wn, begging off time with Petra by claiming exhaustion and then talking to Mathias and, last night, searching Jay’s apartment. She’d found a sat phone smuggled into a secret compartment in Jay’s luggage, one that bypassed Dalton’s tech-device checks. In the same place, she found notes in Danish. They were in code, but the fact that he was making notes in Danish means it wasn’t just some language he knew passably well, as he’d claimed.
When we check the sat phone, we find a few preprogrammed numbers. One is to another sat phone. Victor’s? We certainly hope so.
Émilie calls the number, and it goes through, but no one answers. There’s voice mail, though, in Danish, and she leaves a message. We’ll give it an hour, and then we’ll go on foot to find Petra.
We tell Phil everything, and then we eat breakfast. Well, everyone eats except Phil, who’s still processing. Not arguing. Just processing.
He doesn’t confirm or deny any of it. He can’t. As Émilie has warned, the Danish connection operated above his pay grade.
A few older members of the council were aware of the original drug trial and undoubtedly saw the connection to the “narcotic brew” reported by Maryanne, but they had feigned ignorance. Then there’s the element that’s on the Danish firm’s payroll. All other council members have a justifiable claim to ignorance. I’d still say they’re guilty of not taking the problem seriously. But it’s understandable that Phil knew nothing … with one exception: the plans to close down Rockton.
“I had raised concerns,” he says when he returns from a walk. “About the dwindling numbers. It was a matter of budget and long-term planning. If this was a permanent decrease, then we’d need to close buildings, and we should allow higher-contributing members to take larger quarters. I suggested a plan for reconstruction, doubling the size of some apartments. I also noted that if the decrease continued, we’d need to reevaluate our storage requirements and possibly reconfigure jobs. They insisted it was a temporary drop only—we’d had a decrease in applications and tightening of the extension guidelines.”
“Yeah, I remember you mentioning that,” Dalton says. “Wait. Nope. You never said anything about downsizing. Or tightened extension rules. Funny you didn’t mention that last part when you brought Jen to us.”
“I considered it a management issue.”
Dalton just waits, gaze fixed on him.
Phil meets that gaze with an equally cool one. “There are management issues that I bring to you, and there are ones I do not, ones that seem primarily about supply and resource. I was under the impression you appreciated not being bothered with that.”
Dalton grunts. It’s a grudging concession. Yes, he’d been happy to turn that over to Phil, but in this case, supply and resource concerns implied something larger. It had not, admittedly though, grown to the point where anyone, including Phil, realized that.
As Dalton said, it seemed a normal fluctuation in numbers. If there are plans to shut us down, they’re restricted to a very small number of people, with the general council—and Phil—knowing nothing about them.
“What if we fix this?” I ask Émilie. “If we prove the Danes were behind the hostiles and they’re the ones who wanted to shut us down, then we’ll be okay, right?”
She doesn’t answer. She can’t, and I hear my words, and I hear a child’s hope in them.
I can’t get a dog because they’re too much work? What if I promise to look after it and, if I don’t, you can take it away?
Even as a child, I’d known that denying me a dog because they were “too much work” was an excuse. Is it the same here?
Émilie opens her mouth to speak. Then the phone jangles.
She answers it on the third ring, sounding breathless, the old lady who scrambled to grab a phone.
“Hello?” Even her voice is tremulous. “Hello?”
She holds the receiver from her ear so we can listen in. She wears hearing aids, very discreet and—I’m sure—the best money can buy. She doesn’t strain to hear with the receiver a few inches away.
“Is this Émilie?” a male voice says.
“Y-yes, yes it is. Please tell me you have my granddaughter.”
Petra calls out, “It’s me, Nan. Don’t worry. I have this under control. Whatever he says…”
Petra’s voice fades as he must be moving away. She doesn’t shout to be heard. She knows we got the message, and she also knows that if Émilie called this number, then we’ve realized that “Colin” isn’t a hapless pilot looking for his tourist clients.
Victor comes on again. “I’m guessing that detective did her detecting and figured out what happened, if you have this number.”
“Actually, no.” Émilie’s voice comes clearer, still with a quaver, but as if the savvy businesswoman is wresting control from the fretting grandmomma. “I know what’s going on. That’s why I’m in Rockton. To make sure Casey doesn’t dig deeper than she already has, which is quite deep enough, as I’m sure you know. She thinks my granddaughter has taken you hostage. I knew better, and I obtained this number, which I am using to negotiate my granddaughter’s release.”
A humorless chuckle. “All right, then. Let’s negotiate. I want one thing and only one thing. Get me out of this hellhole.”
“You don’t have a plane? Casey thought she saw keys.”
“Yeah, well, she didn’t just see them. She stole them. Doesn’t matter. That bird is a useless hunk of metal right now. Those people got hold of it. Fucking vultures. Picked the corpse clean. What I need is your plane, which your grandgirl here says you have, and she’d better not be lying because that’s the only reason I made this call. What’ve you got?”