TESS LICKED HER LIPS. “My support?” She didn’t follow. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t—”
“Philip,” he said, chuckling. “Please call me Philip, Tess.”
Although it was like an order, she couldn’t absorb it. Calling him “sir” seemed like what a civilian should do. Damn, she’d never been star-struck. Never. Prominent or famous people didn’t cross her radar. Laying low and staying unremarkable reduced the likelihood of meeting a bona fide celebrity. The man was as close to royalty as they had in the States. His whole family was connected to running or protecting the country.
Byron’s father once held Presidential office too. His son was in the House. His daughter high-up in Homeland. Those were the only details she recalled from media reports.
“Hugo tells me you’re opening your own boutique in his hotel,” Byron said. “That’s exciting.”
In front of the current audience, it seemed pathetic… ridiculous even.
“He’s been generous,” she said, in an awkward position between the men. Insulting Hugo would be impolite, but she didn’t want Byron to think she was an airhead who equated her work with his. “With his home and his business.”
“Yes,” Byron said, his brows rising. “It’s been a full house for both of you. It can’t be easy to have so many people in one building.”
“Says the guy who lived in the White House,” Hugo said. “How many people you got moving through there on a daily basis?”
“It’s hardly the same,” Byron said, sipping his champagne, relaxing into his luxurious chair. “That was my work. I signed up for it… You didn’t sign on to have your place packed.”
“You’ve been to my parties, Phil. You know how many people we squeeze in there.”
The smile they exchanged was different, more knowing, like they shared an inside joke. Tess wouldn’t ask. She didn’t want to think of the president being involved in anything unbecoming or about what excesses Hugo might consider typical.
From the conversation so far, it was easy to deduce that the men were friends. More than just acquaintances, they shared an ease. Byron obviously knew Hugo’s residence was crowded. Did he know why? Did he know about Olympus? The organization had been around for decades. Neither Harry nor Daire had contradicted her when she’d said over thirty years.
The two men at the table were exchanging some pleasantries about the champagne when she interrupted. “Your father was in office when Olympus was established.”
Boom. Just blurt it out. Maybe that hadn’t been such a great idea. If Byron didn’t know the identity of the men taking over Hugo’s home, revealing the existence of Olympus could cause an international incident.
“That’s right,” Byron said, his smile less open.
“He knew about it,” Tess said. “He was involved in its creation.”
“Byron Senior was CIA director for several years,” Hugo said. “He knew a lot about the state of the world. About how bureaucracy could hinder progress.”
“And subsequent presidents?”
Byron shook his head. “Its inception was not a political move,” he said. “It wasn’t a presidential directive… It was personal.”
“As it is for all of us,” Hugo said. “It has to be.”
Her first thought was that Hugo didn’t have a clue how personal it was for others connected with Olympus. Men like Hugo and Byron had lives. They had careers and success and, in Byron’s case, a family. Things beyond what the Olympus agents were allowed.
“One,” she said, her eyes trained to his. “You’re One.”
His single nod gave her confirmation.
Damnit. Where was Daire when she needed to kick him? Even outside his presence, she wanted to glare at him. They’d talked about One. She’d revealed what Hugo said about his conversations with One. Maybe it would’ve been slightly helpful for her Heart to mention that the man at the top of that particular tree also once ran the country.
“After my father’s passing,” Byron said. “I took over the mantle.”
If memory served, his father passed while he was in office… It could’ve been just after. The funeral was on the television, she couldn’t remember paying much attention at the time.
“You must have known about it before then. When it was created.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. My father didn’t tell me anything about it until the campaign… My first for presidential office. He was getting older, frailer, and wanted me to understand its importance.”
“Did you send men into the field while you were in office?”
“Thousands of them,” he said. “In my official capacity. I kept my involvement in Olympus minimal until I was out of office. There’s too much oversight, too many people watching. Sending out a secret force isn’t possible with advisors buzzing around seeking involvement in everything.”
Should she believe that? The truth was it didn’t matter. Not for any professional reason. Her question was personal. She didn’t like to think that a man at the top, the man at the top, was sending kids into the field while he had actual military forces available to maneuver.
“No one in the upper echelons knows anything about Olympus,” Hugo said. “Directives come through back channels or inter-agency intelligence.”
Olympus had access to other agencies intelligence. They’d also know about agency and military failures. After the official forces had taken a shot and failed, or a mission was shelved for being too dangerous, Olympus could slip in and do what needed to be done. Did JARR make that decision and notify Minotaur?
“I understand how and why Olympus did what it did,” she said, despite being fuzzy on many of the details.
Daire believed Olympus’s work was important, so she believed it too. Though the cause they’d dedicated their lives to was headed by a man the agents seemed to dislike. Were Zeus’s objectives as wholesome as the agents might believe?
“What we want to do is take the past tense out of that sentence,” Byron said. “We can’t allow the organization to collapse because certain members can’t get along.”
“That’s not why you’re in this position,” she said, pulling no punches. “You can’t put this on Hades or any of the agents, none of them would’ve considered action if the Six hadn’t set the wheels in motion. You wanted Zeus out.”
“There were many reasons for Zulu,” Byron said, his smile a faded memory.
“Not least of which was someone developing a God complex.”
Hugo’s muttered comment drew a glare from Byron. “This is a precarious time,” the former president said. Hugo had said the same thing. “Years have gone into making the organization what it is. We can’t let that toil, that sacrifice, be for nothing.”
Laying eyes on Byron in the flesh had been awe-inspiring. The longer they talked, the more hypocritical he became. His sacrifice didn’t seem so great. In the private jet, revered, respected, his name would definitely make the history books.
“Is that opinion why Lowell is immune from consequences?” she asked, referencing Six by his real name.
In a plane, going God only knew where, it probably wasn’t a good idea to upset these men. Though if they were the types to get their hands dirty, they wouldn’t need the Olympus operatives to do the less than pleasant jobs. They’d order her murder, not commit it themselves.
Getting answers meant not pussyfooting around. Asking outright, she thought about Daire and what she’d do if Six was the cause of him getting into trouble… or worse.
“Six is important,” Byron said and took a deep breath. “I know that this is difficult for you… You’ve had a lifetime of running from Olympus. I understand your mother didn’t tell you much about it… about your father.”
Once, she’d told Harry that if Zeus killed him, his enemies would be her only source for answers. He wasn’t dead and there it was happening already.
“People like to tell me that I don’t know,” she said. “I think the time would be better spent filling in the blanks. From what I do know, Six, Lowell, is the reason Zeus learned about Zulu, your plot to have him murdered. That must mean he can’t be trusted any longer. It must mean the threat to the organization comes from within.”
“Yes,” Byron said. “But Lowell is the only original member of the Six left. He’s also the only one with Zeus’s trust. If we eliminate him, we have no link to a very dangerous variable.”
She’d never been the type to think about killing another person, hadn’t considered it could be part of her future. Still, in spite of that, and how he could cause issues for Daire, she understood what Byron was saying.
“Six is in contact with Zeus now?” she asked. “Are you in contact with Six?”
“I am,” Byron said.
The whole thing was one big game of Telephone. She just hoped the original words weren’t warped by the time they got to the end of the line.
“You want to keep him close,” she said. “How can you trust he’s telling you the truth of Zeus’s plans? I am right that Zeus hasn’t just given up and gone to ground?”
“Disappearing isn’t really Ulysses Sherwood’s style,” Byron said, using Zeus’s full name. “Hiding would imply he had something to fear, something to run from.”
“If he’s not afraid, why is he in Europe?”
“Regrouping,” Hugo said. “Zeus doesn’t believe this is over.”
“Neither do you,” she said. So far everyone involved in Olympus acknowledged that the situation was dire. Yet, it seemed, none of them were ready to let it go. “How do you plan to progress?”
“Olympus Gamma will become our base,” Byron said. “Hades and Garrick are working to get it online.”
Which Tess knew because Daire and Hugo had told her as much.
“And you think Hades can run your missions with the men he has?”
“He’ll have others,” Byron said.
“Recruits are already being considered,” Hugo said. “And some of his men are still in the wind.”
“You can’t bring them in unless you can find them,” she said. “Which doesn’t seem likely unless they wander into Garrick’s radius.”
“A mission will be set to track them down,” Byron said. “As soon as Gamma is up to speed.”
Her conversation that afternoon with Daire came to mind. He’d told her about Harry holding back. They needed to get Minotaur and JARR from the beta site. She couldn’t say that, not in those words, because no one could know that Daire had trusted her with intel.
“How long do you think that will take?”
Tipping the last of his champagne into his mouth, Byron shrugged. “Could be weeks, could be months. There are too many variables in play to give an exact date.”
“What variables?” she asked. “Surely all you have to do is get the equipment and set it up. That’s like orders and delivery dates, isn’t it?”
Byron’s smile returned. “It is far more complex. The beta site was run by a central computer we dubbed Minotaur. It’s an extremely complex system with control over many factors.” Such as whether or not death gas would be released into the ventilation system. “Extracting it from Beta to install it in Gamma will not be a simple process.”
“Why not?” she asked. “If you have Poseidon on board, he must know how to do it.”
“He does. Removing Minotaur’s core, which includes its memory and CPU, requires three keys.”
All three? The Bolt, Trident, and Scepter. That put a wrench in the works but made sense. If Zeus was able to remove the essence of Minotaur with what he had, he wouldn’t have left the beta site without it. Harry’s choice to stash his key was smart. The two men, Hades and Zeus, had been face to face on the day of the Exodus. Taking the risk of keeping the Scepter on his person was too great.
“So?” she asked with a shake of her head, acting like she didn’t understand why that was a big deal. “Use the keys, take it out.”
She liked Byron’s half smile, not because it relaxed his commanding air, but because it suggested he didn’t see her as any kind of threat. On her own, she wasn’t. But the more she heard from their mouths, the less anyone could suspect she’d got from her Heart.
Protecting Daire was paramount. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to Harry either. They might not be close, and she still didn’t completely trust him, but he was her blood and deserved the benefit of the doubt.