Gameprey nfe-11

by Tom Clancy

  “Too many people were getting hurt,” Mark replied.

  “Maybe so, but that’s what they were paying to do.”

  “We’re here about Peter Griffen,” Mark said. “The word I get is that you guys used to be pretty tight.”

  Zenzo glanced at the other three people at the table. “Check you later.” He stepped forward, and in the next instant he was in the lower floor of the cyber café with Mark and Andy. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Andy stepped in behind Zenzo, flanked by Mark, who dropped the hack he had on the cyber café’s vid systems.

  “Let me take the lead,” Zenzo suggested. “I’ve got a place I want to take you.”

  A trickle of nervous fear threaded down Andy’s spine. Giving control of his movements on the Net was something he didn’t like to do even if he knew the person doing the leading.

  “Okay,” Mark said without hesitation. Not feeling good about the move at all, Andy did the same.

  Zenzo leaped up into the Net, pulling them along after him as he crashed through the telecommunications grid.

  Matt floated in his veeyar and chased paper trails. All the files Maj had archived on Peter Griffen had been reduced to a series of icons hanging in the air, grouped by personal history, publishing history, broken down into different game development corporations Peter had worked for.

  It seemed like a lot of information, but it really wasn’t. Peter Griffen’s life was strictly low profile.

  A com-link beeped for attention, strobing a pulsing blue wave against the black sky to his left. “Connect,” Matt said.

  Instantly a vidscreen formed in the center of the blue pulse and framed Catie’s face. “Having any luck?”

  “Not much,” Matt admitted. “I can give you a copy of every tax form Peter’s ever filed, every place of residence he’s had, the cars he’s owned, and so forth, but I can’t give you any personal details.”

  “What about family?”

  Matt shook his head. “Peter’s had a lot of bad luck. When he was seven, his parents were killed in a car wreck. He survived, but there was no family to take care of him. Or, if there was, they didn’t admit to it. He never got adopted and was raised by the state.”

  “Which state?”

  “California. A little town called Patterson that’s not far from Sacramento.”

  “Maybe you could use a break,” Catie suggested. “I know I could.”

  Matt nodded. He closed his eyes and logged off, opening them again in Catie’s hotel room.

  Catie sat at the hotel desk in front of the communications array Mark had cobbled together to link all the Net Force Explorer teams.

  Matt crossed the room and took an apple from the fruit bowl. He glanced over to the corner and saw Andy still logged onto the Net in the extra implant chair they’d asked the hotel to bring up. “Are Mark and Andy having any luck?”

  “Mark let me know they found someone named Zenzo.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “According to what they found out, Zenzo helped Peter develop some of the computer graphics software used to build Realm of the Bright Waters.”

  “Maybe Zenzo got to know Peter a little more than most of the people who’ve written articles about him.”

  “Have you been able to talk to any of the other gaming companies Peter has worked for?” Catie asked.

  Matt nodded. “Most of them have skeleton crews on-site because the majority of the staff is here at the convention. But it doesn’t do much good talking to them because they haven’t given me anything more than the HoloNet files. Peter was a good guy to work with, very inventive, reliable.”

  “No hidden neuroses or agendas?”

  “If there were,” Matt said, “they’re still hidden.”

  “What about the orphanage?”

  “The records are sealed, and I couldn’t get through to talk to anyone.”

  “Probably every news service around is calling them.”

  Matt nodded unhappily. He wasn’t used to coming up empty. “The only thing I did turn up was an article about Peter’s first few games. He worked with a friend of his from the orphanage. A guy named Oscar Raitt. I’ve reached his answering service, but so far he hasn’t returned my call.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Seattle,” Matt answered. “He’s working with Steph Games.”

  Catie leaned her head back into the implant chair. “Let me check the files Mark gave me.” She was back in an instant. She smiled. “Steph Games is at the convention. And you’ll never guess who one of the representatives is.”

  “Oscar Raitt,” Matt said.

  “Bingo. He’s staying at the Mohammed Arms. It’s just across the street. The Bessel made an arrangement with them to handle some of the overflow. Oscar must have gotten here late.”

  “Have you got a room number?”

  “No. But you should be able to get him through the front desk if he’s in his room.”

  Matt took out his foilpack and punched in the hotel’s lobby number. When the call was answered, he asked for Oscar Raitt’s room.

  “Hi,” a deep and pleasant voice said. “You’ve reached the voice mail of Oscar Raitt. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you. Thanks.”

  “Oscar,” Matt said, “you don’t know me, but I’m looking for Peter Griffen. My name is Matt Hunter.” He keyed the foilpack to send a copy of his Net Force Explorers ID as well. “I’m staying at the Bessel Midtown Hotel, and I’d like—”

  The transmission was interrupted by a booming voice. “Hold on, hold on! I want to talk to you!”

  Matt held the foilpack and watched the vidscreen come to life. Oscar Raitt was a big guy. He had curly blond hair, a bullet of a head, and a goatee. Acne-marked pale skin covered his oval face.

  “What do you know about Peter’s kidnapping?” Oscar asked.

  “I was hoping you could help me,” Matt said.

  Oscar considered that. “Is Net Force involved in this?”

  “I’m helping with the initial investigation.”

  Nodding, Oscar said, “Good. Because Peter disappearing like this isn’t right. I’ve heard a lot of dexters around the convention suggesting that Peter helped himself to his own kidnapping. That’s pure DFB, data flowing bad.”

  “I’ve got a friend who feels the same way.”

  “How about you?” The intensity of Oscar’s gaze was nuclear.

  Matt remembered the men with the pistols the night before, how he’d been fired on before the men knew he was only a holo. “I’m a believer.”

  “Okay.” Oscar nodded. “I’ve been trying to get people to listen to me that Peter would never do something like this. And there’s more going on than what you think.”

  “What?” Matt’s pulse quickened.

  “I don’t want to talk over a vidphone connection. How soon can you get here?”

  “Give me the room number and five minutes,” Matt said.

  Gaspar Latke sat in the cluttered office of his veeyar, his attention locked on the sixteen different screens he’d opened in front of him. Ten of them were different views of the Bessel Midtown Hotel’s banquet room, linked from the buttoncams Heavener’s team had put into the room since Peter Griffen’s kidnapping. Four more monitored the hotel’s main entrances, and two constantly cycled through the various HoloNet news feeds covering Don DeGovia’s interview after offering a million dollars for information about Peter Griffen’s abduction.

  Gaspar’s eyes swept the cameras again, watching the people in the banquet room talking. He could remember when a million dollars would have been a big deal to him, too. But since Heavener had taken over his life, he couldn’t remember how many millions and billions of dollars he’d helped the corporation steal from others.

  Sweat trickled across his face back in the physical world, and his heart rate was slightly elevated with all the stress.

  A small, rectangular window suddenly exploded into view above the sixteen monitors. It showed his heart
rate, dangerously near the automatic log-off point. But he knew that would never happen. Before she’d left, Heavener had ordered a doctor to insert a hypodermic shunt into the back of Gaspar’s right hand. Attached to that was an IV bag containing tranquilizers that would suppress his body’s reactions as needed.

  They also made it harder for Gaspar to think. He concentrated on his physical self for a moment, blurring the veeyar around the edges, and slowed his breathing, taking deep lungfuls of air.

  C’mon. Drop. Just as he was about to give up, knowing his own tension over the medication waiting to be released into his system and maybe take away his last chance at freedom, the indicator level dropped, finally coming to a rest barely within the intermediate safety zone.

  He returned his full attention to the veeyar, then swept his gaze over the banquet room again. He spotted Madeline Green talking to a young man in the middle of the crowd.

  “Identify,” Gaspar ordered, locking a capture window over the young man.

  “Derek Sommers,” the computer answered. “IPG games. Continue?”

  “No.” Gaspar couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized Derek. It only showed how rattled he was. He stood up suddenly and launched himself through the ceiling, passing through it easily and following one of the buttoncams’ telecommunications signal to the hotel through the Net zones. All the security programs and the firewalls had been punched clear by his viruses earlier.

  In seconds he was in the banquet room in holoform. Other game design publishers were there in holo as well, not truly trusting circumstances after the kidnapping. And some of them never appeared in public anyway for their own reasons.

  The holoprojectors gave Gaspar virtual substance, but even as he started to appear, he triggered a program he had prepared. Instead of looking like himself or his usual proxy, he grafted on the appearance of Matt Hunter. He knew the real Matt was working online, in one of the other girls’ rooms. Heavener hadn’t bugged the Explorers’ rooms, but she had ordered buttoncams placed in the hallways beside their rooms.

  Shaking on the inside, hoping the proxy would hold under the scrutiny of the men Heavener had at the banquet, Gaspar approached Madeline Green. “Hey, Madeline.” He tried to sound casual, even forced a smile. “Got a minute?”

  She turned to Derek and excused herself, then walked toward a small empty area beside one of the walls surrounding the table areas.

  Gaspar hadn’t realized how pretty she looked in the cocktail dress until that moment. Watching through the monitors back in his veeyar just hadn’t been the same.

  She turned on him, arms folding across her breasts and her brown eyes stern. “Maybe we need to start with you telling me who you are, because you’re sure not anyone I know.”

  17

  Gaspar froze, staring back at Madeline Green, not knowing how he’d lost control of the situation so quickly. “What?”

  “All my friends call me Maj,” she said. “Ergo, you’re not one of them. No matter how much you look like Matt Hunter.”

  Glancing at the crowd around them, wondering if anyone was paying too much attention, Gaspar pleaded, “Wait! I can explain!”

  “Ten seconds,” Maj said, “and I’m starting counting now.”

  Looking at her, Gaspar thought back to what he knew of her. “Peter Griffen’s in real trouble. I don’t think he knows how deep he’s into it.”

  “Has he been kidnapped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please lower your voice,” Gaspar said. “This room is being monitored by the people I work for.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I can’t tell you. Not now.”

  “I can scream,” Maj pointed out. “When security shuts the area down, you might escape, but there’s a good chance you’d get tagged with a trace virus.”

  Gaspar shook his head. “No. They’ve invaded the system. I can get out as easily as I got in.”

  “So you say.”

  “It’s true.” Angry and frustrated, Gaspar hardened his voice. “Do you want to help Peter Griffen or not? Because if you don’t, they’re going to kill him.”

  “How am I supposed to help him?”

  “I don’t know that yet,” Gaspar answered. “I haven’t gotten that worked out.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  Gaspar considered lying for only a moment, thinking he could improve his own worth, then didn’t because he was sure she would know that he was lying. “No. I’ll try to find out.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone who needs your help,” Gaspar replied. “I met your friend Mark earlier. I arranged for you to get the invitations tonight so I could meet you.”

  “You’re in charge of surveillance over the banquet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then shut it down and let’s talk.”

  Gaspar glanced across the room, picking out the two men he knew Heavener had assigned to cover the banquet inside the room. Neither of them paid any attention to him. “I can’t. There’s someone in charge of me.”

  “It’s going to be hard to help you if I don’t know who you are or what’s going on.”

  “I can only hope that it’s enough that you know I exist, and that you’re right in thinking that Peter Griffen didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping. They set him up, used him, and it’s only going to get worse.”

  Anxious frustration showed on Maj’s face. “Where do I start looking?”

  Gaspar shook his head. “I don’t know. This whole thing is so tangled and I’m so close to the middle of it that anything I say could get Peter and me both killed. We are acceptable losses. There’s too much at risk.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I do know these people don’t do anything without millions or billions of dollars on the line.”

  “So it is about money,” Maj said.

  Gaspar shrugged and felt bad because she sounded so disappointed, which was strange because he was the one who was risking his neck. “Most things are. But this is about a lot of money. I just don’t know how. Yet.” He wanted to say more, but he was afraid to. Anything he said that could lead them back to him was the wrong thing. They need to be led through their own resources to Peter Griffen.

  Maj looked at him, studying him. “Where do we—”

  Before she could finish her question, Gaspar spotted Heavener approaching the banquet room. The woman wore a deep jade cocktail dress but walked purposefully. Even though the dress clung to the curves, Gaspar knew she could have a dozen deadly weapons concealed on her body.

  “What’s wrong?” Maj asked.

  Heavener checked in through the banquet security easily, using the ID that Gaspar had generated for her. She paused in the doorway and glanced over the crowd. Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Only someone watching her closely would have noticed.

  “Latke.” Her voice came through the aud-connect Gaspar had set up in his veeyar.

  “Yes,” he answered, turning to Maj and closing down the aud-send loop so Heavener wouldn’t hear him. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Is it because of that woman?” Maj clutched at the sleeve of the tuxedo jacket he wore.

  Gaspar hesitated, not wanting to leave the safety Maj Green represented but knowing he should log off now.

  “Close your net over this room,” Heavener ordered. “Execute now. I’ve got someone in here with a mask program passing himself off as Matt Hunter.”

  Cold hard fear filled Gaspar, and he couldn’t help looking at Heavener across the room. How did she know?

  “Latke, close the net.”

  Automatically Gaspar closed the net, securing holo traces in a minefield over the immediate area. That had been only one of the safeguards Heavener had insisted on. Now if he tried to leave the room along the Net, he’d be tagged with a trace virus, and Heavener would know he’d made contact with Maj Green.

  And he didn’t even know where to tell Maj to find his own body.

  Heavener cir
cled the room, talking to the two men inside the room over the audlink running through Gaspar’s veeyar system.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Gaspar said to Maj, taking her by the arm and pulling her. He scanned the room. There were three other exits. He glanced over his shoulder. Heavener and the two men had spread out, going slowly and steadily through the crowd, closing in like pincers. They easily covered three of the exits. The exit on the other side of the room was his only hope.

  “What’s wrong?” Maj asked, resisting his urge to move.

  “They’re on to me.”

  “The woman?” Maj still wasn’t moving, and Heavener was getting closer.

  “Yes. But she doesn’t know it’s me. She sees your friend Matt, the same as you do.”

  Maj got into motion, following at his side. “What happens if she finds out it’s you?”

  “Then I’m dead, and your friend Peter is probably dead, too.” Gaspar struggled not to run for the exit. They were ahead, but it was going to be close.

  “Latke,” Heavener called over the audlink. “Do you see him? The guy with Madeline Green?”

  Gaspar had to restrain himself from correcting Heavener and telling her it was Maj, not Madeline. “I see him. Are you sure that isn’t Matt Hunter?”

  “Matt Hunter left the room where he was a few minutes ago,” Heavener responded. “He’s another problem I’m having to take care of at the moment.”

  “I missed that,” Gaspar said. Panic flooded his senses, and he knew his heart rate was accelerating beyond control again. He tried to control it, knowing the tranquilizers would definitely affect his ability to do everything he needed to do.

  “We’ll talk about it when I see you again,” Heavener said.

  Gaspar felt like an animal with a leg in the iron jaws of a bear trap. He hurried toward the glass doors of the exit. “I need you to open the door,” he told Maj. “It’s not programmed for holo interaction. There are holoprojectors out in the hall for the hotel guests, so I won’t be immediately tossed out of the hotel, but if I just walk through the door, Heavener’s going to know I’m a holo instead of a person in a mask program.”