Soldiers [Detective Conan] [Crow series 1/2]

you're in

29 July, 2010

Suffolk, England, UK

Given the choice between landing at RAF Lakenheath or Ramstein AB, it's not even a damn toss-up.

(Coming from Kabul, one of those options takes an hour less, is a more comfortable drive to the next civilian airport, and involves a cosy nonstop flight from Frankfurt to JFK International.
The other option comes attached with a disgustingly luxurious London hotel booked by an overbearing MI6 agent parent.)

Shuu'ichi* Akai was not given a choice.

(* - usually transcribed as Shuichi,
with the characters 秀一 in Japanese.)

So much for the chances being 50/50.

At least the debriefing pack that the USAF Colonel handed him while dropping him off in Cambridge included a wad of hard cash (in addition to a Platinum AmEx card, a new internationally contracted smartphone, and a goddamn iPad, jesusfuckingchrist they really went all out) and orders to report to FBI HQ in New York ASAP.

So Shuichi spent the morning washing up at a local gym (finally got to properly shave stubble off, and also properly condition his hair again), hitting up an Oxfam for clean clothes (no time for a laundromat, and the only dark clothes available in his size were a black t-shirt with a Japanese cartoon on it and faded grey jeans), booking himself the next-best flight to America on some Costa Coffee wifi (with a decent croissant and mid-tier coffee), and finally calling himself a cab to London (with his extremely worn military duffel bag on the backseat next to him).

There's no point in hiding from MI6, at least not when you're in the Queen's own country.

The least Shuichi can do is meet her on his own terms.

(The secret reason for Shuichi buying some fresh clothes: Mum will go ballistic if she finds that he's been cycling through the same handful of outfits for the past few months. It wouldn't be hard to figure out, either: the industrial-grade washing machines at the various barracks he worked at are brutal to everything that's not fatigues.)

Besides, there's a relief in not being surrounded by people for once.

Shuichi doesn't have a problem with crowds or even public transport by any means. But after the last weeks (hell, months**), he's happy not to have to scan the faces of nearby civilians while wondering which will have to be peeled from the baked asphalt within the next hour. It's nice to breathe a little more freely, even if the taxi smells of stale smoke.

(** - and hell months, no comma)

(Despite his frequent assignments in hot warzones, Shuichi is not a soldier.
He's just a special agent who's become very good at soldiering on.)

Anyway, the motorway isn't so packed on a Thursday. The taxi driver (c. 178 cm, light-skinned second-generation British-Arab, late 50s, brown eyes, pockmarked scars on clean-shaven face, passed the background-check) is friendly enough without being overbearing. The radio is on, but turned low: BBC Radio 3. A pine-shaped hanger that's lost all scent dangles off of the rearview mirror next to an oversize nazar amulet.

(These teardrop-shaped ornaments of blue glass are very common across Western and Central Asia, especially but not exclusively in Muslim societies. Concentric black, light blue, white, and dark blue circles form an abstract sort of eye shape. The intention of these charms is to ward off the evil eye. 'Nazar' literally means 'sight' or 'surveillance'.)