“I’d have thought the new boyfriend would be keeping you up late.”
I leaned back in my chair. From anyone else those words might have sounded jealous. Bruiser’s voice, however, was mild, vaguely curious, faintly amused, as if he knew Rick and I hadn’t seen each other much lately. As if he knew Rick was undercover ... I squashed the desire to ask. “As per our discussion,” I stood, stretched, and headed for the door, “I’ll talk to my guys about providing security for the soiree. During the negotiations themselves, the safety measures in this conference room are sufficient. I want to see the sleeping quarters for the envoy and the assistant, the ballroom, the entrances and exits for the press, the greenroom, the kitchen, and anything else that grabs my fancy while we walk. Then I’m for home and sleep.”
Bruiser didn’t argue; he stood and led the way. The rooms for the were-guests were on the second floor, each with an exterior wall and windows: walls two feet thick, built of reinforced poured concrete, bulletproof glass in the windows. Inner walls were soundproofed. The intercom in each room rang directly to security, the kitchen, or housekeeping. New, secure phone lines were being installed, allowing the envoys to make unmonitored calls, as the walls’ iron rebar reinforcing made sat phones and cell phones unreliable. Both rooms would be swept for electronic monitoring before the guests’ arrival and daily thereafter.
The rooms were really two small suites, one decorated in brown, the other in green. Each suite had a sitting room with love seats, the ubiquitous fireplace, a small table and two chairs, a minuscule desk, and a minirefrigerator filled with drinks of every conceivable kind. The bedrooms were small, the space mostly taken up by queen-sized beds and one upholstered chair. The baths were elegant but not spacious, the closets comfortable but not walk-ins.
There was a sprinkler system in case of fire. An alarm rang if emergency doors were opened, and security cameras monitored them constantly. Static security cameras were set at the ends of all hallways. “Secure Internet for their computers?” I asked.
“Password protected and capable of encryption, if they wish,” Bruiser said. “We have a dedicated antenna dish on the roof, installed yesterday. We’ve tested the alarm system and the intercoms. There are two small rooms across the hall for their bodyguards.” He nodded to the rooms across the way.
“When is the last time the sprinkler system was tested?”
Bruiser’s face ran through a series of muted expressions as he looked up at the ceiling.
“Never, then,” I said. “Get the company who installed it in here to check it out. Make sure the workers are accompanied at all times. Also, electronic monitoring equipment was a lot easier to detect back in the old days. If you have someone who wants to see what’s happening in vamp HQ today, they’d use fiber optics, installing a system separate from any audio or electronic information monitoring. Systems could have been installed at any time, with any upgrade, or even yesterday when your dedicated dish was installed.”
“They might install multiple separate systems?” When I nodded, Bruiser asked, “And how would they go about that?”
I said, “It’s easy to install and hard to locate fiber optics. You just thread the cable conduit through a vent or alongside an existing cable. The conduits can be run quite a distance as long as there aren’t many bends. If there are too many bends, then surveillance would require junction boxes. The boxes themselves are problematic and much easier to detect than the actual cable, and would likely have to be installed during original construction or remodeling, like when this place was wired for cable or when satellite TV was installed.”
Bruiser looked at the flat screen television on the wall of the bedroom. “We had cable until yesterday.”
“And no one pulled the old cable out of the walls, because it’s too much trouble,” I said, making it a statement. Bruiser gave me a nod that said I was correct so I continued. “They just left it in place. Having cables in place for other things makes it difficult to discern what cable is good cable and what cable is spyware. However, fiber optics don’t provide audio monitoring, which is usually a lot more effective in terms of info gathering, but if someone managed to get fiber optics installed, then they probably got audio somewhere too.”
Bruiser was looking at me in unhappy surprise.
“What? It’s what I do, besides hunting and killing rogue vamps. Licensed security expert and PI, remember?”
“I do. And yet, knowing that, I have apparently been underusing your talents and skills. Something I intend to remedy immediately.”
There was a double entendre in there but I decided to pretend I hadn’t heard it. “Lucky me. But since I’m earning my retainer, walk me through the hallways to the ballroom and the conference rooms and anywhere else your guests might be. I’ll talk about the pros and cons of micro-sized audio transmission devices, long distance mikes, heat sensing, and Internet info capture.” Bruiser had thought his security measures adequate. I was sure he cursed under his breath, but I pretended not to notice.
Another hour later, I knew twenty times more about the council building than before. I’d seen the ballroom—holy fancy pants, Batman—and gone over the logistics for the press.