Mandi watched Cade leave the room and wondered how such people came to be.
She'd met a few others somewhat like him since her arrival on Earth and her
involvement with the NIA. None of them had talked much and few had been as
smilingly sociable with her as Cade.
She paused by the door to help the two men who were working to angle the
long commo equipment trunk through the narrow hallway to the corridor.
One guy grousingly asked, "How the hell did they get it in here in the first
place?"
Grasping the top strap in her right hand, Mandi lifted it out of their hands
and said, "I'll hold it. You guide it."
After a moment of staring, the men steered the trunk through the door frame
and into the corridor, where Mandi put it down on end for a guy with a
two-wheeled dolly.
One of the guys marveled at the way the leather-and-metal handgrip on top
had been deformed by her grip and said he was going to replace it just to have
this one as a souvenir.
When John saw Mandi at the door of 835, he excused himself from the two
women who'd been hostages and went to her, leading her a short distance away
from everyone else.
"Mandi," John enthused, "I just wanted to say that I've never seen anything
like that in my life. It was amazing. I can't tell you how happy we are to have
you aboard."
"Thanks, John. Can you tell me why you wouldn't let me go in there alone?"
Expecting her to simply accept his words, Mandi's question appeared to take
him somewhat aback, but he recovered and said, "No. I'm sorry, but I can't."
"Can you at least tell me whether it was your idea or someone else's?"
He shook his head. "No, Mandi. I'm sorry, but..." A thought seemed to occur
to him and he asked, "Where's Cade? He hasn't been debriefed yet."
For some reason, it gave Mandi a twinge of pleasure to say, "I believe he
went to see about some dinner, John. Besides, what debriefing is really
necessary? You have it on tape."
John regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.
As he was about to say something else, Mandi asked, "Was he 'debriefed'
after what happened earlier today? From what I've heard, he just filed a police
report and left."
"You know about that, huh?"
"Yes," she said flatly. "Ringer told me why the car blew up. What's going
on, John? Why all the secrecy?"
Looking pained, John said, "Look, Mandi, talking could cost me my job. Give
me a break, okay?" After a short sigh, he added, "Here's some good news. We
think we may have all the copies of the pictures sold to WNN. The risk at the
moment is that someone who had a set may have posted them on the internet.
Nobody's admitted to that, but the only way to know for sure is to wait and
see."
Thumbing over her shoulder at room 835, Mandi asked, "What about the tape of
what happened in there?"
In a firm tone, John said, "It goes into an NIA vault. One copy goes to
Washington. That's it."
"Does Washington get copies of all your incident tapes?"
"Well, no, but this one's not exactly routine and I've been ordered to
supply a copy."
Altogether unenthused, Mandi muttered, "Uh, huh. Is there anything else,
John? I have to go do some things."
He shook his head and said, "No, nothing else that I can think of. Thanks
again, Mandi."
Nodding, she said, "You're welcome. See you later, John."
Heading back past 835, Mandi refocused her vision and began looking inside
the trunks, bags, and boxes that were lined up for removal along the wall.
She saw the outlines of all sorts of objects, electronic components, and
weapons, but no tapes. Glancing around slowly, she let her vision sweep the
interiors of nearby rooms from 835 to 831, but saw no videocassettes of any
type.
Then she realized that the large trunk was missing from the equipment
lineup. Lifting slightly from the floor, Mandi flew toward the elevator alcove,
arriving just as the doors opened for the two guys who'd taken the trunk on the
dolly.
Landing and smiling as she approached, Mandi said, "Hi, guys. Need another
hand with it?"
One grinned at her as they stood the dolly upright in the elevator and said,
"No, ma'am. I think we've got it this time."
Mandi boarded the elevator and pretended to examine the damage she'd done to
the handle as she scanned the trunk and chatted with the guys.
She saw three cassettes in the trunk and used her heat vision to melt the
fragile tape within each cassette. They -- whoever 'they' happened to be --
would realize the damage hadn't happened by accident, of course. The damaged
tapes were Mandi's message to them: "No pictures."
Would it really do any good? Or would her action simply piss somebody off
enough to leak the other pictures? Mandi sighed, knowing that her exposure was
inevitable, anyway, but she vowed to stave it off as long as possible. Privacy
was just too damned hard to come by.
There wasn't really any way to pressure the authorities. She couldn't in
good conscience refuse to help in matters of life and death. On the other hand,
she could let them know that quite a number of their other hopes and plans
involving the cooperation of a superwoman would become null and void the moment
any pictures were found -- or even suspected -- to have leaked from any
government offices.
Mandi mentally studied her list of agency... 'acquaintances'. That was the
best that she could call them, really, even after two weeks of working with
them. Most of them were more than a little in awe of her and some even seemed to
fear her.
John Cooke, who was nominally in charge of this NIA op, but seemed unable to
let even his star players know who was really running the show.
Alan Vosier, who reported to and took his orders from John.
Karen Phillips, who liaisoned between John and someone else, probably the
nameless entity controlling the op.
Ed Cade, who called himself semi-retired, appeared to work directly with
John, and... And what? She realized that she knew almost nothing else about him.
Nothing at all.
Mandi suddenly also realized that Cade had so far seemed to come and go like
a cat, disdaining such formalities as 'debriefings', although he'd filed a
police report after the first incident of the day because he'd used his gun.
He definitely hadn't seemed either in awe or afraid of her. Instead of
asking her dozens of questions about herself, he'd simply asked her to validate
his own conclusions.
Or had he? Yes. Once, at least; in asking whether her language teacher had
been human or machine. In all else, he'd simply stated his conclusions about
her, and they'd been right.
Furthermore, although she and Cade hadn't discussed possibilities or been
issued a plan of action, when Cade had pounced on Marjeel, he'd done so with
apparently no doubt at all that she could and would deal with the other two
terrorists.
How could he have had such implicit faith in her?
Mandi couldn't really envision any of the other agency people she'd met
attempting much of anything without a thoroughly pre-discussed plan that had
been specifically approved by someone up the chain; a plan that would cover all
contingencies and especially peoples' asses after any fuckups.
That line of thinking led her back to the question of why she hadn't been
allowed to go in alone. Those of consequence within the NIA knew her
capabilities from demonstrations of her speed and strength at White Sands on two
occasions.
The elevator doors opening at the second floor roused Mandi from her
contemplations. Two men and a woman stepped aboard and moved to one side, then
the doors closed and the elevator descended.
When the doors opened again, Mandi nodded goodbye to the two men with the
trunk and strode out of the elevator at almost a march step, in keeping with her
mood, but had no particular destination in mind.
The lobby of the Rivage Hotel seemed crowded with people in various
costumes. Mandi asked a nearby woman in an alien costume what was going on and
was informed that preliminaries for the first costume contest of the convention
were about to be filmed for the local six o'clock news.
Someone heralded the arrival of a camera crew and equipment and shepherded
them to one side of the doors to a ballroom, where they began setting up their
lights, reflectors, and other gear. Two hotel employees wheeled a big-screen TV
to the same area and plugged it in, then left.
Oh, great. If John's people had missed even one copy of the pictures or
failed to properly intimidate even one news hound, she could be in the middle of
this crowd when some talking head said, "This footage just arrived..." and
everybody saw her airlifting a taxi on that huge damned screen.
Would they do that after being contacted by the NIA? Oh, hell, yes, they
would, even if it meant having someone 'anonymously' send the pics to several
news outfits at once so they could cover their asses later.
Mandi spun on her heel and -- again at a march step, but this time with a
destination in mind -- headed for the walkway where she'd made her Atlanta
debut.
Disdaining the revolving door, she used the left side door in a manner that
made the mechanism ring and clatter and continued down the walkway with a glance
at the spot where the explosive taxi had been.
At the bottom of the ramp she had to wait for the light at the corner to
interrupt the flow of traffic. Looking around, Mandi saw the faint remains of a
stain on the nearby sidewalk and spotted glitterings of overlooked shards of
glass in the shrubbery by the wall. Glancing up, she saw that the cafe's window
had already been replaced.
When the crossing guard stepped into the street and waved to people on the
sidewalks, Mandi's march continued against the flow of more costumed people on
their way to the contest preliminaries.
Across the street and up the steep steps she went; past the pool and into
the lower lobby of her own hotel, with little attention spent on anything except
getting past the oncoming herd of people and the crowd by the escalators.
The group waiting for the elevators in the main lobby was large, as always.
Mandi cut left and headed for the stairs, instead, dodging people who preferred
the stairs as a short cut to the convention's hospitality suite in 221, which
was only a few steps from the stairwell.
Traffic on the stairs thinned to nothing above the second floor and Mandi
flew above the steps until she reached the fourth floor.
Through the stairwell door and down the corridor toward her room she went. A
man in a suit -- one of Frank's people -- glanced out of one of the rooms and
recognized her with a nod and a small salute. Mandi nodded back as she passed,
but her stride remained constant until she reached her door.
Once in her room, Mandi picked up the TV's remote as she set her purse and
key card on the bed, flicked the channel to WNN, and noted the time on the
screen bar.
Five-fifty-eight. Two minutes to newstime. Mandi sat on the edge of the bed
and watched the remnants of an item about some event in Marseilles, France, that
didn't seem particularly newsworthy to her.
The cell phone in her purse chirped and she reached for it with more than a
trace of irritation. Someone had to choose just this moment to call her...
Tapping it on, she said, "Angel here."
"Dragonfly here. You sound a little tense, milady. Sounds as if we're
watching the same channel."
Listening to the background sounds at his end, Mandi said, "Yes, we are. It
sounds as if you're in a bar, Dragonfly."
"Only because I am, ma'am. I stopped in the lobby's pub to grab a burger
platter. Had the bartender turn on the news, in case the newsies have used the
last couple of hours to figure a way around the confiscations. Have you made any
plans yet?"
"Plans?"
"Yeah. If they show the pictures, will you stay at the convention or leave?"
With a ladylike snort, Mandi said, "Leave, I'd think."
"Won't help," said Cade. "If I can make blowups, others can, too, and
they'll circulate nationwide. Worldwide. Did you see the 'Dawn' lookalike
contest in the program guide? If the pictures are shown, what would you say to a
'Mandi Steele Lookalike Contest'? After something like that, you'd be just
another pretty tree in the forest while you're here."
After a moment of horrified silence, Mandi asked, "You're actually serious,
aren't you?"
Around a mouthful of french fries, Cade said, "Yup. I know a guy who can set
it up and they can build it into one of the other costume contests. It can be
the first of its kind."
"The what?!"
"The first ever 'Mandi Steele Lookalike Contest'. Who knows? If you enter,
you might even win. Think about it and call me back after the news."
He disconnected and Mandi sat staring at the phone. Had Cade lost his mind?