Dodge nodded, but Sam shook his head. “Happened while you were in Chicago.”
SPAM CANNED was the newspaper headline.
Sam scanned the article quickly. Apparently, a gradual reduction in the amount of spam around the world had turned suddenly into a full-blown collapse.
“Spam servers around the world have been targeted and shut down,” Jaggard said. “I want you on it. Find out who’s behind the attacks.”
“Who cares?” Dodge said with a laugh. “They’re spammers. Let ’em burn.”
“The day before, it was online gaming sites,” Jaggard said.
“You think the attacks are related?” Sam asked.
“Possibly, probably, who knows?” Jaggard said. “What I want to know is, what’s next? What are they planning for tomorrow? As long as they’re doing good deeds, then nobody really cares. But what defines ‘good’? As they—whoever ‘they’ are—see it. What if they decided at election time that they didn’t like one particular candidate? Would they crash all the support Web sites? Worse, would they hack the election software and rig the election?”
“Now you’re giving me ideas,” Dodge said.
Jaggard ignored him. “And I especially want to know whether it’s related to the Chicago terrorists.”
“What makes you think that?” Sam said.
“I don’t know. Maybe just the timing,” Jaggard replied. “We have three separate incidents occurring within three days, and in each case we have no idea how it happened or who did it. Vienna and Kiwi are already looking into the gaming sites. I want you two on the spammers. If there is a link to the terrorists, or that ‘phantom,’ then I want to know ASAP.”
“On to it, guv,” Dodge said, and they both got up to leave.
“Stay for a moment, Sam,” Jaggard said.
Sam sat back down slowly.
Jaggard waited until Dodge had left, then said, “I need to talk to you.”
“Is it my probation?” Sam asked.
Jaggard shook his head. “That’s not going to be a problem. We need you around.”
Sam said nothing, looking closely at Jaggard. He kept his face emotionless, although inside him a warm surge of pride was competing with a sudden, inexplicable fear.
“Your mother has been in contact,” Jaggard said. “A message relayed by the authorities in New York.”
“Is she all right?” Sam asked, the fear growing rapidly.
“She’s fine,” Jaggard said. “It’s not about her. It concerns a Derek Fargas.”
“Fargas?” Sam mentally kicked himself. He had meant to get in touch with Fargas but hadn’t yet got around to it. The business with the terrorists and the phantom had simply got in the way. Fargas would understand, though, surely? Once Sam was able to explain.
“How well did you know him?” Jaggard asked.
Sam opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again quickly. Jaggard hadn’t said, “How well
He’d said “did.”
When Sam arrived at his desk, his new CDD-issue neuro-headset was sitting in a plain cardboard box next to his keyboard. He sat and just stared at it for a while. The headsets were the thin, rubber-coated wire mesh style that they had used in Chicago. Looking closely at it, he saw it was a Neuro-Sensor Pro 3.1. A big step forward from the 1.2-version headset he had scored from Telecomerica. Glancing around, Sam saw that about half of the team was already wearing them.
Bashful and Gummi Bear, to his left, were staring at nothing with their eyes shut and laughing their heads off over some shared private joke. Socks was wearing his, although Zombie seemed to be having difficulty with the shape of his and kept taking it off, making small adjustments to the wires and putting it back on.
“Are you all right?” Dodge asked.
“I’m okay,” Sam said, but he wasn’t okay. The news about Fargas felt like a kick in the chest, a crushing, winding blow. Fargas’s funeral was on Tuesday, and Jaggard had already said he could take time off work. He’d go. But he’d find it hard to look Mr. and Mrs. Fargas in the face. Was he responsible for what had happened?
“You look pale,” Dodge said.
“It’s nothing,” Sam said. “Let’s get on with it.”
They spent most of the shift digging around in the dark alleyways of the Internet, where the gamers, spammers, scammers, and phishers lived.
Places they expected to find full of seedy little servers and malformed code were empty. The dingy bars and backstreets were deserted.
It was as if the barnacles on the dark underbelly of the Internet had been scraped off.
What did it, who did it, how they did it, were questions without answers.
Fargas intruded constantly on his thoughts, and several times he found himself blinking back tears. Once, he caught Dodge looking at him strangely, but Dodge said nothing, which suited Sam just fine.
Sam kept an eye on his watch as the afternoon progressed, ever conscious of the time. Dodge was casual about it, but to break into the office of the Oversight rep was no laughing matter. If they were caught, he could end up back in Recton. Or worse.
He needn’t have worried.
Just after 3:30, with the shadows from the windows starting to spread long gray fingers across the room, there was a paralyzing scream from the center of the room.
“What the …?” Dodge began.
The scream continued on and on, an ancient primordial sound that reeked of every kind of terror and black despair, then just as suddenly cut off.
“Get Jaggard,” Dodge said. “That came from the swamp.” He was already running up the slope to the central octagonal office.
Sam pressed the Emergency Alert button on his keyboard and ran after Dodge.
The door was locked, but before they could even think about finding someone with a keycard who would open it, the door opened by itself and something that used to be Swamp Witch staggered out.
She made just one tottering step before collapsing to her knees, then slumping over, twisting onto her back as she did so, half in and half out of the door.
Whatever it was inside her that had made that scream was gone, vanished from her body as if it had never existed. Her face was calm and still. She looked up at Sam and Dodge with the cherubic questioning innocence of a newborn baby.
27 | THE PHANTOM
The paramedics took Swamp Witch out on a stretcher, her breathing shallow, her eyes empty. John Jaggard went with them, holding her hand as if she was his child.
The intense laser-beam stare was now just a soft wash of moonlight. The piercing intelligence had been replaced by the vacuous mind of an infant.
Sam had hardly known her and certainly wouldn’t have been one to put his hand up and say that he liked her. But there was something about that happening to someone he knew, something about it happening right in front of him, that made it shocking in ways he couldn’t fully comprehend. And coming right on the heels of the news about Fargas, it seemed almost too much to deal with.
“Well, I guess she wasn’t the insider,” Dodge said in a vague attempt at humor.
The main doors closed behind the paramedic team, and after a moment or two, people around the room began to turn back to their screens. Getting back to their work, or just discussing what had happened.
“Come with me,” Dodge said, picking up the silver field kit that was still sitting under his desk.
Sam started to ask where he was going, but it was unnecessary. Dodge was heading for the swamp.
He rose on shaky legs and followed. By the time Sam got there, Dodge had already plugged in the kit and
