Alien Diplomacy

enough people.”
    She nodded. “Perhaps not. But your oversight was based on locationand being very new here. No one was left off the list as an intentional slight. Your invitation did say ‘our nearest neighbors,’ did it not?”
    “Yes. Amy did a nice job with those. She did them by hand.” Why I was trying to get any kind of kudos for the fiasco I couldn’t say, but you’re supposed to support your best friends’ efforts.
    “They were lovely. Please let her know I have preserved ours in a memory book.”
    “Will do.” I didn’t want to ask if it was the Nice Handwriting memory book or the We’re Still Laughing At THIS memory book.
    “However, your predecessors would never have invited most of the countries you did. And for those who were so lucky as to receive an invitation? No real emotions would have been expressed. No caring. They put on good faces, but they were not good people.”
    Well, events had certainly proved that to be true. “That sort of sounds like D.C. in a nutshell.”
    “No. As you will find, many are here to do the best they can. We don’t all agree, but most of us do try to do what is best.”
    “Best is in the eye of the beholder,” Chuckie mentioned.
    “True.” Olga chuckled. “However, I can assure you, those you replaced were not working for anyone’s interests but their own.”
    She was right, of course. I was curious how she’d figured it out, though, since the former Diplomatic Corps had fooled most of the A-C community for years. “What makes you say that?”
    “I met them. They were not pleasant because Romania was not of interest to them. We had nothing they wanted. And refused to perhaps give them things they might want in the future. We were not of…like mind.”
    I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “What countries were they friendly and of like mind with?”
    “Oh, all the majors. They had a particularly strong fondness for France.”
    “Yeah, we sure know that.”
    “They were also quite friendly with the South American countries.” She made eye contact with me. “Especially Paraguay.”



CHAPTER 63
    I COULD FEEL CHUCKIE PRAYING that I’d keep my mouth shut. But as far as we knew, we had a world of hurt heading toward us, and we knew nothing. Olga, who apparently spent her days looking out of two windows, seemed to know a lot more than we did.
    “Paraguay’s been coming up a lot recently.” I felt that was a noncommittal enough statement that Chuckie might not strangle me for it later.
    “I’m sure it has been. It is quite pivotal for certain things.”
    “What things do you mean, Madame?” White asked.
    “So sad about the police force,” Olga said with a sigh. “I am not certain the correct decision was made.”
    “You mean to put Titan Security in charge, or to lay off what seems like half the police force?”
    “Either.” Olga smiled at Jamie. “So sad, to be willing to disavow your loved one, just for the sake of politics.”
    “You mean the head of Titan, right? Someone influential is his son or daughter or something?” Per Oliver, anyway. Of course, also per Oliver, there wasn’t enough evidence to make an educated guess as to who said relative might be.
    Olga kissed Jamie’s fingertips, which earned her the I Love YOU baby giggles. “What do you know of Titan?”
    “What should we know?” Chuckie countered.
    “Have you met him, the man in charge?”
    “No.” I looked at Chuckie, who shook his head. “Really? You’ve never met him?”
    “No need.” He looked at the desk. There was a newspaper on it.Chuckie picked it up, flipped to the business section, and handed it to me. “He’s always in there somewhere these days.”
    “Wow, just like Ronald Yates used to be.” Of course, Yates had owned the media outlet, and this man didn’t actually look like Yates. But I could see the resemblance in his expression, which said he was taking over whether anyone else liked it or not.
    He looked around sixty, plus or minus, and appeared trim. Nothing exceptional about Mr. Antony Marling really, other than that he headed the top private security firm in the U.S. and, per the article, possibly the world. “Huh. He’s a French expat.”
    “He and his wife both have very interesting names, don’t you think?” Olga asked.
    I scanned the article. He was “in” with the Pentagon as well as some others—Madeline Cartwright was credited with the “one of our most trusted suppliers” line. She really