Jay sat behind his desk and stared at his flatscreen, thinking about how to break into a bank.
They almost hadn’t bought this desk. Moving into the new apartment had made more of a dent in their savings than he’d planned. Their furniture plans had been put on hold until one of Saji’s uncles at the wedding had suggested a money dance for the couple.
According to tradition, the newlyweds accepted dances from various members of the wedding party, who had to
“purchase” each dance with a donation. What made the money dance funny was that the payment wasn’t just given to the couple. It was pinned to them. By the time the dancing was over, he and Saji had looked like a couple of greenback-stuffed scarecrows. They had made enough from the money dance alone to furnish most of their new condo — including the huge desk in his home office.
It was funny, Jay knew he was the ultimate forward-thinker. His tastes normally ran to ultramodern, usually involving chrome and leather. This desk was different. It was enormous, for one thing, and made out of solid cherry. It was also antique, with absolutely no provisions for hiding computer peripherals and cabling.
But Jay didn’t care. He’d fallen in love with this desk the first time he’d laid eyes on it. And Saji had insisted he buy it. No matter that it took up nearly half the floor space in his home office. No matter that it wouldn’t fit into the third bedroom, so that if they ever decided to start a family the baby would end up with the smallest room in the house. No matter that the ancient grained surfaces were as un-Gridley-like as you could imagine.
He loved that desk, loved the way sitting behind it got his creative juices flowing.
Except this time it wasn’t working. He just couldn’t seem to get a handle on this bank he was trying to crack.
He’d worked late at Net Force trying to get his latest VR scenario to work. The bank account number he’d gotten in his trace of the payments from CyberNation had led him to a small branch of the Virginia National Bank out in the suburbs, but no further.
This particular branch had unfortunately kept up with the security bulletins Net Force issued to computer-intensive businesses from time to time. Their firewall was impressive.
He’d spent hours as a Swiss guide attempting to scale the Matterhorn, the VR equivalent of an attack on the bank’s firewall. He had found it was like trying to walk up a Teflon-coated slide at a ninety-degree angle. He got nowhere fast.
Jay could hack his way into most international networks before breakfast. Being shut out by a dinky little domestic bank was frustrating. More than that, it was embarrassing.
He knew he could go through Legal. There was enough to get a search warrant, but there were problems with that approach. For one thing, serving a warrant might alert the person they were after. That could give them time to prepare, to hide the money or to move it into a legitimate account.
On the other hand, if Jay could get the name on the account, Net Force would be able to do a little background research. Then they could set a trap and spring it when they were ready. One thing he did not want to do was let CyberNation get away this time, and that meant not tipping his hand too early. Once their target was ID’d, then he could request a warrant and build a chain of evidence. Putting the target under surveillance under those circumstances would probably be much more informative.
The trick was, how to do it?
He’d tried brute force, although he supposed one of the NSA supercomputers might have a little more juice than Net Force’s own. He could tap them, add them to the mix, and maybe—
“Hello? Earth to Jay?”
With a start, he realized he hadn’t heard — or seen — Saji come into his office. She had perched on one corner of his desk, and he smiled as he looked at her. All this time, and the sight of her could still make him smile.
“Practicing your meditation, darling?” she asked.
He grinned, shook his head. Caught bringing work home. Again.
“I didn’t think so.”
She came around behind him and started rubbing his shoulders.
Jay leaned his head back against her and sighed. She had started doing this on their honeymoon. Initially, they had planned to go to Bali, but changed their minds at the last minute and ended up going to Spain instead. They had spent most of the two-week trip on Formentera, an island off the coast of Ibiza. The place they’d stayed had truly been get-away-from-it-all; no electricity, no telephone, or even net connection. He’d felt a little claustrophobic at first — had spent a lot of time with his virgil, bringing up old games he never bothered with when he had VR. Saji had started giving him massages as a way of relaxing him.
After a while the charm of the island — hot sun, the beautiful clear water, and time alone with Saji — had relaxed him more than he’d been in years. She hadn’t given him a back rub since they got back. Until now.
He wished they could go back to that island right now and forget about Net Force and CyberNation.
Hmm. Maybe he could try piggybacking a worm with a transfer, capture some keystrokes—
He became aware of Saji’s breath in his ear.
“Whoa!”
“Oh, you are still here. Good. Remember me? You know, we got married a while back?”
He laughed. “Sorry. I’m here! I’m here!”
“All right, then, Mr. I’m-Here, what did I just say a moment ago?”
“Uh—”
“I thought so.” She leaned forward to see his flatscreen. “So what’s so important that you managed to go into VR without the gear? Pretty impressive concentration, by the way. You might almost think you had studied with a brilliant Buddhist.”
“I did,” Jay said, “only he was a lot older and uglier than you.”
Now she grinned, but she also shook her head. “Uh-uh. You’re not getting off that easy, Gridley. Now give.”
Jay told her about the bank, how he couldn’t get in.
Saji listened. It occurred to Jay, and not for the first time, that he was one of the luckiest men on earth to have found her. Someone who listened to him, who cared about his problems. And he’d almost backed out and blown it.
When he finished his explanation, Saji stood there for a few seconds without speaking, her hands motionless on his shoulders. Then she said, “Okay, no problem.”
Jay tilted his head back to stare at her. Okay? No problem? Was she serious?
“What?”
“Well, I could tell you,” she said, “but do you really want me to make it easy for you? Wouldn’t you rather earn it? I know how you hate game cheats and all—”
“Saji!” he said, reaching up to grab her shoulders.
She laughed. “You know that old saw about not seeing the forest because of the trees?”
Jay nodded. Where was she going with this?
“That’s you and this bank. You’re not looking at the forest. You’re stuck on one tree.”
He shook his head. He just couldn’t see what she was talking about.
She laughed again, and then gently bit his earlobe. “You’ll get it, Jay,” she said, “when you quit trying so hard.”
He hoped so. Frustrated, he let go of her and turned his attention back to his computer.
Somewhere there was a way in. He knew it. There always was. He just had to keep looking.
9
Ames was in his clean office at the mall, listening to his hacker’s progress report.
“Are you sure this is working?” Ames asked.
The programmer, whose netnom was “Thumper,” shrugged. He was a smallish man, young, but nearly bald. He wore a black Metallica tank top and gray cord trousers, with some kind of high-tech rubbery sandals, and no socks. Brilliant in his field, but socially inept. One was probably a result of the other.