CHAPTER 61
TO MY TEAM’S GREAT CREDIT, no one argued. Not even Raheem. Definitely a smart teddy bear. No one panicked, either, which was also a positive.
Tim was texting and Reader was on his phone, calling in Field agents to arrive via a floater in these rooms. But the person who walked out of the floater first wasn’t a Field agent. Well, not anymore.
“Tim says you guys need the Flash and told me not to strain myself until I arrived,” Christopher said as soon as he was solidly here. “What’s up?”
“Nostalgia for Operation Fugly.” Pointed to the bag on my bed.
“Fantastic. Snake or bomb? Or both?”
“See, this is why Megalomaniac Lad called you. Both is my guess, but who knows? Poisoned darts and such are always a possibility, too.”
“Do you care what happens to your clothes and stuff?”
“Wow, Amy’s really made you a hell of a lot more thoughtful. No. The Elves can just get me more stuff. They might have a challenge recreating all the people, though.”
Christopher nodded, then went to the suitcase. “You all should leave the room, just in case.”
Field agents started arriving in the general living room area, so it was easy enough to tell the others to go with them. Reader had to tell them what to do anyway. We moved most everyone out, and I literally had to shove Buchanan, Len, and Kyle through the door, but White and I remained. It was his son, and this was Jeff’s cousin. The two of us weren’t leaving.
“Dad, you shouldn’t be in here.”
“Son, I’ve outrun explosions and so has Missus Martini. We’re staying. Just in case.”
“Call us worrywarts. There’s always a possibility that I’m being overly paranoid, but be cautious.”
Christopher nodded, then went to town. My stuff was flying through the air because he was pulling it out and tossing it so fast. He got to the bottom of the case in seconds. “Huh.”
“What?”
“How are you with rubber snakes?”
“If they’re lifelike they still scare the crap out of me. Why?”
Christopher turned around. He had a very lifelike rubber cobra in one hand and a round black ball that said “Bomb!” on it. “Someone knows us far too well.”
“It’s Cliff, as if there was any doubt. Was there a note in there of any kind?”
Christopher handed the fake bomb and rubber snake to White, then he searched every inch of the suitcase, including ripping out the lining. “Nothing.”
“Then it’s in the snake or it’s in the bomb.”
They both looked at me. “Why are you sure there is a note?” Christopher asked. “These two things seem clear enough.”
“Yeah, the old, I know what you’re terrified of and I also know how we almost got you way back when ploys. But I think there’s a note because Cliff is a freaking lunatic and if we’ve found this, then we know we’re not exploding or being snake bit, but we don’t know anything else. Like, he doesn’t know for sure that we know he’s here.”
“He might,” White said slowly. “If John is, in fact, a very canny triple agent. Or if King Raheem has been lying to you.”
“Raheem might have been. Without an empath to be sure, all we have is my gut. Which says he was not.”
“Daniel and Marcus both were reading him and he gave off no signs of betrayal. And also gave off the right mixture of emotions to indicate that he wasn’t wearing a blocker or an overlay.”
“Then he’s what we think he is unless he’s an android.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“Let’s be sure.” Opened my rolling purse. “I think I have an OVS in here.” Sure enough, one of the handheld models was sitting right there.
Trotted into the other room. “Pardon this, but under the circumstances . . .” Wanded Raheem. Wanded the rest of the people in the room for good measure. Per the OVS, they were all organic enough that they couldn’t be an android or a fembot. This was because Butler was gone, along with all of Alpha Team, Mossad, Buchanan, Siler, the Amazons, Jareen, Felicia, and Wahoa. Presumably to go save the day and get the religious leaders out of the deadly room they’d been locked into. Good thing I was rolling with a million people.
“Camilla, come with me. The rest of you, please continue to stay put.”
Camilla returned to the bedroom with me. We showed her the snake and the bomb. “You seriously think something’s inside those?” she asked.
“I think the possibility is there. I want to ask you your thoughts on King Raheem.”
“You want to know if I think he’s in on whatever’s going on?”
“Yeah.”
“He shook a Jewish-American woman’s hand in front of every minister this country has. I think he’s potentially as crazy as you, but if he’s setting you up, he really likes to live on the edge. I’d assume someone’s already put a contract out on him as we speak.”
“That fits with everything that’s already gone on. So, what do you know of Ali Baba Gadhavi? And not the guy from the stories, though he does have forty thieves and all that.”
“The gangster?” Camilla gave me the hairy eyeball look. “He has more like four thousand thieves. But what the hell . . . oh. Really? Dammit, that’s going to make things harder.”
“I haven’t made the leap,” Christopher said.
Camilla sighed. “Ali Baba Gadhavi is a notorious Indian gangster, and he’s been hiding out in Bahrain for decades. He’s who’s funding Cliff?”
“Yeah, per Raheem. And, to add to the intrigue, this can’t come back on Raheem.”
“The king has other worries. Let me again mention that he broke Islamic law by shaking hands with you and we’ll take it from there.”
“He’s seen the saucers, so to speak.”
“Yes. Let’s hope he and the rest of us live to see the rest of them. Cliff’s well-funded if he’s now considered part of G-Company.” We all stared at her blankly. “What the media calls his crime syndicate. Gadhavi is running his own version of the mafia.”
“Do we have a hope of getting Cliff, then?” Didn’t want to have come here with all these people and plans only to have no hope of achieving either one of our missions.
“Yes, because while Gadhavi might be funding Goodman, there’s no way they’re hanging out together. It just means that Cliff will have a lot of toys I’m sure we won’t like. Speaking of which, there’s a third possibility for what’s going on with Francine and John that you may not have considered.”
“You mean aside from John using Francine as his cover to get back inside with Cliff, or Francine being kidnapped—either as ‘me’ or as herself—and John going along to protect her and, again, re-infiltrate Cliff’s Crazy Eights?”
“And other than John being as captured as Francine, yes.”
“We hadn’t considered that one. Thanks for the extra worry.”
“I have a theory other than that one, was what I meant.” Camilla was giving me a look that indicated she thought I needed a nap. “There’s a good chance that Adriana contacted them.”
“Why would she have contacted either one?” White asked.
“Well, not John, but Francine is a very high possibility. Malcolm and I sent Adriana off to scout hours ago. Because of what was going on, the moment we were in these rooms, I told her to contact Francine if she found anything, as Francine would be the only one likely to be alone and not compromised with visitors who weren’t part of our team.”
“Well, that’s good in one sense. But why not leave us a note?”
“Saying what? We’re off on a secret mission, will call soon?” Camilla’s sarcasm meter, like Mom’s, went well past eleven. “Either they thought they’d be quick or they plan to contact us at another time.”
“So if that option is the case, why are all the guards dead?” White asked.
“What?” Christopher barked. “Who’s dead?” Right, he’d come into the room via a gate and had immediately done the luggage search.
White filled him in at hyperspeed while I put my fingers in my ears and hummed Lit’s “Hard to Find” to keep from hearing White and thereby getting sick. White nodded to me when he was done. “So, what I’ve been thinking about while trying to avoid barfing or passing out from Richard’s smooth vocal stylings is this—what if Francine and John left before Cliff’s goons ever got here? Francine has hyperspeed—none of the guards would see her if she didn’t want them to.”
“John could have merely shifted to look like another guard and told the others he was escorting her elsewhere, too,” White said.
“But does it make sense for what we know?” Christopher asked.
Camilla nodded slowly. “Cliff’s men—and I agree with Kitty that it was most likely Kellogg and Kozlow—think they’re coming to get you. They kill a bunch of guards, then get into the rooms and they’re empty. It’s not hard or time-consuming to carefully remove a bag’s contents, leave moronic joke threats, and then take off.”
“Cliff’s way of telling me he knows where I am.”
“A dozen dead men outside your door isn’t easy to explain, either,” White added.
“So, how do we determine which of the many options we have for Francine and John is the one that’s really happening? Colette texted and called Francine. There was no answer.”
“Huh.” Camilla put her head outside of the room. “Colette, how many rings before your call to Francine went to voicemail?”
Colette joined us. “One. Oh. You think she turned her phone off? Why? She’s always available.” Colette’s eyes didn’t quite meet everyone else’s.
A-Cs trying to lie were always interesting. Other than the rare natural liars like Camilla, troubadours as a class had the least issues with it. And yet Colette was betraying signs of lying. Then again, it was her big sister in danger.
Considered options. We didn’t have a lot of time to waste. Either the others would be back soon with, please God, news that all the religious leaders and those with them were alive and well, or we’d be pulled into action.
Camilla was a vault unless she felt it was necessary to share intel. White might have made the same assumptions I had. So that left Christopher. Who’d been the number two man in Centaurion Division for over a decade and who had, along with Jeff, kept the worst secrets in the world to himself.
“Colette, you know as well as I do that there’s plenty of times a troubadour will go into a form of silent running. I want you to search the rooms to see what fiddly little clue Francine left to tell you, and Manfred, what’s really going on.”
“What do you mean, Kitty?” She’d recovered from the lapse that worry had given her. Colette looked completely confused, and I could tell she was trying to use her talent to make me think I was wrong. However, I’d realized that once you knew, really knew, what the troubadours were doing, it lessened their effect.
Heaved a sigh. “Colette, I know. I’ve known for a long time. Camilla either knows or she’s guessed. And Richard and Christopher are both trustworthy. They can keep the secret, especially because it’s in all our best interests. We’re going to have to tell Jeff soon, anyway. Might as well be sooner as opposed to later.”
“Tell him what?” Christopher asked.
“That Serene’s running the A-C’s version of the CIA, very competently, I might add, and she’s doing it with every troubadour you guys have.”