The final person in the room was Dionne. She too looked completely different, but not in a Tatiana way. The first time he’d met her, she’d seemed frighteningly together – a woman with all the answers. Reserved. Self-contained. This time, she stank of cheap booze and hot garbage, she looked dishevelled, and she was wearing on the arm of her blouse what appeared to be some of the stew they’d had for dinner the night before. She was laying out the grand plan she had apparently just come up with in a dumpster.
That was everyone in the room. However, it wasn’t everyone present. Not if you included the woman on the big screen who had listened in silence to the whole rambling plan as it had been outlined. The woman had a fearsome countenance, and while Dionne was explaining her idea to everyone, clearly she was pitching to the woman on the screen.
Arthur still didn’t understand fundamentally who these women were. They were the Sisters of the Saint, but only some of them referred to themselves as nuns, fewer still dressed as nuns and, as far as he could see, none of them acted in a nun-like fashion. Of all of them, the one on the screen – he had heard her referred to as Sister Dorothy – was the only one who had really nailed the whole nun thing. Just the sight of her made his palms tingle in anticipation of getting smacked with a ruler.
Dionne drew in a big breath and looked up at the screen. “And that is my idea.”
“I see,” said Dorothy. She nodded and looked off screen, as if debating with herself. “So, you want to combine the two problems, and make them into one big one?”
“No,” said Dionne. “I want to make each of them into the solution for the other.” She pulled a face. “Well, kind of. Look, it’s the best and – let’s be honest – only idea we’ve got. I’m wide open to any other suggestions, but the clock is ticking and we’ve got nothing.” She looked at each of them in turn and then addressed the whole room. “If anyone has anything to say, now is the time. We don’t have time to pussyfoot around.”
“Alright,” said Joy. “Say you can get all that to work – big if. We’ve got a way of causing one hell of a distraction and getting our two jailbirds out of there once they get outside the gates. Cool. That still leaves the bit where they have to, y’know, actually break out of prison.”
“Yes,” said Dionne. “It does.” She turned and looked at Arthur.
“Oh, right,” he said. “You expect me to just magic something up out of thin air?”
“Yes. You want a shot at that new life? Now is the moment you’ve got to come up with the goods. So far you’ve given us nothing but the opportunity for Joy to have a little target practice. It’s time you stepped up. How do we get them out?”
Arthur scowled at her. Thing was, he actually had one idea. He’d been thinking about it while lying in bed. At the time, it hadn’t been anything, because it didn’t solve any of the other problems. Now, though …
“Alright, then, Sisters.” He stood up. “Maybe I have something. I’d say it’s a bit crazy, but you were all here for the presentation from the drunk woman who smells like a wino.”
At this, Dionne blushed and smelled her blouse surreptitiously.
“According to your technical genuis over there,” he pointed at Zoya, “the only way we can get into the closed system that controls the doors – assuming we don’t have a guard willing to commit career, and possibly actual, suicide to help us – is by physically hacking in. I have an idea about how to get somebody in and get them somewhere where the lines are accessible.”
He walked over to the big board on the wall and unpinned one of the emails that they had printed out. He came back and handed it to Dionne. “Your Trojan horse.”
She read it silently and then re-read it out loud to the room. “This could work.”
“OK,” said Tatiana. “I’m going to say it. Leaving aside all the other bits of the plan, we need to infiltrate this Celestial Church of New Hope in a day. I like a challenge, but c’mon, that’s impossible. I mean, I’m assuming they’ll be on high alert after we had to rescue you from the cops. You also said they know about the Sisters. What I do won’t work if these people are suspicious of everyone walking in the door.” She leaned back. “I’m really sorry. But honestly, there’s no way it’ll work.”
Dionne nodded. “I’d agree, only here’s the thing. We’re already in.”
“How?” said Tatiana, looking around the room as if she were expecting someone else to appear who could explain this development.
“We’ve already been in for a couple of days,” said Dionne.
Dorothy cleared her throat pointedly. “Excuse me, but didn’t we agree that you would have nothing more to do with these people?”
“Actually,” said Dionne. “We didn’t.”
Dorothy’s scowl went up a few notches in the severity stakes. If you’d have asked Arthur if that was possible before it happened, he’d have confidently predicted it wasn’t.
Dionne brushed her hair behind her ear. “What I actually agreed was that the Sisters of the Saint would have nothing more to do with these people. I hired some outside help.”
“Outside help?” said Dorothy, her tone icy. “Since when have we used outside help?”
“Well,” interjected Joy, pointing at Arthur, “we’ve got this dude.”
“That is different,” said Dorothy. “He is our—”
“Prisoner,” supplied Arthur.
“I was going to say consultant,” finished Dorothy.
“Cool,” said Arthur. “So, I can leave?”
“You can try,” said Joy, smiling.
“And there’s the lawyer,” added Tatiana.
“My point is,”
