He loomed over Matt’s insubstantial proxy. “You wouldn’t like that, Yank. No, not at all.”
Matt was glad to let Caitlin take him out of there. But when he came to leave her veeyar, he didn’t go straight home. Instead, he took a complicated, preprogrammed escape route that shunted him with dizzying speed between dozens of different Net sites. He’d done the same thing when he’d bailed out of Lara Fortune’s party, ricocheting back and forth across the Net to baffle any possible tracers that might have been planted on him. He’d even taken the precaution of making this route different from the one he’d taken on Friday night.
His last stop brought him to a huge pyramid ablaze with electrical impulses — the virtual representation of an on-line catalogue operation. The restless glitter represented constant calls for pricing information and orders.
Matt hurtled onward without even slowing, blending into the blaze of electronic activity around the construct. If the virtual vandals had managed to keep track of him up to now, the sheer volume of information glaring would confuse their pursuit.
He was aiming for a tiny dark spot on the side of the pyramid — a few gigabytes of computer memory that Matt had diverted from the catalogue business. Now, the little niche held programs to let Matt run a self-check to insure he’d made a clean getaway.
The tiny dark space suddenly flared into life, blinking brightly as the antitracking programs gave him a green light, then erased themselves. He took one more whirl around the pyramid, routed himself along with some outgoing calls, and veered off homeward.
Matt’s knees felt a little rubbery when he got out of his computer-link chair. Maybe that evasive pattern he’d flown from Vandal Central had a few too many twists and turns. His only regret was that he hadn’t been able to plant a tracing device in the veeyar where Caitlin had taken him.
That problem was, a bug would turn out to be a two-edged sword. It would reveal the node where the virtual vandals had met, but the transmission would let the bad guys pinpoint him. And right now, the only things he had going for him were the Caitlin Corrigan connection and his hidden identity.
Matt walked off his shivers, then headed down the hall to the phone.
Now it’s my turn to try and unmask a few proxies, he thought as he punched in Captain Winters’s office number. Luckily, the captain was in, spending his Saturday clearing away paperwork.
“Captain, it’s Matt Hunter,” Matt said into the handset. “Could I come down there and talk with you? I may have come across a connection to that Camden Yards thing.”
“You don’t want to tell me right now? Or e-mail a report?” the officer asked.
Matt coughed. “I’d rather you hear this in person, sir. When you do, I think you might agree.” No way was he going to talk on an open phone line — or send a message through the virtual vandals’ network playground.
A sigh came over the phone. “I was hoping to leave in a little while — when can you get here?”
“I’m leaving right now,” Matt said.
On the autobus ride to the captain’s office in the Pentagon government office center, Matt tried to organize his experiences of the past week into a coherent report. But even his best effort didn’t sound so coherent when he faced the impatient Captain Winters.
The captain was a lot less impatient and much more worried by the time Matt finished. “You’re suggesting that the daughter of the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts is linked to a group of wealthy virtual thrill-seekers? And several other members of this bunch are foreign — possibly related to the diplomatic community?”
“I think—” Matt began.
But Captain Winters finished his sentence for him. “I think you’d better have some pretty convincing evidence to back up charges like that. We don’t have any official standing in the case — it’s still the Baltimore PD’s baby.” He rolled his eyes. “And they’d just love hearing this theory.”
“I still think the foreign connection is worth looking into,” Matt said quietly.
“As long as you don’t go rocking any boats,” Winters said. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll leave you to it.” Turning to his computer console, he said, “Computer, identify for voice commands.”
“Voice identified as Captain James Winters,” the computer responded.
“Open database search, nonclassified material, Corrigan, Caitlin — known associates, specifically foreign nationals.”
“Going back to six months ago,” Matt suggested. “I don’t think they’ve been meeting recently.”
The captain nodded. “Time variable extending to six months before present date. Datascrip copy to be presented to Matthew Hunter, identified now.”
“Matthew Hunter,” Matt said.
“Execute,” Captain Winters ordered. He glanced at Matt. “I’m sure you’ll have a bit of a wait. Even for our computer system, this will be a long search.” He went to the door. “I’ll leave this locked. Just close it on the way out. And tell me if anything interesting kicks out.”
Matt didn’t know whether to be flattered by the captain’s trust or annoyed by his obvious belief that nothing interesting would emerge. Standing alone in the office, he waited impatiently as the Net Force search engines ground through all the public information sites — print news, electronic info, HoloNet, and government public affairs — for any connections between Caitlin and Washington’s large foreign community.
But impatience quickly became dismay as the computer announced hundreds of hits.
“Organize by individuals,” Matt ordered, “listing by name in decreasing frequency of references.”
Even that way, the datascrip Captain Winters had left was quickly filled.
I bet he figured this would happen, Matt thought, and set it up as a lesson for me.
He was about to pull the scrip from its reader when he suddenly stopped, struck by a new thought. He hadn’t been able to identify the accents of two of the three proxied-up characters he’d met today. But he had a suspicion about Mr. Jewels.
“Separate file,” Matt ordered the computer. “First ten individuals on the list — sort by nationality. If there are any British subjects, give them precedence.”
The scrip whirred again. “Last thirty-seven names on master list deleted to make room for file,” the computer warned.
“Accepted,” Matt said. “List nationality file.”
A holo-screen appeared in the air over the computer console. Matt examined the glowing letters. “One British subject,” he muttered. “Look at all those press references.”
Matt decided to try and press his luck. “Computer,” he said, “is there a current government file on”—he squinted, then read the name—“Gerald Savage?”
The room was silent for a moment as the computer searched the Net Force files. “Affirmative.”
“Is the file classified?”
“Negative.”
“Call up file on Gerald Savage,” Matt ordered.
An eye-blink later, the image of a harsh-faced but handsome enough guy appeared over the console. There was just a little too much nose and chin, and the brown hair was worn defiantly long.
“Hunh,” Matt muttered. “It’s a State Department file, not Net Force info.”
He frowned as he ordered a scroll of the written contents. Gerald Savage, it seemed, was the kind of guy who gave the idea of diplomatic immunity a bad name. He’d gotten into several physical confrontations, which had earned him the nickname “Gerry the Savage.”