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Background
Garrett Darcy Haswell was born on April 4th, 1924 in Manhatten, New York, to mother Herta (nee Fuchs) and father George, a civil engineer. Garrett had two younger sisters, Lisa, 2 years his junior, and Wilma, 7 years his junior. Garrett's mother was a recent immigrant, with the rest of her family, from eastern Germany, who George had met in Pennsylvania (where that side of the family had put down roots) several years prior to Garrett being born. Garrett's childhood was defined by interacting with those two very different worlds, often being spoken to in German while his mother was at home and father was at work, and visiting his mother's side of the family in rural PA as much as visiting his father's. Garrett grew up fluent with both German and English, familiar with German culture. The family moved to Manhattan shortly after Lisa was born, and Haswell considers New York City his hometown, for the most part. He had a somewhat normal childhood for a middle-upper class child, going to public school growing up in the depression, insulated from at least some of the poverty on his father's side of the family, exposed to its glaring realities with his mother's rural family. He learned to be urbane in New York, and to hunt in Pennsylvania, and was an apt cheerleader in high school.
When Gary happened to turn 18, it was 1942, and there just so happened to be a war on. Volunteering for the Army wasn't totally due to rampant patriotism, for Gary (though he certainly wanted to see Germany and Japan defeated like any other red-blooded American), but in part due to the stigma an able-bodied adult would have /not/ joining the damn Army. And so, a month or so after his 18th birthday, off he went to a recruit depot to learn soldering.
During basic training the government noticed two things about Garrett that stood out. One) He was already a fine shot with a rifle (thanks to a tradition of hunting every year), and that, with a modicum of effort he could speak flawless, accentless German. That and above averages scores at basic training earned the volunteer an assignment to the SSR, and certainly more interesting, if more dangerous work. Not exactly a spy so much as a saboteur (as much difference as there might be from someone deep cover for months, and someone slipping in to explode something), Garrett spent his career during the war in between slipping behind enemy lines with a team to locate information on Hydra assets (and broadly, Nazi secrets, when they came up), and participating in raids /against/ Hydra assets (the ones that might be too small for the Howling Commandos). Like with many other soldiers, the war was a formative experience for young Gary. And while other soldiers went home from war, leaving it as an important footnote, the war was one point in a progressive timeline for Haswell. With VE and VJ days, the war ended, and Gary… didn't go back home. After all, a man who spoke German with nary an accent and intelligence experience would be rather useful to the U.S. occupying force in Germany.
With SSR adjusting to different kinds of operations, and the shifting of American intelligence needs to combat the growing spectre of communism, Haswell was pulled out of the SSR, and shuffled off into the Army's new Strategic Services Unit. The excitement and world-in-the-balance danger of stopping Hydra and the Nazi's was replaced by the more mundane, grimmer tasks of foreign intelligence gathering. Haswell, experienced with the horrors of Hydra and the war, moved like a fish from the ocean to a tributary, taking a role in spying on the East Germans, in East Germany. Protected, at times, with a flimsy official cover as an enlisted secretary to U.S. Occupying Forces in Europe (and, sometimes, not at all protected as a foreign spy with precise knowledge of German and a warm coat), Haswell did his job, standardization of deviation making things that would have shocked the green 18 year old shipping off to basic cool and easy tasks.
IC Events
Traits
- Sharpshooter: If there was one particular talent underlined in Haswell's various dossiers and collected files, it was his skill as a sharpshooter. Learning how to take a buck early in life on hunting trips with his mother's side of the family, given a moment, Garrett's a natural at making a bullet go where it need to go, often with a rifle at near absurd distances. He's no hawkeye, of course; Good shots still take effort, information, and time. But these are all things Haswell doesn't mind addressing.
- Company Man: No matter where his life takes him, Haswell will never stop being a professional, career spy. After spending more than half his life in the intelligence community spending the vast majority of that time directly involved with dangerous, clandestine work, the instincts and skill-set involved comes as second nature to him. The lingo is his language; the paranoia, with all its shells, front's, fallbacks, and cutouts his day-to-day; Dead drops, microdots and one time pads are his postal supplies; Boltholes, and safehouses his bank-you get the picture. After nearly 20 years, Garrett is innately skilled with such things.
- Interrogation: Having worked in the the U.S. Army then with the CIA in many, many capacities, Haswell has training in various methods of interview and interrogation, for the purposes of gathering intelligence. With that training he certainly has experience both administrating interrogation techniques, the methods he knows range from amiable and friendly negotiation, to sleep deprivation and psychological tricks, to… less savory techniques. Beyond knowing the proper application of these techniques, he's had enough first hand experience and training on the other side to do a good job of resisting even some of the most arcane and unusual methods of interrogation that might be thrown at him.
- Bureaucracy: An Army vet with nearly two decades of government experience, Haswell's aware of the more intricate natures of government service and bureaucracy. He generally knows how to read an employee handbook, codes of federal regulations. He can generally figure out what paperwork he needs to submit, or who he needs to rub shoulders with to get the ball rolling, presuming that ball should be rolling somewhere.
- Sprichst du…: Growing up in a multi-cultural family, Garrett speaks English and German natively, and can speak both without an accent easily. Further study, practice, and education as an clandestine officer means Garrett speaks fluent Russian, Spanish, and has a conversational command of various other languages of note. Beyond that, Garrett has a unique and in depth knowledge of Germany in particular, and Europe, generally, having served in the hotbed of espionage that was Berlin and Germany in the Cold War.
- Combat!: Between training during the war, actual fighting with bayonets, and belonging to a particular elite tier of spies and assassins, Garrett is more than adept with hand to hand combat, able to hold his own with other skilled martial artists, either fighting hand-to-hand, using melee weapons, or even using improvised tools.
- Sergeant: Having soldiered for a few years during one of the largest wars that has ever taken place, Garrett knows how to lead a squad, as well as generally participate in those aspects of small unit tactics, whether it's navigating a hedgerow or assaulting house.
- Pilot: Haswell is an adept and experienced driver, honing his skills pursuing people, or escaping from them at high speeds down generally narrow European streets (the more deserted roads of rural Germany). Beyond wheeled vehicles on the ground, Garrett is a competent motor sailor and small plane pilot, but moving about in such vehicles is likely to be much more exciting (and dangerous if he has to do anything fancy.)
- Singed Network: Getting drummed out of his career spy service certainly didn't do much for Garrett's set of contacts and connections, but a pinkslip and a position on a blacklist wasn't the same thing as a burn notice, and a career of espionage doesn't leave one completely devoid of people and knowhow. Despite the lack of maintenance, Haswell still knows an extensive network of mercenaries, smugglers, spies, 'freedom-fighters', government workers, forgers, etc. Although generally apt to a life of unsanctioned crime, Haswell still has favors (or dirt) that can help him get shady things done.
- Boltholes: One doesn't have a career as long as Haswell's without coming up with a number of off-the-book assets and contingencies to address the possibility of the dreaded burn notice. While they aren't readily available when he's not in the area, Garrett has a few old, unmaintained caches in Europe, Asia, and across the United States that might prove useful. Beyond the old caches, Garrett has several maintained caches in New York City, and a few surrounding states. Its nothing that would make him rich, but he usually can find a place to get a few bucks, a gun, and a safe bed for the night.
- Blacklist: Haswell made the mistake of making a rather influential enemy in the Central Intelligence Agency, who enacted a vendetta against Garrett, ruining his career with the agency. During the subsequent investigation, Haswell was dogged by an internal Agency investigation, as well as an investigation into 'communist sympathies' by the FBI, whose assigned agents were eager to take apart an agency rival to score political points. While he wasn't burned, he was certainly dismissed from federal service. The ignoble status of his termination, combined with the lack of work history that a patchwork of official, non official, and secret covers provided, means living a straight and conventional life is nearly impossible, and certainly makes any cooperation with the FBI or CIA… tense.
- Divorcee: Haswell is subject to the stigma and shame of divorce and adultery, his status easily accessible to anyone willing to do a small amount of digging through filed court documents. Beyond that, Garrett definitely got the worse end of the divorce agreement between his ex-wife, pressured by his erstwhile employer to settle out of court, and quickly. The majority of his usual meager pay goes to paying alimony (presuming his wife hasn't remarried), and out running a wage garnishment is another factor that keeps him on the outskirts of the conventional economy. If Haswell ever tries to hide his divorce and the causes of it, someone having this information could have some very good dirt.
- Leverage: Haswell still loves his ex-wife, and his ex-mistress, though perhaps not in the same way that he did when he first met either. Still, leaving original romantic feelings is hard, and however gruff, bitter, or stand-offish Garrett acts about his former paramours, he does care about them. Despite his infidelity not standing very well with his family (especially his relatively modern sisters), Haswell cares about them too. Any party looking to get under the spy's skin might find an easier path among his loved ones.
- Reality-Colored Glasses: Gary's been doing bad things for the 'right-reasons' for too long, and towards the end of his tenure with the CIA, he started losing the particular motivation for it. It's been a long time since 'The Good War' and its purer motivations , and Garrett's done a lot of things he's not terribly proud of, and he's starting to grow tired of it. Between making plenty of enemies by doing his job, and slowly losing the ability not to care, the burnout he's experiencing can both make him cynical to the high-stakes international chess game of espionage, and make his 'commitment' come into question.
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