by Tom Clancy
He ran over a couple of other ideas with Megan, then went for more coffee. Yes, Bodie might indeed still be useful. If he could just survive her….
Megan easily found a Net directory listing for The Fifth Estate in the D.C. area. When she called on the holophone, she found herself speaking directly to Professor Arthur Wellman himself. He looked like a Hollywood casting director’s idea of what a professor should look like. Wellman was plump, with wispy white hair surrounding a large bald patch. He had a carefully trimmed white mustache, and a thread of smoke rose from the pipe sitting off to one side on his desk.
The professor had a surprisingly young smile. “You’re surprised to speak to the head honcho rather than a receptionist?” he said lightly. “This isn’t exactly a multinational conglomerate yet. No receptionist so far. And I’m interested in seeing who seeks us out.”
“Well, I’m interested in talking to someone who wants to take on the news business,” Megan said, honestly enough. “The other magazines my Net search turned up seemed too…” she reached for a word.
“Schoolie?” Wellman suggested.
“Pretty close, although I didn’t expect a professor to say it,” she said. “I’m a Net Force Explorer, and I like to think of myself as a friend of Captain James Winters. Until recently he was pretty anonymous, just a regular guy, but you might have heard of him lately.”
Wellman looked a little less amused. His pale blue eyes grew sharper. “Like it or not, he’s become a figure in the news.”
“More like a target,” Megan said. “And the one who started everybody shooting at him is Tori Rush.”
“So you’d like to make her a target of ours?”
I guess Wellman earned his degrees, Megan thought. He’s certainly no dope.
“Just a question or two. How’d she get all that dirt on Captain Winters? It was all old history, history that made the captain into a hero, not a criminal. Nobody else came up with that stuff, certainly, until she led them there. Who has she got digging?” Megan knew she was pushing her luck but hoped the result would be worth it.
“Has someone approached you?” Wellman seemed almost eager.
Megan shook her head. “I just…hear things.”
The professor’s sharp blue eyes took her in again. “Considering the side you claim to be on, I don’t think you heard any such rumor from HoloNews. And I know you didn’t hear anything from my operation.”
He glanced away from the holo pickup for a moment. “How refreshing. You actually seem to be who you claim you are. Megan O’Malley…” Wellman reeled off her address, her age, and several other pieces of information about her.
“How did you—” Megan asked, a little surprised.
Wellman glanced back from the off-pickup display he’d obviously been reading. “The Fifth Estate is supposed to be in the journalism business,” he said. “You didn’t take any extraordinary precautions in contacting us, so it was easy enough — and entirely legal — to trace your call. No different than using Caller ID a generation ago.”
His smile was back, perhaps just a tad grim. “You introduced yourself at the beginning of this call. Perhaps you’re not aware how much seemingly private information can be accessed from public sources.”
“That’s not what happened to Captain Winters,” Megan shot back. She decided to go for broke. “I heard that Tori Rush hired private eyes to go after him, and they weren’t exactly scrupulous about how they did it.”
“And I wish I knew where you heard that rumor,” Wellman replied.
Megan grinned. “I have to protect my sources — isn’t that what all the media types say?”
“And for my part in the game I’d have to answer, ‘No comment,’” Wellman said.
“Off the record?” Megan suggested.
Slowly Wellman shook his head. “There’s no such thing in the media. And I’m sure you know that.”
Megan dropped all pretense of playing reporter. “Professor, I’m trying to help an innocent man who’s about to get his life ruined.”
“There’s a lot of evidence against him, from what I hear.”
“Maybe I’ll sound like a silly schoolgirl when I tell you this,” Megan said. “But I know Captain Winters. Until they find an unimpeachable witness who saw him blow up Stefano Alcista, I’ll never believe the charges against him. Everything they’ve got, as far as I can tell, is circumstantial. I know he didn’t do it.”
“You believe the evidence is fabricated?” Wellman asked.
“Worse. I suspect that the captain is being intentionally framed. I’m not sure why, but he’s being put in a box,” Megan responded angrily. “And Tori Rush seems to be the one hammering down the top.”
“Interesting.” Professor Wellman looked silently at Megan for a long moment.
“Let’s consider a hypothetical situation,” he said abruptly. “What has been the fastest-growing specialty in the news business in the last fifty years?”
“Overseas reporter?” Megan offered.
“Not a bad answer.” The professor nodded. “The global economy has affected the networks, and not necessarily for the better. Foreign audiences have forced broadcasters to give more world news. That’s good. But competition from abroad means more competition for national audiences here and abroad. It started more than thirty years ago, when British broadcasters started sending satellite newscasts to the U.S. Now most of Europe and quite a few Pacific Rim nations are competing for the world news market share. It’s affected the quality of the news.”
“How?” Megan asked.
“After politics, scandal is the easiest sort of news to sell — both inside this country and around the world. Think about the worldwide obsession with the scandals of the British royal family for the past fifty years. Even though they have very little relevancy to most people’s lives, we’re all interested in them. That news plays everywhere, so you can’t escape it.” Wellman gave her a lopsided smile. “Most news appeals very differently to different audiences. Local news, for example, rarely plays anywhere out of its home turf. Business news, too, has a limited international audience — investors who can afford to play in the big leagues. But some news hits just about everybody where they live — a juicy scandal is like that. It’s got all the lowest common denominators of humanity — sex, money, and murder. Which leads back to my original question: What’s the fastest-growing news specialty?”
Megan admitted defeat. “What?”
“Being an expert in front of the cameras. When there’s a war, the networks trot out ex-generals to explain the strategy. If there’s a financial crisis, economists try to put it in perspective. Lawyers become part of the coverage of big trials. When a serial killer is caught, or some terrible crime is committed, psychologists appear like magic all over the HoloNet.”
Professor Wellman shrugged. “Given this influx of specialists into the news — and we’re being strictly hypothetical here, remember — we have to ask a question. How long could it be before someone brought in investigative specialists to help — or replace — investigative reporters? Perhaps we are now looking at the results of that very process.”
7
Leif sat at the breakfast table, frowning. He’d volunteered to find out more about I-on Investigations. But his Net search had turned up very little — just a scattering of news articles about a new CEO and some expanded business.
Right, Leif thought. They went into show business.
His father poured himself a cup of coffee. “You look deep in thought today,” Magnus Anderson said.
“And I’ve got very little to show for it,” Leif replied. Then an idea hit him. “Dad, when you went out with Deborah Rockwell, did she ever talk about business?”
“Back to that, are we?” Magnus shrugged. “She tended to keep whatever she was working on under wraps. Why?”
“What do you think she’d say about a newsperson who hired private investigators to dig up information for a story she was working on and then didn’t bother
to double-check it before broadcasting news based on it?”
“I imagine Deborah would have to doubt the competence of that newsperson,” Magnus said slowly. “The networks have staff people — researchers, fact checkers, and so forth — to develop the background for the stories the reporters dig up. But, in the end, it’s up to the journalist to get it right — he or she makes the judgment calls in creating stories. Hiring outside assistance — that doesn’t strike me as good judgment for a reporter. Not double-checking such information strikes me as career suicide.”
“Well, Tori Rush is in the process of committing it, then,” Leif said. “She’s apparently working with an outfit called I-on Investigations to trash Captain Winters. I thought it might be a good idea to check those people out—”
“You, and a couple thousand of your Net Force Explorer friends, no doubt,” his father said with a laugh.
Leif nodded. “Maybe. The part that’s not funny is that my friends think I know what I’m doing. Sometimes I even do — but this time I’m in over my head, and it’s frightening. This might be important, Dad. Captain Winters’s career, maybe even his freedom, could depend on what we find out. But I don’t seem to be getting anywhere on the Net.”
“Perhaps that’s because you’re not a professional investigator,” Magnus said gently. “You have some sources that even network research types might envy. But this job seems to require a serious attack. Luckily, I think we can handle it in-house.”
Leif knew that his father didn’t mean the answer was inside their home. His dad was referring to the company he had founded — Anderson Investment, Multinational. It was a large and very profitable concern, a brokerage house that was an investor’s paradise, with investigative resources Leif could never hope to access on his own. Just as he’d planned, his dad had taken the ball and run with it.
Now, Leif thought, it’s just a matter of time until Captain Winters is cleared.
Two days later Leif visited his father’s offices, hoping that his dad had come through, and that all Captain Winters’s troubles would be over. Leif was conducted to a conference room, where Magnus Anderson met him at the door. There was an attractive woman seated at the table in the center of the room.
“Anna Westering, this is my son Leif,” Magnus said in introduction. The woman who rose from her seat at the big shiny walnut table looked rather petite beside Magnus Anderson’s Viking-chieftain physique. But Leif noticed that she had a firm grip when she shook hands with him — a very firm grip, and some odd calluses.
“Karate, Ms. Westering, or one of the more esoteric martial arts?” he asked.
“How observant you are,” she replied with a slight smile. “Karate it is.”
Leif shrugged. “Net Force Explorers are expected to learn a bit in the way of self-defense. I’ve noticed that many of the Marine instructors they bring in have similar ridges of callus on their hands.”
Anna Westering cocked her head to the side, then glanced at Magnus. “There’s more to your son than meets the eye. There’s potential there.”
See, Dad? I’ve always told you that, Leif thought but wisely didn’t say.
“Ms. Westering is the company’s new head of security,” Magnus explained.
Leif glanced at her in surprise. Old Thor Hedvig, the last head of security, recently retired, had been about as big as Leif’s father. He’d started out as a driver-bodyguard and had risen through the ranks of the company as Anderson Investments had grown.
“I asked Anna to take a look into I-on Investigations,” Magnus Anderson went on.
“Which I did,” Anna said. “Of course, we don’t use outside agencies for our investigations here at Anderson Investments. We prefer to utilize long-term hires — people who’ll know our company and our needs.” Anna Westering shrugged. “And who will be far less inclined to talk about anything we don’t want talked about. Of course, we do occasionally utilize a few contract operatives to handle out-of-the-ordinary technology, or sometimes urgent circumstances.”
Hackers and corporate spies, you mean, Leif thought. Aloud, he asked, “Do you see a problem with agencies like I-on?”
“From my point of view, yes,” Westering replied. “I don’t object to what they do, of course. I’m in much the same business myself. My problem with outfits like I-on is with security. You can’t win an agency’s unswerving loyalty, the way you can a corporate employee’s. And you can’t check an agency out exhaustively, the way you can with a single contract operative. There are too many people tied into an organization like I-on for a real background check to be effective.”
“So what is it that they do better than an investigative reporter?”
Anna Westering gave him a half-smile. “Investigative reporters are trained to investigate and to report what they discover in an interesting manner to the public. A good security person, or investigator, investigates and reports, but only to the person paying for the investigation. And the buyer doesn’t care about ratings, only about results. Journalistic researchers can investigate the public record, and, if they’re good hackers, they might know how to penetrate some more private datafiles. Private detectives — at least the better kind — are aware of more avenues to get information than a typical reporter or researcher. Of course, many of those routes are neither public nor legal, but investigators usually have connections in place to help them get what they need to get the job done.”
She spread her hands. “I’ll give you an example from a typical HoloNet mystery. How often do you see the detective hero enter the local Net node, claim to be a police officer, and find the name connected with a particular phone number? I assure you, Leif, that particular trick won’t work in real life. But there are published databases — national and international reverse directories — that list phone numbers in a searchable form with their associated information. You can use those databases to do a search based on phone number and come up with the name and address of the person who has that phone number. The typical person in the street wouldn’t know how to get that information without a bit of research. A trained investigator, whether a reporter or private eye, would not only know, he’d have such a database handy. And that’s legal investigation. I leave the picture of the illegal avenues of investigation available to various detectives to your imagination — your father assures me it’s a very active imagination. I wouldn’t want to corrupt such a promising mind.”
“So tricks like that are how Tori Rush was able to assemble so much information on the captain in such a short time,” Leif said. “It’s just basic info-crunching on an exalted scale.”
Westering nodded. “Yes. She’d probably apply the same kind of methods used by the low-end private investigative outfits that advertise their services all over the Net for searching out lost friends and loved ones. Given a few sketchy details — full name, date of birth, Social Security number — they can grind through all the public datafiles, state and federal, to find a match. But there’s far more and far better data held in private by companies and individuals. Successful investigators know how to tap into that secret sea of information, whether the database holders want them to or not.”
Leif couldn’t help himself. “And then they spy into people’s private lives.”
Westering looked at him in silence for a moment. “You’re awfully quick to judge, even while you’re demanding information from that very same sea.” Her eyes challenged him. “Is it so different from what the agents of Net Force do? Or what you do yourself when you need to know something about someone? For the record, I did the same sort of work for Interpol before I went into the private market.”
“Perhaps you can tell us what you found this time,” Magnus Anderson interjected, trying to head off any argument.
Anna Westering nodded. “The basic information is pretty run-of-the-mill. I-on Investigations started up about seven years ago. It’s what’s known in the trade as a ‘cop shop,’ founded by several retiring police detectives.” She shrugged. “Happens oft
en enough. Most states require that anyone applying for a private investigator’s license should have prior experience in the field. Police detectives are, of course, trained in basic investigative procedure…although they may not be up on the latest techniques.”
Anna’s lips twisted. “Ex-cops would also expect to get a lot of work because of their former employment. That doesn’t always happen. It didn’t for I-on. The company was frankly floundering until it was taken over by new management.”
“I knew they’d been taken over,” Leif said. “That much I found in the business datafiles.”
Magnus Anderson looked interested. “What sort of people take over a failing detective agency?”
“Foreign money, sir,” Anna said.
Leif noticed that the woman showed his father considerably more respect than he got. His dad had probably earned it the hard way — and it was certainly deserved.
“What kind?” Leif asked.
“I haven’t succeeded in pinning that down.” She frowned. It clearly bothered her that the shell game hadn’t yielded to her inquiries. “The new CEO is a Marcus Kovacs. The name is Hungarian, but his background—”
“Is lost in one of the Balkan wars, I’ll bet,” Magnus Anderson finished for her. “A lot of people have that sort of cloudy past. Some of those clouded pasts are even legitimate.”
Westering nodded again, this time more cautiously. “I-on has done considerably more business — and made more profit — since the new management came in. A lot of new blood has been hired — hackers. And they’ve gotten a certain…reputation.”
“What kind?” Leif and Magnus Anderson both asked.
Anna Westering shrugged unhappily. “My father had a phrase he used to use as a joke: ‘You lie, and I’ll swear to it.’ Some people say that I-on takes that saying seriously — and that they take it further than that. You lie, and they won’t just swear to it, they’ll even create the evidence to back up your story.”