“Correction. Mike Steele was declared dead on an island down in the Caribbean, because people saw his boat burn up and sink. Nobody actually saw him die. I checked the story out with some insurance-company people. They mentioned that that part of the world is a favorite place for people to go to pretend they’ve kicked the bucket so they can collect on their life insurance policies. The water’s warm enough, and plenty of other islands are close enough for the ‘corpse’ to make a nice, easy swim to another waiting boat. If Iron Mike wanted to bail, he chose the perfect place to do it.”
“And what about Marcus Kovacs? You gonna tell me that his whole life is made up, a paper trail? He’s got a valid birth certificate. Didn’t anybody see him get born?”
“You’d have a hard time finding witnesses,” Leif said. “The village where Kovacs was supposedly born got smeared by both sides during the Sava River campaign. There’s no town hall left — it was flattened; no church…no records at all, really. Paper hardcopies of whatever documents the refugees had were submitted to the central government, when a new database was set up. The authorities had to take a lot of things on trust.”
“So Kovacs is a figment of a computer’s imagination?”
Leif shook his head. “He could have been a real person, born in that ghost town and getting a university degree. He’d have been just the right age to fight in the war that created the Free State. But a lot of people died in that war in thousands of little guerrilla actions — and, again, neither side has great records.”
He looked at Matt. “The fact is, neither side keeps such great records even now. The Carpathian Alliance is under serious trade embargo, so they can’t get decent computers. And the Free State is too poor to afford the newest machines — or the security software to protect them.”
Leif pounced on Matt’s expression of surprise. “Given a reasonable knowledge of the language, a good hacker could easily penetrate government computers over there and insert a whole life story. Or rather, a life story in fragments, just like almost everyone else’s.”
Matt still wasn’t coming over. Leif could see it in his face.
“Remember,” Leif said, “Steele got the nickname ‘Iron Mike’ because people kidded that he was part computer. He was a specialist agent whose job was to penetrate systems and uncover information for the good guys. It would be easy for him to plant whatever he needed in the old crap they’re using in the Balkans.”
He stabbed a finger at his friend. “And it would explain how this bean counter became so good at computer investigation. More important, what caused Mike Steele’s downfall in Net Force?”
“Falsifying evidence,” Matt admitted.
“And what is I-on Investigations making its big profits on?”
“Fake evidence,” Megan said.
“I’ll give you something else. Marcus Kovacs is known as Marc to his friends and associates.”
“So?” Matt said.
“Marc…Mike. They sound awfully alike, don’t they? It makes life easier for someone who adopts an alias. That’s why the majority of Witness Protection program people pick sound-alike names or use the same initials.”
“Your analogy breaks down, then,” Matt said. “Mike Steele — Marc Kovacs? What sort of connection is that?”
Leif shrugged. “Not much of one in English. But Kovacs is a Hungarian name. In that language it means ‘smith.’”
“Oh, great,” Megan said. “America’s most popular alias on motel records.”
“You still don’t get it,” Leif said. “Smith — as in ‘blacksmith’—somebody who works on iron…and steel.”
His friends stared at him for a long moment, until Matt finally broke the silence. “Pretty clever, Leif. But you’re hanging a lot of what-ifs on this guy’s — or maybe these guys’—ears.”
“The basis for that leap is in the FBI manual,” Leif began wearily. “And I’m just raising some possibilities. The world is full of professional investigators — some of whom may even be honest. It will be up to them to prove or disprove what I’m suggesting.”
“Up to them?” Megan repeated.
“We’re not the Junior Net Force, you know,” Leif pointed out. “We don’t have police powers. We just poke around and ask questions. And something tells me that it would be smarter — and maybe healthier — to let the pros take a shot at poking around Marcus Kovacs.”
“You think what you have here will be enough to turn Steadman and Internal Affairs around?” Disbelief was plain in Matt’s voice.
“No,” Leif admitted. “But I think an honest private eye, directed by, say, Captain Winters’s lawyer, might do some good. At the very least my theory offers a possible defense at a trial. Better than anything the captain has been able to come up with so far, which is mainly to say, ‘I didn’t do it!’”
He gave Matt a straight look. “Captain Winters is innocent. We know that. So we also know that Winters has been set up by someone who does very good work. You tried and couldn’t shake any part of the I.A. case.”
“I couldn’t help the captain,” Matt admitted.
“But using this information, a lawyer might be able to make a case for a frame-up job,” Leif said. “Right down to a well-trained perpetrator with motive and opportunity. Alcista died as punishment for trying to blow up Steele. Winters could have been framed as punishment for letting the cat out of the bag when Steele phonied up evidence against Alcista.”
“All this talk about lawyers is fine, but we don’t even know who has the job of representing the captain,” Megan objected.
“Stewart Laird,” Leif promptly answered. “He’s a partner in Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird, a firm of criminal lawyers—”
“You’d think they’d come up with a different way to refer to that,” Megan interrupted. “It makes the lawyers sound like crooks.”
Leif chuckled. “Point taken.” Then he grew more serious. “It’s a small outfit. They’re not power brokers like some of the big Washington law firms. But these guys know their business, which is what Winters needs. I was afraid I’d find him represented by some ambulance chaser, or the guy who handled the mortgage on his house.”
“How did you find out about this lawyer?” Megan wanted to know. “I haven’t seen his name or the firm’s mentioned on any newscasts or in any of the print media.”
Leif gave a quick command to the computer. Instantly one end of the living room turned into a view of a large, crowded office, with a pretty brunette sitting behind a desk at the foreground. “Hi, I’m Tracey McGonigle?” she said, a classic California upward lilt at the end of the sentence making it sound like a question. “I’m working for FaxNews International? We’re trying to get in touch with the lawyer representing James Winters?”
Megan turned on Leif with a dangerous expression. “That — that cardboard cutout looks like an older version of me! Although it doesn’t sound like me — thank heaven.”
“I didn’t think any law firm would deal with a teenager,” Leif said. “But with someone slightly older, working for an obscure news organization—”
“Do you have a sim program that makes all of us look older?” Megan demanded.
Matt, however, wasn’t about to get distracted. “You launched this program to contact every law firm in the Greater Washington metropolitan area?”
“What a scam!” Megan shook her head in disbelief.
“A stratagem,” Leif corrected her. “I started out in the Maryland suburbs and downtown D.C., figuring that those were the places Winters was most likely to go. Most of the firms either informed Ms. McGonigle that they weren’t involved in the case, or turned her down flat. Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird’s receptionist told young Tracey that Mr. Laird had no comment at this time.”