omar | 13: Spam: Man got to live what he know.

13: Spam: Man got to live what he know.

[Open spam]

[Omar is a roamer. As long as he's not forced to stay in his cabin -- in his cell, comfortable as it may be -- he spends very little time there. He's just as likely to sleep in an empty cabin, or even once or twice in the Enclosure. He keeps bizarre hours, and he keeps them largely to himself.

None of this is new. This is how he's been since he got here the first time. Since his last death toll, though, he's become even more erratic in his efforts to stay unpredictable, and the recent spate of unwarranted brutality has him feeling especially restless. He can be chanced upon at all kinds of odd times and places: at the library early in the morning, in the showers and the laundry room around noon, eating in the dining hall in the late afternoon. In the evening, smoking up on the deck with so many of his fellow passengers, because it's not actually that he's antisocial -- just very, very careful.

Careful enough that he takes data, and so some of the newer passengers may or may not be surprised to glimpse him out of the corner of their eyes every now and again. Maybe even writing something down.]

[Spam for Cold and Dark]

[But there's a predictability even in unpredictability, and he does from time to time spend the night in his cabin, if only to keep up the illusion that he does so much more often. It might take a more careful observer a while to figure out when he's likely to return, but the time comes around eventually.

It's late in the evening, but he's been up for the last 36 hours, and he's tired -- and therefore both baffled and a little annoyed to hear a knock on the door right when he's about to lay his head down.]

Man, who is it?

[Edit: Voice to Ricki, post-Tiffany spam]

You know what? I remember a time this place didn't feel like a cross between a day care and a circus.

[Edit: Spam for Luna, post-pairings announcement]

[Omar's been playing the warden shuffle for a while now. At best, it's been ineffective -- the closest thing he's gotten to a decent temporary warden, in Horatio, got ripped away from him halfway through the month. At worst, it's been disastrous. So he's not inclined to pay much mind to the announcement, not anymore. He goes about his day. Let Luna Lovegood come to him, if she likes.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He smokes, and he listens, and pictures it. He remembers himself at eleven- probably around the same, already with a habit of skipping school, stealing fishing boats and running off in them, with a little more familiarity with the violence of adults than one might hope for in a child of that age.

He pictures Omar, living across the world and decades away, already familiar with guns and grappling in a pretty serious way with power and opportunity, and all the things that twist kids into being fighters. How the story ends instead, with the bright indignity of an unlikely, twelve year old Robin Hood.

Ricki has a tell, if you watch him close. He always touches his mouth when he's trying not to be caught smiling at something.]

How'd you get away from your brother's boy, after an improvisation like that? [No, that's not what he wants to know.] Did you catch back up to him? Get to see the look on his face when you handed the money back?

Wasn't like he was gonna cap me with Anthony right there, man. They gave the money back and I ran back over to the bus stop and shoved it right back into the working man's hand. He looked...

[It's funny, but he doesn't really remember that part as well. It hadn't been about the man's feelings; it had been about the injustice of it. The idea that a man could get up, kiss his family goodbye, and spend all day and into the night at some crummy minimum-wage job, just to have a group of punk kids that were too scared to go up against anyone with teeth come and take all his hard work away.]

...he looked grateful, I suppose. Maybe confused, mostly.

You don't think highly of thieves and robbers.

[He guesses, distilling all of this down, and everything else he's heard so far. What Jimmy told him, about his work and Omar bothering him.

That's right, Jimmy. The thing with the gun, he feels a little guilty about, but no need to go into that, now. Not when he's getting the long and short of it.]

Organized crime is fair game, for a rip-running stick up boy, with a moderate crew. [Well.] I have a unique talent for getting mugged everywhere I go, you know. I really should go to Baltimore.

[He shrugs in response to the first part.]

Depends on what they thievin' and robbin'.

[Because he has no illusions about what he is. He just knows that no one that's been on the other end of his gun since that night has ever been trying to keep hold of an honest day's pay.

Then Ricki continues with that and Omar finds himself poorly containing a grin, a twitch of pleased surprise tugging at the corner of his mouth.]

I don't do so much of that anymore. Thieves don't get nearly as much as drug dealers, and they get torn down by the police a whole lot easier. Sorry to disappoint.

Sure. Makes sense.

[Agreeing, because he can see how it'd be a quicker way to clean up, and a more insidious kind of damage, drugs do, as well.]

So has anyone ever tried to tell you your inmate sticking point? General rakishness, or theft in the abstract? Because I'll be honest, Omar, you sound considerably more principled than I feel.

[The smile lingers faintly, but now he just looks utterly bemused.]

If I had to guess, I'd say it might have something to do with all the murder and mayhem along the way. I told y'all I had bodies on me.

[A lot. There are a lot of those.]

Ain't like I'm turning them G-packs and that cash in to the police, neither.

Right. They're really hung up on that.

[A little wrinkle of his nose. Peculiar local custom, isn't it?]

Mind you, some wardens- but then again... Maybe that's the key to your graduating, though. Promise with all your heart to turn a cut over at tax season. Could be, we conduct a survey, we find out that the one thing that connects us all is that we're all terribly delinquent on our taxes.

[He laughs.]

Could be. My old warden kept trying to think on other occupations I could be going into, instead of wasting my potential like I am.

Self-help novelist.

[Ricki pegs him, right away.]

That's my back up plan. I, personally, an expert on gently tossing ambitious young muggers into canals.

Oh? Guess Anthony got lucky you wasn't the one on that bench.

[He leans over suddenly as if to tap out his ash into the wastepaper basket, but seems to think better of it just in time and veers away again. He glances around for a different substitute ashtray.]

Let me ask you this, Good Boy -- what you think your sticking point might be? I mean, whatever it is I be thinking about your methods, you saying it was all for your people, right? Stopping wars and all.

[He points. There's a cup of tea liberated from the mess near the back of the desk, wet bag down in the bottom of the cool remains.]

Two foibles, me. First one's obvious. Ends justifying means. Boring, easy, not worth getting into. Mea culpa, and all that.

Second one, I've been putting a little more thought into lately, and it actually is there. Right on the face of it. Being a good boy in a game like this.

[He sits up again, something laconic melting off him. This will be the first time he's said this out loud, and it's complicated, and he wants badly to get it right.]

I've told you a lot of stories, Omar, but this one is different enough that I'm going to explicitly tell you this time that you need to keep your mouth shut about it in any room that I haven't cleared for ears.

[He leans back to grab the teacup and set it down in his lap, resettling in his seat as he clears the ash from his cigarette and takes another drag. The first point he just nods along with. It makes sense to him, too, and he can certainly see how it would stick someone to the Barge, even if it also brings up something deeply cynical in him that he'll--

--circle around back to later, he thinks, as Ricki sits forward. He cocks his head slightly, curiosity duly piqued.]

...a'ight, man.

[He hasn't exactly been going around sharing Ricki's stories anyway, but he can respect when a secret really needs to be a secret.]

Think you gotta know by now I'm a man that keep his word.

I know. My own shit-

[A gesture, not important, and he leans over out of the bed to drag out the ashtray that lives underneath it.]

-but I'm not supposed to know this, so if by any chance any of the parties involved showed up...

[This one's different.]

It starts with a man named Leamas. A good man, a loyal man, a man with no reputation in particular except with those high enough up to know that he is very, very good. An old rhino who skulks around the edge of the Berlin Wall for years, doing the kind of work that destroys a man's soul. It's West Berlin, so all his men keep going down, and no one can tell why. No one can blame him, precisely, but you can't get a commendation for something like that, either, and I'm given to understand it eats away at a handler, watching the men who trust them go down in pools of blood, over and over.

Now, as I understand it, Leamas is transferred back and to a desk, which is never a promotion for a man like this. His flaming out is slow and predictable, and involves a fair amount of cheap whiskey and someone getting his pension cut on a technicality- a real nasty business, the kind that gets through the rumour mill, even in circles like ours where we all know better. After this little performance, he is now reasonably well known as an 'ex' spy. A humiliated, penniless alcoholic ex spy, at that, and one with a hell of a lot of possible gold to give any German smart enough to pick up on the fact.

[Watching him closely, wondering how quickly Omar will see the pieces come together. How long in advance these games can run. The kind of voluntary and personal mortification it takes for a man like Leamas to pretend to all his colleagues to go out like that. The kind of system that would ask such a sacrifice from one of their oldest, most dedicated, and best.]

Somewhere in all this, there's a girl. Either he loves her, or he doesn't, no one can really remember, but she's a member of some silly UK Socialist-Leninist organization in the little strip of nowhere where he's living, and she's pretty enough and half his age. We can figure, maybe she's the one who flagged someone back home to send legs after our man Leamas, or maybe her youth and her revolutionary zeal are a cover for him, something to let him make a call, make an offer to go over- doesn't matter. There's a girl, is all we know, and maybe he loves her.

[Omar listens, and he's getting better at translating the parts he doesn't understand to things he does, but that's exactly why he ends up not putting it together: because he doesn't know spies, but he does know police, and he's known of police who have gone out in just such a fashion. Everyone knows that happens every day in Baltimore. Honestly, he's surprised that Jimmy McNulty -- the closest thing he's ever had to a friend among them -- is still hanging on for dear life at the edge of a cliff that looks very much like this one.

So there's just a broken man at the end of his rope and a girl and the bottom of a bottle. In Omar's world, he'd become an angry security guard or something equally demeaning. In this one, he'll become a turncoat. Omar nods -- go on.]

Now Leamas, it so happens that his handler in this operation is nowadays my handler, so I know how Peter works. Your instructions come long in advance, and quiet. It's likely this plan was all hatched in a little hole in the wall all the way back in Berlin. Might be they never spoke to one another, all the years it was unrolling, all the years Leamas was undoing himself.

So he builds himself up into this craven thing. No money, no dignity, no loyalty left, and by hook and crook, he gets himself picked up by the Abteilung.

[Ricki says, with a glint of admiration in his eyes that may not quite make sense.]

East German secret police. There are exactly three things you need to know about them, for the purposes of the adventure of our man Leamas. The first, is that they have this sadist in their ranks; a bastard named Mundt, who had a hand in putting a few of the bullets in the heads of the members of that leaky network. Second, that Mundt has a second in command, a bright young thing named Fiedler, who is sharp as a tack, but in a sort of pleasant 'enemy worthy of respect' sort of way. Third, partially because of the efforts of Mundt, they make the KGB interrogators look like a cakewalk.

No way in hell would I ever defect to them, and certainly not with an agenda, but Leamas does it. Walks right in and works it so he ends up in Fiedler's office, with that young man trying to get everything he knows out of him.

This is all- you're with me?

[Convoluted as hell, and about to get worse.]

[Omar blinks, genuinely caught off-guard by the twist in the story, though he catches up quickly. Instructions; a plan; he gets himself picked up and right into the arms of the best and the brightest. Omar leans forward slightly, intrigued.]

I'm with you.

The only way to ever lie to a good interrogator is to not believe it yourself.

[He says, stopping for a breath from the cigarette.]

They'll see the lie. So if you're sitting down across from a man like Fielder, and he asks you about a man like Mundt, you talk about what a prick he is, and how he came to London that one time-

Well, before you get to any of that, there are four days of other names to go through. Everything from West Berlin, we can imagine, not that it made much of a difference by now. Some pre-screened ongoing ops that can be safely rattled by the Germans without anyone getting seriously hurt. Maybe, just maybe, Leamas gives over one or two bits of chump change- a Polish undersecretary who handed over the sugar distribution plans, who Fiedler doesn't know has been dragging his feet on us since, but is a pretty enticing traitor to nab, because think of how much worse that could have been, if we'd kept working him.

In the end, it's easy. Men are very simple. Fiedler is Jewish, Mundt is an ex-Nazi, they loathe one another already. Fiedler doesn't trust Leamas, but as long as Leamas doesn't lie to him, never says this man is a double agent, Fiedler will hunt for it. The Circus has given Leamas enough to make the shape of it almost clear- not perfectly incriminating evidence, because that wouldn't be any good either, but by the end of their days together, this bright young man is convinced that he has twisted this old warhorse of ours into giving up secrets that even Leamas didn't know that he knew. Because he's fought to win this truth, Fiedler will believe it down to his very marrow, and when he proves it, the Nazi bastard will be-

[A throat slitting gesture.]

[He lets out a low whistle and sits back, brows raised.]

Your boy Leamas got some real heart. Among other things.

He certainly does. I'd have liked to know exactly how he handled this next part, but the translated scraps of the tribunal are in German, and mine isn't very good. Here's what I have of it.

Leamas is testifying for Fiedler, who has a slough of other evidence against Mundt- really convincing stuff our boy Leamas couldn't really have brought him. Then there's the police report for the missing girl, filed back home. She's gone as of just a few days before the proceedings begin- and for some reason, Circus coffers have paid her rent off for the next year.

Here's what I think happened. Fiedler shows up at the trial, with Leamas as the nail in the coffin he's been building for Mundt for years. Leamas testifies, but Mundt arrives, with proof, handy, perfect proof that Leamas is one of ours, never flipped at all. Maybe a picture of that meeting with Peter and Control, all those years ago. Maybe the girl knows something. Maybe Leamas cracks and admits everything to save the poor waif. It looks real, because it is real. Leamas behind enemy lines, he's blown to all hell, he's caught red handed in this game, because his own people, my bosses, have given Mundt everything he needs and more.

[Ricki is not drinking any more. He is not. You can tell that, by the barely banked fire in his expression, the way he does not look at that waste paper basket. The story is sickening, to Ricki, because it is so fucking perfectly them.]

It ends with Mundt, in the eyes of the Germans, unassailably loyal. It ends with bright, lovely young Mister Fiedler being led out in handcuffs, the proof of his case against Mundt in tatters, probably going back into his own interrogation cells. Probably into Mundt's tender custody. It ends, with the best fucking placed mole the Circus has ever had, Mundt, indelibly protected and secure in his position, on track for promotion to the head of the Abteilung. The most dangerous threat to his placement, Fiedler, who is a good spy and a threat to us and ours, deftly and totally neutralized.

[When the story finishes, Omar almost seems like he's still waiting for more. The part where the tables turn yet again and the good guys, whoever they are, win, because he doesn't feel like that's what just happened at all even though it technically is. After a beat, he blinks owlishly and licks his lips, looking genuinely a little blindsided by the whole thing.]

That's cold, yo. I once--

[But no, he's not yet ready for the story of Bird and Brandon. What he would say if he were is that he'd thought he'd been pretty hard with that, smirking at Bird from the stand and watching him get put away for life, but this is hardness on a whole new level. He shakes his head.]

That's cold.

What happened to Leamus?

Sniped trying to cross back over the wall, him and the girl.

[Ricki is looking at his hands now, two fingertips tapping a little against the edge of the ashtray. None of this is Ricki's story. It was nearly ten years ago, his name isn't a footnote anywhere near here. He has actually told Omar almost nothing, and yet a great deal, at the same time.]

To answer your question, I am an inmate because there are whole weeks at a time where I can't remember why anything that happened in that was wrong. But then, part of trusting your life to someone like Peter Guillam is remembering that if he deems it necessary, he's allowed to spend it. Part of taking orders from him and not asking any questions is knowing that this is the kind of plan I am obligingly making myself a part of.

I am routinely a very good boy. I have gotten to a point in my life where I am a more effective tool if I do not pause to ask questions. I think there's something a little sick about that, knowing what the Circus is capable of, and letting men like these use my deliberate ignorance as another kind of knife.

[He stretches his feet out, and crosses them at the ankle. Reaches for the pack of cigarettes; his has burnt down while they've been talking.]

But that's where we are, isn't it?

[That's what Ricki is, he means.]

[This time, Omar doesn't need the translation as much as he did before. The story may not be about Ricki, may not feature him at all, but it says plenty about him anyway.

Some of it, Omar even wonders if he already knew a little bit already, if he had somehow picked it up beneath the skin. The surface version of Ricki Tarr isn't someone he'd normally have all that much to say to, but he can't deny that he's felt a pull to him. Some of that is the inevitable Barge mixing-pot-slash-pressure-cooker doing its work, but some of it...

Well, Ricki is a good boy, and Omar has always liked good boys. Ricki had wanted to put his loyalty in someone, it seems to him, and Omar has always been good at inspiring loyalty. Even now, here, him saying all of this tugs at something in Omar. It makes him want to steal from Peter Guillam, a little bit.

He bites it back and draws deep on his own cigarette, looking down at the ash as it falls into the cup.]

Y'all play some real twisted games out on your side of the pond, don't you?

Get me stoned again one day and I'll start telling you about Americans.

[He promises, trying to decide whether to light up another cigarette.]

I'm a reasonably hardened man, but some of that whole game is completely, completely fucked.

[Technical term, that.]

[He smirks slightly down at the cup.]

Y'all got yourselves stoned, man. I told you -- that ain't how Omar play it.

[He glances back up at him, raising a brow.]

Never saw the point of all them dirty words, neither. Especially not in a man with such a... versatile vocabulary.

[It is exactly how Ricki plays it, often, but he concedes the point today with a wave.]

I like to paint with every colour in the vocabulary box, and sometimes the situation just begs for a fuck.

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