Chapter 8 #3
They left with clear heads, knowing the UMG had agents discreetly posted around the home’s location to keep an eye on it in their absence.
Lunch ended up being at the Grosvenor Hotel in Mayfair, a Victorian-style hotel filled with other businessmen and women taking clients out on the company’s account.
The exterior was old and dated in a classic sort of way, if you liked that sort of thing.
Inside, it was designed to impress, the marble flooring and paneling still holding up centuries after it was first built.
Only Trevor followed them inside, while Annabelle stayed with the SUV despite the valet’s assurance they could care for the vehicle.
The Cavalier, a restaurant tucked away inside the hotel, was well-known for its revamped take on classic British food, with its chicken tikka taking pride of place on the menu.
Alexei was glad about that because if Jansen had made reservations at a place where only small plates with tiny bites were offered, he’d have probably punched the guy.
Really, all Alexei needed was one little excuse.
Jansen was waiting for them at the table they were led to; it seated four, and three of the leather seats were empty. Trevor posted himself near the exit and out of the way of the servers bringing food to guests and topping up drinks, keeping a weather eye on his charges.
Jansen’s smile was as oily in daylight as in the light of his club, Alexei decided.
“Ekaterina, I’m so pleased you could make this meeting on such short notice,” Jansen said as he stood at their arrival.
Jansen pulled out Katie’s chair for her, and she smiled at him. “Thank you, Mr. Jansen.”
“What did I say about calling me Niko? It’s much easier to conduct business on a first-name basis.”
“Niko, then,” Katie agreed. She didn’t ask for him to call her Katie.
Alexei and Sean got situated in their spots, with Alexei putting himself next to Jansen-cum-Niko and across from Katie.
It put him facing a majority of the restaurant and the exit, which left Katie to watch his six.
It was as defensible as it could get, but it still made his skin crawl. Fucking Niko made his skin crawl.
Alexei picked up the tablet with the menu from the middle of the table.
Niko hadn’t ordered anything yet other than a martini, so Alexei skimmed through the menu and chose what looked good.
He passed the tablet over to Sean so he could pick his meal while Katie and Niko had a polite conversation that revealed absolutely nothing to each other.
For his part, Alexei slouched in his chair and opted to look bored, gaze trailing over everyone in the sleek dining room, picking out Niko’s bodyguards almost immediately.
They’d taken up similar posts with Trevor, along with several men and women who screamed security.
It told Alexei this lunch spot was favored by some wealthy people, or at least, people who wanted to be seen as wealthy.
“You order?” Alexei asked in a brusque manner, interrupting their conversation after Sean set the tablet down on the table. The food wouldn’t come until everyone had picked out their choices and sent the order along to the kitchen, and Alexei didn’t want to wait. He was hungry.
“Yes, we’re ordering,” Katie replied, ignoring the tone in his voice.
She chose something at random, and Alexei only knew it was at random because usually, Katie picked her way through a menu for the best dish like it was a battlefield. He hoped she liked what she decided on. If not, oh well. He wasn’t giving up his steak for anything.
Niko took a sip of his martini. “Our mutual friend was quite impressed with how you presented your company last night. We did some research and came to the conclusion you may be exactly what we’re looking for in terms of, oh, flexibility.”
“We’re Marines. We’re used to being flexible on the battlefield. The mindset transfers well to civilian life,” Katie replied.
Niko gave her an odd look. “I thought you were out of the military?”
“Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
He chuckled at that, as if he found it amusing, when no one else at the table did. Alexei had never quite understood the near fanaticism Marines had with their branch of the military until he’d joined a team full of them, but he understood it better now.
“We will need an understanding of your company’s capabilities. We have a client, shall we say, who needs a particular security setup created for his business. We suggested your company could perform the work,” Niko said.
“What are the parameters?”
“Oh, this and that.” Niko shrugged before pulling a small solid-state drive out of his suit jacket pocket and handing it over. “I don’t profess to know anything about computer systems. I much prefer people. They’re far more interesting. The instructions are on the drive.”
Katie tucked the solid-state drive into her purse. “I’ll be sure to review it thoroughly after lunch. When the assignment is complete, who do I deliver it to?”
“Me.”
Katie tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowing. “I know we work through you, not for you, Niko. We’ll need to know who our client is if we’re to continue doing business together. You can let Oksana know that’s part of our terms.”
“Oksana is not the one seeking your employment.”
“Then you can let whomever it is know we may not do things strictly by the book, but I do like a clear chain of command for productivity purposes. So does Jamie.”
“Ah, yes. Your investor. A shame he couldn’t join us today.”
“He’s busy,” Katie replied as a server arrived to deliver their drinks.
Niko’s gaze slid Alexei’s way. “I’m sure he is. Jamie’s partner was delectable-looking, even if the man himself is a bit possessive. Like you, Alexei, don’t you agree?”
Alexei didn’t have to think very hard about what Niko was implying, and it made him bristle. “Not your business,” he growled, reaching for his beer.
Alexei didn’t look at Sean, but he didn’t need to. Sean picked up the thread of conversation without missing a beat.
“We’ve all become close since I was hired to work for them,” Sean said, the flat evenness of his Pacific Northwest tone replaced by the Brooklyn accent his old cover had cultivated. “That won’t impede us from doing our jobs.”
“Tomas didn’t seem impressed with your position last night, Riley,” Niko said.
“I’m not impressed with Tomas’ capabilities. Fair warning, he’s liable to shoot you and not give a fuck about the problems it causes everyone else. He’s something of a hothead.”
Niko put on a mask of worry that would pass muster with everyone else except them. “I hope none of you were caught out in the shootout that happened last night.”
“We left for a different club and luckily missed getting caught in the terror attack,” Katie answered. “The news is saying it’s another Reborn IRA attack. Does London see them often?”
“I wouldn’t know. I travel so much the issue never comes up. You must have seen a lot of the world as Marines. What was it like for you?”
Katie let him steer the conversation away from talk of the Reborn IRA and gamely chatted about her postings through the years.
Alexei kept half his attention on the conversation in case Niko tried to include him.
The rest of his attention he reserved for the arrival of several new lunch groups while a couple of people at the bar paid their bill and left.
Their food soon arrived, and Alexei zeroed in on the steak with garlic mashed potatoes.
The green beans he didn’t touch, since Kyle wasn’t here to tell him to eat them.
Katie’s chicken tikka smelled amazing, and Sean had gone with classic fish and chips.
Niko had some dish consisting of meat wrapped in baked pastry dough that took second place to Alexei’s steak.
Conversation was the same, with Niko steering it back to their time in the military over and over.
Alexei doubted it was because he was actually interested in the aspects of military life.
Katie easily rebuffed his efforts to find out their capabilities, letting Niko lead her, rather blatantly, to the real question.
“Did you ever encounter any metahumans during any of your deployments?” Niko asked when he was three-quarters done with his lunch.
Alexei hid his eye roll by leaning his head back and finishing what remained of beer in his glass. The man wasn’t subtle at all.
Katie, for her part, merely shrugged at the question. “No, but we were stationed in contested areas a few times. The brass issued everyone in our platoon a neural net before deployment.”
Niko laughed, the sound more than a little condescending. “Those don’t work.”
Katie delicately tore off a piece of garlic naan to dip it into the sauce smeared over the bottom of her shallow bowl.
“The DOD doesn’t mess around when it comes to R&D and doling out weapons.
The equipment worked for us when we were in the field, when we needed it to, at least when used against any mental interference. And guns still kill metahumans.”
Neural nodes and neural nets weren’t really effective against mental powers.
Neural nodes, a cheaper option than neural nets, would monitor a person’s brain waves to discover if any mental interference had happened, but that was about it.
Neural nets were marketed to a richer clientele, requiring actual surgery to program nanobots into lining the brain with delicate bioware.
The technology was all passive, but the idea of a military upgrade was a sound story.
Alexei could grudgingly agree that Sean’s idea seemed to be working.
“I see,” Niko said slowly, staring at her. “How interesting.”
Katie smiled winningly at him. “As interesting as who we will be working with, I’m sure. You never did say.”
“I didn’t.”
Katie waited him out with the intense focus that had served her well on the battlefield. Niko didn’t exactly wilt under it, but he did shift in his seat, and Alexei knew Katie would count that as a win.