A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

  He was making fun of her. He knew she always ordered turkey on rye, and he had intentionally bought her something different. Well, she’d show him. She didn’t care what kind of sandwich he brought, as long as it didn’t come from a vending machine.

  On that thought, she took a hearty bite of the ham on sourdough.

  It was all right, but she liked turkey on rye more.

  “What’s in the file folder, Birchard?” Oliver asked between bites of his burger.

  “It’s a printout of commercial and residential rentals for the last three weeks. The government has a database to keep track of housing contracts, and General Stone gave it to me to review. Care to have a look?”

  “Why? You want me to do your job for you?”

  Ben smiled and shrugged. “I just thought you might be bored of homework. But actually, you can’t look at it. General Stone gave it to me to take care of, and it wouldn’t be responsible of me to hand it over to a ten-year-old without his say-so.”

  Oliver glowered as he chewed.

  “Is there anything to drink?” Quincy asked quietly.

  “Oh, almost forgot.” Ben dug four water bottles from the bag. “The agents downstairs warned me that the tap water here is horrendous. Make sure to toss your bottles in the recycle bin when you’re finished with them.”

  Alyson beamed her thanks as he handed around the water. Emily warily took hers, careful to keep her expression neutral. Ben waited until she had lifted the rim to her lips before he announced, “General Stone said he wants to meet with you after lunch, Quincy, Oliver. I’ll escort you down to the conference room he’s commandeered once you’re done eating.”

  “What’s he want?” Oliver asked sourly.

  “I imagine he wants to pick your little brains. He’s good at using whatever resources he comes across, and it would be foolish to let a couple of those resources rot away doing homework. I told him you had a personal interest in seeing the Wests brought home, Oliver,” he said.

  Oliver eyed him suspiciously.

  “What did you tell him about me, Birchard?” asked Quincy.

  Ben only smiled and arched his eyebrows.

  “Great,” she muttered.

  Emily ate only half her sandwich and wrapped the other half up again, intending to save it for a late-afternoon snack. The refrigerator stood empty except for a couple of ice trays in the freezer, so she didn’t feel the need to label the wrapper.

  “Ham-and-cheese isn’t your favorite?” Ben asked her in a low voice as she stooped to put the sandwich away. Alyson and Quincy had gone to use the restrooms, and Oliver was polishing off the last of his burger, heedless of anyone else in the room.

  “It was very good, thank you,” said Emily diplomatically.

  “I thought with the bacon obsession that ham was a decent bet to make. I guess I got it wrong.”

  “I said it was good,” Emily repeated, annoyance thick on her voice.

  He shrugged, and she could tell he didn’t believe a word she had said. That only annoyed her further.

  “How did you know that Alyson likes Reubens?” she asked accusingly. “She said she only buys them once a year.”

  Ben tipped his head. “On her birthday. It’s not only a matter of reviewing data, but of interpreting it. I’m rather proud of my abilities. I think I’ll get you a club sandwich next time. Maybe a turkey club. I’ll have to mull it over.”

  “Turkey on rye is what I always get,” Emily said.

  “But you also hate to be predictable,” Ben replied. “It shows on your face plain as day. But if you’d like to request turkey on rye for tomorrow’s lunch, I’ll abide by your demands.”

  “What if I want a strip steak with a baked potato and extra gravy?”

  He winked. “The GCA’s paying.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “I don’t really want one. I was just trying to think of something expensive. I don’t even like steak, not that I’ve ever had more than a taste of it…” She was babbling, she suddenly realized, and he was laughing at her. “Ooh!” she cried in frustration, and she stalked away from him.

  And not a moment too soon. Alyson and Quincy returned from the lavatory. The other handler had shown a marked desire to monopolize Ben, and as far as Emily was concerned, she was welcome to him.

  “Shall we head downstairs?” he asked. “I’m sure General Stone is ready and waiting for you.”

  He ushered them to the doorway. As they moved toward the elevator, Oliver suddenly snagged Emily’s sleeve. “We’ll take the stairs, Birchard,” he said. “It’s the second floor? We’ll meet you there.”

  Ben was nonchalant. “Yes, second floor. Are you sure you want to take the stairs, though? The elevator’s quicker.”

  “I need the exercise to work off that fatty burger you fed me,” Oliver retorted.

  “Oh, it was mostly soy and you know it,” said Ben. “But if you want to take the stairs and your handler has no objections, I certainly don’t care. We’ll see you downstairs.”

  The elevator doors slid open and the three got on. Quincy favored Oliver with a suspicious glance as he led Emily to the stairwell.

  “What gives?” Emily asked.

  Oliver waited until the landing door shut behind him before he answered. “Would you kindly stop flirting with Birchard? It’s gross.”

  She bristled. “I am not flirting. I don’t even like him. He’s an infuriating know-it-all.”

  “Yes, infuriating,” said Oliver. “He knows everything about everyone, and right now he’s showing off like a bowerbird dancing to attract a mate.”

  “Ugh!” Emily recoiled at the analogy, but her reaction had no effect on her pint-sized scold.

  “Quit giving him the time of day. It only encourages him.”

  “I’m encouraging him?” she said incredulously. “Quincy’s handler is ready to lick his shoes clean, and I’m encouraging him?”

  “I’d tell her to cut it out too, but I’m not allowed to talk to her,” said Oliver with a dark scowl. “I’m pretty sure she’s a lost cause anyway. Women are so stupid.”

  “Hey.” She grabbed his shoulder so that he would look at her, her expression deadly serious. “That’s not appropriate. I know I let you get away with a lot of things—you can tell me I’m an idiot, you can say that Alyson’s an idiot, but don’t just categorize all women as stupid because a few of them have bad judgment. And I am certainly not flirting with Ben Birchard.”

  Oliver’s face flushed a mottled red. He shrugged out of her grip. “Fine. But don’t encourage his antics, either. Just take whatever he gets for you and keep quiet about it.”

  “I did keep quiet about it,” Emily cried, feeling unjustly accused. “He gave me a ham sandwich, and I didn’t say a word! I can’t help it if he starts up a conversation with me. I mean, I guess I could be all surly and glare at him like you do, but most people don’t think that’s polite. And he finds it amusing enough coming from you. He’d probably laugh himself silly if I tried to stonewall him like that.”

  The scowl on his face grew deeper. He harrumphed. “There’s never a right answer with Birchard. You’d better hurry, or he’ll come looking for us.” He swept past her down the stairs.

  That little punk, Emily thought. He’d been the one who wanted to discuss something privately—not that she expected any privacy within a GCA office. The security cameras that overlooked each landing reminded her of that quite nicely. She supposed that Ben would hear the entirety of their conversation before nightfall.

  As they exited the second floor stairwell, the man himself stood waiting. Quincy and Alyson were nowhere in sight, but voices traveled from a conference room down the corridor.

  He smiled. “This way,” he said, and he led them forward.

  “Snake,” Oliver muttered, aptly voicing Emily’s misgivings aloud.

  If Ben heard the quiet insult, he made no such acknowledgement. Instead, he motioned them through the doorway of the conference room. Within, General Stone stood at
a table of GCA agents. Quincy sat in a chair near the far end, with an empty seat next to her that was undoubtedly meant for Oliver. Alyson had been relegated to a chair in the corner, and Emily rightly surmised that its adjacent companion was meant for her. Wordlessly she took her spot.

  “And now that we’re all here,” General Stone said with just enough control to indicate how annoyed he was, “let’s begin. We’ve established that the Wests targeted this office in particular, that they must have gleaned information from both public archives and the low-level agents that you sent to track them. We know what they seized and how they escaped. We’re only missing where they ended up. Agent Knox and his team have established from sighting reports that they’re moving from one place to the next every day or two. Is that correct?”

  Agent Knox sat up straighter in his chair. “Yes, sir. We’ve been able to pinpoint a hotel room in Glendale, an apartment in Peoria, and a small business office downtown as places that they definitely stayed at some point. The hotel room was only rented for one night, but there was a signed lease on both the apartment and the office. We’ve kept the areas under surveillance since their discovery, but they haven’t returned there yet.”

  “Three places in what’s likely a very long string,” said General Stone, “with three different names on the rentals and payment by money order. They have an extraordinary number of resources at their disposal, but they are limited in what they can do. They’re not buying any property because the process takes too long. We’ve narrowed our search to business and private rentals that have payment by money order rather than by check or bank transfer. Anything else?”

  To Emily’s great surprise, Oliver raised his hand. “General Stone,” he said. All eyes turned upon him. The general looked more irritated than interested in what he had to say, but Oliver didn’t care. “You’ll want to look for something that was rented at a significantly lower price than the landlord originally asked. Honey West likes a bargain. At least, she did in Las Vegas and Flagstaff.”

  Grudgingly, Stone shifted his attention to Agent Knox. “Do we have access to that information?”

  Knox shifted through a stack of papers. “The hotel room was rented at half its usual price. The office space…” He paused to glance over a few different pages. “Its rent was significantly lower than the comparables in the area. The apartment seems on the low side as well.”

  “You’ll want to look for contracts where the utilities are included in the asking price too,” said Oliver. “I doubt they’d want to take the time to set up those services or pay those bills.”

  “No one includes utilities in the rent these days,” said a balding agent halfway down the table.

  “They do when a projector like Honey West asks them to,” said General Stone grimly. “From everything I’ve heard, she could sell a crate of light bulbs to the Amish and have them thanking her for the honor.”

  A few of the older agents exchanged knowing glances. Everyone else looked around in confusion. Ben was the one to voice their collective uncertainty.

  “The Amish, sir?”

  General Stone grunted. He deigned to explain himself, though with a hint of contempt on his face. “I guess I’m showing my age with that remark. The Amish were a community of people in Pennsylvania that shunned modern technology. They were assimilated into the general population back in the twenties, but before that they drove around in horse-and-buggy rigs and led a primitive lifestyle.”

  “Ah,” said Ben.

  The general redirected the conversation back to more pertinent matters. “So we’re looking for units that were rented at a lower asking price with all utilities inclusive. Agent Knox, would you be so kind as to divide the contracts among the proper parties?”

  “Wait,” said Oliver. “Aren’t these in a database? Can’t you just whittle down the possibilities with search terms?”

  A muscle clenched along Agent Knox’s jawline, and a controlled breath left his throat. “The properties are in a database, but most of the contracts are submitted as images. The Housing Department is roughly three years behind in verifying that those contracts match the information tied to them.” On this monumental tribute to government efficiency, he shuffled around the table to distribute the papers he held. “These are all the rental contracts from the past three weeks for the entire valley. Star any likely candidates, and when you finish with your pile, pass it to the right. We’re double-checking to make certain that we don’t miss anything.”

  Emily was supremely relieved when he bypassed the two handlers. She’d had a boring enough morning and didn’t want to spend the afternoon looking over rental agreements. Her relief was short-lived, though.

  “Oliver, you should trade places with Alyson,” said Ben. “You and Quincy can have your handlers help you go over your contracts.”

  “You don’t trust a couple of kids to do the work of adults, Birchard?” Oliver asked snidely, but he pushed away from the table as instructed. Alyson, eager to impress one person in the room at least, moved out of her chair to replace him.

  Quincy simply glared at Birchard with disgust.

  Oliver split his pile and handed half to Emily the moment he sat down. “You aren’t too keen about combing through rental agreements either,” she surmised as she took it from him.

  He wrinkled his nose, but he turned his attention to the set of pages he had kept.

  It was slow-going. Most of the rentals didn’t have an original list-price included in the government registry—nor were they required to—and only by looking at comparables in the same neighborhood could they figure out whether the price was appropriate or not. This meant frequent consultation of a computer database, and while the GCA agents were nice enough to provide laptops for everyone, the work still took forever. As the hours passed, they slogged their way through contract after contract. In a city this large, there were literally thousands of rentals to review. Emily couldn’t blame General Stone for enlisting all the help he could get, child labor laws notwithstanding.

  The task had long since become mind-numbing when agents began to stand up, stretch, and take extended breaks away from the conference room. When Emily chanced a peek at General Stone, she discovered him thumbing his cell phone, much to her disbelief. The only ones who seemed to take the task at all seriously were Oliver, Quincy, and Ben.

  Of course Ben would take it seriously. He was probably creating a personal catalogue of Phoenix residents and their preferred breakfast foods. Why anyone let him anywhere near a database of any kind she would never understand.

  Just after four o’clock, when she thought her brain might combust from sheer boredom, a chime sounded from the elevator. A couple of agents who had been loitering in the hallway scampered back into the room and took their seats at the table. They leaned over to their colleagues and whispered something, their excitement simmering.

  Emily’s attention shifted to the door as a pair of voices approached.

  “It’s just a formality, I assure you. I see no reason why the general wouldn’t agree to such a tiny request.” The man sounded vaguely familiar, but Emily couldn’t put her finger on where she had heard him before.

  “I do hope so,” a woman replied, and Emily sat bolt upright at the sound of that lush voice. The whole conference room turned to watch as none other than Veronica Porcher sashayed in, with Principal Rupert Carter of Prom-C on her heels. It was the first time that Emily had seen him from a normal vantage point instead of from above. From here his comb-over didn’t look nearly as atrocious.

  General Stone stood. “Principal Carter,” he said in greeting, and he extended his hand, which Principal Carter promptly shook.

  “General,” he said with a deferential nod. “Of course you know Ms. Veronica Porcher of the National Public News Network. Veronica, this is General Stone.”

  “Charmed,” said Veronica as she also shook his hand. Her lovely mouth curved into a beautiful smile, and Emily instantly hated her for it.

  “Unfortun
ately for you, I’m not,” said General Stone. “Principal Carter sent me a message that you want to be put up in a hotel for the duration of your stay here.”

  “It’s customary,” Veronica said, trying not to look perturbed at his brusqueness. “I’ve been on several assignments like this, and the NPNN executives always provide me with a hotel room.”

  General Stone remained unmoved. “We’re not the NPNN executives. This is a GCA operation, and you’re here as a resource. You’ll be treated like any other resource.”

  Emily’s heart froze as the meaning of that sentence sank in. Oliver and Quincy were resources, and they were staying on the fifth floor of this very office. Did that mean that Veronica…?

  She didn’t have to wait long for her answer. “Surely you can see that I’m more than a mere resource, General,” Veronica said in her most persuasive voice.

  “Have Ms. Porcher’s things taken to the fifth floor,” the general said to Principal Carter. “We’re on a budget here, and there’s no reason for an extra expenditure like a hotel room when there are perfectly serviceable quarters within the office. And before you waste your breath on any more arguments, Ms. Porcher, I should point out a couple more of our resources at the end of the room: Oliver and Quincy, from the Prometheus Institute. They’re both null-projectors, so there’s no point in you trying to change my mind.”

  A momentary pout crossed her face, but she quickly schooled it away. “How nice to see students of my alma mater using their talents for good in the world,” she said with a contrived smile. “And is that—” Suddenly her face lit up. “Do my eyes deceive me? Is that you, Ben Birchard?”

  He stood from his place at the table. “Hello, Veronica,” he said warmly, and he embraced her in a very familiar greeting. Emily could have sworn she heard Alyson growl when Veronica kissed him on the cheek.

  “Darling Ben! I had no idea you were here. It’s been ages since we saw each other! How have you been?”