All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (33 page)

“That’s no business of the Council, even if it came up in the closed session,” Wini said, and stood.  “I’m afraid this meeting is over.”

“The Council didn’t gather this information, Wini,” Tonya said, staying seated.  “It came from an outside source, and pertains to a special report that CBS News is working on.”  Keaton had finally found a way to leak the information Arm Haggerty had collected to the media.  Keaton hadn’t leaked Wini’s involvement.  Yet.  “The Council denied any involvement or knowledge of what the reporters were asking about, of course.”

“CBS News?” Wini asked.  Tonya nodded.  Wini sat back down, her face fading from reddened anger to pasty white.

“Later, the Washington Post and the New York Times contacted us, followed by someone from the Detroit News,” Tonya said.  They hadn’t published anything yet because they were still researching the story.

Wini’s eyes took on a wide, glassy look.  “I see.”  Her hands shook, and drops of expensive tea splashed onto her elegant suit.  “How much do the media know?”

“We’re not sure.  Everyone but CBS News appears to be working on rumors.  CBS News claims they have documentation.  They claim at least two Focuses have been trained to function without households, with skills better suited toward combat than Transform maintenance.”

Focuses were supposed to save lives.  This thing was an abomination.

“Hmm,” Wini said, then sat back and thought.  Two minutes passed before she managed to compose herself.  “I want to thank you personally, Tonya, and the Council in general, for bringing this to my attention.  It will be dealt with.”

“If I may ask, what…”

“No,” Wini said, her eyes growing hard.  “The less the Council knows about this, the better.  We can’t afford to have the Council besmirched by the actions of myself and those working with me.”  Damn.  Some of the other first Focuses were involved as well.

“I’ll relay this information to Polly,” Tonya said.  She couldn’t do anything else.  She hadn’t been authorized to press Adkins, just to bring the issue to her attention, and ask if there was anything the Council could do to help.

“I can ask nothing more of you,” Wini said.  She thought for a moment, and smiled.  “I’ve a few private questions to ask of you, though, and I may as well ask them now.”

Even though she was but the messenger, Tonya had suspected she would end up roasted by Wini for her part in this.  She had been correct.  Wini wanted a report on her mentoring effort.  In detail, immediately, with no time for preparation.  All the secrets, all the blackmail information needed to keep the younger Focuses in line.

Tonya no longer respected the blackmail threat as much as she used to, and neither did Polly.  Once the word got around about how easily she and Polly had evaded the effects of the information Schrum had released about them, she doubted any other Council Focuses would respect the blackmail threat either.  A Council Focuses’ household had to be strong to survive the rigors of the Council, strong enough to live through the loss of a few jobs and some criminal investigations, and they shared their high-end resources more than the other Focuses realized.  Suzie had released so little on Tonya and Polly, compared to what Tonya had feared might happen, and although neither Tonya nor Polly had the wherewithal and knowledge to legally discredit the released information, Connie Webb and Jill Bentlow did.  As both Polly and Tonya had the financial resources to make low-interest loans to Connie and Jill, to help them recover from the firebombing of their households, the situation had practically resolved itself.

The Council was no longer the total puppet of the first Focuses, and the first Focuses would now have to live with the change.  The first Focuses remained little more than decadent puppetmasters whose only goals were their own self-interest, and they no longer understood the strength of the Council.  They would still cut the young Focuses down, keep them weak, and keep them poor, but they wouldn’t be able to extort them and ruin them as much as before.  Not with Tonya in the way, as head of the mentoring program.  Polly had been right.  Being in charge of the mentoring program put Tonya in the blackmail information loop, giving her immense power, and she intended to hold back as much information as she could.

As she did here this evening.

How many young Focus households had gone hungry, over the years, so Wini could sit in Queen Anne chairs and sip from fine porcelain teacups?  So Wini and the other first Focuses could work with impunity on evil projects like the salt mine and the Mutie Mill?

The Cause existed because of this impunity, and the first Focuses’ days of absolute impunity were over.  With Patterson’s tag on her now nearly four months gone, Tonya considered her decision to join the Cause the best choice she had ever made.

Gilgamesh: April 18
th
, 1969

“Are you sure about this?” Sylvie asked Gail from beside her in the back seat.  “I know you want a seat at the grown-ups’ table, but this terrifies me.  We’re getting involved in something way too large here.”

“Uh huh,” Gail said.  “It’s my idea, too.  Gilgamesh here wanted information on Focus Adkins, but didn’t want to say why, so we traded.  We’re going to get this whole negotiation on the record, into the YFL newsletter, in as positive a way as we can.  Well, positive for Focus Adkins.”  And take in every last nuance of this negotiation, she
didn’t
say.

“Your Focus is becoming quite a good negotiator,” Gilgamesh said, turning around to look back at Gail and Sylvie.  He did enjoy the chaotic byplay among the members of Gail’s household.  However, he had only made it part way through the one meal Gail talked him into attending.  They were too much for him, too
real
, too much of a reminder of the life he led before he transformed, the life he kept barricaded in his memory, never to remember.  Gail’s young clique of somewhat leaders was much easier to cope with than the full household.

Such as today.  Sylvie and her husband Kurt, both household leaders, shared the car with him and Gail.

He owned the upcoming negotiation, the culmination of the project he had been working on since mid-February, ever since he learned Stalin held Newton captive.  He once counted on Lori being by his side, but after the assassination attempt three weeks ago, he gave up on his earlier plan.  Instead, he had arranged for Kali’s protection and support, and he didn’t want to think about what her protection would eventually cost him.

Thus today’s café meeting.  The place, named Sugar and Cream, was a ramshackle dive across the street and a half block down from Stalin’s household.  This was her turf, and easily within range of her tamed gristle dross.  Kali would be acting as both his bodyguard and as his negotiating partner.  Gail and her people attended as witnesses and reporters.  She had already told him Focus Adkins possessed enough of a hold on her that she would have to think hard to print something in the Young Focus League newsletter Focus Adkins didn’t want printed.

Gail’s attitude didn’t match what he understood about young Focus relations with the first Focuses.  There wasn’t supposed to be any thinking involved in a young Focus’s mind.  Gail broke the rules, certainly not a first for her.  Even more shocking, her household was aware of the blackmail material Stalin held on them and the whole household was prepared to thumb their noses at Stalin if she got too abusive.

As they walked to the café, the car holding Kali and four of Focus Mann’s second-line bodyguards parked behind Gail’s car, and one of the guards formally opened the right rear door for Kali, who stepped out like a queen.  Two of the other guards took up defensive positions around her, and the remaining guard settled himself to watch the car.  Kali’s disguise, as Focus Mann, was perfect save for her glow (which would fool many Crows, but not him) and the extra hundred plus pounds of muscle she carried on her body.  Gail and her crew took nearly a minute to recognize her.  They hadn’t been told what Kali’s disguise would be today.

“Let’s do this,” Kali said.  She had Focus Mann’s voice down perfectly.

Stalin’s bodyguards greeted them at the café door and led them to two small pushed together café tables.  A cheap place, with dusty linoleum floors and crumbs from the last guests still littering the tables.  No other guests occupied the dining area, and the clerk at the cash register disappeared into the back when he saw them coming.  The guards signaled, and Stalin walked across the street, flanked by four more bodyguards.  She wore a glower on her face under the full regal air of a Focus doing the Show.

Stalin had every reason to glower, with the Focus Council recognizing male Major Transforms, and with the loss of her Attack Focuses, now in the custody of the CDC and out of her reach.  Stalin sat.  Gail made the introductions, not anywhere as nervous as Gilgamesh.  He made sure he sat next to Kali.  His life and freedom were now in her hands.

“Ma’am,” he said, to Focus Adkins.  He needed to think of her in Focus terms now, or he would blow everything he had worked so hard to arrange.  “I would like to negotiate for the release of Crow Newton.”

“I hear you,” Focus Adkins said.  Her tamed cloud of gristle dross wafted across the street, blocking the front door of the café.  “Do you think I’m at fault for what happened to the fool?”

When in doubt, be honest.  “Ma’am, I don’t know,” Gilgamesh said.  He took a deep breath to steady his nerves.  His heart still beat twice as fast as normal.  “Crow Newton should have known not to approach the household of a Focus of your seniority.  I can’t imagine why he did.”  Actually, he could.  The Newt was always pushing himself, trying to prove to himself he was a worthwhile, even adventuresome, Crow.  Stick-to-itiveness was his problem, not courage.

Adkins nodded.  “Then you don’t know the story.”

“Ma’am, I wasn’t aware there
was
a story.”

“I see,” she said.  She looked over at Kali, penetrating the disguise as if it didn’t exist.  “Arm Keaton.  What I want in return for my cooperation in this matter is a form of protection.  I believe you’re the one who can deliver this.”

“What form of protection are you talking about?” Kali said, a sneer on her face.  She, unlike him, and definitely unlike Gail, had no intention of being polite.

“From Arm Hancock,” she said.

Oh.  Gilgamesh nodded in understanding.  Stalin must have learned about Tiamat’s mind-scrape of Hera, and figured Tiamat now knew Stalin had been the one behind sending her into withdrawal.

“Four years,” Kali said.

“Excuse me?” Focus Adkins said, archly.

“I can offer you four years of protection, in return for the fool Crow and the story behind his capture,” Kali said.

Gilgamesh kept his face blank.  Tiamat had already agreed not to return to Chicago for the next two years, or seek revenge for her capture for two years after that.  He wasn’t sure if this restriction extended to Stalin, but Keaton’s ploy here, getting something for nothing, implied so.

What was he doing here, among people as hard as Kali and Stalin?  Negotiating.  Thank heavens Gail, the Clumsy Angel, remained a beacon of light in this pitch-black morass.

A part of him was quite happy, though.  If Kali ended up paying nothing to Stalin then he wouldn’t owe anywhere near as much to Kali as he feared he would.

Focus Adkins turned to him.  “I want no Crow payback for this.”

“I can agree to myself, and Newton,” Gilgamesh said.  “I’m not a Crow leader, though, ma’am, and can’t make any agreements for the Crow community as a whole.”

“In that case, all I can require is that you represent my dealings with you as a negotiation in good faith, when you’re called to explain your actions by the senior Crows,” Focus Adkins said.

“I can agree to that.”

She nodded.  “Then it’s settled.”  She waved a hand in a regal way; one of her people brought over a cup of tea from behind the counter.  “Crow Newton had fallen under the control of an enemy of mine, a Crow I once knew by the name of Richard, long ago, during the Quarantine years.  I believe you name this Crow ‘Wandering Shade’.”

“Ma’am,” Gilgamesh said, mentally scrambling, his voice nearly a squeak.  This changed everything.

“Son of a bitch,” Kali said.  “Are you saying this is personal?”

“It’s very personal,” Focus Adkins said.  “Back during the Quarantine, Richard and I worked together, not as friends, but as allies, in the St. Louis Detention Center.  Until the Crows betrayed the Focuses held in the CDC’s Detention Center you destroyed.  We’ve stayed in contact over the years, by mail, each trying to convince the other to be reasonable.”  Gilgamesh translated her comment as: betray their own.  “I’ve never learned what Crow name he goes by.  Over the years Richard’s tone became darker and darker, until I committed a well-known faux pas during the Arm Flap.”  Driving Tiamat into withdrawal.  “Then he congratulated me and offered up a formal alliance.  I told him to go to Hell.  After his charge, the Male Monster Enkidu, rampaged through Detroit, he sent me a letter calling me a moral travesty, promising his undying hate and threatening to skin me alive, tan my skin, and make a leather chair out of my remains.”  She paused.  “If he shows his face anywhere near here, I’m going to kill him.”

“Well,” Kali said.  “It sounds like we’re in agreement, then.”  She cocked her head and met Focus Adkins glare.  “Once this little deal is done, I would be more than willing to engage in further negotiations on
that
front.”