Dateline: 10 April 1925 – SCENE 01 – RE-ACTIVATED – Simon Keane is summoned to Craig Cartwright’s office on Downing Street. Cartwright is the new head of British Intelligence’s Paranormal Investigation Unit. Cartwright tells Keane that an agent in Cairo (Nigel Wassif) has informed him of an existential threat and as it pertains to the cult Keane has already encountered in London, he would be a great asset on this mission. Cartwright offers Keane triple his usual daily rate and tells him that Wassif’s courier, Upton Reade, will be arriving tomorrow via military cargo plane with photographic plates of Adler’s journal.

Cartwright tells Keane that the next ritual enacted by the cult on 22 April will be pivotal in determining the power balance in Egypt and across the world and his mission must be completed prior to then. Keane’s mission: find a way to take Augustus Larkin out of the picture, weakening the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. As Larkin is believed to possess supernatural powers as reported by Wassif, Cartwright ascertains that mundane weapons will be of little use against Larkin as they are apparently also useless against al-Shakti.(Wassif was able to retrieve the body of a Cairene asset named Muntz after a failed assassination attempt on al-Shakti)

SCENE 02 – THE RESEARCH TEAM – Immediately upon leaving Cartwright’s office, Keane reaches out to the Baker Foundation and arranges for two of Homer Bannon’s researchers, Eleanor Migsby and Heinrich Goring, to meet him at the British Museum the following day.

Dateline: 11 April 1925 – SCENE 03 – INVESTIGATIONS – Upton Reade proceeds straight to the British Museum upon landing at the London Aerodome and the assembled team begins immediate work on the photographic plates. The team is able to uncover the following information:

• Larkin and al-Shakti are central figures to the main branch of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh
• There is a reference in Adler’s notes to an egg-shaped artifact that can open a gateway to the Dreamlands
• Germany’s Occult Investigations Detachment filed reports stating that they found a similar artifact and were studying it
• GOID established a secret laboratory on the motile listening station located on an iceberg
• According to intercepted communiques by English Intelligence agents, the GOID discovered a way to activate the gateway that doesn’t require using a great pyramid as a power source
• The Germans made contact with an entity through the gateway and were conducting genetic experiments at the laboratory with the information provided by the entity
• Something went wrong at the laboratory and it was evacuated. The German team bombed the runway on the iceberg after they fled, leaving their research, and the artifact, behind

Based this information, Keane concludes that if the British military can get onto the motile base and retrieve the artifact, it can be used to trap Larkin in whatever dimension the Germans gained access to.

Keane immediately brings this information to Cartwright who then contacts General Sinclair so that he can begin planning of the military operation.

Dateline: 12 April 1925 – SCENE 04 – OPERATION: CIGAR BOX – General Sinclair assembles Keane along with a team of military engineers and strategists to plan the operation. They discover that they are in luck: the currents have the motile island just off the cost of Iceland and in waters accessible to the British military.

The following plan is devised:

• A small, crack team will parachute onto the motile island on 15 April at 1400 Hours
• The team will locate and remove the artifact and any records, notes, equipment, and paraphernalia associated with the operation and maintenance of the artifact
• If possible, the team’s secondary objective will be to located, contain, and securely transport any records, notes, samples, or paraphernalia pertaining to the GOID’s experiments
• At precisely 1300 Hours on 16 April, the team will activate their mobile platform’s helium balloons, securing themselves on the jump seats, and ascend to an altitude of 4500 feet
• At precisely 1400 Hours on 16 April, an aeroplane fitted with a special “sky hook” will grab the mobile platform and land at a private air field on Iceland owned by the British government
• The artifact will be conveyed to London where Keane and Reade will fly to Cairo’s military base deliver the artifact to Wassif on 18 April

The Operation is code named Operation: Cigar Box and approved by the British Military on 13 April by Her Majesty’s head of the War Office, a young man named Winston Churchill.