The Devil's Code

CHAPTER 9

ST. JOHN CORBEIL

Corbeil was intent. Not angry, not stunned, not confused.

Focused.

"I don't know where she got them, but she apparently knew they were important because she made copies," Hart was saying. His voice was distant, tinny, with traffic in the background. He was calling from a payphone in San Jose.

A television was mounted on the wall opposite Corbeil's desk. One of the talking heads on CNBC was chattering about the newest disaster on the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. "MUTING" was printed across his face in green letters, like a TV-chip editorial.

"If she had access." Corbeil began, speaking to Hart.

"We know she had access. goddamnit, nothing is clear," Hart said.

"Make it clear," Corbeil snapped. "What's the problem?"

"She had four Jaz disks that probably came out of our supply room," Hart said. "They have that blue OEM tint to the cases, and we assume that her brother stole them to make his copies. But on the other four disks, the cases are clear plasticnot ours. We looked in the wastebaskets and found a receipt from CompUSA, which shows that she bought three three-packs of Jaz disks. Nine disks. We found one set of four disks in clear casesthe copiesand one blank disk in a clear case."

"Which means four are missing, and that's the exact number you'd need for another set of copies," Corbeil said, picking up on it instantly. "Goddamnit. Where are they?"

"That's the problem. We don't know. I can only think of one reason that she even made another set of copies."

"For security reasons. She ditched them somewhere."

"Yes. That's what we think," Hart said. "We don't know exactly why she'd go to the trouble, though. The thing is, you can't load an OMS file unless you have five hundred megs of memory. Not without making the computer go crazy. Her home computer had three hundred eighty-four megs, and her laptop has one hundred twenty-eight. Neither one had any of the files from the Jaz drive on itnot even the small files."

"So what are you saying? That she never looked at them?"

"Not at home," Hart said. "She could have taken them to her university office, except that we've been cruising her place almost since she got here, and as far as we know, she hasn't been to the university. So the question is, if she doesn't even know what's on the disks, why'd she make all those copies? If she did?"

"Could you take a look at her office?"

"Doubtful. It's right off a college computer lab, and there are always people around there, day and night. Not right in her office, but up and down the hall and around the lab."

"We've got to get those disks, before she does something with them."

"We don't know what to do, other than watch her. We could snatch her, and squeeze the disks out of her, but, man. if she disappeared, that might be one too many accidents even for the Dallas police. Also, there's been a guy hanging around with her, maybe a boyfriend or something. It's like she doesn't want to be alone."

Corbeil thought for a long time, Hart waiting through the pause. As he thought, with the CNBC mimes doing their silent chat opposite his desk, it occurred to Corbeil that he'd like to fuck every single one of the reporting women, but as for stock information, he wouldn't trust any of them as far as he could spit a rat. That was not a coincidence, he thought. That was marketing. He wrenched himself back to the problem: "So keep an eye on her. Monitor her."

Hart was disappointed; Corbeil could hear it in his voice. He didn't say "That's it?" but he wanted to. Instead, he said, "We can't really hang around her neighborhood, but if you want to cough up a couple of grand, in cash, I can put a bug on her car. At least we'll know where she goes."

"Do it. I'll send the cash through American Express. I'll find out where the local office is out there, and you'll have the money in a couple of hours. How long will it take you to get the bug?"

"Probably tomorrow. I'll have to call around."

"Good," Corbeil said. "One other thing. I want you to start e-mailing reports to me. I've set up a new account called, um, Arclight. A-R-C-L-I-G-H-T. Regular number. Tell me that you're monitoring them, that you're watching them, and ask for advice. I'll send one back that tells you to watch them for another week, to see if they make any contacts that seem to reflect an association with Firewall. We can discuss the feasibility of going to the FBI. Don't be overly dramatic, but mention something about national security. We want to sound ethically challenged in the defense of the good old USA."

"Building a paper trail?"

"Exactly. Give me a note or two every day, reporting on the surveillance. Maybe even suggest that we might want to get an ex-FBI guy to do a black-bag job, but I'll turn you down on that."

"All right. I'll get Benson to chip in a report."

"Read it first. He's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier."

When Hart was off the line, Corbeil leaned back in his chair, made a steeple with his fingers, and thought about it. Hart's memos would be useful in a couple of different ways. If everything went smoothly, and they either recovered the disks or discovered there was no second copy, then the memos could stay in the files just as Hart sent them.

If, on the other hand, the situation got out of control, the memos could be altered to show an illegal operation running inside AmMath. The memos could be altered without changing the time stamp on them, and a check of the phone records would show the matching calls coming and going.

Since the Arclight file had been opened from the computer in Tom Woods's office, it would be at least credible that Corbeil didn't know about it; especially if Woods wasn't around to testify.

That's all Corbeil would need: a level of credibility, and the silence of contrary witnesses.

And a good lawyer, of course.