Play To Kill

Chapter Two

The auditorium was dimly lit, and very cold. Outside the temperature was reaching for the mid-eighties; in here the air conditioning was set to keep an audience of a thousand comfortable. No one had told the maintenance staff that there would be less than fifty attending this seminar, and now all of them were huddled in the front two rows, freezing whatever body parts were exposed, which, in some cases, were considerable.

Special Agent John Smith was gathering his thoughts just offstage. In his thirty years with the Bureau he'd never given a single speech; never taught a class; never spoken at a press conference; never dealt with the public in multiples. He was a behind-the-scenes workhorse. Most agents were, walking through entire careers without leaving a ripple. He'd interviewed a lot of suspects, of course, but most of them were handcuffed in a locked room - a literal captive audience. And yet here he was, six months out from mandatory retirement, finally facing the prospect of being the sole focus of a crowd's attention, really nervous for the first time in his career.

John Smith's life had always been about as ordinary as his name. His parents loved, but did not spoil, the one and only child they would ever have. And they loved each other, even now, as they grew old and stayed happy in

Florida, where all elderly parents should be sent for their dotage.

He'd been a good kid, smart to a degree, but no genius by anyone's estimation; raised with the strong values that were common back when people had to be civilized enough to deal face-to-face. He was sent on to adulthood with a college education and a middle-class sensibility that would see him through life with only a few potholes along the way.

He'd been in second grade, eight years old, when he'd first learned how to fold a flag; how important it was that it never touched the ground or was left flying after dark or in the rain. These were lessons written into school curriculums then; a learning assignment as important as multiplication tables, although no second-grader could imagine why, or think to question it. They only knew that if they did it properly, they might be chosen to exit the stifling classroom without supervision to lower the flag from its pole at the end of the school day.

Every time he passed a car dealership or a Perkins restaurant that flew those monstrous flags from towering poles, he thought of those second-grade respites from times tables and spelling bees when he and two others who had earned the privilege had been excused from the class to perform the duties of tradition and pomp. The funny thing was that they found something else on that empty playground, where they fled for freedom from the teacher and the confining classroom; something almost spiritual that seeped into your memory without you ever knowing it was there. He still felt the red and white stripes and the stars on the blue field under his fingers all these years later, and that memory had shaped his life.

He did not become the superhero he wanted to be in comic-book kindergarten, not the super agent he'd hoped to be when he first went down the FBI path, but not a failure, either. Just a man in the middle, as most men were. He believed in God, family, his country, and the Constitution, and still, none of that had prepared him for the audience he faced now.

He took his place at the podium and looked out over the motley collection of humanity that was probably the world's only hope of solving this particular case, and a direct reflection of the Bureau's desperation.

There was a cluster of normalcy on one side of the aisle - ten FBI agents dressed in the customary suit and tie, all sitting together in one section. Paul Shafer, the Minneapolis special agent in charge, sat on the aisle seat of that group, looking self-righteously indignant to be present at a seminar where the law and law-breakers shared the same space. Smith had to hold back the nasty smile. Shafer was still young enough and gung-ho enough to believe he'd be part of this exclusive, frighteningly powerful club of suits forever. Wait until he found out the FBI's sell-by date crept up a whole lot faster than he'd thought it would.

Then again, because a little gung-ho of his own still gasped for breath every now and then, Smith could almost sympathize with Shafer's discomfort when he looked on the other side of the aisle. There were young and old, body piercings and tattoos, a few beardless boys who looked like they'd just walked off the set of Revenge of the Nerds, and a lot of people who sported tank tops and hairy armpits - men and women both. And these were the normal ones. Monkeewrench was in the back, isolated from the rest, which was fine with him. He'd deal with them tomorrow. They'd agreed to host a panel in one of the smaller, closed rooms, but Grace MacBride had flatly refused to get up on a lit stage.

'Most of you have an understandable reluctance to work with the FBI,' he began, looking over the audience with a very slight smile. 'Probably because most of you break several Federal laws on a regular basis.' Nervous laughter from the audience. 'Oddly enough, this is why you were asked here today. Your hacking ventures have brought you to our attention, won you an FBI file of your own, and, legality aside, your skills have impressed us. Now we need your help tracing an anonymous, extremely sophisticated network operating through several foreign proxy servers in countries that will not grant the United States access to their servers, which is why our own Cyber Crimes Unit has not been able to trace the users of this network.'

'Dude. Are you seriously asking us to hack into servers in hostile countries so you can catch one of our own? First off, we don't kiss and tell. Second, we could go down for years on something like that.'

John looked at the man who had actually had the guts to stand up and speak. It surprised him that it was one of the nerds, probably 120 pounds soaking wet with a chest that looked like a safe had fallen on it. 'Certainly not. The FBI would never suggest or condone such a violation of international law. We ask only that you use your own unique skills to track this network and find the origination sites of the users.'

'Come on. You know damn well our "own unique skills" happen to be hacking illegally into closed sites. Personally, I already did one-to-three for that, and I'm not about to risk it again.'

A lot of murmuring from the group then, and John couldn't blame them. He had to measure every word, say everything exactly right.

He leaned his arms on the podium and let his eyes travel over every face. We trust you all,' he said, and everyone laughed. 'For that reason, we are absolutely certain that we will never have reason to suspect that any of you would violate federal or international law. It would be pointless to waste Bureau time investigating such a possibility. Is that perfectly clear?'

For a moment, everyone went silent. Nobody knew doublespeak as well as a really good hacker. Special Agent in Charge Paul Shafer looked like he'd swallowed a toad, which, for some reason, pleased Smith mightily.

'Furthermore,' John continued, 'your efforts will not be expended on catching "one of your own." These people are not identity thieves, spammers, or virus disseminators. These people are cold-blooded killers. They film their murders and post them on the Web for the world to see.'

The lights in the auditorium dimmed further and the screen behind the speaker became illuminated with the introduction to a PowerPoint presentation. The caption read: 'Cleveland, Ohio.'

'What I'm about to show you is a series of five videos that were pulled from various websites over the past several months. Some of you may have stumbled across these videos before they were pulled from the Web, and even though you now know that these are authentic, please be warned - the images you are about to see are extremely graphic and disturbing. Before we begin, I want to give anybody here who doesn't feel comfortable with viewing such content the opportunity to leave the auditorium now.'

No one in the room moved a muscle.

'The reason we are showing you these films is to highlight the critical importance of tracing the murderers who posted these films. They are still out there, probably still killing, or planning to kill, and we have absolutely no idea who they might be. They are extremely computer proficient. For this reason, I warn you not to discuss this case with fellow hackers who have not been invited to this seminar. If you do, you may unwittingly be talking to one of the killers. All of you here have been thoroughly vetted to the very limits of our resources. Still, we realize that the vetting process is not perfect, and that some of the murderers may be in this room at this very moment.' He paused for effect, pleased to see a few attendees cast sidelong glances at their seatmates.

'Now. The films you're about to see have already been seen by hundreds of thousands of people on the Web, but very few of those people realize that what they were watching was actually real. Nor do they understand that these may not be anomalies, but perhaps the very grim beginning of an unimaginable new cyber crime.'

He tapped some keys on his laptop to roll the first film but didn't turn around to watch the images. He didn't have to. He knew exactly what was happening on the large screen by the involuntary gasps from his audience.

You had to see a body close-up, touch it with your own hands, to connect with the deadly real loss of a single human from the entire race. Everyone in this room saw murders almost every day. On television, in movies, video games, on computer screens that showed that which was real, and that which was staged. The average person never connected a depiction of death with a human being, and that was more than a problem; it was a moral catastrophe.

'These are real people,' he said in the break between one film and another. 'People who were here one moment, and cruelly torn from the world the next. Please remember that.'

In the very back row, in the darkness under a balcony, Grace MacBride watched the next film and felt her heart take a double beat, because if this couldn't be stopped, it could change everything.