Spyder Web

32

‘Ian, I’ve something you ought to take a look at,’ Roe announced as she entered Parnell’s office.

Parnell looked at his watch and saved the document that he was working on. ‘You’re a bit early — we’re not scheduled to meet until noon. What’s so urgent?’

Roe sat in the leather chair in front of Parnell’s glassandsteel desk. ‘We’ve made a little headway at Chrysler, but only a piece of what you wanted is there.’

Parnell thumbed through the report; the financial data he had requested was listed as ‘Inaccessible’ from that system. ‘It was a long shot, trying to punch through from the engineering side to finance, but worth a try anyway.’

‘There is some troubling news at the end of the report.’

Parnell flipped through to the last page and read the Spyder’s status report. The device was operating nominally, as always. Parnell’s brow furrowed when he reached the item regarding an attempt to dump the Spyder’s operating program. ‘What does this mean?’

‘Someone is taking a close look at the device, closer than we’d like. Unfortunately, it can’t tell us who or why, so we don’t know if it has to do with that experimental processor it’s attached to or something else.’ Roe didn’t have to elaborate on what ‘something else’ might be.

‘Any thoughts on what we might do about it?’

‘Unfortunately, we’re not going to get anything more detailed about this situation without going there. Actually’—Roe mused for a moment—‘that might not be a bad idea. They’ve gotten a fair amount of press regarding that optical processor. Perhaps I could arrange an interview to see how things are progressing. That might get me close enough to see what they’re doing.’

‘Excellent idea,’ Parnell agreed. ‘I’ll have Paulette make arrangements for you to fly out this afternoon. After all, we wouldn’t want our source to disappear suddenly.’

In the building across the riverfront park from the latemodern tower that housed Parnell’s office, two watchers from Axton’s team sat armed with cameras and laserdriven sound amplifiers. From their vantage point in the unleased space, they had a clear shot at Parnell’s corner office. Teams had been staked out here around the clock since Kang Fa’s last visit to London, without much success. If Parnell was involved in something illegal, he was doing a good job of not discussing it during business hours. This afternoon, Neville Axton sat in with the watchers, taking his measure of the man in the other building.

‘Interesting, lads — that’s the first time I recall Parnell mentioning an outside source for his information. Interesting, but strange,’ Axton mused.

‘How so?’ one of the watchers asked.

‘Well, it’s their language,’ Axton explained, still not clear himself about this train of thought. ‘They never come out and say who their source is, but Roe mentioned that someone was looking “at the device.” I wonder what she meant by that. Very odd.’