“Hell no. A timing thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Wait a minute-”
“Cut the bullshit, then.”
“Your phone could be tapped, man.”
“I no longer care. The FBI missed Brahma, by the way. They arrested the wrong guy.”
Miles hesitates. “I’m aware.”
I say nothing.
“You never faxed me the Brahma stuff,” he says.
“I just put it through to EROS. Now tell me about the Trojan Horse.”
After a long silence, he begins to speak in the Mister Rogers tone he uses to explain technical matters to people like me. “The code I wrote is hidden in the compressed data of Erin’s JPEG photo, right? When Brahma downloaded the JPEG to his computer, he pulled the horse into his city. When he tried to view it, Erin’s photo went up onto the screen just fine. But right before it did, my program slipped away and made a nest in another part of his computer. Once every twenty-four hours-at one-thirty a.m.-that program will wake up and use Brahma’s EROS interface to dial my EROS mailbox. Once the connection is made, it’ll download a copy of whatever it finds on Brahma’s hard drive. And I’d be very surprised if his name wasn’t in there somewhere.”
I feel a sudden rush of hope. “That’s actually possible?”
“Unless Brahma got suspicious of the single black line in the image and detected the hidden code, it’s going to happen. The only question is how soon.”
“How obvious is this black line?”
“It’s practically invisible. I fixed it so it’s hidden by the dark stone at the bottom of the photo.”
I’m marching around the office with the cordless. “You’re a genius, man! You’re going to get him!”
“We’ll see,” Miles says with uncharacteristic modesty.
“How did you come up with one-thirty a.m.?”
“Analyzed Brahma’s recent traffic patterns. That was one of his least active times.”
“Does his computer have to be on for this to work?”
“Yes.”
“If he’s at his computer when it happens, will he see it?”
“No. If there’s another program running, the Trojan Horse won’t activate.”
“But if his computer’s off, it can’t activate?”
“Right. But I figure he leaves all his computers on, just like me and anybody else who knows anything about computers. Unless it’s a notebook.”
“So tonight he was working at his computer at one-thirty?”
“Bet on it.”
“Damn. You’re going to crack this thing. You’re going to-” I stop in the center of the room, staring at the EROS computer screen.
“Harper?”
“I’ve got e-mail. EROS mail.”
“Who from?”
I walk to the computer and click the mouse on the e-mail icon. “It’s Brahma. He’s using ‘Maxwell.’ I thought EROS was shut down.”
“What’s the time stamp on the message?”
“Thirty minutes ago.”
“Damn!”
“How can he be in the system if it’s shut down?”
“Shut down doesn’t mean switched off. It just means the servers are closed to subscribers. They’re still running.”
“So he’s in the system?”
“He obviously got an e-mail message through. I’ll start checking. What does the message say?”
I read it aloud into the phone: “Erin, I know you told me not to send e-mail, but I had to. I cannot express what I feel at this moment. I received the photograph, and it was astounding. Everything you said was true. I stored the image in a program that allows me to view it from any angle, to modify it as I wish, even create a moving montage. Yet every modification, every turn or inversion, is a desecration of the original. I can only imagine what it must be to behold you in three dimensions. Reflect on all I told you. Imagine what I withheld. Be assured that I am your deliverance. Your Dark Prince.”
“That’s it!” Miles yells. “We’ve got him going and coming, and he has no idea.”
“Maybe,” I allow, strangely sobered by Brahma’s reappearance in my life. “What about the master client list? Did Jan remember dating anybody who seemed suspicious?”
“She’s been out with a couple of doctors, but they’re not likely candidates. She’s hired private investigators to check them out, though. How are you going to answer Brahma’s message?”
“I’m not.”
He sighs unhappily. “Any typos in the message?”
“No. It’s pretty short, though. Why do you keep asking me that?”
“If he’s using voice-rec, he’s back at his home base. And I think that’s New York.”
“Why?”
“The false airplane registration, for one thing. The way that was set up.”
“How do you know about that?”
He ignores the question. “Brahma had to know about this anesthesiologist to pick his plane for a front. Other things point to New York, though. I also happen to like the idea. Know what I mean?”
I make an affirmative noise, not wanting to state the obvious. If Miles is glad Brahma’s home base is New York, it’s not because innocent women are unlikely to die in the next couple of days but because Miles has managed to get back there himself. And if his Trojan Horse works as planned tomorrow night, he can be there for the endgame. I am about to ring off when he speaks again, unable to resist letting me know how deeply this hunt has worked itself into his blood.
“You know what English fox hunters used to say, don’t you?”
“Enlighten me.”
“In at the death.”
I grunt neutrally. “Just remember something. Brahma’s no fox.”
He laughs. “And I’m no Englishman. Ciao.”
After putting down the phone, I save Brahma’s message, then sit down on the bed. It’s a mistake. In seconds I am lying on my back, half conscious and fading fast. As sleep washes over me, I see red-coated men riding horses through misty fields of dying cotton, their horses’ legs thrashing and crackling through the dried brown stalks. Far out in front dogs howl madly as the horses close the gap and then gather in a ring around a tiny hole in a grass- covered hill. Someone lights a bundle of straw, then sets it by the hole while the dogs guard the back entrance to the den. The men on horses swig Scotch and congratulate each other, saying,
Laughter.
CHAPTER 36
