Heath Robinson Redux (Night's Black Agents, Dracula Dossier)

Once upon I time I talked about Heath Robinson Assassination, using reporting on the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh as an example.

I based my discussion on a Guardian newspaper article which said:

“The operation was very complex and took place using electronic devices, and no one was present at the scene,” [Ali Shamkhani, secretary for Iran's supreme national security council] told Iranian media ...

A [Fars news agency] report said Fakhrizadeh and his wife were travelling in a bulletproof car along with three vehicles for bodyguards when gunfire hit his car. Fakhrizadeh exited the car to check the damage, the report said, speculating that he may have thought he had hit something.

“At this moment, from a Nissan car that was stopped 150 metres away from the martyr’s car, several shots were fired at the martyr from an automatic remote-controlled machine gun,” the [Fars] report said, adding that one bullet hit his back.

“Moments later, the same stopped Nissan exploded,” it said, adding that the owner of the car, which it did not identify, had left the country a month ago. It said the weapons may have been controlled by satellite.

The Iranian state-owned broadcaster Press TV cited unidentified “informed sources” as saying remnants from the attack showed Israeli arms had been used to kill Fakhrizadeh.

Turns out, some of this was a load of old hooey.

I’ve been listening to The Rest Is Classified podcast, part of the Goalhanger family of podcasts, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in spycraft. Night’s Black Agents players and Directors should binge this, but their recent MKUltra discussion will interest Delta Green folks too.

From the Classified discussion, I discovered a few interesting facts.  

Among them:

• Fakhrizadeh was not driving a bulletproof car. He was in his own car which was, in fact, the Nissan mentioned in the article. It wasn’t protected in any way; it was a bog-standard, run-of-the-mill, please-shoot-me-full-of-holes Nissan.
• Fakhrizadeh did not get out of the car. He was shot while driving, and fell out of the car, possibly trying to take cover. At that point he was seriously injured but not dead; the killing shots came directly afterward.
• The explosion that destroyed the Israeli vehicle, which was intended to destroy all the evidence, didn’t work as intended. The machine gun survived more or less intact, or at least intact enough to be identified as a Belgian FN MAG general purpose machine gun – an old warhorse. That puppy’s been around, in one form or another, since the late 1950s.
• The Heath Robinson machinery was smuggled in over a lengthy period, probably by people who didn’t know what they were carrying. Classified alleges that several people had been charged with smuggling in relation to this attack. 

Officially, nobody knows who did it, though judging by the comments made on Classified there doesn’t seem to be much doubt as to who did what to whom.

Honestly? A lot of this reminded me of the preamble in the Forsythe novel The Day of the Jackal, which describes an attempt on the life of General de Gaulle. Particularly the description of the kill point, with one car out in advance spying on approaching vehicles to see if Fakhrizadeh was coming, while the kill team lies in wait further down the road. 

The de Gaulle shooting was the Petit-Clamart attack of 22 August 1962, where the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) signaler was supposed to give the alert by waving a newspaper. At which point the gunmen further down the road were to take action. However, the whole thing went wrong when fading daylight made seeing the newspaper difficult. This delayed the shooting by a vital few seconds, allowing de Gaulle’s vehicle to slip past – though not unscathed.

It turns out, if Classified is to be believed, that the Fakhrizadeh shooting nearly came undone thanks to a similar problem, though this time it was distance, not fading light, that proved problematic. Thanks to the distance between the shooter and the kill site, the remote shooter faced a time lag of a few fractions of a second between the signal to shoot and the shot itself, which in turn affected accuracy. AI had to be used to solve the computational problem, allowing the instruction and the shot to happen simultaneously.

Still, consider: Petit-Clamart involved at least 12 people on the day, not including support staff and sympathizers, of whom 15 total were arrested. This includes the leader Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, who was the only one whose sentence of death was carried out. This was a devastating blow to the OAS, which didn't survive past 1963.

This is a significant difference from the Fakhrizadeh killing. In that attack, there were no operatives on the ground, either at the spotter car or the shooter. The whole thing was done remotely. We don't even know who was at the trigger, who the spotters were.

However, to my mind the biggest difference by far between the two assassinations was that de Gaulle was driven by a professional, Gendarme Francis Marroux, whose skills made the difference on the day. Fakhrizadeh insisted on driving himself. That may have been a fatal mistake.  

So! Some of my comments in the previous article are comprehensively disproved. Though I did rely rather too much on one source, which was my error. Turns out the source was talking out of his hat. 

Does any of this change the game advice I gave concerning Heath Robinson Assassination, Distance Shooter and Difficulty assessment? Not really. The advice stands. 

However, since we're here:

Uncover the Shooter

An important target (eg. Edom Duke) has been assassinated, by someone using a specially built, remote-targeted rifle. The target's organization is in an uproar, and the agents are brought in to find out who it was that carried out the attack.

For complete success, the agents need to discover both the organization that sponsored the attack, and the shooter. Partial success means uncovering the organization, but not the shooter. 

The assassination took place in public in a major European public place (eg. on the steps of Westminster Abbey, or in St. Mark's Square, Venice) and was witnessed by several people, including the target's bodyguards. An explosion took place seconds later which eliminated much of the evidence. 

Tradecraft indicates there are perhaps half-a-dozen freelancers, world-wide, capable of carrying out the attack, all of them Wire Rats. Assuming, of course, that the attack was carried out by a freelancer.

Military Science identifies the type of rifle used, despite the explosion. It's a Russian SVD which, in combination with the Tradecraft clue, narrows down the suspect list to two, assuming it's a freelancer. Most Wire Rats would use different tech.

Notice or Forensic Pathology indicates that the target was chemically dosed with an agent that created what amounts to a glowing bullseye, invisible to the human eye, to assist targeting. Occult knows that the substance used to create this target is an alchemical substance favored by some Russian Satanic groups. This narrows the freelancer list to one.

It was:

Option One: CIA. The killing was orchestrated by Find Forever, who mimicked the kill style of a particular Russian asset to throw shade on the Litsky Brava Russian criminal group. Find Forever is playing a Yojimbo Option; it wants the targeted side to start fighting with the Litsky Brava, at which point Find Forever will offer its services against the Russian threat.

Option Two: Alraune/Unternehmen Braun The killing was orchestrated by a German-based group, either the German vampire program or the deathless Alraune, and whoever it was used an old Rote Armee Fraktion asset to do it. The Red Army shooter has been around since the 1960s but is forever updating their methods; back in the day, its codename was Trapdoor Spider. The killing was an attempt to remove what the targeting organization sees as a nuisance. 

Option Three: Edom. The killing was orchestrated by Britain's vampire program, to take out an important Conspiracy target - though the agents may not know that the target was, secretly or otherwise, in the Conspiracy's pay. Edom hired an outsider to pull off the hit as it didn't want anything left behind that might allow the target's organization to work out who did it. The shooter is a former Turkish asset who wants enough money to retire, and who doesn't realize that Edom's bank accounts aren't as bottomless as they've been led to believe. This lack of funding may tempt the Wire Rat to betray his paymasters, at a crucial juncture.

That's it from me! Enjoy.

RPG All (NBA) - Plot Blocks & Pacing

 

Deutschland 89 Trailer via Sundance

I just finished the final episode, End of History.

My God.

OK, I've mentioned Deutschland 83 before, and recommended it. I waited till I could get hold of the blu-ray sets before seeing the rest of the series. Now I'm recommending the entire series, without caveat or cavil. It is by far the best espionage story I have ever seen, from the very first moment to the last.

But! It made me realize something very important about pacing.

See, this is a remarkably fast-paced series. It runs entirely on plot from start to finish and never wastes a shot, or a scene. This is all meat, all the time. There's never a moment when you feel bored, or think that things are going too long, or wish that the characters would just shut up and get on with business. 

Yet there's plenty of character development. You never feel as if you don't know these people, don't know what makes them tick. There's no exposition, no 'you remember that time in season one when we did the thing?' Nothing wasted. 

[There are some brilliant characters, by the way. Gary Banks? A villain's villain. Annett Schneider? Ice Queen. Nina Rudow? Stone Cold Killer. Steal these for your game. You will not regret it.]

So, what was the important thing about pacing?

Combat. Combat kills pacing.

Probably also Chases. 

See, there's combat and chases in Deutschland, but they're used sparingly. If this were, say, Justified, there'd be at least one gunfight and one chase scene per episode, probably more than one. There would be showdowns prior to those gunfights and chase scenes, moments where Our Hero is allowed to quip a bit, hogging the spotlight before the big finish.

In Deutschland, whichever series, while there are gunfights and fistfights they don't crop up once an episode, necessarily. Chase scenes too, but not every episode.

This means two things.

First: when those scenes do show up, they have impact. It's never certain who will win or who will lose. Nobody quips (praise be!). This means that, whenever they happen, you, the viewer, are on the edge of your seat.

Second, it means you, the viewer, don't waste time with unnecessary moments when Plot could be happening.

Think about it. You've probably seen any number of YouTube wafflers bibble on about Combat In D&D Sucks! This is How To Run Combat! Improve The Size Of Your Quarterstaff With These Combat Tricks! So on, and on, and on.

None of them ever ask the question, Do You Need This Combat Scene?

They all assume you need it.

Do you, though? Really? Because every combat and chase scene, however Thrilling it may seem at the time, is perhaps half an hour or more of game time that you will not get back. Combat diverts attention from plot. The crunchier the setting, the more time the combat scene will take up, which means less plot. 

This is even more the case if we're talking about a TV episode, like Deutschland, where the runtime is maybe 50 minutes. If you kill 5 or 10 minutes in combat and chases, that leaves you only 40 minutes for the rest of it. Probably less than that, when you realize that every one of those fast-paced action scenes will want a downbeat moment directly after, when the characters lick their wounds and the audience recovers from the events on screen. Do that kind of thing too often and you'll only have 30 minutes for the actual episode.

Or in your gaming session, when you have perhaps 2 hours at best, accounting for late arrivals and pizza interludes. Can you really afford to kill off even 20 minutes of that 2 hours dealing with an orc in a 10x10 room, guarding a chest?

Put it this way. Everyone remembers that moment when they faced down Dracula, or some other Big Bad that they've been chasing for however many episodes. Nobody remembers Mook #3 in that place with the thing. But Mook #3 in the place with the thing took up the same 20-40 minutes game time that the Dracula moment did. Possibly longer, depending on circumstances. 

Does that seem reasonable to you?

With that in mind, consider this Dicta:

1. Never have a meaningless combat moment if you can avoid it. All combats should be, or aspire to be, Thrilling.

2. In situations where a combat with minor foes, ie. mooks, is an option, make that combat Thrilling by introducing elements that raise the stakes. Is there a bomb that will go off if the combat doesn't end quickly? An abduction that will take place if the agents don't intervene quickly?

3. Reduce combat scenes to one per episode, or even one every other episode. 

4. Always remember, combat raises stakes. Make sure everyone understands the stakes, and that there will be real loss should the agents lose. 

5. Never let the agents feel that success is guaranteed. Loss is always possible, and there should be consequences for that loss.

6. Where there is combat, make it cinematic as possible, and as quick as possible. 

Deutschland 86

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

PS! I've been working on some DriveThru scenarios, expanding on the Many Mansions concept. I've written one so far, Your Number, Please, and am on the verge of completing a second, When Tides Are Right. Once that's done, I'll start on the third. 

Once all three are written I'll move to art & layout and then publish all three at the same time.

I'll keep you posted!

Boots - Night's Black Agents

Putin noted that Russian societal unity is critical for Russian victory in Ukraine.[2] Putin alluded to the Russian Revolution, noted that Russian society collapsed during the First World War, and urged Russians to maintain support and unity as the war continues. Putin stated that Russia "will not give up" its "own" territory in future peace negotiations — likely referring to illegally annexed territory in occupied Ukraine.[3] The Kremlin launched the Defenders of the Fatherland State Fund in April 2023 to oversee social support for veterans, elevate veterans within Russian society, and monopolize control over veterans activities in Russia. 

Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day 

Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before -- 

(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) 

There's no discharge in the war! 

Kipling, Boots.

There’s an interesting narrative percolating about Russia and Ukraine, which goes like this: Putin’s at a point where he cannot afford peace because, if there’s a ceasefire, the troops come home. With all their military skills, their anger, and their stories about life on the front.  

This is a narrative that pokes its head up every time there’s a significant military action, no matter who’s at war or what they fought for. The soldiers come home. They can’t handle peace. They don’t like the government. They know how to take direct action; direct action is all they’re fit for. 

After the Great War British misfits came home to farm chickens, because they couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office building, liked to work outdoors, and were attracted to rural life. You see this plotline pop up in Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie.  

Christie uses the war and its disruption as a background for her soft-edged detectives Tommy and Tuppence, both of whom served in the war. Sayers uses the war as a background for her detective Lord Peter, but she also uses it to good effect in her detective story The Bellona Club, where the action is set in a member's club for military men, should you wish to steal it for Bookhounds or Trail. 

Meanwhile in modern drama, Peaky Blinders makes much of Tommy Shelby’s time at the front, how it made him the criminal genius he is today.  

There was a time when the villain of choice for an American thriller was an ex-Vietnam vet looking for a little action. Whether it’s something like First Blood or Taxi Driver, where the psychological damage comes out in misanthropic physical action, or something more direct like Dead Presidents, if you went to Vietnam you were one bad day away from being Public Enemy Number One.

Dead Presidents trailer

Really, the only difference in that evolving narrative is the war, and the strength of society to deal with the consequences of that war. It probably hasn’t taken you ten seconds to think of a movie drama with broadly the same text as Dead Presidents, only this time it’s about the Iraq War.    

Even the so-called ‘good’ wars, like World War Two with its Greatest Generation, has its examples. After all it’s that same Greatest Generation that gave us Hell’s Angels, and with it any number of biker rebel narratives.  

The Wild One

Ultimately it comes down to the strength of civil society. A weak civil society can't handle returning soldiers. A strong one can. There will be unrest, some disorder, a few thrilling moments and a shaky narrative, but the society will survive. Changed, probably. Change will come whether asked for or not. There's an argument for saying that returning soldiers accelerate the process, but it is an acceleration not a causation.

Russia has particular concerns. 

The original Revolution was kicked off by troubles on the Western Front. Russia wasn't the only nation that struggled; France and England both worried that slaughter on the battlefield would cause revolution at home. In Germany the Nazis came to power, in part, on the back of this fear that revolution was in the air. Yet it was Russia that fell to revolution, though there's a case to be made that, had Germany somehow lasted longer than it did, England and France would both have endured protracted revolutionary action.

Meanwhile, in modern times, the collapse of the Soviet regime came after the destruction of the Red Army in the Afghan debacle. The Wall came down, Yeltsin went out the door, and with him went the Soviet Union.

Russia’s modern history can be summed up as ‘troops come home, disaster follows.' Which suggests a strong reason for keeping troops in the field, but the problem with that is, no army can stay in the field forever. At some point, all wars end. 

Sometimes they end with an angry army attacking the leadership. That was what scared Putin half to death when Prigozhin took his Wagner mercenaries home. Sometimes they end with reverses on the battlefield or a protracted stalemate that turns into a peace agreement because nobody can force anybody to a different conclusion. That seems to be what might happen in Ukraine. 

In-game, groups like Edom have their own issues with returning soldiers. Specifically, their Jacks of E-Squadron. 

Here we have a group of heavily armed, well-trained troops up to their eyeballs on peculiar substances who go out, do unspeakable things, and come home again. 

Intact in body, perhaps. Longer lived, perhaps; the Seward serum does strange things to a man. But intact in mind? That's debatable.

You'd want to keep an eye on people like that. 

Psych Eval

Social Worker Neela Chaudri (Edom Field Manual) has been tasked with carrying out wellness checks on former E-Squadron personnel, of which there are perhaps a dozen, all-told. Rotated out, retired, living the civilian life. 

Some of them date back to the Second World War and aren't in the best of health. Most are 1970s-80s recruits, one is a 1990s man with artificial legs. All of them are psychologically scarred by their time in the trenches. 

Edom picked Chaudri for this job because she's already got the clearances, thanks to her work with Chain Home Deep. She just doesn't know it. Edom didn't care whether or not this overloaded Chaudri or caused her any problems. From Edom's perspective, the fewer people with their eyes on Edom's business, the better, and Chaudri is already a known face.

The problem with this darn fine scheme is, just as with Chain Home Deep, nobody at Edom is paying close attention to Chaudri's reports. After all, why should they? The point was to get a report, not to read the damn thing. Let alone take action based on that report.

Pity. Because, if someone did read them, they might notice disturbing similarities between the experiences endured by some of Chain Home Deep's crew and the veterans of E-Squadron. Particularly in the dreams they experience ...

Option One: A 70's Kid: The trooper, David Allenby, served during the time of the Mole Hunt and was there at the death, when the mole was run to ground. Allenby suffered a traumatic encounter with several SBAs in the final months of the Hunt and this left him with scars both mental and physical. However, it also left him a peculiar gift: he can spot Renfields. It takes him maybe 30 seconds, and his success rate is 100%. The thing is, he's convinced there's a Renfield near him now. At all times. Who can it be?

Option Two: A 40's Veteran:  This might be Van Sloan. It's certainly someone of similar vintage, who was there during Edom's assault on Schloss Karnstein. He remembers everything. He goes back there at night, in his dreams. Something is calling him there. Something in his dreams wants to get out. This could be an entry vector to the Carmilla Sanction in the Edom Files, or a postscript dream-sequence to that operation in which one of the entities killed during the assault on the Schloss wants to come back to life and is using the Veteran's mind and body to do it.

Option Three: The 1980's: The trooper, Simon Yellern, went through any number of peculiar operations back in the day but the one that sticks in his mind is the incident in Afghanistan during the Soviet's Operation Curtain. While attempting to extract Yellern and his team were caught up in a Soviet special forces raid against the mujahideen they were working with, and those forces were very special indeed. Yellern was the only survivor from his unit. Thing is, he swears he saw one of those Soviet troopers in England. Chaudri has it down as a nightmare due to carelessness with medication, but Yellern's convinced the man he saw was real - and died during that 1980s raid. Yellern should know. Yellern killed him.

That's it for this week!

 

The Floater (NBA, Dracula Dossier)

Floater: Person used for a one-time or occasional intelligence operation. Generally a floater is a low-level person, sometimes used unwittingly. A floater might be a waiter sent to a hotel room with a bottle of champagne allegedly from the management - in order to see who is in the hotel room.

Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Polmar & Allen, Random House 1998.

Retired KGB Agent Dmitri Lobanov. Lobanov was one of the KGB’s field hands during the late 1970s and ’80s, until he was burned by a former colleague and arrested in England — for assault and grievous bodily harm, not espionage. Ten years in Long Lartin prison followed; MI5 discovered Lobanov was a spy and debriefed him while he was incarcerated. These days, he’s a plumber doing odd jobs around North London. Dracula Dossier p97

Archives/Library Establishing Shot: Endless rows of metal racks hold dusty case files (or civil archives, or Securitate surveillance reports, or dissertations on medieval Romania). Strata of labels, each one stuck over its predecessor, trace the development of the filing system, from handwritten notes to typewritten ones to bar codes. Dracula Dossier p254

A North London archive of importance to Edom, the Conspiracy or a significant third party is penetrated by a Floater - the retired KGB agent. The agents are alerted to this after the fact through security camera footage, or perhaps they were conducting surveillance of the archive only to find Lobanov already on-site. Lobanov's a face, a known quantity. That he was even seen near the archive is a problem for the higher-ups. The higher-ups hate problems. 

The question that needs answering: is Lobanov a Floater, and if so to whom does he report? Or is something else going on?

After all, there are any number of legitimate reasons why a plumber might be on-site. It might just be bad luck for Lobanov that he was called out to this particular location. Or someone may have paid Lobanov to go to the archive to see what happens next. If the agents overreact, this might tip off whoever Lobanov's employers are that there's something interesting in the archive. 

They can't afford to be too gung-ho, nor can they ignore the situation altogether. This calls for delicate handling.

Additional complication: Lobanov isn't alone. He has a youngster with him. The kid might be an apprentice. A quick background check shows that Lobanov recently took his nephew into the family business. Is this the nephew? Or did whoever sent Lobanov think he needed additional support? 

Potential Thrilling Surveillance: the agents covertly pursue Lobanov and his apprentice across North London, to job sites, pubs and finally Lobanov's main gaff in Hammersmith. If Lobanov spots the tail and is innocent, he may assume that the agents are working for some leg-breakers he has reason to know all too well; he has gambling debts. If Lobanov spots the tail and is a Floater, then he reacts badly. It's been years and years since he was in the field, and the last thing he wants is to go back to Long Lartin - or worse.  This could turn the Thrilling Surveillance into a Thrilling Chase.

Potential Thrilling Interrogation: the agents corner Lobanov and try to get him to talk. If innocent, he assumes that the agents are working with Edom and are really here about the mole hunt, despite whatever they may say about archives. He went through all that years ago. He hates going through it again. If a Floater, then Lobanov assumes the worst and goes straight to combat, if he can. He had his suspicions about this job, and now they're confirmed. He doesn't know anything useful, but he doesn't think he can convince his captors he's just a pigeon.

Potential complication: The kid. He's maybe sixteen, but he has a mouth on him like a sewer and he's a little too handy with his fists. Treat as gym rat for stat purposes. 

As an innocent, he's actually the son of an influential Russian oligarch. The oligarch remembers Lobanov from the old KGB days, back when the two of them were in the same line of work. The oligarch is sick of his no-good, layabout son drinking all the time and getting into trouble. He figured a few months working a real job with his old buddy Lobanov would straighten the little turd out. However, just because the oligarch wants his son on a diet of bread and skilly for a while doesn't mean he wants him dead or up on charges. 

As a Floater, the kid's actually a Renfield and while he still has the mouth and the gym rat stats, he's considerably more dangerous. As are the rat swarms he can call on as backup, should the need arise.

Short one this week! Enjoy!

PS - I'm headed to Toronto later this year and am putting together a list of bookshops to visit. Any shop you'd care to add to the list?