Alien vs. Alien

some. There were more chairs in here than the last time I’d visited—clearly they’d been expecting us. White, Buchanan, and I settled down as Adriana brought in more goodies. I snagged a cookie to keep up my strength.
    “For once, we’re not miles behind you. It’s pretty clear Bellie heard everything Marling was plotting. She’s sort of told us. She knows ‘Daddy’s secrets’ but so far we haven’t gotten really clear answers.”
    “Ah. Well, do remember—it
is
a bird. It will not speak, or reason, as humans do.”
    “Point taken. So, are we going to pussyfoot, speak in vague homilies, or actually cut to the chase?”
    “I understand you did not pass a required test.”
    This conversational shift was classic Olga. I didn’t even blink or miss a beat. “Wow. Just how many contacts do you have, and where? I’m truly shocked you know this soon. Not that you know, mind you, just that you know only a couple hours after the fact.” Okay, maybe I blinked a little.
    Olga shrugged as if to indicate still waters continued to run deep. Not that there was any doubt. “I also understand there is a scandal brewing.”
    “Oh, yeah. The dirty pictures. They’re fakes.”
    “I’m sure they are. Your loyalties have never been questioned by me.”
    Loyalties, plural. Did she mean my being in a committed marriage, new Beloved Birdie aside, my friendship with Chuckie . . . or something else? It was Olga. Asking straight out so rarely worked.rard m I figured it was because, being mostly confined to a wheelchair, she wanted to prolong her fun as much as possible. No problem. Extra time spent with Olga, Adriana, and their foodstuffs was not an issue.
    Though Adriana, as per usual for these types of meetings, didn’t stay in the room. I was quite clear that Olga briefed her later. The possibility that Adriana watched us from a secret room was also quite high. But she made sure we had plenty of food and drink and then trotted out.
    “Do you have any recommendations for how to deal with the scandal?” White asked. “You do have more experience here than we do, Madame.” He was always courtly, but he turned it up to eleven for Olga. And it was also clear that Olga ate it up.
    It was slowly dawning on me that White was, quite frankly, a ladies’ man. It had only taken, what, close to two and a half years with almost constant contact for this to dawn on me, but at least the realization was finally arriving, wearing a Belated Clue sign.
    Olga laughed softly. “I suppose this is true. In some cases it’s best to meet things head on. In others, it is not.”
    I sighed to myself. Vague innuendos it was going to be. “Which tactic do you think we should use for this scandal?”
    “Whichever tactic will work at whichever time.”
    I really liked Olga, and not only because she’d sent Adriana along during Operation Assassination to ensure I didn’t die, but there were times she drove me crazy. Any time she had information we needed, especially.
    “Someone sent the pictures to Senator Armstrong and insinuated they were going to be released. He also told Guy Gadoire, at the least, about it.”
    “Interesting choices.” She said this leadingly.
    It was always Remedial Class whenever we chatted with Olga. She was a lot like my mother—usually about ten steps ahead of everyone else but determined to make you work for it so that you’d remember how to do it by yourself next time.
    “The senator and Gadoire both insist they aren’t trying to blackmail me and want to help.”
    “They could be telling the truth.” She didn’t say this definitively enough for me to feel truth was a given.
    I went for the frontal attack. “Okay, my plan was to get Mister Joel Oliver and Senator Armstrong, both of whom have seen the pictures, and go see if the nice guys from the K-9 squad could help out.”
    Olga nodded. “Your strategy has potential.” She didn’t sound like this was an awful plan, but it also clearly wasn’t first on the list of Olga’s Recommended Ideas. And I also wasn’t sure if by “potential” she meant potential to succeed or potential to be disastrous. Or both.
    “What would you recommend, Madame?” White asked again. He was always the one most willing to put up with Olga’s playing around. Maybe this was a form of flirtation in the older set. I still wasn’t a fan.
    “Oh, I imagine anything you try will be fine.”
    There was something about how she said this that made me want to really think