She went to bed early and slept late. When she rose, she started the coffee machine and cooked some oatmeal in the microwave, then took a shower. She ate breakfast while CNN reported that South American currencies were still under attack. Dagmar muted the volume on the television while she booted her laptop and checked her email.
FROM: BJSKI
SUBJECT: Corrupiton
Oh hai!
U waz rite about Hellmouth. We haz been out all nite and I iz now
throughly corrupited.
Ai think her nbame was Beverly. She and Hellmouth goze way back.
She drinkz mojitos.
Have you ever haz mojitos? 3 and you can not walk rite. Ai do not
know how Ai gotz home.
Ai just write to let you knowz that I iz going to be lait with the
deliverabblies.
Bj
PS Ai haz spent all mai dollarz. Kin I haz a raze?
Dagmar laughed, saw that the email had been sent at 4:42 A.M., and figured she wouldn’t be hearing from BJ till midafternoon at the earliest.
At least some people in Great Big Idea were having fun.
FROM: Charlie
SUBJECT: Patch 2.0
Hi. I’m attaching the second version of the patch. I’ve tested it on
my own machines and it works.
I’m also attaching files from an assortment of online
brokers giving the IP addresses of computers making suspicious
trades.
Talk to ya soon!
Charlie
That email had been sent at 5:08, so BJ wasn’t the only person having an all-nighter.
It’s like they’re undergraduates again, Dagmar thought.
She shifted in her seat, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a familiar piece of downtown Los Angeles on the television screen.
The brick facade of the Figueroa Hotel.
Her mouth went dry. She lunged for the television remote to bring up the sound.
“-believed to be one fatality in the early morning blast,” said the reporter. “It has not been officially stated whether the explosion was an accident or the result of a bomb, but sources report that Homeland Security has been called in.”
Dagmar’s heart sank. The reporter hadn’t said where in the hotel the explosion had been, or given the name of the casualty, but Dagmar already knew.
She knew.
The Russians had found Charlie.
She looked at the screen of her laptop and saw Charlie’s emails, with the attachments listed.
This might be the only copy left of Patch 2.0.
She turned back to the television and listened. The explosion had occurred just before six o’clock, a short time after Charlie had sent her the email. The hotel had been evacuated and the fire department called, but the fire had been minor and easily put out. One body had been found, and there were believed to be no further casualties.
She should find out, Dagmar thought. She should try to confirm what she felt she already knew.
Dagmar turned to the laptop, took it from the kitchen table, and connected it to the cable modem on her desk. She found the Figueroa’s home page, got the number for the front desk, and called it.
“Figueroa Hotel.” The desk clerk’s voice was hoarse. He’d probably been answering a lot of phone calls in the past few hours.
“Can you connect me to the Medina Suite, please?”
There was a moment’s hesitation.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” the clerk said.
“The accident was in the Medina Suite?” Dagmar asked.
“Yes.” Another hesitation. “May I know the name of the person you wished to contact?”
“By ‘accident,’ ” Dagmar said, relentless, “you mean the bomb, right?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” Dagmar pressed End.
She stared at the phone for a long moment while CNN ran a commercial for Viagra.
Her mind seemed to have nothing in it. Just a big empty warehouse space, with fading footsteps echoing.
Both her fingertips and her mind seemed to be numb as she downloaded Patch 2.0 to her computer, then copied both it and the broker files to a memory stick.
Now there were three copies. She put the memory stick in the pocket of her jeans.
She gave a galvanic leap as the phone began to ring in her hand. The number on the display was area code 818, but she didn’t recognize it.
She muted the sound on the television, then pressed Send and put the handheld to her ear.
“Yes?”
“Dagmar.” Joe Clever’s voice was breathless. “I’ve found the Russian!”
Dagmar let breath whisper from her lips in a sigh. If only Clever had found Litvinov twenty-four hours ago.
“He’s in the pool, swimming laps!” Joe Clever said. “I’m watching him now!”
“Where are you?” Dagmar asked.
“Oceanside Motel, in Santa Monica. Near Pacific Palisades.”
That wasn’t anywhere near downtown Los Angeles, but then of course the bomb could have been carried to the Figueroa from wherever Litvinov had assembled it.
“Charlie Ruff lives in Santa Monica, right?” Joe Clever said. “I think the Russian was probably still trying to stake out Charlie’s house.”
“Yes,” Dagmar said. Her mind turned in sluggish circles. She didn’t seem to be processing this at all.
“Man!” Joe Clever said. “I thought I’d never be able to get back to my cell phone! I’ve been watching his door since six thirty last night, and I had no way of contacting you!”
Dagmar suddenly found herself in a timeless space, the long, soft period between two of her heartbeats extending to infinity in all directions while Joe Clever’s words echoed in her brain.
“You’d better tell me,” Dagmar said.
“I’ve been going to every hotel and motel in Greater Los Angeles,” said Joe Clever. “I’ve got pictures I made of Litvinov, and I show them to the desk clerks. I photoshop beards and so on in case he’s trying to disguise himself.” He laughed. “It’s old-fashioned detective work! I tried emailing the pictures, you know, but the hotels don’t always respond, so I have to go in person. And the desk clerks work in shifts, you know, so I don’t always get them all, and I have to come back.”
Dagmar tried to picture Joe Clever driving his old van from one motel to the next, talking to one bemused desk clerk after another. How many thousands of hours would it take to hit every motel in the Los Angeles area? Even LAPD didn’t have that much manpower, that many hours.
“Good work,” Dagmar said. It seemed inadequate praise.
“I keep coming back to the motels around Santa Monica,” Joe Clever said. “I checked the hotels in the Valley, too, but I figured Litvinov wouldn’t go back to AvN Soft, not after you increased security the way you did. Anyway, I got lucky… Yesterday around dinnertime I got to the Oceanside just an hour after Litvinov checked in.”
“You’re sure it’s him?”
“Oh yes, once I got a look at him! When the clerk told me he’d checked in, I got a room across the motel court from his. Then I ran to the van and got my Big Ears and video camera and went to my room to set up.
“I was going to call you, but I realized I’d left my cell phone in the van, and I didn’t dare leave until I was sure that it really was Litvinov. I didn’t want him to disappear the way he did last time.
“I didn’t have your number with me, so I couldn’t use the phone in the room. So I employed the Big Ears and I got some conversations of Litvinov talking on the phone.”
“When did you confirm it was really him?”
Joe Clever was so excited that his words began to stumble over one another. “Just this morning! S-someone came to the door to give him a package, and I got a good look!”
“Who was the messenger?”
“Just some guy. They talked in Russian! I got some good pictures of him.”