Matt nodded unhappily. He wasn’t used to coming up empty. “The only thing I did turn up was an article about Peter’s first few games. He worked with a friend of his from the orphanage. A guy named Oscar Raitt. I’ve reached his answering service, but so far he hasn’t returned my call.”
“Where is he?”
“Seattle,” Matt answered. “He’s working with Steph Games.”
Catie leaned her head back into the implant chair. “Let me check the files Mark gave me.” She was back in an instant. She smiled. “Steph Games is at the convention. And you’ll never guess who one of the representatives is.”
“Oscar Raitt,” Matt said.
“Bingo. He’s staying at the Mohammed Arms. It’s just across the street. The Bessel made an arrangement with them to handle some of the overflow. Oscar must have gotten here late.”
“Have you got a room number?”
“No. But you should be able to get him through the front desk if he’s in his room.”
Matt took out his foilpack and punched in the hotel’s lobby number. When the call was answered, he asked for Oscar Raitt’s room.
“Hi,” a deep and pleasant voice said. “You’ve reached the voice mail of Oscar Raitt. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you. Thanks.”
“Oscar,” Matt said, “you don’t know me, but I’m looking for Peter Griffen. My name is Matt Hunter.” He keyed the foilpack to send a copy of his Net Force Explorers ID as well. “I’m staying at the Bessel Midtown Hotel, and I’d like—”
The transmission was interrupted by a booming voice. “Hold on, hold on! I want to talk to you!”
Matt held the foilpack and watched the vidscreen come to life. Oscar Raitt was a big guy. He had curly blond hair, a bullet of a head, and a goatee. Acne-marked pale skin covered his oval face.
“What do you know about Peter’s kidnapping?” Oscar asked.
“I was hoping you could help me,” Matt said.
Oscar considered that. “Is Net Force involved in this?”
“I’m helping with the initial investigation.”
Nodding, Oscar said, “Good. Because Peter disappearing like this isn’t right. I’ve heard a lot of dexters around the convention suggesting that Peter helped himself to his own kidnapping. That’s pure DFB, data flowing bad.”
“I’ve got a friend who feels the same way.”
“How about you?” The intensity of Oscar’s gaze was nuclear.
Matt remembered the men with the pistols the night before, how he’d been fired on before the men knew he was only a holo. “I’m a believer.”
“Okay.” Oscar nodded. “I’ve been trying to get people to listen to me that Peter would never do something like this. And there’s more going on than what you think.”
“What?” Matt’s pulse quickened.
“I don’t want to talk over a vidphone connection. How soon can you get here?”
“Give me the room number and five minutes,” Matt said.
Gaspar Latke sat in the cluttered office of his veeyar, his attention locked on the sixteen different screens he’d opened in front of him. Ten of them were different views of the Bessel Midtown Hotel’s banquet room, linked from the buttoncams Heavener’s team had put into the room since Peter Griffen’s kidnapping. Four more monitored the hotel’s main entrances, and two constantly cycled through the various HoloNet news feeds covering Don DeGovia’s interview after offering a million dollars for information about Peter Griffen’s abduction.
Gaspar’s eyes swept the cameras again, watching the people in the banquet room talking. He could remember when a million dollars would have been a big deal to him, too. But since Heavener had taken over his life, he couldn’t remember how many millions and billions of dollars he’d helped the corporation steal from others.
Sweat trickled across his face back in the physical world, and his heart rate was slightly elevated with all the stress.
A small, rectangular window suddenly exploded into view above the sixteen monitors. It showed his heart rate, dangerously near the automatic log-off point. But he knew that would never happen. Before she’d left, Heavener had ordered a doctor to insert a hypodermic shunt into the back of Gaspar’s right hand. Attached to that was an IV bag containing tranquilizers that would suppress his body’s reactions as needed.
They also made it harder for Gaspar to think. He concentrated on his physical self for a moment, blurring the veeyar around the edges, and slowed his breathing, taking deep lungfuls of air.
He returned his full attention to the veeyar, then swept his gaze over the banquet room again. He spotted Madeline Green talking to a young man in the middle of the crowd.
“Identify,” Gaspar ordered, locking a capture window over the young man.
“Derek Sommers,” the computer answered. “IPG games. Continue?”
“No.” Gaspar couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized Derek. It only showed how rattled he was. He stood up suddenly and launched himself through the ceiling, passing through it easily and following one of the buttoncams’ telecommunications signal to the hotel through the Net zones. All the security programs and the firewalls had been punched clear by his viruses earlier.
In seconds he was in the banquet room in holoform. Other game design publishers were there in holo as well, not truly trusting circumstances after the kidnapping. And some of them never appeared in public anyway for their own reasons.
The holoprojectors gave Gaspar virtual substance, but even as he started to appear, he triggered a program he had prepared. Instead of looking like himself or his usual proxy, he grafted on the appearance of Matt Hunter. He knew the real Matt was working online, in one of the other girls’ rooms. Heavener hadn’t bugged the Explorers’ rooms, but she had ordered buttoncams placed in the hallways beside their rooms.
Shaking on the inside, hoping the proxy would hold under the scrutiny of the men Heavener had at the banquet, Gaspar approached Madeline Green. “Hey, Madeline.” He tried to sound casual, even forced a smile. “Got a minute?”
She turned to Derek and excused herself, then walked toward a small empty area beside one of the walls surrounding the table areas.
Gaspar hadn’t realized how pretty she looked in the cocktail dress until that moment. Watching through the monitors back in his veeyar just hadn’t been the same.
She turned on him, arms folding across her breasts and her brown eyes stern. “Maybe we need to start with you telling me who you are, because you’re sure not anyone I know.”
17
Gaspar froze, staring back at Madeline Green, not knowing how he’d lost control of the situation so quickly. “What?”
“All my friends call me Maj,” she said. “Ergo, you’re not one of them. No matter how much you look like Matt Hunter.”
Glancing at the crowd around them, wondering if anyone was paying too much attention, Gaspar pleaded, “Wait! I can explain!”
“Ten seconds,” Maj said, “and I’m starting counting now.”
Looking at her, Gaspar thought back to what he knew of her. “Peter Griffen’s in real trouble. I don’t think he knows how deep he’s into it.”
“Has he been kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
“Please lower your voice,” Gaspar said. “This room is being monitored by the people I work for.”
