The Great Race

by Tom Clancy

  Leif nodded again. Research had been going on since the 1100’s, when a British official in India had noticed similarities between ancient Sanskrit words and words meaning the same things in Latin and Greek - basic vocabulary, like the words for ‘father’ and ‘water’.

  ‘Indo-European’ was the name given to this root tongue, whose descendant languages were spoken across the old countries of two continents … and in new countries across the globe. In recent decades, however, scientists had attempted to probe the roots of Indo-European, trying to find out where the language had originated.

  Using computers, they’d exhaustively compared words in various languages, noting what matched - and what didn’t. For instance, words connected to water showed the same ancient roots. So did the words about rivers. But the ancient languages - and the modern ones - came up with different names for seas. That would indicate that the original Indo-Europeans lived inland, away from any large bodies of water. Further clues had narrowed down the possible area - things like the names of trees and animals that all the vocabularies shared.

  ‘They finally narrowed down the area where it was first spoken to southern Poland, right?’ Leif asked.

  David nodded. ‘And you must know that there’s another name for the people who spoke Indo-European - Aryans.’

  Leif didn’t say anything. The name had been seized upon by too many people pushing theories about a ‘master race,’ explaining the success of nineteenth-century Europe in carving out colonial empires in terms of ‘Aryan heritage’ instead of superior technology and finance.

  One theorist - a guy named Adolf Hitler - had not only praised Aryan supremacy, but had written about the need to reduce, even exterminate, what he called ‘lesser races.’

  He’d put the world through decades of horror when he tried to put his theories into action. And ever since then, groups had seized on the word ‘Aryan’ to justify their racism.

  David went on. ‘Anyway, our friends from the Carpathians cooked up a neat theory. Since Indo-European was first spoken on Polish territory, that means that the Slavic races - which happens to include the people from the C.A. - are the true Aryans!’

  Leif blinked. ‘Wait a minute. The Aryans - Indo-Europeans - whatever you want to call them, they date back to about five thousand years ago. The Slavs enter the historical record about fifteen hundred years ago. That’s a pretty big time gap - a lot of people marched through that territory in the meantime.’

  ‘It’s a nonsensical claim,’ David agreed. ‘But the Carpathian Alliance is pushing it hard.’

  ‘And the Nazis - Hitler’s Aryans - they slaughtered lots of Slavs for belonging to a so-called inferior race.’

  ‘According to the C.A. party line, Hider was a false prophet who stole his ideas.’ David tapped the side of his head. ‘These people are wacko, Anderson. Dangerously wacko.’

  ‘Where did you find out all this stuff?’ Leif asked.

  ‘I talked with Captain Winters. He spent some time over there - and he likes to know the enemy.’ David looked grim. ‘So do I. Those Alliance zombies are in this contest for the propaganda value. They want to win the Great Race - to show that they’re the greatest race.’

  Leif stepped over to the window. ‘That’s a reasonable motive under the circumstances, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I can think of others—’

  His voice cut off, and he squinted. Their room was in the center of the hotels overlooking Rodeo Drive with the mountains in the distance. But the H-shaped building had two wings that jutted out on either side. And Leif had noticed something odd in one of the windows overlooking theirs.

  It was an antenna, an old-fashioned rig like the satellite dishes people once used to catch world broadcasts in the days before the Net became the delivery system of choice.

  There was no need for a direct-feed link in a hotel already hardwired for every sort of communications, unless somebody wanted a really secure connection. It was aimed downward - right at their room!

  Chapter Six

  ‘Hey, David,’ Leif said, fighting to keep his voice even and his expression bored. ‘Why don’t you turn that thing off for a moment and come check out the view?’

  ‘Leif, I’m running simulations, trying to get a handle to all the possible quirks and surprises we might come across trying to race the Onrust’ David’s eyes were still glued to the display from his laptop computer. ‘It’s hard enough being captain of this pocket rocket without—’

  He bit off his words, but Leif could just as easily imagine what would have followed. Something along the lines of, ‘Without being bothered by your idiot interruptions.’

  Leif turned from the window. ‘I think you ought to come over here. Now’

  David caught the note of warning in his friend’s tone and set the computer aside. ‘All right,’ he said, rising from the couch. ‘What’s the big deal?’

  ‘I want you to see something,’ Leif said, gesturing off to the horizon. ‘Keep your face pointing straight ahead, but move your eyes to the right. Up three floors, the seventh window from where the west wing juts out. No!’ he abruptly warned. ‘Don’t actually turn and look. Just move your eyes.’

  David drew an annoyed breath as he followed Leif s instructions. But whatever he was going to say passed in a quick outrush of air.

  ‘There’s something in the window,’ he finally whispered.

  ‘An antenna,’ Leif agreed, his voice equally low. He didn’t think that whoever was over there had eavesdropping equipment, but he couldn’t be sure. They were quite possibly under observation - that was why he kept up the charade of ‘enjoying’ the view.

  ‘People sort of forget it these days, since entertainment, voice, and data communications all route through the Net, but computers - including that laptop over there - throw off radio-frequency radiation.’

  ‘My dad mentioned that,’ David said. ‘When he was a kid, the family’s flatscreen TV would sometimes pick up images from the display - the CRT - when the computer was on at the same time. Word-processing pages, or the screen of some game his brother was playing.’

  ‘Was the TV on cable or an aerial?’ Leif asked.

  ‘I never quite understood what he was talking about,’ David admitted. ‘Dad always talked about rabbit ears.’

  ‘That was a kind of antenna,’ Leif said. ‘But the dish sticking out that window there is much more sensitive. I’m sure it would have no problem picking up enough leaked radiation to duplicate whatever’s on your display.’

  David jerked as if he’d been stabbed. ‘Those miserable, scum-sucking - I think I’m going to go up there and kick some butt!’

  He stalked away from the window, but Leif quickly intercepted him.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Leif said. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to have the temper around here.’ He pointed to his red hair. ‘We don’t want to give whoever’s up there any hint that we know what’s going on … not until we can nail them.’

  Leif nodded toward David’s laptop. ‘What you’re going to do is call up an image of the Onrust - something non-sensitive - and fool around with it, tweak it, to keep our spy upstairs interested - and staying in place. Meanwhile, I’ll lead a small delegation downstairs to have a chat with the management.’

  David glared at him - he really wanted to get his hands on that snoop in the window.

  ‘Look, they’ve seen you with the laptop - and they’ve seen you working on it. If I start fooling around on it, they might get suspicious and pull the plug. Besides, I don’t know which files might tell them something dangerous, and which are just pretty pictures.’

  Grudgingly, David nodded. ‘I’ve got an earlier version in one of the directories - completely different specs from the file we turned in. I can start taking that to pieces—’

  ‘Good,’ Leif said. ‘Keep them on the edge of their seats.’ While David returned to his computer, Leif left the room.

  One bedroom still had its door open. The other was closed. Leif quietly slid the clos
ed door open and stepped into semi-darkness. Matt and Andy had simply closed the shades and flaked out, fully dressed, on their beds.

  Just looking at the sleeping boys made Leif’s eyes feel gritty. He stifled a yawn. This was what he should be doing. But no, he had to go and spot the spy in the sky. Or at least the spy in the upstairs window.

  Leif decided against waking both of his friends. Matt would look sturdy and dependable if they went to talk to the manager. Andy would probably mouth off and annoy whoever was in charge. Stepping around Andy’s bed, Leif leaned over Matt. He put his hand over the sleeping boy’s mouth and pinched his nose shut between thumb and forefinger.

  Having his air cut off quickly roused Matt to wakefial-ness. His eyes popped open, and he made some sort of sound, which was muffled by the hand at his mouth. Then he stared at Leif.

  ‘We’ve got a little trouble,’ Leif whispered in Mart’s ear. ‘Spiff yourself up. We’re going to go and see the manager.’

  He headed for the door as Matt silently got off the bed and followed him.

  In the bathroom, Leif filled Matt in on what he’d noticed while the other boy ran a cold washcloth over his face and combed his hair. The Leif made himself a little more presentable and they went downstairs to the front desk.

  The clerk was surprised when they asked to see the manager - and even more surprised when they refused to tell him what it was about. But the boys’ perseverance paid off. In the end, they wound up with an assistant manager. Her name was Ms Ramirez. She was an olive-skinned, dark-haired, businesslike young woman in a quiet suit instead of the blue blazers and gray slacks most of the hotel staff seemed to wear.

  She frowned as Leif explained what he’d seen in the window overlooking theirs - and how it could be used. ‘We don’t get much trouble on the premises,’ she said.

  Leif said nothing. Perhaps in the old days, when more people from the entertainment business stayed here, there might have been worries about corporate espionage. With tourists, the concerns were more with theft and pilfering.

  Ms Ramirez looked at Matt. ‘Did you see this antenna, or dish, or whatever it was?’

  Leif was glad he’d brought along his all-American, reliable-looking friend.

  Matt nodded. ‘I only took a quick look between the curtains - we didn’t want to warn whoever was up there. But I saw something aimed at our living room window.’

  ‘And where did you say this was?’ The assistant manager turned back to Leif.

  ‘Three floors above us - on the fifth floor,’ Leif replied. ‘Seven windows out into the west wing.’

  ‘There are five hundred rooms in this hotel, not to mention ninety suites,’ Ms Ramirez said. ‘Computer,’ she ordered the unit in her desk. ‘Floor plan for west wing, fifth floor. Highlight the room with the seventh window in the southern exposure.’

  ‘Processing,’ a smooth voice seemed to announce from thin air. ‘Location pinpointed.’

  ‘Display,’ the young woman ordered.

  A hologram swam into existence over the desk. It showed an architect’s floor plan for the west wing of the hotel. It wasn’t a case of one window per room. Some of the windows were paired, as they were in the boys’ suite. One location was highlighted with a glaring red glow.

  ‘What room is that?’ Ms Ramirez asked.

  ‘Room 568,’ the computer replied.

  ‘And who is checked in there?’ the assistance manager went on.

  ‘Processing.’ The computer took a moment to check the front desk’s registration records.

  It seemed almost hesitant as it reported. ‘Room 568 has been vacant for the past two days.’

  That got Ms Ramirez’s attention. ‘Perhaps a previous guest just left something in the window,’ she suggested. But her tone of voice insinuated that she didn’t believe her own explanation. ‘Let’s have a chat with Hotel Security and check into this.’

  In hologram crime dramas, house detectives usually were fat, badly dressed incompetents who’d been thrown out of the police force and walked around chewing half-smoked cigars.

  In traveling with his dad, however, Leif had stayed in plenty of upscale hotels - places that took and interest in protecting their wealthy and powerful guests. He’d met many hotel security officers, and the man escorting them and the assistant manager fit the type. He had neatly trimmed hair worn in the current corporate style, wore a blue blazer like everyone else working at the Casa Beverly Hills - and there wasn’t a trace of a cigar around him.

  He had a wide chest, and muscles bunched in his arms under the blazer sleeves.

  Their elevator reached the fifth floor, and the security man in the blue blazer led the way down the hall.

  Security, Leif thought, an irreverent notion tickling his brain. At least he’s not wearing a red tunic.

  He shook his head. He had Ultimate Frontier on the brain these days.

  They arrived at the door to Room 568. ‘Please stay back,’ the man warned the people accompanying him.

  He reached into his jacket. Leif saw Matt staring avidly, as if he expected the guy to pull out a gun and kick in the door.

  Poor Matt was in for a disappointment. The security man produced the house compukey and pressed it to the lock. Instantly, the door swung open.

  Room 568 was designed for a single traveler. It was much smaller than either of the bedrooms in the Net Force Explorers’ suite. Even the bed was skinnier. The door to the bathroom was open, and so was the closet.

  It took about three seconds to make sure that the place was empty.

  The assistant manager turned to the boys with a stern expression on her face. ‘If you’ve been wasting our time—’ she threatened.

  But her security officer was prowling the room, looking in the wastepaper basket, the bathroom sink, and the toilet. ‘No, someone was in here, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know, Harris?’ Ms Ramirez demanded.

  ‘This is the non-smoking wing,’ the security man replied. ‘No one is supposed to bring any smoking materials in here.’ He sniffed the air. ‘But you can tell there was some kind of smoke in here very recently.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Or at least that someone set fire to something.’

  Leif took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Somebody was smoking,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t American tobacco.’ The smell was rougher than the usual cigarette smoke, spicier -somehow more exotic. Leif had encountered it before on trips with his father. ‘That’s Turkish tobacco.’

  A smile tugged at his lips when he saw the looks he was getting from the other people in the room. ‘Believe me, I’m no Sherlock Holmes. I don’t have a database of hundreds of kinds of cigarette ash. But I have traveled with my dad through the parts of Europe and the Middle East where they smoke this stuff. Over here, you usually find the stuff in pipe tobacco mixtures.’

  The harsh scent in the air didn’t seem to remind Leif of pipe smoke, however. It brought to mind the image of office lobbies in certain European cities - places where public smoking was still tolerated. A memory suddenly clicked in Leif’s mind. They’d been in Hungary - an office building in Budapest. His dad had had business to transact there.

  They’d passed a janitor who was smoking a villainous-looking cheap cigarette. Leif had coughed his head off, almost choked from the fumes. Mr Anderson had simply shaken his head. ‘Ten-percent Turkish, ninety-percent rags.’

  A cheap cigarette with some Turkish tobacco and lots of additives - the kind sold in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, where you found Hungary …

  And the Carpathian Alliance.

  Ms Ramirez wasn’t wondering about Turkish tobacco. The assistant manager was more worried about what an intruder meant to the reputation of her hotel.

  ‘Harris, are you telling me that someone broke in here—’ she began.

  The security officer shook his head, almost a sad gesture. ‘I don’t think that’s the way it worked out, Ms Ramirez. Whoever was in here, they probably got in with a house compukey. Looks like we’ll have to quest
ion the day people. Cleaning workers, the bell staff…’

  When they knew to start looking, they didn’t have to search very far. Security people and the managers began questioning the staff members. One of the bellmen started looking shifty as soon as he heard the words ‘Room 568’.

  ‘Oswald!’ Ms Ramirez frowned furiously. ‘Did you let an unauthorized person into one of our rooms?’

  The bellman wasn’t all that much older than Leif or Matt. His face was now beaded with sweat. ‘I - uh—’ he stammered.

  Harris, the security man, sighed. ‘What story did he hand you?’ he asked.

  Oswald looked at his shoes. ‘He said he was a detective. Wanted a room there so he could take some pictures and get the goods on somebody.’

  ‘Did you get a name? What did he look like?’ Harris kept trying. It might be closing the barn door after the horse was gone^ but the security operative wanted to make sure that the spy wouldn’t get back into the hotel again.

  But the young bellman could only shrug his shoulders. ‘I barely looked at his face,’ he said, ‘only at the bills he was holding out. Cash money.’

  Sure, Leif thought. Working in a fading tourist hotel wouldn’t bring a lot of cash his way. Nowadays, guests even put tips for the staff on their credit cards,

  ‘Come on, Oswald,’ Harris pressed. ‘You had to notice something’

  Oswald shook his head, then stopped. ‘The guy talked … funny. Like a foreigner. That’s all I noticed. That’s all I can say.’

  So, Leif thought, I was right! Somebody really is spying on us!

  Chapter Seven

  Leif felt tired and grouchy as the boys sat down to dinner. He’d tried out his bed after his little stint of playing detective, but even though he’d closed his eyes, he hadn’t been able to sleep. Too many questions kept bouncing around in his skull.

  Who had been spying on them? Cetnik? Somebody else? Whoever it was, they must have penetrated the hotel’s computer system. Leif was sure he and his fellow Net Force Explorers hadn’t tipped off the electronic eavesdropper. Yet the spy had known in advance that they were on their way - and had gotten out of Room 568.