I was careful: when someone was seeking a lost blood relative, I checked the seeker’s background to see if he or she was in need of a bone-marrow or kidney transplant, or something similar—not that I flat-out denied such requests; not at all. But in contacting the other party, I did let them know that they were perhaps being sought by a relative who wanted a very big favor; I included similar caveats when approaching rich people who were being searched for by acquaintances who had fallen on hard times. To their credit, sixty-three percent of those who were probably being sought for medical reasons and forty-four percent of those being sought for financial ones allowed me to facilitate contact.
All in all, it was gratifying work, and, although there was no way to quantify it, little by little, I was indeed increasing the net happiness in the world.
Tony Moretti was exhausted. He had a small refrigerator in his office at WATCH and kept cans of Red Bull in it. He thought, given the hours he had to work, that he should be allowed to expense them, but the GAO was all over wastage in the intelligence community; it’d be interesting to see if next month’s election changed things.
The black phone on his desk made the rising-tone priority ring. The caller ID said: WHITE HOUSE.
He picked up the handset. “Anthony Moretti.”
“We have Renegade for you,” said a female voice.
Tony took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
There was a pause—almost a full minute—and then the deep, famous male voice came on. “Dr. Moretti, good morning.”
“Good morning to you, sir.”
“I’ve just come from a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. We’ve made our decision.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Webmind is to be neutralized.”
Tony felt his heart sink. “Mr. President, with all due respect, you can’t have failed to notice the apparent good it’s doing.”
“Dr. Moretti, believe me, this decision was not taken lightly. But the fact is that Webmind has compromised our most secure installations. It’s clearly accessing Social Security records, among many other things, and God only knows what other databases it’s broken into. I’m advised that there’s simply too great a risk that it will reveal sensitive information to a hostile power.”
Tony looked out his window at the nighttime cityscape. “We still haven’t found a way to stop it, sir.”
“I have the utmost confidence in your team’s ability, Dr. Moretti, and, as you yourself have advised my staff, time is of the essence.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Tony said. “Thank you.”
“I’m handing you over to Mr. Reston, who will be your direct liaison with my office.”
Another male voice came on the line. “Mr. Moretti, you have your instructions. Work with Colonel Hume and get this done.”
“Yes,” said Tony. “Thank you.”
He put down the phone, and, just as he did so, the door buzzer sounded. “Who is it?” he said into the intercom.
“Shel.”
He let him in.
“Sorry to bother you,” Shel said.
“Yes?”
“Caitlin Decter has just announced to the world that she has a boyfriend.”
Tony was still thinking about what the president had ordered him to do. “So?” he said distractedly.
“So if she knows how Webmind works, she might have told him.”
“Ah, right. Good. Who is it?”
“One of the boys from her math class; there are seventeen candidates, and we’re monitoring them all.”
Tony took a swig of his energy drink; it tasted bitter.
He’d gotten into this line of work to change the world.
And that, it seemed, was precisely what he was going to do.
thirty-nine
Dr. Kuroda was sitting in the small, cramped dining area of his home. He had a computer with a Skype phone and a webcam hookup there; the Japanese, Caitlin guessed, had computers
The round face smiled at her from the larger of her monitors. “Hello, Miss Caitlin. What are you doing still up? It must be late your time.”
“It is, but I’m too wired to sleep. You shouldn’t have left all that Pepsi in the fridge.”
He laughed.
“So, how are things in Japan?” she asked.
“Besides general excitement—and some concern—about Webmind? We’re disturbed by the rising tensions between China and the United States. We’re so close to China that if they sneeze, we catch pneumonia.”
“Oh, right, of course. That’s awful.” She paused. “It won’t come to war, will it?”
“I doubt it.”
“Good. But, if it did, would your army have to join in?”
His voice had an odd tone as if he were surprised by what she’d said. “Japan doesn’t have an army, Miss Caitlin.”
She blinked. “No?”
“Have you studied World War II yet in history class?”
She shook her head.
He took a deep breath, then let it out in a way that made even more noise than usual for him. “My country…” He seemed to be seeking a phrase, then: “My country went
The math was so trivial she didn’t even think of it
“And my tiny country, we did some terrible things.”
Caitlin’s voice was soft. “Not you. You weren’t even born…”
“No. No, but my father… his brothers…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Do you know the document that ended the war? The Potsdam Declaration?”
“No.”
“It was issued by Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek, and it called for the Japanese military forces to be completely disarmed. We all know this here; we study it in school: ‘The alternative for Japan,’ they said, ‘is prompt and utter destruction.’ ”
“Wow,” said Caitlin.
“Wow, indeed. And we did the only sensible thing. We stood down; we disarmed. You—your people, the Americans—had already dropped two atomic bombs on us… and even still, some of my people wanted to fight on.” He shook his head, as if stunned that anyone could have wanted to continue after that. Then he loomed closer into the camera, and Caitlin could hear him typing. After a moment he said, “I’ve sent you a link to the Potsdam Declaration. Have a look at Article Three.”
Caitlin switched to her IM window, clicked on the link, and tried to read it in the Latin alphabet. “The result… of… the… the—”
