Jia had mentioned something about him. She said she saw him meeting with someone and it looked off to her. Hearing Frankie say this now was even more reason for suspicion.
“Armand, why do you think it’s him?”
“He’s shady as shit, Xander. I don’t know how you can ask me that. He’s the only one of us with that lackadaisical attitude. He has a get out of jail card on account of his ties back to Italy and connections to the Marchesi family. It means it gives him more freedom than the rest of us to move around and do stuff.”
The night of the shootout Armand was screwing around with one of the maids. But, he didn’t have to exactly be around at the same time the Ra guys came in. They could have already been there waiting.
“He has access Xander, and that means a lot in our world. I can’t figure it all yet, but I suspect that son of a bitch. He’s the only guy who knew who would be at the poker games. All the players taking part and guests. Granted anybody who has deep pockets can attend and play, but the point is he would have had some idea who was coming. I think he’s working with someone else. The fucking web goes deep. Tangled up in knots so tight I can’t figure it. Giovanni is right though.”
“About what part?”
The man had said so much.
“He said The Ra would only get involved the way they are if they were tipped off. I didn’t know the specs of whatever the four knights were stealing but it was secret enough to keep it right under wraps. No one should know about Giovanni’s involvement at all.”
Ethan had said one of the guys was caught on camera. That was how the SMF knew. If Armand was working with the Ra, he could have tipped them off. It didn’t fit though. Something didn’t fit.
There was someone else.
Again, like Giovanni said, the someone was the joker. A person who’d managed to fool everybody and get all involved on this wild ride.
I thought he was right about that.
“So you think Armand squealed?”
“I think he squealed for the right price. I think he’s in balls deep for the right price. It actually grieves me that Jia has to have anything to do with him. The other reason I helped you was her.”
Just the mention of her name gripped my heart.
“I hated that she saw me being tortured.”
“Me too. Giovanni is one ruthless son of a bitch, but fuck, he definitely used to take the premise of keeping women out of business to another level. If this was another time he would never have allowed her to see something like that. It’s no excuse. The bastard is in over his head and acting out because of that. He won’t take me down with him when the shit hits the fan.” He gave me a more quizzical look, one more of scrutiny. “So, I won’t ask who you work for. Take you from the frying pan to the fire. All that shit. I reckon if you held your silence for so long and endured the torture Giovanni put on you, it must be important. What I will ask you is this. You one of the good guys?” He held my gaze through his reflection.
I nodded. “I am. I came with good intentions to stop bad from happening. Only bad can happen when certain things fall into the wrong people’s hands.”
“That’s good enough for me. Can I ask what the thing is? This thing it’s all about, that you came to steal. Is it okay to ask that?” He gave me a tentative expression. “I wasn’t able to really hear what it was while Giovanni was torturing you. I heard the word ‘prints’ drop, but couldn’t really tell with all that was going on.”
I didn’t see any harm in telling him that part given the circumstances. Or, rather clarifying. The issue of what it was I was here to steal wasn’t the worry anymore. It was what would happen next. Frankie seemed to know enough and some of what he’d shared with me was more than I knew before my sketchy plan to steal the prints went to hell.
“Blueprints for a nuke,” I replied, pulling in a deep breath. “A super nuke with a combo mix of uranium and plutonium. They were designed by a scientist at NASA.”
His face hardened and he looked back to me. “Fuck, you’re serious?
I nodded.
“Fucking hell, I was right. I was fucking right. I knew it was serious but I didn’t know it was that.”
“It’s serious.” And I didn’t have the damn prints. The mission was blown, The Chameleon saw me too, when he and Giovanni caught me with the prints in my hands in the chamber.
They could have moved the prints by now.
Now… when was it?
I got that disoriented feel again of not knowing what day it was. That made me think of Jia.
I gazed out the window, at the shadows of night.
I was too afraid to ask what day it was. It was something I needed to ask though.
