Ooooh. Back to T.
T. smiled. Helen noticed she didn’t even glance in Alex’s direction. “That’s right,” she agreed. “With new technology, we’ve managed to create a miniature version and we were charting Helen’s and her monitor’s surroundings just to test how sensitive it is, and whether it works.”
“Apparently it does,” Alex said, “and apparently, according to the activity in the chart here, the same time Hell had that attack, we can establish a new fact, that there are remote viewers who sense it differently.”
“No, it establishes that something set off GEM’s version of the energy alarm and when that happened, it triggered some kind of reaction in Agent Roston,” T. said.
“Would that something be another entity, let’s say, and can GEM’s people establish that there was another remote viewer in the area and somehow that bothered Agent Roston?” Alex asked, in a very polite voice.
“I’m taking care of it,” T. replied, and for the first time, she looked at Alex.
“You didn’t bring this up last night when we were being updated about what happened to Helen in the stairwell.”
Helen’s own tension meter went up about ten notches watching those two eye each other. She could safely rule out Alex Diamond as the person in her room last night, that was for sure.
“I wasn’t sure since we haven’t run tests on the ring yet,” T. said, her beautiful eyes narrowing slightly.
“I meant the fact that GEM has this kind of device in its possession and that you have given one to one of our operatives to wear. I thought GEM was our partner?”
Helen’s gaze quickly swept around the table once, gauging the other commandos’ reactions. They seemed to be sitting back and watching, enjoying it as much as she was. Obviously, like her, they’d never seen T. on the verge of losing a battle.
Her chief leaned back in her chair. “We aren’t full partners in everything, Alex. I realize that the merger was done in your absence and you probably don’t have the full details, but the written agreement is somewhere in this building, I’m sure. GEM has retained quite a bit of its independence, and—” she paused, before continuing softly “—will continue to do so with its operatives.”
Whoa, T. had drawn first blood. No way were they arguing about her and GEM operatives. There was a wealth of hidden challenges in this exchange for an interested observer to mine and sieve. No one said a word during the small silence that followed.
“Nonetheless, Agent Roston is our operative, as per her contract, and your giving her that device meant you’d kept certain information to yourself that could have jeopardized our operation, and future missions as well. As a partner, it’s your responsibility as co-operations chief to at least tell the operations chief on the COMCEN side about certain things that might affect the ongoing operation. I’ll, of course, bring this up as a suggestion during the council meeting between our agencies, but I think this is an issue we could easily solve during our own personal time.”
Helen bit her lower lip. T. sharing information with Alex Diamond would mean meeting or talking with the man a lot more, and from all accounts, T. had been keeping her distance, in some case, even keeping several continents between herself and Alex Diamond.
She had to give it to Alex Diamond, though. She’d never seen a man able to keep T. on her toes. She wanted to snicker at the “personal” time comment. She wasn’t going to sit by and not help out her chief, though. After all, T. had shown up to help her last night. She cleared her throat, tapping the tip of her pen on the paper in front of her, as if to make a point.
“The device, as explained here, wasn’t supposed to have an effect on me but on interfering entities,” Helen said. “I see it as protection gear, something like a bulletproof vest, except it was made for a remote viewer. So do you boys report on every piece of protection gear on you during an operation? I’m sure, if the device had worked normally, without my strange experience in the stairwell, this chart would have read the same. T. would have brought back the same results and none of you would care because there wouldn’t have been any proof that it actually happened. So my having this reaction at the same time as shown on this chart shows that it was actually I who was interfering with the overall mission, and T. wouldn’t have known that in the first place.”
There was a chuckle from the end of the table. It was Flyboy. He was scratching his nose, probably hiding a grin. “What I want to know is, when are we going to be issued our very own magic decoder ring?” he queried, tongue-in-cheek.
Jack Sullivan snorted. “Rings are for sissies,” he drawled. “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve found out tracking the satellite, Flyboy, so I can get out of here and take a shower? It’s gotten mighty stuffy and I’m running behind with…operation duties.”
“If you’d start your day earlier, you’d have all that done already,” Shahrukh said.
“Oh yeah, some of us just love the crack of dawn like you do, right, Armando?”
“Early bird catches the worm,” Armando said, twiddling his pen between his fingers like a majorette’s baton, “but better late than never.”
“Just love a dude,” Jack said blandly, “who can speak from both sides of his mouth. Let’s hear the satellite findings, Flyboy.”
Helen loved the exchange. It showed they were a lot more relaxed with each other than they pretended to be. She glanced over at T. Her chief was also smiling at the talking men. Helen looked back at Alex, who was studying her chief with brooding eyes. He hadn’t said anything else after her own comment. It appeared that he wasn’t that concerned with her “device” jeopardizing the operation after all. More likely, he just wanted to rile a reaction from T.
“Satellite tracked that van to a fake identity, of course. But it has CIA marks all over it. Easy to track when they had the vehicle delivered to a well-known CIA landing strip, you know. Why they would take the time to give a fake identity and not even bother to at least mask their entry points…”
Listening, but a little distracted by what she’d found out, Helen looked down at her ringless finger. Energy alarm. Did she somehow sense its warning through her “danger” sense? And somehow, it was amplified to the point that it affected her. Somethingdidhappen at that moment and it wasn’t because of the serum.
The idea of another remote viewer in her vicinity had occurred to her before, and had been the subject of discussion during training. From Q and A sessions, she’d learned that it took a very high-level remote viewer to see different forms of energy, such as another remote viewer, and it took a lot of energy for one remote viewer to even communicate with another. That was why RV was a solo thing, with many remote viewers working the same event on their own, in separate modules. Too much energy working together destroyed their concentration as well as objectivity. She let go of the idea and returned her attention to the commandos.
“I’m going to call our liaison, Steve McMillan, for information from his CIA contacts at TIARA. He’ll get us the names of the people who requested the use of the plane at that time.”
“Do you suspect rogues or was it a sanctioned CIA operation?”
“Too early to tell. But either way, we have to deal with it. We can’t have them interfering, especially with something like this. None of the big brass are going to take it seriously when the departments are fighting over remote viewers. No VIP’s going to want to be arguing over that on record.”
