[Plot] Background Checks and Balances

[Nika Novak]

With her usual contacts already tapped for information on Jezabelle, Nika focuses her attention on digging into Basil's background. Obviously she's not going to find anything linking him to House Sablinova but maybe it'll turn up something she'd be able to use. The British uppercrust is bound to have some connections. Drake she's fairly certain isn't going to yield much, even if the dragon-boy himself might be dumb enough to make something stick.

Nika throws her head back and lets out a groan. She doesn't want to throw anybody under the bus here, but she has to figure out something. As she mulls over what to do she sends out a couple careful feelers regarding Prince Alex, leaning into the name Katarina gave her. The last thing she needs is Prince Alex becoming aware of her digging around. This intrigue stuff is not her area of expertise at all, but at least travel records she can dig up and maybe she'll find something that she can take to Katarina so they can combine their two areas of expertise on this. She straightens her back a little with renewed vigor. At least her plan worked a little bit. She's back to working at protecting Katarina, not quite back to just the two of them yet but this wasn't a complete failure.

She absentmindedly compiles dossiers for Drake and Jezabelle. A radical transgender woman with an arrest record. How in the world did Katarina fall for her anyway. At least it's a believable canvas on which to paint a worse picture. What she needs is a tie to Symkaria somewhere in the Benson family.

What a mess. This could have been so neat and tidy but Prince Alex has to barrel through with zero subtlety or intrigue. That's supposed to be his job. All the more reason to bring him down in all of this...

[Basil Benson]

It was incredibly difficult to make a connection between the Benson family as individuals and Symkaria,Transia, or Latveria. It seemed like The Benson Financial Group had investments just about everywhere, but that was about as helpful as 'Microsoft throws money at dumb projects sometimes'.

She did learn they primarily dealt in real estate. Having been an investor since the 1980s, his father George had been in possession of an obscene amount of land in London before the property boom. And when that happened, what was once a lucrative business that allowed his wife to stay at home and 'play' at being a socialite ballooned into a billion pound money making machine over the last several decades.

Jessica Benson herself went from playing socialite to being one. She used all that money to buy herself the finest of things, and buy her way into the fanciest of places. While there weren't a lot of recent photos of her, there we loads of them in her younger years seemingly before Basil, though some after when he was very little. None of them featured George, though being trained to look for these things Nika would notice a fashionable gent in shades was frequently with her. A slim man with chestnut hair, a strong jawline and a permanent smirk, he cut a figure not that unlike the grown Basil's own.

As for George himself... it seemed the Benson patriarch preferred to stay out of the limelight. No photos could be found of him, not even on the company website.

On the topic of his home purchase, Nika would find that he did indeed buy a house. It did not appear to be under a loan and was paid for outright from funds in a personal account. The home had been listed on a local real estate group's website and was not purchased from George Benson's company. Apparently, the previous residents had been an elderly couple, then an elderly person, and eventually time caught up with them and the family sold it simply because they didn't want to live in Maldon.

Once Basil acquired the home, he then turned around and immediately sold it to one Colette Astrid Madeleine Rosenhof. For 20£. Anyone who knew Basil would be right on the nose to presume the 20 quid came out of his own wallet.

[Nika Novak]

"<Now that's what I call sufficiently sketchy...>" Nika mutters to herself as she compiles all the pertinent information. Printing out a couple of photos she scribbles down some notes for herself.

George Benson - excessively private? recluse?
Basil Benson - bastard son? getting into Mr. Benson's good graces??? motivation?
no immediate connection to Symkaria, real estate?

check into property sales, tax, etc? probably nothing

unknown man, Jessica Benson connection?
need a name

She taps her pen on her notes and shifts her focus to Jessica. High society is more Katarina's playing field but a public face means info. Couple of calls around to private security companies and the likes she might be able to get some guest-lists, cross-reference some things. Plenty of work but promising.

recently bought house for girlfriend
check into bank accounts?

she adds to her notes. There's certainly something here and from the right angle it could look the way she needs it to. Sketchy but no outright proof of anything. No pictures being available of the head of the family certainly helps. Maybe something on the Sablinova side of things would work. She starts digging into flight records and travel itineraries for real now, look into two things at once. George Benson as well as Sablinovan Nobles moving about must leave some traces...

[Basil Benson]

she adds to her notes. There's certainly something here and from the right angle it could look the way she needs it to. Sketchy but no outright proof of anything. No pictures being available of the head of the family certainly helps. Maybe something on the Sablinova side of things would work. She starts digging into flight records and travel itineraries for real now, look into two things at once. George Benson as well as Sablinovan Nobles moving about must leave some traces...

Unfortunately, it seemed George Benson never left the country leaving the possibility of him being some sort of Howard Hughes recluse on the table. If he did have any business in the countries perceived as potentially sketchy or if he had any contact with the Sablinovas, it would have to have been through a third party. None of the people on payroll seemed to have traveled to the countries in question either, though that didn't rule out the possibility of a meet up between an employee of Benson Financial group and a Sablinova in another country, though she'd need to see if any of the two groups had been in the same country at the same time. She'd have to store this information for later to check it against what she found on the Sablinovas.

She taps her pen on her notes and shifts her focus to Jessica. High society is more Katarina's playing field but a public face means info. Couple of calls around to private security companies and the likes she might be able to get some guest-lists, cross-reference some things. Plenty of work but promising.

Guest lists from recent parties and events didn't seem to pull up any +1's for Jessica, and Nika would be forced to go back to digging through online photos but after extensive digging, she was eventually capable of finding a name on the man.

In some weird, kinda pathetic forum that seemed to discuss the personal lives of the obscure British aristocracy, someone posted a news paper clipping from a gossip column of what appeared to be a very young Jessica Benson and the chestnut haired man, though in this photo Jessica was not name dropped. Instead, the man was.

The caption under the picture read: Familial black sheep Edmond Spencer, exiting Tahiti nightclub.

The poster themselves simply commented 'Told you. Whatever was going on there had been going on for years.

Her husband probably had him bumped off or something.'


The topic of the thread was "What ever happened to Edmond Spencer?"

[Nika Novak]

"<Now that is almost certainly not kosher...>" she mumbles. It's ammunition, of a sort. For a battlefield that feels unsteady underneath her feet. How do people like Alex and Jessica Benson and Katarina navigate this all the time? None of this is certain, flimsy lies t best. Yet here she is, digging further and she feels awful... But it'll get better. Once Katarina realizes that things are better the way they were. She'll deal with digging in the dirt if it means she can keep Symkaria's Golden Girl untarnished...

[Narrator]

Meanwhile, Nika's request to look into the Sablinova's movements had come back.

Prince Alex's public movements were, well, quite public -- Nika would shudder to be his bodyguard. On his way to London alone, he had spent some time in Monte Carlo, some time at Lake Como, some time at Dubrovnik -- rich people destinations, each and every one. He certainly hadn't been in a hurry to get to London, spending two weeks in Monaco and Italy, and a full month in Croatia, according to tracking his private plane.

His mother had not left the country in the past three months, though plenty of news stories reported on the various comings and goings of nobility. Lady Sablinova had apparently been on a tour of the countryside, slowly circumnavigating her way around Symkaria on some sort of idle holiday.

[Nika Novak]

Nika pulls up dates for all the various stops of Prince Alex to try and see if she can pin-point when he planned his trip to London or if he rebooked any flights. If he didn't then he possibly knew before he even left on his leisure tour. As she does she pulls out her phone and calls through to the Symkarian Royal Guard to get connected over to Brigadier Monomakh.

[Narrator]

There was little call for booking flights when you had your own private plane, and Prince Alex made a habit of filing his flight plans just before he left. The closest she could find to an irregularity was a flight plan schedule and scrubbed for Duborvnik to Lake Como -- apparently he had planned to leave Croatia two weeks before he eventually did.


It would take a while for even Nika to get through to a relatively remote outpost of the Symkarian Special Forces, but eventually, she was patched through on a secure channel.

<"This had better be good, Lieutenant.">

[Nika Novak]

"<I've been told to ask about 'Grand Dawn'.>"

[Narrator]

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and some muffled voices in the background. When the Brig came on a moment later, he was significantly more respectful.

<"Go ahead, Lieutenant, this is a secure line.">

[Nika Novak]

"<Brigadier.>" she responds respectfully. "<Her Royal Highness Princess Karkov asked me to look into some things. It appears Prince Alex of House Sablinova made some very serious allusions over dinner. I am trying to trace the flow of information, especially regarding how he knew the Crown-Princess' location to begin with.>"

[Narrator]

<"The Crown Princess' location was a classified matter. It was not inherently kept secret from someone at Prince Alex's level, but it only would have been given out in a need-to-know situation. Is the Princess alright?">

[Nika Novak]

"<Yes and if I'm to make sure it stays that way I need to get to the bottom of this. Who would have told House Sablinova?>"

[Narrator]

<" I do not have a file marked 'indiscreet conversations' sitting next to my phone, Lieutenant.">

<"I shall tap my internal network and call in any of House Karkov's favors that I need to. Do you have a location where I will be able to reach you?">

[Nika Novak]

"<Of course. I much appreciate it. This phone should be as secure as a cell-phone gets. Oh and... check if the name 'Benson' has come up anywhere.>"

[Narrator]

<"No, a physical location. Once the network starts poking around, I can not guarantee that any line will be secure.">

[Nika Novak]

"<London, Piccadilly Square then.>"

[Narrator]

There was another pause on the line.

<"I understand. Gods will be with you -- for the Glory of Symkaria.">

[Nika Novak]

"<For the Glory of Symkaria.>" she says almost automatically and Nika can only wonder what on earth she just stepped into here.

[Drake Martin]

Information on Drake had taken longer for her Genoshan contact to gather, but it finally came through. It took digging but apparently the boy had played a little too fast and loose with restricted airspace and been detained for a few days by the Genoshan military. At least that was the story. The details are suspiciously redacted for something quite that simple. Perhaps he stumbled on a state secret, or perhaps he was working for someone and they couldn't prove anything. Or maybe he was recruited for something. He could be a Genoshan spy for all she knew, his flamboyant attitude a front.