part0076

Child shrugged proudly. “Not a clue. It’s something my grandfather says.” He scrunched his nose. “What does it mean?”

Leroux leaned back. “Well, you’re both wrong.” He pointed at Child. “You for saying it wrong”—he rolled his head toward Tong—“and you for not catching that he did.”

Tong stared at him. “Huh?”

“It’s ‘in like Flynn’ not ‘flint.’ It means you’ve easily accomplished something.”

“What’s a Flynn?” asked Child.

“Look it up.” Leroux pointed at the back of Child’s terminal. “You said you’re in something?”

“I’m in her accounts.”

Leroux stood. “Which ones?”

“All of them. Like a genius, she used the same password for every single account, and her User ID is her Gmail address for all of them, so, once you put two and two together, it’s pretty easy to access everything she’s got.”

“Anything interesting?”

Child smiled. “You’re going to love this. It’s a direct message from her brother, who does have a Facebook account, by the way, just under a fake name to hide it from his parents. It says, ‘Please post this to your account and tag me so I can get the followers.’” He pointed at the displays at the front of the room. “Look at this.”

Everyone turned to watch a video of the professors, with their hands up, being led toward a door with Hugo Peeters, gun in one hand, Bible in the other, bringing up the rear. There was a brief conversation, the audio muffled, though Leroux was certain they could recover it, before the door was opened. The alarm sounded and the professors left with the Bible. Peeters closed the door and appeared to wait for something when someone else came into frame and the video ended.

Leroux looked at the fully-staffed room. “Well, if that doesn’t prove they’re innocent, I don’t know what does. I think it’s safe to assume that nobody out there has seen this. Now we need to decide what we’re going to do with it. There’s no doubt we have to let the authorities know. It’s a critical piece of information that proves their innocence, and with the police operating under the wrong pretext, they need to know. The question is, do we release it publicly so that the world knows the professors are innocent?” He clapped. “Pros and cons.”

Tong spoke first. “Pro, if the public knows they’re innocent, then they don’t blow them away the first time they see them.”

Leroux nodded. “Keeping in mind they’re in France, not Texas. They’re not going to get blown away by a member of the public. No one has a gun over there.”

“An overzealous cop could,” offered Tong as a defense.

“Yup, that’s a valid argument, though hopefully informing law enforcement will deal with that. What else?”

Child raised a hand, still accustomed to school. “Well, if the terrorists have them—because right now we have no clue where they are, but they’re going somewhere, and we assume that somewhere is to hand over the Bible—if the terrorists know we know they’re innocent, could the terrorists kill them?”

“It’s a possibility, but the terrorists don’t want them , they want the Bible, so they are going to do everything they can to get their hands on it. If they kill them because the world knows they’re innocent, then they were probably going to kill them regardless. But I think the greatest threat to their survival at the moment is an accidental shooting by a law enforcement officer, or vigilante justice. We can inform law enforcement that they’re innocent, but the only way to prevent vigilantism is to make sure the world knows they were forced into this and have done nothing wrong. Anything else?”

“Good. I can’t think of anything that makes me not want to push this out to the public. It also gives a jump-start on trying to mend their reputation. We’re less than a day into this. There’s still time to prevent this from destroying their futures after we save them.”

“Let’s do it!” shouted Child, his rallying cry resulting in chuckles and silence. He frowned. “No wonder you guys never have parties.”

Leroux laughed then slapped his hands together. “Okay, people, let’s do what we do best—influence public opinion.”