Meetings of the Minds

Lady Penelope left Number Ten Downing Street carrying a burgundy leather briefcase. It wasn't pink, but it was the best that the Prime Minister could do at short notice.

"Where to, milady?" Parker asked as he handed her into FAB-1.

"Home, Parker. I have some more planning to do. And I must pack."

Three hours later, a regal and distinctive silver Rolls Royce pulled up to the car loading ramp of Flight 404, a direct flight from London to Unity City on Air Terranian's latest model Skythrust. Parker got out, wiping an imaginary smudge off the surface of the car. His employer was already in the VIP lounge, waiting to board. The airline's official, security checked, specially trained valet parking attendant came down the ramp, his eyes gleaming at the sight of the luxury car.

"Oi'll take h'it from 'ere, mate," he said to Parker, holding out his hands for the keys.

Parker shook his head. "Ay don't think so, may gud man." He pulled a folder from his chauffeur's uniform pocket and handed a piece of paper to the attendant.

Immediately, the man's face fell. "Diplomatical, eh? Oi jus' 'ope h'it's been checked fer bombs an' the loike." He handed the paper back to Parker.

"Clean h'as h'a whistle," Parker assured him, tucking the paper back into the folder, and then back into his pocket.

"H'All roight then. Move 'er h'on h'up! There's people waitin' be'ind yeh." Now that Parker had established his right to drive his employer's car up into the belly of the jet, the attendant's attitude changed from helpful to officious. Parker shot his cuffs, fingered the thick salt-and-pepper mustache he was wearing as disguise, slipped back behind the wheel, and eased the camouflaged FAB-1 into the holding bay. He went around back to see that the new diplomatic plate was firmly fastened, and jumped as the attendant rudely honked at him. Scurrying out of the way, he watched with consternation as the car that the attendant was driving came to within two inches of FAB-1's rear bumper. The attendant got out, looked at his handiwork, and gave Parker a smug and cheeky smile. I'll wipe that smile off his face with my fist if milady's Rolls takes so much as a scratch in flight, the chauffeur promised himself as he left the car bay.

Before taking his seat in coach, Parker made sure that Lady Penelope was comfortable. "H'Is there h'anythin' yeh'll be needin'... madam?"

"No, Parks. I am quite comfortable," Penelope replied, sitting back in her well-padded, well-upholstered, first-class, VIP armchair. She wore a chic dark blue dress and a long dark wig, reminiscent of the one she wore while posing as "Wanda Lamour". "Please do not worry. I am sure that the cabin crew will take good care of me. Take your seat and relax."

"Yus, madam," Parker said with a half-bow. He made his way back to coach where he shared a pair of seats with a slightly-deaf elderly lady who insisted on showing him all the photos she had brought of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She's worse than milady's friend, Her Grace! Parker thought with consternation. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, snoring loud enough for the lady to hear... and to irritate the other passengers around him. But somewhere during the flight to the Bahamas, he actually succeeded in dozing off and had a satisfying dream about using the old "Parker Haymaker" to wipe the smirks off an ever-growing number of officious valet parking attendants.

Penelope pulled out her burgundy briefcase and extracted the latest fashion magazine from its depths. As Ms. Alison St. Clair, the prime minister's new "social secretary", she was supposedly coordinating an upcoming visit to the World Congress from her "employer", a task which would necessitate an appointment with the minister of security. She had been given diplomatic status so that neither her luggage nor FAB-1 would be searched. Which is good, considering some of the more... questionable items in my luggage. Really, Edward was such a dear to give me this cover. I shall have to find an appropriate way to express my gratitude.

A bleary-eyed Cindy Lou brought her coffee into her office and activated her computer. She had just spent the past hour and a half going through her kitchen implements, scanning each one as necessary. There hadn't been as many listening devices in the kitchen as there had been on the living room accoutrements, but what few she found were hidden in the most inconvenient places and were difficult to see and remove. She would wave her "magic wand" (as she had begun to call it) over a drawer full of cutlery and it would vibrate and beep. She'd swear, then dump all the utensils out on the table or counter, scanning again and again until she found all the bugs. The only things she did not have to scan were her kitchen table and chairs. They were new, bought to replace the ones tainted with the memory of her ordeal just passed.

She connected with the web, her wireless interface working perfectly. Her connecting modem was state-of-the art, and rendered her invisible to the rest of the web. She could come and go in cyberspace without being noticed, leaving no pesky ISP numbers by which she could be traced. She was given the specs by a hacker she had once arrested; a gift, she was told, for treating the computer whiz like "a human being" and not like a geek. She and Dee had worked together on the project to dig out the little telltales that would enable the hacker himself to invade the wireless set up and upload what he wanted. The two of them built one for Lou, and one for Dee, thus ensuring the privacy of Dee's own work, the specs of which usually ended up in her computer's memory. Hmm. I bet IR could use this, too, she realized, and made a mental note to have Dee forward the corrected specs to her so she could pass them on to Brains through her cyber dropbox.

Right now she was searching for a series of particular websites, ones that she had been monitoring ever since she opened the file with the collected info on International Rescue. The sites were all anti-IR, a thing she would never have believed existed until she went looking for them. Some were rather harmless, just a group of discontented people grousing about the celebrity of the Thunderbirds and or dissecting the latest rescue as reported in the news. Some were rabidly anti-IR; it was these that she watched the closest and made notes of who said what and when so she could try and track down the authors. It was from the most rabid of these that she had first heard the rumors of the blackmail scheme, although it wasn't put quite that way. It was more of "a leak, confirmed by a reliable source" giving vague details of a plan to put IR under "proper governmental control", words that had waved a big red flag in her mind. It had caused her to call a few old informants in Unity City to get confirmation of the rumors, and once they were confirmed, wring as much intelligence as she possibly could out of her sources.

Now she entered the site, checking the home page, and scrolling down the message boards, making notes of inflammatory statements or titles. A critique of what she supposed was the latest rescue was posted, with the headline, "IR puts life of tiger ahead of human life!" Where do they get this information? she wondered. From the press? From bystanders? IR can't function in a vacuum, but as of this morning the legitimate press hadn't even reported this! Someone is cyber stalking them somehow, getting information on their movements whenever they surface, possibly even tapping into their frequencies! It's only a matter of time until they are traced back to Jeff and his family, and when that happens, all hell will break loose!

She continued to scroll down, and as she refreshed the page, a new headline popped up. Her eyes widened as she read, "IR plants devastating termite in government agency database!"

"Damn!" she drawled. "That bastard Franks musta opened th' fayles whahle he was hackin' into a government saht. Which one was it?" She read the terribly biased report, and groaned. "Oh no! Not Interpol!" Sitting back, she stared at the screen unseeing for a moment, then suddenly, she opened an email window and began to type. "If Interpol's involved, they'ah not gonna stop 'til they fahnd who's responsible. Ah gotta warn Tony!"

"Mr. Donovan?" The secretary's voice floated over the intercom.

"Yes?"

"Baye Mohenu wants to speak with you. He says it's important."

"Thank you. Send him in."

The young Ghanian with the thick round glasses entered Piers Donovan's office with a sheaf of papers and a data pad in his hand. "Sir, we may have tracked down the creator of this termite."

Donovan got up from behind his desk and motioned Mohenu to a small table near a window overlooking Lake Geneva. The two sat down, and the computer tech laid his papers and the data pad on the table top. "This termite was very hard to trace, and even now I'm not completely sure we have a match. It was stripped down to the bare essentials, with none of the usual signature fillips a hacker usually gives his or her work." He pulled a paper to a position between them and pointed to a small printout of code. "But here we have a part in the design of the termite that matched the works of a cyber terrorist in our database. He was arrested eight years ago, did five years for intellectual property crimes, then was released two years ago. We hadn't heard from him at all... until now, it seems." He handed his superior a data pad, opened to a file with a mug shot showing a young Asian man, his impassive face staring unblinkingly at the camera. "His name is Anthony Cho and he's from Singapore."

Donovan scanned the file once, then went back and read it thoroughly. He glanced up at Mohenu. "Do you think that International Rescue could have recruited him to build them this termite?"

The tech shook his head. "I don't know, sir. They seem to have the most advanced technology in the world at their disposal. To develop such high-level equipment means that they must have a computer genius or two, maybe even more, working for them. The kind of genius who wouldn't find a termite like this much of a challenge. To me, it seems unlikely."

The Interpol director nodded his head. "You may be right. Has MacPherson had any luck in tracking down where this came from?"

"No, sir," Mohenu shook his head again. "She's had to stop her search to help Bates isolate this thing. It's simple, but very, very tricky to catch."

Donovan sighed. "I'll assign a detail from Singapore to have a little chat with our Mr. Cho." He scrolled through the file again. "Hmm. I see he was arrested by Myles and Franks. I'll have Neussel get in touch with Myles, get some insight on Cho from her. I doubt Franks would be cooperative, even if we could find him. I'll keep this for now," he said, standing with the data pad in his hand. "Good work, Mohenu. Now I need more of it. See if you can find out where this termite came from and if it has infected any other governmental computer systems."

"Yes, sir," the computer tech said, rising from his seat. He picked up his papers, tamped them on the table, and left the room.

Donovan returned to his desk and activated his vidphone. "Sandy? Put me in touch with Neussel in the U.S., please." There was a pause, then the caller picked up the line. "Hello, Ilsa? How are you? I need you to get in touch with one of our retired agents, purely for some information on an old case. Her name is Lucinda Myles."

"Before we begin, I want to stress something. Since we have an open channel from here to Thunderbird Five, we need to either use our code names or use no names at all," Jeff cautioned. He looked around the room at his sons, four of whom sat in the room and one whose face peered out from his communications portrait. "And, as of now, the current space monitor's new code name is Sigma. Please remember that." He turned to Tin-Tin. "You have the floor... Theta." With that, he sat down behind his desk again, picking up a data pad and stylus, ready to take notes.

"Now, I've called this meeting for a very important reason," Tin-Tin began. She stood before Jeff's desk, data pad in hand, and faced the Tracy sons. Eleanor sat on Thunderbird Three's sofa, a pensive look on her face. Brains sat next to her, a data pad of his own in hand, absorbed in whatever information he was reading.

"I called you here to get some input from you on the new uniform design. Since you know what does and doesn't work with the uniforms you currently have, I thought that you might be able to give me some pointers on what you'd like to have in a new one." She smiled nervously, then asked, "Who wants to go first?"

The Tracys looked at each other, clearly out of their depth. They had not had any say in the design of their first uniform, Jeff had designed it himself with a little help from Penelope and they had accepted it without question. Now they were being asked their opinions, and the truth was they hadn't really thought about it. Scott raised his hand, and let Tin-Tin know this. "Uh, I don't know about the rest of you, but I hadn't really thought all that much about our uniforms. I mean, as long as they're functional, who cares what they look like?"

"Well, they have to be more than just functional, S... uh, Alpha," Gordon piped up. "You know that in any organization a uniform is a symbol of unity and identification." He glanced over at Tin-Tin. "I think that what we've got does both of those things pretty well."

Virgil sat back and put his hands behind his head. "I think they make us look too militaristic," he commented.

"I don't think they make us look 'militaristic' enough!" John shot back. "I mean, what military group wears... pastels?"

"Don't you mean lavender, Epsilon?" Alan teased. He was pleased that this meeting was going on while he was in space. There were lots of things he could say and get away with, hoping that his brothers would forget by the time he returned planetside.

"What's wrong with pastels?" Virgil asked. "The old United Nations wore light blue. It was a symbol of peace." He looked to Jeff. "Isn't that why you chose that color for the main uniform?"

He nodded. "Well, yes. Penelope thought it was an appropriate color for a non-partisan group to wear."

Eleanor piped up. "But it's turned out to be less than practical as far as keeping it clean is concerned."

The Tracy sons looked at each other. "Well, in that case," Scott said carefully. "Maybe it's time for another color?"

"I agree," John said, sitting up. "Which one?"

"Black!" shouted Gordon.

"White!" riposted Virgil.

"White?" Eleanor asked, shocked. "Do you know how hard that would be to keep clean?"

"How about silver?" Alan suggested. "You know. A pale silver, one piece jumpsuit with colors coded to our ships..."

Gordon cut him off. "Nah! We don't wanna look like a bunch of race car drivers, Alan!" He clapped his hand over his mouth as the rest of the assembly's attention focused on him, expressions of shock or warning on their faces. He took down the hand and said softly, "I mean, uh, Sigma."

"Would navy blue be a good compromise?" Tin-Tin suggested.

John shook his head. "I like Omicron's idea. Black for me."

"Then no one can see you in the dark!" Virgil came back. "We do a lot of night time rescues, you know."

" 'In space, by no one can you be seen'," Alan intoned with a sepulchral voice. He trailed off as his brothers all stared at him with expressions from annoyed to befuddled.

"I like a n-nice brown," Brains said, his comment coming out of nowhere.

"Look like a bunch of package delivery men," Gordon muttered.

"How about a good camouflage pattern, like in the military?" Scott suggested.

The rest of the Tracy sons groaned. "Alpha, if you go with camo, you've got to have one for every occasion. Snow, sand, jungle. It's never ending!" Gordon explained.

"What about gray?" Eleanor suggested. "A nice light gray with dark colors to contrast. Like a navy blue, or a deep gold, maybe an ochre..."

"With all due respect, GM, black is cool. Gray is not," Alan replied.

"It's only cool if you're out of the sun," Virgil muttered. Gordon gave him a dirty look.

"If we went with black, we could use a florescent fabric in a contrasting color. That way you'd have some idea who was where when you were out at night," Tin-Tin said, looking at her data pad and making notes.

"Ah, but what coordinating colors?" John asked. "I refuse to have pastels. No more lavender!"

"You've made your point, J... uh, Epsilon," Jeff said from his desk.

"Hey! Could we use neon colors?" Gordon suggested, bouncing up and down.

"That's an idea," Scott chimed in. "Florescent fabric in neon colors."

"No one said it was a good idea," muttered Virgil.

Brains frowned, still absorbed in his reading. "I w-wouldn't be able to have, uh, brown."

"We'd find you a color just as good, Rho," John assured him. He turned to Tin-Tin. "Now, I don't mind a neon purple but no lavender!"

"I'll keep that in mind," Tin-Tin said wryly.

"I've got orange!" Gordon exclaimed.

"Blue for me," Scott added.

"Can you do florescent white?" Alan asked, frowning.

"Yes, Sigma," Virgil snapped. "You can." He turned to Tin-Tin. "Since everyone else wants their old colors, only in bright, garish, neonshades, I suppose I'll stay with yellow. But I think it's hideous."

"So big of you, Delta," Gordon said sarcastically.

"Omicron." Jeff gave his second youngest a quelling glance and the redhead subsided.

Tin-Tin made some more notes. She looked up at the group. "Now that we've decided on a uniform color, what do you want it to be? A one piece jumpsuit? Shirt and trousers? What kind of trousers? Do you want jackets? What kinds of hats? Do we keep the sashes...?"

At that last suggestion, the Tracys exploded into loud chorus, "No! No sashes!" "Oh, God, get rid of the sashes!" "Uh-uh, no sashes!" "Those sashes were a bad idea." "Don't you dare think of keeping the sashes!"

Jeff sat back, stunned by the vociferousness of his sons' reactions. "And here I thought the sashes looked rather... dashing."

There was a sudden silence, as Jeff's comment sank in. "Uh, C-Commander? Were the sashes your idea?" Alan asked hesitantly.

"Yes, A... I mean, Sigma, they were. I wanted something that set us apart from everyone else but was utilitarian in function as well. Hell, I thought you all liked the sashes."

The four Earthbound Tracy sons looked at each other. "Well," Scott ventured, his face screwed up in an expression of someone who was about to get pounded. "I suppose we could keep the sashes..." He sat back, letting his words trail off as his brothers all glared at him for even making the suggestion.

Jeff shook his head and held up a hand. "No. If you loathe those sashes so much, I won't make you wear them. I just wish someone had told me this before. And when we're done here, I'd like to know just what it is about those sashes that makes them so unpopular."

Virgil now sat back, glancing around at his brothers for support as he said, "Uh, Commander? About the hats...?"

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about the hats. I've already decided that they have to go. They really don't serve any function except decoration. They don't keep the rain off your heads, or protect you from falling debris. They don't even keep the sun out of your eyes. The hats as they are now are kaput. There are baseball-style caps ready for distribution. I'm afraid they're all the same color though."

"That's okay. We're glad for the change," Gordon said, relieved that they'd dodged a bullet.

Tin-Tin tapped her stylus on her data pad for attention. "Back to the subject!" she said sharply. "Now, what do you want?"

"Not a jumpsuit," Scott said firmly. "They, uh, tend to, uh, pull up... in the, uh, crotch area..."

The Malaysian girl shook her head slowly as she took more notes. "Okay. No jumpsuit. A two-piece outfit. Shirt and trousers. What kind of trousers?"

"Cargo pants!" John piped up. "Sometimes we need a place to put stuff, like belaying devices, or bandages or such. The pockets on cargo pants would be great!"

"Yeah, and make the bottoms of the pants legs able to zip off at the knee," Gordon added. "That way they're all-weather gear."

"Okay, that sounds feasible. Anything else?"

"We should have different shirts for different climates," Scott said. "Long sleeves for cooler climates or weather, short for warmer."

"Yeah. We could have long-sleeved turtlenecks, and maybe short-sleeved mock turtlenecks as the alternate?" asked Alan. "In the same colors as the trim on the uniforms?"

"Where is that trim going to be, anyway?" Virgil asked. "On the trousers?"

"I can put it as contrast along the edges of the pocket flaps if we go with the cargo pants. Possibly as a stripe down the outer sides of the trousers," Tin-Tin suggested. "I also envisioned a jacket with the trim that would be part of the uniform in all but the hottest climates."

"P-Put in an order for s-sunscreen, uh, Commander," Brains piped up.

Jeff started; the scientist had been so engrossed in whatever he was reading that Jeff had forgotten he was listening, and listening intently. "Uh sure, Rho, sure."

"That sounds feasible," Scott said, keeping to the topic at hand. "A bomber style jacket? In a windbreaker weight, then a heavier fabric for cooler climes, and something warm and lined for snow rescues."

"And waterproofed!" Alan said. "Either that, or design a rain slicker for us. I'll never forget standing in the rain outside that radio tower..."

"This isn't the time to reminisce," Virgil said sharply. He turned to Tin-Tin. "Please, please, let's get rid of those little furry hats! There's got to be a better solution for keeping our heads warm!"

Eleanor folded her arms with a little, "Hrumph!"

Virgil turned his face to her, smiling in a half-pleading manner. "I'm sorry, GM! It's just that those little furry hats were too... cute."

"They kept you warm, didn't they?" she demanded.

"Well, yes..."

Jeff intervened. "Well, if the boys are unhappy wearing those little furry hats, then we'll change them. As he says, there's got to be a better, more manly style out there that will work just as well."

"Theta w-won't want something m-more manly," Brains piped up. "Save a f-furry hat for her."

"Oooooh!" the Tracy brothers said in unison.

If looks could kill, Brains would have been six feet under. Tin-Tin deliberately put down her data pad and stylus on Jeff's desk, and tiptoed over to the sofa. Eleanor handed her a sofa pillow, and gave her a slight nod. Two more quiet steps, and... Brains slammed her in the stomach with a pillow of his own.

"OOOOOH!" was the response from the Tracy brothers. Tin-Tin shrieked! Her eyes grew wide, then narrowed, and she attacked, swinging her pillow with both hands to score one hit after another on Brains's head. Jeff sat back and watched, a slight, amused smile on his face.

"H-Hey!" Brains protested as Tin-Tin ripped the pillow from his hands, then knocked his glasses askew with a well-placed blow. He put down his data pad, handed his glasses to Eleanor (who was leaning away from the fracas) with a polite, "Hold these, please," and with a loud, "En garde!" to Tin-Tin, started to counter attack with another sofa cushion. Scott and Gordon exchanged looks and nodded to each other. Getting up, they separated the combatants, Scott putting himself between Brains and Tin-Tin (and covering his grandmother as well), while Gordon grabbed the girl around the waist and pulled her away from the couch.

"I think that's enough," Jeff said, standing up. The two pillow fighters stopped trying to get at each other, and faced him. Tin-Tin pushed a stray lock of her hair back behind her ear. Scott retrieved Brains's glasses from Eleanor and handed them to the scientist.

"Theta, do you have enough information to get started on this project?" Jeff asked.

She took a deep breath and let it out, then nodded. "I think so, sir."

"Then this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for your time." He raised a finger as they all prepared to leave. "Please remember, Thunderbird Five's current occupant officially has the code name of 'Sigma'. Please drop the 'Lamda' entirely," Jeff warned. "Okay. That's all."

"No furry hats!" Tin-Tin was heard to say as the meeting broke up. Brains just grinned at her as he picked up his data pad and strolled out of the office. Scott and John left through the balcony door, talking about a possible tennis match. Virgil sat down at his piano, running his fingers idly over the keys. Gordon chatted with Tin-Tin as she picked up her data pad and then made her way over to speak briefly with Alan. Jeff offered a hand to Eleanor to help her up from the sofa, but she waved him away, and got up on her own. Gordon wandered out after Scott and John after greeting Alan, and a moment later, Tin-Tin and Eleanor left together.

"Thanks," Alan said as Jeff prepared to shut down the communications between them.

"You're welcome. I hope this name works better for everyone."

"I think it will. I can hardly wait to see the new uniforms."

Jeff smiled at his youngest. "I'm pretty excited about them myself. Even if we are doing away with the sashes."

Alan chuckled. "Have a good day. Thunderbird Five, out."

The room was empty of all save Jeff and Virgil, and as Jeff settled back behind his desk, his artistic son approached.

"Any news from Lady Penelope, Dad?"

Jeff shook his head. "Not yet, son." He looked at the clock on his computer screen. "I expect she's arrived at Unity City and is settling in. She said she'd email as soon as she could."

"Okay, Dad. Thanks." Virgil turned and headed out to the balcony.

Jeff frowned. I wonder why the sudden concern? And why was he so tetchy during the planning session? Usually he's pretty even tempered. It can't be just about the colors, can it? He watched Virgil leave and sat back to ponder his artistic son's current behavior.

Eleanor tried to keep pace with Tin-Tin as the two of them left, but the Malaysian girl said, "Please excuse me, Mrs. Tracy. I have an idea that I just have to sketch out."

"Go ahead, child. I'll be along in a few minutes."

"Thank you, Mrs. Tracy!" she said as she picked up her pace and hurried along to the terminus of the monorail.

Eleanor took a deep breath, then another. She could feel a bit of a headache starting. I must not be quite over this flu, she thought. Perhaps I'll go lie down for a bit and see how I feel then. Turning, she headed for the elevator that would take her down to the lower level and her own quarters.