“You two rock. We have a situation outside that could quickly turn into a riot. I’m certain people will try to get in. We need to let friends in and keep enemies out. Good luck with figuring out which are which.”
“On it, Chief. Do you want the com to remain open?”
“No, but please advise Jeff of what’s going on. He’s still with some of the others in the conference room.”
“I don’t know that Field teams are the right answer,” Chuckie said once Walter had turned off the com. “I think we might need the National Guard.”
“We need to discuss this at the Zoo,” Olga reminded us.
We started across the bridge, meaning we were now easily seen from the street. This clearly made the crowd’s day. They turned their random focus onto us. Happily, the thick glass and metal and other materials made the bridge pretty soundproofed, so we couldn’t hear what they were yelling. I could guess, though. I’d heard most of it already.
We could, however, see them surging at us, which wasn’t fun to experience. They weren’t all that coordinated, but there were a lot of them. Wanted to pull my Glock out of my purse, but since bulletproof glass worked both ways, controlled my fight impulse, though it took effort.
Someone tossed something at the bridge, and that, of course, meant that others followed suit. Good to know this was one of their signature moves.
Happily, the shields were indeed on and working quite well. Whatever was being thrown was tossed right back. Tried not to feel vindictive joy when signs, rotten fruit, and other nasty things bounced back onto the crowd. Failed.
We reached the Zoo and were able to at least not look at the scene outside. The Zoo’s first floor was where the Alpha Four animals were on display on random days and times for our protection, the fourth and fifth were housing and the Computer Lab. The third floor was where we now hosted gala events where sometimes our guests didn’t die.
But the second floor was mostly a huge kitchen, a row of bathrooms, one of which housed a gate, a couple of elevators, and open space. It made for a good For Your Ears Only meeting room, because there was almost nothing anyone could hide in or behind.
The rest of Hacker International were waiting for us, looking worried. “Did you look outside?” Ravi asked.
“We walked over from the Embassy, what do you think?” Stryker replied.
Showing that Dazzlers were always on top of things, Lorraine and Claudia did a fast check of the floor and stairwells while Hacker International bickered amongst themselves about who was on top of looking at the mob outside and who wasn’t.
“We’re alone,” Claudia said when they returned, a few seconds later.
The one thing this floor didn’t have was chairs. Oh well. Olga’s chair traveled with her, and everyone else could follow my lead and sit their butts down on Mr. Clean Floor. Most of them did—we looked like the most formal bunch of Fireside Friends ever—though Buchanan remained standing, and because he did, Len and Kyle did as well.
“Great. Okay, I know what’s going on and I know why, at least, most of it. But first, to explain why we’re here and everyone else is in the conference room, you know how I’ve been saying off and on that we have a mole?”
Everyone nodded. “Going to steal your thunder,” Chuckie said. “It’s Gladys, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and before you all start protesting, I don’t think she’s been a willing mole.”
“No,” Tito agreed. “However, she’s given in to Al Dejahl’s mind control at least twice that we know of. Who’s to say it hasn’t been more often?”
“I’d think she’d have told someone if that were the case, Richard maybe,” Lorraine said.
“Not if she doesn’t remember it. She said that things are fuzzy when she’s under mind control and she can’t remember everything.”
“How long have you known about Ronaldo Al Dejahl?” Olga asked.
“Since Jamie was born. But he was a French businessman and philanthropist well before then. And he had to have been protected in some way, because Mom never made the connection to him and the Al Dejahl terrorist group until then.”
“While I’m sure he’s been protected,” Buchanan said, “your mother checked him out years ago. But Al Dejahl and its derivatives are common names in a small, very rural part of Europe and also in a few remote regions in the Middle East, and he had legitimate lineage to those areas. Ronaldo wasn’t shown to be anything but a successful businessman until Baby Chief’s birth.”
“So, where does this leave us?” Adriana asked.
“Besides exposed and under attack both from the mob outside and from our other enemies? It leaves us with this—I know, exactly, what the bad guys are after.” Pointed to Tito’s laptop. “From now on, Tito, that laptop, its backups, Melanie, Emily, and Magdalena are considered second only to Jamie and the rest of the kids in terms of protection needs.”
Nurse Carter looked confused. “Why? And why am I on that list?”
“Because what our enemies are searching so desperately for is the one thing they couldn’t have found when they stole and wiped our data yesterday—the research on the Yates Gene.”
CHAPTER 56
IT WAS A GOOD THING I wasn’t hoping for gasps of surprise or horror, because I didn’t get many, though Nurse Carter came through in a big way. Of course, she was the only one who wasn’t an active member of Alpha Team, who wasn’t determined to never let me know I’d surprised them, and who hadn’t been in the conference room with us.
“Why are you sure?” Chuckie asked. “I can tell you’re sure, and I’m inclined to agree, but I want to know your thinking first.”
“Because they took Melanie and Emily hostage. And there was no reason. They didn’t take Walter or the Barones, who are actively working in the Embassy. They didn’t try to lure Alfred and Lucinda or any of the rest of Jeff’s family into the trap. They had freaking Alpha and Airborne captive, and they left them. So they wanted Melanie and Emily, specifically, and there’s only one reason in the world why they’d be more appealing as hostages than anyone else I’ve named, and it’s because they’re the only ones who work with Tito on the Yates Gene project and also assist at all hybrid births.”
“Makes sense to me,” Tim said. “But do you think Gladys, or any of the other A-Cs, have figured out the connection you just made?”
“Jeff has because he can read me so easily and he went out of his way to help us get out of the room.”
“Christopher hasn’t,” Amy said. “And not because I think my husband’s stupid or unobservant. But he’s been distracted and moody like I’ve never seen, for the past few weeks, really, and I honestly think he was paying more attention to the inside of his own head than anything else going on.”
Chose not to share why I knew Amy was probably accurate. “Raj and Richard, maybe. Lucinda probably not. Gladys? Let’s just hope not.”
“Doreen might have,” Irving said. “But if she did, she won’t say anything.”
“Yeah, she’s our best untrained liar, well, her and Richard. And Raj.” Okay, we had some A-Cs really coming along in terms of lying. Good for us, I hoped. “Speaking of which, we need to contact our trained liar. How soon can we get in touch with Camilla?”
Chuckie shook his head. “There’s almost nothing you can say that will make it worthwhile to risk her cover.”
“We need to get into Gaultier and get our data back, while also wiping our theirs.”
“Not sure escalation’s the right answer, Kitty,” Tim said.
“Not sure allowing them access to all our work on superbeing genetics is the right answer, either,” Lorraine countered. “They could figure out what Tito has, or at least what the missing links are, with all the work we’ve done over the decades.”