My cube is also in earshot of the big open stairwell that runs up the middle of the building and so eventually I heard Gráinne’s voice—she had returned from the San Francisco DTAP, without Mel. I heard her go up to the floor above me and enter Blevins’s office. The door closed, and there were a few minutes of calm-before-the-storm before voices were raised and people up there started looking stressed out. A couple of DOSECOPS personnel came up the stairs double-time and blew past Blevins’s receptionist into his office and there was a lot more jawing. I was sitting there trying to be cool, watching the progress bar on my screen, wondering whether I should just yank the thumb drive and get out of there.
Then the decision was made for me by a DOSECOP who had approached me from behind, a little bit sneaky-like, and told me I was wanted in Blevins’s office immediately. I made a glance toward the stairwell and saw another DOSECOP loitering there, keeping me in the corner of his eye, so I figured they had orders not to let me just bolt. So I got up and went up the stairs into Blevins’s office. He and Gráinne were in there with two of the higher-ranking DOSECOPS officers, including Major Isobel Sloane, who I kinda wondered if Gráinne had a bit of an influence over. Blevins was in his big leather swivel chair and Gráinne was standing behind him, sort of hovering, and both of them were glancing between me and a monitor on Blevins’s desk.
“Where be they, then?” Gráinne demanded, eyes fixed on me in a way that made me feel like a prey animal.
“Who?” I asked, trying to look stupid, which is actually something I’m pretty good at when I have to be.
“Where’s Colonel Lyons?” demanded Blevins. “We know he and Erszebet came into the building early this morning within moments of your arrival, and that they both left a short time later.”
And then Blevins pivoted the monitor around and let me see some security camera footage from earlier that morning: yours truly talking to Tristan and Erszebet.
I have no idea what kind of look was on my face at that moment, but I can tell you how they looked: Blevins was sort of blank-faced and unnerved, while Gráinne was trying to kill me with her eyes.
“Yeah, I saw them, but they had a fight about something and they both stormed out. I wasn’t really paying attention because I’m a little hungover and anyhow those two are always bickering. I think Erszebet said she was going home.”
“It’s a lying bit of treachery, is this one,” Gráinne declared.
And then I glanced down at Blevins and saw a change come over his face. I know magic can’t work outside of an ODEC or an ATTO and that Blevins’s office was neither of those, but I swear it was like seeing a Jedi mind trick in action. Whatever Gráinne had done to Blevins during all of that time they’d spent together in ATTOs conducting psy-ops “research,” it still worked on him somehow. Maybe it wasn’t magic at all. Maybe it was just plain old psychological influence. But it was clear to me in that moment that Blevins had been reduced to a marionette.
But not a very precisely controlled one, apparently.
“You,” announced Blevins, with a flip of his manicured gray mane, “are fired.”
“Don’t be firing him now!” Gráinne objected. “You want to be interrogating him, you’re not allowed to do that if he’s not yours anymore.”
I caught the eye of Major Sloane, the ranking DOSECOPS officer, and I thought maybe she was taken aback a little too, so I was maybe mistaken about thinking she was Gráinne’s minion. I pointed out, “You’re not allowed to do it anyway because this is a free country and we don’t just interrogate people here. Maybe Major Sloane could explain some of the legalities.”
Blevins thought about it for a moment, which was fine with me—I just needed time to download as much of the ODIN database as possible. Major Sloane looked back at me like she was taking the point I was making.
Then Blevins called out to his admin that he wanted General Frink on the line as soon as possible, to discuss a matter of national security.
“Where’s Mel?” I asked Gráinne.
“Detained in San Francisco,” she answered, sort of indignant, like how dare I even.
Getting Frink on the line happened incredibly quickly, apparently he was taking the day off with family and so he just answered his phone. The admin patched him through on voice and Blevins went off on a rambling, bizarro version of the last couple of days’ events, talking about how Mel was AWOL and now Tristan and Erszebet were up to no good and assumed to be on the lam with important national security secrets, and I, Mortimer, was in cahoots with them. And he couldn’t just call the cops because national security this and classified that, and so he wanted to invoke special powers and procedures and basically send out a DOSECOPS squad to round up Tristan and Erszebet and just let the chips fall where they may in terms of lawyers and arrest warrants and all of those other minor technicalities. Every so often he’d pause for breath and General Frink would grunt into the phone like, Yeah, I’m still here, I’m with you, bro. Finally Blevins didn’t so much finish up as wind down for lack of anything more to say and Frink says, “I am authorizing you to mobilize the DOSECOPS Extra-Facility Ops Team and get this done as surgically as you can.”
Now, I’d never even heard of the EFOT before, so its existence must have been a pretty closely guarded secret, but everyone else in the room seemed to know exactly what it was. Major Sloane nodded and said, “Already mobilized, General Frink. When I got word earlier this morning that trouble was brewing, I sent out the call. We have two squads in the ready room fully armed and armored, deployable on short notice.” As if reassuring herself this was the case, she unlocked her phone and scanned her eyes over some information.
“Well done,” Frink said over the phone.
“And what is the word from our surveillance team at the East-Oda residence?” Blevins asked. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised they’d already covered that angle.
“Sir, Professor Oda is still on the premises here, of course,” said Sloane, “but Colonel Lyons and Erszebet were just reported at the residence with Mrs. East-Oda. Somehow they got in without being spotted, but they got careless once they were in there, and surveillance saw them in the kitchen.”
“What are the odds that if we go in quickly, EFOT can take them into custody without it becoming a cause célèbre in the neighborhood?” Blevins asked.
“Depends on whether Tristan puts up a fight,” said Major Sloane, “but I don’t imagine he would.”
“Very well,” said Blevins. “Major Sloane, I am ordering you to deploy the EFOT squads to the East-Oda residence and—”
He stopped in midsentence, a little surprised because every phone in the room had started ringing. Even mine. And there was a bit of a funny moment, just then—not “ha-ha” funny—when Gráinne clearly didn’t know what to do. Because Gráinne didn’t have a phone. And it was clear from the look on her face that she hadn’t been expecting this interruption—whatever it was.