Lady Chief went on, “And that takes us to the next problem: the sitting duck pond. If I am to give you ANY more information you MUST upgrade this safehouse and upgrade it NOW! The chief of GLCIS wanted the three of us dead even though we were no threat whatever and were quietly behaving like private citizens and roommates of one another. He wanted it enough to send out a half trained bomber to do it, who botched it, and killed a security service agent in consequence.
“Under the circumstances, since they can no longer spy on us, they MUST find and kill us. They will be coming, they will be armed, they are remorseless, and they have a mere seven safehouses to choose from. There is no better safehouse than this one for us to go to, so we have to upgrade this one immediately to give the three of us and Emily a fighting chance to stay alive.” Emily looked as if she didn’t like the prospect. “We will talk about it more carefully and in detail after lunch, but it WILL include putting a dead bolt on the front door.
“We came under names which they don’t yet know, and they can’t count on us flying away in any particular direction, though they will be able to trace us to Midway airport as soon as they find the car we abandoned there, which will filter out alternatives. And, while we weren’t security risks before, we have just committed treason now, and as soon as Aaron starts changing the cars and the safehouses wholesale, which he MUST do to get this situation under control, GLCIS will know where we went, and which was the probable flight we took. With that information, they will make our new names, as well as find out that we are carrying real GLC passports, not fakes, under those names. The reason this is important is so we could obtain refugee visas to stay here indefinitely, and we can only be trading information for them.
“There are still GLCIS agents spying on PI here, how many I don’t know, so they WILL infer our presence here by the increased PI activity. In fact, there could be a GLICIS operative spying on us right now, because he was tailing the PI car we all came in and which you blithely parked across the street instead of a block or two away after dropping us off. More than that, Emily came out the door and had us introduce ourselves on the front lawn. If there was a spy, GLCIS will have a fine picture of that little gathering by tomorrow. And if there were what we call a ‘Truth Team’ here with a bomber, there might now even be a bomb with a magnet on the underside of that car. They won’t botch that bombing and will have plenty of time to wait and watch before they detonate it.
“So the upgrading of this safehouse must start today and be complete by three more days at the longest, even if you must use uncleared private contractors. Aaron has assured me that he will open a generous new budget line to fix all this. So you need to call Helen, Donald, as soon as we’re finished this afternoon to get that process started. Emily, why don’t you bring out lunch.”
The Matriarchal Zone 