went on.
Andy suddenly looked nervous.
“On the other hand,” David said, “computer courses or awards should be a matter of public record.” He gave his pal a big, cheerful grin. “Gee, I’m so glad
Matt was still chuckling as he headed for his first-period class.
There wasn’t much else for Matt to enjoy during the day. With all the investigation he’d been doing, his classwork had suffered. It seemed word immediately went out on TeacherNet, because every class instructor seemed to find some way to drag him over the coals.
At lunch, Sandy Braxton was sympathetic. “Mr. Fairlie really nailed you today,” the rich kid said. “I thought he only saved those kind of zingers for me.” Sandy started to laugh, but cut off in mid-chuckle. “I hope our project isn’t distracting you too much.”
Whatever his worry, Sandy seemed to forget it as he talked about something he’d discovered in his research on the Battle of Gettysburg. It turned out he had an ancestor who’d fought at the battle. “My great-great-great- great-great-grandfather joined a Virginia regiment and fought until Gettysburg,” Sandy said. “He got his arm shot off.”
“Did it happen during Pickett’s Charge?” Matt asked. If he remembered correctly, the general had led Virginian troops on his ill-fated attack.
“Nah. Great-Whatever-Grandpa was hit during the first day of the battle.”
“Oh,” Matt said. It was easy to see how Sandy got distracted into the gossipy side of history. Maybe he was interested in society gossip, too?
Matt decided to see. “Hey, Sandy, I’ve been hearing rumors about something weird going on among the diplomatic brats in town. Do you know anything about it?”
The other boy only shrugged, shaking his head. “My family doesn’t have much to do with the diplomatic corps,” he said. “Except my daddy made a bunch of money off some of them. He’s developing a gated community down by the Anacostia River. Thought there’d be a bunch of folks from Capitol Hill who’d move in. Instead, it’s, like, wall-to-wall ambassadors. Not that Daddy minds.” Sandy gave him a big, slow smile. “Money is money, no matter what country it comes from.”
At home after school, Matt tried to do some of the research for his joint paper with Sandy. But he kept slipping back to the list of ambassadors’ kids, as if just a little more study might unlock some hidden secret.
One thing he noticed was that the addresses seemed to clump together into two bunches, one in a zip code for Northwest Washington, the other in a zip code in the Southwest.
Matt knew that most of the embassies clustered in D.C.’s northwest corner. Could all these Southwest addresses represent foreign families who’d moved to the development Sandy had talked about?
Setting a search engine to work on the question, Matt was a little shocked at the number of hits that quickly showed up. He asked for an overview, and an article titled “Population Shift — Washington, D.C.” appeared in holoform over his computer console. Browsing through, Matt learned how the Federal Government and private developers had changed the face of the city over the years. One of the things that surprised him most was an old flatfilm picture taken less than a hundred years ago. It showed the dome of the Capitol Building rising over the backyard laundry of a beat-up wooden house that looked like something out of a hillbilly comedy.
Matt couldn’t believe that such an eyesore would have been tolerated on Capitol Hill. Now it was the site of an old office building and underground parking garage. Still, the area southwest of the Capitol had been home to very poor people for fifty years after that picture had been taken. Pockets of poverty had remained even after the turn of the century.
The article even showed pictures of the new gated community, a place called the Gardens at Carrollsburg, after an old town that existed there before the city of Washington had even been laid out. Matt had to laugh when he discovered that in later and poorer days the place had been called Buzzard Point.
He closed out the article, and had gone back to staring at the list of names when his computer began beeping — a file transfer was underway.
It was David, reporting in. His search for computer wizards among the diplomatic community had clicked with very few people on the list connected with Cat Corrigan. High on David’s computer-geek list was Sean McArdle, the Irish ambassador’s son. Matt noticed that he lived in the Gardens at Carrollsburg.
But it seemed that Caitlin didn’t get along with real hacker types.
Probably thinks of them being as Dexters, Matt thought, running down the list. There were just a couple of names, none of them in the top ten.
David included a news clip on how Gerald Savage boasted about being almost computer-illiterate. Apparently, that was a swipe at all the Irish programmers invading the British job market. David had thought it was pretty funny, but Matt wasn’t laughing. That sort of ignorance — and taking pride in it — was entirely in character for Gerry the Savage.
Matt frowned as he continued to study the two lists, plus the clip and head shot of Gerald Savage.
“Computer,” he suddenly said. “Prepare search engine Newshound. Search nonclassified media databases for any references to associates of Gerald Savage. Emphasis on violence and pranks. Sort by frequency of reference. Then compare with present lists.”
Sighing, Matt further ordered the computer to work in the background while projecting the datascrip Sandy Braxton had given him. Might as well get some reading done, Matt told himself. All that searching and sorting will take a long time.
Matt had moved on to doing homework when the computer beeped again. The job wasn’t done. Instead, it was Andy Moore sending an electronic file. Not surprisingly, Andy’s report was a lot more casual than David’s.
Yo, Matt!
D. G. was right. Ambassadors do not like to admit they don’t know English. But there were two exceptions in the diplo-brat department — kids who might reasonably expect to be using Idiom Savant. Back when smash-dancing was hot, Cat went out with a German guy named Gunter Mohler. Good choice for a partner if you’re doing something that’s half dance, half karate. He’s built like a mix between a football linebacker and an autotruck. Seems he was brought up by his widowed mom to be a “true German”—so he only speaks the tongue of his forefathers. That must be an annoyance for his stepfather, who’s a trade attache at the embassy.
Then there’s Serge Woronov, whose father is the ambassador from Slobodan Narodny, the new Balkan Free State. You know how fiercely nationalistic they are in that part of the world. Foreign languages are strictly zabranjeno — forbidden — especially for anyone with political ambitions.
These are the only two I’ve been able to find out about.
Hope it helps.
Matt was chuckling, shaking his head, when the computer beeped yet again.
A quick glance at the holo display showed that his search had been completed.
“Okay,” Matt muttered. “Let’s check out
It was like those Venn diagrams in school. While each suspect might have a wide circle of friends, Matt was only checking where those circles overlapped. There were still a lot of people, but there were a lot less.
Matt scowled. Andy’s list wasn’t too helpful after all. Both Gunter Mohler and Serge Woronov appeared on the Savage and Corrigan pal rosters.
Another name on both lists caught Matt’s attention. It seemed strangely familiar. “Computer,” he ordered. “Subject Lucien Valery. Recent media references.”
The computer holo flickered, then showed a story about a prank involving a local fencing instructor. The teacher had penalized a French fencer — Lucien Valery — while refereeing competition. When he went to drive home, the official had been caught by a dye bomb that marked his skin red, white, and blue — the colors of the French flag.
Valery had been suspected of setting the joke bomb, since he had a long history of pulling pranks. But nothing had been proven — perhaps because he was the son of a French diplomat. Anyway, the prank had backfired. Lucien Valery had lost a chance to try out for his country’s Olympic fencing team.
