“Well, then he'll go underground, disappear as completely as he can-there's no point in watching his family or friends; he won't have any contact at all with his old life until he's got a secure position to recruit from.”
“We know he's disappeared,” Smith said. “Where has he disappeared to?”
“Well, he's got multiple options there,” Schiano answered, looking at the flowchart, “but first choice is to contact any existing rebel groups.”
“Rebel groups?” Smith asked. “Jesus, Schiano, this is Pennsylvania, not some damn banana republic-we don't have rebels here.”
Schiano hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Second choice is to take shelter in the underclass and start assembling his own organization, working through organized crime and charitable organizations.”
“ Where? ”
“In the biggest city he can get to, of course,” Schiano said. “The best place to hide is in a crowd, and it's in the big cities that you find the underclass, and organized crime, and organized charity. In most countries that would be the capital, so Washington would have been a possibility, but you said he was headed north, so he must be going to New York.”
“Unless he doubled back, to throw us off,” Smith said.
“Unless he doubled back,” Schiano agreed. “Which he might have; I deliberately left that random, to make him less predictable. Remember, when I wrote this I was assuming he'd be on our side-I wanted him to succeed.”
“So he's in either New York or Washington,” Smith said.
“Probably,” Schiano said. “Remember, though, he's not a computer, and this is an optimization program, not a set of fixed instructions-he's still got free will.”
“Fuck free will,” Smith said. He turned and stamped away.
As he walked, he marveled to himself at the blind naivete of that stupid programmer. Didn't he realize the difference between ideals and reality? The Constitution had been increasingly irrelevant for at least a century, and downright dead ever since the Crisis; if Beech really believed in the American dream, he'd find plenty to rebel against.
Behind him, at his workstation, Bob Schiano stared after the departing spymaster.
Smith was an idiot. Didn't he realize that “rebel groups” didn't necessarily mean a bunch of yahoos with guns running around in the mountains or jungles? The U.S. was full of rebel groups; they were all over the web. Terrorism wasn't as bad as a few years back, but there were still terrorists, and weren't those rebels? The fundies and militia groups had been reduced in the campaigns of the early ‘20s, but did Smith really think they were extinct? And there were groups that hadn't resorted to violence but were just as rebellious in other ways. Some of them were labelled “subversive organizations,” others were “lunatic fringe,” a few were “cults” or even recognized churches, while others didn't fit any handy label, but to the Spartacus File they'd all qualify as rebel groups.
And that wasn't even counting all the little whacko political parties that the Party hadn't bothered to outlaw. The Spartacus File would see any party that had never been in power or at least held a seat in Congress-which was to say, just about any party except the Democratic-Republicans and the Greens-as either a present rebel group or a potential one.
Of course, Schiano could have pointed out Smith's error-but why should he? He didn't have anything against this Casper Beech. And Smith was an asshole.
Besides, Schiano thought, he wanted to see just what the Spartacus File could actually do.
Chapter Fourteen
The van pulled up beside them, and a flashlight shone in Casper's face; he blinked, but resisted the temptation to shield his eyes.
The light moved on to Cecelia, then to Mirim, then went out.
“I don't believe I'm really doing this,” Mirim muttered from the back seat. “I mean, why am I sitting here in a deserted parking lot in the middle of New Jersey meeting a bunch of crackpot revolutionaries?”
“Because the government is trying to kill me to cover up their own mistake,” Casper said, “and you've got the guts and the morals to join me in trying to stop them.”
“Christ, Cas, you sound like a video hero,” Cecelia replied.
The van door slammed; a thin young man in black, wearing a black ski mask, had climbed out. He came over to the Mustang; Casper rolled down the window.
“You're Beech?” the man in black asked. He did not bend down to bring his face closer; that, Casper knew, would make him too easy to grab.
“Yes,” Casper said.
“Which one's the lawyer?”
Casper jerked a thumb at Cecelia. “Ms. Grand,” he said.
“And the other? The phone call wasn't real clear.”
“Her name's Mirim Anspack,” Casper said. “She's just a friend who got caught in the crossfire.”
The man in black considered that.
“I'll vouch for her,” Beech said. “If that's worth anything.”
“It isn't,” the man in black said. He looked around at the empty parking lot-a church lot on a Tuesday night. The van and the Mustang were the only vehicles in sight.
“Get out of the car,” he said.
Casper obeyed promptly. Cecelia and Mirim were slower, but eventually all three were standing.
“You armed?”
Casper nodded.
The man in black held out a hand, and Casper handed over the Browning 9mm-the. 357 was in the glove compartment.
“I'd like it back later,” Casper said.
The man didn't answer. “What about the car?” he asked.
“Hotter than hell, I'm afraid,” Casper replied. “I took it off a man who tried to kill us this afternoon. I'd suggest running it up to New York and ditching it somewhere in the city.”
“Leave the keys,” the man said.
“They're in the ignition.”
“Get in the van.” He opened the back door of the vehicle.
“Casper, are you sure about this?” Mirim asked.
“Get in the van,” Casper said.
Reluctantly, Mirim got in the van.
Casper was fairly certain that at least half the subsequent twenty-minute drive was just misdirection and doubling back, but he didn't try to keep track. He had no intention of escaping from these people.
He'd been doing some thinking on the way here. He couldn't just hide out until the heat blew over, not after killing four feds; the heat wasn't going to blow over, ever. And he couldn't lose himself forever and create a new identity-his fingerprints and voiceprint and retinal patterns were on file, and sooner or later he'd be spotted somehow, his voice recognized on a random phone check or his style spotted on the nets.
Not to mention that he'd have to open new online accounts, and a standard background check might nail him.
So he didn't intend to hide; he intended to take the offensive, and he couldn't do that alone. These people he was meeting weren't just a temporary refuge; they were his hope for the future.
He intended to recruit them.
Bob Schiano gulped his personal caffeine-sugar mix and studied the screen.
Smith wanted him to locate Beech so that Covert could kill him, and Schiano was indeed doing his best to locate Beech, but he wasn't at all sure about this killing stuff.
It wasn't that anything in Beech's file from before the optimization made him sound especially appealing; he'd been a corporate nonentity, working at a dead-end job for an obscure member of the Consortium, with nothing of
