactavish #johnny mactavish #soap mactavish #john price #captain price #captain john price #call of duty #cod #cod mwii #cod mw #cod mw2 #cod modern warfare #cod x reader #141 x you #call of duty x reader #tf141 x reader #tf 141 x reader #141 x reader

[adricthemindnimon]

Ok seriously, Triangle is one of my all time favourite episodes of anything. It is a delirious fever dream in all the best ways.

The sheer insanity of the plot

Their absolute refusal to even try to create a plausible explanation for the plot. Just straight up "yeah there's no possible way this actually happened but also he has the black eye so it definitely did. You figure it out".

Mulder thoroughly enjoying having no idea what's going on

The excellent musical choices

The phenomenal camera framing/those wonderful split screens/wipes. The moment where the two Scullys pass one another and move from one frame to the other gives me chills.

Scully in That Dress with That Hair looking That Gorgeous

Alt-Scully being an OSS agent

Alt-Scully and Mulder immediately becoming best frenemies.

The kiss. And the punch (no weak ass slap, a whole hearted punch that hurts her hand), and his stupid little "I was expecting a left"

The way the second he's safe in hospital she's roasting the daylights out of him

His confession of love which is the single most honest moment in ages

Her "oh brother"

But most of all I adore how this episode makes everything so heightened. And I love that that's not limited to whatever world Mulder's inhabiting on the Queen Anne. I love that they let Scully be just as elevated. And that that takes the form of her losing every single one of her inhibitions. We all knew Scully was a feral little gremlin under the veneer of civilization and the iron grip she maintains on her self-control at all times. It's so damn satisfying watching the inner gremlin running the show. Threatening to murder Spender. Kissing Skinner. Power walking through every hall and fidgeting so aggressively she whacks someone and talking so fast your ears can barely keep up. The woman is so constantly stressed trying to be the acceptable face of the operation, it's a never ending thrill to watch her go truly uninhibitedly feral

#triangle #the x files #mulder and scully #dana scully

[thedeviltohisangel]

All The Things I Did (8): That Girl Is Going, Going, Gone

a/n: ok a bit of a different chapter! this is more cass than john & cass until we get to the main event. i PROMISE the next chapter will pick up right where this one left off (don't be mad, be excited!). lots of warnings for this chapter and hopefully you guys don't change your love for her after reading about berlin. please let me know your thoughts & send in any interlude (aka novels) requests. always open. love ya xoxo

warnings: murder, blood, death of minor character, smut

Cass looked at Will with horror as he opened a black briefcase and set it on the ground of the alley way. It looked a lot like a gun. 

“Will, no one said anything about an assassination.” She had shot a gun before. Had been shot by a gun before. But she had never pointed one at another human being and pulled the trigger. 

“Cass, you’ve got this. You stay steady and you’ll be fine.” She rolled her eyes. Of course he would think it was so simple. He wasn’t the one expected to pull the trigger. To take a life.

“Walk me through the plan again.” 

“Dressler comes through this main drag on the way to his country estate. We track him to the edge of the woods where your asset has placed an obstacle for the car and when he gets out, you take the shot.” Cass knew it wasn’t going to go according to plan because things like this never did. Because Dressler had been on OSS’ target list for almost a year and they were the third pairing of agents to try and accomplish this task. “You scored better than me on the range. Don’t think for a second you aren’t the right choice for this.”

“And we avoid the fatal flaws from previous iterations. Don’t approach the vehicle. Maintain surveillance detection tradecraft. Make the exfil window.” 

“That’s kind of a big one, isn’t it?” he smiled. She was too busy testing the weight of the weapon in her hand to notice. “I meant it when I said I’d get you back home to him.”

“You got someone to get home to?” Will shrugged. 

“Thought I did. Then I got a letter last week…it’s for the best. Loving someone in this line of work isn’t for everyone.” Cass gently palmed his cheek.

“Then we’ll get you home to find someone who will make it work.” Find someone who would love those doubts right out his head the way John had for her. Find someone who’s passion for their work matched in kind. Find someone who would help him clean the blood off his hands when the war was over. 

----

It was Sunday and the roads were filled with people going to and from church. Cass was in a white dress, Will in a suit, as they each smoked a cigarette while they waited for mass to let out.

“When did you start smoking?” 

“I didn’t. Still don’t really drink either.” She dropped the cigarette onto the sidewalk and pressed it beneath her foot. “They take away your control over yourself. I don’t like the way they make me feel.” But she thinks she was learning to like the smell of smoke on the collar of John’s jacket. The bitter whiskey on his lips when he kissed her. The way his face flushed and his curls pressed to his forehead and his hands wandered after a night of them both. The doors opened and people began to exit the church.

“I’ll go get the car,” Will said, slipping into German with ease. Cass nodded and removed a compact from her purse. She pressed the powder to her nose as she caught sight of Dressler over her right shoulder. She counted two men who looked like SS hovering around him for protection. They escorted him to a waiting Mercedes, Will pulling up to her a few minutes after their departure. “Let’s go kill some Nazis.”

They took the occasional turn to ensure no one was following them, maintaining a safe distance from the target who was following the route from church to his compound outside of Berlin just the way they had mapped it. 

“Final weapons check.” Cass pulled the chamber to ensure a bullet was loaded before releasing it back into place. “Will…if something goes wrong, we abort and get to the airfield. We don’t need to force this.” 

“Copy, Lieutenant,” he smirked. “But it would be nice to be the one to knock Dressler off the list.”

“I agree but-” Her hands flew to brace against the dashboard as he slammed on the brakes. An overturned horse cart was blocking the Mercedes path and the car sat still as the occupants determined what to do.

“Come on,” Cass whispered, “Get out of the goddamn car.” The door opened and one of the SS officers got out and walked towards the cart. 

“Close protection remains,” Will muttered. When the second SS officer exited, Cass began to get nervous. He walked towards her side of the car and she rolled the window down with a smile.

“Good morning, sir. Is there a problem with the road ahead?” The pistol was hidden in the fold of her skirt, her thigh acutely aware of the metal. 

“Yes. We’ll need you to turn around so we can go back the way we came.” She knew there was no other way to get to the compound. Knew they were really just clearing them from the area. She opened her mouth but the words were silenced as Will whistled. The third door was opening. 

Will pushed the car into reverse and rolled over the foot of the man by her door. He dropped quickly with a yell. It took one second for her to lean her body out the window. One second for Dressler to look in her direction. One second for her to shut down her humanity, inhale, exhale and pull. Between his eyes and he was gone. A man who only answered to Himmler. It was automatic for her to move the gun to the man on the ground. He had seen their faces. Looked her in the eyes and stared at her legs. A loose end and he was gone, too. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she screamed as Will took them backwards down the road as quickly as he could. The second SS officer in the car and chasing after them as quickly as he could. “What did I just do?” 

“What you had to, Cass!” They both ducked as the first bullet hit the front of the car. “Hang on.” The car pulled sharply to the left as they raced through a field, another bullet pinging off the exterior of the car. 

“Two minutes until takeoff.” Her watch seemed to be ticking faster than usual. As if the universe was trying to close the gap between here and home. The Mercedes gained ground and nudged the back of their car, spinning them in a circle Will couldn’t regain control of. 

“Run!” They could see the clearing in the not too far off distance. Her knees hit the ground before she pushed herself up with urgency and took off at a sprint. She heard the consistent popping of a gun behind her but she kept running. 

Cass collapsed on the open hatch of the low profile plane and let herself slide down as it closed, Will stumbling in right behind her. 

“Do you think we did it?” she asked after they had settled for a moment. “Will?” She turned her head and noticed he looked a little pale. His breathing was labored. He turned and looked at her and he was afraid. She repeated his name again before she noticed his hand pressed to his side and the red blooming out from underneath it. 

“You guys good back there? Going to be bumpy if you can hold onto something.”

“Where’s your medical supplies? My partner’s been shot!” Cass pressed her hands with all her strength to the wound. She grunted as they took a tight turn and they slid to the wall of the plane. 

“Orange bag!” She grabbed it, the zipper slipping through her bloody fingers. Cass grabbed as much gauze as she could and the scissors, cutting Will’s shirt to get a better sense of what she was dealing with. 

“I’ve got to look and see if there’s an exit wound.” She rolled him slightly as he yelled in pain. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said but there was a hint of relief to her tone as she found a matching wound in his back. She took a deep breath as she cleared the blood in search of the bullet’s entrance. Once she found it, she held the gauze to it and tried not to wince as his breathing sounded like it was growing ragged.

“Cass…” The gauze in her hands turned red, a pool of blood seeping out from underneath him. The wound wasn’t clotting and the rudimentary kit had no platelets to help. 

“You’ve got to hang on. Save your strength. We’ll be back before you know it.” An hour and she was out of gauze, cutting fabric from her skirt in its place. Wil was sweating. Paler. Taking a long time to inhale after he exhaled. “Do you remember back in school when I almost quit? You stopped me on my way to the Colonel’s office and told me the OSS needed me, that Europe needed a free spirit to bring back their freedom. Now, I need you to do exactly what you told me. Pull up your boot straps, keep your head in the game and fight through it.” His hand weakly rested on top of hers.

“You…did…”

“I’m right here. We can talk about it all when we get back.” A tear rolled down his cheek and a matching one rolled down hers. “Don’t do this, Will. Please.” His hand dropped to his side and there was no longer light behind his eyes. 

“Lieutenant, we’ve got wheels down in 30!” 

“Tell the control tower that Captain Foster is…” Her hands were on his chest as she tried compressions. Her tears were coming quicker now. She watched them drop on his face and he didn’t react. All she could hear was her own heartbeat and the silence of Will’s as she pressed and pressed and pressed and nothing happened. She didn’t notice the plane landing. The pilot calling her name. She kept pressing and pressing and pressing. 

“Cassandra.” Harding’s use of her full name pierced through the fog. It was soft and familiar and safe. “Cassandra, you have to let him go. Let the doctors look at him.” She couldn’t even imagine how she looked. His blood all over her arms and clothes. Her dress ripped from when she was trying to make bandages. Tears dried to her face and snot dripping from her nose.

“Where’s John?” she asked. That was who she wanted to see. The only person who could offer her comfort in this moment.

“He’s probably halfway to Norway by now taking a second strike at those submarine pens for you.” She choked out a laugh. No doubt John would be willing to do an extreme act of commitment such as this. “Come with me to get some water? Maybe some food?” 

“That sounds good.” He offered her his arm and she gripped it like without him she would collapse, letting him escort her out of the plane. There was a group of people waiting and watching. The mechanics to make sure Cass was alive and well. The medical team. Extraneous personal who just wanted a glimpse of the covert American intelligence officers.

Harding led her to the mess hall, the orderlies freezing at the sight of her before scurrying to set the table. He pulled a chair out for her and she sat and avoided his gaze when he took the chair across from her. 

“Were you successful?” 

“Yes, sir,” she croaked out as the food and drink was placed in front of her. Harding waved off the second plate they brought. “I apologize I wasn’t here to give the briefing this morning. I should have been available for their questions.” 

“You can’t be in two places at once, Lieutenant. You were where you were needed most.” She nibbled on a bite of eggs and chased it with a few gulps of water. “They’re going to want you to talk to a shrink.”

“I’ve talked to them before. Know how to play the game.” He reached for her hand across the table and she offered it, wanting the reminder she was here and she was okay. He looked like he was inspecting the blood dried into her knuckles and caked under her nails. “He was a friend. An old friend.” The loss would sting for awhile. 

“The world is a better place for the task you two accomplished.” Cass took a shaky breath and blinked back tears.

“Then why do I feel so awful?” Harding knew the general feeling of taking a life. He had dropped bombs and shot guns and watched the havoc with a smile. But he had never looked another human in the eye and watched the life leave it. “Why do I feel like I did something wrong?”

“War is not natural. The role we play in it won’t be either.” She nodded with understanding. “You feeling up to interrogation?” They would want a look at her before she was able to change and clean the blood from her skin.

“I don’t have a choice.” She hoped it would be the first and the last time she had to relive the traumatic moments this day had brought. “Thank you, Colonel.” He indulged himself for a moment. Held her chin between his thumb and pointer finger. Looked into the eyes that he had found himself learning to love. 

“You should get going,” he whispered. Before I say something I might regret.

----

“How you doing, Bubbles?” The medical wing was the first stop John had made after landing. He hadn’t been able to find Mary to ask for an update on Cass and Colonel Harding had disappeared almost as soon as the last B-17 touched down. 

“Never better, sir.” His eyes were flickering to the door at the end of the wing. A private exam room. Crosby was also oddly quiet. They had seen Lieutenant Cooper be escorted back there almost an hour ago and she hadn’t emerged. They hoped nothing was wrong because they didn’t want to be in the radius of John Egan when he found out.

“That’s good. I was actually looking for you, Crosby.” John paused as both men continued to shift in their seats. “They not keep you comfortable?”

“No, sir, I mean yes, sir, I’m fine it’s just-” Bubbles stopped as the entrance opened and he recognized the secretary from Lieutenant Cooper’s office. She looked vaguely horrified to see John Egan.

“Mary! I stopped by but you weren’t there. Any word from Spook?” Bubbles, Crosby and Mary all looked at each other. “Clearly, I’m on the outside of whatever this is.” John’s finger twitched as his side. He wasn’t liking the feeling in his chest.

“Colonel Harding didn’t talk to you, sir?” He liked that even less.

“No. Mary, whatever is going on, I need to know right now.” Her gaze dropped to her feet.

“I can’t, sir. It’s need to know at this moment in time.” His chest heaved at her words. 

“You can’t?” He spun back towards the airmen. “Then why do you two look like you know something?” Why wasn’t anyone telling him anything? What happened that they were keeping from him. 

“Sir, we don’t really,” Crosby started. 

“Someone just please fucking tell me if I need to start grieving.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easily, Major.” She is trying so hard to smile because John is who she has been wanting all day. But he turns to look at her and he looks so relieved and she hasn’t felt safe enough to show emotion since she left his arms a few days ago. 

“Cass…is that…blood?” He walks towards her slowly. They had let her wash the blood from her arms and face but there was still some dried into her hairline and soaked into her dress. She nods as a sob rips from her throat. “Oh, Cass, baby.” She collapses into his chest as soon as he is near enough. 

“Will’s dead,” she sobs into his neck, “I tried so hard. I wasn’t good enough.” His arms were iron around her, the only thing keeping her standing. 

“I know you did everything you could.” He kissed the side of her head and stroked his hand down her hair. “I’m sorry you lost a friend today, my love.” The word felt like a slap across her face. She was so undeserving of his love after what she had done. She had taken the life of another, twice over. She could scrub at her skin but the blood would never wash away.

“Will you take me back to my room?” He slid an arm under her knees and lifted her so she was in his arms, her arms around his neck and her head resting on his shoulder. “Don’t let them take me away from you. Please.” 

He noticed the stares and whispers that followed as they made their way to her billet. He didn’t put her down until they were safely behind her closed door.

“We should get you cleaned up,” he noted as she sat on her bed and looked through her wardrobe for her shower kit. 

“How was Norway?” she asked quietly. 

“Successful. Had to leave Biddick in Scotland but he’ll be fine.” He found the basket of her toiletries and a towel. 

“Good. I’m glad you guys were able to use the information.” She smiled. “I’m sure Curt will find his way around quite well.”

“I can stand outside the door. Make sure no one bothers you.” John was offering her a few moments to shed her armor and embrace the emotions that were still heavy in her chest. 

“Outside the door will be too far.” Cass stood and pressed her forehead against his lips, asking for the strength of his touch during this weak moment. 

“I don’t want to be intrusive.” 

“I’m asking you to take a shower with me. That’s all.” They had seen each other naked. Shared a bed. Expressed the very real feelings between them. What was one more facet of domesticity gracing their lives? 

Cass undressed and stepped under the water and watched it run red down the drain until John’s chest pressed against her back. He wrapped one arm around the front of her chest and the other around her hips. She rested her own hands on top of his. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Her head turned so she could look at him. 

“They sent me there to kill someone,” she whispered. John stiffens for an instant before he recovers. “I killed him and his bodyguard because he saw my face.” She hates that in the moment she had been thinking about the fact that they would remove her from the field if they thought her identity had been compromised. That she wouldn’t be able to do the job the way it was meant to be done anymore.

“It’s okay you don’t feel good about it.” Cass smiled. He was the only one so far to not try and convince her that she had done the right thing. That she had made the world a better place and shouldn’t let the specifics bother her. This was why she had sought him out in the first place. This was why she loved him.

“They’re grounding me. Desk duty until further notice.” He reached for the shampoo and lathered it between his hands. She titled her head back into his waiting hands and let his fingers work through the roots of her hair, the last of the red going down the drain, her eyes closing as he soothed the ache away. 

“Bet you’re as happy about that as I was being Air Exec.” 

“Touche.” Next was a bar of soap, Cass turning around and John dragging it across her skin and focusing on the few spots of dried blood she hadn’t been able to scrub off in her haste earlier. He seemed to get lost in a trance, circling her breasts a few extra times and moving it slowly down her torso before letting it slip into the wispy curls between her legs. “So much for just a shower,” she whispered as her legs spread a little further. 

“I’ll stop, Cass.” He moved his hand and she grabbed his wrist and moved it right back.

“Make me forget, John.” The soap was discarded out the shower stall, his fingers dipping between her folds and relishing in her warmth. Her forehead dropped to his chest as she shuddered. 

“Remember what you said to me before you left?” His fingertip circled her clit and she nodded. “Said I could show you how much I love you when I get back.”

“I did say that,” she gasped as he slipped a finger into her and the heel of his hand rubbed her bundle of nerves with every thrust. “Oh, I like that a lot.” 

“I want to show you, Cass, show you properly.” She brought him in for a kiss as she felt herself getting closer and closer. “Take my time and love you the way you deserve.” 

“I want that too, John, please.” Her hips rocked at the same gentle rhythm of his hand as she chased the feeling stirring low in her belly. 

“I missed this sight, baby.” He had her like this once before, had only been separated from her a few days, but it had been too long. “Love having you like this.” 

“John, I-” The words caught in her mouth as he hit that sweet spot with a curl of his fingers and stars danced across her vision. He held her as her knees buckled, his fingers not stopping, as she kissed him to try and keep quiet if only slightly. “Take me to bed. Take me to bed and make love to me, John Egan.” 

He would be happy to oblige.

#masters of the air #john egan #callum turner #mota #masters of the air fanfiction #john egan fanfiction #callum turner fanfiction #mota fanfiction #masters of the air fanfic #john egan fanfic #mota fanfic #john egan x oc #john egan x reader #cass and bucky

[probablyasocialecologist]

Hiring high-ranking Nazis to test new torture methods on prisoners was only the beginning, however. By 1953, CIA scientists like Schreiber and Sidney Gottlieb—the titular character of Stephen Kinzer’s book, Poisoner in Chief—had initiated a sprawling two-decade campaign of reckless human experimentation best known by the codename MK-ULTRA. A quixotic but well-funded hunt for truth serums, brainwashing drugs, and other mind control techniques, MK-ULTRA scientists subjected countless non-consenting and/or otherwise vulnerable people to powerful drugs and interrogation techniques. In spite of being subject to three separate government investigations, only a small fraction of the total program has been publicly disclosed since the CIA shredded nearly all relevant documents. What little we do know, however, is horrifying. With the help of OSS veteran and federal narcotics detective George Hunter White, Gottlieb maintained a network of domestic and international “safe houses” where he would administer LSD to unwitting and “expendable” subjects such as petty criminals and drug users. Sometimes, Gottlieb’s expendable subjects included other scientists, such as bacteriologist Frank Olson, who was dosed with LSD and allegedly murdered by CIA, supposedly because of fears that he would reveal America’s use of chemical and biological weapons (CBW). The Agency has had more than its share of CBW-use allegations beginning in this period, including the open-air testing of aerosolized biological agents in New York City and spreading whooping cough on the coast of Florida in 1955. MK-ULTRA research was also conducted at university laboratories, such as those of Harold Wolff and Louis Jolyon West at Cornell Medical College and the University of Oklahoma, or Donald Ewen Cameron at McGill University in Montreal. Between 1957 and 1963, Cameron used CIA money to develop psychological “depatterning” techniques on approximately one hundred patients. These techniques included placing patients in extended drug-induced comas, LSD dosing for months at a time, electro-shock treatments, and forcing patients to listen to recorded messages such as “my mother hates me” played on a loop. A multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against McGill, the Canadian government, and the Royal Victoria Hospital on behalf of Cameron’s victims and their families is currently underway. MK-ULTRA later found a home in existing networks set up by scientific institutions and universities in the USA and Canada.

#cia #torture #mkultra

[wexhappyxfew]

AND THEN THE DAWN CAME

OC masterlist for the band of brothers fic

tags to look at: #attdc #and then the dawn came #esther armstrong #mercy codona, etc….

ESTHER ‘ESSIE’, ‘FUBAR’, ARMSTRONG

-> war correspondent for the us airborne (101st, company E), trying to make a name for herself in this world by telling the stories that no one wants to tell

MERCY ‘HALF-PINT’ CODONA

-> war photographer for the us airborne (101st, company E), esther armstrong’s most trusted companion, running from her past into a future that’s nothing more than a blur. at least a camera can keep her in the present

MARGARETA ‘MARGOT’ GERINGHER

-> double agent for the SIS in britain, proclaimed legally dead by the world it seems, but is doing everything she can to get back at the germans, even pushing herself to the breaking point to get revenge on her mother

LUCY GARDNER

-> rogue SOE agent with a foggy past, previously having graduated from oxford, having been stranded in both the desert in north africa and the bavarian alps, now running with the red devils to invade normandy

ROLANDE PELLETIER

-> member of the maquis with ties to a few prison cycles in marseilles, partaking in the normandy operations, paired with a stubborn oss agent who does nothing more than sit quietly

MILDRED ‘ MILLIE’ CARTER

-> oss agent with a traumatizing history in berlin, now freed and escaped, but with a heavy burden on her shoulders, trying to make up for something or other without getting too close to the sun

YVETTE ST. CLAIR

-> ex maquis member, previously on the run, who lost everything but a wrist watch through the war, and is doing nothing more than trying to save the lives of people she can still save, having found herself in normandy

JEANNIE DESCHAMPS

-> maquis member, who works covertly as a translator, knowing 5 languages, trying to save the life of a russian sniper after a freak break-out from a prison cycle in marseilles, who says knew her missing brother

MIRIAM ‘MITZI’ ZAKHAROVA KASATKINA

-> russian sniper who found herself tangled in the lives of vichy, france, and was tried for far too many counts alongside the brother of a maquis member who helped to get her out

PADMAVATI ‘PUJA’ SOLANKI

-> member of the british 8th army, working as a translator of 5 languages, who has a chance run-in with a few people from her past and a fellow oxford graduate

#and then the dawn came #attdc #band of brothers #band of brothers fic #bob fic #bob ocs #band of brothers ocs #THE LADIES!!!! #the ladies of attdc! :) #probably some of the fav moodboards i’ve made for them!! #esther armstrong

[captain-price-unofficially]

Werner Von Braun after capture by OSS agents in 1945

#wwii #western front #western allied invasion of germany

[bidoofenergy]

wip wednesday

thanks to @xthelastknownsurvivorx and @affectionatelyrs (on sunday) for the tags!!

Everything Alex has heard swirling around about the upcoming promotion is that the team—because there’s only one this year—is young. And Alex wants that team to be his so bad his heart might burst out of his chest. If he gets promoted this year, he will be the youngest Level 4 agent in the history of the OSS. Being the son of two incredible agents is good for a lot of things. It got him in the door young. People know who they’re dealing with when they hear Claremont-Diaz. They know what to expect from him. But he’s still firmly in his parents’ shadows—and his parents were newcomers to the OSS. It shows, in the assignments they're given, in the equipment they get access too, in their stupid cramped office. Alex works his ass off, June and Nora too. He puts his all into everything he does but, at the end of the day, he doesn’t have the Montchristen legacy behind him. Alex becoming a Level 4 agent—becoming the youngest Level 4 agent ever—could be the start of a Claremont-Diaz Legacy. All Alex has—all that he can really rely on—is June, Nora, and a deep, ever-burning desire to prove something.

tagging: @canarydarity @baronetcoins @read-and-write- @gayrootvegetable @chadoe-dex and anyone else who wants to share!! im kinda late to this so sorry if youve already done this lol

#listen. yes this is a spy kids 2 au. but if i dont give alex a Complex i will explode into a million pieces #so yeah. we're making up some shit about legacy spy families. slay #tagged #wip: spy kids 2 au #my fic

[softguarnere]

Masterlist

Oneshots

Ron Speirs

Pull That Trigger

Ares and Athena

Learn to be Lonely

People-Watching vs People Watching

Alone, Together

Anywhere You Go (Let Me Go Too)

From Scratch

If You Strip Away the Myth From the Man

Everyone, Everywhere, Everything

Evaded By Hypnos

Joseph Liebgott

The Freudian Slip (Part One) (Part Two)

Touch Me, Love Me, Can't Get Enough

Miracle of Miracles

'Til Dawn

2am

Hardheaded At Best

Joe Toye

When You Talk To An Officer

In That Head

I'll Be Right Here Waiting/Put It Back Together

Seven

In Sickness and In Health

Bill Guarnere

Always Best to Believe in One's Self

Hoping That There's Something Coming (It's Not the Same)

You Need a Little Candor, Need a Little Candor

Might Find Love

Babe Heffron

Call A Medic (But Not For Me)

I Don't Want You to Hide Your Issues (Blow Them into Your Tissues)

Inhale, Exhale

Eugene Roe

A World Without Color is a World Without You (Part One) (Part Two)

Avec Les Étoiles Dans Les Yeux

Staring At the Ceiling With You

Where There is Injury

Shifty Powers

You Tied a Tether Here to Keep Me Close

Don't You Feel My Heart Go?

She Used to Be Mine

Wildflower

David Webster

Friends That I Barely Know

Return to Sender (Part 2)

It Will Have Been Worth It

Lewis Nixon

I Can Read You Like a Magazine

Hold Me Close While I Think This Through

Coming Clean

Carwood Lipton

White Christmas

You Matter Too (I Promise You Do)

Skip Muck

I See Forever in Your Eyes

Dick Winters

Guardian Angel

Lucky Stars

Blushing All the Way Home

Skinny Sisk

Return to Sender (Part 2)

You've Got a Side You Can't Explain

George Luz

I Can't Stop Feelin', I Want Her Love

Cold Turkey

The Rest of the World Falls Away

Floyd Talbert

Passed Me a Note Saying, "Meet Me Tonight"

Johnny Martin

The Depths of Despair

Headcanons

Pining Headcanons

Bull Randleman and Chuck Grant

Joseph Liebgott and Dick Winters

George Luz and Don Malarky

Carwood Lipton and Joe Toye

Eugene Roe

Bill Guarnere

Joe Toye

Relationship Headcanons

Dating Shifty Powers

Dating George Luz

Dating Eugene Roe

Dating Lewis Nixon

Dating Joseph Liebgott

Dating Chuck Grant

Dating Dick Winters (as an OSS agent)

First date with Skinny Sisk

Misc. Headcanons

fem!reader overworking herself for Easy

taking care of Malarky

Easy Company reacts to praise

How they react to you being in a shootout

Helping a S/O who is touch starved

Christmas with Easy Company

How they react to false news of your death

Luz falling for a lady lieutenant

Asking their crush to be their Valentine

Asking their crush to be their Valentine (part 2)

How Liebgott would ask out his crush

How Easy Co. would help a S/O with insomnia

Doc Roe dating an extrovert

Nurse!reader who has a boyfriend back home

Falling for a childhood friend (Eugene Roe and Joe Liebgott)

How they would react to reader saying they don't like smokers

How they take care of you when you're sick

Luz asking out his crush

Comforting them after a bad week

How they react to you being wounded in combat

How the officer squad reacts to your awards

First date with Winters

When they get jealous

Dick with an upbeat nurse

Double reaction - end of war

Original Character Fics

Like A Girl (Like A Man)

For Whatever We Lose

#my writing #band of brothers x reader #band of brothers headcanon #band of brothers imagine

[liebgotts-lovergirl]

Agent Alix "Pyro" Martinelli

The Allied Assassin Office of Strategic Services

#thinking of Her #another Alix moodboard bc I wanna #a formally trained Hannie Schaft 🥺💔 #an assassin with a heart 🥺 #poor thing will i ever let you be happy #No probably not #boutta inflict some serious emotional damage #Alix Martinelli #FOFGallery #OSS #OSS agent OC #Band of Brothers OC #FireOnFire

[antoine-roquentin]

Part 1 in this series about... something. I’ll figure it out when I write more.

Howard Imbrey was a CIA agent. Having started in the CIA’s WW2 predecessor, the OSS, he was placed undercover in diplomatic roles at American consulates and embassies in Sri Lanka, India, and Ethiopia during the late 40s and 50s. This was a traditional role for intelligence agents: with diplomatic immunity, they would be safe from prosecution, while embassy parties and other events allowed them to pick up gossip from inside the country.

However, it did limit agents and paint a large target on their back. Imbrey operated in a friendly environment in India, where he could rely on British-trained police chiefs as informants in the battle against the Communist Party of India in Maharashtra and Kerala. In other parts of the world, governments would monitor the movements and activities of those who came out of the American embassy, knowing them to be spies.

In 1958, Imbrey was instead embedded in a fake corporation headquartered near the UN in NYC, with a real businessman as his partner. They worked closely with UN diplomats to find actual businesses to promote, to keep the whole thing legit. At the same time, it allowed Imbrey the chance to question the diplomats and businessmen for gossip and to meet with other informants the CIA had already cultivated across the continent. Some of these informants included Cyrille Adoula and Albert Kalonji, head of political parties and breakaway factions devoted to undermining Patrice Lumumba’s elected government in the Congo.

The article attached was important to developing his cover. Initially, it ran in Fortune, owned at the time by Henry Luce’s Time Inc., while the screenshots are from John H. Johnson’s Negro Digest. Luce was historically close to the CIA and the American government in general. He hired CIA agents onto his staff and allowed them to write propaganda as they saw fit. He directed his journalists to publish opinion pieces attacking those who exposed CIA secrets, like Ramparts magazine. At one point in the Congo Crisis, US Ambassador to Belgium William Burden, a friend of Luce’s, phoned him to get him to bury a story on Lumumba. No information has come out either way on just whether the journalist who wrote this article knew Imbrey was CIA or was simply ordered to by higher ups, but it seems likely that the editorial staff of Negro Digest simply saw it as fitting with their focus on black lives and reprinted it unwittingly to the CIA’s benefit. Later on, Imbrey would find another cover as a journalist with a CIA-controlled news outlet in Paris, Brussels, and Rome, which allowed the CIA to fly informants to him.

None of this was known to anyone until 2001, save for a brief acknowledgement of thanks to Imbrey’s wife in a book by Larry Devlin, CIA Station Chief in the Congo. That year, Imbrey suddenly gave two interviews in April and June, and then died a year later. One was to a high school student at a private Episcopal school in Maryland. It’s roughly written, and clearly transcribed by someone who’s writing the names of Congolese officials by ear rather than knowledge, but deserves to be read, not because Imbrey lets his guard down consciously, but rather because of the implicit biases he still has and the distinction between the secrets he wishes to keep and those he feels fine in revealing. Particularly humorous is when the kid tries to ask him about whether the CIA operated independently from the president, and Imbrey denies it, saying “That’s an Arab type of operation.”

The other was to Charles Stuart Kennedy, a career diplomat who retired in the 80s and subsequently made a post-retirement life of interviewing other diplomats for the public record. Since many CIA employees were embedded as diplomats, he ended up running into a bunch. His interview is much more detailed and professional, albeit with the same transcription errors on names, and makes for excellent reading for anybody who enjoys salacious historical gossip. Imbrey talks about reading Popeye the Sailor bootleg Rule 34 as a kid, kidnapping fishermen in the Indian Ocean with submarines to train them to use radios to spy on the Japanese Navy (sounds like UFO abductions), supplying porn to the higher ups in the Indian Navy, etc. But two particular moments stand out, one being what may be the single worst denial of American involvement in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba:

Q: Did you get involved at all with the Lumumba business?

IMBREY: No, the only thing I can tell you is they sent out this shellfish compound to chief of station Larry Devlin and he sent it back with an angry note saying, “Don't you know the Belgians are going to kill him, what do you want us to do?” We kept totally out of that one. Then Lumumba really put himself in terrible trouble when he gave a rise of one rank to everybody in the army and then found he couldn't pay the new prices. Then the army rebelled; they put him in an airplane, took him south and they pulled him out of the airplane on the driveway, brought him up to the chief of the Lunda tribe and in Munongo's office and I guess they shot him there or it may not have been there. In Munongo's office they began asking him a couple of questions. Well, this was according to his answers. Munongo took a bayonet and put it right into Lumumba's chest and Captain Gatt, a Belgian, was right there and he fired a bullet in the back of Lumumba's head to put him out of his misery and that was how it happened, but no Americans were involved.

and whatever this is, which happens to coincide with the CIA’s MHCHAOS operation on American soil:

Q: When you came home what were you doing?

IMBREY: That's where we turn off the tape recorder.

Q: All right, well then, we'll just skip over that. When did you take off again where we can talk?

IMBREY: Let's see. I was sent back to Rome in '72. Turn it off for a while and I'll tell you about it.

[nils-elmark]

My New Book About three Brave Americans

On August 25th 1914, a group of young Americans joined the Foreign Legion and “with a cowboy swing” marched through Paris, wildly cheered by the crowd. They were the first Americans in the Great War. I have written the intimate story of three of those young men: • David Wooster King - a 21-year-old dropout from Harvard and son of a rich businessman whose family can be traced back to Mayflower. • Alan Seeger - a 26-year-old poet and a dreamer from New York and a family of highly educated intellectuals. His ancestors too, can be traced back to start of the American nation. • Eugene James Bullard - a 19-year-old entertainer and boxer from Columbus, Georgia. His father was born a slave and his mother was Creek Indian. King ended up as an officer in the US Army chasing German spies in Switzerland in 1918. Later, he became a modern global adventurer, met rulers across the world and was sent to Casablanca in 1941 as the very first OSS agent reporting to President Roosevelt. Eugene Bullard too survived the war years. He was wounded at Verdun and invalided out of the French Army but despite all odds he became the world’s first black aviator. After the war, he married a young French woman and settled in Paris where he opened a bar. In the roaring 20s he was surrounded by every artist and intellectual of the day from Hemingway to Louis Armstrong. Bullard fought for the French again in 1940 before he was wounded and had to flee to New York with his two children. Here he was ignored except by the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The French never forgot him, and Bullard ignited the eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in 1954 and was kissed on both cheeks by President Charles de Gaulle.

The third legionnaire, Seeger, was not so lucky as his two comrades. He was killed during the Battle of the Somme on July 4, 1916. However, six weeks earlier, he wrote the famous poem, ‘I Have A Rendezvous with Death’ which was to become his legacy. President Kennedy’s daughter Caroline recited it for her father six weeks before his fateful trip to Dallas in November 1963, and the poem has since inspired a line of American presidents during the 20th century. It has become an indestructible poetic lifeline linking France and the United States of America. The three young Americans, rooted in the nation, each has an amazing story to tell. But when their adventures are brought together we get a three-dimensional perspective on how America broke its isolation from the world and started to unite as a nation during the 20th century. The three men represent different pillars of the American soul, and their lives and dreams symbolize the story of how America became modern and remind us of the strong historic ties between France and America. Most of all, this book is a fantastic saga full of brave men, great adventures and terrific sacrifices that bring hope and a new direction in a time of human division.

You can buy the book at most online bookshops and at my publisher Pen & Sword.

#ww1 #alan seeger #eugene bullard #david king #french foreign legion #nils elmark #the great war

[mariacallous]

In 2003, senior White House officials outed me as a covert CIA agent. They leaked my identity after my then-husband, U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op-ed stating that the George W. Bush administration lied about the threat posed by Iraq ahead of its decision to invade the country.

I have spent a lot of time in the decades since processing the trauma of that experience. It endangered my assets, ended my covert career, and unsettled my family. Even events that happened much later took me back to that time, such as then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 pardon of Scooter Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, who was convicted of perjury and lying to the FBI during its investigation into the leak. In those years, I was called a liar, a traitor, and—in the words of one Republican congressman—a “glorified secretary.”

Yet when I read journalist Liza Mundy’s new book, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of the Women at the CIA, uncomfortable memories came up that I had not grappled with since my time as a spy. The book touched me in ways I did not expect. I realized that I had mostly repressed the toll inflicted on me and my female colleagues from the many years of working in a man’s world.

When I was a child, the U.S. government passed Title IX, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school that received federal funding. By the time I was a teenager, my suburban Philadelphia high school had a variety of sports teams for me to choose from that were just as robust as what the boys had. I was fortunate to have parents who never suggested that my gender should dictate what I could pursue. In fact, my father made it a point to tell me that I could “do anything I wanted to, if I put my mind to it.” Even my college years passed in ignorance of the sexism ingrained in U.S. society.

Then, as a young woman, I joined the CIA. Suddenly, it became clear that the real world operated on a different set of principles.

The CIA that I entered at the height of the Cold War was very much a man’s world. The agency had only recently started to recruit women into intelligence operations, rather than into secretary positions and other support roles. A deep network of male officers still called the shots.

As I began the rigorous training to become a field operations officer, I looked around at the women already in the CIA. The more senior ones—none of whom were in the highest ranks—tended to be unmarried, childless, sometimes embittered, and tough as nails. Even then, I recognized that my opportunity to succeed came at the expense of their trailblazing.

I also knew I didn’t want to become like them. Couldn’t I be a successful officer and have a family? The terms “sexual harassment” and “gender discrimination,” much less “microaggression” and “unconscious bias,” had no meaning to my small cohort of female ops officers. We simply had to accept the casual misogyny that the agency’s alpha males tossed around.

Sometimes, it was explicit: My friend was told by her boss, the station chief at her first assignment in Africa, that she should go home, get married, and have a baby—and what the hell did she think she was doing in operations anyway? Other times, it was implicit: Promotions went to young male bucks over female colleagues who were just as successful in running and recruiting spies.

The contributions of female spies to the CIA—and the barriers they faced—are the focus of Mundy’s deeply researched and highly readable book. The Sisterhood starts off slowly, with a recap of women who entered the U.S. intelligence services during World War II. Thousands of women flocked to the job opportunities that the war opened up at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s predecessor, as men were sucked into the giant war-fighting machine. These OSS workers were among the first women in U.S. history to be formally recruited into intelligence work.

As Mundy recounts, these early recruits were told to report to an unassuming brownstone in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood. The men were instructed to change into Army fatigues in an attempt to strip them of social class, job, or military rank before the interview process. The women were taken to another room and asked to remove their coats and hats; since they were women, Mundy writes, “no further equalization was thought to be needed.”

Many of the women recruited into the OSS in the 1940s were highly educated, sophisticated, and multilingual. The test designed for female recruits assessed how well they could file papers. Yet once they were inside the agency, a few of these women moved into field intelligence operations. They demonstrated verve, bravery, and intellect at every turn as they set up effective spy rings, solicited intelligence from Nazi and other Axis officials, and passed important intelligence back to Washington.

After the war, a collective amnesia seemed to settle over Washington. As the country quickly forgot the vital role of women in the war effort, women were once again relegated to support jobs. The 1950s and 1960s looked something like Mad Men, where secretaries wore white gloves and pantyhose to the office and deferred to their male bosses. President Harry S. Truman established the CIA in 1947, but the agency did not begin to hire more than primarily white men with Ivy League degrees for another couple decades. It was not until the 1970s and 80s that it recruited women of equal intelligence, nerve, and—as my father would say—moxie to do clandestine work. I was a beneficiary of this sea change. I joined the CIA because I wanted to serve my country, it would get me overseas, and it seemed like it would be a lot more interesting than what my peers were doing.

Mundy’s book picks up steam as she delves deeper into the era when women were admitted, grudgingly, into the heart of secret CIA missions. She follows a few of them closely, including Lisa Manfull, a top student at Brown University from a cosmopolitan family, who was hired in 1968 to join the CIA’s career training program at a lower paygrade than male recruits. Manfull eventually became a successful clandestine operative despite higher-ups trying to keep her in desk jobs for years. Mundy also highlights fearsome agency legend Eloise Page, who started as a secretary to the OSS’s founder and became the CIA’s first female station chief in 1978.

Despite not being allowed to take the full operational courses at “The Farm,” the CIA training facility in Virginia, into the 1970s, these women proved their worth. They succeeded in work as varied as negotiating with terrorists who highjacked a plane in Malta and dealing adroitly with intelligence “walk-ins”—when a potential foreign agent shows up unexpectedly at an officer’s home or an embassy with promises to provide intelligence in return for something they desire.

The 1991 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were a catalyst for change. During the hearings, the all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee listened as Anita Hill, a Black woman, calmly testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her a decade earlier. The Senate ultimately confirmed Thomas—and Hill faced criticism and death threats from the public—but the hearings brought a newfound awareness of gender-based discrimination to Washington. They influenced the election of 1992, which media outlets dubbed “The Year of the Woman” after a record number of women won seats in the Senate.

In 1992, the CIA also commissioned a “Glass Ceiling Study,” which found that men rose to much higher ranks than women in the organization. Women filled 40 percent of the agency’s professional positions but only 10 percent of the jobs in the Senior Intelligence Service, comprised of top agency executives. Mundy writes that female CIA employees responded to the study with a sense of relief—maybe, they thought, the agency’s culture would finally change. The men, by and large, seemed puzzled by it.

Then-CIA officer Janine Brookner sued the agency in 1994 for federal sex discrimination after being falsely accused of professional misconduct and threatened with a demotion and criminal sanctions. The lawsuit ended with a cash settlement and Brookner’s resignation. Brookner went on to law school and used her degree to specialize in federal discrimination cases. Around the same time, female case officers filed a class action suit, claiming that the CIA had a pattern of sex-based discrimination; in the 1995 settlement, Mundy recounts, the CIA admitted that it “discriminated systematically against its women secret agents for years,” as the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.

Mundy is at her sharpest when she writes about the women in Alec Station, a CIA unit that followed al Qaeda when few in Washington thought it was a threat. The analyst who led the unit, Mike Scheuer, filled his overlooked and underfunded team with women. Scheuer had no qualms about hiring women. As he told Mundy, women were “experts at minutiae, putting pieces of information together” that men might miss.

As the search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden intensified, the women tracking him diligently compiled intelligence, but the George W. Bush administration seemed to put their increasingly dire predictions on the back burner. On Aug. 6, 2001, CIA analyst Barbara Sude wrote a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US.” The Bush cabinet did not meet until Sept. 4, 2001, to discuss the threat. A week later, 9/11 happened.

The grief and guilt of the women who had warned the U.S. government for years about a potential attack is palpable in Mundy’s book. As one undercover case officer told Mundy, “For two years of my life, I was trying to do the right thing, and people died, and you felt like it was your fault. … And it really, it affected us a lot.” Their rage was channeled into the hunt for bin Laden that ultimately led to his capture.

Mundy’s book left me both inspired and disheartened. Many of the women in her book are now retired or dead. At great personal cost, they poured their lives into their intelligence careers. As I read it, I found myself empathizing with their hardships and remembering my own.

On the first day of my initial overseas assignment, I was told to go see the chief of station, a highly respected CIA officer. As I nervously entered his paneled office, he leaned back in his chair, feet on the massive wooden desk and unlit cigar in his mouth. He didn’t say anything to me. He merely took the cigar out of his mouth and motioned with it for me to turn around, a little twirl. Confused, I spun around and faced him again with a quizzical look. He broke into a smile. “Oh, you’ll do,” he said. I realized he was evaluating how I looked. It was crushing.

Thankfully, as Mundy shows, a lot has changed since then. Female CIA officers today have it better but still face quiet discrimination and barriers to success, as nearly all professional women do. Although the professional advances women have made are heartening, Mundy lets some women in the agency off the hook.

For instance, she glosses over the 2018 confirmation hearing of the CIA’s first female director, Gina Haspel, who admitted to a significant role in one of the agency’s darkest hours: the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” otherwise known as torture, in the aftermath of 9/11. The same can be said for Freda Bikowsky, an ex-CIA analyst known as the “queen of torture” who helped in bin Laden’s capture. I would have liked to see Mundy acknowledge that female officers in positions of power and responsibility—just like their male counterparts—have caused harm, exercised terrible judgement, and failed to mentor other women.

While Mundy’s book is a compelling and very good read, The Sisterhood is probably misnamed. It’s true that female CIA officers find comfort in their female friendships and can be supportive of each other as they advocate for equal rights in a male-dominated environment. But years of fighting for scraps—not just against their male counterparts, but against each other—has extracted a price. A climate of suspicion and unhealthy competition remains, and ultimately, this weakens U.S. national security.

[thedeviltohisangel]

Blurb idea of Cass bringing John a gift back after her overseas trip?

All The Things I Did (Interlude): All I Brought Back With Me

CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 INTERLUDE 1 CHAPTER 3

INTERLUDE 2 INTERLUDE 3 interlude 4

a/n: this got a little out of hand. cass and john have a mind of their own. i took the prompt in a bit of an evil direction but am i sorry? you be the judge. interlude ideas still open/come scream thoughts and questions at me. esp curious if you guys think cass should visit more? what does she do when she notices bucky's decline? does seeing her help or hurt? interested in your thoughts. love you all, enjoy !

When she landed at Thorpe Abbotts, her trip to rescue John failed, Colonel Harding was waiting for her on the runway. He looked like her father did when he caught her sneaking back into the house after night swimming with friends back in South Carolina. Hands on his hips and jaw twitching. 

“You look like hell, Lieutenant.” Cass had spent the flight back biting her lip so hard it drew blood in an attempt to keep it from trembling. The tears had fallen silently but she was doing her best to keep them at bay. She couldn’t waste time crying over the current situation. Emotion would distract her from the task at hand. Prevent her from focusing the way she would need to do to break him out of the camp. She wasn’t going to sleep until he was back with her and safe.

“That’s where I came from, Colonel.” Her ribs were hurting with each breath, the bottle of whiskey the pilots had given her not numbing the pain at all. 

“We’ve got to get you in front of an interrogator.” Cass nodded. She knew the drill. Knew they would want to know about the layout of the camp, the susceptibility of the guards, the process of transferring pilots. “For what it’s worth, Cassandra, I’m sorry about Egan. He was one of our best.”

“Is. He is one of the best. He’s at that godforsaken camp and I’m going to get him out.” She grimaced and reached for her side. 

“I think your supervisors at the OSS have an opinion on that. They’re waiting for you inside.” Fuck. Now she was screwed. They had kept out of her business the entire time she was in the field. Had sent her instructions by classified mail or cable and praised all of her reports. For them to show up in person, she must have pissed someone off all the way up the ladder.

“Well, Colonel, I guess this is goodbye.”  Harding removed his aviators and looked at her with sadness behind his eyes. He reached out and tenderly touched the bruise on her cheek before his hand dropped back to his side. “Cassandra-”

“Colonel, you already declared your love for me once. Don’t do it again.” Every professional wall she had built would break. She turned before he could change his mind and take the risk and walked into the building where she was sure her career was going to end. In there was a table with a man in a suit sitting behind it, a thick file open in front of him. All the chairs for her to sit in had been removed and she would’ve taken a deep breath if she thought it wouldn’t have killed her.

“Lieutenant Cassandra Ann Egan. Ink barely dry on the marriage certificate before your husband goes down over Germany and you recklessly insert yourself  behind enemy lines. I might add, also in defiance of orders from your local, cover consistent chain of command, in direct violation of your training. Any comment so far, agent?”

“No, sir.” 

“You’re lucky you were successful in Berlin last month. If you weren’t the only officer to ever accomplish that operational objective, I’d be here to escort you back to the states in handcuffs.” Cass gulped but maintained eye contact as best she could. “Instead, I’m here to promote you.”

“Sir, that doesn’t seem-” She caught the new rank he threw her way as best she could with one hand. 

“Captain, you’re being sent on mandatory R&R back to the states until DC decides where to place you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Do I get to choose my location for leave?” 

“I presumed South Carolina-”

“Wisconsin. There’s some people I need to meet.” He looked at her pensively but nodded. 

“Very well. Now, let’s get a doctor in here and start the interrogation, shall we?”

----

When Cass finally made it back to her room, breathing was easier and the moon was illuminating a giant trunk that was now at the foot of her bed. She froze in the doorway. It was John’s. And now it was hers. She kicked her shoes off and padded over to her desk, his large sheepskin resting over the back of the chair. It still smelled like him when she put it on and it shattered her last will to stay strong. She dropped to her knees and wrapped his jacket around herself tighter, the sheepskin catching her tears like she imagined John would himself if he were here.

“You were right, Johnny. We should have never left London.” It had been the happiest two days of her life. It had been normal. Just like she imagined falling in love with a boy might be. They had gone to dinner and danced and danced and danced until her feet hurt. He had kissed her and ran his hands down her body and whispered in her ear how he needed her. They had gone to bed and claimed each other over and over until she forgot where she was and how awful the world around them was. Until she forgot how dangerous it would be to tell him she loved him and said it anyways. Had married him the next morning because neither of them could shake the feeling something bad was going to happen. That they needed to be each other’s fully in this life to guarantee they would find each other in the next.

Cass crawled over to the trunk and opened it shakily. There were the items she was expecting. Books, gum, cigarettes. A photo of his family back home and Yankees baseball cards. There was a pile of letters from home and then at the very bottom, an envelope with her name on it. And then she found another one and another one until there was a stack of letters he had written to her on the floor. 

The first one dated the night she found the nerve to claim him in public. He wrote that he was going to tell her he loved her. That he couldn’t keep it in any longer so he wrote it down. That he knew she would be the one to get his trunk if anything happened to him because he had known she was it for him all along. She held that one close to her chest and felt the words seep into her skin and soothe the ache in her chest. 

The rest of them followed similar themes of John pouring out emotions he was too afraid to say out loud. They all made her giggle because almost immediately after the letter was dated, he had said those words to her in person. He was never good at restraining himself when it came to her. The last one made her heart ache. It was the morning of the last mission, his handwriting rushed and sloppy. He poured out his love for her, how he was fighting for a future with her and hoped at least one of the men who owned the bullets she collected was down there today.

And as soon as I get back, we are going to celebrate our wedding and plan our trips to South Carolina and Wisconsin and practice our baby making. Cass smiled. The version of her that had met John that first night at the social club would have never guessed how broody he was. Now that she knew, it made her tingle. My sun. My moon. My stars. My wife. My precious Spook. I love you, Cass, and am eternally yours. She wiped the tears from her eyes and gently placed the letter back in its envelope. Sitting at her desk, her pen hovering over the blank paper, she looked up at the moon. Whenever her dad spent the nights camped with the farmhands in the field and Cass missed him, her mother would tell her to look at the moon and remember he was looking at the same one. John was looking at the same moon as her tonight. As she whispered her love into the moonlight and wrote the first of the daily letters she had promised him, she hoped the moon did her a favor and carried the message to Germany.

----

She spent the first day or two of her leave building up the courage to knock on the door of the Egan family. Her and John had discussed the eventuality of meeting his family. It felt odd to do it without him but she felt in her heart they deserved to know where he was and how he was doing. Selfishly, it was like getting a piece of him back. 

After knocking on the door, she hoped for a moment it didn’t answer. Maybe this wasn’t going to make her or them feel any better. Maybe it would just break her heart all over again.

And then, the door opened.

----

A few weeks later she was pacing outside that wretched chain link fence. She had managed to make it without any broken ribs this time and she was thankful her contact hadn’t confiscated her canvas bag. In it were hats and gloves for John and Gale and the other men, enough chocolate to hopefully bring them some happiness and some mementos from Wisconsin his mother had sent with her. Cass wasn’t even sure how many of her letters had made it to him yet. If he even knew of the trip she had taken. 

“There’s my beautiful, beautiful girl.” Her smile split her face, surging to meet his lips through a gap in the fence. “I’ve missed you.” Seeing her soothed the ache within him only incrementally. There was still something endlessly aggravating about the fence in between them but John knew he was lucky to even be able to see her like this. Counted her as his chief blessing before he tried to find sleep at night.

“I’ve missed you too but your face looks better than the last time I saw you.” John scoffed.

“Worried I wasn’t handsome enough for you anymore?” 

“Worried you weren’t going to take care of yourself more like it.” 

“Buck’s got me covered.” He pressed as close to her as the fence would allow. “I’ve gotten a few of your letters. Wrote you one back.” She smiled at how sheepish he seemed. Nervous that maybe she hadn’t liked what he had written.

“It hasn’t made its way to me but I’m sure it's lovely if the letters to me in your trunk are any indication.”

“You found those?” he asked while rubbing the back of his neck.

“It was waiting for me when I got back from here the last time. You loved me a lot earlier than you said it, John Egan.”

“Loved you from the moment I saw you.” He smiled, he thinks he only smiled when he read her letters or the one time she had visited, took any opportunity to escape into their solar system that he was allowed. “Your last letter said you got in trouble at work.” 

“Colonel Harding ratted me out for not obeying his orders.” John’s jaw clenched at the mention of the man. The man who had used his rank to take Cass to dinners and dances and promised her the life of a General’s wife if she wanted it. “But you’ll be happy to know after I got my ass thoroughly chewed, I got promoted.”

“Promoted?” 

“You are now the lucky husband to one Captain Cassandra Ann Egan.” He whistled, heart stuttering at the reminder she was his wife, as she did a little twirl and took a bow. 

“Congratulations, Captain. You certainly earned the hell out of it.”

“You’ll have to feign surprise when the letter telling you all of this gets to you.” John watched as her face fell and grew concerned. “You’ll also see some letters from me that are postmarked from Wisconsin.”

“Wisconsin?” Then realization settled on his face. “Cass, did you…did you…” He was struggling to formulate the question.

“Please don’t be upset with me,” she breathed desperately. “When they mandated stateside leave it just slipped out. It was selfish of me. I’m sorry. I should’ve just gone to South Carolina and left it alone.”

“I haven’t been to Manitowoc in years,” he spoke wistfully. Had wanted to go back with her on his arm when all this was over. “My sisters give you a hard time?”

“I brought some fabric from my last trip to Paris to butter them up.” John laughed. Only his Spook would be able to tame his two older sisters. “I spent most of the time promising you were okay. They thought you injured your head when I told them we’d been married, something about you not seeming like the type.”

“Just had to find the right girl.” 

“Your mom misses you. A lot. Wanted me to give you this.” Cass reached into her bag and pulled out a slightly tarnished silver watch with a date engraved on the back. 

“My dad’s watch.” It was hard to swallow around the lump in his throat. “His dad gave it to him on my parents' wedding day. That’s what the date on the back is. Told me when I got married, it would be mine.”

“I can get it cleaned and upgrade the engraving and bring it back if you’d like.” John coughed and shook the fog from his head.

“No. It’s perfect. We’ll get the engraving done together when I’m out of here.” He tucked the watch into his shirt pocket. 

“She also gave me this. Was horrified I wasn’t already wearing it.” Cass handed him a small ring box and he knew it was his grandmother’s engagement ring before he even opened it. “I told her it would be wrong to put it on my own finger. One more thing for us to do when we get you out of here.” 

“Yeah but you best keep it safe while we wait to get the chance.” He removed the cross from around his neck, slipping the small diamond ring onto it and passing through the fence. She took the chain but slid the cross charm off and handed it back to him with a look. “I’d rather use it to protect you.” 

“It’s not up for debate.” He took it and slipped it onto the same chain as his pendant. “Here comes our friend. Catch.” Cass launched the canvas over the side of the fence, John gathering it with ease.

“Thanks, baby. I’m sure all the guys will be very grateful.”

“I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Moscow is my new station.” She had asked for London but was turned down. Told she had earned more of a challenge than London presented. “I have to get the lay of the land and keep my head down for a little bit.”

“I’m sure you’ll win them over in no time, Spook.” She rolled her eyes and reached for a kiss. “I love you, Cass. Now and forever. I promise.”

“I love you, too, Johnny. I’ll see you soon.” Cass stayed until he was walked out of sight, the chain heavy against her chest once he disappeared from her view. 

Soon was never soon enough.

#masters of the air #john egan #callum turner #mota #masters of the air fanfiction #john egan fanfiction #callum turner fanfiction #mota fanfiction #masters of the air fanfic #john egan fanfic #callum turner fanfic #mota fanfic

[bedlamsbard]

Do you have any recs for WW2/Cold War espionage and counter espionage non-fiction? I’ve read 3 of Ben Macintyre’s books and one by Sonia Purnell this year and really enjoyed them.

Right now I'm going through Macintyre's books largely out of order; he's definitely one of the best. (I just finished Agent Sonya last night, it's great.) I have a couple of piles of reference books for Home, but I haven't read most of them in full. Two that I have read in full are The Women Who Lived for Danger by Marcus Binney and The Debs of Bletchley Park by Michael Smith. I've also got a bunch of books on WWII intelligence and counter-intelligence by Helen Fry, but haven't read most of them; I'm working slowly through SMERSH: Stalin's Secret Weapon by Vadim Birstein, about Soviet counter-intelligence.

I figured out that a lot of the more traditional SOE/OSS narratives (sabotage, guerrilla work, etc.) are actually less relevant to Home, so I'm not up much on that and I've been starting to veer further into Cold War era for espionage, but it's not as though any of it is wasted. Some books I also just take out from the library because they look interesting (like Blitz Kids, that one's not relevant at all), but haven't necessarily had a chance to read them. (I am also attempting to write this PhD dissertation on something that is not WWII.)

#there's some kind of metaphor in all of this research hiding the shield #(that's the catfa art book on top of some fiction) #I also spend a lot of time on wikipedia #like...a lot #thelamplighter17 #bedlam replies