| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA |
 Actor |
|
| P«STAHL««DANIKA««E««USA««««« |
| 6USA6908130F156S0«CONTRACTOR«« |
What do you do when you're a Stasi Wolf? The best of the best? What do you do when your whole life, from the time your parents were selected to give birth to you has been in preparation for one thing and one thing only: To be the best?
To be the most efficient.
Most deadly.
To pass among the sheep, claim your prey, and leave no traces that a crime was committed, let alone that you did it? The best at working social events, by whatever means were necessary, be it bribes, drugs, sex. It made no difference.
When you were raised to be deadly with your bare hands, and with a broad assortment of knives, guns, poisons - when everything you knew focused on being the razor edge on the tip of the spear? When you were *the* agent the Stasi sent when no-one else could get to someone, because they knew that somehow you would find a way? Because they knew that this is who you are?
What do you do when you're all that, and just as you start to use it, your country goes away? When the big lies finally come home to roost. When you know, really know, that ordered, managed economies and absolute bureaucratic centralization Just. Don't. Work? When you know, really know, that everything you fought for, everything you sacrificed and were sacrificed for was just so much cold war posturing?
When the best thing your handlers can do for you is erase your identity before the reporters get into the Stasi's records as the wall is coming down?
When all you have is the paperwork naturalizing you as a U.S. Citizen. The great enemy of the people. The decadent power that ultimately proved itself in the Darwinian sense to be better than the ones you served.
Me? I went to America. The land of opportunity.
I contracted privately a lot. Did a lot of work for the CIA at first, then the NSA, and I lose track how many other alphabet soup organizations within the deep black of the decadent capitalist bureaucracy. It felt like coming home.
The last few years, though, I've been working for private security firms. You know the type. The kind that if they make the newspapers, they've failed utterly, and change their names and try their best to slink out of the limelight before the sheep notice that this corporate army is doing things only a government should do, and is not responsible to anyone but its stockholders.
I should have just been a whore. It would have been more honest.
Now I am an American. A free and equal citizen of this glorious capitalist empire. The wolf must now run with the sheep. Or I must once again rejoin the company of wolves. And age is creeping up on me.
Chameleon:
When I was a girl, they trained us against having a personality of our own. Any readily identifiable style, attachments, habits and so on would compromise our covers. It served me well while I was working. The vague hunger I imagine normal people have that creates these things you'd call a personality was sated with the personality of my cover identity. When I was a model, I liked fast cars and rich men and big parties. When I was a corporate woman, I liked power, and wealth, and conservative clothing, and making other people suffer made me feel alive. When I was a Junta leader's paramour, I loved sex and silky lingerie and sweaty Latin men fighting for a cause. Were they me? Yes. Except for the little part where the mission lived, when my handlers would tell me it was time to kill the millionaire playboy, or the wealthy business magnate, or the sweaty Latin man. And I mourned being the model, and the paramour, and even the businesswoman, though least of all her, when their times were done. What is left between missions? between covers? The wolf. The cold warrior. The hunter.
Wolf Among Sheep:
I was raised to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. To live among sheep, to revel in it, to take joy from the lives I would lead. If you would know what lies under the cover persona, who Danika Stahl really is, that's it. The wolf is arrogant but loyal. The wolf is proud but practical. Always the wolf. It is always in the back of my mind, who I am, and that this gaudy, decadent sheep life does not define who I am. And if I start to, things happen. Usually lethal to someone somewhere. The wolf, having been betrayed once when her country fell, will bite the hand that feeds her if it seems to happen again.
Sense of Humor:
Look. It's easy to sound grim when you're analyzing the very core of who and what you are. But it's impossible to survive without a sense of humor. I have one Sometimes it's not appropriate, the things I laugh at. But really. It is a survival trait to remember that no matter how high the throne, one still sits upon one's bottom. They taught us that despite themselves, this cadre of agents who took themselves far too seriously. They raised us to be their superiors, functionally, and then resented it when we laughed at them.
Life Among Sheep:
If there is one conflict defining my life right now, it's that for the first time in over twenty years, I have no mission. No real purpose. I eat, I excrete, I consume - and that is what your world wants of me. But I lack focus. It is as though I am a child, at this late point in my life, a child fresh out of school and wondering what she should do when she grows up.
Identity-craft:
Creating, stealing, and destroying legal identities.
Inverse CSI:
Whereas CSIs analyse a crime scene to determine who committed a crime, I analyse it beforehand so I can misdirect and mislead them, or convince them that no crime was committed at all. Sometimes it's as simple as giving a man a subtle shove in front of a subway train. He dies, and it's a horrible, tragic accident, and nothing more. Play the cover identity for a while longer and quietly disappear her.
Deep Cover Operations:
Disguise
Infiltration
Stealthy murder
Cover maintenance
Escape
Gunsmithing: In the old days, working for Stasi or an American government agency, I would simply tell them what I needed after I began my infiltration. Now I can't count on that kind of support. Fortunately this country is remarkably free with firearms and the skills to make and modify them. So I signed up for one of those courses in the back of a gun magazine, bought the tools, and I can do it myself. And amazingly you don't even require a license for this kind of thing.
A lifetime of covert operations training.
Memory training. I seldom forget anything important. It's not true eidetic memory, which is good. There are things I would someday like to forget.
The best body the East German athletic programs and French plastic surgery could build. Twenty years ago, it was much more impressive, but it's worn surprisingly well.
A (small) fortune. I have a cache of money enough to keep me for a few years, if I don't develop any major illnesses, or expensive addictions.
A Past: From former Eastern Bloc employers and co-workers to the corporate organization whose covert bureau leadership I recently exterminated, there are lots of people out there who'd like to see me dead. Or better yet, slowly tortured to death, or pretty much any variation on my… how do Americans say it, being made their bitch.
Age: I'm forty-one years old. Sometimes my work can be very physically strenuous. Other times it's handy to be young and dazzlingly beautiful. Every year that goes by, these things become harder for me to do. But worst of all is the mind. There's so much to learn and keep learning to stay ahead of modern crime scene investigation, and my brain isn't getting younger. And I'm getting set in my ways. I have to watch out for that. That is how a signature is made, and that, in turn, is how a formerly good assassin gets caught.
The Cold: When you go corporate, a lot of the more traditional agencies stop returning your phone calls, no matter how good you are. Of course, if they'd been sending a lot of work my way, I wouldn't have gone corporate in the first place. The bottom line is my contacts are drying up, from age, unhealthy lifestyles, shifting political landscapes or just plain getting caught, and I've not managed to replace them. I may have a few favors left to call in, but functionally? I'm in the cold.
The Body: Remember how I said that I had the best body East German Olympic technology and French plastic surgeons could build? That takes maintenance. Fortunately the East German Olympic trainers sold out to American sports medical corporates, so I can at least get the designer hormones I need to stay functional. Unfortunately, those hormones aren't cheap, and I need a steady supply. Without them, I weaken. Grow soft. Ultimately die of congestive heart failure within six months.
29 Aug 2010 23:51 — 2010-08-29: Victorious Mark
31 Aug 2010 05:30 — 2010-08-30: Taking Victory
06 Sep 2010 15:33 — 2010-09-04: A Sheep In Were Clothing
14 Sep 2010 23:00 — 2010-09-14: Course Correction
22 Sep 2010 03:14 — 2010-09-17: Jailbonds For Work
25 Sep 2010 07:00 — 2010-09-25: The Spy who Came In from the Cold
10 Oct 2010 07:36 — 2010-10-09: Arrival
RP Hooks
Cold Warriors
Betrayed Corporates
Former Eastern Block Operatives
Requires a supply of designer hormones for maintenance.
Soundtrack
Twilight Zone - Golden Earring
