"Will you be needing anything then, sir?"
"Yes, actually, thank you. Would you bring a bowl of onion soup to my office?"
"Certainly, sir," the man said, and headed off towards the kitchen.
A few minutes later, Jeremy was picking through the cheese on the top of his French onion soup and using his implant to search for news of the death of Dr. Jenkins. He knew that as he relaxed in his office, at least four net spies were roaming the building.
Chapter 18
Jeremy awoke from sleep on the couch in his office to the sound of light tapping on the door. He put on a pair of pants and checked his implant. It was 1:10 a.m. Who could that be? he wondered.
"Open," he said. The door mechanism hissed as the pneumatic pistons filled with air. His room was dark, and he expected the bright light of the hallway to pour in and blind his eyes. Instead, he saw the silhouette of a medium-sized man framed in dim light from the hall. He didn't wait to be invited, but came in quickly, pressing the manual close switch.
"Dr. Jenkins is alive, it seems," Peter's voice said.
"Lights," Jeremy said, sitting up and reaching for his shirt. The automated lights instantly came up to their day-time brightness.
"Yes. I aborted the mission in time. I was concerned that I might have waited too long."
"So you knew it was Dr. Jenkins?" he asked. "You weren't supposed to know that."
Jeremy explained what had happened, and how the reflection in the truck window just happened to give him a view of Dr. Jenkins' apartment. Peter shook his head.
"You can't plan everything. No matter how hard you try, something like that can always ruin an operation. We didn't want you to know that it was Dr. Jenkins because we knew you might have met him at Dr. Berry's office. I suppose you're having second thoughts about the agency right now." His voice was unemotional and unapologetic.
"Yes," Jeremy said. He let it hang in the air for a few moments, then continued. "Why did you approve a sanction against him?"
Peter shook his head, sadly, and now with a hint of apology. "I've given Lenzke far too much slack with the net spy project. He had intelligence reports that said Jenkins was about to blow our entire hole operation. Secretly, I wished he did, and had. But I have a commission from the president of the United States, Jeremy, and that commission is to be performed, even at the cost of human life. If Dr. Jenkins gets in the way, I'm authorized to take him out of the way. That's rough, I know," he said, looking him in the eye, "but that's life."
Jeremy had never seen Peter so morose, or so personal. He almost seemed human. He sat down next to Jeremy on the couch.
"But we've got a bigger problem on our hands," he said, assuming a more business-like demeanor. "Lenzke hasn't filed anything about his meetings with Dr. Berry. That's a serious breach of procedure. That he would do such a thing implies things I'd rather not consider."
Jeremy was still shaking off the effects of his sleep. He was new to this spy game, and he couldn't decide what Peter was talking about. What did it imply?
"I don't follow you," he said.
Peter shook his head. "For Lenzke to be seeing one of our field contacts like this implies one of two things. Either he has a callous disregard for procedures, or he is involved in something that goes above -- or through -- me. Unfortunately, Lenzke is a stickler for procedures."
"So you think he's threatening you?"
"That's a possibility I have to consider, but I can't wait around to find out," Peter said, suddenly standing, with a look of cold determination and hidden energy. "We need to talk to Dr. Jenkins -- you and I. I've arranged things. We're leaving in 10 minutes. Get yourself ready."
* * *
Duncan's office didn't have any of the standard group-display equipment MacKenzie had access to at school. Her computer science professors always insisted that part of writing a brilliant program was making a brilliant presentation to a group -- otherwise you'd never get the project out of development and into commercial practice -- so they required all the students to make monthly presentations on their work to a mixed crowd of students and professors. MacKenzie hated those presentations. She wasn't much of a public speaker, and frequently asked Hanna to come along and give her pointers. But she was glad of the experience now.
MacKenzie had made a major breakthrough on tracking the intruders, and Duncan wanted her to explain it to the entire staff of his organization. She and Hanna woke up before dawn, and they spent hours trying to rig a projector that would be something like the one MacKenzie used at school. A normal broadcast, using the implants, was out of the question, and MacKenzie didn't like the interface with the holoprojectors.
As they worked, Hanna interjected several pointers on making the presentation and was pleasantly surprised at how willingly MacKenzie took them to heart.
While MacKenzie put the finishing touches on the make-shift projector, Hanna gathered bed sheets to make a suitable projection screen. It was crude, low-tech, and looked remarkably out of place next to the sophisticated computers against the east wall of the warehouse, but it would do.
Gathering a crowd for the presentation was the easiest part. The "in-house" staff -- those who lived on the premises -- were naturally curious and somewhat amused by the display of low-tech theatrics, and it was difficult to keep them away. As the rest of the morning shift arrived by hovercar, they gladly joined in the carnival atmosphere. Someone happened to bring in several dozen donuts, and the morning's work was largely shot. Duncan disapproved of the waste of time, but he decided to make the best of it and joined the rest of his staff.
MacKenzie stepped in front of the "projection screen," donut in hand, and waited for everyone to calm down.
"Sorry about the low-budget props," she said, gesturing towards the bed sheets, "and I assure you that Hanna will re-make all the beds she raided." There were a few chuckles, and Hanna smiled. MacKenzie rarely came out of her shell in a group.
"Okay, to business. Most of you have been working on how to block the intruders from using the hole for their dirty deeds," she began. "I've seen most of that work, and I think we're close to a solution. Since you all seem to have that part of the problem well in hand, I've been working with Duncan on a different issue, namely, why can our intruders see their intruders sometimes and not others? Here's what I've figured out.
"The fact that we can see them at all implies certain things. Most importantly, it implies that their virtual location is available on the net, somewhere. You all know that -- I've seen it in your work. But how do we access that information? That's been the problem, because, as you all know, the VR program doesn't do all the work itself -- it interfaces with the VR goggles to determine virtual location, and we don't know how their goggles work. We only know two things for sure: they don't work the way ours do, and they don't work the way the ones on the open market do. If they did, we could locate their intruders easily.
"Several of you have gone through every line of the VR program code, trying to figure out how it knows where the enemy intruders are. I began to wonder if a solution could be found by looking at the implant locator," she said. The 'locator' was the term for the implant utility that allows a hole user to determine his precise location anywhere on the planet. "But let me ask you a question. How many of you use your locator?" No one raised a hand. "Why not?"
One of the technicians spoke up. "Because when you use your locator you're basically broadcasting your location to all the hackers out there," he said. "There's a black-market utility that lets you get a fix on anyone who uses the locator. I don't want people to know where I am."
"Right," MacKenzie said, "and it just so happens that I stumbled across a copy of that utility. But don't tell anyone," she said with a conspiratorial smile. "I took the thing apart line by line, looking for clues on how the VR program knows where the other intruders are. I didn't find anything, but I found a few subroutines that looked suspicious, and I began to tinker with them. I tried redefining variables, adding a line
or two here and there, but nothing worked until I fed that black-market utility into our VR program." She heard a sharp intake of breath from someone in the crowd and quickly added, "A copy, of course. I didn't chance corrupting the working code.
"This is what I found," she said, and Hanna tossed another switch on the projector. The map of the United States suddenly showed about 20 pin-point lights. There were about seven of them in the Washington area, three in New York City, four in California, two in Denver and the rest scattered along the east coast.
"I'm not sure, but I think this means that we can see the other intruders when someone is running this nasty illegal program," she said. "But the bigger issue is that we can track them now. Each of these points of light represents an intruder. Duncan and I suited up and did a spot check last night."
There was an awed silence for a few minutes as every eye gazed at the map. This was a major breakthrough, and they all knew it.
"What are those lights over there?" Duncan asked. He was pointing to a section of wall to the left of the bed-sheet screen that had a cluster of several points of light. Hanna turned the projector to the right so the lights would fall on the screen. She got to Hawaii, but that wasn't far enough. She adjusted a few settings on the projector and went further east. In a moment she was displaying 16 points of light scattered around China.
"What cities are they?" Hanna asked.
"They're not cities," Duncan said. "They're military bases."
* * *
Jeremy had become accustomed to riding in darkened hovercars, not knowing where he was going or when he was going to get there. But riding with Peter was difficult. He managed to make Jeremy feel uncomfortable, despite his uncharacteristic friendliness and his obvious concern about Lenzke. Jeremy tried to sit quietly and review the briefing Peter had provided an hour before.
Lenzke had always been worried about funding for the agency, he had said. He wanted to develop an independent source of income so the agency's work wouldn't be threatened by changes in funding. Peter had refused his recommendations again and again. "We serve the government. If they cut our funding, we have no mission and we get other jobs." Lenzke always protested that the work of the agency was too important to be subject to the whim of politicians.
Peter was concerned that Lenzke was trying to pull something off behind his back to "fix" this funding problem, but Jeremy suspected there was a lot more to it than that. He recalled his talk with Henry about tensions in the office. Henry didn't act as if this was just an argument over money, or a political thing. That wouldn't justify his description of Dr. Berry. Jeremy remembered the language from the Apocalypse: "The great whore with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication." "Kings of the earth" had an ominous sound to it. No, this was no intramural dispute about whose plan the agency was going to follow. This was much bigger.
The hovercar came to a stop. Peter gave Jeremy a serious nod before the doors opened. They stepped out of the car and into the night. Jeremy immediately recognized the place. They were walking up the steps to Dr. Jenkins' apartment.
"You must be Peter. Come in," Dr. Jenkins' cheerful, but somewhat sleep-deprived voice said after he opened the door. "Jeremy!" he continued, recognizing him. "Where have you been? And how are you feeling? Have you seen Dr. Berry recently?"
"No, I haven't, and in case you were thinking about it, please don't let her know that I'm here," Jeremy said quickly. "I don't know what she's told you, but I'm just fine, okay? I hope it'll all be clear to you before the night's over."
Dr. Jenkins gave him a concerned look, but he nodded and smiled. This made Jeremy feel even more guilty about his near-involvement in the man's murder. I've got to see this crisis through, he thought, but no matter how it turns out, I'm quitting the agency. This work stinks.
Dr. Jenkins ushered them into the living room and closed the door. He made apologies for the mess and cleared off a place for them to sit on the couch. Medical books, journals and other assorted papers had been stacked on every available surface. He picked up a heap of papers from the couch and wandered around for a minute looking for a place to put them. The entire room, except the floor, was terribly cluttered, but not dirty. Dr. Jenkins seemed to have an aversion to putting anything on the floor, for, after finding nowhere to deposit his arm full of papers, he went into a back room.
Jeremy glanced around and thought for a moment about his wife. She had been a miserable house-cleaner, but, fortunately for Jeremy, they never owned enough for their house to get quite this disorganized. But then he noticed that something was different about the mess in Dr. Jenkins' house. Amy, his wife, always left cups and dishes around the room. Sometimes even clothes. It had always bugged Jeremy. There was nothing like that here. It was disorganized, but it was clean.
Dr. Jenkins returned with a carafe of coffee and three cups, which he set on top of a few large books on the coffee table. Jeremy realized how odd it was that Dr. Jenkins had any books or papers at all. Dr. Jenkins noticed his confusion.
"You wouldn't believe how much implant work a doctor has to do in the course of a day," he said. "You're always checking patients' records, looking up the literature on something, or checking the specs on a new drug. Back when I was on staff at St. Michael's, I just couldn't bear to look at my implant for another second after I got off work, so I developed the habit of reading real books." He thumped his hand on a few. "But you didn't come here for chit-chat and coffee," he said, looking at Peter. "What can I do for you?"
"Have you ever seen this man?" he asked, and handed him a pocket-sized work pad with a picture of Lenzke.
"Yes, I've seen him. I hope he's not your sister's husband."
"No. Let me remind you, this is official government business," Peter said, handing Dr. Jenkins a holographic identification card. "Do you know his name, and where have you seen him?"
"I suppose you know already," Dr. Jenkins said, losing even more of his good natured smile. "His name is Carl Lenzke, and he's been seeing my associate, Dr. Berry."
"Seeing her? Are they romantically involved, or are they business associates?" Peter asked.
Dr. Jenkins snorted a laugh. "You don't know Dr. Berry. I guess I'd have to say both."
"I want to remind you, as we discussed earlier, this conversation never happened," Peter said. Dr. Jenkins nodded. "Very well," he continued. "We have reason to suspect that Dr. Berry and Mr. Lenzke are involved in illegal hole traffic. Have you seen anything that would make you suspect that something like that was going on?"
Dr. Jenkins' face suddenly turned pale. He looked away, stared blankly at a wall to gather his thoughts, then turned back, his face composed.
"I was hoping I was wrong," he said. "I hoped I was misreading things, but yes," he looked up, "I've seen a few things that I've wondered about." Peter's look said, "such as?" so Dr. Jenkins continued.
"Dr. Berry and I do a lot of research on the implants, so we have some pretty impressive computers in the office. One day I was working late, and I don't think Dr. Berry knew I was there. I heard Carl's voice -- Mr. Lenzke, that is -- and I noticed they were both at one of the workstations. I overheard something they said. Something about 'our man in Taipei,' and something else -- I can't think of the words right now, but somehow it made me suspicious. Something came up, and they went into Dr. Berry's office. I slipped in and peeked at the workstation.
"What I saw on the screen looked like an automated search, at first -- just like the ones Dr. Berry and I do sometimes. But then I noticed the background. I could see the back of a hovercar seat behind the workstation desktop, and then I realized what I was seeing. The workstation was displaying the image of what someone with an implant would see through their left eye if they were working on a project, sitting in a hovercar. I was impressed with the graphics, but I thought it was just a computer model to simulate what a person might see. I didn't even suspect that anyone was actually seeing it until about a week later.
"I was in early that day, and Dr.
Berry and Mr. Lenzke were at the same workstation. I overheard her say, 'And this is what he's seeing right now?'
"I'll tell you, it put me in a cold sweat. I've been trying to convince myself since then that it didn't mean anything, but now here you come asking me about it."
So is that how she knew what was going on with me? Jeremy thought. Was Lenzke feeding her information from the net spies that followed me in the park that night?
"Dr. Jenkins," Jeremy said, "do you remember the night Dr. Berry ordered me committed to the hospital?"
"Yes," he said.
"Was she with Lenzke that night?"
"I'm sorry, I can't be sure. I left the office early that day and didn't hear about the order until the next morning."
Jeremy shook his head. How am I ever supposed to sort all this out?
"So you think Dr. Berry and Mr. Lenzke are spying on what people can see with their implants?" Dr. Jenkins asked Peter.
"It's far worse than that," Peter said, "but I'm afraid I'm going to have to contradict what Mr. Mitchell said earlier. We can't explain it all to you right now. I hope we can later." Jeremy knew that was a lie. "But did either of them say anything else that might indicate what they're up to? Anything at all?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact," Jenkins said. "Just yesterday I heard them say something about 'making their move.' I have no idea what that meant, but that's what they said."
"Okay. Can you think of anything else?" Peter persisted. "Any detail, even if it seems trivial."
He thought for a minute and sipped at his coffee. "No, I'm sorry," he said, "but I can try to keep my eyes open for you, if you like."
"That's very tempting. We could use some inside information, but I can't ask you to do that," Peter said. "In fact, I'd like you to leave the country at once. Your life is in grave danger." Dr. Jenkins looked at him with a curious expression. "You may not know this," Peter continued, "but just yesterday an assassin tried to kill you. Mr. Mitchell was able to prevent him from getting to you."
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