by MF Bishop
Chapter Sixty Four
The atmosphere at Enterprise Magnetics was not happy. The arrival of Howard's reinforcements saved Gunnar and Helen from a nasty scene with the owner of the Rolls and his many friends. Leaving the Lincoln and the Geo locked in their steely embrace, they returned to the upstairs lounge, where Howard reassured Helen and sent her on her way.
"Not to worry, my dear," he purred, "they won't be back, not after the scare you and Gunnar gave them."
"What if they bring the police?" Helen was unconvinced and still angry at missing her chance for revenge on the red-haired bitch.
Howard smiled again. "Ah, Helen, I guarantee that they cannot get a search warrant from any judge in Washington. Have faith. Now, go home to your family. We will have other opportunities to deal with that pair."
But after she was gone, Howard and Gunnar looked grimly at one another.
"We have trouble, do we not." Gunnar made a statement rather than a question.
"We do." Howard said. "Yes, we do. I am afraid our little game may be coming to an end. It's time to take precautions, make arrangements."
"Do we notify Halloran and the others?" Gunnar asked.
Howard snorted. "Gunnar, Gunnar, what would be the point? It would just make them nervous. And if they get nervous they may shut the operation down. And if the operation stops, our monthly payment stops. Remember that."
"Those two snoops have found us out," Gunnar protested.
"Really, Gunnar, I didn't realize 'snoop' was in your vocabulary; it is such a vulgar word, and old fashioned, as well. Whatever we call them, 'those two' are not acting on their own. Perhaps we can discourage them and at the same time discover the real threat. Arranging the details might take some time, so we had better begin immediately." Howard picked up the phone on Michelle's desk and punched in a West Coast number.
Chapter Sixty Five
Major Robert Edward Lee Britton was locked in another dream. Or rather the dream was locked on him. He wandered through the underground computer room at OMCOM, surrounded by Omniac's electric blue cabinets. The floor opened and he fell part way through. The floor closed against him, digging into his legs. The smooth tile grew jagged teeth that bit into his flesh. He cried out in pain and fear, but Omniac only laughed an electronic, ringing laugh.
It was the phone. Bobby groaned. His knee hurt. He had been dreaming, something about his leg...the phone was ringing from across the room. Cursing, he crawled out of bed and hopped over to where he had unthinkingly left it.
"Britton?" the voice said, "It's Mary. How the hell are you?"
Bobby's heart skipped. Mary Grier, calling him. She never called him.
"Hey, Mary, finally realized you can't live without me?" Good God, even groggy with sleep and pain pills, he could make a fool of himself.
"In your dreams, Britton. I have some information for you. About the Dragon."
The Dragon. Bobby had forgotten about the Dragon, another puzzle, and one that didn't chase people down the street. He wasn't interested in the Dragon, but he was interested in Mary. "Uh, Ok," he said slowly, "what's it about?"
"Not over the phone. Where can we meet?"
Meet Mary! Bobby looked at his watch. Eleven AM. "Lets do lunch. Your people can call my people."
"Can it, Britton. If this wasn't important, I'd tell you to go fuck yourself. Now, name a place."
"Ok, make it Dickie's Downfall. In about an hour. Got that?"
Mary was briefly puzzled. "Dickie's...oh, got it. See you there."
Bobby hobbled into the shower with a song in his heart.
The shower and a shave left him feeling refreshed and at least relatively sharp. Alexa had banished the limousine, but the Geo was dead and he couldn't handle the Metro on this gimpy leg. This was an unforeseen situation. He called the White House motor pool. A long, black Cadillac arrived in a prompt fifteen minutes. As usual, a ride in a chauffeured luxury automobile lifted Bobby's spirits.
He was only slightly brought down when they got to the Watergate and he had to struggle out of the back seat. He had dressed as well as he could in a slightly worn linen suit, since all his good clothes had been destroyed. It didn't really matter, he thought ruefully, since the large brace clamped around his knee was hardly a fashion statement.
Mary was already at a table when he limped into the Red Pepper. Wearing the blouse from one uniform, the jacket from a second, and slacks from a third, she looked like she had dressed in the dark.
"Mary! Fancy meeting you here! And so beautifully turned out!" Bobby folded gratefully into a chair.
"Up yours, Britton," Mary responded amiably, "let's get this over with."
"C'mon, Mary, have a little lunch. We can talk about old times."
"Don't remind me. You're buying, right?"
He sighed. "Right. If you have something really interesting to say." They paused to order.
"What I've got is right here," Mary said once the waiter had left, pointing to a briefcase on the chair beside her.
"Aren't you going to ask me what happened to my leg?"
Mary sighed, "Ok, Britton, what happened to your leg."
"I hurt it playing tennis."
Mary laughed. "Sure," she snorted, "in center court at Wimbledon. More likely you fell off a bar stool."
"Hey, it was part of the Omniac investigation and I could have been killed."
"So what happened?" Mary asked. The food arrived.
"Lets put all that off and enjoy these few minutes we have together." Bobby dug into his salad, finishing it and a double order of enchiladas before Mary was through with her soup. He spoke in a low voice for the rest of the meal, filling her in on the adventure.
"Alexa Allbright, huh?" Mary said. "She's the tall redhead? The tough Army Captain?"
"Yeah, that's her. How do you know about her?"
"Oh, Joe Walsh told me. Have you fucked her yet?"
Bobby was so shocked he forgot to be surprised that Mary knew the programming boss at Omniac. "Mary! Always the romantic, aren't you?"
"Forget it," Mary said, "let's talk about the Dragon. And Omniac."
Bobby was surprised at that. "The Dragon and Omniac both together? How so?"
"More together than you imagined," Mary began, but Bobby stopped her.
"Let's go for a walk. The walls have ears."
"Ever the clever quip, Britton." But she gathered her briefcase while Bobby paid the bill.
"Can I lean on your shoulder?" Bobby asked, "I'm still a little weak."
"Ok, Britton, but one false move and I break your other leg."
Bobby thrilled at the touch of Mary's well padded shoulder as they walked slowly to the Kennedy Center and out onto the balcony overlooking the Potomac.
"If we sit right here I can pick up a cellular link." Mary pulled a small laptop computer from her briefcase, unfurled its antenna, and entered a series of passwords. "There's the handshake. Now I've got something to show you."
Bobby patted her knee. "I love cuddling in front of a computer screen."
"Do that again, and there'll be blood on that fancy suit. Now pay attention, I'm a busy woman." She banged on the keys and brought up the Dragon database. "We don't have all the Dragon; that's why it looked so stupid. All we have is some kind of front end - a translator. It takes in three separate signals and combines them into one. Here's an image of the waveforms."
Bobby looked at the lines curling across the screen. Three square waves came from the right and entered a box that represented the Dragon. Mary had even drawn a tiny oriental dragon on the side of the box. A single, more complex wave flowed from the left side of the box. Mary touched a key and the box expanded to show the conversion algorithm. "Very, uh, 'flash', Mary," Bobby said, "but at the moment I'm really most interested in Omniac."
"Like I said, this has one
hell of a lot to do with Omniac. Pay attention and learn." She manipulated the keyboard rollerball and in a moment the screen displayed a large-scale schematic of the Omniac design. "This is some of the on-line documentation from the Omniac design book," she said, "those weenies built a crude asymmetric multiple processor system, not very sophisticated, but very fast." Mary pointed and clicked as she spoke. More stylized diagrams of Omniac appeared, illustrating the principles of operation.
"Look at these signals." Mary froze the picture, then moved it in slow motion. Bobby watched the instruction set waveforms roll across the screen.
"Well, Christ on a crutch," he said, "bring the Dragon back."
She did, putting both Omniac and the Dragon on the screen at the same time. They watched the show in silence. The signals Omniac produced and the signals the Dragon accepted and processed were identical.
"So it comes in Omniac and goes out something else." Bobby said. He stood up and started to pace, but the pain in his knee drove him back to the bench.
"And," Mary said, "the 'something else' is passed to the rest of the Dragon, the part we don't have."
"So somewhere out there," Bobby forgot about security and began to shout. "Somewhere out there, a damn J computer is being spoon fed every signal Omniac produces."
"Pipe down, Britton, for God's sake. Yeah, and probably real time at that. The Dragon is fast. It can mince up everything Omniac turns out and still have time for a game of Go."
Chapter Sixty Six
In a suite at the Sheraton, four people gathered around a computer. Three of them looked doubtfully at the screen. The fourth indignantly defended his creation as a major contribution to the art of sleuthing.
"All the facts are visually represented," Bobby said, "so we can see all possible relationships."
"And what are those relationships?" Richard Dorrian-Smith asked.
"Well, sir, actually, we're not sure," Alexa answered, "that's why you and Mr. Jervis are here - to help us see the relationships."
"That's right," Bobby said eagerly, "it's all here, if we can just see how it ties together."
"Do you and Captain Allbright have any theories?" Frank asked.
"We'd rather show you what we have, first," Bobby answered. He turned to Dorrian-Smith. "Do you mind if I call you Richard?" He asked.
"Not at all," Richard said.
To Alexa Bobby said, "And do you mind if we call you Alexa?"
"Uh, no," she stammered, surprised.
"And, Frank," Bobby continued, "Ok with you if we all call you Frank?"
"Get on with it," Frank growled.
"Ok, now that we've gotten rid of the formal bullshit, maybe we can make some progress." Bobby turned up the brightness level on his computer screen. "Look at that."
"What is it?" Frank asked.
"It's a map of the central seaboard," Bobby said, "there's Washington, and there's Roanoke, Virginia, and there's Sperryville." Moving the cursor to the circle representing Roanoke, he clicked a button on the mouse and recognizable photographs of Helen Holtzman, Terrell Dennerman and Dugan Loughlin appeared on the screen. He clicked again and an arcing line curved from Roanoke to Washington. He clicked again and another line snaked north from Roanoke to Sperryville.
"There's Dugan Loughlin, Helen Holtzman and Terrell Dennerman," Alexa said, "all in Roanoke on June 15 for a speech by Loughlin. After the speech, Loughlin and his wife head for Disneyworld. Holtzman supposedly flies back to Washington - her plane ticket was used - and Dennerman drives alone up the Blue Ridge Parkway."
"But," Bobby said, "the cabin attendants on that flight think they remember someone else in that seat." He moved the cursor to Washington and with a click produced a cartoonish drawing of a red-haired, fat woman.
"Who is that?" Richard asked.
"The loud, red-haired fat woman that the attendants remember from that flight," Bobby said.
"Where is she now?" Frank asked.
"Hell, I don't know," Bobby said, "she took the flight and disappeared."
"So what's the point?" Frank persisted.
"Only that it looks as if this woman - whoever she is - used Holtzman's ticket," Alexa said patiently.
"Now, Bobby said, "look at this." He produced a new screen, showing the body of Terrell Dennerman falling from a cliff, the greyhound bus rolling around the edge of the screen, another cartoon drawing, this time of a boy or young man in a baseball cap, and a fingerprint superimposed on a small drawing of a car.
"Good god," Richard said, "what's all this?"
Frank Jervis snorted.
"Sperryville," Bobby said, "and the scenic overlook on the parkway above Sperryville." He went on to explain the significance of the fall and of Terrell's injuries, illustrating his lecture with gruesome pictures scanned directly from the photographs in the autopsy report.
"All right," Frank said, "I'll agree with you if I don't have to look at any more of those pictures. Dennerman didn't fall, and that isn't really a suicide note, but so what?"
Bobby highlighted the picture of the figure in the baseball cap and related the convenience store night clerk's description of the reticent young man. "That was Helen Holtzman," he concluded, "fleeing the scene after killing Terrell Dennerman."
"But what does this have to do with Omniac?" Richard asked plaintively.
"My words exactly," Frank said.
"Ah," Bobby said, "now it's back to Washington." He produced a new screen, a map of Washington and Alexandria, with points of interest marked in red. He clicked on each one in turn.
"Omniac," Alexa said, "Loughlin's office, the Holtzman residences, junior and senior, Enterprise Magnetics, the spot where John Holtzman was killed."
Bobby began to describe the relationships, starting with his tour of the Game at the Pentagon and OMCOM. "I was stumped after that," he admitted, "and I'm not sure what I would have done if Marilyn Holtzman hadn't called and gotten me going on Helen and then on Terrell Dennerman."
"You are saying," Richard said, "that this Marilyn called you out of the blue after Frank asked you for help?"
"Well, yeah," Bobby said.
"That's one hell of a coincidence," Richard said.
"Uh, not exactly," Frank muttered.
It was Bobby's turn to be surprised. "You knew about that?"
"Not exactly," Frank answered, "but she's what made me think of you in the first place. The FBI did a background as part of the security check on the major people associated with the Omniac conversion. When I read that, I saw your name as a distant relative. That's how I thought of you for this job."
"Christ on a crutch," Bobby said, "why didn't you tell me about her? What if she hadn't called?"
"I didn't think it was important," Frank said sheepishly.
"Well, Christ on a crutch," Bobby said again.
"Sure," Alexa snorted, "no one else forgets anything important, such as a notebook with interesting names in it."
"That wasn't very important," Bobby protested.
"Let's get on with it," Richard said, "this is all very interesting and complicated, but we are continuing to lose the Game."
Bobby replaced the map of Washington with a diagram of Enterprise Magnetics, showing the three microwave dishes. He added a picture of the Electric Dragon, and illustrated the actions of the Dragon in translating the signals produced by Omniac into signals that could be read by Japanese computers. "The instruction set produced by the Dragon," he said, "is a Japanese standard, used in a lot of big J, uh, Japanese computers. Once it's translated, clever programmers could decipher what Omniac is doing."
"And," Alexa said, "Loughlin's staff is somehow involved. Otherwise, why would Holtzman resort to murder? And why would she go running off to Enterprise Magnetics when she was in trouble?"
"Do you think Loughlin knows about this?" Richard asked.
"Don't know," Bobby said.<
br />
"He got John Holtzman the Omniac conversion job," Frank said, "but it's well known that he does - did - whatever Dennerman asked. You told me before," he said to Bobby, "that Dennerman was meeting with Chuck Halloran. I think that slimy shit is in this up to his neck."
"Nothing that will stand up in court," Richard said.
"No," Frank agreed, "and nothing that will turn the Game around. This is a fascinating story, and proves what we suspected all along; the Japanese have access to our plans and Game moves. But knowing that, how are you going to stop it?"
"Don't know," Bobby said, "somehow they're getting the information from Omniac."
"But that computer is physically inspected every day," Alexa said, "they open every cabinet, look at every connection, make sure everything is exactly as it should be."
Frank sighed and stood up. "Look," he said, "we appreciate what you've done so far, but time is running out. If you can't find the missing piece, none of this is worth a damn."
"Thanks for the praise," Bobby said bitterly.
Chapter Sixty Seven
Sitting with her feet on the desk, Alexa heard Bobby's excited yells from down the hall. He charged through the door, still yelling.
"Look, Alexa." He dropped two small boxes on the desk. "We got ten of these at the CIA and Colonel Kaplinger gave me two to play with."
Sighing, Alexa leaned forward and picked up one of the boxes. The office was hot, and she felt fuzzy and tired. They weren't making any progress, Frank Jervis was pissed, and they were about to hold a hearing on the Omniac druggies that she had busted. Anything for entertainment. The box held a digital watch.
"It's a digital watch," Alexa said, putting it back in the box. "Passe. Analog is in this year."
"Yeah, right," Bobby answered, "if it were a watch it would be out of style. But," he paused for emphasis, "this here gadget, ladies and gentlemen, ain't a watch. Nosiree."
"So what is it? A veg-o-matic?"
"Good guess," Bobby laughed. "It slices and dices fur shure. But this little baby slices and dices bits and bytes. It's a computer."
"Oh, great." Alexa yawned and stretched. "Another tiny toy computer. Just what the world needs."
"No, no, look at this. Its amazing." Bobby pushed it at her. "Put it on, just like a regular watch."
Alexa sighed again, but replaced her own watch with the new toy. "Ok. It's on, it's ugly. Now what?"
"There's four studs on the side. Rest your left hand on the desk. Now press the bottom stud."
Alexa pressed the stud and gasped. A computer, complete with a small keyboard and screen, appeared on the desk in front of her. She touched the screen. Her fingers met no resistance.
"Its a holographic projection." Bobby was as proud as if he had invented the thing himself. "Completely functional. Press a key."
She pressed the 'a' key. She felt nothing as her finger moved through the image of the key, but she heard a tiny click and the letter 'a' glowed on the screen.
Alexa was impressed in spite of herself. "Wow," she said. "Not much for touch typing, though."
"There's more. Press the key with the little handset symbol on it."
As she pressed the key, the computer turned into a telephone with a keypad. At Bobby's urging, she dialed her home phone. The keys clicked as she pressed them and the number being dialed appeared in the display window. Her answering machine picked up and she heard her recorded voice, clear if slightly tinny.
Bobby laughed again. "Isn't it great? And there's more. Press the second from the bottom stud."
The phone disappeared, replaced by a screen and two keys. At first she couldn't tell what it was, but then she realized the screen was displaying a map of Washington.
"Press the key with the down arrow on it," Bobby instructed. When she did this, the map rapidly expanded in scale until she could see individual streets, then blocks. The map stopped expanding when it covered several blocks. A small dot glowed in the center of the screen. "That's you," Bobby said. "This thing shows you exactly where you are. It picks up the standard Global Positioning Satellite signals.
"Big deal. GPF has been around for years." Alexa poked at the controls and watched the map zoom from large to small scale and back. "Picture's a little fuzzy, too."
"This one tells you where you are, and it also makes a cellular call and tells a central computer where you are. Trucking firms and cab companies use them. This is the smallest version ever made." Bobby leaned over the desk. "Christ on a crutch," he said earnestly, "this is the biggest advance in computers in a long time."
"Well, I'm damned, I'm sure." Alexa was bored again. Too much technology always bored her. She handed the watch back to Bobby.
"No, wear it," he protested, "it might come in handy."
"I can't imagine how," she replied. "I like my own watch. Ok, I'll keep it in my pocket. Call me any time."
Bobby made a face. "Alexa, sometimes I don't understand you. This is wonderful."
Alexa stood up and gently cuffed Bobby on the cheek. "Life is wonderful, love is wonderful," she said, "this thing isn't even a good watch."
Chapter Sixty Eight
When Bobby arrived at the office on Tuesday morning, he was surprised to find it empty; Alexa usually beat him to work by at least an hour. Settling into the tattered easy chair beside Alexa's desk, he amused himself by going through the car rental agencies in the phone book and trying to rent a car. But the word was out, Jack had his revenge. Every agency, as soon as they heard the name Robert Britton, was fresh out of cars. He started with the cheap rentals and worked his way up to the expensive national outfits.
"I'm terribly sorry sir," the sweet female voice at the far end of the line said, "I really did think we had what you wanted, but it must have been a computer glitch, because it turns out we don't have a thing."
Bobby made a face at the phone. "You're the biggest rental agency in Washington, your ads say you're the biggest in the world, and you don't have a car to rent in all of DC?"
"I'm terribly sorry sir...," the voice sounded genuinely distressed, but also genuinely unmoved.
As Bobby carefully hung up the phone, the office door crashed open. Alexa stormed into the room and threw the door closed. The wall shook and bits of paint and plaster fell from the ceiling.
"God damn, somma bitch," she screamed, kicking in the front of the nearest file cabinet. "That fool, that military mistake."
Bobby retreated behind the desk. He had intended to tease Alexa about being late, but his keen sense of self-preservation told him this would not be a good time. He noticed with some surprise that she was in uniform.
Alexa calmed herself. She stood in the middle of the room and took several very deep breaths, letting each one out slowly. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, tangling the short, red curls.
"That bastard," she said quietly.
Bobby risked a question. "Who?" he asked.
"Gotts," she answered. "The right honorable General James damn-him-to-Hell Gotts put a letter of reprimand in my file."
"Because of those druggies? You were the one that caught them."
"But, as he said, it was my responsibility to keep that sort of thing from happening in the first place." She walked to the desk and plumped into a chair. "I don't know which was worse, Bobby. Getting shafted or being told about it by that pompous ass, Grinnell."
"Major Grinnell? The electronic security chief?" Bobby remembered Grinnell without affection.
"Yeah, I told you he was my boss. He was in charge of all the security on the base, so I reported to him, but he never paid any attention to all that boring patrol shit; all he cared about was his damn sensors and robot signal trackers." Alexa sighed and made an effort to rearrange her hair. "He sat there and looked down his long nose and curled his lip and told me how he 'regretted not supervis
ing more closely' and how 'in the future he would give me the benefit of his experience'. I almost threw up."
"Maybe you should have." Bobby grinned at the thought.
Alexa laughed. "Hey, yeah, rrraaalph! Right across his desk!" Then she made a face. "I might as well have gone out with a flourish, of sorts. This finishes my military career."
"Ah, Alexa, a letter of reprimand isn't good, but its not that serious is it?"
"You forget, my boy, the military in this country is a shrinking profession, has been for the last several years, the various Persian Gulfs and Eastern Europes and Latin American pacifications notwithstanding. There are more officers than jobs, good officers, officers with spotless records." She banged her fist on the desk. "What royally pisses me is that it was Gotts' own damn fault. He's the one that insisted on rounds at exactly the same time every day, 'more military, more precise', the old fool. And he's the one that wouldn't let anyone but technicians open the cabinets."
"But Sunday you told Frank and Dorrian-Smith, I mean Richard, that the entire computer is physically checked every day."
"Only the operational computer, not the empty cabinets. That whole side of the computer room was the stuff that talked to the Department of Commerce in Omniac's previous incarnation. Once they tore it out, nobody went back there." Alexa found her compact and did some serious tidying up. "Remember, Bobby? There wasn't anything in those cabinets at all."
Bobby did remember. He remembered the huge room filled with blue cabinets. He remembered the rushing sound of the cooling system. He remembered the empty computer enclosure, big enough to use as a club house for the stoned-out gang.
"Wait a minute," he said. "Are you saying that all those cabinets are empty, that no one inspects that area at all?"
"Yeah, Bobby, that's what I'm saying." Alexa frowned into the mirror and reworked her eye shadow. "Listen, is it okay if I go home and change out of this damn uniform? I've had all the military...."
"No, wait, Alexa." Bobby was beginning to get excited. There was an idea in the back of his mind, flitting around, if he could just catch it. "That's where the communication line started out, right?"
"I just said that, Bobby."
"Right, right." Bobby leaped to his feet, knocking his chair over. He didn't notice. "And that line runs underground, some way or other, all the way to the Department of Commerce, right? And it's a shielded fiber optic cable, right? No electronic emissions at all, right?" Bobby was pacing now. He came around the desk and into the center of the room, waving his arms.
Alexa ducked out of the way. "Easy there, ranger. All you say is true, so what?"
"So is that line monitored or patrolled or checked or any damn thing anywhere along its entire length?" Bobby yelled.
"No, it isn't. It isn't hooked to anything. I remember Grinnell and Walsh talking about it once. And stop being so noisy."
Bobby stopped pacing. "You were making a bit of noise yourself a few minutes ago."
"That was different."
"So what if that line is hooked to something? What if that line is hooked to Omniac, and the signals are being smuggled out using our own communication system?" Bobby tried to stay quiet, without success.
"Well," Alexa said doubtfully, "I don't know much about that stuff, but I thought the whole idea was that they unhooked the line. That's why they aren't watching it."
"Christ on a crutch. That must be it. Those mystery electricians that John Holtzman hired to work on Omniac." Bobby circled the room, waving his arms and yelling out the ideas that poured into his head. "They rigged it so the signals from Omniac are sent over the old line and the thugs at Enterprise Magnetics tap the line and send the signals to the J's."
"Dammit, Bobby, sit down! You look like a street corner preacher, only more demented." While she admonished him, Alexa picked up the chair he had knocked over.
Bobby didn't hear her. "We've got to get to OMCOM and search the computer room, especially that empty corner." Then he stopped the noise and plumped into the easy chair. "Maybe your troubles finally showed us the missing piece," he said hopefully.
Alexa finished her makeup and carefully cleaned a bit of lipstick off a tooth. "Can I be the one to tell Grinnell?" she asked.
Chapter Sixty Nine
The guards wouldn't let them into the computer complex. Alexa was still in uniform, but Bobby had chosen a cowboy motif from what was left of his wardrobe, complete with jeans, denim jacket and hand tooled genuine leather boots.
"No pass, no appointment, no admittance, ma'am." The senior guard pointedly addressed his remarks to Alexa, ignoring Bobby completely. "If you will just check at the security office, I'm sure they can assist you." He was polite, even deferential, but unyielding.
"Maybe," Alexa said as they turned away, "maybe you should have warn something more appropriate. A tuxedo perhaps, or a satin smoking jacket."
"You know perfectly well my smoking jacket is silk," Bobby said irritably. "Let's call Gotts, or maybe Tony Walsh."
Generals Gotts and Walsh were both out. They ended up talking to Major Grinnell. The security chief sat stiffly behind his big desk and looked down his nose. He interrupted Bobby's excited recitation.
"So you want to tear up the computer room, do you?" Grinnell leaned forward, his thin lips curling into a sneer. "The entire computer is examined every week. There is no way an unauthorized connection wouldn't have been found months ago."
"I don't know how they did it," Bobby said heatedly, "but that's the only possible answer. Start looking where the old communication line enters the computer room...."
"Really, Captain Allbright," Grinnell said coldly, "I thought you had more sense than to associate yourself with this twaddle. I'm afraid I have misjudged you."
Alexa smiled sweetly. "Why thank you, Major. Coming from a man of such obvious charm and ability, that is high praise indeed."
Grinnell looked momentarily puzzled. Then he smiled his most superior and condescending smile. "And another thing, ah, Major Britton...." Pausing, Grinnell looked Bobby's unorthodox costume up and down. "It is Major, is it not? Never mind. Are you aware that every piece of computer and communication equipment was logged into and out of that area during construction? That the workers were required to completely undress and change into clothes they wore only on the job? Clothes that never left the building?" Grinnell crossed his arms and looked down his nose. "I designed the construction security myself." His lip curled. "Now, good day. I have work to do."
As they turned to go, Alexa tossed him a snappy salute. "Thank you, sir," she chirped.
Once outside, Bobby snapped at her. "What's all the cheer, and 'thank you sir' shit?"
"Where's your sense of humor? The good Major can never figure out where I'm coming from." Alexa chuckled. "He suspects I'm making fun of him, but his ego says that's just not possible."
"I'm glad you had a good time, but we're out in the cold. Time for SuperFrank." Bobby led the way to Alexa's truck.
The Astro's amenities included a cellular phone. Frank was unavailable, but the secretary promised to get the message from Major Britton through to him as soon as possible.
"We might as well have a drink while we're waiting," Bobby said hopefully.
"It's not even noon yet, I'm on duty, and you are too, whatever that means, and this is a car phone, not a portable," Alexa said. Her game with Grinnell had left her feeling more cheerful.
Bobby started to argue - Alexa's game with Grinnell had left him feeling grumpy and confused - but the phone interrupted them. Alexa's used her trained reflexes to beat Bobby to the receiver.
"Captain Allbright here," she said, and "yessir, Mr. Jervis, Bobby, uh, Major Britton has a suggestion on continuing the, uh, investigation." She listened for a moment. "Yessir, uh, Frank. I think we would prefer to give you the details over a land line, sir, uh, Frank. Could you call M
ajor Wilson Grinnell at OMCOM, and request an immediate phone conference in his office? We can be there in two or three minutes. Thank you, sir. Yessir, uh, Frank."
Alexa hung up, her face slightly pink. "He said to call him Frank," she said.
"So I gathered," Bobby said. "Back to Grinnell."
"Too right, let's go. This should be fun."
They identified themselves again to the receptionist and sat down to wait. In less than five minutes, the intercom at the reception desk rang. The receptionist listened and spoke the magic words: "Major Grinnell will see you now."
Major Grinnell's long face wore a distinct pout. As Alexa and Bobby entered the office, he said, "The Captain and Major are here, Mr. Jervis. I'll put you on the speaker phone."
"Frank's voice echoed around the room, sounding as if he were in a well. "Now, uh, Major Britton, what action do you propose?"
"Turn off your speaker, Frank," Bobby said, "you sound like you're in a well."
Grinnell looked astounded. Alexa looked mortified.
"Sorry," Frank said, "that better?"
"Much better," Bobby said, "the short of it is that Alexa and I think the J's are somehow using the communications line to the Department of Commerce to get Omniac's signals out of OMCOM. We recommend a careful search of the old communication section of the computer room. Major Grinnell doesn't agree."
Frank asked for details. Bobby and Alexa interrupted each other for several minutes relating the logic of the situation.
"Major Grinnell," Frank said.
"Yes, Mr. Jervis," the Major answered.
"I'm certainly in no position to give you orders, Major," Frank said, "but my advice to you is to carry out any suggestions made by Major Britton and Captain Allbright to the best of your ability. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"
Grinnell answered in a strangled voice. "Yessir, Mr. Jervis. Absolutely clear."
"So are you inclined to begin the search immediately, Major?" Frank pressed.
"I certainly am," Grinnell answered, "you can be assured of that, sir."
"Good," Frank said, "I'll contact General Gotts and let him know. He will want to speak with you, I'm sure."
"I'm sure," Grinnell sputtered.
"Major Britton, is that all for now?" Frank asked.
"Uh, yessir, Mr. Jervis, that will do nicely." Bobby barely suppressed a snort of laughter. Frank made his goodbyes.
"I'll get right on this," Grinnell muttered. His face was flushed and angry.
"Can we be of any help?" Alexa asked sweetly.
"I will let you know what we find," Grinnell snapped, "which will be nothing, I assure you. Now, if you don't mind, I have quite a lot to do."
"Now," Alexa said as they left, "let's go have that drink."