by Doug Solter
Before the Gems left Kansas City, Emma gave Ryan her number. Last week, he’d called her to apologize for his dad. The boy sounded distressed and sad. So much so that Emma wanted to reach into the phone and give him a big hug. Ryan told her he was packing his car and driving to his mother’s house in Wichita. There he wanted to chill and think things through.
“That’s a great idea,” Emma said. “I can’t imagine the craziness this has caused you and your entire family.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Ryan said, hesitating. “Next time I’m in San Francisco, could we hang out?”
Emma’s mind grabbed on to that scenario and ran with it. She saw images of her driving Ryan over the Golden Gate Bridge. Showing him Fisherman’s Wharf. Taking him to her favorite places to eat. Seeing the boy grip his car door handle in terror as Emma drove on the expressway.
Maybe she should let Ryan drive her car.
“I would love that,” Emma told him before they said their goodbyes.
Her phone rang.
Emma noted her reflection still gazing at her from the bedroom mirror and shook off her daydream.
Wait. Could that be Ryan?
Emma ran over to the dresser and checked the phone. Crap. It was her grandma.
“I’m almost ready. Promise.”
“Good,” Grandma said over the phone. “Ben and his family are here, so step on it.”
Emma checked her outfit and makeup one more time. Snoopy waddled into the room and looked up at Emma.
“I know. I know.” She knelt down to scoop up the dog and carried him downstairs.
Grandma’s backyard flickered with light from a series of lit tiki torches placed strategically throughout her garden. The stone fire pit at the center of the garden burned at full strength while people lounged around in chairs or stood watching the soothing dancing flames. A large grill sizzled with food. A quartet of street musicians played a Celtic-sounding tune with fiddle and guitar for the patrons.
Grandma swayed with the music. Her two pigtails of white hair were decorated with flowers. Grandma’s friend Phil and his husband, Daryl, talked as they supervised the grill, flipping over burgers, beef and chicken kabobs, and grilled veggies. They waved at Emma and she waved back. Emma put Snoopy down on the grass. The dog took off at a waddle to explore the party. Emma joined her grandmother, who brushed a piece of Emma’s hair back.
“You okay, young one? Been quiet since you got back.”
Emma flashed a grin. “I know. Just thinking.”
“Emma!” two little girls shouted and ran across the garden, almost tackling her.
Emma hugged them tight. “How are you guys?”
“Will you come to New York with us?” the first girl asked.
“She just moved out here, dummy,” the second girl said.
The two little girls started arguing.
“Stop it,” Emma said. “Or I won’t show you a magic trick later.”
“Wicked,” the first girl said. “Which one will you do?”
The second girl scoffed. “Can you do one where my sister disappears?”
Ben Gooden and his wife approached the girls. “I’ll make you both disappear if you don’t cool it,” his wife said.
“Told you they missed their babysitter,” Ben said.
The Goodens talked to Grandma and Emma about their plans for a house in New York. They mentioned finding something in Brooklyn or way out in Long Island.
“Thank you both for recommending me,” Ben said. “I know it wasn’t an easy decision.”
Emma brightened. “For me it was the only choice. My dad would’ve wanted you to succeed him.”
“When Emma brought up the idea, I thought it was a good one,” Grandma said.
“Even though you had to force it down the board of directors’ throats?” Ben asked.
“I couldn’t let those power-hungry capitalists take over and ruin Ken’s vision for Rothchild Industries. They would’ve taken advantage of Emma’s situation and have her pushed out as soon as she officially inherited ownership. It’s Emma’s company and she should have a say on how it should be run.”
“And I want you to run it, Ben,” Emma said.
“Thank you again and I hope to earn that trust you both have placed in me.”
Emma noticed a new group of guests entering the garden. Olivia, Miyuki, Nadia, and Mrs. B wore casual clothing. Aardvark wore a pink Hawaiian shirt over his gargantuan build.
“Would you please excuse me?”
Emma slipped away from the Goodens to greet her friends.
“Apologies for crashing your party,” Mrs. B said, “but I need to speak with your grandmother.”
Emma peeked over her shoulder. Grandmother glared at Mrs. B from a distance. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Why don’t you girls find something to eat from the grill.” Mrs. B walked forward using her cane; she rested her hand on Emma’s back. “Let’s have a talk, my dear.” Mrs. B guided Emma away from the group while Aardvark trailed them. “How would you feel if the Gems stayed here? With you and your grandmother?”
“Seriously?” Emma asked.
“I promised the girls’ families that we would provide ongoing education while they were in our service. I could have the girls stay in Napa, but it’s not practical to ferry them back and forth to the city for their education. And since your grandmother refuses to let us tutor you…the only alternative I see is allowing them to go to school with you here in Berkeley, with your grandmother’s blessing, of course.”
“There’s no way she’ll go for that,” Emma said.
Mrs. B raised her chin. “She will if you sell it, my dear.”
Emma managed to sweet-talk her grandmother into following her into the kitchen where Phil was preparing some fresh salmon for the outside grill. Emma waited for him to finished up his fillets and bring them out to the grill before closing the French doors behind him.
“What’s on your mind, young one?” Grandma folded her arms. “Who were those teenage girls with Laura? Friends of yours?”
Emma nodded.
“Is there a reason she’s here?”
“Well…yes.”
“Whatever you did for Laura…is it over now? Are you done?”
“The mission is over, yes.”
“Then you can quit. Laura doesn’t need you anymore, so you can go on with your life. I’ll help you get out, Emma. I’ll explain everything to Laura and make her leave you alone for good.”
Emma looked away. “I don’t want to quit.”
Grandma pulled out a stool from the kitchen island and sat.
Emma took her cue and pulled out another stool. Emma sat down and sighed, knowing she was about to poke the beehive again.
“Grandma Laura proposed this great idea. Something I think you’ll like. She wants—”
“I don’t give a damn what Laura wants,” Grandma interrupted. She then tried to calm herself. “Did you know the CIA is obsessed with closing The Authority down? I know things, Emma. Thanks to your mother and father, I know more about The Authority than I should. I could hurt them. One phone call. One email. A secret trip out of the US to a CIA safe house overseas. I could tell them and they’ll listen.”
“Why? Why would you do that?” Emma asked.
“Because my life means nothing without you. If I lose you to Laura…I might as well become worm food in the cemetery.”
“Please don’t talk like that. I would never turn my back on you. That would never happen.”
“It’s either me or her. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you stay under Laura’s spell.”
“You can’t tell the CIA about The Authority. If Grandma Laura finds out about it…”
“She’ll kill me, Emma. Make no mistake about that. Laura might lose sleep over it…but she’ll order it if necessary.”
“Why do you have to put her in that position?”
Grandma softened. “Love. Pure and simple.”
Emma
could feel the weight pushing her down to the floor tiles. “That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not. I’m being selfish, yes. But that’s a grandmother’s choice when she loves her grandbaby as much as I do.”
Emma said nothing as she slid off the stool. She took one last look at her grandmother before walking out of the kitchen.
Emma ran upstairs to her room, her mind swirling in thoughts and emotions. Grandma’s ultimatum. Her new friends. Mrs. B wanting Emma to carry on her parents’ mission. Emma even wondered if Mrs. B would ask the Gems to kill her grandma.
What a horrible thought.
It was too much. It was all just too much.
Closing the door behind her, Emma flopped onto her bed. She let the tears trickle down the creases of her eyes and onto the pillow. Something scratched at the door. A dog’s snout then pried open the door as Snoopy let himself into her room. Emma must not have shut the door all the way. With effort, the small dog hopped on top of the bed. He looked Emma over and lay down beside her, as if he could read her sadness.
Emma rubbed his ears and the dog closed his eyes. What was she going to do?
She couldn’t let Grandma go to the CIA. That sounded like the worst thing ever for everyone involved. That only left one option, telling Mrs. B she wanted out. Hopefully she would understand. They’d only needed Emma for that last mission anyway, right? Now that it was over, they could let her go. Besides, The Authority hadn’t given her any real spy training yet. How could she be an official spy without proper training? That made sense. There was also another reason to quit. That girl inside the elevator. The one holding the gun. Emma wasn’t sure she wanted to be that girl ever again.
Our venom flows through the veins of the animal. Its death is certain.
Jacqueline’s words came back to Emma as she relived the moment.
It was haunting…
Strange…
Emma sat up straight. A new thought sliced through her emotional fog. That wasn’t some strange poem Jacqueline pulled down from midair. She knew Mr. Raymond was about to be captured. She knew his master plan was already in jeopardy.
Our venom flows through the veins of the animal. Its death is certain.
Emma tumbled the words over and over in her mind. Why would Jacqueline say that? She was arrogant, almost as bad as Mr. Raymond. But had Jacqueline given Emma some sort of cryptic warning? Thinking Emma was too dumb to figure it out?
Our venom was obvious. Flows through the veins of the animal could mean…their plan was still in place.
Its death is certain.
Emma studied the phrase. Did that mean their plan was going forward still? But how? Without Raymond Foods, what damage could Venomous cause to the world’s food supply?
Emma flopped back down on her pillow, her mind churning through all the information Bertrand Petit had given them in that forest before Jacqueline killed him. But she couldn’t remember all of it.
Emma called Miyuki’s phone and told the girls to come up to her room as soon as possible. The girls came inside and Olivia closed the door.
“Doggie!” Miyuki flocked to Snoopy, who got all excited by the new attention.
Emma told the girls her suspicions about Jacqueline and Venomous. “What did Bertrand tell us in the forest? Do you remember? There could be something we overlooked.”
Nadia opened her small purse and took out her tablet. She accessed The Authority recording of the conversation Mrs. B had with Bertrand over the phone. They played it back and listened. Nothing raised a flag until they came to…
“I also worked on the projects at Ovechkin-Komstat in Ukraine. Kyo-Shun in China. The Lester-Sumner Company in Australia. Ganchi Farms in Mumbai.”
Olivia tensed. “Those are all food-production companies, some of the biggest in the world.”
“Bertrand must have modified all their systems,” Miyuki said.
“Could he do all that work by himself?” Nadia asked.
“Doubt it,” Olivia said. “But under Bertrand’s direction, Venomous agents could have made those modifications on the other facilities as well. Many of them have AirTech systems installed, remember?”
“And because of that, those computer control systems can be networked together easily,” Nadia said. “If Venomous still has the means to destroy that amount of food production…there would be a worldwide panic.”
Olivia left the room. She brought up Mrs. B and Aardvark from downstairs and closed the door again. The girls briefed her on what they’d discovered.
Mrs. B sat down on Emma’s bed, her mind evaluating the info as quickly as a computer. “There’s one missing key to all this. Venomous is quite thorough. They don’t conduct operations like this half-cocked. To disrupt the world’s food supply, they would need to be in control of all of it.”
“If they still have a way to sabotage Raymond Foods and all those other companies…what else would they need?” Olivia asked.
Nadia gasped. “The global seed storage vaults in Norway.”
“Precisely,” Mrs. B said.
“What’s that?” Emma asked.
“A giant underground facility carved under a mountain,” Nadia said. “It’s administrated by the Norwegian government, but most of the world keeps their seeds there as a backup. That way if there were some kind of man-made or ecological catastrophe that destroyed their crops and seeds, a country wouldn’t lose their native plants. I read an online article about it last year.”
“Controlling that facility would be key to any plan to disrupt the world’s food supply,” Mrs. B said. “Aardvark?”
The man held Snoopy in his large hands and the dog licked his face as the man quietly giggled in a rare moment of enjoyment.
“Aardvark?”
The man finally heard Mrs. B and put down the dog.
“Please contact Mr. O and tell him I have a job for his section. If you’re done making out with Emma’s terrier, that is.”
Chapter 28
A half hour after Aardvark sent the information to The Authority headquarters, Mrs. B discreetly led the Gems outside to the front of Grandma’s house. Aardvark stood near a stretch-limo parked on a side street and held open the back door for them.
Once inside the limo, Mrs. B called out to Aardvark. “Cone of silence mode, if you please.”
He nodded and activated something on the dash. A low hum radiated around the vehicle, something Emma remembered from the first time they’d used this device. Mrs. B touched her fingers to a tiny square on the roof pillar, which exposed a hidden panel inside the limo. Mrs. B took out a tablet attached by USB cable and tapped in a code. The monitor just behind the driver’s compartment flickered to life. Begin Signal Scramble Mode flashed on screen. Then Transmission Link Established.
An older Indian man flashed on the screen.
Mrs. B addressed him. “Aardvark informs me your section has news, Mr. O.”
“Indeed,” the man called Mr. O replied. “Code one satellite sweep of the global seed vault facility is complete. Nothing is out of the ordinary. No alerts from the Norwegian security forces regarding the facility. We also analyzed all communications from the facility in the last month. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. We checked all Norwegian security forces computer servers for any recent officer assignments to that facility. No new assignments. We even checked for emails referencing the facility in general. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. I will continue the satellite surveillance and alert you with any new details.”
Mrs. B nodded. “Excellent job from your section, Mr. O.” She switched off the screen and held her cane closer to her. “Well, that is that. Is it possible that Jacqueline’s obscure and cryptic blathering could be only a generalization, Emma?”
“She’s a nut job,” Miyuki said.
“Our venom flows through the veins of the animal. Its death is certain,” Olivia repeated as she crossed her arms. “Sounds like a motto they say at their flipping secret meetings. Did the woman look like she was just me
ssing with your head?”
“No. She looked confident,” Emma said. “She played off Mr. Raymond’s capture like it was nothing, like whatever we uncovered didn’t faze her. That’s what makes me think Venomous has something bigger going on.”
Mrs. B examined Emma as her mind sorted through the information. “I’m sorry, but we have no evidence to support your hypothesis. It’s possible that the plot at Raymond Foods could have been the first phase of a larger plan. The second phase might have been the other food companies Bertrand mentioned that he visited. He could have been preparing those sites for a future operation.”
Emma frowned. But she was so sure.
“I think it’s safe to say that the plot at Raymond Foods has been rooted out, thanks to you young ladies.”
“Can we go to Norway to have a look anyway?” Olivia asked. “Just in case?”
“I’m not sending you girls to the Arctic circle to prove a hunch. We pride ourselves on collecting data. Facts. We only act on facts, not hunches. Hunches need to be proved. You don’t risk people’s lives on them.”
“How are we risking our lives?” Miyuki asked. “We just hide in bushes and observe.”
“Ladies, this Norwegian facility is located at the base of a mountain. The only road in is heavily monitored and patrolled. Therefore, you would have to hike through the forest in subzero temperatures and survive in that climate for hours to properly observe the facility in question. You might even be forced to climb up the mountain and rappel down it in order to observe it. You girls are not trained to take on a mission like that.” Mrs. B checked her watch. “It’s getting a bit late for my taste. Did you have a chance to speak with your grandmother, Emma?”
Emma balked. If she said the wrong thing to Mrs. B, her grandmother could be in danger.
“I’ll need more time. She’s…stubborn.”
Mrs. B gripped the top of her cane. “That, your grandmother is. All right, I’ll have Aardvark drive me back now. Then I’ll send him back to collect all of you when you’re ready to leave. I’m sure you girls would like to stay and socialize. Please enjoy yourselves. You girls deserve it.”