Authors: Kathy Disanto
“Can you do it?”
Shuki Okazawa smirked. “Is there
gold on Mars?” A view of the mines as seen from the Mars Orbital Assay Station
swam onto the lenses of the opaque, wrap-around shades perched atop her button
nose. “Pieceacake. Provided.”
I bit back an exasperated,
Can we
please cut to the chase?
The four-foot-eleven, ninety-pound techno-priestess
known as Shady Lady—both because of her trademark headgear and her well-known
rep for operating on the shifty side—was temperamental. If the petite Asian climbed
on her high horse now, it would take days to cajole her out of the saddle.
We had first met five years ago. A
counterfeiting operation was driving the feds crazy as they tried to follow a diffuse,
masterfully encrypted funny money trail that seemed to start everywhere and end
nowhere. There was this one bank president, Lambert Gottschalk. Tall,
silver-haired, dignified. Every time you turned around he was taking to the
air waves to assure John Q. Public First Federal was working with the
authorities to dam the flow. Guy was always front and center ... a little
too
front and center for my taste. My gut told me Gottschalk was dirty, but when I
suggested law enforcement do some digging on Mister Clean, nobody wanted to
hear it. That left me holding the shovel.
I needed a geek, but not just
any
geek. I needed somebody better than all the gifted-yet-stymied federal geeks
combined. Shuki came highly recommended by one of my back-alley contacts—one
of those
friend of a friend of a friend
referrals. It had cost WNN an
arm and a leg, but she finally agreed to work for us. Trouble was, she came on
board hell-bent on hacking into the bank, the Continental Reserve, and at least
half the world’s money markets.
“They won’t even know I was there!”
But I was out to fix this deal, not
break it worse than it was already broken, and I wanted evidence that would be admissible
in court. Shuki was disappointed but rose to the occasion, designing a
one-of-a-kind marker-byte she could slip into a counterfeit transaction
mid-stream. In less than a week she had the goods on Gottschalk.
She and I have worked together
enough times since for me to swear she’s the slickest, quickest, most creative hacker
on either side of the law. If she’s not unstoppable, she’s a baby step away
from it. Unfortunately, Shuki knows all this, too.
Since I didn’t have time to wheedle,
threaten, or bribe my way back into her good graces, I held onto my patience. “Provided
what?” I asked.
“Provided you got no problem with a
touch of piracy.” Her bright-blue, cupid’s-bow lips curved in a nefarious grin
as her lenses flashed hideously cackling Jolly Rogers.
“You know I like to keep it legal,
Shuki-O.”
“Yeah, so you keep telling me.”
The Rogers shattered into colorful
bits of confetti that arranged, then rearranged, themselves in a series of
intricate patterns as she pondered, lips pursed. Watching her absently finger the
thin, pink braid sprouting from her inch-long, blue-black buzz-cut, I could
almost see the synapses firing. Finally, she shook her head, the lens confetti
coalescing into twin abstract caricatures of Shuki’s frowning face.
“Sorry, Goodie Two-Shoes, there’s no
other way. Unless you wanna leave a trail a third-grader can follow, I need a
back door into the Cloud.” Her glasses came alive with a rapidly shifting
series of schematics laced with streaming lines of code. “We’ll route the
signal through a series of ghost terminals and sneak it in when the data flow
is heaviest. Once I lose it in the other transmissions, I can bounce it
between satellites, downlink to a heavy traffic terminal, pull it back out, and
run it over an anonymous virtual. I’ll delete the whole schmear the second the
transmission ends. You’re not gonna stay on long, right?” I shook my head.
“Good. We should still triple-encrypt, though. Another layer of insurance
never hurts.”
“So the broadcast will be untraceable?”
“Nothing’s untraceable, if you’ve
got the right people on it.”
I was momentarily distracted enough
to ask, “You’re not tracing
this
call, though. Right?”
I had used the disposable’s high-end
quantum-encryption and anti-trace caller ID-alteration features. Programmed in
a plain gray background to disguise my surroundings and placed the call via one
of the thousands of anonymous call-routing services offered by here-today-gone-tomorrow
providers based in Bangladesh or Timbuktu. Not bad for an amateur, but no defense
against Shady Lady. It would take thirty seconds, tops, for her to pinpoint
both me and the silk flower arrangement near my left elbow.
The scowling Shukies made a return
appearance. In red. “I gave you my word, didn’t I?”
“Sorry,” I said, and held up a
placating hand. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m a little on edge here.”
“Yeah?” She sniffed. “Well, like I
was saying, nothing’s untraceable, if you’ve got the right people working on
it.”
I looked her straight in the UVs. “You
don’t want these guys to find you, Shuki. They play for keeps.”
“So I hear. Don’t worry, I’ll drop
off the grid as soon as we’re done. Won’t be the first time I erased my
existence. Meanwhile, the
A.J. Gregson Show
will be on the air and off,”
she snapped her fingers, “like that. They might be able to trace it back to your
general geographic location eventually, but it’ll take them a day or two.”
“A day or two is all I need.” By
that time I would have ditched the throwaway and found a safe, secure place to
await developments. Heck, Jack would probably lock me up himself.
“All right,” I agreed reluctantly, “we’ll
do it your way, just this once. But don’t get caught, okay?”
“Do I ever?”
“Threats, Amanda Joy?”
Nothing says you’re on thin ice quite
like a frosted Virginia drawl. I subdued a wince and forced myself to meet his
gaze head-on. “Only because you won’t listen to reason, Dad.”
“Listening to reason assumes the
party of the first part has said something reasonable.”
Always the lawyer. “I have to do
this.”
His angry gaze softened slightly.
“I know you do. I even understand your reasoning. I’m not sure I agree, but I
respect your professional judgment and realize you’ve got to follow your
convictions. That’s the way your mother and I raised you, and I won’t play the
hypocrite now.” He paused. “Much as it pains my father’s heart not to.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem isn’t what you want to
do, but how you plan to do it. Alone and unprotected. There’s no reason to
risk your life foolishly. Tell me where you are. Let me send Bart.”
My gaze shifted to the bodyguard
making like the Sphinx behind Dad’s left shoulder. Might be nice to have him
watching my back, but …. “He’ll have his hands full covering the rest of you.
That’s why I’m giving Dickson this heads-up, so he can make arrangements.
You’ll have to move fast,” I told Bart, “but you should have time to get the
pieces in place. I can’t do this, unless I know the family’s taken care of.”
I got a tight nod in reply.
“For the love of God, Amanda,” Dad
said, and the rough plea in his voice almost broke my heart.
“Look, I probably won’t get any
reaction at all. Why would they bother? It’s not like I can really hurt
them.” Seeing as how I had bluff and bubkes to work with. “A week from now,
I’ll probably have egg on my face. Dickson will grouse about all the
unnecessary work I caused him. Better to be safe than sorry, that’s all.”
“At least let Agent Eagan know what
you have planned.”
Sure, Dad. Then I’ll shoot myself
in the
other
foot.
But I was taught to respect my
elders, so I said, “He would never let me go through with it.”
“Maybe if I had Bart talk to him.”
“No. Nobody talks to him. Swear,
Dad, or I’ll drop off the grid right now. Then
no one
will know where I
am.”
“Better give her what she wants,
Senator,” Dickson advised. “At least this way she’ll stay put, and Eagan will
know where to find her, once the cat is out of the bag.” He shot me a look
ripe with promise. “He’ll have her in protective custody ten minutes after the
broadcast.”
If that long.
“I don’t appreciate being
blackmailed by my own daughter,” Dad fumed. “I don’t like it one bit.” He
glared at me in clenched-jawed silence, before exhaling in defeat. “But it
appears you have me over a barrel.” Then, “Lord in heaven, how am I ever going
to explain this to Ruth?”
“You’ll think of a way.” Better him
than me, right? “So you promise not to rat me out? You won’t try to find me
and send the cavalry?”
“I promise, damn it.” He skewered
me with a wait-until-I-get-you-home glower. “Of course you know, you and I are
going to have a sit-down when this is over.”
“I figured as much,” I admitted,
smiling ruefully.
But the truth hung unspoken between
us. If my scheme worked out as planned, Dad reading me the riot act would be
the least of my problems.
I was only two steps away from my goal
now, but they were long steps.
One, I needed access to a studio—sans
audience and crew, because I didn’t want any innocent bystanders who might get
in my way or become collateral damage later. The fact that the
Harold
had
the only broadcast facilities in town narrowed my choices to three
,
according
to the website. Like all news organizations, this one would man a night desk,
but in a burg like Hobson’s Hope, where they rolled up the sidewalks early, the
after-hours staff wouldn’t be big enough to play a hand of bridge. So, barring
a local, national, or global catastrophe that would call all hands back on
deck, those
studios should be dark and pirate-able.
Two, I had to come up with a believable
reason to go out after dark. Pitiful, but true.
On a scale of one to ten—one being a
tea party, and ten being a Roman block orgy—Hoper nightlife didn’t hardly crack
the scale. Even the bar, singular, closed early. Since arriving, my social
life could be summed up under the heading “Evenings at Sadie’s.” If I wasn’t reading,
I was watching documentaries with Byron or suffering through chick flicks with
Fannie and Connie. On a good night, I got to talk cop-shop with Happy or play chess
with Sadie and Cosmo. (Biker Dog was a world-class kibitzer. Sitting with his
nose at board level, eyes glued to the action he critiqued each move, giving it
either an
atta-girl
tail twitch or a derisive curl of the lip. Although
how he ever learned to tell a rook from a pawn is anybody’s guess.)
Anyway, thanks to the absence of
anything remotely resembling after-hours entertainment, an unexplained excursion
that lasted beyond eight p.m., no matter how brief, was bound generate innocent
but unwelcome curiosity.
And I had to do this between eight
and ten. Prime time, baby. Sure, Tug would replay the recorded version
ad
nauseam
, but I was going for the big splash, live and in person. That
meant prime time, and
that
meant I needed a hall pass. One so
completely legit Sadie wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. I was still wracking my
brain for an idea two days after talking to Dad, when fate intervened. Hank
Ellison and I crossed paths again at Mocha Joe’s.
“A.J.,” said Hank, “glad I ran into you.
I would have called last night, but I don’t know your number. I was going to ring
the boardinghouse when I got to work.” He flicked what struck me as a nervous smile
across the counter. “Morning, Joe. Give me a jumbo coffee, black.”
“Comin’ right up, Mr. Elllison.”
I squeezed a packet of organic honey
into my chai and licked an errant dribble off my middle finger. “What’s up?”
Obviously ill at ease, he straightened
his navy blue tie. “First of all, I … ah … I wanted to tell you I’m sorry
about Senator Oppenheimer. WNN
said you two were close.”
The ache in my heart throbbed as I
answered softly, “Yeah, we were.”
“So how are you doing?”
“As well as can be expected, I
guess.”
He nodded and lapsed into awkward
silence. I was about to ask if offering condolences was the only reason he had
wanted to get in touch with me, when he cleared his throat. “I know you’re
still …. I mean, I know this must be a tough time for you, but I was wondering
….” He faltered again and ran a hand over his fiery cap of close-cut curls. “Damn,
I hope you won’t think this is out of line.”
I snapped the lid back on my cup. “Spit
it out, Hank.”
“It’s … ah … well, it’s the Garden
Club,” he finished in a rush. “Thanks, Joe,” he mumbled accepting his coffee.
He glanced around. “Look, can we sit down for a minute?”
“Sure.” I followed him to the
window table, and we sat. “Now what about the Garden Club?” In an effort to
put him out of his obvious misery, I smiled and asked, “Bloodshed among the
hydrangeas?”
“Probably,” he said, relaxing a bit,
“but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” He fingered the lid of
his coffee, watching me out of the corner of his eye. “They’re having their
annual Petal Pushers’ Gala tomorrow. Big black-tie to-do, their major
fund-raiser for the year. They pull out all the stops—five-star catering, music,
champagne, the works. My sister was supposed to go with me, but she had to back
out at the last minute, because her son broke his arm at peewee football
practice. I wondered if you might like to use her ticket. Not like a date,”
he hastened to add, “strictly professional. Malcolm Conover’s going to give
the keynote.”
“You can’t be serious. Heart of
Gold Conover? Here?”
I couldn’t see it. Malcolm Conover
was both a multi-billionaire and a world-renowned philanthropist. His name was
practically a household word. Universally admired for his compassion for, and
commitment to, the less fortunate, he donated untold sums to found
state-of-the-art hospitals in third-world countries, construct fabulous
shelters for the homeless, set up cost-free training programs for the
unemployed, and rush tons of relief to disaster-stricken areas.
I shook my head. “You’re telling me
an A-lister like Conover is coming to Hobson’s Hope?”
“I know, right?” He forgot his
discomfort long enough to look at me. “Everybody knows the man is a fiend for gardening,
but why chat up Podunk when you would get the red carpet treatment at the Royal
Botanic Gardens? I did some checking. Turns out our Garden Club president is
his only living relative. Second cousin, twice-removed. On his mother’s side,
I think.” Ellison took a quick sip of coffee. “So, you … uh … want to go? It
might take your mind off your troubles. You can think about it and call me
later, if you want.”
What was to think about? This was
like a gift from God. The perfect explanation for going out. The gala would
give me a chance to do the broadcast. It would also keep me beyond the reach
of the long arm of the law for a couple hours afterwards. Any plan that
offered a temporary reprieve from the wrath of Eagan was a plan I could love.
“I can give you my answer right now.
I’ll go. I have a favor to ask, though.”
I laid out the basics and suggested
he hold his questions until the next night, when my request would become self-explanatory.
Curious but game, he agreed and said he would pick me up at seven-thirty.
As soon as he was out the door, I
slumped back in my chair and blew out a long, slow breath. Okay, the stage was
set. All I had to do tomorrow night was walk out and say my lines.
Imagining how it would feel to spit
in the devil’s eye, and wondering what might happen afterwards, I found myself both
raring to go and scared stiff. I felt dizzy and slightly winded. Closing my
eyes, I fought to control my breathing. It took a good ten minutes, but my
system finally settled down enough so I could finish my chai and be on my way.
When I left Mocha Joe’s, I did
something I almost never do of my own free will. I bought a dress.
After that, I called Tug.