Have had some interesting conversations with Nate Prichert since I joined up with this band of Scions. He expressed some scepticism at my appearance, even after showing him my INTERPOL badge and Garda badge, commenting how my hairstyle didn't look Garda regulation to him.
I explained to the good Deputy (who is himself still uniform patrolman), I just made the rank of Investigator in 2008, and was posted to INTERPOL later that same year. I'm a plainclothes detective for the Gardai, which sometimes necessitates my going under cover.
I can't do that convincingly if I keep my hair cropped to regulation length. "Think of me like an Irish Sonny Crocket", I said; This Nate understood, and he nodded in acknowledgment. Though I suppose in style of dress I take more after Tubbs than Crocket. Although my bulletproof vest does read GARDA, that's usually worn under a shirt and not readily visible. Unfortunately THAT vest now has some .223 caliber sized holes in it now. I'll have to make due with the American tactical vests we recovered as a replacement for now.
On any given day I wear dark dress pants and a casual dark men's jacket...it's sort of like an American sport coat, I guess, only way more Euro-trash ;-) The sort of thing you wear to a Discotheque in Dublin (or Lyon). Underneath, I wear either a collared shirt (usually white or grey or pale lime green) with no tie or else any number of t-shirts, many with patriotic Irish imagery. My station chief did once chew me out for purchasing shirts off the Sinn Fein website using my work computer, since it provoked unwelcome inquiries from M.I.6 and G2...as I knew it would, actually. That chief was a right eejit, and I knew how to push his buttons. Stupid feckin' culchie from County Kerry. He didn't last long, thankfully, and was replaced with a better man.
Anyway, rounding out my attire, I wear comfortable black dress shoes...the kind worn by waiters and other working people on their feet all day. I also am never without my wireframe glasses. I had Lasik done a number of years ago and no longer require corrective lenses...but these are no ordinary glasses. They're ostensibly prescription sunglasses...and they are of the "transitions" variety, that is, grow darker the brighter it is outside, and are completely transparent/clear after dark. They are the means by which Ogma has given me to be able to use an ability known as "night eyes", which should prove to be a tactical advantage in the upcoming assault.
That and having grown up always wearing glasses, I just find them fashionable and don't care to part with that look. Vanity on my part? Perhaps. But others seem to like it as well. Fits in with my bookish, "academic" persona, I'm told.
The men's jacket moreover helps me with the concealment of my Garda-issue Sig Sauer P226 that I wear in an Inside-the-waistband (IWB) concealment holster on my right hip. I also conceal my police baton behind my left hip. I've been known to enter rooms on missions with the baton in my left hand and the pistol in my right. It's how I should have been in that hotel room back in Fresno. It's a bit atypical for a plainclothes investigator to carry a riot stick more commonly worn by uniformed patrol officers, but it's also atypical for such a riot stick to transform itself into a massive, mythic spear once wielded by the mightiest hero of Ulster in the distant past, too. I tell my fellow Gardai it's a symbol of my moral authority as an officer of the law. Not like I can tell them the truth about what it's really for and what it really does, at least not to them. Not on my day job.
I held back from wielding my spear against the invading cultists...I didn't want any escaping and tipping our hand, and I didn't feel them worthy of facing Gae Bolga. Plus being shot at tends to make you react wanting to return fire instead of lunge at your attacker with a spear.
I'm sometimes amused at the undeserved reverence and deference some Americans show towards my INTERPOL badge. I'm not above taking advantage of their ignorance about what INTERPOL actually does. I do think Nate should widen his ambitions and go ahead and take the time to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Credentials like that could really help us down the road. Sure, it's many months for the application process and many weeks of training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, but I think it would be worth it for Nate to go through with it.
Nate needs to understand these human offices we hold are simply a means to a greater end. His joining the FBI would be instrumentally useful to us, besides being a logical career move. Nate does sometimes talk about having long wanted to be part of the US Marshall's service. While FBI would be better, I do encourage this track as well. A US Marshall in our band would be a good deal more useful than a local lawman well outside his jurisdiction most of the time. While my credentials are truly international, they don't carry much weight in the USA unless I can tie my investigation to international cartels, conspiracies, terrorist links, etc. Something INTERPOL has a real stake in. I feel awkward walking into American jails to question suspects; Thankfully Nate is pretty brazen and can act like he belongs in a place, even if he doesn't. Do have to admire the man's confidence, I'll give him that much.
Well, tis getting late, I'd best be signing off for now.
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