"What part of 'no' did you not understand? If you want any information—" I was about to send him to bother Reilly, when a new voice took over the other end of the line.
    "This is Wendell Jenkins."
    "Mr. Jenkins. Hello." Jenkins, from what the guys have told me, is a bit more sane than Peter.
    "If you could just do us a favor," he went on carefully. "Just make a call out to Phoenix Talon, let him know that we have some offices out in Worcester, there are going to be some people there who would like to talk to him. He can act upon this or not as he sees fit, as a member of the law enforcement community."
    "Thank you for your reasonableness, Mr. Jenkins," I sighed. The letter of that request, I could follow with a clear conscience.
    "Not a problem. I hope that you don't have any complaints about the way that you're being handled in absentia in the...?" he inquired.
    "That is none of my business, Mr. Jenkins," I pointed out. Pointedly. I'm pretty sure right now that it was the right decision to stay away from these people.
    He caught on quickly and didn't press. "You have a nice day."
    "You, too." Then I called Talon to relay the message. "I just got a call from the ever-so-enthusiastic Mr. Paulson, who wanted to send some of their people out to catch the action as you deal with the Rooster. I told him no, but Jenkins wanted me to let you know that they have an office in Worcester that you can contact if you happen to have any photo opps or something, I suppose, but I would really rather that you didn't make a big deal out of this with them."
    "I wonder if this is another setup," he speculated. "One of their little footage-gathering operations."
    "I suppose anything is possible."
    "Except they really took the paintings," he added. "I don't think they'd do that."
    "Unless AMC is actually 1-800-HENCHMEN, which is an idea that appeals to me on many levels."
    "Makes sense. Thanks for the word."

[Aside: Phoenix Talon, Privateer, then Thunderbolt]

    With Phoenix Talon in Worcester, it was a remarkably quiet afternoon. We're on the downhill slide now in terms of daylight; as it got darker out, Scott returned to his poking about the Theater District in hopes of finding more clues, or at least more zombies, and Thunderbolt went out on patrol. That left me at base, watching the trouble board and waiting for the phone to ring while I updated my journal and slogged through a mountain of trivia, looking for the tracks of the World Crime League and getting a big fat nothing, as usual.
    A light began blinking quickly up on the board; a silent alarm was going off in Central Square, Cambridge, about a half a block from Thunderbolt's position. I let him know about it.
    "Let me know if you need backup."
    "I will. Thunderbolt out."

[Aside: Thunderbolt]

    Just got a call back from Thunderbolt. Apparently Cait Sith showed up again and he needs to be broken out of the League weapons lab he's been trapped in. I think I'll give Scott a call.
    A half hour of delicate work later, Scott got into the room and got our teammate out of it. Turns out Cait Sith put the building into lockdown; if Thunderbolt had tried to open the door, the room would have been replaced by a fireball. He would have lived through it, of course, but still.
    The truly interesting thing is that the police never got the alarm that we did, as if someone had rewired the alarm so that it would be picked up by just our computers when it went off. Scott and Thunderbolt looked it over while they were there and found no evidence of such tampering; not only that, but the alarm was apparently shut off while all of this was going on, and there's no way it could have transmitted anything to anyone.
    One does begin to wonder about this Cait Sith. Not to mention what the hell the League thinks it's doing.

October 4, 1987

[Aside: Phoenix Talon, Privateer]

After hearing Thunderbolt's report, this morning we dragged Reilly back out to the base to tell him about what Cait Sith had been kind enough to reveal to us, and to make sure that surveillance is in place on the store and someone is assigned to tracking down the ownership.
    "So, Cait Sith showed you where a League of Nations weapons plant was? How did she know where it was?"
    "I didn't ask," Thunderbolt said darkly.
    "How did you know to go there?"
    "Looks like she tapped into our sensor system and faked a silent alarm from that location," Scott told him.
    "How did she do that?!"
    "That's a good question. She also knew that I happened to be on patrol," Thunderbolt went on. "I was half a block from there when it went off."
    "We haven't gotten around to scrambling the phones yet, so that's not all too hard to figure out."
    "Okay," Reilly decided. "We'll get some people checking on it, I'll put a phone call through to MEDUSA as well."
    "Nice place," Scott told him brightly. "Careful going in there, the whole building's rigged to go if you open the back door wrong."
    "Wonderful. At least we know they're there," Reilly sighed.
    "By the way, there's some Greek nobility coming to town," Thunderbolt informed us. One of their kids is checking out Harvard or something. They're bringing their own security detail, but we'll have to be on watch as well, just in case they're the reason the League is so active around here lately.
    "Would you happen to know where their seat it?" Scott asked, remarkably intent. The town was in the south, somewhere around Athens.
    "Scott, could somebody have tripped that alarm from K. Robeson?" I asked.
    "You could do it from K. Robeson. If you figured out our frequencies you could probably do it from almost anyplace," he shrugged. "But it could have been done from K. Robeson. I'll go over and check the computers, see if there's anything in the logs."
    "Just a thought. Weird thought, but a thought."
    "Not a bad one; I'll go check the Blobcave, too, it could be done from there. Course if anyone's broken into the Blobcave, we're in a lot of trouble."
    "Yeah."
    "You guys haven't been down since I remodeled."
    "Remodeled what?" Thunderbolt asked.
    "The Blobcave. Hologram generators, defenses...."
    "Oh good, so we won't have any more civilians wandering in," I noted. "Good."

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