by Tom Clancy
Unfortunately, this cozy arrangement had blown wide open when a radical Hollywood offshoot of the anarcho-libertarian movement went too far trying to fix the Great Race for their C.A. heroes. Repercussions were still shaking out, which was probably why the Alliance delegation was lobbying Congress, no doubt complaining about some unfairness or other.
Oh, yeah, Leif thought. He’d felt it was reasonably safe for Ludmila to return home to the Carpathian Alliance. Cetnik couldn’t go after her without admitting just how badly he’d screwed up his mission. But Leif had never considered that Cetnik might use Ludmila as a lever to force him to do favors for the C.A.
“I don’t expect an answer right now,” the C.A. agent was saying as if Leif were suddenly his new best friend. “You should take a couple of days to consider the .. . possibilities.” Cetnik then slipped right into business mode. “I’ll expect a call from you by the end of the weekend.” He handed Leif a slip of paper. “This is the hotel where I can be reached. You can be Igor Lachavsky, inquiring after your cousin Ludmila.
“I’m sure I don’t have to warn you to use a public Net connection.”
Leif said nothing. Not using an easily traced Net connection was a basic precaution in making prank calls—or, Leif suddenly realized, in espionage.
Even so, Cetnik was taking a chance. The C.A. delegation had to be drawing some attention from counterintelligence agencies. Playing a lone hand had some disadvantages for Cetnik.
If only Leif could think of some way of turning that to his own advantage! But his brain remained stubbornly numb as Cetnik ended their little meeting.
“I expect I’ll be hearing from you.” The C.A. agent smiled, but there was a chilling kind of certainty in his voice. It was the tone a fisherman might use when he was sure the hook was well and truly caught in his quarry’s gut.
Leif wasn’t sure whether Cetnik stayed around a little longer, enjoying what he’d done, or if the agent walked off quickly. He himself spent the next hour running along the Central Park loop almost blindly, his pace hurried, as if he could somehow outrun the lump of cold dread weighing on his heart.
Ludmila … Leif remembered his annoyance—actually his jealousy—when he saw her flirting with guys from the other teams, even though Leif knew it probably meant disaster for their racing efforts. He remembered her face as Cetnik had screamed at her after she’d saved Leif’s life, along with all his teammates. He remembered her smile as she relaxed with him and let the real Ludmila come out. Exhausted after a worried, sleepless night, she’d dozed off against his shoulder. But most of all, Leif recalled Ludmila’s patient, almost sad tone as she described her day-to-day life in a fanatical dictatorship. It wasn’t terrible; people weren’t out of their minds with fear. It was just that they always had to be … careful. In a million small ways they had to watch what they did and said.
She never told him what happened if someone made a mistake in that wary dance around the edge of the volcano. But Leif could imagine. And he could imagine what Ludmila and her mother would go through if Cetnik made good on his threat. The girl had lost her father years ago in the last outbreak of war in that troubled part of the world.
Leif shuddered. He knew he wasn’t a coward. For the thrill of it, he’d tackled tough ski runs, runs that regularly broke arms and legs; he’d crashed parties that were supposedly un-crashable; he’d even spent some time in the cockpit taking the controls of a friend’s private plane. He also knew that there was something in him that enjoyed twisting rules until they were just about—though not quite—broken.
Right now those two parts of Leif were savagely fighting it out. One side wanted to tell Cetnik to screw off, to stop him, to hurt him if necessary. But doing that would put Ludmila in danger. One word from Cetnik, and the machinery would start. And the C.A. had very a horrible efficiency at grinding people up for the good of the State.
Go along with him, Leif’s sly side urged. String the guy along. Knowing David, he probably will find out whether — or how — secrets leak from people who wear Hardweare vests. You might be able to get Cetnik off your back.
No. If he gave in, he’d never get Cetnik off his back. Leif knew he’d become … what had Cetnik called it? An “intelligence resource.” If he went along with what Cetnik wanted, the C.A. spy would then have two levers to pry future treason j out of him.
And if he didn’t…
Leif could see Ludmila’s laughing face in front of him as she briefly relaxed her guard. Then he remembered the expression of sick fear on those perfect features as she begged him to hide her from her keeper—Slobodan Cetnik.
Leif Anderson ran on, his body hunched a little as if someone had punched him in the gut, his hands jammed in his pockets. It was an impossible choice. Whichever way he went, » the consequences were … unthinkable.
Think, he commanded his usually agile brain as mile after mile passed beneath his feet. You can always concoct schemes I and scams. Come up with a solution for this problem!
But he couldn’t engineer a way out of this difficulty by himself—and who could he ask for help? Mom and Dad loved | him, but Leif doubted they’d understand how he’d gotten involved with Ludmila, much less why he felt the need to protect her.
David knew about Ludmila and even liked her. But Leif couldn’t drag his friend into this mess. For one thing, it would be like asking David to make up his mind for him. More important, it would leave them both trapped in Cetnik’s web.
That’s what this C.A. creep wants, Leif suddenly realized. Ludmila was the lever that worked on Leif, who’d be the key for David, who’d give away the secrets of Hardweare—and then permanently be available to have his brains picked.
This was blackmail, extortion .. . and espionage, plain and simple. Leif knew the person he should be taking this problem to—Captain Winters. Net Force was supposed to take on people who attempted computer spying.
But Leif couldn’t go there for help, either. He might trust the captain, but Winters wouldn’t be put in charge of this case. Whichever agent got the job would be interested in nailing Cetnik—not helping Ludmila.
Leif found himself walking across a grassy field in Central Park, not quite sure how he got there. Come on, come on! he urged his increasingly confused brain.
But every time he thought he had a halfway decent scheme, he ended up picking holes in it. He even managed to come up with drawbacks in schemes he’d already discarded. For instance, if he went to Winters, how could Leif be sure that Cetnik wouldn’t learn who’d double-crossed him?
If only I could make it too dangerous for Cetnik to mess around with Hardweare — without him being able to blame me y Leif thought. He stopped in his tracks as a glimmer of an idea hit him.
Leif began retracing his steps across the grass, moving almost at a run. / might be able to pull this off, he thought, but I need to make the call from home. This isn’t a job for a foil-pack phone. Til need every advantage I can get — watching facial expressions and reactions in detail. That means using my holo-system back home.
Soon enough, Leif was sitting back in his room, facing the holo pickup of his system. He debated going into veeyar to make this call, but decided he needed the indefinable feel of reality, not to mention the lack of distraction from that first painful entry into the Net. He almost barked instructions at the computer, then sat waiting for the connection to go through, holding his breath. Was it too late? Would he still be in his office? Would he pick up?
Struggling to keep a calm expression, Leif let go a long sigh of relief as Captain James Winters appeared in the display over the computer.
The captain looked rather skeptical when he saw Leif.
“Well, Mr. Anderson, this is a surprise. What can I do for you?”
“You make it sound like there’s always something I want.” Leif let a note of complaint creep into his voice.
“Perhaps that’s because whenever I talk with you, you end up playing me like a violin,” the suspicious Winters replied.
“The Hardweare business?”
Leif nodded. “I think David’s told you a little about the company and that three-ring circus of a family.”
Winters gave a short, sharp laugh. “I think that’s a generous description of the MacPhersons.”
“Well, the circus now has an animal act,” Leif said. “Battlin’ Bob MacPherson caught his daughter in the same car with Nicky da Weasel—excuse me, Nick D’Aliso. And Daddy simply went ape.”
“I didn’t hear about this.” Winter now leaned forward over his desk.
“David was wondering out loud if there was some connection between the family’s problems and the whispering campaign against Hardweare. I’m wondering if there’s something more,” Leif said. “Nick D’Aliso tried to warn him off from taking a job with Hardweare. At the time, we thought he was trying to get rid of a potential competitor. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m not so sure. Maybe he knew more than he was telling.”
“And maybe it’s time to rattle a few cages and see what we hear,” Winters said.
Leif nodded, afraid to trust his voice. He’d just gotten exactly what he’d wanted.
“Whoever it is, make it brief,” David’s mother said when the call came into the Gray house. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
David answered at the living room system.
“Captain Winters!” he said in surprise.
The captain looked somewhat ill at ease. “I’m torn in two directions,” he said abruptly. “You know how I warned all the Net Force Explorers about getting too involved in this leak problem we’ve encountered.”
David nodded. “We’re just to pass along any interesting information, so we won’t get killed.”
“Well, it’s beginning to look as if you’ve put yourself right in the middle of the case,” Winters said. “We decided to take a look at Hardweare—and at the principals involved with the company. A couple of hours ago one of our agents came across what may be a serious development. He spotted Nick D’Aliso entering the headquarters of the Forward Group.”
ad-hoc alliance of hackers whose specialties interlocked. They took on projects that single hackers couldn’t handle alone. The jobs kept getting bigger and bigger until Forward had to take on partners and be more businesslike. Even then, he used to drive the bean-counters crazy because of the jobs he wouldn f t take. Forward had high-tech answers to any problem—but he refused to handle military contracts.”
“So what happened to make the Forward Group what it is today?”
“Forward died. The business types took over. Forced the specialists into suits and a proper corporate existence. Purged the hackers who wouldn’t fit in.”
“And probably drove most of the creativity right out of the company,” David said.
Winters nodded. “But they learned to raid schools, catch the talent young and try to indoctrinate the best and brightest—or lure them with big bucks. They appropriated creative companies, either buying them up or stealing their ideas and intimidating them into silence.”
“Could they be trying that with Hardweare?” David asked.
“From what we can tell, most of their security budget— and a surprising amount supposedly for ‘research’—goes into corporate espionage,” Winters said. “With a flood of secrets gushing into the Net and being blamed on Hardweare, who could tell if some were quietly going to the Forward Group?”
“David!” His mother’s voice brought him back from the shadowy world of corporate skullduggery to more everyday concerns—like supper.
Winters must have heard the call, too. “I’ll let you go to your mom,” he said. “Just bear in mind, whatever Net Force does with Hardweare and Forward, I don’t want you investigating.”
“But you said it yourself,” David put in. “If I find information …”
Winters had that “torn in two directions” look again. “Yeah. I’m sure it wouldn’t be rejected. But personally, I’d be happier if you got out of there.”
David was so distracted through dinner that his brothers began making fun of him. “I said, ‘Pass the potatoes,’ Mr. Space-o.” Tommy giggled.
Mom scolded the eight-year-old, but David noticed that she looked a little worried. He made an effort to take a bit more interest in what was going on around him, but it wasn’t easy. All sorts of questions kept popping into his head, things he wished he had asked Captain Winters.
Was there hard proof that the Forward Group was using Luddie MacPherson’s invention as some sort of espionage vacuum to suck up corporate secrets? What was Nick D’Aliso’s involvement? Was he an information conduit to Forward? Had he somehow programmed the leak into the supposedly tamperproof computer vests?
But one question above all really disturbed David. What was Nicky da Weasel doing at the offices of the Forward Group? The obvious answer would be he was working for them … as a corporate spy. But an undercover agent would have lots of ways—inconspicuous ways—to pass along information other than walking in the front door.
Nick D’Aliso must know how to bounce messages all over the Net. He could infiltrate inactive Net sites to use as data drops—in fact, given Nicky da Weasel’s talents, he’d be able to mess around and program active sites to take his messages.
So why was he strolling into the corporate gates of the Forward Group, where he could be spotted? Where he had been spotted?
Did the Forward Group think it was so well-insulated from whatever was happening at Hardweare that no connection could be made?
Maybe it was just a case of big-business arrogance. These guys had pretty much had things their own way—buying up companies, strong-arming competitors, changing foreign governments to suit themselves. Of course, this time, they were up against the U.S. government. David felt a sudden chill. Unless, with their spies and their assassins, they thought they’d reached the point where they could win here.
Slobodan Cetnik strolled down the hall of his Washington hotel. But his seemingly easy stride hid a careful, nervous search for hidden watchers. From the moment he stepped into the lobby downstairs, he’d paid special attention to anyone who seemed to be loitering, sitting, reading the paper.. . keeping an eye on new arrivals. Had he seen these people before?
Then, on the way upstairs, he’d checked out the hotel workers—bellmen, porters, cleaning staff on the floor. Were there faces here he hadn’t seen before?
Those were the easiest ways to infiltrate people into a hotel for surveillance duties. Cetnik had used both approaches himself at various points in his career.
As he approached the door to his room, however, his shoulders relaxed a little bit. He’d been confident no one was tailing him when he set off on his private business, but he’d taken all the usual precautions just to be sure. He was certain he hadn’t been followed to New York.
And as far as he could see, no counterintelligence agents seemed to be awaiting his return.
It was just another example of soft, decadent, gadget-happy American life. The lawmakers his delegation visited had been surprised at the thought of hosting actual meetings instead of computerized get-togethers in veeyar. When Cetnik had left, he’d taken a train up to New York, paying with actual American dollars so there would be no record of the transaction. Then he’d walked the couple of miles from the station to the home of Leif Anderson. And now, twelve hours later, he was back, with no one the wiser.
In the homeland he’d have faced identity checks if he tried to leave a major city or enter another one, for trying to ride on major transport, and at least one police demand for an internal passport from any obvious stranger on a city street.
There, Vd have been helpless to move around and develop my plans, Cetnik thought. But here, the Americans are helpless, useless … what was the word they always used? Clueless!
Cetnik slipped his digitized card-key int
o the slot in the door and pushed it open. He was three steps inside before he realized he wasn’t alone in the room.
“What—?” The C.A. agent flicked his wrist, and the ceramic knife which was invisible to X-ray scans dropped into his hand. Even as he stabbed out, however, the aerosol spray was going into his lungs, his eyes, soaking into his skin—
The man in the dark suit became grotesquely large, then impossibly small, as if Cetnik were seeing him through a distorted camera lens. The knife dropped from Cetnik’s suddenly leaden fingers. Something strange was happening to the floor. It seemed to be tilting wildly to his right.
Cetnik flung out an arm, attempting to balance himself. He tried to call out for help, but his voice emerged only as a thin whine.
The floor treacherously swung to the other direction, and Cetnik suddenly found himself falling.
His arms and legs seemed somehow disconnected from his brain, but he could feel his heart pounding in his chest from rage and terror.
The man in the dark suit bent over him. Cetnik saw a perfectly bland face, a face so ordinary no one would remember it.
Except, of course, that the face was gray. No, the world was going gray. Cetnik blinked, then couldn’t seem to get his eyelids open.
Everything went black.
Leif Anderson sat silently in his room, going over his conversation with Captain Winters for about the hundredth time. He didn’t think he’d given too much away. The captain had gotten into the habit of wariness when Leif called, certain that some sort of con job was underway.
But there was no possible way that Winters could uncover Leif s real motives for this last call. His concern for David was real enough, even if it wasn’t the overriding reason why he’d warned the captain about the new troubles at Hardweare. Maybe Winters would think the spoiled playboy had turned over a new leaf.