“Tony, no I…” Pausing, I watched what he was doing. “Are you leaving?”
“No.” He laughed. “Where would I go?”
“You’re packing that.”
“Oh, no. Check this out, Peter said the temperature may creep above zero tomorrow, if it hits five or ten, Ben and I were thinking of going out and seeing what’s down in Elwood. OR what’s left.”
“I would love to see that.”
Tony shrugged. “Maybe you can wait until it gets a bit warmer. Then without a doubt. I’ll take you out there.”
“Are you bringing back survivors?”
Tony just stared at me.
“Of course, not how silly to ask.”
“So what brings you up here? I thought you’d be hanging out with Gil.”
“I was. Is that why we haven’t seen you? Because I’m hanging out with him?”
Almost snorting a laugh, Tony shook his head. “Um, no, it would just feel weird. Knowing how the guy feels about you. The guy builds you the ultimate survival haven and the treks through the wasteland for you. I think that speaks volumes.”
I watched Tony, as he shuffled through items he was going to take, almost as if he was giving survivors the stuff we didn’t want.
“So…” I said upbeat. “I heard something interesting.”
“What’s that?” Tony turned to the cupboard again.
“I heard that Tony Garrison is actually a sixty year old black man.”
Tony paused, just for a second, then continued what he was doing.
“Tony?”
“You heard Tony Garrison, head of GSS was a sixty year old black man.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“From Gil?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t kidding when you said you heard something interesting.”
“Seriously? That’s your reaction?”
Tony slammed a box of food down when he faced me. “What do you want me so say, Anna?”
“The truth.”
“Do you think I lied to you?” Tony asked, nearly barking.
“Gil said he met you.”
“He did.”
“He said more than once.”
“No,” Tony folded his arms and swayed his head. “He met me one time. I doubt he’d remember. I was the limo driver who brought that Tony Garrison he met to the first meeting. That is the man he met several times and that is the man he described to you. I am Tony Garrison. I own GSS. And the thing I told you that I rarely tell anyone unless I trust them is I never let anyone see me as the face of the company.”
“But Gil knows you hide behind a face.”
“Yep. He knows. He also believes he met with the real Tony. I never let that happen.”
“How do I know you’re being honest now?”
Nearly growling, Tony threw up his hands. “I knew it. I knew the second he came in here that this was going to happen. I knew you’d question me. So…. I went to my room and to my things.” He reached down, unsnapping the side pocket of his pants and started slapping items on the counter. “My driver’s license, and in case you think that’s fake, here’s my military ID, my daughter’s newborn hospital bracelet, my son’s… dog tags. Look at that them.” His finger pointed to each item. “Garrison. Garrison. Garrison. I never lied to you Anna. Ever. I have been more honest with you than with anyone in my life.” He grabbed the items and put them in his pocket. “If I am guilty of anything, it’s not being one hundred percent honest about the finality of the plan. And trust me, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it getting back to Gil. And I didn’t…” He took a second, caught his breath, and then ran his fingers though this hair as he calmed down. “I didn’t want to ruin this illusion of grandeur you had for Gil.”
“What are you talking about? Gil is a great guy.”
Tony snapped his fingers several times. “There, that’s it. Gil’s a great guy. You proclaim it. He’s not a bad guy, Anna, but he is not that man you put on a pedestal.”
“He did all this for me, Tony.”
“Yes, he did. I just tweaked the plans to make it better for you. Safer for you.”
“What was the plan?”
“Are you asking me because you want to know or because you are still interrogating me?”
My mouth dropped open. “I was far from interrogating you.”
“All right.” Tony pulled up two stools, one for me and one for him. He placed his hands on mine as we talked. “Six years ago, I get a call from Senator Jenner asking to meet with me. Now I know he used GSS for an op that went well, the intel was spot on, and we never let the information leak. He didn’t say why, but because he was a senator, I didn’t trust it. He said secrecy was imperative.”
“If it was so secretive, why did you send the face of GSS?”
“He can be trusted. He looks the part, and I knew him my entire life. I remember sitting in the limo. My face op, Gavin is his name, told him the glass was sound proofed, which is was. He tested it. But of course, it was me, so I had the limo bugged. At first I thought he was there to cheat on his wife.”
That made me laugh. “Why would you say that?”
“We had been in full operation for three years at that point. We set up secure communications and built homes for some pretty big wigs to keep their mistresses. He brought that up. Then he stated simply that he had the money and he wanted to build three state of the art doomsday bunkers without it being traced back to him. It was a bigger scale, a much bigger scale. I’m cocky. I was positive I could do it and it was a challenge. Plus, if I didn’t take on the job, I would be in the dark on the doomsday thing. Nothing about it was being transmitted electronically or over the phone. I set up a secure means of communication between him and I. It was hacker proof, because I had the best hacker.”
“So construction began.”
“Immediately. We were to operate on the assumption it was happening. And the sweet end of the deal was, if it didn’t, Tony Garrison got one of the bunkers.”
“This one.”
“It’s the one I picked.” Tony smiled. “I didn’t think it was happening. I thought he was whacked, but if he wanted to dump eighty million dollars into it, who was I to judge? I made good money off of it. Now, jump ahead to the failed attempt to divert it. Things got amped up. The original plan was, when it came close to impact time, Tony Garrison would be the messenger and the go between. But then, Gwen diverted reporters to you and you said a flag word.”
“So the boyfriend cover up began.”
Tony winced. “Well, it wasn’t supposed to be that. It was supposed to be one informational date, with a series of pizza deliveries and so forth. I thought that was risky, but in my opinion, one date wasn’t going to blow the cover and I wanted to keep tabs on the situation. It was a big one. Plus, the Senator or ‘Gil’ believed it was Gavin who took you out.”
“So the sleep overs, all that was your call?”
Tony nodded. “I needed to be where you were. That’s why I took over. I’m gonna be honest with you. When it was a reality that the comet would hit, my first thought was my daughter. I did not want to lose another child and I was going to do everything, even break protocol, to make sure she had the best chance of survival. And that survival was being where you were. I figured if I stayed close, I would be aware of any last minute change of plans.”
“Why would he change things at the last minute and not tell you?”
“I don’t know. In my opinion he was a guy suffering from horrible unrequited love with a big enough bank roll to ensure that after you were done sitting pretty and lonely in your queen room at the bunker, you’d be more than willing to welcome him back into your life.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Tony, that’s over the top.”