'Not necessarily,' he said, but he could not fool me.
'Tell me the truth.'
He was thinking, looking for a way out.
'You assigned Lucy to the security floor, didn't you?' I went on. 'It wasn't Burgess. It wasn't because of this log-in time you just showed me. That's flimsy.'
'Not to some people it isn't,' he said. 'Someone over there raised a red flag and asked me to get rid of her. I said not now. We would watch her first.'
'Are you telling me you think Lucy is the virus?' I was incredulous.
'No.' He leaned forward in his chair. 'I think Gault is the virus. And I want Lucy to help us track him.'
I looked at him as if he had just pulled out a gun and shot it into the air. 'No,' I said with feeling.
'Kay, listen to me . . .'
'Absolutely not. Leave her out of this. She's not a goddam FBI agent.'
'You're overreacting . . .'
But I would not let him talk. 'She's a college student, for God's sake. She has no business-' My voice caught. 'I know her. She'll try to communicate with him. Don't you see?' I looked fiercely at him. 'You don't know her, Benton!'
'I think I do.'
'I won't let you use her like this.'
'Let me explain.'
'You should shut CAIN down,' I said.
'I can't do that. It might be the only trail Gault leaves.' He paused as I continued to glare at him. 'Lives are at stake. Gault hasn't finished killing.'
I blurted, 'That's exactly why I don't want Lucy even thinking about him!'
Wesley was silent. He looked toward the shut door, then back at me. 'He already knows who she is,' he said.
'He doesn't know much about her.'
'We don't know how much he knows about her. But at the very least he probably knows what she looks like.'
I could not think. 'How?'
'From when your American Express gold card was stolen,' he said. 'Hasn't Lucy told you?'
'Told me what?'
'The things she kept in her desk.' When he could see I did not know what he was talking about, he abruptly caught himself. I sensed he had brushed against details he would not tell me.
'What things?' I asked.
'Well,' he went on, 'she kept a letter in her desk at ERF - a letter from you. The one that had the credit card in it.'
'I know about that.'
'Right. Also inside this letter was a photograph of you and Lucy together in Miami. You were sitting in your mother's backyard, apparently.'
I shut my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as he grimly went on.
'Gault also knows Lucy is your point of greatest vulnerability. I don't want him fixing on her, either. But what I'm trying to suggest to you is that he probably already has. He's broken into a world where she is god. He has taken over CAIN.'
'So that's why you moved her,' I said.
Wesley watched me as he struggled for a way to help. I saw the hell behind his cool reserve and sensed his terrible pain. He, too, had children.
'You moved her on the security floor with me,' I said. 'You're afraid Gault might come after her.'
Still he did not speak.
'I want her to return to UVA, to Charlottesville. I want her back there tomorrow,' I said with a ferocity I did not feel. What I really wanted was for Lucy not to know my world at all, and that would never be possible.
'She can't,' he simply said. 'And she can't stay with you in Richmond. To tell you the truth, she really can't stay anywhere right now but here. This is where she's safest.'
'She can't stay here the rest of her life,' I said.
'Until he's caught . . .'
'He may never be caught, Benton!'
He looked wearily at me. 'Then both of you may end up in our Protected Witness Program.'
'I will not give up my identity. My life. How is that any better than being dead?'
'It is better,' he said quietly, and I knew he was seeing bodies kicked, decapitated, and with bullet wounds.
I got up. 'What do I do about my stolen credit card?' I numbly asked.
'Cancel it,' he said. 'I was hoping we could use money from seized assets, from drug raids. But we can't.' He paused as I shook my head in disbelief. 'It's not my choice. You know the budget problems. You have them, too.'
'Lord,' I said. 'I thought you wanted to trail him.'
'Your credit card isn't likely to show us where he is, only where he's been.'
'I can't believe this.'
'Blame it on the politicians.'
'I don't want to hear about budget problems or politicians,' I exclaimed.
'Kay, the Bureau can barely afford ammunition for the ranges these days. And you know our staffing problems. I'm personally working a hundred and thirty-nine cases even as we speak. Last month two of my best people retired.
'Now my unit's down to nine. Nine. That's a total of ten of us trying to cover the entire United States plus any cases submitted from abroad. Hell, the only reason we have you is we don't pay you.'
'I don't do this for money.'
'You can cancel your Amex card,' he said wearily. 'I'd do it immediately.'
I looked a long time at him and left.
10
Lucy had finished her run and showered by the time I returned to the room. Dinner was being served in the cafeteria, but she was at ERF working.
'I'm going back to Richmond tonight,' I said to her on the phone.
'I thought you were spending the night,' she said, and I detected disappointment.
'Marino's coming to get me,' I said.
'When?'
'He's on his way. We could have dinner before I go-'
'Okay. I'd like Jan to come.'
'That's fine,' I said. 'We should include Marino, though. He's already on the road.'
Lucy was silent.
'Why don't you and I visit alone first?' I suggested.
'Over here?'
'Yes. I'm cleared as long as you let me through all those scanners, locked doors, X-ray machines and heat-seeking missiles.'
'Well, I'll have to check with the attorney general. She hates it when I call her at home.'
'I'm on my way.'
The Engineering Research Facility was three concrete-and-glass pods surrounded by trees, and one could not get into the parking lot without stopping at a guard booth that was no more than a hundred feet from the one at the Academy's entrance. ERF was the FBI's most classified division, its employees required to scan their fingerprints into biometric locks before Plexiglas doors would let them in. Lucy was waiting for me in front. It was almost eight p.m.
'Hi,' she said.
'There are at least a dozen cars in the parking lot,' I said. 'Do people usually work this late?'
'They drift in and out at all hours. Most of the time I never see them.'
We walked through a vast space of beige carpet and walls, passing shut doors leading into laboratories where scientists and engineers worked on projects they could not discuss. I had only vague notions of what went on here beyond Lucy's work with CAIN. But I knew the mission was to technically enhance whatever job a special agent might have, whether it was surveillance, or shooting or rappelling from a helicopter, or using a robot in a raid. For Gault to have gotten inside here was the equivalent of him wandering freely through NASA or a nuclear power plant. It was unthinkable.
'Benton told me about the photograph that was in your desk,' I said to Lucy as we boarded an elevator.
She keyed us up to the second floor. 'Gault already knows what you look like, if that's what you're worried about. He's seen you before - at least twice.'
'I don't like that he might now know what you look like,' I said pointedly.
'You're assuming he has the photograph.'
We entered a gray rabbit warren of cubicles with workstations and printers and stacks of paper. CAIN himself was behind glass in an air-conditioned space filled with monitors, modems and miles of cable hidden beneath a raised floor.
&nb
sp; 'I've got to check something,' she said, scanning her fingerprint to unlock CAIN's door.
I followed her into chilled air tense with the static of invisible traffic moving at incredible speeds. Modem lights blinked red and green, and an eighteen-inch video display announced CAIN in bold bright letters that looped and whorled like the fingerprint of the person who was just scanned in.
'The photograph was in the envelope with the American Express card he apparently now has,' I said. 'Logic would tell you that he may have both.'
'Someone else could have it.' She was intensely watching the modems, then glancing at the time on her screen and making notes. 'It depends on who actually went through my desk.'
We had always assumed it was Carrie alone who had broken in and taken whatever she wanted. Now I was not so sure.
'Carrie may not have been by herself,' I said.
Lucy did not reply.
'In fact, I don't believe Gault could have resisted the opportunity to come in here. I think he was with her.'
'That's awfully risky when you're wanted for murder.'
'Lucy, it's awfully risky to break into here to begin with.'
She continued making notes while CAIN's colors swirled on the screen and lights glowed on and off. CAIN was a space-age squid with tentacles connecting law enforcement entities here and abroad, his head an upright beige box with various buttons and slots. As cold air whirred, I almost wondered if he knew what we were saying.
'What else might have disappeared from your office?' I then said. 'Is there anything else missing?'
She was studying a modem's flashing light, her face perplexed. She glanced up at me. 'It's got to be coming in through one of these modems.'
'What is?' I asked, puzzled.
She sat before a keyboard, struck the space bar and the CAIN screen saver vanished. She logged on and began typing UNIX commands that made no sense to me. Next she pulled up the System Administrator Menu and got into the audit log.
'I've been coming in here routinely and checking the traffic on the modems,' she said, scanning. 'Unless this person is physically located in this building and hardwired into the system, he's got to be dialing in by modem.'
'There's no other way,' I said.
'Well' - she took a deep breath - 'theoretically you could use a receiver to pick up keyboard input via Van Eck radiation. Some Soviet agents were doing that not so long ago.'
'But that wouldn't actually get you inside the system,' I said.
'It could get you passwords and other information that might get you in if you had the dial-in number.'
'Were those changed after the break-in?'
'Of course. I changed everything I could think of, and in fact, the dial-in numbers have been changed again since. Plus we have callback modems. You call CAIN and he calls you back to make certain you're legit.' She looked discouraged and angry.
'If you attached a virus to a program,' I said, trying to help, 'wouldn't it change the size of the file? Couldn't that be a way to find out where the virus is?'
'Yes, it would change the file size,' she said. 'But the problem is that the UNIX program used to scan files for something like that is called checksum, and it's not cryptographically secure. I'm sure who ever did this included a balancing checksum to cause the bytes in the virus program to disappear.'
'So the virus is invisible.'
She nodded, distracted, and I knew she was thinking about Carrie. Then Lucy typed a who command to see what law enforcement agencies were logged on, if any. New York was. So were Charlotte and Richmond, and Lucy pointed out their modems to me. Lights danced across the front of them as data was transmitted over telephone lines.
'We should go eat dinner,' I said gently to my niece.
She typed more commands. 'I'm not hungry now.'
'Lucy, you can't let this take over your life.'
'You're one to talk.'
She was right.
'War has been declared,' she added. 'This is war.'
'This is not Carrie,' I said of the woman who, I suspected, had been more than Lucy's friend.
'It doesn't matter who it is.' She continued typing.
But it did. Carrie Grethen did not murder people and mutilate their bodies. Temple Gault did.
'Was anything else of yours taken during the break-in?' I tried again.
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me, her eyes glinting. 'Yes, if you must know,' she said. 'I had a big manilla envelope that I didn't want to leave in my dorm rooms at UVA or here because of roommates and other people in and out. It was personal. I thought it was safer in my desk up here.'
'What was in this envelope?'
'Letters, notes, different things. Some of them were from you, including the letter with the photograph and charge card. Most were from her.' Her face colored. 'There were a few notes from Grans.'
'Letters from Carrie?' I did not understand. 'Why would she write you? Both of you were here at Quantico and you didn't know each other before last fall.'
'We sort of did,' she said, her face turning a brighter red.
'How?' I asked, baffled.
'We met through a computer bulletin board, through Prodigy over the summer. I saved all the printouts of the notes we sent.'
'Did you deliberately try to arrange it so you could be at ERF together?' I said as my disbelief grew.
'She was already in the process of getting hired by the Bureau,' Lucy answered. 'She encouraged me to try to get an internship here.'
My silence was heavy.
'Look,' she demanded. 'How could I have known?'
'I guess you couldn't have,' I said. 'But she set you up, Lucy. She wanted you here. This was planned long before she met you through Prodigy. She probably had already met Gault in that northern Virginia spy shop, then they decided she should meet you.'
She angrily stared off.
'God,'1 said with a loud sigh. 'You were lured right into it.' I stared off, almost sick. 'It's not just because of how good you are at what you do. It's also because of me.'
'Don't try to turn this into your fault. I hate it when you do that.'
'You are my niece. Gault has probably known that for a while.'
'I am also well known in the computer world.' She looked defiantly at me. 'Other people in the computer world have heard of me. Everything doesn't have to be because of you.'
'Does Benton know how you met Carrie?'
'I told him a long time ago.'
'Why didn't you tell me?'
'I didn't want to. I feel bad enough. It's personal.' She wouldn't look at me. 'It was between Mr. Wesley and me. And more to the point, I didn't do anything wrong.'
'Are you telling me that this large manilla envelope was missing after the break-in?'
'Yes.'
'Why would someone want it?'
'She would,' she said bitterly. 'It had things in it that she'd written to me.'
'Has she tried to contact you since then?'
'No,' she said as if she hated Carrie Grethen.
'Come on,'1 said in the firm tone of a mother. 'Let's go find Marino.'
He was in the Boardroom, where I tried a Zima and he ordered another beer. Lucy was off to find Janet, and this gave Marino and me a few minutes to talk.
'I don't know how you stand that stuff,' he said, disdainfully eyeing my drink.
'I don't know how I'll stand it either since I've never had one before.' I took a sip. It was actually quite good, and I said so.
'Maybe you should try something before you judge it,' I added.
'I don't drink queer beer. And I don't have to try a lot of things to know they ain't for me.'
'I guess one of the major differences between us, Marino, is I am not constantly worried about whether people think I'm gay.'
'Some people think you are,' he said.
I was amused. 'Well, rest assured nobody thinks you are,' I said. 'The only thing most people assume about you is that you are a bigot.'
Marino yawne
d without covering his mouth. He was smoking and drinking Budweiser from the bottle. He had dark circles under his eyes, and though he had yet to divulge intimate details about his relationship with Molly, I recognized the symptoms of someone in lust. There were times when he looked as if he had been up and athletic for weeks on end.