by Tom Clancy
At that moment his wallet decided to attack him from his back pocket.
Matt blinked, trying to push his tired mind to make sense of what was going on. Oh — the vibration was his wallet-phone….
He dug the wallet out, switched to the foilpack keypad, and switched it to phone format.
“Hello?” His voice was more like a groan.
“Matt?” Even considering the wallet-phone’s inherent shortcomings, the voice on this connection was incredibly tinny. It took Matt a moment to figure out who was calling.
Finally, “Squirt?” Matt squinted over for a look at his clock and flinched in horror. “Do you know what time it is? What are you doing up?”
“I — um — I was hacking,” Mark Gridley confessed.
Well, I know how that feels, Matt thought.
Mark rushed on. “Sorry. I know this must sound kind of scraggy. I’m still on the Net. Figured this would be quieter than disconnecting and calling from a phone.”
Matt could understand that. The vidphones didn’t exactly ring selectively. And a parent awakened before daybreak was not a happy parent. His own folks wouldn’t be pleased to discover that he’d spent the entire night out on the Net. The Squirt would probably get it worse than Matt would. He was four years younger…and his father was the head of Net Force.
Mark was still babbling. “I knew that calling your house would probably wake everybody up. So I tried your wallet-phone, one of those hope-and-a-prayer things. I’m kind of surprised I got you.”
In a reasonable universe I’d have been asleep in my pajamas, and the phone would have been gently vibrating on the top of my dresser, Matt thought.
Aloud, he said, “But you did get me. What was so important that you’d take a shot at waking me up before sunrise?”
“I couldn’t copy the files I hacked into, and I want to share this while the memory is still fresh. It’s about Captain Winters. I got the feeling that the I.A. report was holding stuff back. So I used some of Dad’s codes and went into the Net Force computers…hello?”
Matt finally remembered to breathe out all the air he’d just sucked in. “You did what?” he asked in a strangled voice. And here I was sweating over a bit of stupid, low-level hacking, he thought.
“The stuff I got — it’s not the I.A. report, but records from before — the time of the first bombing.” Mark sucked in a breath of his own. “The time when the captain’s wife was killed.”
The more Mark talked, the wider Matt’s eyes became. He stirred himself around, cued up his own computer, and began recording the story the Squirt was telling. He had a lot to learn from the kid….
Megan was frankly annoyed to be attending another meeting of the D.C. crew. Not only was she wasting time watching everybody discuss what they should do, but they were wasting time she could have spent sharing information with Leif Anderson. They’d sealed their alliance last night by agreeing to a Net date this evening to go over all the information they’d dug up.
“I’m sorry to drag everybody in again,” Matt greeted them.
“You sound like Agent Dork,” Megan grumbled.
“The Sq — that is, Mark — came up with something last night,” Matt went on. “I’ll turn the floor over to him.”
“If we had a floor,” Andy Moore joked from where he floated in the void.
Mark Gridley was usually talkative, even cocky. But this evening he was strangely subdued. “I thought there were pieces of the Internal Affairs report that we weren’t seeing, so I went in—”
“Where?” David asked.
“Where do you think?” Megan shot back.
David shut up, but there was a worried look on his face.
“There was nothing useful in the report, but there were other records that they were using to collate their findings with — stuff dating back to when Mrs. Winters was killed in the bomb blast.” Mark took a deep breath. “Sealed court transcripts, internal memos, and the results of a Net Force disciplinary hearing.”
“Who got disciplined?” Megan asked. She felt a sudden chill. “The captain didn’t do something crazy back then, did he?”
“Captain Winters and his partner, ‘Iron’ Mike Steele, were investigating a mob-owned company that supposedly offered computer assistance to small businesses. What it actually did was drain them dry. If the owners realized this and tried to break the contract…well, this was Alcista’s baby. They wound up with broken legs. Or worse.” Mark looked sick. “It seems Alcista liked to get out in the field and show his leg-breakers how it was done. Winters and Steele were gathering evidence to show that besides running a criminal organization, Alcista had personally put several victims in the hospital.
“Somehow, Alcista found out and decided to stop the investigation by taking out both Net Force operatives. Bombs were placed in both Winters’s and Steele’s cars.”
He shook his head. “Apparently, Mrs. Winters had an early doctor’s appointment, and her car wouldn’t start. She got behind the wheel of the captain’s car, and…we know what happened then. There was time to warn Steele, so he never got in his car that day. Lucky thing, considering the bomb Net Force found. The problem was, no matter how hard they pressed, Net Force couldn’t manage to link the bombing plot to Stefano Alcista.”
“We know all that,” Megan said impatiently. “That’s why Alcista only took the rap for fraud and extortion.”
But Mark was shaking his head. “That wasn’t the story the court papers showed. Alcista was going to be arraigned on murder charges.”
“How?” P. J. Farris demanded.
“When Net Force couldn’t pin the bombings on Alcista, Iron Mike came up with evidence that showed certain records had been deleted from Alcista’s computer, but not completely destroyed. When Net Force techs brought them back, they definitely incriminated Alcista.”
Megan frowned. “Then how—”
“It wasn’t real,” Mark Gridley said. “Steele got the nickname ‘Iron Mike’ not because he was so strong, but because people joked he was part machine. He was a specialist agent who could just about make computers sit up and bark on command.”
He shook his head. “I was impressed at how he managed to plant the evidence. A seemingly innocent phone call inserted a very nasty program that called several incriminating numbers, then erased the records. Get it?”
Megan nodded. “But the traces would be left if anybody looked for them. And it would seem as if Alcista had tried to erase the evidence that would prove him guilty.”
“Federal prosecutors were getting ready to try and put Alcista away for life….” Mark hesitated. “Until Captain Winters found out that the evidence was false. He took the story straight to my father.”
The nightscape they were floating in was quiet as the Net Force Explorers took that in.
“But — but—” Daniel Sanchez was so upset, his protest came out as a sputter. “Alcista was guilty. By blowing the whistle on the falsified evidence. Winters was letting his wife’s killer walk.”
Mark nodded. “That’s exactly what happened. Not only did the murder case crash and burn, it gave Alcista’s lawyers the leverage to set up a pretty lenient deal for the charges that could stick.”
“Which explains the closed court records,” Leif said quietly. “No one would want the reason for the change in sentencing getting into the public record.”
“So, instead of life, a killer gets a couple of years in a country-club prison,” Megan said bitterly. “Talk about a slap on the wrist—”
“What happened to Steele?” Andy wanted to know.
“That was the disciplinary hearing,” Mark said. “Pretty open-and-shut. Steele twisted the prime purpose of his job — the very reason Net Force was created. He was cashiered but disappeared before charges could be brought against him. Apparently, he was a boat nut. He took his cabin cruiser and headed south.”
The Squirt shrugged. “About a month later the boat blew up in the Caribbean, with Steele aboard. There were some intern
al Net Force memos about whether it was accidental or deliberate.” He shook his head. “Apparently, he’d told a lot of people that he preferred a Viking funeral, sailing into the sunset aboard a burning boat.”
“Sounds like he got his wish,” Andy said. “Even if he had to arrange it himself.”
“Forget about all that stuff,” Matt said excitedly. “Don’t you see? This whole earlier episode proves that Captain Winters is innocent! He had a chance to screw over Alcista and not even get his hands dirty. Why would he plant a bomb after the guy got out of jail?”
“Take it from Steadman’s point of view,” Leif said harshly. “Winters does this tremendously noble thing, and his worst enemy gets sentenced as if he’d spat in the street instead of killing somebody. A couple of years go by, with Winters stewing over the unfairness of it all. Then Alcista gets out — and Winters sets out to get justice, no matter how belatedly.”
Megan fought a chill as she stared at her supposed ally.
Leif shrugged. “Twist hard enough, and you can make any set of facts fit the pattern you’ve already decided on. We see the captain’s actions as proving his innocence. Steadman saw it as showing his guilt.”
“Won’t a jury get to decide all that?” Matt insisted. “The stuff Mark found shows Winters in an entirely different light from the picture the media is pounding into everyone’s heads.”
“Do you honestly want things to go that far? I don’t. So what do you want to do with what we know?” Leif snapped. “Spread it around to every competitor HoloNews has? It would just be dismissed as wild rumor. We don’t have any documentation we can show anybody.”
Miserably Mark nodded. “I wasn’t able to download anything without setting off alarms from here to Canada. Just getting in was hard enough.”
Leif went on a little more quietly. “Besides, this isn’t news to the one person who really counts. Captain Winters lived through it all. His lawyer could subpoena all the records Mark found, and maybe even petition the court to unseal the records on Alcista’s sentencing deal.”
He hesitated for a second. “If he wanted to.”
“If?” Megan echoed. “IF? Don’t you mean when? What are you talking about, Anderson? This is the captain’s ‘get out of jail free’ ticket.”
She stared uncomprehending at Matt’s suddenly stricken expression. Out of all the kids in the room, Matt was probably the most like James Winters. So why wasn’t he happy? What was wrong with this information that would exonerate the captain?
“If he uses it,” Matt said in a hollow voice. “Here’s a guy who basically let his wife’s killer go rather than ruin Net Force’s reputation for integrity. Do you think he’s going to smear the agency now just to get himself off the hook?”
12
After the Squirt’s bombshell of an announcement — and the realization that it still didn’t help their case — most of the Net Force Explorers began synching out. Some stayed to discuss the news a little, but it was clear their hearts weren’t in it.
Leif Anderson wasn’t one of those. Something that had been said during this get-together was teasing his brain. He felt as though he were on the edge of an idea…just what kind of idea, however, he couldn’t say.
A thought sent him floating through Matt Hunter’s starry sky to where Megan O’Malley hung like a very pretty balloon.
“Well, this went much shorter than I expected,” he said quietly.
She nodded, her expression not a very happy one. Then her eyes went sharp. “You’ve got that I’m hatching something’ look,” she told him.
“I’m not sure what it is,” he admitted. “But I could use your help finding out. You still want to meet?”
She nodded.
“Chez vous or chez moi?”
“Your place, I think,” she replied.
Then it was Leif’s turn to nod. Megan’s workspace was impressive, a virtual amphitheater on one of the moons of Jupiter.
But its vastness wasn’t the greatest place to share confidences.
Leif stretched out a hand, and Megan took it. In the blink of an eye they were in the living room of the Icelandic stave house he’d carved out of cyberspace. Leif dropped onto the sofa, surprisingly comfortable in spite of its angular, modernistic look. Megan joined him.
“Oh!” she said, glancing out the big window. “You run a night and day cycle in here.” She turned from the view to him. “But it’s not a full moon — is it?”
He shrugged. “I like a full moon.”
“Good for romance,” she said cynically.
“Maybe later. We were going to share information, remember?”
Megan gave him a half-smile. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”
He pushed back a wave of annoyance. Megan was acting as if this were some kind of date, playing boy-girl games. Or maybe it was just that he realized he didn’t have much to bargain with.
“You’ve already got most of what I dug up,” he admitted. “Except for the source.”
Megan looked skeptical. “Who is she, and why should I be interested?”
“Her name is Bodie — short for Boadicea — Fuhrman,” Leif said in a resigned tone of voice. “She used to be an intern at HoloNews, working for Tori Rush. I happened to meet her the evening after she quit.”
“And the morning after that, as I recall, you looked like you’d been run over by a truck,” Megan said. “What is she, a female wrestler?”
Leif shook his head. “Just somebody who was determined to party hearty.” He thought for a moment. “Everybody got so interested in what Tori Rush was doing — hiring detec tives to dig up her stories — that they ignored why she was doing it.”
“It’s an old story,” Megan said. “She wants a promotion.”
“She wants her own show,” Leif corrected. “Even has the name picked out—The Rush Hour.”
Megan wrinkled her nose. “Cute, but a bit much,” she said. “I guess Ms. Rush isn’t in the running for the World’s Smallest Ego award.”
“Most people in show business aren’t,” Leif agreed. “And these days that includes network news as well. At least the on-air personalities.”
“And your new friend Bodie — was she a budding personality as well?”
“More of a frustrated idealist,” Leif suggested. “She’s hoping for a job on The Fifth Estate when she gets out of school.”
“So, you were already discussing her hopes and dreams,” Megan said.
Leif could feel his face growing warm. Megan was not making this easy. “I thought you might like to tackle Ms. Fuhrman this time around.”
“Tired of her already?”
“I thought she might react differently to you than to me,” Leif said.
“No doubt,” Megan replied dryly.
“You can use the same approach as you did with Wellman at The Fifth Estate,” Leif pushed grimly onward. “The loyal Net Force Explorer trying to help the captain.”
“And why did I pick the bodacious Bodie?”
“You’re tracking down a list of people who left HoloNews,” Leif suggested. “Specifically, people connected with Once Around the Clock.”
“That might work,” Megan admitted. “It’s certainly worth a try.” She gave Leif a look. “And that’s all you were holding out?”
“A little later in the evening Bodie mentioned Tori Rush’s contact at I-on Investigations. Someone named Kovacs.”
Suddenly Megan was leaning forward on the couch, her eyes excited. “Marcus Kovacs? He’s the big cheese in the company — supposedly a financial guy rather than an investigator.” She frowned. “So why is Tori Rush talking with him instead of the guy digging up the dirt?”
“Customer relations,” Leif suggested. “Maybe he wants to make sure his famous client is happy. Or maybe he wants to keep an eye on someone who could land him in a nasty lawsuit.”
“I don’t think he’d inspire confidence,” Megan said critically. “He doesn’t even look like a detective.”
“And how many detectives have you seen — outside of holo-mysteries?” Leif wanted to know. Then he leaned toward Megan, his glance sharpening. “Wait a minute! You’ve actually seen this Kovacs guy?”
Megan nodded. “When I was talking to Wellman, he was going over flatcopies of images to use in his story about Tori and I-on.” She grinned. “I just happened to capture them onto my system.”
For a second she just sat there on the couch, silently communing with her implant circuitry. When she turned to Leif again, she had a sheaf of papers in her hands.
“Here’s the elusive Mr. Kovacs, in three pictures — two and a half,” she amended, shuffling through the images, “unless you count the palm of his hand. Apparently, he’s very camera-shy.”
Leif took the pages and stared at the pictures. “Looks prosperous,” he muttered, taking in the cut of the man’s expensive suit jacket. An eagle-beak of a nose dominated his face, looking like an aiming device for deep brown eyes that almost looked black. As for the rest of the face…“I guess we should also mention hairy,” he said.
“Very hairy,” Megan agreed, tapping a finger on the graying jet-black mane. “When was the last time business-people wore their hair this long?”
“There was that whole revival of the ponytail thing when we were kids.” Leif frowned, moving on to the next picture. “But that was for supposedly creative types — fashion designers, heads of Hollywood studios, public-relations geniuses.”
“Lawyers, too, I thought,” Megan put in.
“In holos, maybe,” Leif said in disgusted tones. “I remember my father saying he’d never do business with what he called ‘the ponytail boys.’ He told me, ‘Never trust anyone who’s a slave to fashion — it means they can’t think for themselves.’”
“Well then, maybe Mr. Kovacs is an original.” Megan grinned. “Nobody is going around with a big mane of hair right now — unless it’s a European thing.”
“Not that I know of.” Leif looked at the second image, where Kovacs had absently brushed back his hair. Then came the third, with the palm of Kovacs’s hand filling most of the image space.