Jay had asked Chang to hold off having Leigh arrested and sweated, for two reasons. First, Jay wanted a shot at finding the hacker on his own. Second, if the Chinese got the guy, they would pry things out of him that the U.S. military surely would not want them to have.
If this didn’t work, he’d have to give Chang the go-ahead — if he hadn’t already decided to do it anyhow — and they’d get the ID from Leigh, who surely must know who it was he had been watching.
But Jay wanted his chance first. It wouldn’t take long — he’d either pass or fail in a hurry. Pass — and it would go a long way to making him feel as if he’d done his job; fail — and they could always take the other road. But they’d have to give up some things to do it. If Jay could catch him, it would be better.
Jay didn’t intend to fail. He sipped at his sake, and watched the men in the room. Which one?
The front door opened, revealing the gloomy outside. Rain began to splatter against the tile roof at that same moment. A samurai on the porch stepped into the building, and as he did, a fierce gust of wind blew in as a nearby lightning strike strobed and a loud boom of thunder vibrated the room. The wind blew the lamps out, and for a couple of seconds, the room was dim. The patrons laughed and cracked jokes as one of the serving girls relit a lamp.
When the lights came back up, it took Jay a moment to realize that one of the samurai, a short and somewhat swarthy fellow sitting to his right, near the door, was gone.
Jay scrambled to his feet and hurried for the door. The guy was onto him!
Outside, the storm raged; hard winds drove rain almost horizontally at Jay, blinding him. Where was the guy?
Jay caught a peripheral movement. He turned and saw the samurai running, splashing through puddles already ankle-deep, one hand holding his swords steady as he sprinted away.
No doubt about it, that was him!
Jay took off after the fleeing man.
He started gaining immediately. The guy was slow compared to Jay — of course, so were most people — and already Jay was grinning. Guy might look like a samurai, but he was a fake, and in this scenario, Jay was on a par with Miyamoto Musashi. He’d slice the guy into hamburger, figuratively, anyway—
The rainy air ahead of the ninja rippled and it was as if the man had stepped through time and space — he just… vanished, as if running behind a curtain—
What ninja trick was this?!
Jay skidded to a stop just short of the rent in the air, which, even as he watched, faded back into the rainy night.
Jay looked around, wiping the water from his eyes, hoping to spot some clue—
And there one was: a scrap of what looked like blue silk, flattened and soaked by the downpour. Jay moved to it, bent, and picked it up. A scarf of some kind. There was a tag in one corner, tiny, with writing on it, so small he could barely read it.
It said, “CyberNation.”
Jay shook his head. Somehow, the guy had slipped away from him by using CyberNation protocols. Shouldn’t be able to do that, but there it was.
Bag that. “End scenario!” Jay said.
He wasn’t out of moves yet.
Jay grabbed his virgil from the desk — he was still fully suited — and said, “Call Charles Seurat. Priority One.”
32
Seurat was most unhappy about the insistent demand of his cell phone. There was a naked woman in his shower, a woman that he was, he was sure, in love with, and he was about to join her — when the phone started playing “Love Is Blue,” the Paul Mauriat instrumental version. Since that was his Priority One ring, he couldn’t just let it go. Merde!
The caller ID was blocked, but since anybody who knew his private number was somebody he would usually — usually — want to speak with, he answered it. Not all that graciously:
“What?”
“I need full access to your system, no playing around with pitfalls and hidden stuff, I need your security code and I need it now.”
Gridley. Seurat recognized the voice — who could forget that arrogant tone? Not a hello-how-are-you? Just a demand for something he should not have.
“Va te faire foutre! Why should I do that?”
“You want me to get stuffed? I have the guy who screwed your network in my sights! He ran into your system to hide and the longer it takes me to get after him, the more likely it is he might get away!”
“My people can—”
“—get stuffed themselves! We don’t have time for this! Give me the number!”
“Listen, Gridley, if you think—”
“Seurat, the clock is running. The guy is Chinese. He is in China. The Chinese are about to have a guy in custody who can give them the hacker’s name — what do you think they’ll do once they know who he is?”
Seurat felt a cold roiling in his belly. “Merde—”
“Exactly. They will grab the guy who was able to penetrate CyberNation and United States military hardware and give both of us all kinds of grief. You think they won’t squeeze everything he learned since he was born out of him? You want the Chinese to do that?”
Seurat had not gotten to where he was by dithering when he needed to move. He rattled off his personal security code, one that would allow the bearer to go anywhere in CyberNation.
“Got it. Thanks.”
“Go, go! Let me know!”
“Bet on it.”
Seurat discommed, and put the phone down. He looked into the bathroom at the fogged-up shower glass. The future of his company might be riding on what Gridley could do. How could a man relax under such worry?
Then again, there was a beautiful, sexy woman in the shower waiting for him. There was nothing he could do to help Gridley at the moment anyway, non? He stood and began to undress.
C’est la vie…
The Japanese village was gone and now Jay found himself in a gritty Los Angeles ninety years in the future. It wasn’t exactly like Blade Runner, but it was not a world anybody wanted to live in — the streets were grimy, the people dirty, and it looked more like Saigon in the ’60s than L.A. a hundred odd years past that. It was very noisy, crowded, and it stank of something Jay couldn’t identify exactly — like some combination of mold, dust, synthetic lube, and sweaty humanity.
It gave Jay some hope that maybe — maybe — he could still find this guy. A true pro — not one just with experience in VR and with rascaling scenarios, but one who was used to playing cat and mouse with the police — would not still be in this scenario. A true pro would have bounced once, twice, three times already, leaving no trail for Jay to follow.
Jay grinned bitterly and shook his head. A true pro, he realized, wouldn’t have done that at all. No, he would have simply ended the scenario, unjacking and leaving VR entirely, and giving Jay absolutely no way to track him.
But if this guy wasn’t a pro, if he wasn’t smart enough — or scared enough — to bail, this would be a nice place to hide. Who’d want to come here looking for you?
And Jay had one other small hope to cling to: He knew what he would have done in the guy’s place. Even knowing the smart thing, Jay would have stayed, playing with his chaser, confident in his own abilities.
He already knew this guy wasn’t as good as Jay Gridley. No one was, after all. But he could hope the guy was every bit as confident.