“Hey, boss.” The visual blossomed on the receiver, a tiny hologram of a face that definitely wasn’t Toni’s.
“Jay. What’s up?”
“I’ve got good news, better news, and not so good news.”
“Oh. Give me the good news first.”
“I found Jackson Keller.”
“I didn’t know he was lost. Who is Jackson Keller?”
“Long story. Short version: I believe he is the guy running the web/net attacks.”
“Good. Where can we collect him?”
“Well, see, that’s the not-so-good stuff. I’m not exactly sure where he is. I know where he was, up until a few days ago, I think, but I’m pretty sure I know who he’s working for.”
“And that would be…?”
“The better news — CyberNation.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Yep. Want me to dazzle you with my brilliance?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Jay ignored that and said, “I scanned public tax records in the U.S. and found he had paid federal taxes last year on foreign income grosses of $250,000. I checked incorporation records, and found a Delaware company called Molotov Software Programs, Inc., the president being one Jackson Keller. Apparently the vice president is his mother, the secretary-treasurer his uncle. That’s got tax-dodge or scam written all over it.
“From what I was able to determine, all of MSP’s income for the last three years came from another corporation, Systems Upgrade, Inc., which turns out to be a shell owned by Future Tense Computer Engineering, which is, when you run it down, another shell, owned lock, stock, and barrel by — ta dah! — CyberNation.
“Corporate credit cards — Visa, MC, AmEx — have been issued for MSP, Inc., from the International Bank of Zurich, and Three-Cees and TRW both say that the credit is good, which means he pays his bills on time. Without a warrant, I can’t get into real specific details on those transactions, but I’ve checked commercial usage location lists and gotten hits in southeast Florida for the last three months. Before that, he spent some time in Japan, and before that, in Germany. Apparently CyberNation owns some rolling stock and some other ships. The train carries tourists back and forth between Berlin and France, and there is some kind of repair work being done on the boat, or barge, or whatever, in Yokohama.”
“He does some traveling,” Michaels said.
“Yeah. But the south Florida thing is the deal — he goes to the same places the other programmers on the gambling boat go. Last hit was less than ten days ago, so my guess is he’s on the boat. I dunno what his connection to the CyberNation stuff in Germany and Japan is, but I’m gonna find out.”
“You think this is the leader of the assault team?”
“I’d bet money on it, boss. He’s a programmer out of CIT, second in his class.”
“Isn’t that where you went to school?”
“Yeah.”
Michaels heard something in Jay’s voice. “What?”
“I know the guy. I used to know him, anyway.”
“Second in his class, you said? He must be pretty sharp.”
“Not as sharp as the guy who was first in the class.”
“Ah.”
“I’m gonna dig some more. When I think I got enough for a warrant, I’ll shoot it past Hang ’Em High Harvey, and then we can pin this moth to the collecting board.”
“Good work, Jay.”
“Thanks, boss. Discom.”
After he broke the connection, the com chimed again.
This time, it was Toni. She looked tired, but she was smiling.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
“Hi. I’m all settled in. I’m at the airport Hilton in Fort Lauderdale. I’ll catch a shuttle copter to the ship in the morning.”
“You’re calling from the hotel?” It had been a while since she’d been in the field, but surely she hadn’t forgotten something so basic?
“Not on the house phone, I’m using the coded cell.”
He nodded. Net Force had field phones that looked ordinary, but sent and received shifting-code encrypted messages; even if somebody managed to trap the signal, they wouldn’t be able to translate it into anything they could understand, unless they had a matching transceiver. Michaels’s house com was so equipped, just as all the virgils were. SOP.
“How’s the boy?”
“He’s fine. Conked out about eight. Guru has him in bed with her. She’s gonna spoil him.”
“How are you doing?”
“Cold and pitiful in this big old bed all alone.”
“Poor baby. I’ll be all alone in this big old hotel bed, too.”
“You better be.” That got him a smile from her.
“I just got a call from Jay.” He explained what Jay had just told him.
“Does he have a picture of this guy? Maybe I’ll spot him on the ship.”
“I’ll have him upload one to your flatscreen if he has one,” he said. “I’ll have him bury it in a picture of your aunt Molly’s seventieth birthday or something.”
“Thanks.”
There was a short pause, then she said, “Thank you for sending me to do this. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. Just don’t do anything other than what is in your mission plan.”
“By the numbers, Commander Honey, don’t worry.”
But of course, he did. Despite what he had told her about how low risk it was, the husband and lover in him didn’t like sending her anywhere. He worried about the plane’s safety, the helicopter ride, and street traffic, not to mention being on a vessel that he now knew was enemy territory. He knew Toni would resent it mightily if he tried to keep her home and completely out of harm’s way, but that’s what he felt like doing.
They talked a few more minutes, said their good-nights, and discommed. It had been a long day and he was tired, but sleep was a long time in coming. This was the first time he and Toni had slept apart since they’d gotten married, and he didn’t like it. Not even a little bit.
This was not a town where you would expect to find a major Internet locus, Santos thought. Probably why it was here. Not far from the Louisiana border, in the southwest corner of Mississippi, Woodville was a sleepy place that time seemed to have touched only lightly in passing, at least in its last few decades.
Santos drove the old pickup truck along the Lower Woodville Road carefully. The day was gray, overcast, and cold. This was just a scouting trip to be certain of the information he had been provided. He was a black man in a small Southern town, and while racial profiling was not supposed to be allowed by police departments in this country anymore, he knew they still did it in such places. On the surface, the old tensions had been smoothed over. But a few inches down? Everybody here remembered who had been property and who had been slave masters, just as they did back home. People of color had carried the water and picked the crops. Nobody forgot that. A shiny new rental car would have made him suspect; a beat-up ten-year-old truck with local plates made him less likely to be noted. He wore a baseball cap and an old pea jacket over a workshirt and overalls, windows rolled up against the cold — just another lower-class Negro not worth paying any mind to, Thank you, Officer.
He would only get two passes by the location, one going out, another one half an hour later coming back. Any more than that might raise suspicion, and he did not want that.
The road ran next to a sluggish little river that he assumed was Ford’s Creek — he’d been on Ford’s Creek Road before, the place he was looking for was farther north, where Lower Woodville Road branched and another section of creek road picked up again, so that would make sense. He would make a pass, drive for fifteen minutes, then turn around and go back. From there, he’d keep right on going, local highway 24 east to Highway 61, then south on that all the way to New Orleans and a flight back to Florida. By mid-morning, he would be back on the ship.