All Hands on Deck #3
Somewhere around eleven-thirty, my suit jacket went over the back of my chair.
Jace’s tie disappeared ten minutes after that.
Charlie has kicked off her shoes and tucked one foot under herself.
Nora has six windows open on two different screens and appears personally offended that Julian Rooke has spent years making her job difficult.
Just after three a.m., Emerson looks up from his tablet. “I’ve got something.” Every conversation stops as he turns his screen around. “There are repeated references across three separate intelligence reports to sponsored introductions.”
My mom, who is still at the head of the table, straightens. “Explain.”
“Rooke does not accept unsolicited clients for illicit work. At least not according to these reports. Anyone new has to come through someone he already trusts.”
“That tracks,” Jace says. “It keeps law enforcement from manufacturing a buyer and knocking on his door.”
“Exactly.” Emerson enlarges one report. “One source described the introduction as requiring a physical credential. Another calls it a token. And this one has a photograph.”
The image that appears on the conference-room monitor is grainy, taken from far enough away that the camera had clearly not been invited to the conversation. Two people stand outside an upscale restaurant. One of them is holding something small, round, and black between two fingers.
Ledger squints. “Is that a poker chip?”
“It looks like one,” Charlie says.
Nora zooms in.
There’s some kind of marking in the center, and what looks like a narrow, metallic edge, but the image isn’t sharp enough to make it out.
Emerson says, “Based on the reports, Rooke gives a limited number of established clients the ability to sponsor an introduction.”
“Meaning whoever has the chip gets in?” Kella asks.
“No,” I say. Everyone looks at me, and I point toward the screen. “Not if Rooke is as careful as we think he is. A stolen invitation would be worthless if he didn’t verify who gave it.”
Emerson nods. “That’s my read too. The credential gets someone considered. The sponsor still has to vouch for them, and Rooke vets the new client independently.”
“So, we don’t need to steal one,” Jace says.
“We need someone to give us one,” Ledger says.
That is significantly harder. And significantly more interesting.
My mom folds her arms. “Who has sponsorship privileges?”
“We don’t have a complete list,” Emerson says. “But we have four names that appear repeatedly enough for me to be comfortable calling them probable.”
He puts them on the monitor, and I recognize the third one immediately. Celeste Alati.
I sit forward, and Kella looks at me at the same time.
“Marlene,” she says.
“Exactly.”
Nora is already pulling up our report from the Turnip Days mission this afternoon and the handoff to Celeste Alati’s personal assistant.
My mom’s attention stays on Marlene’s image. “Do we have any reason to believe today’s transaction is connected to Rooke?”
“No,” I say. It’s important to say that out loud, because the fastest way to wreck an investigation is to decide every interesting thing belongs to the same story because you want it to.
We look into all four of the probable names. Only one meets all the criteria— recent illicit activity, confirmation that they have previously been seen with one of the black tokens, and a schedule this week where we know we can run into them. Celeste Alati.
My mom looks toward Nora and Charlie. “What do we know about where she will be?”
Charlie turns her screen to show us an event page. “This Saturday, a charity casino night. Invitation-only. Aboard a yacht. Celeste Alati is on the guest list.”
Ledger leans toward the screen. “A charity casino?”
Charlie nods. “Rich people raising money by pretending gambling on a boat makes them more generous.”
“That does sound like Celeste’s demographic,” Nora says.
My mom looks at me. I know that look. It is the same one she gave me when I was sixteen, and she realized I had talked a police officer out of giving me a speeding citation. “We need Celeste Alati to sponsor a new client to Julian Rooke.”
“And you want me to become the new client.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t go in as myself. I would need a legend capable of surviving Rooke’s vetting. Financial history. International business interests. Criminal plausibility without anything that would get me arrested before I make contact.”
Nora starts scrolling through something on her laptop. “We have dormant deep-cover commercial legends we can adapt. Some of them have years of financial footprint already built in.”
“Use one,” my mom says. “Make him wealthy enough to interest Rooke and connected enough that Celeste doesn’t wonder why she’s never heard his name, but not so prominent that anyone expects to have met him.”
Then the director turns to me. “Celeste doesn’t simply need to like your cover identity, Miles. If our intelligence is accurate, sponsoring someone to Rooke puts her own standing with him on the line. She has to believe you are worth that risk.”
That quiets the room. Because there’s the mission. Not steal something. Not follow someone. Not break into a room. Make one extraordinarily careful criminal decide she wants to open a door for me.
“What does Celeste want?” I ask.
“That,” my mom says, “is what you have until Saturday to figure out.”
Nora looks up from her computer. “I found a legend that might work.” She rotates the screen. A name sits at the top of a file. Maxwell Shaw. International investment holdings. Private acquisitions. Several years of constructed financial activity. Minimal public-facing profile.”
Emerson starts tapping away on his tablet. “We can strengthen it.”
My mom nods. “Do it.”
I look at Julian Rooke’s face on the monitor across the room. Then Celeste Alati’s. Then Maxwell Shaw’s name.
This afternoon, I stood in a park full of classic cars and turnip decorations, telling Kella not to fixate on the envelope being passed from one person to another. The object wasn’t the important part—the relationship was.
Now six lives depend on me getting one woman to trust a man— who doesn’t exist— enough to introduce him to another man who has made an empire out of deciding who gets access to whom.
Maybe Nora is wrong. Bonding and surveilling really are gifts. And apparently, it just became the whole mission.