Well, he was going to be disappointed, unless he could talk Betty the waitress into it, which didn’t seem like much of a chore.
When she asked questions about his work, he managed
to slip them, like a good boxer does punches, giving her
almost no information. He walked around, he said. He
.watched for trouble. From time to time, he ran errands.
Nothing special. Just a job.
Toni smiled and nodded and pretended to be impressed anyhow. He wasn’t telling the truth. If something was going on upon this ship, Santos here was a part of it, she was sure of that. But-short of blowing in his ear and going off to his cabin with him-how was she going to find out what he knew?
“You have not had supper yet,” he said. “We should go and eat.”
Toni realized that extracting herself from this would be more difficult if they had dinner, and she was about to offer an excuse-a sudden unexpected visit from Mr. Red ought to do it-when Santos glanced away from her at somebody who had just entered the bar. He looked back quickly, and he wore a small smile when he did.
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Toni looked at the entrance.
There was a strikingly beautiful woman standing there. She looked Asian, maybe Amerasian, Toni couldn’t pin her nationality down exactly. She was tall, had black hair past her shoulders, so black it looked like shimmering ink. She wore a red blouse, tucked into a matching skirt that stopped four inches above her knees, hose, and heels. The domes were snug enough to reveal a svelte hourglass figure, but not so tight as to look trashy. Toni was aware that the conversational background noise suddenly dropped in volume, and a quick glance around showed virtually everybody in the place was looking at the new arrival.
Except Santos. And given his obvious attraction to women, that seemed odd.
“Who is that?” she asked.
He looked at her. “Pardon?’
“In the red, over there.”
He looked, pretending not to have seen the woman before. “Ah. That is Jasmine Chance.” His accent thickened a bit, so that his next sentence came out, “She work on de boat, too.” Not Hispanic, Toni decided. Brazilian, maybe.
The woman, meanwhile, was on the move, and it looked to Toni as if she was heading right toward their table, smiling like the Cheshire cat as she walked, heels clicking in the suddenly quiet bar. Here was a femme fatale.
Sure enough, she approached their table and stopped, still smiling. “Roberto.”
“Hello, Missy,” he said. He grinned back.
While it was all pleasant and smiley on the surface, Toni immediately felt that charged atmosphere that couples who’d been arguing sometimes had-just before they put on their public faces.
Bad blood here.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Rob
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to?” Another smile, and if ever an expression was fake, i one was. It had crocodile all over it. Santos held up a lazy hand. “This is Mary Johnson, she an executive assistant from Falls Church, Virginia, this is Jasmine Chance. Head of Security. My
“A secretary,” Chance said, looking at Santos. Con-
pt practically dripped from her voice. Toni felt a strong urge to stand up and slap the woman that patronizing tone, but that wouldn’t be hi character,
at all.
“There was something you wanted?” he said. Chance never moved her penetrating gaze from him. “An important security matter came up. Perhaps your end could excuse us for a moment?” Toni would have loved to stay and listen to this con- pversation, but it provided the easy exit she needed. She “Oh, of course. I was just about to leave anyway. |{‘m feeling a bit under the weather.”
“I’m so sorry,” Chance said, the words absolutely de|void of any sympathy at all.
“No need to leave,” Santos said. “I’m sure this won’t I take long.” He wasn’t looking at Toni, either, but at IChance.
If looks could kill, anybody walking between these two | would have been turned into crispy critters as if bathed fby flamethrowers.
Toni stood. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Chance. Thank you i>for the drink, Roberta. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
She hurried away, just in time. She had to call Alex, and the window for the call was pretty narrow.
Back in her cabin, she went into the small bathroom .and started the shower. That her room might be bugged ? was unlikely, but it paid to be careful. Once the water was running and making noise, she used her disguised scrambler phone to call Alex, vox only, no visual. There was a long-distance microwave repeater on the ship-they I couldn’t expect people to be without their phones even
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out here-but Toni’s call went through a military comsat she knew would be footprinting the area for the next ten minutes.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” she said.
“How’s it going?”
“Fine. I haven’t seen Jay’s guy.”
“That’s okay, we think he’s in Germany. Anything else?”
“I’ve managed to meet a couple of people who look interesting. You might have Jay run their names and see what he can come up with.”
“Shoot.”
She gave him Santos and Chance, described them. “Santos says he’s with ship security, and that Chance is his boss. They have some kind of thing going between them, if that’s any help.”
“I’ll pass it on to Jay. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. I miss you and Little Alex.”
“We miss you, too. He’s fine, Guru 1s fine, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about here. Listen, I need you to plug whatever you’ve got, pix, thoughts, diagrams, into a file and upload it to one of the secure mailboxes. Mark it for John’s attention.”
“I won’t be able to do it until the next comsat pass,” she said. “Unless you want to risk using the ship’s transmitter.”
“No, it’ll wait a couple hours.”
“What’s up?”
He explained Jay’s theory about CyberNation’s train and barge. He finished by saying, “I spoke to the director. Ordinarily, the government would be hesitant to move with so little hard evidence, but the powers-that-be uplev- els are really nervous about this whole situation. There are going to be some strings pulled, some favors called in. The German train and the Japanese barge are going to get unexpected visitors. If what Jay minks is right, that’ll take two of the three computer loci out of action.”
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“Leaving the ship,” she said.
“General Howard is working on that,” he said.
“You’re serious?”
“As a triple bypass. If this nest of electronic snakes is
(about to strike, we need to stop them before they do. Both Jay and John think they might escalate things, from pure software attacks to physical attacks on servers and phone ompanies. That would really screw things up royally.” “Yes. So, I’m the fifth column agent?” “No. You leave as scheduled. Finish up, catch the flight |back to the Mainland, come home tomorrow.” “Alex-”
“Not open for discussion,” he said. “If Net Force’s mil- litary arm has to flex its muscle, that’s who does the job, loot the Assistant Deputy Commander.”
She knew he was right. She was a mother, she had a I’toddler at home. She didn’t have any business being on a military raid. Still, she felt the excitement at the idea. “All right,” she said.
The signal started to cut in and out, so they finished ttheir conversation and discommed. Toni shut off the f. shower and went to collect her flatscreen. She would make : notes, draw maps, and add in the pictures she had taken, I and fold them into a compressed and encoded packet to send to John Howard via the scrambled cell phone the next time the comsat overflew her. One more day on the ship, and she would head home. It felt good to have gotten back into the field. And while she would have liked to stay on board if Net Force mounted an assault, she had other responsibilities now. It was the right thing to do. Although she hated thinking like a grownup. It made her feel… old…
33
In the Air over the Central Atlantic
{teller’s jet was more than halfway to Miami when he got the frantic call from the train’s SysOp.
German authorities had stopped them for a “health inspection,” looking for, they said, a carrier of Lassa Valley Fever. Trash protocols had been instigated as soon as the police had arrived, the SysOp said. The onboard computers would be blank before anybody could download anything, all files burned and unrecoverable. There wouldn’t be any sign of anything particularly illegal. Certainly it would seem suspicious, to have that kind of state-of-the- art computer setup on a train, and more suspicious that the machines were all empty, but there would be nothing the German authorities could charge anybody with that would stick. They could haul everybody in, but no evidence, no case, and all the players knew all they had to do was sit tight and CyberNation’s lawyers would eventually spring them. Keller and his crew were safe, and they were what made the programs work.