Fine, but that might not be enough. The system had three overt inputs, two covert ones. Five in all. Two of these were set up for Gear protocols. His vicarious hackers could be using either, but if he shut down both, the system alarm would engage, which could cause… well, panic for one thing. A military panic was not a pretty thing. He’d have to make a choice. The covert link made the most sense. It would be accessed at the installation only in an emergency, so the hacker-spies could expect little chance of interruption. Beck completed the routine with a fatal interrupt to the covert Gear device, wondering how long he’d been here and if Marian had tried to reach him.
He entered the virtual hotel lobby cautiously, as if Bourbon or Darren could be expected to pop out of nowhere to intercept him. He didn’t think they had the technology to do that—to enter this dream world completely—and doubted they could even monitor him precisely. He wondered which of them was the programmer. Maybe they both were. Maybe neither of them had anything to do with publishing. But then how had they intercepted his manuscript? He remembered what Bourbon had said about novels being lifted electronically off editors’ desks. Had that happened to his?
He moved directly to the elevator core, chose the center shaft and punched the “up” button. The doors slid apart. “Destruct,” he told the pager, lobbed it into the elevator car and ran, thinking of Marian. He was still thinking of her when a flash of blinding light enveloped him and lifted him into the non-existent sky.
“I thought you weren’t speaking to him,” Ruby said.
Sometimes, Marian thought, Ruby could be impossibly dense. “Not speaking isn’t a synonym for not caring, Rube. It’s two A.M. He hasn’t answered his pager and Mr. Bourbon hasn’t answered his phone.”
“So, they’re out celebrating the book deal.”
“Until two A.M.?”
Ruby shrugged. “Why not? We’re commiserating over his thick-headedness until two A.M.”
“You don’t know Beck the way I do. He would never stay out so late without calling me. Even when I know his schedule and he knows I know his schedule, he calls.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby sipped coffee, steam coating her glasses. “Even if he’s not speaking to you?”
“Especially if he’s not speaking to me. Then guilt takes over. He has to call.” She got up and headed for the kitchen, leaving Ruby camped in front of the fireplace.
Ruby sighed volubly. “Shall I lock up?”
“Whatever.” Mentally, Marian was already on the road, already pulling up to the Sheraton, already leaving her car in the hands of a bleary-eyed valet. Already on her way through the lobby to the elevators.
Fifteen minutes later, when she actually entered the Sheraton’s spacious lobby, she had to take a detour to the concierge—she had absolutely no idea which room Laurence Bourbon was in. As it turned out, he was in one of the Tower suites and would have to issue an invitation to her if she was to go up. Marian decided a good lie was in order.
“My husband had an appointment with Mr. Bourbon this evening and he forgot his heart medicine.” She scrabbled in her fanny pack and produced her own pill case, full of stress tabs, vitamin C and Midol. “He didn’t expect to be this late. He should have had one of these hours ago.” She knit her brow and let her voice sound very slightly frantic.
The concierge called a rather muscular bellman to escort her up (as if she might possibly need to be overpowered). The elevator ride was silent. Marian looked at the ceiling of the car—stained-glass, it clashed with the once-upon-a-time modeme decor of the lobby. The broad corridor that gave onto the Tower suites was Queen Anne. What could they have been thinking?
“He’s stuck.”
“He’s what? What do you mean, he’s stuck?”
Zev Darren turned away from his monitor and pointed at the flashing cursor, which had sat for the past forty-five seconds in the same place in a crude but colorful maze. “Check his pulse rate.”
Bourbon glanced at the tiny screen that displayed Beckett Hodge’s vitals. “It’s up.”
“He’s stressed over something. He may be having trouble with the last stage. Sometimes programmers put randomizers into their routines—sort of a code du jour thing. He may not remember all the different sequences. Damn.” He watched the cursor a moment longer. Watched it until it abruptly blinked out. “Oh, shit.”
It was like something out of a James Bond movie. As Marian knocked repeatedly on the door of Bourbon’s suite with no result, someone within the suite howled. Having no pass card, the beefy bellman opened the locked door with his foot. Marian flung herself through the door. She was hardly prepared for what she saw—Beckett, strapped to a chair, VR Gear on head and hands, with two men hovering over him. One had his hands on his shoulders and was shaking him hard enough to make his teeth rattle.
Marian’s female instincts kicked in. “You sonofabitch! Get your hands off my husband!”
Lawrence Bourbon obeyed without hesitation, while his partner reached for a gun lying holstered on the sofa. The bellman was having none of it.
When he woke, Beck was surprised to be alive and in a hospital room. The room was under military guard and, besides Beck, held two occupants. Marian and Colonel Traynor chatted quietly in one comer. He cleared his throat, drawing their immediate attention.
“Bourbon?” he croaked.
Marian, her eyes still showing concern, afforded him a lopsided grin. “A little early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?”
He shook his head; his brain wobbled. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean. He’s in military custody, courtesy of your ferocious and quick-thinking wife and a burly bellman named Frank. And he’ll stay there for awhile too, thanks to Colonel Traynor and his buddies in the CIA.”
Beck’s eyes shifted automatically to Traynor’s face. The movement hurt. “They—they—” He choked, prompting Marian to give him a sip of water. Throat wetted, he ploughed on. “They linked me to the ICBM security system using some kind of specialized VR rig. They wanted me to crack it for them—my own code…”
The colonel was nodding. “Yes, we suspected as much when we saw the system. It was… tremendously sophisticated. We had no idea a high-end ‘off-the-rack’ system could be modified to that extent.”
“But why? An editor and an art director? Why?”
“Money. But people aren’t always what they seem. Oh, Mr. Bourbon is an editor, all right. A minor, poorly paid line editor. But Zev Darren is no art director. He’s a computer expert lately in the employ of Shalom/Salaam and Ibrahim X. In simple terms, a terrorist.”
Beck glanced at Marian. She was looking away, her face wearing the patented Marian Whaley-Hodge “Itoldyouso” look. The blood drained out of his head. If he hadn’t been lying down, he would have swooned. “Ibrahim X?”
“Bourbon line edited his best-selling manuscript,” said Traynor. “Mr. X evidently felt his position in the publishing industry could be advantageous. Unfortunately, he was wrong; Bourbon was a poor choice of accomplice. Zev Darren is a professional mercenary, at least in the realm of hacking, but Larry Bourbon is only a greedy amateur. The threat of a treason charge rattled just about everything loose. Your editor friend got swept up in the romance and intrigue of it all. He simply wasn’t prepared to be caught.” He gave Beck a sideways glance. “Honestly, professor, how close did they come to breaking it?”