stocking the sourest Chardonnay on the market.
'I think he's making a statement,' the guy said.
'About what?'
'I haven't the faintest. But don't you just love them?'
Jack knew what the statement was: Callusless people go home. But they didn't see it. Julio was purposely rude to them, and he'd instructed his help to follow his lead, but it didn't work. The dinks thought it was a put-on, part of the ambience. They ate it up.
Jack stepped over the length of rope that closed off the back half of the seating area and dropped into his usual booth in the darkened rear. As Julio came out from behind the bar, the blond dink flagged him down.
'Can we get a table back there?'
'No,' Julio said.
The muscular little man brushed by him and nodded to Jack on his way to bus the empty glasses. Jack signaled for a Yuengling.
'Hey, Jack.'
Jack looked up to see Russ Tuit stepping over the cord and approaching.
'Russ,' he said, shaking his hand. 'A little far from home, aren't you?' He lived over on Second Avenue.
'Need to talk to you.'
Jack had his back against the wall and indicated a chair opposite him.
'Looking for work?'
Russ was Jack's go-to guy for all things cyber-legal or not so legal. He'd done time for hacking a bank and was still on probation.
He smiled. 'Believe it or not, I'm gainfully employed. Full time too. And you'll never guess by who.'
'The feds.'
Russ's face fell. 'How… how…?'
Jack had to laugh. 'Well, you said I'd never guess, so I figured the least likely people to hire a federal felon would be the feds. What've they got you doing-hacking citizens?'
'Close. This branch of the NRO hired-'
'What's NRO?'
'National Reconnaissance Office. They run all the satellites. Their research wing put me together with a bunch of other hackers to help tighten up their security. Seems their computers are under constant attack, especially from the Chinese. So what we do is pretty cool. One team sets up a security system, and the other team tries to break through it. If we get through, then we switch sides, shore up the breach, and now it's their turn to try to break through. We keep going back and forth, switching sides, and let me tell you, it's working. We've been building firewalls that are higher, wider, and smarter than anything else out there.'
Jack's mind wandered as Russ went on about viruses and worms and trojans. He noticed the blond guy in the sweater stopping Julio again as he returned to the bar. He pointed toward Jack and Russ.
'How come they get to sit over there and we don't?'
Julio swung on him and got in his face. He was a good head shorter than the blond guy but he was thickly muscled and had that air of barely restrained violence. He went into his Soup Nazi act.
'You ask me one more time about those tables, meng, and you outta here. You hear me? You out and you never come back!'
Julio loved to use 'meng' whenever he could, especially with the yups and dinks.
As Julio strutted away, the blond guy turned to his companions, grinning.
'I just love this place.'
'So all in all,' Russ was saying, 'a pretty cool gig.'
'Sounds utterly fascinating.'
Russ grinned. 'I can tell you'd rather stick pins in your eyes.'
'Not pins. Nails. Glowing, red-hot nails.'
'Hey, it's not bad being a white hat. It pays and they may go to bat for me and get me back on the Net.' One of the terms of Russ's probation was banishment from the Internet, cruel and unusual for a guy like him. Of course, he'd found numerous ways around that. 'But that's not why I'm here. Got a friend in trouble.'
'This 'friend' wouldn't be named Russ, would he?'
'No. This is a buddy. We've been working on an MMO game hack-'
'NRO… MMO… I don't speak acronymese.'
'Sorry. A massively multiplayer online game.'
'Sounds like bad English.'
'It's a big deal these days. WoW-I mean, Warcraft-has eleven million players, Habbo's got eight, and people average between twenty and thirty hours a week at it.'
Jack shook his head. He got game playing, but didn't get Russ. 'And you want to hack it? Don't you ever learn?'
He laughed. 'Hack's an umbrella term. Me and Munir are working on a way to make MMOs play faster. If it works out the way we hope it will, we'll patent it and be sitting pretty.'
'And this Munir's got trouble? What kind?'
Russ shrugged. 'Don't know. Won't tell me. I think it involves his wife and kid.'
Jack remembered a voice mail that said, Jack, please save my family! He'd decided not to call back.
'And he can't go to the cops,' Russ added. 'You thinking what I'm thinking?'
A kidnap, most likely. One of Jack's rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for feds than he had for local cops.
'Yeah.' He leaned forward. 'Look, Russ, kidnapping is best left to the big boys. They've got assets and manpower and teams specially trained-'
'He's scared shitless to make that call. I told him I knew a guy who could look into it and keep it outside the system.'
'Sorry, Russ. No way.'
5
'Drexler, I have a task for you.'
Ernst straightened in his chair as he recognized the voice: the One.
His office seemed to shrink around him. Contact with the One never failed to make him feel like a frightened child. He grabbed a pen and poised it over the legal pad before him.
'Yes, sir.'
'Do you remember the woman who created such a nuisance last summer?'
'Louise Myers? The woman posting on the nine/eleven sites?'
'Yes. Her.'
Everyone Ernst had sent against that woman had ended up dead. A bit more than a nuisance. Quite a bit more.
'Did you ever find her?'
'No, sir. We gave up on the search some months ago. She's stopped posting and there didn't seem much hope-'
'Resume the search. Widen it. Find her.'
'Is there something I should know?'
'Merely a contingency plan. She has a book I may have use for. She's in the city. I could find her myself if I were there, but I am in the middle of something else at the moment.'
'I'll get on it right away.'
'Also, a package shall be arriving for your safekeeping. As for the woman, remember this: I want no contact. Locate her, but do not contact her.'
'No contact? But-'
