Meeting Lilah Morgan (open to freelilah)

[a_sloane]

There were worse ways to pass one's time than to open up business negotations with a woman of mystery. Sloane had dealings with Wolfram and Hart before, mostly concerned with the Credit Dauphine cover for SD-6, but he himself, as a private person, had never been a client. Huge and ruthless organisations he could not control were not exactly trustworthy.

On the other hand, any lawyer serving for Wolfram and Hart would know their business, or would be dead. Lilah Morgan appeared to be very much alive, and rather intriguingly not listed as a lawyer acting in any current case, something which he had checked out, using the APO access to the relevant databases without hesitation. She had been head of the Los Angeles special projects department, as she had mentioned, but no activity was listed since. All of which opened up a can of interesting possibilities.

Arvin Sloane had no intention of telling a stranger just what he had in mind, but he decided some preliminary dealings, perhaps involving some of his less traceable bank accounts from his time with OmniFam, would be a good way to find out whether Lilah Morgan was the right person for what he privately termed "the project".

His pardon agreement banned him from any Rambaldi research, unless, he thought cynically, said research would be to the government's advantage. Well, there were other ways. Nadia's current state was due to a Rambaldi formula Elena had injected her with. It stood to reason that somewhere, in some manuscript by the Master which Sloane had somehow not managed to get hold on so far, there might be a clue for a cure. Of course, he had tapped all resources known to him by now. Except one. Wolfram and Hart was rumoured to have the greatest collection of manuscripts and artifacts known to man. And he needed something - or someone - to open that collection to him.

If Lilah Morgan turned out to be the wrong person, well. Then he would still have spent some hopefully agreeable hours dining at Orris with what a vague memory told him was an attractive brunette, and what her comments so far had shown to be an intelligent woman.

There were, indeed, worse ways to spend one's time.

Comments

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

"Someone else's lifetime, I hope," he says crisply, and hands her a paper with a new numbers and names. All written by your standard computer and printed out by your standard printer. "Yours should excel in length."

The waiter arrives with some hors d'oeuvres; after he leaves again, Sloane continues:

"There are several European accounts here I want to be closed, with their contents transferred to new accounts, in a way that even in the event of my execution would not allow the government to touch them, yet keeps them within the United States. Now I realize that it might be a somewhat mundane task for a woman of your abilities, but still, mundane things make excellent building stones, wouldn't you agree?"

He leans back.

"Besides. There is one account here I do wish to be traced to someone."

With the exception of the very few people he cares about, who are allowed to do anything to him, Sloane is not a forgiving person. He would have killed Howard Dean in any event, though at a time of his own choosing if events had not played out otherwise. This left him with another sadly anonymous enemy whose identity he had yet to discover, and Dean's assistant, the elusive Peyton. Who as it turns out has some relations in Texas, named Burkle; according to her file, she visited her aunt, uncle and cousin quite often. Not that Sloane has anything against the Burkles, but then, Peyton presumably doesn't have anything against Nadia, either.

"As you say, patriots can be obnoxious. Especially Texans."

Texans important from the East Coast, but his being less than impressed by the current administration was neither here nor there.

"Though it's quite possible in these times, wouldn't you agree, that all that artless Texan patriotism hides who knows what business connnections to foreign sources."

Asking Lilah Morgan to frame the Burkles could of course backfire, if she was a plant, but their actual connection to Peyton gave him enough leaveway to justify this. Jack wasn't naive. He would see this as a possible weapon to lure a crucial Prophet Five operative out of the woodworks and actually greenlight it.

If Lilah wasn't a plant, well, then it could be more.

[freelilah.livejournal.com]

Making the European accounts untraceable should be a snap. Ilona in the Rome office still owes Lilah a favor or three.

Involving Burkles from Texas could be trickier. Of course, these may turn out to have nothing to do with the Burkle she is familiar with -- she'll have to check that out first -- but if they do, there could be a conflict. It's not as though Lilah cares about Fred's family at all, but Wesley is still her best contact at the Los Angeles office. She has spent more than a little time contemplating exactly what she would have to do in order to alienate him forever; she's pretty sure that messing with Fred's Norman Rockwell relations would figure high on the list.

Of course, if she could pull this off without having her name attached to it, you're talking win-win. She indulges, for a moment, the idea that Wesley might even come to her for advice on the problem. Honestly, as though she cares about that.

She wants to know exactly what Sloane wants done with the frame-up, but she thinks he might prefer to explain in his own time. Too many questions might make her potential conflict more obvious.

Instead she responds to his comment, though she deliberately misinterprets it a bit. "I'd like to think so. I'm much more comfortable in a world of realpolitik than one run by the real naive patriots of the word." Here she's telling more or less the truth. If the current wars are really being run by oil interests, her only real regret is that she's not seeing any of the money.

"Call it a failure of imagination on my part, Mr. Sloane, but it's the people who really believe the rhetoric they spout who worry me."

Again, she's skating dangerously close to the truth, but she's curious how Sloane will react. She grew up surrounded by Cold Warriors, and, though she guesses that Sloane was born a decade after her own father, there's something about him that reminds her of the men who used to come and go late at night from the family house in Georgetown. She can't say why she feels this, and in a moment she feels silly. He's just a banker, a money man, who got the government on his back because he doesn't like to pay his taxes the conventional way. Anything else they say about him is just so much smoke and slander. Right?

[a-sloane.livejournal.com]

Sloane takes the fact she voices no objection to mean she'll do it, or at least pretend to; and so he consider the matter settled for now, and replies to her statement during which he consumed the hors d' oeuvres.

"I dare say you're right, Ms Morgan. There is nothing more dangerous than a man of faith, acting on his convictions."

Which is a bit of a self-advertisement, but then again, why not? She appears to be fishing; let's see how she handles some bait, Sloane thinks.

"Except, perhaps, one who finds his old convictions less than satisfying. A dear friend and I used to joke that we shared an unsentimental patriotism and devotion to our wives, back in the day, and yet we came to... but you do not want to hear an old man's reflections. They're worse than overblown rethoric. Do you, Ms Morgan?"

She has eaten her hors d'oeuvre as well, without signs of either pleasure or displeasure, and the waiter, clearing the table, gives Sloane a bit of a concerned look. He's the chef's son, and has some professional pride. Sloane raises an eyebrow, and the waiter dissappears again.