"Well, we have an idea. They look like our parking lot."
"They are. If you check the arrangement of carsthat's your car up in the northeast, and that's you getting out of ityou'll find out that the pictures were taken yesterday, with a Keyhole satellite. That's what AmMath was doing. They'd written a code sequencewhich you approved, by the waythat sat on top of the satellite encryption engine, and allowed them to use the satellites. They've been retailing satellite recon photos all over the Middle East and South Asia since the Keyholes went up. From what we've figured out, they were supplying recon for both India and Pakistan."
"Who have you told about this?" A man's voice, deep, harsh, angry.
"Nobody," I said. "But we've got a PR package ready to go to a dozen congressmen and senators, as well at The New York Times, The Washington Post, the L.A. Times, The Dallas Morning News, the Chicago Tribune, and a few other places you wouldn't want to see it. I mean, maybe we're going to do that."
"Maybe?"
"If you don't get off our backs. You fuckin' fascists are running innocent people all over the place, this so-called Firewall crackdown. AmMath invented Firewall and the IRS attack was just a bunch of punks from Europe. You know it, we know it, and most of the press knows it, but they're riding along with you for the amusement value. We want you to knock it off, or we'll ship our PR package, and the NSA becomes a greasy spot on the road. A few of you, I wouldn't doubt, will be looking at the inside of Leavenworth."
"We know who you are: we're tracking you right now, we're breaking down the walls," the male voice said.
"Bullshit. You've only found a couple of serious people so far and you only got them because they got careless," I said. "The rest of us are going to fuck you up if you don't back off."
"You're talking to the U.S. Government here, asshole."
"No, I'm not. I'm talking to a scared bureaucrat. But not as scared as you will be when we start sending recon photos to the press."
"You're gone; you no longer have any access to the Keyholes "
"Sorry, pal, it doesn't work that way," I said. "We own Keyhole. The only access you have is entirely walled off by our software. We built a firewall around your access port. Go ask your guys who are trying to get inside; go ask them. They can take picturesif we let them. They can even retask the satellites, if we let them. But if we get pissed, we'll eliminate your access and then we're gonna start taking pictures of nude beaches and the Royal Families and the president's vacation, and start flogging them off to The Star and People and whoever else wants them. With a nice little Keyhole credit line on them."
There was a long silence; then Rosalind Welsh said, "Don't do that."
"It's up to you," I said. "You'll be able to tell when we're pissed, because we'll cut off your Keyhole access. I mean, you could go ask Congress for another twenty billion to put up another Keyhole system, but I suspect that they'll be pretty pissed when they find out you lost the one you had."
The male voice: "You fucker. you fuckin' traitor."
"This is Bill Clinton you're talking to," I said. "We don't want to overthrow anything. We just want you off our backs."
"We can't promise anything in detail." Welsh said tentatively.
"Look, we're not bargaining with you," I said. "Don't get that idea. This is a straightforward extortion. If you get off our backs, you can run Keyhole like you always have. Nobody'll ever hear about how AmMath was selling American recon photos to Pakistan, or how AmMath invented Firewall to cover up a couple of murders and that you knew about it, or about how Keyhole now belongs to a bunch of hackers. All you have to do is stop. If you don't, well, you better grab on to something solid and bend over, because something ugly is about to happen."
I hung up, got off at the next exit, wiped the cell phone and threw it into a ditch, and headed back to St. Paul.
And they quit.
The IRS announced that Interpol, in coordination with U.S. authorities, had issued warrants for the arrest of a half-dozen European hackers for their attack on the tax-return site, and said that the IRS site was now fully protected. The FBI declared victory over Firewall, said that we were seeing the fine results of eternal vigilance. Other hacker organizations, the FBI spokesman said, had better take warning, and not mess with the bulldog of federal law enforcement.
I was lying on the couch, reading the St. Paul paper, the Cat sitting next to my head, when somebody knocked at the door. I opened it, and LuEllen was standing there. She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots under a waist-length coat that looked suspiciously like mink.
"We cool?" she asked.
"We cool," I said. "Come in."
She came in, and we had a cup of coffee, sitting at my kitchen window looking out over the Mississippi. The river was locked in ice, and down on the streets, we could see people in heavy parkas puffing up and down the hill. Twelve below zero, the weather service said: a splendid day to stay inside and paint.
We had a lot to talk about. About the relative quality of our safety, about Jack and Lane. About whether the government might come creeping around. About the collapse of AmMath, and the disappearance of Corbeil.
"The government's out of it," I said. "At least for a good long while."
I told her how the Net would occasionally be saturated with the cryptic message, "Bobby, call your Uncle."
"Does he?"
"I don't know. I leave that to him," I said.
"You think he's going to die?"
"That's what he says. But not for a while."
We were silent for a moment, then she said, "The devil cardit was like the tarot said."
"In hindsight, I suppose."
"Don't be skeptical with me, Kidd. You're getting messages from somewhere, and I think maybe you oughta stop it."
"Right. Messages," I said. She was so serious about it, I had to laugh. Superstitious claptrap.
The Texas newspapers reported that a man carrying Corbeil's passport had crossed into Mexico shortly after his Waco ranch house burned downa ranch purchased under a phony name, the papers said, and which was now cordoned off by the FBI. Corbeil hadn't been found yet, but there were hints that he might be in Southeast Asia.
LuEllen was worried that he might somehow come back on us.
"Not to worry," I said. She didn't ask.
LuEllen stayed over. Clancy, the computer lady who had been designing the America's Cup boat, had found somebody else to design it with, and my feet, had, in fact, been cold all winter. So LuEllen was welcome.
But as I lay beside her that night, awake, listening to her easy breathing, I felt the finger of darkness pressing on me again. It had come any number of times in the past two months, usually just before sleep: the ghost of St. John Corbeil.
I was the only one who'd ever know, but the passport that crossed into Mexico was the same one that Green, Lane, LuEllen, and I had passed around a diner table after the raid on Corbeil's apartment. The man who'd carried it was a friend of Bobby's, reliable, and who, for a price, was willing to check the passport through Mexican passport control, without asking why. He'd burned it in a bathroom of the California Royal Motel in Matamoros; and that is the last, I hope, that we'd hear of St. John Corbeil.
Corbeil himself was buried under a foot of sandy Texas soil, in a hastily scratched-out grave, a few miles northwest of Waco, Texas.
At night, lying in bed, I sometimes felt his loneliness out there.
Maybe, I thought, as I turned over and touched the woman's back, LuEllen could make him go away.
Maybe.
