He was drawing a hasty diagram on a napkin, and it was all clear enough. "As soon as the dish begins to move, turn our receiver on," he said "There's only one switch, a toggle on the side. While the dish is moving, make the same kinds of notations you did the other nightdirection, times, and azimuths. The receiver will pick up both incoming and outgoing, and record them, and Bobby built in a timer function, but he didn't have time to do a level or compass function."
"All right"
"LuEllen with you?"
"I sent her away," I said
"You guys ought to have a couple of babies," he said. "You're gonna wind up old, with nobody to care for you."
"Thanks for the thought," I said, and flashed to Morris Kendall, dying in room 350. "Has Bobby heard any more about Firewall?"
"I'm not all together on this, this is not my line," John said "Bobby says Firewall is definitely phonyhe says you think so, too "
"I'm leaning that way."
"But he says the feds, the NSA, are blowing it up into a major danger to justify their budget. He says that they don't have anything to dothey're completely obsoleteand this whole Firewall thing has been like a gift from heaven. A reprieve."
"What about the IRS attack?"
"Bobby says ten kids in Germany and Switzerland. He's sent four names, specific names, to the feds, but they're not paying much attention. Bobby says they don't want to catch Firewall. Not yet."
The salad came, along with John's food, and we spent twenty minutes talking about his wife, Marvel, and kids, and the political situation in Longstreet, where Marvel lived with the kids He hadn't quite finished eating when he finished with the political situation, and I looked at my watch and said, "There's a phone booth out in the lobby. I'm gonna get online with Bobby; see if anything's happening."
"Be my guest," he said.
The phone had little business, and I got right on and dialed. I never got to dial the ten digits after the 800 number, because after seven, the phone rang once, and a woman picked up and said, "Montana Genetics, can I help you?"
"Uh. I'm sorry, I think I have the wrong number."
"Well, have a good day then," she said cheerfully, and hung up.
I dialed again, "Montana." and hung up.
"Got a problem," I told John, when I got back to the booth. "Bobby's not online."
He looked at me, a wrinkle between his eyes. Bobby was always online. His life was online. "He's not."
"When I dial the 800 number, I get something called Montana Genetics."
He sat back, hands on the table: "Ah, shit. He's pulled the plug."
"I need him, man," I said.
"So do we," John said. I never did know who we were, although I'd known for years that there was a we. He looked at his watch and added, "I gotta get back. I've got to be near a telephone."
The waitress came over, carrying the check. She looked at John and asked, "Are you Mr. Smith?"
"What?"
"Are you Mr."
"Smith. Yes."
"You've, uh, got a phone call. Normally we don't allow customers, but the gentleman said it was an emergency."
John was out of the booth, trailing her; she took him into the back. Two minutes later, he was back out. "Gotta go."
"Bobby?"
"Yeah. He knew we were gonna be here." He tossed five dollars at the tabletop and headed for the cashier. Outside, in the open, he said, "He says to tell you that Ladyfingers was busted and she gave them the 800 number and that the feds, the NSA, traced him all the way to the banana stand. He said there were only three more links between him and the feds before he was toast. He's shut down everything. He says you should recover the number just like you did beforehe didn't tell me what it was, he's crazy paranoidand said you will cut directly into him. It's the only link he's going to take coming in, until he reworks all his numbers."
"Bad time for this," I said. "Bad time."
At the car, John handed me a gym bag with the receiver in it. "As soon as you've recorded a full movement, mail it back to me, express mail, at the house in Memphis."
"All right."
"Good luck," he said. "Keep your ass down."
At Texarkana, I found a gas station phone booth and hooked up with the laptop. I went out to my two mailboxes, and found, just as Bobby had promised, two pieces of a phone number. I called, keyed a "k," and Bobby came up.
very close. never closer. scared the s out of me. i'm closed for business, except for you. did you get package?
yes.
can you mount tonight?
yes.
what else can we do?
I told him, and got back a long silence. Then,
take care. take care. take care.
The Interstate crosses some sparsely inhabited landscape between Texarkana and Dallas. After checking the map, I got off at one of the larger white spots, and picked out a long piece of quiet road. I parked on one side, got out my sketchbook, checked around, then paced off 200 yards down the road, and stood a plastic Coke bottle on the shoulder. I was willing to bet I wasn't more than a yard or two offone of the things you learn in the burglary business is how to estimate distances. My normal stride was thirty-four inches long, and I'd learned how to swing a leg just a split-second longer than I usually did, to come down right on thirty-six inches.
Back at the car, I looked around again, then got the AK out of the trunk, loaded it, rolled down the passenger-side window. When I was sure nothing was coming from either direction, I ripped up a couple of pieces of newspaper, made them into spitwads, put them in my ears, and aimed the gun out the window at the Coke bottle.
The scope was decent; I leaned back against the driver's-side door, my left hand cradling the fore-end, and braced against the inside of my knee, held on the bottle, squeezed.
The rifle jumped, and I lost sight of the bottle; and when I got back on itwhere it would have beenit was gone. I got the car straightened out, repacked the rifle, found the ejected shell and threw it into the roadside weeds.
Rolled slowly down the road until I spotted the bottle. There was a neat 30-caliber hole an inch off center to the right, maybe two inches below the shoulders of the bottle. Good enough; more than good enough.
At Dallas, I stopped at the motel to clean up, change clothes, look at the packagea plastic box with a toggle switch and a couple of pieces of tape antenna sticking out of the top, the whole thing the size of a VHS videotape cassette, but heavierand get the rest of the gear
Moving right along, it was still well past nine o'clock before I made it through Waco, and headed out to Corbeil's. The ranch house showed only one light, and I saw no cars in the yard; I continued up to the ruins of the old home place, took the car back into the trees, then got out, and sat down on the incoming track.
And listened.
Listening will always tell you more than your eyes, if you're in the dark and somebody might be hunting you. People get tense, try to see, don't know how to move, breathe too hard, and they stumble. If you're relaxed, breathing as quietly as you can, eyes closed. you can hear. Everything but owls. You hear birds moving at night, but never the owls; they're like ghosts.
After a half-hour, I was satisfied that I was alone I stood up and scanned the area with the night glasses, then picked up the equipment, including the AK, and headed down the road. Halfway down, a truck came banging up the gravel. I stepped well off the road to let it pass, and watched until it had passed the car's hiding place. When it was out of sight, I listened again, then moved on.