Private Lives

16

Matt could see that the waiting driver was surprised to see two people coming out to his car. He was more surprised — and somewhat dubious — when James Winters told him about the change in destination.

“We’re going to the offices of Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird,” the captain announced. When he saw the look on the driver’s face, he said, “Check with your dispatchers. And have them check with Mr. Laird.”

Even when the okay came through, the driver kept shooting his two passengers quizzical looks in the rearview mirror. It couldn’t be the change in destination — that wasn’t that unusual. No, it was probably that the driver felt he knew Winters’s face from somewhere, thanks to all the news coverage. Or perhaps he even recognized the captain. But if so, he didn’t say anything. Nobody spoke. Matt was so glad to see Winters shake off that frighteningly lackadaisical attitude he’d shown during their visit — and so shocked by what the captain had told him — that he really couldn’t think of anything else to say. As for Winters, the captain seemed downright impatient to get to his lawyer and discuss a defense.

From the continuing looks in the mirror, Matt suspected that the driver really had finally identified Winters as the unwilling star of so many recent news items. The driver’s silence was one of suspicion, although that turned to a broad smile when the captain gave him a fat tip on their arrival at the downtown offices of Mitchell, Liddy, and Laird.

Matt and Winters strode through an impressive lobby and rode up in an elevator. All along the way the captain held Leif Anderson’s datascrip, tapping it repeatedly with his forefinger.

Steward Laird must have been just as eager. He almost flew into the reception area when they were announced and all but hustled them into his private office. “What have you got?” the lawyer demanded.

“Some information — and a possible description — of someone with the motive and means to create the mess I’m in,” Winters replied crisply. “And we have this young man and several of his associates to thank for it.”

He took Laird through the original Alcista case — not mentioning why Cynthia Winters was using the car — and the aftermath, explaining how his partner had fabricated evidence to put Alcista away — and how Winters had found out and blown the whistle.

“I’m aware of that much,” Laird said. “Michael Steele was cashiered and died soon afterward.”

“Perhaps,” Winters corrected. “Take a look at this presentation and tell me what you think.”

After seeing Leif’s show-and-tell and hearing how I-on Investigations made its amazing profits, Laird got on the phone. “We keep a private investigator on retainer — a somewhat more ethical investigator than the ones I just heard about. I want him to see this and start looking into Marcus Kovacs. This isn’t enough to convince a jury on its own, but it certainly strikes me as a fruitful line for investigation.”

The lawyer’s conversation with the private eye was brief and to the point, requesting a detailed background check on Marcus Kovacs and I-on Investigations.

Winters interrupted. “You don’t know how secure this line is,” he said, putting a hand over the holo pickup. “I suggest you don’t transmit the datafile electronically or put the file on any networked computer. Use a dedicated machine only. Make a copy of the finished file and have it hand-delivered.”

Laird looked incredulous at first. “We have our lines checked—”

“Remember who we’re dealing with,” Winters warned.

A new expression came over Laird’s face as he remembered all the trouble Winters was in. He nodded and completed the call.

“Now that you have an idea who did this to you, does it suggest anything about the way it was done?” the lawyer asked.

Captain Winters nodded grimly. “Iron Mike Steele was a specialist agent at Net Force. His job was figuring out how the bad guys got into computers, so he had a lot of knowledge on how to do just about anything to a computer.” Then, as he paused, if anything, Winters became more grim. “He also had a knowledge of the Net Force computer system that any outside hacker would envy.”

Matt was abruptly reminded of Hangman Hank Steadman’s mocking words. “If someone could infiltrate our systems like that, I’d hire them immediately as a specialist agent.”

That was precisely Mike Steele’s job description. Matt began to feel hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, the seemingly airtight case Internal Affairs had compiled was beginning to spring leaks.

Winters shook his head. “Mike was very good at his job. When it came to cooking evidence, he’d create a sort of baloney sandwich, slipping false data between a few slices of truth. It almost always passed muster.”

Matt thought back to the records Mark Gridley had accessed — the story of how Steele had planted the fake evidence on Alcista. The Net Force agent had used what seemed like an innocuous phone call to sneak a program onto the gangster’s system. That program had initiated the incriminating calls, then erased the records — but not so well that Net Force techs couldn’t find traces of them.

“Before things, um, hit the fan, did you get any strange calls to your office?” he asked Winters.

The captain frowned. “Now that you mention it, I got the king of all wrong numbers a few days before Alcista died. A telemarketing call, trying to sell me a discount casket. I had a job breaking into the salesman’s spiel, telling him he’d gotten an office, not a home number — and the offices of Net Force, at that.”

“Speaking of breaking in,” Matt said, “were you on the line with this guy long enough for a program to be transmitted in the background?”

Winters gave him a sharp look. “Just like Mike did to Steve the Bull.” He thought for a second. “Maybe. And if it implanted a program, that would explain a few things. If there was a program resident in the Net Force system, that informant’s call I got could have been generated in-house. I took it for granted that it was an outside call, because it came from my informant — or seemed to.”

Now Laird nodded. “But if it came to you through the Net Force computer, there would be no trace of the call through phone company records.”

“Nor through the agency phone log,” Winters went on. “It would just be an internal record.” He grimaced. “Knowing Steele, we can probably change that to an erased internal record.”

“But would it be lost and gone forever?” Laird asked. “I could get a subpoena to have the system checked.”

Winters shook his head. “I think it would be better to present it as an internal security breach. Jay Gridley will have techs going over the system with fine-tooth combs. They’ll find anything there is to find.”

But the captain sounded doubtful, and Matt could understand why. Mike Steele’s infiltrated program would no doubt have erased itself after erasing the record of the phony phone call. And in the weeks since the deed was done, who knows how much data might have been recorded over the circuits where the Trojan Horse program had resided?

Still, it was a possibility — a chance to shake the case that seemed to be winding around the captain like a hungry python.

An incoming call came to Laird’s system. He looked surprised when he saw the caller. “That was fast work,” he commented. “You must have barely gotten the datafile.”

The lawyer’s system was a high-priced model that offered privacy of image and sound, even from people sitting in the office’s visitors’ chairs.

Laird’s newfound confidence suddenly seemed dented. “Looks like we hit a snag on the Kovacs-Steele thing. The first thing my investigator did was pull fingerprint files — Steele’s from Net Force, and Kovacs’s from the local licensing agency. Not only do they not match, there are wild dissimilarities.”

Winters wasn’t fazed in the least. “Of course not,” he said. “Steele was a specialist agent — a master hacker. If he intended to disappear, the first thing he’d go after were his fingerprints. And, regrettably, he had the access and the knowledge to change them — both there and throughout the Federal system.”

Matt nodded. “The confusion would start from the Net Force computers, which we already have to regard as compromised.”

Laird turned back to his computer’s display, which only looked like a gray storm cloud from where Matt was sitting.

“Keep digging,” the lawyer ordered.

“And tell them not to call again,” Winters said. “We still don’t know if the phone line’s secure.”

If it’s not, Kovacs-Steele will already know we’re after him, Matt realized. This could be a problem.

Stewart Laird passed the message along and cut the connection. His expression was preoccupied, as if he was already moving on to other matters mentally. The prospect of having some sort of case to present — something besides temporary insanity — seemed to fill the lawyer with energy.

“I’d like to call a press conference,” Laird said. “Like it or not, you’re being tried in the court of public opinion. It would be nice to point that out — and maybe have these so-called journalists tearing at one another instead of coming after us.”

Winters looked doubtful. “If you mention Kovacs, it will just warn him.”

“I’ll couch it in general terms,” Laird promised. “Suppose I attack the reporting on Once Around the Clock—I could say it was sloppy, that they didn’t check their facts.” He thought for a second. “How about this? They broadcast slanderous untruths, untruths which were not researched and developed by the network staff. That should get the other reporters going after HoloNews, and spark an in-house investigation by the network lawyers.”

“I think Kovacs would have to be blind not to figure out that we’re on to him.” Winters sourly tapped the pickup on Laird’s office system. “For all we know, he could have been listening in already.”

He flashed a grin at Laird’s expression. “Yeah, I know, makes me sound paranoid, but then, that’s my business.” His expression went serious again. “Okay, go for it without mentioning Kovacs. Let’s shake the tree and see what falls out. In the meantime, send a copy of the kids’ datafile to Net Force. To Jay Gridley, not to Internal Affairs. I don’t trust Steadman not to bury it. I’m pretty sure Jay’ll at least order a security check on the computers. And maybe, if we’re lucky, he’ll turn a really big magnifying glass on Marcus Kovacs.”

Laird nodded. “The more resources we can call on, the better,” he said, then quickly consulted his watch. “Okay. I think I can set things up for a press conference tomorrow morning, before the noon news.” The lawyer hesitated for a second. “I don’t think you need to be present.”

Winters looked like a man who’d just gotten a reprieve from a firing squad. “I’m sure I can trust you to say what needs to be said.”

“All right, then,” Stewart Laird said with a little nod. “The other side has been slinging mud at us for a while now. It’s about time we knocked some of it back on them.”

It had been an unusually tight day at the O’Malley household. Megan’s mom and dad were both freelance writers, which meant they generally set their own schedules. But both of them were up against deadlines, working to finish books. Since coming home from school, Megan had been tied to the computer, making up work she’d skimped on while trying to help Captain Winters.

I will not call Matt Hunter, she told herself. The words had run through her head like a mantra while she ground her way through all her reading assignments in world history.

Right now Megan had a greater interest in more current events — as in how Winters’s lawyer had reacted to the file Leif had developed. But her parents were really getting on her case about schoolwork. And, to tell the truth, Bradford Academy was a pretty demanding place, academically speaking. It wouldn’t do to fall too far behind. She’d even made the ultimate sacrifice, programming the home system to meet all incoming calls for her with a message and record them for later consumption.

Supper was late. Her brother Sean tried to do the cooking and filled the kitchen with a peculiarly acrid smoke. The O’Malleys wound up waiting for takeout while airing the house out.

So, between one thing and another, it wasn’t until the late news that Megan had a chance to catch up with the world.

“I think you’ll want to see this,” her father said, poking his head into her room.

She followed him to the living room, where a model-perfect newscaster looked very serious sitting in front of a logo that said NET FORCE MURDER?

“A surprising counterattack came today from the lawyer defending Net Force Captain James Winters. Attorney Stewart Laird not only insisted on his client’s innocence in the alleged bombing murder of organized-crime figure Stefano ‘the Bull’ Alcista; he also accused the media of in-accuracy and outright misrepresentation in their coverage of the story. Laird took special aim at HoloNews—”

The image shifted to a lean-faced, balding man standing in a heavily paneled room. “The leader in this savage attack of pack journalism has been Once Around the Clock. I don’t know how a supposedly respectable newsmagazine could air some of the so-called facts they’ve presented. The information was obviously unchecked, and apparently didn’t even originate with anyone on the network.”

Megan pumped a fist into the air. “All right!” she cried. Whatever else, Leif’s file had apparently pumped some life into the captain’s defense.

The lawyer’s image faded, to be replaced with another familiar face. Megan found herself looking at the chubby features of Professor Arthur Wellman.

The newscaster’s voice-over provided the bridge. “Support for Laird’s allegations came from media analyst and publisher Arthur Wellman.”

Wellman sat at his cluttered desk, handling an unlit pipe. “It’s unfortunate that media transgressions are usually only scrutinized in the light of the most sensational cases. It takes a Net Force scandal to disclose irresponsible, possibly even unethical, reportage. But The Fifth Estate will present the proof in a special issue….”

“Why, that pink-faced little weasel!” Megan burst out. “He’s using the captain’s case to get a little free advertising for his own rag of a magazine!”

“Well, he seems to back up what Captain Winters’s lawyer was saying,” Mrs. O’Malley observed. She squinted to look at the channel selector. “Judging from the roasting HoloNews is getting, I’d guess this is some other network.”

Wellman’s face disappeared, replaced by the newscaster. This time a different heading appeared behind her head — a stylized car crashing into the HoloNews logo.

“In any event, proof for these allegation will be harder to come by. In a late-breaking report HoloNews personality Tori Rush of Once Around the Clock was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver less than an hour ago. Reporting live from George Washington University Hospital is Liz Fortrell…”

Megan stared, her whole face slack with shock.