“Good morning, all,” J.J. said by way of greeting, surprisingly chipper.
“Stow the sunny optimism and get on with the talking,” Eve said, arms folded, drawing an impatient and measured look from Ariadne.
“Righto,” J.J. said. “So, I told the Director I found some irregularities in the U.S. Customs systems, some people coming through that we flagged for being part of a batch of passports all issued from the same center on the same day, that contained a few familiar faces.” He paused and lifted up the screen of the tablet computer, showing it around to us all in a slow pan. When it came around so I could see it, I bristled. A very familiar face was on the screen—Wolfe. “Oh, yes,” he said, “but just like a bad infomercial, wait—there’s more.” He used his fingers to flip the screen to the next one, revealing another passport photo which he held in position for me to see. A scarred, horrific face was visible on the screen, something that looked familiar, but only slightly so.
“Henderschott?” I asked, drawing a nod from J.J., who flipped to the next screen, pausing for just a second. “James Fries,” I said and he flipped to the next one, a dark haired man who was trying his best not to smile. The photograph was color, but something about the eyes was off. He flipped to the next picture, a blond-haired man, and once I saw it, I realized who they were. “Spike and Angel, the vampires they sent after me.” I blinked at the pictures. “They didn’t look anywhere near that human when I fought them. They had red eyes…”
“Contact lenses,” J.J. said. “They were groomed up for the photos.” He stole a look at the screen. “Probably had their hair done before travel, kept their mouths shut to keep the fangs from showing. I’m guessing they did that with Wolfe, too, based on the before and after nature of this passport picture compared to the newsreel stuff I’ve seen from him. But there’s actually more still in this batch.” His fingers slid along the screen again, and another face appeared. “Look familiar?”
“Bjorn,” I said, recognizing the brown hair and blunt face more than anything else about his bearing. “The guy who’s sitting down in the cells right now,” I said to Reed. “How many of these passports are there?”
“Hundreds in the batch,” J.J. said. “It was from one specific facility in the UK over the course of a few weeks. Kinda hard to believe they’re all British citizens, but it’s possible. Anyway, so we got this whole batch, and I’m sifting through it with the Director for familiar faces, but that’s kind of a losing proposition because his sight isn’t what it used to be and a lot of these people don’t look anything like metas, and some of them don’t look like…well…anything.”
“Can you track any of them right now?” Reed asked.
“Yeah, and that’s kind of the point of this meeting,” J.J. said. “We got a good line on one of them, one of them in the batch that just landed in Minneapolis yesterday, came in from London via New York.” He held up the pad again, this time showing a female face, a dark-haired, serious woman who looked to be in her forties with a short bob haircut. “Eleanor Madigan,” is the name on the passport…but of course Wolfe was in the system under Eugene Dellwood, so…” he looked up and blinked, his twitch magnified by his glasses, “probably an assumed name.”
“Now in Minneapolis?” I asked. “So if she’s part of this Operation Stanchion, it looks like they’re moving pieces into place in the area now.”
“Probably more than you think,” J.J. said, and tapped away at his tablet for a minute before pushing it toward me to see again, holding it in the air between us. “This is Des Moines Police Department’s report on what they found in the house after you finished demolishing it.” I cringed, but J.J. paid no mind. “Looks like Bjorn had a Google Map leading him up to a hotel near the airport here in Bloomington.”
“He was coming here?” Parks spoke up at last, the voice of wisdom. “If he already had the map, let’s assume that he was going to travel within the next day or so after the attack. That puts it about now. You thinking he might be meeting up with Madigan?”
“I don’t know for sure,” J.J. said, surprisingly smug for a guy who really had nothing to be smug about, looks-wise, “but an Eleanor Madigan checked into that very hotel just last night. Room 1117.” He smiled wide, and then it vanished. “That’s the eleventh floor, by the way, and it’s one of those hotels where the rooms are all centered around a big open-air courtyard, so you might wanna…” he shrugged, “I dunno, use some discretion or something. Unless you want to do an eleven story plunge in public. Might not hurt you too much—”
“It would kill most of us,” Parks corrected him.
“Well, it’d make a hell of a scene for the news, too, y’know.” He nodded at me and Reed. “They’re still talking about the gangland house crashing down in Iowa.”
“That’s because it’s the most exciting thing to happen in Iowa in six decades,” Parks said.
“I want caution,” Ariadne said, cutting across all other talk in the room. “Bastian has lead on this, Sienna and Reed, you’ll be answering to him. I want everyone working together, no lone ranger BS—got it, Clary?” She waited until Clary picked his head up, gave her a silent nod, and then she continued. “Whoever this Eleanor Madigan is, I think we can expect she’s trouble if she’s truly with Omega.”
“You’re going to send all of us?” I asked, throwing looks around the room in return for the ones I got. Questioning orders like this wasn’t done. Eve gave me the nastiest look of all. “That leaves nothing to defend the campus with.”
“We still have agents,” Ariadne said. “We need a unified front. After Des Moines, I want us to be prepared for anything you might encounter, and I doubt they’re going to hit us here in the hour or two you’re gone.”
“You call it being prepared for anything,” I said, “but this is Omega we’re dealing with and I call it putting all your Faberge eggs in one basket. And then throwing that basket off the top of the IDS Tower.” I paused, and wondered where that thought had come from before realizing it had been a subconscious suggestion I hadn’t even noticed. “Which I am told is fatal.”
Ariadne opened her mouth to respond, eyes looking up as she tried to come up with something. “I can’t really do anything with your eggs metaphor, so let’s put it this way—we’re dealing with an A-rated threat, so I’m sending in my A-Team.”
“Or your M-Squad?” I asked with amusement. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it fast and quiet and get back here. With whatever Omega is planning, this is not a fortuitous time to be absent from the campus for long.”
“Agreed,” Ariadne said. “Kid gloves for the pickup on this one. Take care with her.”
“You asking us to give her the benefit of the doubt that she’s a civilian?” Bastian asked, his expression almost unreadable.
“Yes,” Ariadne said. “Take her peacefully, if possible.”
“Omega doesn’t do ‘peacefully,’” Reed spoke up. “They do bloody, violent and destructive, and that’s about it.”
“We do that pretty well ourselves,” Eve said with a wicked smile.
“And that’s fine—if she starts it,” Ariadne said, turning to look at Eve. I couldn’t see her face, but her tone shifted. “The last thing we need is a civilian casualty for some poor British nanny who picked the wrong time and place to get her passport done before she took her dream vacation to see the Mall of America.”
“Wrong season to visit,” Eve said, “Christmas shoppers and all that vileness. Horrible idea.”
“We will take all precautions not to harm her in any way,” Bastian said, ending any debate. “Eve will be at the fore; her nets are second to none for non-lethal containment. Sienna and Reed will follow up, being effective in-fighters, and Clary and Parks will keep overwatch.” He looked around at each of us until he saw the nod. “With your permission, ma’am?” He looked to Ariadne, who gave him the subtle nod of approval, and with that he opened the door and walked out first.