his mouth, Becker realized his mistake.
The agent's eyes narrowed. 'Your lover is fifteen years old?'
'No!' Becker gasped. 'I mean…' Shit. 'If you could just help me, it's very important.'
'I'm sorry,' the woman said coldly.
'It's not the way it sounds. If you could just-'
'Good night, sir.' The woman yanked the metal grate down over the counter and disappeared into a back room.
Becker groaned and stared skyward. Smooth, David. Very smooth. He scanned the open concourse. Nothing. She must have sold the ring and made the flight. He headed for the custodian. 'Has visto a una nina?' he called over the sound of the tile buffer. 'Have you seen a girl?'
The old man reached down and killed the machine. 'Eh?'
'Una nina?' Becker repeated. 'Pelo rojo, azul, y blanco. Red white and blue hair.'
The custodian laughed. 'Que fea. Sounds ugly.' He shook his head and went back to work.
David Becker stood in the middle of the deserted airport concourse and wondered what to do next. The evening had been a comedy of errors. Strathmore's words pounded in his head: Don't call until you have the ring. A profound exhaustion settled over him. If Megan sold the ring and made the flight, there was no telling who had the ring now.
Becker closed his eyes and tried to focus. What's my next move? He decided to consider it in a moment. First, he needed to make a long-overdue trip to a rest room.
Chapter 64
Susan stood alone in the dimly lit silence of Node 3. The task at hand was simple: Access Hale's terminal, locate his key, and then delete all of his communication with Tankado. There could be no hint of Digital Fortress anywhere.
Susan's initial fears of saving the key and unlocking Digital Fortress were nagging at her again. She felt uneasy tempting fate; they'd been lucky so far. North Dakota had miraculously appeared right under their noses and been trapped. The only remaining question was David; he had to find the other pass-key. Susan hoped he was making progress.
As she made her way deeper into Node 3, Susan tried to clear her mind. It was odd that she felt uneasy in such a familiar space. Everything in Node 3 seemed foreign in the dark. But there was something else. Susan felt a momentary hesitation and glanced back at the inoperable doors. There was no escape. Twenty minutes, she thought.
As she turned toward Hale's terminal, she noticed a strange, musky odor-it was definitely not a Node 3 smell. She wondered if maybe the deionizer was malfunctioning. The smell was vaguely familiar, and with it came an unsettling chill. She pictured Hale locked below in his enormous steaming cell. Did he set something on fire? She looked up at the vents and sniffed. But the odor seemed to be coming from nearby.
Susan glanced toward the latticed doors of the kitchenette. And in an instant she recognized the smell. It was cologne… and sweat.
She recoiled instinctively, not prepared for what she saw. From behind the lattice slats of the kitchenette, two eyes stared out at her. It only took an instant for the horrifying truth to hit her. Greg Hale was not locked on the sublevels-he was in Node 3! He'd slipped upstairs before Strathmore closed the trapdoor. He'd been strong enough to open the doors all by himself.
Susan had once heard that raw terror was paralyzing-she now knew that was a myth. In the same instant her brain grasped what was happening, she was in motion-stumbling backward through the dark with a single thought in mind: escape.
The crash behind her was instantaneous. Hale had been sitting silently on the stove and extended his legs like two battering rams. The doors exploded off their hinges. Hale launched himself into the room and thundered after her with powerful strides.
Susan knocked over a lamp behind her, attempting to trip Hale as he moved toward her. She sensed him vault it effortlessly. Hale was gaining quickly.
When his right arm circled her waist from behind, it felt like she'd hit a steel bar. She gasped in pain as the wind went out of her. His biceps flexed against her rib cage.
Susan resisted and began twisting wildly. Somehow her elbow struck cartilage. Hale released his grip, his hands clutching his nose. He fell to his knees, hands cupped over his face.
'Son of a-' He screamed in pain.
Susan dashed onto the door's pressure plates saying a fruitless prayer that Strathmore would in that instant restore power and the doors would spring open. Instead, she found herself pounding against the glass.
Hale lumbered toward her, his nose covered with blood. In an instant, his hands were around her again-one of them clamped firmly on her left breast and the other on her midsection. He yanked her away from the door.
She screamed, her hand outstretched in futile attempt to stop him.
He pulled her backward, his belt buckle digging into her spine. Susan couldn't believe his strength. He dragged her back across the carpet, and her shoes came off. In one fluid motion, Hale lifted her and dumped her on the floor next to his terminal.
Susan was suddenly on her back, her skirt bunched high on her hips. The top button of her blouse had released, and her chest was heaving in the bluish light. She stared up in terror as Hale straddled her, pinning her down. She couldn't decipher the look in his eyes. It looked like fear. Or was it anger? His eyes bore into her body. She felt a new wave of panic.
Hale sat firmly on her midsection, staring down at her with an icy glare. Everything Susan had ever learned about self-defense was suddenly racing through her mind. She tried to fight, but her body did not respond. She was numb. She closed her eyes.
Oh, please, God. No!
Chapter 65
Brinkerhoff paced Midge's office. 'Nobody bypasses Gauntlet. It's impossible!'
'Wrong,' she fired back. 'I just talked to Jabba. He said he installed a bypass switch last year.'
The PA looked doubtful. 'I never heard that.'
'Nobody did. It was hush-hush.'
'Midge,' Brinkerhoff argued, 'Jabba's compulsive about security! He would never put in a switch to bypass-'
'Strathmore made him do it,' she interrupted.
Brinkerhoff could almost hear her mind clicking.
'Remember last year,' she asked, 'when Strathmore was working on that anti-Semitic terrorist ring in California?'
Brinkerhoff nodded. It had been one of Strathmore's major coups last year. Using TRANSLTR to decrypt an intercepted code, he had uncovered a plot to bomb a Hebrew school in Los Angeles. He decrypted the terrorist's message only twelve minutes before the bomb went off, and using some fast phone work, he saved three hundred schoolchildren.
'Get this,' Midge said, lowering her voice unnecessarily. 'Jabba said Strathmore intercepted that terrorist code six hours before that bomb went off.'
Brinkerhoff's jaw dropped. 'But… then why did he wait-'
'Because he couldn't get TRANSLTR to decrypt the file. He tried, but Gauntlet kept rejecting it. It was encrypted with some new public key algorithm that the filters hadn't seen yet. It took Jabba almost six hours to adjust them.'
Brinkerhoff looked stunned.
'Strathmore was furious. He made Jabba install a bypass switch in Gauntlet in case it ever happened again.'
