Alien Diplomacy (23 page)

“Oh, that’ll be Zachary,” Cartwright said. “He had to travel separately from the rest of us.” She smiled at me. “The traffic’s been so terrible that we all carpooled.”

I managed not to ask how Cartwright, who worked at the Pentagon, was in a carpool with any of these people. The answer was obvious—they’d been plotting somewhere together before storming our particular castle.

Instead, I took an educated guess as to who our straggler was.
“You mean Senator Zachary Kramer?” Also known as Marcia Kramer’s husband. Fabulous. With him joining us, the only spouse missing from this little group was Jack Ryan’s wife, Pia. I wasn’t disappointed that she wasn’t along—we were at Marx Brothers occupancy in the room as it was. Of course, for all I knew, Pia Ryan was on her way and just stuck in traffic.

“Yes, indeed,” a man’s voice boomed out. Sure enough, Pierre was ushering in a man about White’s age. He resembled Armstrong and most of the other congressmen I’d met—he was well dressed, well coiffed, and exuded chummy confidence. “So sorry I’m late, all. Had to drop Marcia off at a friend’s place. What have I missed?”

“Oh, we’d just shared our little request,” Culver said quickly.

“Great.” Kramer seemed pleased. “So, what’s your answer?”

Both Jeff and I opened our mouths. But before we could speak, Pierre dashed in. “Ambassadors, I’m
so
sorry to interrupt, but you’re already terribly late. You know how the king gets when you keep him waiting. As your Majordomo, I’m going to have to insist you both leave immediately.”

J
EFF AND I SNAPPED OUR MOUTHS SHUT.
The rest of the room looked as though they’d been goosed or had just eaten spoiled chum, depending. Chuckie looked as though he wanted to make Pierre his top operative.

Jeff recovered quickest. “Thank you, Pierre. You’re right.” He gave everyone a charming smile. “Thanks so much for dropping by. Please, next time, set up an appointment so we can really spend some quality time together.”

“Madeline, perhaps you could organize that and coordinate with the Embassy Majordomo,” Chuckie said pointedly. Cartwright’s eyes narrowed—an interesting look behind her cat’s-eye glasses—but she nodded and managed her standard fleeting smile.

Jeff took my arm and jerked his head at Chuckie. He nodded to the others. “We all need to get going. Pierre will see you out.”

The three of us left the room in a reasonably stately manner and continued it to the stairs. Then Jeff grabbed Chuckie and zipped us back up to the room where Oliver and the boys were. It was a short trip, so Chuckie only gagged for a second or two.

“I want you two jocks ensuring the ten people who just came in leave immediately. Shove them physically if they aren’t doing what Pierre wants, which is getting the hell out of our Embassy.”

Len and Kyle took off. “What was that all about?” Oliver asked. We gave him the fast, confusing rundown. He nodded sagely. “Ah.”

“Ah?”

“Sorry. You’re too new. This is a tight-knit group. The politicians are in the lobbyists’ pockets. For those not in the know, American Centaurion has the reputation of being very well placed politically,
in terms of both national and international defense. Obviously, for those in the know, you’re a key group.”

“Yeah, everyone wants to make us the War Division.”

Oliver nodded. “Understandable. Deplorable,” he added quickly as Jeff glared at him, “but understandable.”

“So Lydia’s already on Culver and Gadoire’s payrolls?” This was disappointing. I liked Eugene and I didn’t want to hate his wife.

“Maybe not,” Oliver said. “She’s new. However, they’re a hugely influential group. If she wants to rise up in the Washington hierarchy, they’re a good set to join. One of them is related to the head of Titan Security, too.”

“Really? Which one?” I figured it couldn’t be Madeline Cartwright—not only did she seem just too boring for this level of intrigue, she was a Pentagon employee, and I knew their background checks rivaled Chuckie’s.

Oliver shook his head. “I don’t know, can’t find the information. The records have been cleaned, so to speak.”

“How do you clean off records of your relatives?”

“Change their names, steal and delete all the birth records, replace them with new ones.” Chuckie shrugged. “We do it all the time with witness protection. I didn’t know Titan had this direct a Washington connection, though.”

“They’ve taken great pains to hide it,” Oliver said. “I only know from piecing together little bits of information here and there, found over time and while I was doing my exposé on the situation with the police department. So far, it hasn’t been enough to even write an article about, let alone take to someone like you.”

“Take it to me now,” Chuckie said. “I don’t like discovering a conspiracy theory I know nothing about.”

“Losing a perfect track record?”

He shot me a glare. “No. But part of my job is to determine which of the theories and rumors are true. Like the supersoldier project that came out of nowhere. I don’t like being blindsided. Titan’s got a lot of clout—I need to know who or what they’re connected to, and discovering who they have hidden in our government would be an intelligent place to start.”

“As far as I can tell, this was put in place decades ago,” Oliver said.

“That’s some serious long-term planning.”

“Our enemies tend to fall on that side of the house,” Chuckie reminded me. “And I consider Titan to be among our enemies.” He shook his head. “They’ve been investigated. Senator McMillan has
certainly had a number of background checks run on Titan’s board of directors and chief officers. They focused on Titan because they won the local protection contract, but they’ve done the same with all the other security companies bidding on government contracts.”

“Go Arizona.” McMillan was our senior senator, and my sorority roommate, Caroline, worked for him now. “We rock the suspicious.”

“And yet they’ve found nothing actionable against Titan,” Chuckie pointed out.

“Are we safe in assuming they want to kill all of us and make Centaurion the War Division, or do we think they just want all the money and power in the world?”

“Yes.” Chuckie shook his head. “And yes, I know that was an either-or question. Always assume they’re out to get you. It may sound paranoid, but it keeps you alive.”

Jeff ran his hand through his hair. “What a great mindset to live with.”

Chuckie shrugged. “Look back at the last few years and call me overcautious.”

“What bothers me most is what’s bothered me since Operation Confusion—that there are conspiracies and plans going on that you and my mom know nothing about. And we don’t know if Titan’s part of an older plot we didn’t know anything about before but at least have an inkling of now, or if it’s part of a brand-new plan to kill the people we care about and take over. Or something else entirely.”

Jeff, Chuckie, and I shared the “we’re doomed” look.

“Ah, well,” Oliver said in a tone of voice clearly intended to cheer us up. “I’m sure it’ll all come out eventually. The truth always does.”

“Does it?” Jeff didn’t sound happy. “Because if that’s the case, that means we’re going to be exposed somewhere along the line.”

The boys returned before any of the rest of us could make a sarcastic comment about Oliver’s optimism or reassure Jeff that we’d remain hiding in plain sight without issue. Of course, it might just have been me who had to hold back the fact that the truth very often never came out because it was too busy being beaten to a pulp and rearranged into something “more palatable.” Yeah, I’d picked up a few things in the short time we’d been here. Which was why I was less worried about us being discovered than Jeff was.

“Pierre had them all leaving, but we made sure they didn’t dawdle,” Len shared.

“Good, then let’s get out of here. Our appointment with the ‘king’ is overdue.”

“What?” Kyle asked. “We’re seeing a king?”

“Not so much, no.”

The six of us trotted off, me, Oliver, and Chuckie bringing the boys up to speed. We got into one of the limos that didn’t have a car seat in it. Jeff and I sat in the back, Chuckie and Oliver faced us, Len had the wheel, Kyle had shotgun. Not the team I was used to, but we were a team nonetheless.

“How do you keep all these people straight?” Kyle asked as we finished our Weirdness Wrap-Up.

“Unwillingly.”

“And is there really a king?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. “Only he’s on Alpha Four.”

“So,” Len said, getting us back on topic, “whoever bugged Mister Joel Oliver, they had plenty of time and opportunity, right? Because he doesn’t live in a secured building, at least, not like you do.”

“Right.”

“But who bugged Kitty?” Kyle asked. “Because from what you all said, there were a lot of different bugs in her purse.”

“But nothing in the baby’s things,” I added.

“The baby would be presumed to be with her mother,” Oliver suggested.

“Not all the time.”

“So they aren’t after Jamie,” Chuckie said.

“Good,” Jeff growled. “Not that it stopped them from trying to kill her.”

“Is it the same people, though? I mean, we never have just one plan going on.”

Chuckie sighed. “Good point. Let’s assume we have multiple actions against us active. It’ll make us more alert.”

“Maybe whoever bugged Kitty didn’t have access to Jamie’s diaper bag,” Kyle suggested.

Jeff’s phone rang before we could comment. “Hi, Gladys. Really. Really? Huh.” He looked at me and Oliver. “Good initiative, those teams. Good. Really. Thanks, Gladys. Yeah, we’ll sleep better. If, you know, we ever get to sleep again.”

He hung up and looked at Chuckie. “They searched your home and office, the Embassy, the Pontifex’s residence, Kitty’s parents’ home as well as their new place, and Mister Joel Oliver’s trashed apartment. Gladys had each Centaurion Base run through a full
scan set, too. The only bugs found were the ones in the Embassy—those that were on his clothes and equipment and in Kitty’s purse. Between the two, there were over a dozen different pieces of tracking equipment. They’re running comparisons now, but it’s a good guess they won’t all be from the same group, organization, or country.”

We all let that sit on the air for a while. I could see Chuckie’s conspiracy wheels turning. I could also tell they weren’t settling on anything key.

“So, I guess the big questions are, why are Mister Joel Oliver and I so very popular, and how did we get so many bugs on us both, in, I’d have to guess, such a short period of time?”

“Succinctly put.” Chuckie looked as if he might have gotten something. “Martini, you said there were around a dozen pieces of tracking software between Kitty and Mister Joel Oliver?”

“Yes.” Jeff’s phone beeped. “Test results are back. We’ve identified matches between what was in Kitty’s purse and what was on our reporter here. Seven matching sets, so we can safely assume there are seven different groups who were bugging them. Huh.”

“What?”

“There’s one that was only in your purse, baby. Doesn’t match at all with the others.”

“So there’s one person out there only following me, instead of me and MJO? I feel so special.”

“Seven sets…” Chuckie’s voice trailed off. I knew his expression; the wheels were turning. “That fits.”

I thought about the past hour and made the leap. “You think the people who visited us unexpectedly were the ones who bugged me?”

“Yeah, because there were seven of them in addition to Cantu, Armstrong, and Cartwright. And there was no real reason for them to make the first lobbying and bribery steps today.”

“Unless they know someone’s gonna die at the President’s Ball.”

“I’m more concerned about Kitty being spied on in her Washington Wife class,” Jeff said, looking and sounding worried.

“Eugene wouldn’t bug me.” I considered whether it was a good time to suggest I not attend the class anymore. Thought about it and figured I’d be told I had to go to perform counterespionage and decided not to get into that resulting discussion.

Jeff nodded. “I don’t get anything threatening or dangerous from him.”

“He wouldn’t have to bug you to get information about where
you were going,” Chuckie said. “You’d tell him, as long as he asked in a way that made sense.”

“Or he’s not involved.”

“Possible.” Chuckie didn’t sound convinced either way. “However, the other six that dropped by all have significant others in class with you, don’t they?”

“Oh, snap. Yeah, and that explains why they called me and Eugene over yesterday morning—to plant their bugs. My purse was shoved under the middle of the table, and I wasn’t paying any attention to it because I was so focused on the return-to-high school situation. So they all could and probably did drop something in.” I thought about it. “I’ll bet the seventh bug was planted by Jack Ryan. His wife works for the C.I.A.”

“Not in my division, and her division’s not read in on American Centaurion. Which means her spying on you makes sense.”

“So they showed up today because we’d found their bugs?” Jeff asked.

Chuckie nodded. “Sounds right to me.”

Jeff made a call. “Yeah, me again. Please have the agents sweep the lower floors of the Embassy for bugs. Yes, again. Trust me, they’re going to find some.” He waited a few moments. “Right. How many? Really? Great. No, not at this moment. Thank you.” He hung up, looking angry.