23, Assessment

“I scurried upside down along the power lines for two and a half hours without falling as that blizzard beat the crap out of me.  By the time I got to the transfer station where my hideout bunker was, I couldn’t feel any part of my body.”  The apprentice thief known as Anastasia tightened her abs as she held herself flat against the ceiling nine feet up.  She moved slowly and methodically, half like a spider, half like a sloth, holding her weight up by impossibly strong finger grips clinging to power outlets or light fixtures.  She spoke clearly, not out of breath or showing any signs of strain.  “I was so cold that I honestly considered holding a pose with a happy face and just let myself freeze to death.  Some poor soul would have to find my frozen body giving two thumbs up and smiling, hard as an ice cube.”

“I like your humor, lady.  Now, let’s up the ante, shall we?”  Master Thief Owens hit a switch and the lights went out.  “I just turned on the audio sensors.  Top of the line.  They activate in ten seconds.  Get the thumb drive now!”

“Piece of cake,” Anastasia said matter of factly.  “And also, most computers are wireless now, Owens, so thumb drives are a thing of the past.  See you shortly!”

With that, Anastasia performed a masterful primate display of climbing.  She moved with grace and efficiency in the dark, as if it were a peaceful sunny day.  The room was dead silent.  Owens could stand razor still for a week at a time without moving if needed, so he wouldn’t be the one to set off the sensors.  

When Anastasia reached the corner of the room, she pulled both of her feet off of their holds and dropped them slowly towards a desk.  She held on to some lighting fixtures and remarkably, they didn’t come crashing down from her body weight.  On the contrary, they didn’t look like there was any strain on them at all.  She gingerly used her toes like a monkey to pick up a thumb drive that was on top of a desk, as silently as deep space itself.  She pulled her body back up to the ceiling and within a few minutes, she’d done her upside-down spider crawl back to the starting line.

Anastasia broke the silence.  “Here you go.”

“Nice save on the center light piece there.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t necessarily predict that specific one, but construction these days is so cheaply done and shitty that you never know.”  She lifted her foot up to her hand and dropped the thumb drive into her palm.  Even in the dark, Anastasia could see as clearly as day.  “This place is amazing, by the way.”

“Yeah, thanks!”  Owens clicked a button and the lights came back on.  “I was recruited at eighteen, and that first year was intense.  It’s not scary or anything, but it was a ton of work.  I got through it and wanted to explore this whole D.C. area just to take a few months to not think for awhile.  I was tailing some drug dealers when I found this place.  I fell in love immediately.”

“It’s cool now, but I can see that it was in rough shape once.”

“Oh yeah,” Owens laughed.  “The drug dealers were using the room down there as their main hangout room.  I started fucking with them to make them think the place was haunted.”

Anastasia didn’t smile.  She listened to this information as if she were a pilot listening to a weather report.  This was important but not exciting.  “I’m guessing we’re talking about the standards here, right?  Moving objects, stealing money out of wallets and putting it back in days later, just sticking to the classics?”

“I did it all.  My masterpiece was that I rearranged their living space in less than two minutes.  They were watching sports and the people in the room all migrated to that kitchen area over there.  I swapped the couches and tv from one side of the room to the opposite side.  When the thugs came back into the room, they freaked out and ran hard.”

“Fucking genius.”

“One thug came back a few hours later.  I’d already cleared the building of their stuff and killed the electricity so it was silent and empty.  I can’t verify this, but I’m pretty sure he peed himself.  I’ve been training here ever since.”

Anastasia nodded, as if she knew that particular story was over.  “Do you train a lot?”

Owens shrugged.  “No, not usually.  If I have a big job to do where I know the details of the score, I train like hell.  I can’t tell you how many nights I spent in this place trying to figure out how to steal The Rising Sun.  Months, night in and night out!  But you got it and I didn’t.  That’s something, Ana.”

It was the first time Owens had called her by a nickname.  She didn’t mind it.  “You’re gonna be pissed when I tell you that it took me less than a week to do it all.  From planning to execution.  The hardest part was getting a replica made that was as heavy as that gun.  That thing is crazy heavy!”  

“It’s easily the dumbest thing ever made if you’re being pragmatic, but if you’re a Saudi Prince who’s had your butt wiped your whole life by another human?  I’m sure he loves it.  To me, that’s the funniest thing in the world.”

Anastasia’s eyes lit up.  “I know, right?!  What a dumb thing to own, and then what an even dumber thing to put security measures up all over to protect it.  The replica will probably sit there for fifty years or more before anyone even checks on it.”  She got a big grin on her face.  “The cats and dogs of San Antonio will be spayed and neutered for years and years to come because of that score.”  

Owens nodded in approval.  “I like your style, but don’t get cocky.”

“Well you’re supposed to be assessing my abilities, for Pete’s sake!  What am I supposed to do?  Hide what I can do from you?”  Anastasia used words that communicated directly but she was calm and collected as she spoke with confidence.  “I’m not cocky.  I’m good.  If I get caught, it won’t be because I’m greedy.  I’ll make new mistakes, not the same old ones, thank you.”

A decade in, Owens had become an accomplished agent.  His natural abilities had been refined into a set of skills that made him the most formidable thief in the world.  Here he was, face to face with the only other human that was naturally better than him.  He hated it, but loved it too.  Owens was a team player, and the better he could make his apprentice, the better the world would be.

“Ana, it’s time.”  Owens pulled up a chair and offered it as he sat down in another one.  “You obviously know about what we call The Great Round Up.  But you don’t know the whole story.  When you’re done with basic agent training this time next year, you’ll be assigned with me in Denmark or Russia.  You’ll like my boss, Von Stryker.”  He shook his head.  “Just don’t let that bitch drink gin.  If she does, either get out of there or just resolve yourself that you’re going to party all night, cuz that woman goes hard.”

“You sat me down to tell me about your alcoholic boss?”

“No, sorry, I’m A.D.D.  She’s not an alcoholic, but when she drinks, the Russians can’t keep up.”  He paused and thought about it.  “On second thought, maybe she is.  Anyways,” Owens sighed, “The Great Round Up was a six month period where world authorities caught a dozen master thieves.”

“Yeah, the Chinese trio, the South African guy, the Kentucky girls, I don’t remember all of them but I’ve heard about it.  So what?”  

“What you don’t know is, they were all betrayed by the same buyer.”

Anastasia crinkled her brow.  “Trust is a bitch, isn’t it.”

“You got that right.”

“Just so you know, I’m taking this job so I can learn how to disappear from the grid.”

“That’s why I took the job here too.”  Owens pulled a small ziplock bag out of his jacket pocket and pulled out some deer jerky.  He handed it to Anastasia without a word.  She took a nibble as if eating wild game jerky in a thief training facility built into an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Washington D.C. was a normal everyday occurrence.  

“Yum,” Anastasia nodded in approval.

Meat made Owens smile.  “For me, I like to crush a mission, then I bounce for a few months.  I fish, I recharge my soul and I resurface.  You’ve already found what makes you tick.  You’ll figure out what you need to recharge soon enough.”

“I love beaches,” Anastasia said through a mouth full of jerky.

“Who doesn’t!  But you’ll see things with this job and it’ll break your heart what people do to each other.  You’ll need more than a beach to recharge.”  Owens shrugged an pulled out some more dried meat.  “You’ll recharge, you’ll be ready, and you’ll rock.  Then you’ll need to go back off grid for awhile.”

“Rinse, lather, repeat, huh?”  Anastasia took another piece of jerky with a nod and ripped off a chunk.

“You’ll swear you’re done forever, and a week later you’re so bored you can hardly see straight.  Then you’ll hear about some bad guy somewhere doing some sort of bad shit and you’ll get all fired up again.  It’s a fun life, actually.”

“You really are A.D.D.,” Anastasia said.

“Guilty as charged.  So what were we talking about again?”

“The Great Round Up.”

“Oh yeah!”  Owens face lit up.  “They were all betrayed by a Russian billionaire who was laundering money from an illegal gambling ring.  The guy got caught and made a plea bargain with Interpol.  He’d help them catch a few criminals and they’d make his sentence light.”

“That’s great jerky, just so you know.”

“Made it myself.”  Owens handed the last of the bag to Anastasia and continued.  “His name is Vleg, which if you ask me, has to be the dumbest fucking Russian name, ever.  He hired thieves to complete a series of heists that were set ups.  We’ll go over each one individually in the coming years, but you need to know, every time someone got caught, it was because of ego.  Every time.”

“I’m not dumb.”

“I’m not calling you dumb.  I’m calling you uninformed.  So I’ll inform you, and then you won’t get caught with the same tricks.”

“I’ll never get caught,” Anastasia said defiantly.  “I’ve gotten out of so many situations that you can’t even imagine.”

“Well,” Owens shrugged, “you WILL get caught.  We all do.  It’s how you handle it and how you get out of it that matters.”

Anastasia considered this.  “Have you ever broken out of jail?”

“Broken out of jail, no.  Broken into jail, yes, I’ve broken into fifteen or so prisons so far.  But I did get caught, once.”  Owens crinkled his brow.  “It was my own fault, even though I was trying to bail out a friend of mine.  You’ll meet Murdock, and you’ll grow to love and hate him all the same.”  Owens shook his head.  “He’d put vasoline all over a hotel floor in hopes of having a very wild foursome with some Japanese fashion models who were high on cocaine.  I had planned on using that hotel room as my escape window, and when I came running in, I slipped and pulled my hamstring.  We got caught, it sucked, our friend McVandalay busted us out, and I’ve made it a personal policy to avoid being around Murdock while on missions for reasons which you now understand.”

“This Murdock fellow sounds like a real peach.”

“He’s fun to be around, but when you’re on a live mission, you have no idea.”

The two thieves were done eating jerky and sat in silence for half a minute.  Anastasia broke the silence.  “So now what?”

“Now, you get a good night’s rest and report for day one of your recruit training tomorrow.  In a year they’ll ship you off to meet up directly with us.  That’s when the fun really begins.”

“What are you up to?”

Owens grinned.  “I’m gonna go meet up with a few other agents in Denmark.  We’ve got our eyes on a pharmaceutical enterprise that is as crooked as the day is long.”

Anastasia laughed.  “Aren’t they all crooked?”

“Well yeah, sure, but until the general public takes their health seriously, they won’t demand change at a political or judicial level.  So until then, we play the game by the rules until we’re up against enemies that don’t follow rules.”

“Fair enough.”  The two agents talked as if they were discussing strategies for a game of billiards.

“The brass won’t let you know any news from the outside world until your agent training is done, but I’ll be sure to get you occasional private messages so you know how things are going.”  Owens took a moment, collected himself, then spoke from the heart.  “Anastasia, you are the most talented thief I’ve ever met.  I’m rooting for you, I can’t wait to work with you, I’m excited for you and I hope to help make you the best ever.”  

The words had gravity, and Anastasia felt the weight.  “Thank you, Owens,” she humbly replied.

“Ok then.”  Owens demeanor changed back to chipper.  “I’m out.  Work hard and I look forward to saving the world with you when you’re good with a gun.”  He got up and started walking away.

“Yeah, like I’m not already,” she muttered under her breath with a grin.

In the distance, a team of highly trained good people scrambled in preparation to receive a very talented recruit and turn her into the greatest Master Thief the world had ever seen.