Jeff glared at Oliver. “Glad you didn’t miss a chance to report on this.”
Oliver shook his head. “Some things are required. It is my job.”
“If he doesn’t write the story, then everyone questions validity,” Chuckie added. “He’s known to be your confidant.”
“I did run the piece by the Embassy Public Relations Minister.” This was Raj’s official title.
“Did anyone else clear their stories with you?” Jeff asked Raj.
“Yes, the Stars and Stripes. Otherwise, no.”
Jeff ran his hand through his hair. “So we have two out of nine. I suppose those are good odds for us.”
“None of the stories say anything detrimental to our reputations,” Raj said. “They’re all focused on showing Michael to be a hero. Most of them are speculating on the risk of more terrorist activity, though.”
“Which is, let’s be honest, quite likely,” Oliver said.
“Very likely,” Stryker agreed. “And not just the Al Dejahl organization. This kind of thing can easily become a game of one-upmanship between the different terrorist factions.”
“Does it get better?” Jeff asked.
“It does,” Amy said. “The Gaultier Board is trying to use this as a reason I’m not fit to take over in any capacity.”
“Why, because one of your family by marriage was murdered by terrorists?” Didn’t even try to keep the shock out of my voice.
Amy nodded. “Ansom Somerall, Janelle Gardiner, and Quinton Cross graced me with a surprise conference call this morning at seven. Too bad for them that I was up already. They expressed their fake condolences, then shared that my ties to terrorist targets clearly puts Gaultier Enterprises at risk, and for the good of the company, its employees, and shareholders, I should stop trying to gain any kind of control.”
“What did you say to that?” Doreen asked.
“I said that I’d be more than willing to share with any number of the reporters calling to get a story that because my cousin-by-marriage, who is being touted as a true American hero, was brutally murdered, Gaultier Enterprises feels that they now no longer want anything to do with American Centaurion. Then I said I’d be forced to ask those same reporters if they thought Gaultier’s Board had made that decision because they were racist, xenophobic, in bed with the terrorists themselves, or potentially all three.”
“Oh, so you told them to go screw themselves in business-speak. That’s my girl.”
“That’s what that actually meant?” Jeff asked.
“Yes,” Amy said with a laugh. “They backed down, and in fact are now trying to offer any assistance they can to ‘catch those parties responsible for this atrocity.’”
Stryker nodded. “They released a statement to several online news outlets within five minutes of Amy’s phone call ending. They also made calls to a variety of other numbers we’re still tracing.”
“You’ve tapped Gaultier’s phones?” This was news to me.
“Henry’s been working on a phone trace program that, once it makes contact with either the cell phone or the landline the call originated from, can then lock on to any other calls made from that cell or line. So yes, but only this morning. And he’s still working out the kinks. However, I can say for sure that at least three of the calls they made were to overseas, two were to the C.I.A., and one was to the F.B.I. We don’t have exact office or personnel matches yet, so don’t demand them, Chuck. And, as I said, we’re still working on the others.”
“What countries?” Chuckie asked.
“France, Paraguay, and Russia.”
“Figures. Do we think we have more supersoldiers, more androids, more Yates progeny, or all three? Show of hands?”
“How was that program not wiped out yesterday?” Christopher asked, shooting Patented Glare #3 at me while also ignoring my question.
“Henry does his initial work on paper,” Stryker replied. “So he had all his notes.”
“Still that’s pretty complex, even for you guys, to get back up and running in less than a day,” Tim said.
Stryker shook his head. “We were wiped out. Our friends who aren’t attached to Centaurion weren’t. We called in some favors. We were trying to use Henry’s program to vector where the video feed was coming from, since it was the best option we had at hand.”
Refrained from asking who they’d called in favors from—between the five of them they had a huge circle of friends, acquaintances, fans, and frenemies. Chose to also not ask if they’d been careful with what they’d shared with whom—yesterday all anyone had been focused on was trying to rescue our people. If some of us messed up security, we’d deal with it along the way.
“That’s a lot of calls made early in the day immediately after Ames threatened them. To me, that says she did more than tell them to screw off—I think she hit a nerve.”
“I doubt it’s a worry that they’ll be shown to be racist or xenophobic,” Doreen said.
Len nodded. “From what I’ve seen of Gaultier, they cover most of the ‘good steward of the planet and a lover of all people’ hype.”
“I agree. Besides, those worries would mean a call to their advertising, marketing, and PR agencies, not heavy hitter government agencies. Did they call Homeland Security?”
“Not as far as we know yet,” Stryker said. “Why?”
“To cover that they were worried about a terrorist connection or attack, I’d think they’d have contacted Homeland Security as well as the C.I.A. and F.B.I. If only to be able to say they did.”
“We’re still getting back up to speed, so maybe they did and Henry just hasn’t traced that back yet.” Stryker sighed. “The bigger issue from the technology side of the house is the information we’ve lost. Yuri still insists we were hit by Chernobog.”
Adriana sat up. “Chernobog the Ultimate?”
“You know him?” I asked her.
“He’s a myth,” Stryker said.
Adriana shook her head. “No. Chernobog is real. Very real.”
Oliver, Len, Kyle, and I all exchanged a glance. “Don’t tell me,” I said, “let me guess. Olga not only knows Chernobog, but they’re cronies and go way back.”
Adriana’s eyes flashed. “She knows Chernobog, yes, and from way back. But friends? No. They’re not friends—they’re bitter enemies.”
CHAPTER 53
STRYKER STARED AT ADRIANA. “There’s no way. The Chernobog myth started in the eighties.”
Adriana shrugged. “Grandmother was certainly alive and quite . . . active, at that time.”
“Olga’s former KGB, Eddy. Get with the program. Does she know Chernobog on sight or merely by reputation?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” Adriana said. She stood up, pulled her phone out, and stepped away to have a fast conversation in Romanian. She hung up and nodded. “If Len and Kyle will assist me, Grandmother would like to join us.”
“We can go there,” I offered. Olga was wheelchair-bound due to multiple sclerosis. Saw no reason to put her out.
“No, she said that under the circumstances, she would prefer to come here.”
“I’ll go along as well,” White said. He and the boys followed Adriana out.
“We’ll never hear the end of it from Yuri,” Stryker muttered.
“Whatever. I’m just happy that Chernobog is real. Because a real person can be found, reasoned with, threatened, and, above all, stopped.”
Tito, Melanie, and Emily joined us before anyone in the room could tell me I was wrong. Melanie looked like Raquel Welch when she’d been starring in movies mostly naked and Emily resembled a young Sophia Loren. It wasn’t hard to see where Lorraine and Claudia got their Dazzler good looks.