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Wes smiled. “Reckon we can take them on if we're clever.”
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    Senator Jacobs had rented an office in the center of San Diego, close to where he had held his meeting. It was not much, not like his own office anyway, but it would do. It was that office which Elly entered. She looked around at the expensive furnishings that had been quickly brought in. It was apparent it had been a rush job, possibly done that very morning. She wanted to reach out a hand and touch the wall to check whether the paint was still wet, but just as that urge came over her, Senator Jacobs entered the room.
    “Good day, Miss Boukhari.” He greeted her in a smooth voice.
    Elly suppressed a shudder. The man was insufferable.
    “Good day, Senator. I loved your speech just now.” She managed to greet him just as unctuously as he had greeted her.
    “I've never seen you at any press conference or event before. You're new?”
    “I only just got a chance from my editor to take up an assignment.” She smiled at him. “I was asked to report on everything concerning ‘The City’. And, as you are the person who's going to solve it, I just had to be here.” She sounded completely sincere and she almost hated herself for being able to lie and cheat on the same level as that douche bag.
    “Well, you are doing a great job.” Jacobs gestured to a sofa by the window of the office. “Would you care to sit down?”
    Elly strutted over to the sofa and sat down, crossing her legs, showing off her long, smooth, tanned appendages. Jacobs walked over to a small fridge behind the desk. “Would you like some champagne?”
    Elly wanted to rant at him, but she controlled herself. “Don't you think that's slightly inappropriate, given all that's happening?”
    Jacobs looked like he had been slapped in the face as he held the bottle in one hand, his other frozen above some champagne flutes. It seemed to Elly that he was struggling with the thought of whether he had just been pied or whether he had just made a mistake. It seemed he decided she must have thought he made a mistake. “Actually, not at all. There are some glorious things happening here, too.”
    “Oh?” Elly was surprised to hear the man say that to a member of the press. “How so?”
    Jacobs grabbed the flutes and brought the champagne over to her. Elly noticed it was a bottle of Krug and not Californian sparkling wine. The man had very expensive taste.
    “There are a few things going exactly according to plan. And ‘The City’ was a failure anyway. Completely failed to be ‘The City’ of the future it was meant to be. They needed to strike oil to keep themselves afloat. That's not the thing they had been campaigning for.”
    He popped the cork and poured two glasses of the bubbly liquid.
    “I thought it was a Muslim terrorist?” Elly pretended to be shocked by what seemed to be a revelation of epic proportions.
    Jacobs grinned as he sat down next to her, his arm over the back of the sofa. He pressed a glass into her hand.
    “Don't be so naive. Of course, there's more to it than that. No crazy extremist could have made it through the security screening without help.”
    “Help from whom?”
    Jacobs shrugged.
    “Authorities, like FBI. The people responsible for the thing itself. Everyone; from the CEO, Stryker, all the way to the man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the rig.”
    Elly's jaw dropped.
    “You mean the President is in on this?”
    She had never known she could sound like such a ditz.
    Jacobs laughed.
    “No, I don't mean that. Although I would be surprised if he didn’t know what was actually going on.”
    Elly jumped to her feet. “I've got to report on this!”
    Jacobs smiled. “Nobody would believe it, honey. And I doubt your editor would let you put that out. He'd be too worried about losing the support of the investors and all those people paying for commercials.”
    Elly shook her head.
    “I have to try...” She made to walk away,