Page 14.

“That’s right, Captain. I’m a Clearance One, which means I can go anywhere, any time. I can make my own Need-to-Know, though I need to get the CO to chop on it afterwards. Sometimes I have to make a decision on the fly. All my moves are stored in memory, so I can’t fool anyone. My decisions can be reviewed afterwards, so I think twice.”

“Let me guess. You stumbled on something big.”

“Yessir, I did. I would rather forget all about it, but I’m afraid it’s my duty to inform somebody.”

“Did you inform your superior officer, Chief?” David held a pencil poised over a sheet of loose canary note paper in the file.

“I did, Sir, and she referred me here.”

“She?” David glanced into the file. The name floated up at him: Victoria Breen, 1LT, MPC. Maxie’s roommate? David swallowed hard, and his mouth went dry. “Lieutenant Breen is your superior officer?”

“She’s the XO. A Colonel Bentyne is our C.O. We’re an oddball unit, sort of a composite in our own right, been over in the Observatory for years before this CON2 circus started. General Montclair wanted every uniformed person in Washington under his control, so they assigned us to his chain of command along with various other cats ‘n dogs units.”

David hadn’t really caught what it was Tory Breen did for Uncle Sam, just something top secret involving computers. “This woman is an MP officer?”

“Yessir. Nice gal, between you and me. She’s pretty brainy.” (And attractive, David thought, looking at this fat NCO who couldn’t lift six French fries at once). “She referred me to Colonel Bentyne—the field-grade over in the Atlantic Hotel who’s temporarily in charge of us—and Bentyne got cold feet the minute I started talking.”

“I’ll get my foot warmer out,” David said. At least now he’d have an excuse to call Tory. Maybe to chew her out for throwing this curve ball.

“Sir, you remember the Vice President was murdered last year?”

“Yes?”

Shoob’s big yellow teeth looked cadaverous. “Sir, he wrote a memo to his boss before he died, and I found it.”

“His boss?”

“The President.”

“And you found it.” David stared at Shoob and felt like asking if he’d had his head examined recently. “Oh really?”

“Colonel Bentyne said the same thing. I’ve got 25 years of excellent service, and I’m risking my good name sitting here, Captain.”

David softened. “I’ll hear you out.”

“Thank you. It’s all I ask. Then my duty will be done and I can go back to my obscure safe little life.” Shoob faltered. “Can I smoke?”

“Sure.” David had him move by an open window, and a fan took the acrid blue-gray smoke outside. Shoob trembled as he spoke, and the cigarette shook in his mouth. David had his first tremor of uncertainty. Either this man was a good actor, or he was really scared. “I was chasing an international hacker, and I cornered him. I’m a pro. I don’t use an icon or a logo. I try to stay invisible, especially when I’m tailing someone like that. It’s just like a city inside the net, only it might be cartoon-like in one area, or Picasso somewhere else; maybe the sponsor likes Breughel or Goya or Tissot; whatever it is, you move through dream worlds like that.”

“Sounds enjoyable.”

“I used to think so, but it’s a job now.” He grinned with those spade-shaped caramel-colored teeth and his voice rasped on. “They even got a Pigalle inside, Sir, you know, Pig Alley? These ladies wag a leg at you from a doorway, try to lure you inside to show you more, and it’s amazing how many people get suckered. They roll you, literally—it’s a hundred bucks a minute in one of those—” His grin faded as he remembered what the conversation was about and why his job was no longer fun. The cigarette started waving up and down again. “I chased the sombitch and he went underground on me, but I stayed on his tail.”

“—And he led you—where—?”

“I can’t tell you that, Sir.”

David dropped the pencil. “Great.”

“The strategy was to keep him in the net long enough for the cops in Holland to arrest him. He was in there, and I guess he got greedy looking through all those files. All that personal stuff about people’s lives. To a real hacker, the ultimate thrill—to wipe out a murder rap on a prison conviction, or to eliminate an old lady’s pension—hackers are evil little losers who can’t make it in real life, and this is their way of getting even. So there we were. We were in an emergency backup area of the Washington Metro Grid. I got a glimpse of some files, and it was the date on one that got me. December 14, almost two years ago. Brought me to a screeching stop. Almost forgot Salty for a second, but the cops in Amsterdam were beating his door down by then and I wasn’t needed. I made one of those field decisions just then. I knew I could cover; I’d just say I was looking for Salty inside this place. I started reading and here I am.”

David held up the pencil. “The Vice President was murdered by private militia types.”

“That’s what I thought until this.”

“You make it sound like he had something to hide.”

Shoob took a folded sheet of paper from his inner coat pocket. “The Vice President dictated this. He must have e-mailed it to himself, but there was a transmission outage of some kind, and the local net automatically made a backup copy as the net went down. Nobody knew this, and the copy has sat there for 9 months, waiting to be overwritten by the next blackout or browndown. I made a hard copy.” He pushed the paper across the table. “Please read that.”

David read the document, looking for the giveaway that would tell him this was some sort of joke. It looked authentic; had a transmission slug with Cardoza’s name from somewhere in Washington State—wasn’t that where the Vice President had been killed?—and the date seemed right. David skimmed through the text. Supposedly, Cardoza was going to leave for Washington D.C. that night to see President Cliff Bradley about an emergency order to stop CON2. There was a plot, with ringleaders, a list of names of men who must be watched—

David looked at the back of the paper. “Is that it?”

“Isn’t that enough, Captain?”

David’s heart beat harder and his skin crawled a little. “He mentions a list of names. Where is it?”

“I have it. Not here though.”

“We’d have to get our hands on that list.” David hesitated. “Shoob, do your fellow system jockeys ever play tricks on you?”

Shoob shook his head. “I thought about that. No, it would end up meaning jail time. We don’t work with anyone that stupid.”

“This isn’t really proof of anything. I need the list of names. I need everything you’ve got, Shoob, and A.S.A.P.”

“I know that, Sir. I've been looking over my shoulder ever since I found that, and I guess from now on you will too.”

“I’m not the paranoid type.” Something tingled at his spine. There had been a lot of hysterical press about CON2, about the rewriting of the Constitution. David personally felt the Constitution should be left alone. Could there really be people—influential people—who thought they could do better than those guys back in 1787? “Naw,” he said, “this has to be a joke.”

“Wait until you’ve had time to think about this, Sir. Here is a man, the Vice President of the United States, involved with a bunch of military, business, elected, and religious leaders—a whole lot of power there—and one day he wakes up and realizes he’s square in the middle of a conspiracy to help us more than we feel we need to be helped. They think they have a patent on morality and values, and they’re going to make us eat their brand of baloney. I figured from the moment I touched that file, I have my neck out about one mile.” He stabbed a finger in David’s direction, and his voice took on a low, shaking enraged frustration. “I have a wife and kids, I’m working on my Ph.D. in Computer Science, and I’m about to retire. I’ve spent a lifetime setting up my ducks, and here I am caught up in this chicken shit. You think I made this all up?”

David stared at him. “I wish you had.” He swallowed hard.

“So do I. Now you do your part, Sir. You wanted to hear my story—” Shoob calmed a bit and toyed with his cup. “I was afraid to bring the list, in case—”

“—Someone stopped you on the way?”

“Frankly, yes. I have an idea, though. Will you meet me this evening, say at nine? At the Naval Observatory? I’ll take you inside, give you the tour, give you the list, and say goodbye to this whole thing. Let you handle it.”

“Deal.”