“Have a productive evening?” Renwick asked as he glanced meaningfully at his watch.
“You might say that,” Bulatt said as he placed a satchel he’d been carrying on the table and then sat down at one of the empty chairs; Achara taking the adjacent chair. “Sorry we’re late. Achara and I had to stop by the Windmill Inn this morning to help some fellow agents deal with a few loose spiders.”
“Which you are going to keep, and not bring back here, like you promised?” Hager reminded.
Bulatt nodded. “That was the agreement; but it looks like I’m going have put them back in the bug room, temporarily, until the indictments get filed,” he added apologetically. “After that, we’re going to ship the little guys back to Mexico where they presumably came from. Achara and I will take care of the details.”
“Thank god,” Hager whispered.
“Indictments?” Reston said, her eyebrows rising curiously.
“There was a little altercation in the parking lot earlier this morning,” Bulatt explained. “A couple of our special ops agents managed to get themselves assaulted by some fellows who claimed to be federal law enforcement officers, but who couldn’t explain why they were in possession of illegal wildlife — our little red-legged friends — and some possibly-bogus federal government travel cards. Sounded like a pretty confusing deal; probably have to be worked out at the Washington Office level.”
“But it was very exciting to watch,” Achara added. “Lot’s of police cars and ambulances with flashing lights, tow trucks, the works; just like you see on American TV.”
“’Lots’ of police cars — meaning more than one — in Ashland, that early in the morning?” Hager looked skeptical.
“It helps to plan your altercations ahead of time,” Bulatt explained. “Gives the locals plenty of time to get their coffee, call in extra back-ups, and get a good front-seat view of the proceedings.”
“Ah.”
“And our Mr. Smith?” Renwick asked.
“According to the EMT’s, his prognosis looks fairly good. They said he’ll probably be back on his feet in a few days without any serious complications, if you don’t count the assault complaint our agents will be filing with the local U.S. Attorney,” Bulatt said matter-of-factly. “In any case, I don’t think he’ll be bothering us for a while. The guy who pulled a knife on Stoner is another issue entirely; he won’t be up and moving around quite so soon.”
“What about my children?” Reston asked, looking tired and even more grumpy than usual from working all night. “Please tell me they weren’t involved in this… planned altercation.”
“Your sons spent the entire night in their hotel room, presumably working their little typing and mouse fingers to the bone,” Bulatt said, raising his hand in a ‘Scout’s honor’ gesture. “They were sound asleep when their father picked them up a four-thirty this morning. He seemed like a nice fellow.”
“If you happen to like big, ornery and aggressive federal law enforcement types,” Reston said with a shrug. “George had to fill-in on a stake-out last night. You and Achara saved us the expense of an overnight baby- sitter.”
“You actually leave those boys alone, overnight, with a baby-sitter?” Achara said, blinking in surprise.
“Not very often; their grandmother charges too much,” Reston said, keeping her reddened eyes focused on Bulatt. “You didn’t tell them I had access to your laptop, did you?”
Bulatt shook his head. “I didn’t figure that was something they needed to know.”
“Well, they didn’t believe you; that much was obvious,” Reston said. “But I have a feeling they were too busy showing off for Achara to make a thorough check. They found three of the worm programs I inserted, but missed the other two — one of which they should have found. And they really should have opened up the case and spotted the back-up transmitter. I thought I’d taught them better than that.”
“We might have clogged up their brains a bit with all that pizza and the chocolate chip cookies,” Bulatt suggested.
“More likely their brains are just starting to migrate south, which may or may not be a good thing,” Reston said. “Which reminds me, did you bring that laptop in?”
“Yep, right here.” Bulatt reached into the satchel, pulled out his laptop computer, and handed it to Reston who turned it over, examined the serial numbers on the back; then held it out at arm’s length and allowed it to drop to the floor with a loud crash.
“Oops,” Hager said casually.
Bulatt blinked in surprise. “Aren’t you being a little rough on my equipment?”
“Look who’s talking,” Reston muttered as she reached down, picked up the laptop, opened it up, turned it on, watched the computer screen flicker to life, frowned, then held it up higher and let it drop to the floor a second time.
Unable to resist, Bulatt looked around the edge of the table and saw that the computer screen was cracked but still glowing brightly.
“Impressive,” he commented. “I didn’t realize they were making computers that tough these days.”
“Neither did I,” Reston said, frowning. “I’ll take a sledge hammer to it later, and then run the parts through a metal shredder.”
Bulatt’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion for a moment, but then it came to him.
“They went too far — with my laptop — didn’t they?” he said, smiling hopefully.
“Much too far,” Reston acknowledged.
“Meaning?”
“Credit card and cell phone records; definitely forbidden territory for those two. Not to mention hacking into a local mainframe when they decided your computer was too small and too slow; which is why I don’t want any evidence hanging around for an IG investigator to poke at. I’ve got a replacement laptop for you in my office.”
“Which — if I was fourteen, and knew what I was doing — I’d probably open up and check for worms, transmitters and baby spider eggs right off the bat, correct?”
“You’re starting to catch on,” Reston said approvingly.
“I’ll have Mike check it out, just to be on the safe side,” Bulatt promised.
“So how did they approach it?” Achara asked, unable to contain herself any longer.
“That’s the amazing thing,” Reston said, “every now and then these kids still manage to surprise me. Their general approaches to probes and database links are still pretty unsophisticated; but they have this odd ability to make huge logic leaps at the most illogical moments. It’s probably a generational thing; but I would have started with the registration number for Hateley’s Gulfstream, and worked outwards in linear searches from there.”
“They didn’t?”
“No, they went straight into a seven-dimensional array with jet-fuel accounts and Gulfstream maintenance firm records in the first two positions, cross-linked to credit cards, cell phone calls, hotel bookings, national newspaper articles and CITES permits, and then ran the entire matrix through a Boolean logic deep-search with Hateley as the common factor. In effect, they ran forty-two comprehensive searches simultaneously, all of which were cross-linked. They should have set up a logic tree right away, anchored their roots, and covered their tracks better, but they were probably in a hurry to show their stuff; and I had the transmitter set for one second bursts every half hour, to keep them from picking up on the RAM usage, so I was always playing catch-up. But I was still able to follow their trail, clean up the log files and — ”
Bulatt saw that Achara was listening intently.
“Did you actually understand any single part of what she just said?” Bulatt asked Achara, interrupting Reston’s summary.
“Sure.” Achara shrugged, nodding her head. Bulatt looked around and discovered that Renwick and Hager were also nodding their heads.
“Oh.”
Bulatt decided that his head was definitely starting to hurt. “Uh, could we skip the technical details and go straight to the ‘oh my god’ part, assuming there is one,” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Reston said, motioning to Hager who reached over and thumbed a remote device. A glowing Powerpoint™ slide suddenly appeared on the far white wall, showing the faces of four men, all of whom appeared to be in their mid-fifties.
“And just who would these fellows be?” Bulatt asked.
“Starting from upper left hand corner and working clockwise, Michael Hateley, Dr. Stuart Jackson Caldreaux, Max Kingman, and Sam Fogarty,” Reston said. “The internationally-traveling CEO hunters we’ve been looking
