by Gini Koch
“His name is Rudolph Wruck,” Chuckie said. “He’s a German, and his talent appears to be the ability to be sneaky.”
“Seriously?”
“Think slip around in shadows unseen sneaky.”
“Dude, you and I do that all the time. Team Assassination does that in the same way that they breathe. How is that a talent? He’s a Yates progeny, isn’t he?”
“He is. It’s at a higher level than what we do or even the Dingo does. If there was no outside help, then look to Wruck to be the one who engineered and achieved the prison break. We also have Nerida Alfero, the female Yates offspring who you called the water bender. And Nigel Kellogg, the assassin who attacked Missus Maurer and tried to kill Jeff during the election.”
“Nigel? Really?”
“Nothing wrong with the name,” Chuckie said mildly. “Though there’s a lot wrong with him.”
“True enough. So, it’s the Unmagnificent Seven or the Crazy Eights, depending on if Stephanie’s around. Could even be the Abnormal Nine if our Huntress chick isn’t Stephanie.”
“We’ll worry about naming their team later,” Chuckie said quickly, presumably before Mom could ground me. “But, Angela . . . Kitty’s right. Seven, eight, or even nine dangerous criminals out is still not a good enough reason to put off meeting with the Planetary Council. Presidents have always faced dangers.”
“And some of them have died,” Mom said quietly. “But not on my watch. And I want to keep it that way.”
“So does everyone in this Embassy, at Dulce, and everywhere else.” Hugged Mom. “We’ll be on top guard and I promise we won’t let Vince, or Jeff, or anyone else get hurt.”
Mom hugged me back, her breath-stopping bear hug. “That’s not a promise you can make, kitten.” She let me go and heaved a sigh. “But, I know you. And you’re right—ultimately, galactic politics has to take precedence.” She looked at Lizzie. “So, where’s this list of names of the next set of juvenile delinquents who are going to grow up and try to wreck the world because they think they have the right?”
Lizzie grinned. “Vance has it.”
He waved it at Mom. “I can guarantee you know the parents of every kid on this list. You probably have them on a watch list.”
Mom put her hand out. Vance got up and gave her the list. “Huh. No exaggeration. You’ve made quite the enemies, young lady.”
“Sorry?” Lizzie said, sounding unsure if she was in trouble or not.
“Do I have more?”
“Yes, yes, kitten. You have more. It’s always a competition with you.” Mom shook her head and winked at Lizzie, who giggled. “Though, right now, you both have plenty.”
“Is anyone going to let me and Kitty see the list?” Jeff asked. “Since it seems like half the room knows who our new boogiemen are and we don’t.”
“I don’t either,” Raj said.
“I don’t care,” Chernobog said. “I’m still focused on what the catastrophic event is that Olga’s warning us about. But,” she took the list out of Mom’s hands, “if you want to ensure they never bother you again, we have ways.”
“All of them illegal,” Mom said dryly. “So, let’s pretend that you didn’t say that.”
Raj took the list from Chernobog and whistled. “Wow.”
Looked at Jeff. “You know, it’s going to end up being totally anticlimactic by the time we ever get to see this list.”
“I don’t even care about the list,” Jeff said, sounding annoyed. “I just want to know who’s coming after Lizzie and how they’re going to use her situation against us.”
“Oh, so, routine.”
He chuckled. “Exactly.”
Raj handed the list back to Vance. I was certain he’d done it for a private laugh. Vance shrugged. “We know how to avoid these people. You guys deal with them all the time. I think we should focus on the fact that Ansom was the one to call Kitty. I think that indicates a deal of some sort forming.”
“Or a coup,” Raj suggested. Vance nodded.
“In my experience it just means someone’s coming after us,” Jeff said, rightly. “Usually with explosives.”
“Oh, that was so Operation Drug Addict ago.”
As Jeff shot me a look that shared he still hated that particular Operation Nickname, everyone else other than Lizzie snorted.
“I think you could count every operation as having explosions of some kind,” Chuckie pointed out. “And, Lizzie, don’t worry. The Embassy is extremely safe.”
“My dad didn’t exaggerate, did he? You guys see a lot of action.”
“We do,” Jeff said, as he took the list from Vance and showed it to me. Sure enough, it was a list of names of people I didn’t know, or didn’t know well, but who Vance had told me about in relation to our enemies.
Titan Security, Gaultier Enterprises, and YatesCorp were run by people we didn’t trust. Sure, all of these people had been put in place after we’d taken care of the original people in charge of those corporations, but that was merely a changing of the Anti Us guard. Sure, we’d eliminated the First Wave of Evil Corporate Heads, but it was as if we’d cut the heads off the hydra—the replacements popped right up and they were more in number.
Amos Tobin now ran YatesCorp, Somerall along with Janelle Gardiner and Quinton Cross were fighting Amy for control of the Gaultier Board of Directors—and it was a testament to the skill and tenacity on both sides that this fight was still going on with no clear winner—and Thomas Kendrick was in charge of Titan Security. Each of them had special cronies in the Lobbyist League, though Kendrick, having come out of the military, still had more pals in the Department of Defense and other military branches than otherwise.
Faded memory nudged. “You know, Vance, way back when we were talking about the Dealers of Death the first time, right after you’d told me that Berkowitz was tight with Somerall, you wanted to tell me to consider something about Somerall, but we got interrupted. Do you remember what that was?”
Vance’s brow furrowed. “I should, but that was a long time ago now. Gimme a minute to think about it.”
While Vance thought, I perused the list. In addition to a couple Saudi princes, a Malaysian sultana, and a Japanese princess—none of whom registered names-wise and who I knew nothing about—there were certainly last names I recognized.
Some were indeed the children of ambassadors, and those names didn’t really raise any red flags for me or anyone else, other than that, for the most part, they were people who we couldn’t count on for support.
However, there were plenty of names that raised a multitude of flags.
Confirmed relationships with Lizzie, with Vance adding in even though he was supposedly trying to remember a key point from our past.
Elsa Van Dyke was Myron Van Dyke’s granddaughter, meaning we probably had other Van Dykes running around who weren’t awesome like Dick Van Dyke but were, instead, mortal enemies of ours we merely hadn’t met yet.
“Kingman? Who names their kid after a town in Arizona?”
“That’s Kingsley Teague’s son,” Vance shared. “His father likes the ‘king’ moniker, I think I mentioned before.”
Lizzie snorted. “Like father like son. Kingman acts like he’s royalty and makes everyone call him King.”
Showing amazing personal growth, I refrained from additional comments. About the Teagues and their naming choices, anyway. Connor Lee was Talia Lee’s son and Delilah, Leanne, and Remy were her nieces and nephew. “The Lees are really clogging up the system, aren’t they?”
Lizzie shrugged. “They claim to be descendants of Robert E. Lee.”
Filed that one away—we’d had a Lee descendent try to kill us all during Operation Drug Addict. Curtis Lee had been part of Club 51, and while it was a common name, as were those claiming Robert E. kinship, Chuckie had trained me to never believe in coincidence. But the conn
ection was something to follow up on later—Curtis Lee hadn’t been any kind of mover or shaker; he’d been a patsy for Club 51. But then, every family had its black sheep.
Continued my perusal and confirmations. Violet Carr was Luxx Carr’s daughter, and Skylar and Stewart Hopkins were the daughter and son of Simon Hopkins.
“I’m amazed how many of these people are educating their kids outside of the country.”
“It’s a good school and they’re making international connections they’ll need as they grow up and take their places in the world,” Lizzie said, in a tone of voice that indicated this was the school’s motto and was repeated daily, if not hourly. “The School Abroad is where all future leaders of wealth, power, and discernment learn all they’ll need to know.”
“They’ll go to U.S. colleges,” Vance added. “The really good ones. And they won’t have any worries about how they did on their SATs, either.”
“Hopefully not USC,” Len said with a growl.
“They don’t seem like Trojan material,” Kyle added.
Chuckie looked like he was controlling himself from laughing or sharing that we all knew that USC’s nickname was The University of Spoiled Children. However, if Len and Kyle were good examples of the Trojan system—and they definitely were—then they were right. Besides, movers and shakers like these families liked to cluster in the Ivy Leagues so as to be much closer to D.C. and New York.
“Chuckie and I both scored great on the SATs and had excellent GPAs and could have gone anywhere. We chose Arizona State because we wanted to go there.”
He grinned. “I don’t think anyone was slamming our alma mater, Kitty.”
“Go Sun Devils and all that.”
It said a lot about how well international assassination paid that not only Lizzie but Siler before her had gone here. Wondered if Siler had made enemies just as Lizzie had, then decided it wasn’t relevant. Sure, my bet was no, but he had talents she never would—hyperspeed and the ability to blend would mean, knowing him, he’d have had blackmail material on every kid in that school within a week.
“Got it,” Vance said, interrupting my defense of my college education. “I remember what I’d wanted to tell you.”
CHAPTER 27
WE ALL STARED at Vance politely. “Yes?” I asked finally, since he appeared to be waiting for a reaction of some kind.
“Sorry, just wanted to be sure you were focused and I also seriously expected someone to call or evacuate us or something so that I’d forget again.”
“And yet,” Jeff said, “here we are, all breathlessly hanging on your every word.”
“Kitty’s really rubbed off on you. Anyway, I’d thought that you needed to add in one more Dealer. Ansom Somerall is also tight with Susan Howells, who is the head lobbyist for the insurance industry. Her husband, John, is also an insurance lobbyist, it’s how they met, but he’s not nearly as powerful as she is. And because it may matter, her maiden name is Pearson.”
“And we have bingo again, because I’m looking at Nick Pearson, interestingly using his mother’s maiden name as his last name, who I’d guess is their son?”
Vance nodded. Lizzie glared. “He’s the leader of the Junior Skulls, too. Well, him and Noah and Sophie Berkowitz. They’re twins, so they share a ‘special bond.’” She made a gagging face. It was official—I loved this kid.
“So both of Ansom’s buddies’ kids are pissed with you, which explains why he’s involved.”
“Okay,” Jeff said. “But I don’t see any connection to this incident and the high-security breakout. Or our Huntress situation. Or the Planetary Council’s impending visit, for that matter.”
“There’s always a connection,” Chuckie and I said in unison. I’d worry about the unison thing later, since we were, I was sure, right.
“So, do we get Adriana or not?” Kyle asked.
Len waved his phone. “She says that she’ll be over tomorrow morning. Apparently Olga wanted to be sure that we got her message before giving permission.”
“That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” Jeff asked. “I mean that seriously.”
Chernobog shrugged. “You told her I’d gotten her message?” she asked Len, who nodded. “Then it makes sense. We’re warned, so she’s not sending her granddaughter into a situation where she’s the only prepared person.”
“I still don’t understand why she wanted to do the invisible ink and secret message crap,” Jeff muttered.
Chernobog looked at Lizzie. “Perhaps as a test.”
Lizzie looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry I forgot about it until after dinner. There was just a lot going on.”
Chernobog smiled slowly. “But you did deliver the message. A message you couldn’t have read even if you’d wanted to. And a message you couldn’t have created on your own.”
Lizzie cocked her head. “They said it was written in Cyrillic. The uncles know that alphabet. They could have taught me. They haven’t yet, but they could have.”
“But they could not have written the coded portion. And Olga would know this.” Chernobog nodded and seemed to make up her mind. “If you get bored while you’re here, feel free to come over to the computer lab.”
Everyone else looked shocked, but Lizzie looked interested. “Really?”
“Really. I rarely make idle offers.” Chernobog turned back to the letter from Olga. “We still need to determine if the escape is the event Olga refers to. I truly doubt it.”
“It could be the start of something bigger,” Chuckie pointed out. “Wouldn’t be the first time, after all.”
My phone rang. “Aw, Vance, sorry, the interruption was just a few minutes late.” Took a look at who was calling and answered quickly. “Malcolm, what’s up?”
“Missus Chief, I assume you know about the breakout?”
“We do and we’re all thrilled to pieces over here. What are your thoughts about who let them out?”
“The smart money’s on Stephanie, no matter how much anyone would like it otherwise.”
“Yeah, not a shocker. We have some interesting things going on here, too.” Filled him in on Lizzie’s list and Olga’s note. “So should we avoid going out onto the street or near the windows?”
“I had bulletproof glass installed years ago and I test it regularly, so look at the street as much as you want.”
“Really? You had all the windows replaced?”
“I’m full service.”
“Apparently so.”
“But stay inside unless you have to exit. Not that this warning stopped you earlier today, but I like to live optimistically. The shields need to stay up, though I’m sure Walter’s already on top of that. I’ll get Adriana tomorrow—she’s safer in her own embassy tonight.”
“Vance is here. Does that mean he’s less safe?” Chose not to look at Vance’s expression, but Jeff and Chuckie clearly trying not to laugh again indicated that Vance’s expression was probably pretty priceless.
“No, he’s fine with all of you. We have guards on his husband, in case he cares.”
“I’m sure he does. And thanks. Guarding anyone else?”
“Reader’s assigned a lot of Field teams out, at my request, in addition to all the other teams out based on a variety of requests, so yes. Your allies are all under protection. Bases are all on full alert, Dulce is scanning the Embassy regularly.”
“Good. Why hasn’t James called us to tell us that? Or William?” Shot a look at Jeff, who shook his head. So no one had called or texted any news to him I didn’t know about.
“Because, despite how the two of you think, how things actually are is that you’re not in active combat positions anymore. I realize it’s been this way for the past four years, but I expect the two of you to adjust in another decade or so.”
“Wow, bitter much?”
“Yes, because I just had a similar
conversation with Paul Gower, wherein I had to explain to the Supreme Pontifex that, despite his desires to kick butt, he’s going to be under as much security as the President and Mister Chief are tomorrow.”
“So, you called me second?”
“Yes. I like to keep you guessing and not allow you to get too complacent with our relationship.”
“Thanks for keeping it spicy.” Noted the look Jeff shot me and decided getting off the phone was going to be in my best interests. “See you tomorrow, barring the end of the world.”
“The world doesn’t get to end on my watch. And you’ll only see me if I want you to.”
“True enough, Doctor Strange.” We got off the phone and I filled in the others on Buchanan’s half of the conversation.
Chuckie rubbed the back of his neck. “I wonder who else is activated either before or because of the breakout.”
Mom sighed. “Could be no one. Could be a long list.”
Thought about things, Operation Bizarro World in particular. “We need to alert James and Malcolm and Team Assassination that if there are assassins named Luis Sanchez or Julio Lopez, most likely out of Cuba, that there’s a good chance they’re both out to kill us. Too, I mean.”
Mom and Chuckie both stared at me. “Where did you get those names from?” Mom asked.
“When I was, ah, away.” In another universe, but since Lizzie was probably already seriously considering running away to join the circus, figured sharing that wasn’t in her best mental interest.
“My dad said you changed universes,” Lizzie said, without missing a beat. “So don’t worry about freaking me out. I think that’s totes the coolest. He said that it could mean that in other universes my parents weren’t total traitors working with Harvey Gutermuth.”
Our turn to stare at her. “Your parents were traitors?” Mom asked slowly.