Page 83 of The Session

Mark wasn’t sure he should let on what he knew or didn’t know. He also didn’t know how much of an insider Kade was. The fact that Norm had gone quiet when she walked into the room told him to tread carefully.

“Like the Canadians?” he probed.

A detectable silence settled over the room.

“That’s just some made-up bullshit,” Kade replied.

“I don’t know,” Norm said.

“What have you heard?” Kade asked.

“Do you remember Jason Ouelletta?” Norm asked.

“Doberman? Yeah, that guy was a psychopath. He washed out of Constellation real quick,” Kade told Mark.

“I was on a Middle East trip, and over at the executive airport in Qatar we use, I saw him and five other guys in the lounge waiting for a private flight. All of them big and dumb like him. He saw me once; that was it—no more eye contact. We both pretended not to know each other,” Norm said.

“You could have been working for anybody,” Kade pointed out.

“Maybe. But that jet was one of ours.”

“Constellation doesn’t own any jets,” Kade shot back.

“And we don’t actually work for Summit Strategies,” Norm countered. “All those Max Lightman books just happen to randomly be on the shelf, and we all randomly get our pay stubs from the same office in the Bahamas.”

“Ignore him, Bookmark. Talk to him long enough and he’ll have you convinced we’re a CIA front.”

“I don’t think we’re a CIA front. But I think a CIA front writes us a lot of checks,” Norm said.

“You could just ask your dad, couldn’t you?” Kade said to Mark.

“I could ask Jeff Bezos why my protein powder got shipped to the wrong address, but I doubt he’d know,” Norm said.

This wasn’t the first time Mark had come across the rumor that Summit Strategies was somehow tied to the CIA or other intelligence agencies. While it seemed extreme to think they were a government outfit controlled by somebody as eccentric as Max Lightman, it wasn’t that crazy to imagine that the CIA did business with a company that ran private jet services and security around the world. The Agency had worked with far shadier individuals and organizations.

Talking to Kade and Norm was illuminating. It was also chilling to hear Norm all but confirm what Blaise Cutler had said about the clandestine group known as the Canadians.

If Andromeda was the official secret group that did the dirty work, then what did the Canadians do?

Homework

“How’s it going?” Tru asked over the video call.

Mark sat at a cubicle in the corner of what had once been a warehouse, talking to Tru on his laptop. Off to the side were pallets of food from Costco and metal containers holding ammunition and weapons. On the other side was a folding table with a printer and office supplies. The contrast amused him.

“Predictable so far,” Mark answered. “We show up, Captain Renard gets out, tells whoever they’ve sent to negotiate that they’re better off pounding sand, they usually break apart the barrier, and we go through. It’s surprisingly casual—nothing like what I’d seen in movies.”

“Do they even need Constellation there?” Tru asked.

“Absolutely,” Mark replied. “Because when we aren’t around, the barriers usually don’t come down, riots happen, and the places we’re not protecting get robbed.”

“Interesting,” Tru said.

“The other part of this—which we don’t really say out loud in front of the local police, though you’ll hear them whisper it—is that their captain knows he can’t trust his own men. There have been situations where they’ve either been bribed to let the gangs in to steal supplies or have been extorted. I heard of one case where a guardsman absolutely refused to leave his post until somebody drove up with his mother in the back seat, sitting next to a man with a gun.”

“That’s terrible,” Tru said.

“Ninety-nine percent of everybody here is pretty chill. It’s the one percent that ruins it, just like back home. Only here, there’s a lot more opportunity to screw things up.”