“I have friends in all the places. Your request was shared, and here I am, representing for Amnesty International. Gimme a mo, though.” Pulled Melville back and turned us both toward the wall, away from Casey. Kevin joined us. “Has anyone tested to see if she’s in heavy makeup and/or wearing a wig?” Spoke very softly, so Casey couldn’t hear me.
“I have no idea,” Melville replied in kind “We don’t normally wash prisoners’ faces. She was searched for weapons by female officers, so if she was in a wig I assume they’d have found that.”
“Maybe.” Wigs were easy to find—after all, at the start of Operation Drug Addict, when we’d first had the pleasure of meeting Casey and her set of Club 51 loons, two of them had been wearing wigs to make themselves look old. There were other ways to make your hair look like crap, of course, and Casey was a dedicated lunatic, meaning that if she felt the need was great enough, maybe she’d sacrifice her great hair for the cause. “We need to figure it out, and fast. Casey could be dying and all that, but she’s a decent actress. And I find this entire scenario highly suspicious.”
“Do you want me to go talk to the Chief?” Melville asked.
“I will,” Kevin said. “Because this just became a federal situation.”
“Take Manfred with you, just in case.”
He grinned at me. “Always nice to know you care.” He nodded to Manfred and those two headed off.
Went back to Casey, ensuring none of us were within her arm’s reach. “You look flat-out awful and like you’ve aged decades since I last saw you. What gives?”
“Whatever you did to Cliff the last time he saw you is what ‘gives.’”
“Seriously, time’s a’wastin’, especially for you, at least based on what you’re looking like right now. What are you talking about?”
“You infected him with something.”
Per intel we’d gotten from the CIA and Serene’s assumptions during Operation Madhouse, Cliff was indeed likely infected due to what I’d done to him. It was nice to have the confirmation, though.
“Huh. I slammed some dirty needles into his ass. If he’s whining about my infecting him, that’s all his own fault for releasing his Death Virus. You’re saying that my doing this to Cliff somehow made you into someone I should try to fix up with the Crypt Keeper?”
“No. I’m saying that he’s sick, in mind and body. He found out that I was still tight with Club Fifty-One. So he made me the guinea pig for all their attempted cures.”
Attempted. Interesting. “So, how contagious are you?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. I may be deadly. I may not. I’m not clear any longer on what’s been done to me.”
Evalyne was talking quietly to Kevin using her Standard Issue Secret Service Via The Matrix equipment. “We need Doctor Hernandez ASAP. Advise that we may be in another contamination situation. Yes, more A-Cs, too, but only in case we have to lock it down fast. No, no more P.T.C.U. on-site than you right now, I don’t think. It’s one prisoner and she’s contained.”
Wrenched my attention back to our prisoner. “Fantastic. So, Casey, what is it you want to share with me?”
“I want to give you the location to Cliff’s hidden base.”
Contemplated my responses. They seemed limited. Sure, I could snort loudly and leave. Or I could gather the relevant information. If we could believe whatever she said, which I doubted. Sure, I’d flipped a lot of our enemies. But none of those enemies had been dyed-in-the-wool alien haters like Casey was.
And I knew how things worked—my instincts said that if Casey was coming to me, then she was coming to lie to me or send me to a trap in some way. The real question wasn’t if she was lying to me, but whose orders she was actually acting on and what was really waiting for us at the location she’d give for the “hidden base.”
Decided that I was here and therefore getting the relevant info was the Plan of the Moment, so went with the obvious reply. “And what do you want in exchange for giving us that information?”
“I want you to save my life and, whether you can save me or not, end Cliff’s.”
She could be telling the truth—it was possible, after all. But that didn’t mean she was. And there was a really easy way to find out. “So, I’m just curious—how did you get away from Cliff and the rest of the Crazy Eights?”
“The crazy who?”
“It’s my affectionate nickname for all of you loons. Answer the pertinent question. If you were the guinea pig, how did you escape to get here to relative safety?”
Her eyes shifted right, left, up, then down. Quickly, but still, I was watching her closely. “I saw an opportunity and took it.” She looked back at me and she looked angry and sincere. “They thought I was dying and left me alone. I got out and made my way here.”
The majority of A-Cs couldn’t lie to save their lives. Only troubadours and the very rare and specialized Liars could manage it well naturally. Some, like White and Doreen, had practiced enough over the years that they could lie rather effectively when it mattered. But Jeff and Christopher were each a master class in how to easily spot someone desperately trying to lie. Meaning I’d spent many years now honing my skills at spotting tells. And Casey was definitely lying.
I had several options, but chose to go with the one I figured she was hoping for. “Gotcha. So, where is Cliff’s newest Secret Lair?”
“Outside of Paris.”
Ensured I kept a poker face on. “Does he only have one or is he shuttling between locations?”
“There’s one in Paraguay, but he’s not there right now.”
Proof, as if I’d needed it, that Casey was lying. Paris and Paraguay had been hot spots for anti-alien activity and supersoldier creation using superbeings years ago. But we’d stopped all of that during Operations Confusion, Assassination, and Destruction. There was no way in the world that Cliff was going back to any of these locations—he knew we knew where they were, and even if the “new lair” was supposedly “close by” the old ones, it made no sense to go to these locations—all his allies there were dead, gone, or turned to the side of good, with an emphasis on dead for the majority.
Plus, I knew that Cliff had last been in the Middle East, which made far more sense, especially if he wanted to get foot soldiers in the form of the remaining remnants of the Al Dejahl terrorist network.
However, someone or something was currently in Paris. And conveniently, I was about to go on a FLOTUS World Tour with Alpha Team and plenty of others who were happy to kick butt at the drop of a hat. Sure, I’d have the kids along, but their current crop of babysitters and protectors were well up to the task, so I could leave my children in safety while I and the others looked for the Parisian trap Casey was hoping we’d walk right into.
“Got it. Well, you give us the exact locations and all that jazz and we’ll see what we can do for you.”