THE MAN TURNED and headed back to the others who were around a small lantern. But they weren’t G-Company troops. And Algar’s clues suddenly made a hell of a lot more sense. My music shut off of its own accord. Apparently Algar wanted me to concentrate fully or else he had nothing to add to the conversation. Put money on both.
I was looking at Christopher and White, who both looked fine. And several other people, one of whom was laughing quietly. At me, I was pretty sure.
Slid my goggles onto my forehead. “Adriana, what the hell?”
“Rahmi grabbed us,” Christopher said to me. “She dragged us here before I could tell her what we were doing.”
Looked around. “I don’t see Rahmi. Anywhere.”
The man who’d taken our guns grinned at me. “I’m flattered.”
“I called it! You imitated a G-Company thug!”
“Mostly. When they took Charles, I shifted my body to look like a man’s, but I knew that wouldn’t last the moment I took my gas mask off. I ensured I was last down the stairwell, grabbed the man ahead of me, broke his neck, removed his gas mask and shirt, copied him, and was able to get through their rather makeshift floater gate just in time.”
“I am so damn proud of you. Your mother is going to be, too.”
Rahmi beamed. Well, Rahmi looking like a G-Company dude beamed. Same thing. In that sense. Then her, well, his, face fell. “We took Charles to Cliff. But I didn’t see him and we didn’t really get inside. Another man was waiting inside the entrance and told us all to come to the gate here and go back to headquarters. I slipped off and I don’t think the others noticed, since there were over twenty of them to handle one man.”
“Wait. If they have this gate, why do they need a floater at all?”
“This gate is broken,” Rahmi said. “It can only go to G-Company headquarters. I found out by complaining a little about Cliff making us walk all this way to take this gate, and the others reminded me that it’s a one-way trip. And you can’t get here from there, either.”
“Gotcha. By the way, Francine, John, Len, and Kyle, nice to see you and thanks for checking in.”
“You don’t check in with the President when you’re doing a mission he’ll have to disavow you for if you’re caught,” Francine said. She was in jeans and a t-shirt. And she was carrying a purse that looked a lot like mine.
“Are you impersonating me for this mission?”
“Well, three of us can,” she pointed out. “But no. I only had clothes that matched yours for this trip. So I changed into this when Adriana called for backup.”
“I want the poop and scoop, desperately, but we need to roll Jeff’s part of the plan.”
“Not yet,” Christopher said. “That’s what they’re telling us.” He looked at Adriana. “Please get her caught up and then finish what you were saying.”
“Certainly. Mister White tells me that you’ve already figured out why I didn’t check in with Camilla and Malcolm.”
“Yeah. You know, Camilla’s really damn good. We all have missions that go bust.”
“At infiltration there are none better, I agree. But my mission wasn’t to infiltrate. My mission was to find where Cliff Goodman was, not become his employee in order to find out his secrets and stop his evil plans.”
“Gotcha. So, how did you get here? We only know because we sort of flipped one of the Crazy Eights.”
“Grandmother already knew who Cliff’s benefactor is.”
“Why am I not surprised? So, she told you?”
Adriana gave me a good shot of the “really?” look. “Hardly. However, she’s educated us about G-Company.”
“By ‘us’ you mean you, Len, and Kyle, don’t you?”
She smiled. “I do. Grandmother will be very proud of you. At any rate, I left the palace and remembered that G-Company had moved its base to Bahrain decades ago. Ali Baba Gadhavi is a very powerful man, and powerful men like to show off their power. He has little fear in this region. So, if I were the head of the most powerful underworld organization in this part of the world, where would I choose to ensure I had offices and one of my residences?”
“Damn, girl, you went straight to the Burj Khalifa? No stopping at go, no collecting two hundred dirhams?”
She grinned. “I did. Once there, however, I realized that I needed assistance. So, I called Francine, shared my mission with her, and asked for her help. That Mister Wruck was with her to guard her was a happy coincidence.”
“I felt it was best to help Adriana,” Wruck said. “You had plenty of protectors and, if we were successful, you wouldn’t need them.”
“No complaining coming from me. But I never saw any of you at the tower.”
“We weren’t there all that long,” Adriana said. “I had Francine and Mister Wruck do a quick search for information about Mister Gadhavi as well as what he looks like.”
“I shifted to look like him,” Wruck said. “We were given immediate entry. When a person is that powerful, they can make others do things for them. So underlings took us to everyplace we needed to go within the tower.”
“We struck gold.” Francine shared. “Gadhavi keeps very good records on his key people, and he had a good folder on Cliff. Not only did we find details about what he’s assigned to and for Cliff, but we found out where Cliff was living. Residence in the Burj Khalifa, office there, too, and also a residence in Manama.”
“That seems like a lot for a guy who’d only joined the organization a couple of months ago.”
“Yeah,” Francine said, “that would be true for a regular person.”
Adriana nodded. “But for the underworld, Cliff is something of a celebrity. But more than that—he’s the heir to the Al Dejahl network.”
“Giving myself the duh on that one. Knew he’d be trying to hook in with them, but him being the obvious ‘owner’ of Al Dejahl didn’t occur to me. No wonder he got moved in and up fast. For all we know, Gadhavi and Ronald Yates were pals. For all we know, Gadhavi has known Cliff for years. And you found proof of all of this?”
“And more,” Francine said. “We searched Cliff’s office first, then his room. Nothing much in the office, but we found a list he had hidden in his room. It was a copy of a copy of a copy, and written in code.”
“And you deciphered it already?”
“Oh, no,” Adriana replied. “Chernobog and the others did that.”
“You have Chernobog and Hacker International involved? They didn’t say anything to me about this.”
“They were told not to by Grandmother, who is at your embassy along with the rest of our mission right now. Grandmother is spending time with her old enemy and now dear friend. Grandfather is being entertained by your father and all the children.”
“Gotcha. So what did they find?”
“Everything,” Wruck said. “All money trails, which are all drained now. Listings of Al Dejahl strongholds, doomsday plans, and Cliff’s plan to take over G-Company.”
“Wow. So, once we rescue Chuckie and all that, we can take care of those.”
Len shook his head. “We’ve done it already.”