by Fiona Quinn
I rolled my eyes at him. Leanne squeezed my arm and ducked her head behind my shoulder.
The receptionist nodded and pointed down the hall. We lifted our packages and headed on. Halfway to General Elliot’s room, I elbowed Gator. “I was afraid you were going to tell her the twins are ‘Legal’ and ‘Financial’ because your mama fell on hard times when they were born.”
“Nah, that would have been over the top, and she’da known I were pulling her leg.” He moved through the open door and leaned down to give the waiting Mrs. Elliot a kiss on her cheek.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
An Iniquus Hummer picked Gator up while Leanne and I put the final additions on the tree. I had strung thousands of blinking Christmas lights that reflected off the multifaceted silver ornaments and tinsel. My favorite ornaments ran on batteries and twirled, scattering rainbows across the floor.
We wrapped the base of the tree with metallic fabric, and a silent Christmas train set circled around the tree base with its bright red engine and carloads of glittering gifts. It was magical and beautiful and, most of all, extremely, vibrantly, energetically entrancing.
I had taken a gauge of the room when we entered — I’d even put my hand on Gator’s back to try to enhance the sensation of vibration in there — and I got nothing. Gator said he didn’t feel anything either. But still, there was something perceptively changed in General Elliot’s room with the tree in place. Maybe it was just Mrs. Elliot’s lifted spirits.
With Gator already on his way to the field op, I dropped Leanne off at Headquarters and kept driving out to the Maryland suburbs. I pulled in and parked at a small, poorly kept cottage. I made my way through the overgrowth up the sidewalk.
Herman Trudy opened the door before I rang the bell. “Well, look at you. You’re alive.”
“Hi, Major Trudy.” I stuck out my hand. “My name is Lexi.”
Major Trudy shook my hand while scanning over my shoulder.
“I’m here alone,” I said, glancing behind me to run a quick inspection of my own and make sure it was true.
He pulled me into a room that was empty except for two lawn chairs, then hurriedly shut and bolted the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I…” I was so thrown off by his paranoia that it took me a moment to form a plan of action. “I came here because I wanted to thank you for helping General Elliot find me. And I had a few questions about the reports you wrote.”
Major Trudy beckoned toward the folder I clasped in my hand, and I passed it over to him. Standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, I waited while he sat down in the nearest chair and flipped through the pages. Finally, he indicated with a lift of his chin that the other chair was the one where I should sit. His eyes never left the pages he perused.
“Where’s the rest?” he asked.
“It seemed to me there were a few missing pieces, too. I wanted to ask you if you remembered this session and if you could help me fill in the blanks.”
He got up and searched over the empty room until finally, he patted his head and pulled his eyeglasses onto his face. Walking through the passageway, he sent a cautious look behind him to make sure I wasn’t following along. I started doubting the sagacity of coming here on my own. I sent a quick text to Spyder so he’d know where to start looking if I didn’t get home tonight.
Major Trudy came back in with a drawing board and pad of drawing paper. He’d tucked a pencil behind his ear. Sitting down, he leaned over his tablet and seemed to have a private conversation with himself. I chewed on the inside of my cheek and waited.
Peeking at my watch, I decided Strike Force must be at the warehouse already. I crossed my fingers and sent them some good juju.
Major Trudy’s hand drew over the paper for a minute. “I got the coordinates for your jail. Well, I got enough information that someone should have been able to find you. I saw on the news that they didn’t find you. The news said you went down in a plane crash over the ocean. I did a quick search and got sand, not water. Breathing, not dead. But whenever I visited you, it seemed you were about to expire. Which was crappy.” He sent me a scowl.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure what the appropriate response would have been.
“What I saw was the east coast of Honduras. Three huge cement buildings formed a prison set in the woods. Airport in one direction. Small village in another. Near enough to the coast that they should be able to search right along past the mid-point, but not past the seventy-five percent mark going south. Should have been easy to pick you up on satellite imaging and get a c-team down to get you out. Here.”
He held up the drawing.
“Assembly,” I said, describing the pin he’d drawn.
“A fucking dangerous group. At the meeting, you went to — you know, when you were floating around in the ether? You remember that?”
“None of it, no, sir.”
“They were talking about their remote viewer looking for you.”
I blinked. “The Assembly has a remote viewer? And they tasked their remote viewer to find me? Do you know why?”
Major Trudy flipped through the file to the picture with the Hydra and Spyder. “They wanted to know what you knew about a man named Spider. They thought if you were dead, their ability to get to this man,” he pointed to the spider, “would be closed. Their remote viewer couldn’t influence Spider, and they couldn’t get any information from him. They felt if he fed information to you, then you would be an easier target to reach. They wanted to find you and keep you alive, functioning, and back in the field — working for Iniquus — so they could suck information from you about this guy.” He tapped his pencil against the drawing of the spider. He tilted his head. “You’re fucking young to be a field operator.”
“I’m not an operator — never have been. I’m just someone who sits in an office and thinks. Do you know the name of the remote viewer whom the Assembly was using?”
“Yeah. They called him P.M. It’s short for the Puppet Master. They love his skills, and they’re scared as shit of his skills.”
“Do you know his real name?”
“Nope.”
“But you think he’s someone from the Galaxy program?”
“Yup.”
I worked hard to stay patient; this guy was doing me a gigantic favor just by talking with me. I offered up a warm smile, hoping to convey my gratitude. “You said they wanted to influence Spyder. The Assembly has an influencer? I thought only two people were taught that protocol.”
“That’s right — Nelson Scott — he died in a car accident right after we all got tossed out on our asses — and…” Major Trudy ducked his head and creased his brows with thought. “Isn’t that funny? I can’t recall… The two who got tapped to work on the influencing protocol were Nelson Scott…” He shook his head, rubbing agitated fingers over his temples.
I quickly tried to move the conversation in a different — hopefully, easier — direction, but I noted that Major Trudy was having the same difficulty remembering the second influencer’s name as General Coleridge had had. “Let’s talk about the monitor you worked with on these missions. What was his name?”
Major Trudy moved his lips to the side. His irises seemed to focus on the tip of his nose, making him look cross-eyed. He scratched his cheek. “Damned if I can remember.” He looked down at the report. His confusion and his memory lapses obviously rattled his nerves. He crossed his legs, clasping his knee, and jangled his foot as he shot glances through the crack in his drawn drapes. “He didn’t put a name on the report. Used a number. Sometimes folks did that, but it was always the same number, and I don’t recognize this one.”
“Did General Elliot contact you for this job, or did your monitor hire you?”
“General Elliot. I owed him one big-ass fuck of a favor, and he called it in.”
“And you decided not to do this on your own?”
“I don’t like to, and… what’s his name, the monitor lives here in town, so I just call
ed him up.”
“Where does he live?”
“No clue. Just knew he didn’t displace far from Ft. Meade.”
“Called him how? Do you have a cell phone?”
“Fuck, no. Do you know how easy it is to follow your every move, your every word on those things? Nah, I called from my landline.” He pointed at the old-fashioned dial phone attached to the wall in the corner.
“Do you have his home phone number? Can I have it?”
He left the room and came back with a notebook, reading out the number, which I promptly wrote down. I glanced up from my page. “And his name is…” I tried to trick his subconscious mind by catching it by surprise.
Major Trudy opened his mouth to form the name and then looked off in the distance, rubbed the back of his neck, and shook his head. It was almost like watching a hypnotist’s comic act when they tell their dupe that they will always forget their wife’s name. Then they engage them in conversations about their wife, which goes well except for the hole that the name had fallen into and couldn’t be retrieved.
“I don’t know. And I should know. Fucking influencers. The influencers are fucking with my brain. They work on me all the time.” He seethed with belligerence, pulling his lower lip in then pushing it back out, like a toddler getting ready for a full-blown tantrum.
“How can you tell?” I asked gently.
“Well, we all come with a social bubble. Some of us like to keep folks at a good distance. My social bubble is like three feet out from my body. I’m a trained soldier. I want everyone at arm’s distance, so I have reaction time. While I don’t want anyone to come within my arms spread, other people have a smaller bubble. They don’t mind when someone walks right up to them and stands centimeters away. They’re the kind of people that think a busy metro ride is just fine. I have to take a cab. So, imagine your bubble — do you know that itchy anxious feeling you get when people stand too close? That’s what it feels like.”
“Like someone’s watching, but you can’t find the right set of eyes? Like vibrations over your skin?”
“Electric. It’s the sensation of electricity and claustrophobia. It makes you feel like a fucking paranoid.”
“Have you ever seen the person observing you?”
“You mean like in 3D?”
“Less 3D and more like a purply-blue translucent form.” I didn’t want to show my hand, but I did need verification. I had seen the outline of a blue man when I was in prison. I thought I was dreaming — but could it have been Major Trudy?
“Hmm. Indigo is the color of the third eye if you’re looking at auric fields. Have I seen such a manifestation? I have not. Do I believe it’s possible? I have learned through my work as a remote viewer that damned near everything is possible. The last time I was truly surprised was back in the eighties. Now, I’m prepared for most anything. If you told me you saw a Sasquatch having a tea party with a bunch of Martians, I’d just nod my head.”
Chapter Thirty
Later that evening, I answered a call from Deep. “Hey, you’re calling late. Is everything okay?” I trapped my cell phone between my shoulder and ear while I pulled muffins from the oven. Wednesday was my day to bake good old-fashioned American tried and true recipes in honor of my Nana Kate.
“We’re done moving the last box into Iniquus storage down in one of the McMansions.”
“Why there?”
“That’s why I’m calling. I need to give you a heads up.”
My breath caught. Now what?
“Colonel Grant thought it might be best for them to be held in storage for the moment. Why, I’m not sure, except that a couple hours after we left the warehouse, Iniquus got a phone call from the FBI. Seems that the guard at the warehouse put a call into Lacey Stuart to let her know the pickup had gone off without a hitch.” Deep laughed. “Poor guy probably thought he was going to get a thank-you, maybe a bonus check. Instead, he got his head shoved up his… well, it didn’t go the way he’d planned. Lacey called the FBI.”
I pulled the hot mitts from my hands and turned the oven off. “You’re still thinking she’s an innocent in all of this, but that would be my move if I were culpable and in her position. If she is innocent, I bet she’s acting on her own and didn’t tell her uncle.”
“She didn’t tell her uncle. He’s on a golfing vacation. Lacey sent him an email that got an auto-reply saying he’s out of the office. I checked, and her email wasn’t opened. But she did access his list of contacts and selected a very high-ranking special agent at the FBI amongst the list for her next phone call.”
“You planted spyware on her computer?”
“Of course — ongoing case. With a little digging, this case is going to go away — no retrospective, no museum contract, no signature from Colonel Grant…what are they going to say when our art comes back? That we stole our own stuff? We didn’t break and enter — we simply picked it up. Lacey is definitely in the dark on this. She’s being used by her great uncle. Though, I’m wondering what’s going to happen when he’s arrested — will she be out of a job? Will they close the gallery? I’ve got a cousin in that business, even a whiff of something underhanded, and you’ll never get another job in the industry. Everyone knows everyone.”
“If she is innocent, then that really sucks.”
“You are building a case against the uncle, aren’t you?” Deep asked.
“I’m not the decision-maker on that.”
“Well get this, when Lacey was talking to the FBI, she remembered her meeting with Joseph Del Toro and some girl she thinks was named Jan or Jane or Janet or something J-ish where she gave them information about the Tsukamoto collection, and then the Jan-girl had seemed faint. She left them alone with her file when she went to get some water.”
“Nice to be remembered so warmly.”
Deep chuckled. “Yeah, gets better. I handed her my card with my phone number.”
“Surely not your real phone number, right?”
“Nah, voice mail service. Untraceable. But they did trace it — the FBI traced it. Normally, folks wouldn’t have those capabilities. And normally, FBI wouldn’t have moved as fast on a case like this.”
“Does Iniquus have those capabilities?”
“On a good day — but we’d need a fist full of subpoenas, and the phone company can be ‘working on it’ for a long, long time. So, good reputation for being clean and some relationships of mutual respect—“
“You mean mutual aid.”
“Sometimes, you have to grease the gears to get them to function smoothly. Anyway, the FBI traced Joseph Del Toro back to my mother.”
I gasped.
“Yup. So my mom calls me, saying the NYC FBI stopped in. The DC FBI would like to have a chat with me.”
“Holy cow, Deep. I’m so sorry. Was she very upset?”
“Wasn’t a pretty conversation.”
“We’re talking mere hours. Somebody had a fire lit under them. Why’d you tell Lacey your real name?”
“Thought she’d be my girlfriend by now. We had the vibe. But I’m not stepping on a bro’s toes to get to a skirt I don’t know enough to really care about. Hormones are hormones, right?”
“Well, you two did have some chemistry brewing. Don’t know what kind of reaction mixing you two together would produce. Could have been something good, might have been an explosion. So I’d say that’s a sound policy. With Striker out — is he out?”
“He was in, now he’s out.”
“Did you go to Mr. Spencer with this?”
“I talked to Jack and called the FBI on a line that said I was in Alexandria at a library. The special agent said they’re following up on a meeting with Lacey Stuart, and would I please tell him my friend Jan’s full name and contact information? So I did — I had pulled your alias packet from the file. I’m supposed to meet them at headquarters tomorrow afternoon. They wanted to know if I could bring you along.”
“And?”
“I’m going to find out what t
hey know — I’ll say I couldn’t get in touch with you. They didn’t mention art, Tsukamoto, or warehouses.”
“The FBI is—” My phone showed another caller on the line. “Deep, hang on.” I clicked over. “Hey, two secs.” Back to Deep. “Let’s finish this later. Striker is on the other line, and I don’t know what his window is.”
“Yup. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. ‘Night.”
“Hey, Striker, sorry. I was talking to Deep. Where are you?”
“Chasing fucking shadows.”
“You’re cussing.”
“What?”
“You’ve been cussing lately — it’s not like you. You’re the stoic impenetrable boulder. Nothing fazes you. You’re the poster boy for control.”
“I’m frustrated beyond control. I have no idea why I’m out in the field. We’re accomplishing zilch. I keep trying to get back to Headquarters, but Vine has these leads that need follow-up.”
“Hmmm.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“And do you agree?”
“Shit, yeah. But my hands are tied.”
“Cussing again. And your hands better not be tied. That would violate our PG-rating rule.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do indeed. How long can this go on?”
“Hell if I know — years? Shit, she’s giving me the super-secret hand signal — this is like playing dress-up with Cammy.”
“Speaking of Cammy, how is she doing? How is your sister?”
“They’re camping out with some friends. Got to go. I love you. I can’t wait to see you. I’m picking up a case of potato chips. I want to make sure your damned craving is satisfied when I get back.”
