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Chapter 154 – Marching OrdersAlex woke up the next morning when her alarm clock on her tPhone went off. She didn’t feel rested, since she’d had trouble getting to sleep at a reasonable hour last night, and Hanna had wanted to chat about a lot of stuff, and it was way too early back home and her body hadn’t adjusted to the new time yet. She took a quick shower and kept it colder than usual to help her wake up. And she ate a dozen crackers with Gouda cheese and thick slices of yummy sausage on them. She figured that would hold her until the conference breakfast. Then she did the special makeup on her face, and put on her wig, and made sure her lieutenant’s uniform looked really nice.
Hanna was wide awake and in her uniform already, and eating an apple out of the gift basket. Just one apple. Sometimes Alex thought it might be nice to have a normal appetite again, but then she’d have to worry about gaining weight, or getting anorexic, or all the other things she used to fret about.
Alex called Jack on Annie Farrell’s official cellphone. “Good morning, general. Are you ready for the conference breakfast?”
“And all that it entails? Nope. Come on over. I’m just fixing my tie.” Before he hung up but after he moved the phone away from his mouth, he hissed, “Will! Stop it! And put —”
Alex figured it might be better if she didn’t rush over to Jack’s room.
She got her valise, tucked her cap under her arm so it looked right in the mirror, and walked out of the room with Action Girl alongside.
She strode up to Jack’s door and knocked briskly. She made a mental note of the guards. She glanced at their name badges and tried to memorize their faces, just in case it mattered later on. She didn’t know how it would matter, but after last night, she figured she had better be more careful.
Jack opened his door looking really general-ish, in his good uniform, with all the medals on the front so he looked really pretty awesome. Alex had a brief thought that at the rate Jack was going, someone was eventually going to have to let him start putting medals on the back of his uniform jacket. He handed Alex his computer tablet and said, “I dread to think how much work for me you’re going to put on it, but I don’t have a big enough pocket.”
She gave him a lieutenant’s smile. “Yes, sir. Anyway, I can download files to your tablet remotely.”
“And my fiancée can dump even more work onto that thing, so I’m trapped. A helpless pawn.”
She just said, “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”
“In that case, I say ‘let’s eat’. We might as well enjoy it while we can, because once Terawatt gets here, she’ll clean ’em out of house and home, and we’ll be left hunting for crumbs on the floor.”
Alex kept to her Annie Farrell voice and tried not to defend Terawatt too much. “She’s not that bad, sir. And I briefed Ms. Granger on that, so there should be extra food at meals starting tomorrow.”
Jack played dumb. “Do you have her schedule yet?”
Alex fibbed, “No, sir. We did get a heads-up that she’s dealing with an ongoing problem, so she might not be here tomorrow. I’m keeping Ms. Granger informed.”
“Very good. Now then, after you eat, would you be good enough to bring up a big plate of breakfast for my little hacker? You know what she likes. Bacon, sausage, eggs … Go ahead and load up two plates, so she can pick and choose.”
“Yes, sir.” Alex knew that Willow wouldn’t want bacon and sausage, so it was pretty obvious to Alex that Jack wanted her to make a plate for Willow and one for her to eat with Willow. That actually made matters simpler. The pre-breakfast snack she’d eaten would help, too.
She went down to the conference meal area with Jack and Hanna. Riley was already there, eating breakfast with a group of officers who were probably the ‘early to bed, early to rise’ types. A guy she didn’t know was talking away, telling a story with lots of gestures, and making most of the table chuckle.
Alex let Jack go through the line first, like a good little adjutant. She asked Hanna about swinging around the area with her grapples, like Alex hadn’t known all about it already. And she just loaded her plate up a bit more than Jack did, but not too much. With her padded undergarment, she did look like she maybe ate a little too much.
Jack headed over to where Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson was sitting with a stiff-looking captain and several other people, including Hermione.
The stiff captain was insisting, “Yes, sir, but you need to take your morning pills with your food, and you can’t have the grapefruit juice with the pills.”
The brigadier scowled unhappily, and then looked up at Jack. “General O’Neill! Have a seat. Maybe you can talk my adjutant into allowing me to at least have something with a little flavor for my meals.”
The captain started to stand up and salute, but Jack waved him back into his seat. “We can’t get too carried away with the formalities, because we’ve got a truckload of generals, and a colonel with a Medal of Honor, and all this saluting is going to give my little lieutenant here a bad case of tennis elbow or something.”
Alex just pretended like she had to put up with Jack’s snarkiness all the time. Okay, she really did, but while she was Annie Farrell she couldn’t say anything back, or stick her tongue out at him. She just sat down next to Hermione and started eating.
“It’s good to see you again, Ms. Granger.”
“Call me Hermione, please.”
Jack asked Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson, “Your adjutant ruthlessly running your life, like mine does?”
The brigadier admitted, “It’s an unpleasant necessity, Jack. Pills at every meal, watching what I eat … And I am fully aware that Captain McGinnis informs my wife whenever I touch anything with cholesterol or animal fat. Or salt. The old ticker’s not what it used to be.”
Jack nodded. “General Baylor’s got a similar problem. You should exchange horror stories. All I have is a fiancée who wants me to become a vegetarian, and an adjutant who likes my fiancée better than she likes me.”
Alex pretended she was being patient instead of just playing along. “Sir, if that was true, I would have ratted you out last week when you got Sergeant Scott to drive you to the Wendy’s drive-through, and you bought two bacon cheeseburgers, presumably one for each of you, since you also bought two medium sodas.”
“And you would know that because …” Jack pretended to wonder aloud.
“Because you used your personal credit card, sir,” Alex played along. “You authorized me to monitor all your cards in case of theft, identity theft, or suspicious behaviors that might be due to fraud-based attacks on your reputation, not that I would mention any particular agencies by name.”
Jack casually blabbed to Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson, “She means the NID.”
She insisted, “Sir, that is not who I meant … necessarily.”
Hermione whispered to her, “Glad to hear we’re not the only country with rogue elements in our agencies.”
Alex didn’t say anything back, but she sure thought it. After all, the NID was a bunch of jerkheads, but they weren’t running around following a guy who was calling himself something stupid like ‘Lord Deathstrike’ or calling themselves Death Chewers or whatever stupid name that was.
But Jack heard Hermione, and said, “Yeah, there are some really annoying similarities, starting with rich guys who think they’re in charge of anything they want, deciding they ought to control the spy guys, too, so they can do whatever the hell they feel like in terms of espionage capabilities. And then they both turned out to be linked to our little Orphan problem, and it turned out they were both just being used, at least over the last several years, and not smart enough to figure that one out. So the same problem’s probably happening in other countries. Like India and China and North Korea.”
Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson stared at Jack for several seconds before he said, “That’s a remarkably cogent point, Jack. And a very worrying one as well.” He turned to his adjutant and asked, “You got that?” The guy nodded. “You know who to give it to.” The guy nodded again.
Alex noticed that Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson and his adjutant also looked around the room at a couple of guys from other European countries, even though Jack hadn’t mentioned any country in Europe.
Jack managed not to smirk much, but Alex was pretty sure Jack had done that on purpose. She wondered if there were other countries — countries with people in the room with them right this second — who were having the same Orphan and Collective problem that showed up in America and England. And she also wondered if Hermione had already found most of them using the Orphan profile Terawatt had given her.
Maybe she ought to ask Willow if Acid Burn had been checking out other countries besides India. She was pretty sure the answer was ‘well duh’.
But just then, Hermione made a slight gasping noise. Alex looked over at her, and Hermione hissed, “Don’t turn around!”
Alex fished out her Annie Farrell compact and pretended she was checking her lipstick. But really she was looking behind her. Some of the British diplomatic guys had walked in and wandered over to the breakfast food. Alex recognized the oldest guy from the Berlin meeting.
Hermione pulled out her phone and started texting, so Alex pulled out her tablet to read the message.
gray suit round wire rim glasses. lord rupert giles. he is L. watch out.
Alex just sent back a quick ‘k’ but she didn’t know who ‘L’ was, or what that meant. It looked like that was going to be a pretty dangerous oversight, if Hermione was freaking just from having the guy walk into the room. She quickly sent a message to Willow. In seconds, the reply came back. ask jack
Alex finished eating and stood up. “Excuse me, General O’Neill. I just got an FYI you need to see.”
Jack acted all put upon. “Oh, all right. Just please don’t tell me it’s another Wacky Maggie Special.”
Alex acted all stiff. “No sir. It’s from the Joint Chiefs.”
“Oh, fine, let’s go out in the hall.”
Alex said, “We can go into the next room and use one of the small conference areas so you can have some privacy.”
He smiled. “And I suppose you’ve already scoped out the entire conference floor plan and everything.”
“That is part of my job, sir.”
She walked out with him and led him into the subdivided conference room. As soon as she was sure the whole place was empty, she turned around and asked, “Who or what is ‘L’ and why is Hermione so freaked that he just walked in?’
Jack frowned in thought. “L? One capital letter?” She nodded. He scowled. “You already know way too much about the Double Oh series, right?” She nodded again. “The ruthless SOB who sends them out on assignments is always called M. The M-in-training is called L. And his replacement is called K. In case it ever comes up, the head gadget and weapons guys for their little funhouse are usually called Q or R, and the logistics boss is traditionally E. W is the documentation and human resources boss — their in-joke is the W stands for wastepaper.” He paused a second. “So … who’s L?”
Alex spilled. “Lord Rupert Giles. Expensive gray suit and round wire-rimmed glasses, with the British diplomatic guys who just walked in.”
Jack nodded carefully. “Keep your guard up. The SIS has to know Hermione has an unusually close connection with Terawatt. They may be looking to see who at the conference Hermione hangs out with too much. Which would be you. A smart agent might think Hermione’s buddy could be Terawatt herself, or at least Terawatt’s contact. Fortunately, Terawatt is going to save the day again back in the States, so that should confuse matters here.”
“Operation Tera-twin II?”
“Yep.” He even popped the ‘p’ at the end of the word, so Alex knew he was feeling smug about it.
They walked back into the room, and Jack bossed her around, directing her to take food up to his room. So she loaded up a plate for herself and one for Willow, and carried stuff back upstairs. Fortunately, her valise had a shoulder strap, too.
When Willow let Alex into the room, Alex was surprised Willow was still in her jammies. Well, Willow was in a light gray satin lounge set with a matching peignoir.
As they ate, Willow said, “I figured I’d better put something on to answer the door, and Jack told me I was absolutely not to answer the door in like what I was wearing last night, even if it’s him, because of the guard on the door.”
Alex swallowed a big mouthful of really good sausages and asked, “You were wearing something really naughty last night?” Then she wondered why she’d asked, because of course Willow was wearing something really naughty last night at bedtime, since she hadn’t seen Jack in maybe weeks.
Willow hopped up and went into the bedroom. She came back holding up a sheer black babydoll with matching panties. “It’s a lot more comfy, but it’s totally not of the door answering material. I mean, a lot of the nightie stuff is not as fun to wear as it is to look at, but this is really nice. I could even sleep in it all night if I wanted to. Maybe I’ll get you something like this for when you and Ray get married. Bridal showers are the perfect time to embarrass the bride-to-be in front of everybody.”
Alex blushed like crazy, but the babydoll really was pretty. She was thinking about maybe wearing something like that, but in white and not so sheer, on her wedding night. Even if she would probably die of embarrassment while trying to be Miss Sexytime for Ray.
Willow didn’t know about L and M, but she had gotten a text from Jack, so she had some stuff on Rupert Giles, who was a real English lord. And he’d been a very naughty guy when he was in his late teens and early twenties, with a rep for flying wherever there was a jet-set party and then living it up way too much, especially with girls and booze. Alex wondered how much of that could have been real, and if any of it was a cover for Double Oh activities.
And his nickname when he was twenty? Ripper. Alex felt a shiver run down her spine. He had looked harmless and stuffy when she saw him downstairs, but guys with nicknames like Ripper? Probably not harmless. Actually, the name Ripper made her think of a scary guy with a really big knife, stalking down dark alleys.
And Alex had to go down to the meetings and act like she didn’t know how dangerous Ripper Giles might really be.
Willow gave her a hug and murmured, “Be careful, okay?”
Alex grabbed the plates and hurried back downstairs.
It turned out she had time to return the plates to the meals room and get to the table for the Americans in the fancy ballroom, well before most of the important people had bothered to sit down.
The room was still laid out in that big hollow square, but the dais in the middle was no longer missing a section at one corner. This time, the Americans were sitting in between the Finns and the French. General Baylor was sitting down, but his two officers were standing in front of the table talking to him about stuff.
Jack was over talking to Brigadier Brathwaite-Thomson again. Riley was talking with some German and Danish officers at the far side of the room. Action Girl was chatting happily with the people at the Finnish table.
Alex sat down in one of the chairs well behind the American table, and she pulled out her tablet. She sent Hermione a text. the general wants me to stay away from you to keep L from figuring things out.
Within seconds she got a reply. Good. L is very smart and very dangerous.
She texted back. Is dinner off?
Can T come instead? My flat. @ 7. 3 other guests.
Alex figured Willow could get Hermione’s address pretty easily and give Alex GPS coordinates to get there. She replied. Yes. Surveillance?
Probably. Assume so. Inside my flat will be safe.
Two guys in black suits who were doing a Men In Black imitation walked over to her. She spotted them early enough to slide her phone out and snap a photo and send it off to Willow.
“Lieutenant Farrell?”
“Hi. That’s me. And you two are …?”
The taller one said, “We’re DSS. I’m Garrett and this is Mulligan.” They even pulled out their badges without being asked.
Oh, right. The Diplomatic Secret Service deal. She said, “I’m General O’Neill’s adjutant Lieutenant Farrell.” And she already had a message on her tablet from Willow that the guys had already been checked out, and Willow just forgot to tell her at breakfast.
Alex pretended to type into a little window on her tablet, and she glanced up. “Okay. You check out. What can I do for you?”
Garrett told her, “We just wanted to give you a heads-up that we’re here but understaffed. We can’t cover General Baylor’s team and also your team at the same time, and we have to give General Baylor a higher priority. Orders. So if General O’Neill or his fiancée or you, or even Colonel Finn, is going to leave the hotel, please let us know so we can try to arrange some security from the Brits.”
Alex said, “No one’s going to whisk me away to a romantic dinner. And the general may have Action Girl shadow him or Ms. Rosenberg if either goes out. As for Colonel Finn, I pity anyone dumb enough to try and take him down. But I’ll give the general a heads-up and see if I can get him to cooperate.”
They looked at each other. Mulligan said, “Good luck on that one, lieutenant.”
She managed not to smile. It looked like Jack’s reputation preceded him wherever he went. Once the guys walked off, she called Willow and filled her in on the DSS request and what Mulligan said. Willow giggled for about ten seconds.
Major Kuhlman and Lieutenant Martin came over and sat down in front of her. Then Riley came over and sat down beside her. Garrett took up position next to Major Kuhlman, while Mulligan moved out to check for trouble anywhere else.
The meeting got started, although it was mostly really boring guys saying really boring stuff about really boring topics. Did people really care how many ‘official’ Terawatt liaison officers were to be allowed from each country? Okay, they obviously cared way, way too much. And they cared what the official seal of the office would be. And they cared about every tedious thing you could think of. Alex could hardly wait until Friday, when they were going to argue about which country got to host the next meeting in three months. Not.
General Baylor got invited to say something once they had argued for three hours about ‘old business’ and tabled most of it for ‘breakout groups’ later. He stood up and smiled and said, “I know that as an American I’m supposed to be rude and pushy, but I would just like to say we really appreciate this invite and the opportunity to learn how your liaison office works, and I’ll stay out of your hair as much as I can, and if there’s anything we can do to help, just ask me.”
Wow, that was a lot nicer than Alex was expecting from him. And a lot shorter.
As the morning wore on, Alex mainly concentrated on her computer tablet, instead of the extreme boringosity of the meeting. She got a message from Hermione that the conference security had checked out every one of the rooms Action Girl had spotted as potential sniper nests or attack points. Two of them really were sniper nests: the SAS had set up in the buildings across from the front and back of the hotel to proactively control any threats. The other rooms checked out okay.
She also got a message from Hermione’s boss to Jack that the biowarfare stuff in the ‘bubbles’ from the night before wasn’t a bioweapon, it was a chemical compound. Nickel tetracarbonyl, mixed with an aerosolizing compound that would help disseminate it all over the room. She had to copy Willow with the news, because she had no idea what that was. Even after she looked it up on Wikipedia.
Okay, after she looked it up and looked up a couple more things, she knew enough that she thought she could tell Jack about it.
When the meeting stopped for lunch at ten to twelve, Alex stepped forward and said to Jack, “Sir, there’s news on last night’s little problem. We should discuss it in private.”
Then Jack said to General Baylor, “I think you’re going to want to hear this.”
Oh, crud. Now she was going to have to talk about this stuff in front of people who thought she was supposed to be Genius Science Girl, and Lieutenant Martin would catch her first stupid statement, and it would be a disaster.
Action Girl trotted over from the Finland group, where she had been sitting all morning. “What is up?”
Jack glanced at her and said, “Quick conference.” And he walked over to the end of the ballroom away from the exit door that everyone else was going through. Then he started by pointing at Riley. “Synopsis of last night, colonel.”
Riley stood at attention. “Yes, sir. Last night, Lieutenant Farrell was checking out everything computerized around here, and she found someone was messing with the mechatronic temperature controls for this room, making it too cold last night and then too warm this morning. Action Girl and I investigated, and were fortunate enough to catch two Orphans dressed as kitchen staff, fleeing toward the service door. They left a present under the dais. A British NBC team removed it.”
Alex took over. “We were suspecting more hate plague or zombie virus. It’s not even a biological. It’s nickel tetracarbonyl in an aerosolizing compound that would help disseminate it throughout the room. Nickel tetracarbonyl is one of the most toxic substances encountered in industrial processes. The concentration at which half the victims would die after thirty minutes of exposure is only three parts per million. Thirty parts per million is supposed to be immediately fatal. It looks chemically like a nickel atom with four carbon monoxide molecules stuck on it to form a tetrahedron. So first you get hit with a big dose of carbon monoxide. If you survive that, the nickel in your lungs gives you fulminating pneumonia which kills you in a different way.”
Lieutenant Martin scratched his head. “Hmm, sounds like if we all got sick from it, the hospital might misdiagnose it as Legionnaire’s disease.”
Riley insisted, “I don’t think so. It would require every attending physician to miss the diagnosis, and they’d all have to skip a tox screen and a standard confirming test for Legionella.”
Jack added, “But we know some people who are pretty damn smug and act like everyone else is incompetent.”
Action Girl cheerfully guessed, “All the Orphans who aren’t working with you, or maybe Maggie Walsh?”
Riley chipped in, “The perps looked like they were Pakistani or Indian, and none of the American Orphans look like that.”
Jack muttered darkly, “Oh, great, now we might get the India Orphans, too.”
General Baylor asked, “And this couldn’t be a Margaret Walsh project?”
Jack shook his head no. “No genetically engineered anything. Not her style at all.”
Riley pointed out, “Unless she’s trying to direct the entire E.U. at India right now.”
Jack frowned. “If she’s doing that, then she probably has something simmering away and about ready to boil all over Europe.”
Alex added, “Or she’s tired of us not taking her hints, sir.”
“Or both,” Riley pointed out.
They got to the meals room in plenty of time for lunch. Alex was careful not to put more on her plate than Riley did, even if some of the desserts looked pretty scrumptious. She figured Jack would send her up with ‘food for Willow’ even if Willow was actually out shopping and sight-seeing. Alex had already gotten three texts from Willow talking about awesome stuff she was looking at.
And a text telling her not to over-react at the 12:30 news.
How was she supposed to hold still worrying about that? Even if she was sure it had to be the Tera-twin deal.
So, sure enough, at 12:30, while she was eating a really yummy slice of tart or torte or something, she got a blip on her tablet. She said to Jack, “Excuse me sir, but you need to see this.”
And at a neighboring table, Hermione got the same blip. As did someone at the Spain table and the France table. And then at three other tables. And then everyone who got a blip was telling everyone at the other tables, and people were scrambling to get the wall-mounted televisions turned on and tuned to the right channels.
The news was on CNN and MSNBC and FOX News and everywhere. A group of men who identified themselves as agents of The Shop had taken a group of DHS employees hostage in a DHS building and were demanding to speak to Senator Robert Kinsey in person and to have Terawatt locked up, or they would blow up the building. And the news channels were broadcasting the images off the security cameras, so everyone could see the tied-up people and the bombs and the boobytrap on the door and everything.
By then, word was going around to every table in the room. And Hermione was trying not to look at Alex. Lord Giles was calmly looking at Hermione and at the whole American table. Alex figured that could not be good.
Alex had to check the news and a world time chart, because her first thought was it had to be 7:30 or maybe 6:30 on the East Coast. But the U.S. was already on Daylight Standard Time and Europe wouldn’t be on it until the end of the month, so for this brief little window, Washington, D.C. was only four hours behind London. It was 8:30 in D.C. and office workers would be in their offices by now.
Alex also had two different internet-carried news channels in windows on her tablet, although she had to mute the sound on them. But the internet news channels were carrying the security cam footage, too. It looked like Jack had about four windows open on his tablet, and he had muted every one of them.
At about a quarter of one, while the head badguy was yelling instructions into the main security cam in the room where they had the hostages, another badguy suddenly grabbed his throat and keeled over. Then a second badguy keeled over, just as a lightning bolt sizzled across the room to knock out the head badguy and the last badguy was suddenly slammed against a wall by an invisible force. The booby trap on the door unraveled, and the bombs disassembled themselves.
And Terawatt flew into the room. She held her finger to her ear and said, “Mission accomplished, general.” Then she flew over and looked at the hostages, whose ropes all just untied themselves. She went silvery and jetted out of view of the camera. Within seconds, armed forces came charging in and cuffed the badguys before searching them.
Alex got up and got herself another slice of that yummy tart. Hermione strolled over and got a couple of little cookies. Out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “Very well staged.”
Alex didn’t say anything. After all, it really was well staged. She figured this time it was lots of special effects, and the ‘live’ security cam feeds had been filmed months ago and then post-processed within an inch of their lives before being made black-and-white and grainy for this little performance.
And then Jack was right there by her side. “Lieutenant, if you would be so good as to load up a plate with food Willow might like, and take it up to her? And if she’s been out shopping again, please don’t stay for a fashion show, even if the afternoon meetings are likely to be even duller than the morning ones.” He even gave her a keycard, since Willow wouldn’t be there to open the door for her.
“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on that, sir. If you could make sure that the colonel hangs onto my valise, so your tablet doesn’t go walkabout?”
He gave her a smile. “Will do, lieutenant. Now hop to it.”
She loaded up a plate with a bunch of the really good stuff, including three of the desserts, and she hurried it up to Jack’s room. Then she wolfed it all down, checked her lipstick, and hurried back to the meetings.
Everyone was chatting about Terawatt saving the day again, only on a different continent, and whether that meant that she wouldn’t be able to put in an appearance. Apparently, some of the big, important people were also huge Terawatt fans. That made Alex feel sort of uncomfortable. Uncomfortable and smug and weirded out and pleased, all at the same time.
Alex focused on her tablet instead. There was a huge flood of news and maybe-news and crazy-guessing-news. She tried to filter out all the stuff that wasn’t backed up by some sort of verifiable source, even if that was really hard to tell a lot of the time without waiting ten minutes or half an hour until someone else had supporting (or conflicting) news.
But the rogue Shop agents had cyanide pills on them, and didn’t get a chance to take them because of Terawatt. And they wanted to kill Senator Kinsey because he and Arthur Borden and a couple of other important insiders were the authority behind The Shop and they thought the insiders had put out a hit on their leader Colonel McNamara. And Senator Kinsey’s office instantly issued a denial, followed shortly by a statement that the hostage crisis had nothing to do with the impeachment hearings going on in the House.
She wondered if Kinsey would try to save himself by ratting out everyone else connected to The Shop.
At the mid-afternoon break, which was an English tea full of actual tea and really yummy treats, Lord Giles finally strolled over. Alex got a warning text from Hermione before he was halfway across the room. Jack didn’t need a warning.
Lord Giles smiled vaguely. “Ahh, General O’Neill. A pleasure to see you without that black and green all over your face. You clean up rather nicely.”
Jack grinned. “I could say the same about you, Lord Giles. Although you were just in a less-than-perfect suit, if I recall.”
“You may call me Rupert. People who nearly put a bullet in me get special privileges.”
“Then you can call me Jack. Guys who help me get out of countries ending in ‘stan’ get special perks.”
Lord Giles smiled knowingly. “I have seen General Baylor and Colonel Finn on the news, but perhaps you could introduce me to the rest of your enclave.” Riley smiled and shook hands vigorously with him.
Jack said, “This is Major Kuhlman, who is General Baylor’s adjutant …” Lord Giles gave her a warm handshake and an even warmer smile. “… and Lieutenant Martin, who’s the general’s tech analyst, and this is my adjutant and world-class hacker and science expert and babysitter, Lieutenant Farrell.”
Lord Giles took her hand and gave her a smile that had her thinking about how sexy his eyes were when he smiled like that.
Oh, right. He was L. He was maybe a former Double Oh super-spy who had probably boinked hundreds of women in the line of duty, not to mention all the women he had partied with back in his Ripper days. She told herself to stop being stupid.
But Lord Giles was already on to the next subject. “And I was quite hoping to meet Miss Rosenberg.”
Jack casually replied, “My lovely fiancée? I’ll be bringing her to the fancy thing later.”
“Excellent. Oh, and thanks for the timely effort last night. And the security teams would like to know if Action Girl is dating anyone. I haven’t had the heart to tell them she’s only sixteen or seventeen.”
Jack didn’t react even a little bit. He just smiled. “Oh, I imagine she’s fully capable of turning down your security people. And she’s fully capable of handling anyone who doesn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer. By ripping his arms off and bludgeoning him to death with them.”
Lord Giles just smiled wickedly. “And you still have quite the turn of phrase. We really must chat more often.”
Alex glanced over. Lieutenant Martin was looking at Jack like ‘oh holy cow you’re so awesome’. Major Kuhlman was looking at Lord Giles’ retreating backside like she might melt into a gooey puddle at any moment.
L was a real jerkhead to treat Major Kuhlman like that. He probably sized her up in one second and knew she wasn’t used to that kind of attention from guys, and that was just kind of mean.
After the meetings, Alex went upstairs with Jack and Riley. Action Girl was going out to dinner with some of the Scandinavian people from the meeting.
Riley waited until they got into Jack’s sitting room, and he announced to Jack, “Lord Giles still has martial arts calluses and gun calluses on his hands. He’s keeping up on his skills.”
Oh! That was why Riley had done the shaking thing. Riley was probably taking private sneakiness lessons from Jack.
Jack frowned. “And he was hitting on my adjutant.” He glared at Alex. “Don’t let him get you in a private room. He has lethal levels of suave.”
Willow came out of the bedroom in a robe. “Who’s all with the suave?”
Alex explained, “Lord Rupert Giles. L. Maybe a former Double Oh.”
Willow nodded excitedly. “He’s got some seriously blacked-out files. Even worse than Jack’s.” Jack frowned at her, and she hastily added, “Which I would never go poking into without permission or trying to look up the missions that his files were blacked out for, or —”
Jack snarked, “Honey, I think you’ve rammed your foot far enough into your mouth. Stop while you still have an ankle.”
Willow stuck her tongue out at him. “Anyway, we know who he really is, so we can keep an eye out for him at tonight’s gala. And it’s not like he’s going to assassinate you or anything. Even if we’ll need to check each other for bugs when we come back here, because I bet he’s seriously with the sneakiness.”
Jack glanced at Willow and said, “Here’s an FYI. We’re not releasing this, but the ‘rogue Shop agents’ weren’t.”
Riley looked at Alex. He’d figured it out, too. Alex said, “I figured they couldn’t be, if you had to film all this stuff and add in special effects and then make it look like security camera stuff, and I’m pretty sure that was Jo as Terawatt.”
Jack nodded. “Yep. We had a bunch of Shop agents who turned themselves in, and some of them were pretty appalled at what their agency had been doing when they signed up to protect their country and be the good guys. We took four of the ones who were the guiltiest about it, and let them play ‘badguy’. And we got to finger Kinsey at the same time, so it’s a two-for-one sale.”
Willow cut in, “Anyway, Mister Borden’s people took care of the real rogue Shop agents. At least, we’re pretty sure it was them. The Shop guys all met their deaths mysteriously in the last couple of weeks while staking out assorted D.C. power brokers: botulism, a heart attack, a hit and run, a mugging gone wrong … What’s left of the Shop and NID people may never put it all together.”
Alex worried, “A heart attack?”
Willow nodded. “Yeah, it’s caused by a drug you have to inject into a vein, so it’s pretty hard to do without tipping off your victim that you’re up to no good. But the CIA invented the stuff years ago, after the KGB came up with the ‘stab you with ricin in an umbrella tip’ deal.”
Alex felt sick to her stomach that there were people out there who could just make you die whenever they wanted to, even if the people who had died were really bad people.
Riley changed the topic. “I’ve been invited to have dinner with some NATO officers I know. I’ll keep an ear to the ground.”
Alex said, “Well, poor unwanted Annie Farrell is just going to sit in her room and eat gift basket stuff. Meanwhile, Hermione’s going to have company over for dinner. A superheroine and three other guests.”
Jack said, “Fine. Tera’s perfectly capable of getting across the Atlantic in the time since she saved the day in D.C. today. But while Terawatt is at the meeting tomorrow, we’re going to have an Annie Farrell impersonator covering for you.”
Alex thought for a second and smiled. “Cool. I’m guessing I’m going to need to sneak her in and out of the hotel, right?”
Jack nodded. “We’ll handle the details when we have an ETA.”