Mirim's mouth opened, then closed. She stared at him for a moment before she found her voice.
“And what if I wasn't thinking of inviting you?” she said.
Casper smiled wryly. “Well, then I've misjudged the situation and by bringing it out in the open now I may have just saved everybody some later embarrassment.”
Mirim smiled back at him. “You didn't misjudge,” she admitted.
“Well, good. Thank you. But I'll still sleep on the couch for at least two or three nights. We're going to need Celia's help later, after the rally.”
“After the rally?” Mirim asked. “You really plan to hold a rally?”
“Sure do.”
“How the hell are you going to do that? Isn't that just asking for a sniper to take you down?”
Casper smiled at her again, a big surprised smile this time. “Of course it is,” he said. “That's the point. We have to taunt them, make them act stupidly, and make them do it in front of an audience.”
“But Cas…”
“The real trick here,” he said, interrupting her, “is to live through it.”
Chapter Eighteen
Smith waved the print-out at Schiano. “Is he really this crazy?”
Schiano shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “I didn't think he was crazy at all, but this isn't anything I put into the program.”
“So you don't know if it's a trick?”
“It isn't anything I programmed,” Schiano repeated.
He didn't need to read the print-out; he'd seen the messages himself. They were all over the nets. Posters were all over New York and Philadelphia as well, pasted on walls, utility poles, trashcans, everywhere. Schiano figured that everyone who had ever been involved with PFC at all must have been called in to help put them up.
Smith was probably trying to track down the printer responsible, but that wasn't likely to work. Schiano doubted a print shop had been involved at all. Anyone could have run off a few thousand posters on his home printer easily enough, and if that was what they'd done then even if Covert was able to identify the make of printer, that wouldn't tell anyone anything useful. It was probably some model that was common as dirt.
“Are you going to let him hold the rally?” Schiano asked.
“You tell me,” Smith said. “You're supposed to be the expert on this guy-what's happening here? Is this some kind of diversion? Or is he really going to show up at this thing and give us a clear shot at him?”
“I don't know,” Schiano repeated.
“Suppose we clear the streets, cordon off that block, don't let anyone in-then what?”
“Oh, he won't show then,” Schiano said confidently. “He's not stupid.”
“But if we let a crowd form?”
Schiano shrugged. “Maybe he'll show,” he said. “I just don't know.”
“Damn,” Smith said. “You aren't a hell of a lot of good, are you?”
“Hey,” Schiano protested, “this isn't my job! I'm an imprint programmer, not a goddamned counterspy. I didn't know I was ever going to have to stop my Spartacus!”
“Yeah, well…” Smith flung the print-out aside. “Let's just hope your Spartacus is doing something stupid here.” He turned and marched angrily away.
Schiano watched him go, then picked up the print-out. As he had expected, it was one of the notices from the nets.
“Rally!” it said. “If you saw me on the news, here's your chance to find out what it's all about.”
It went on for a few lines, and then it gave time and place. Down at the bottom it was signed, “Casper Beech, People For Change.”
What the hell was Beech up to?
Should he warn Beech that Covert knew about the rally?
He shook his head. No, he told himself, that would be putting his own neck in a noose; he didn't dare try to contact Beech again. Even sending that one message had been incredibly risky. He'd routed it through dummy accounts and six layers of anonymous remailers, done everything he could to keep it from tripping any alarms, but anything in a non-government encryption could be snagged, and any encryption could be broken if someone good wanted to work at it. And he hadn't dared do anything subtle, for fear Beech wouldn't be able to read it himself.
And Beech was too smart for this rally to be as stupid as it looked. Beech had to know he'd be exposing himself to Covert's snipers if he showed up. He must have some sort of plan in mind.
Schiano wished he knew what it was.
Casper leaned against the oily brick and looked at his watch for the hundredth time, more grateful than ever for the illuminated display.
7:58. Almost time. He reached down and picked up the first sheet of heavy, rigid plastic, then looked up. Tiny circles of light showed through the airholes in the manhole cover. That was reassuring; it meant no one had covered it over.
It had been a long, unpleasant wait down here, with his kevlar jacket and his plastic shields, but it was almost over, and the government hadn't found him.
He leaned the plastic shield against the ladder rungs, then looked down at his vest. Time to put in the ceramic inserts; he'd left them out until now to save weight, but he'd need them in place before he emerged from the manhole.
As he tucked the ceramic plates into the vest pockets he wondered if hiding down here had really been necessary. Then he smiled at his own foolishness; of course it had been necessary. Once those posters had gone up and the messages had gone out over the net, there was no way the feds would ever have let him just walk up to the appointed corner of Washington Square.
They'd let other people come, so as to lure him out, but if he'd shown his face above ground he'd have been dead meat, he knew it.
Just then the manhole cover shifted, with a heavy grating sound; grit sifted down onto his hair. Casper looked up as he smoothed down the last Velcro fastener on his vest; he stepped back further into the shadows and waited, just in case the feds had caught on.
“Cas? Are you okay?”
It was Mirim's voice.
“I'm fine,” he said. “Get it open and clear.”
“I'm trying,” she replied. “Listen, there are police all over the place-we had one guy tell us we didn't have a permit, but they haven't really tried to get rid of us.”
The manhole cover slid aside, and light poured in; Casper blinked as his eyes adjusted.
“I expected that,” he said. “What about the rooftops? See anything?”
“We aren't sure.” Casper could see Mirim now, as a shadow blocking part of the light. He could see others around the manhole, as well.
“Is the sound system set up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Here.” He handed up the first of the bulletproof plastic panels. Someone grabbed it and lifted it away, and Casper handed up the next, and the next.
When he finally climbed the ladder out of the manhole he emerged into a booth of clear plastic shielding, each panel held by a trusted member of PFC. Each of them wore a helmet and heavy vest-lined, Casper knew, with kevlar and with ceramic shock absorbers like his own.
Together, the little clump of revolutionaries moved across the street to the sidewalk and up onto the platform set up there for Casper's use. Once he was on the platform someone handed him a microphone, passing it between two of the plastic panels.
Then the people holding the panels all sank down, sitting on the platform, ducked down low, and Casper looked out at the crowd.
The street was packed-as he had hoped. Most of them were just curiosity seekers, of course, but there might be several potential recruits, all the same.
Police were scattered around, as well. That was to be expected. There were also reporters, and a dozen or more videocameras. That was excellent. Casper wanted this as public as possible.
And somewhere out there, he was sure, there were assassins in the pay of the Covert Operations Group.
“Hello, New York!” Casper called into the microphone. “My fellow Americans, thanks for coming!”