The Fool's Run

CHAPTER 4

I spent the night in a Chicago hotel, watching a bad movie about teenagers and thinking over the job proposition. Anshiser was a maniac, of course. He knew what he was doing, but he was clinging to a thin edge of control, like a grunt with battle fatigue. Would a crisis crack the control, or harden it? It could go either way. Maggie was something else. She was precise, measured, cool. She knew what she was doing, and she was nowhere near the edge. She apparently agreed with Anshiser. Dillon was a cipher.

Their proposition was not entirely novel. There have been several hushed-up incidents in which businesses were damaged by computer attacks. Most of the time, the object of the attack was theft or embezzlement, and the damage was an unintentional byproduct.

A major railroad was burned when a group of techno-thieves, as they were called in the FBI report, began shuffling and relabeling boxcars. The intent was to send certain cars, loaded with high-value consumer items like televisions and stereos, to remote sidings, where the gang would crack the cars, load the loot onto trucks, and haul it away. The most serious damage came when they tried to cover their tracks. Three thousand boxcars were mislabeled and sent to the wrong destinations. The result was chaos. Perishable products rotted, time-critical shipments were late. It cost the railroad millions to straighten out.

In a few of the known raids, the damage was intentional. In every case, though, the attacks were from the inside-guerrilla hits by employees against their own company. Anshiser's proposition was altogether different. He was proposing a war, an act of naked aggression, an attack to the death by one corporation on another. As far as I knew, there had never been anything like it. A war that was business by other means, to paraphrase a famous Prussian.

Maggie called at eight o'clock.

"Jesus," I said with a yawn. "When you said morning, I thought you meant like eleven. Where are you?"

"Downstairs," she said briskly. "I have three warm bagels, a small cup of cream cheese, a plastic knife, two Styrofoam cups of coffee, and your room number. What do you think?"

She looked like she'd been up for hours. She came in, sat in one of the chairs, and ate one of the bagels while she watched me finish the other two.

"You look like you've been dragged through hell by the ankles," she said. "Any thoughts yet?"

"It will take a while," I said, scratching my day-old beard. "I wonder about Anshiser."

"If he's crazy?"

"I might have picked a different word."

"But that's what you want to know," she said. "The answer is, no, he is not crazy. He is extremely anxious. This might be our last card. If we're going to play it, we have to do it soon. In six weeks, or two months, it will be too late."

"Hmph." I drank the last of my coffee. "Let me shave and take a shower, and we can get out of here."

She came and leaned on the bathroom door-jamb while I shaved, still nibbling on her first bagel. "I used to watch my father shave when I was a little girl," she said as I wiped the last of the shaving cream off my face.

"You watch your father take a shower, too?" I asked.

"Of course not." A tiny frown.

"Well, if you'll move your elbow, I'll shut the door and spare you the experience," I said, and she grinned and moved off across the room.

The Anshiser research plant was somewhere out by O'Hare, a nondescript, modernoid building. It looked, as somebody clever once said, like the box the building should have come in. The director didn't quite slaver over Maggie's hand, but he personally took us down to the laboratory level, where a String package was being assembled.

The lab looked like the world's cleanest machine shop, with concrete floors and a lot of noise. The String package was in a back room. Entry was through three sets of glass doors, and for the last two the director needed different-colored key cards.

String was the size of a console television. It was mounted on a testing gyro that allowed it to swivel freely. There was nothing tidy about it. Wires and electronics boards stuck out at all angles. There were nozzlelike protrusions here and there, and cylindrical openings where other nozzlelike protrusions would fit. A dolly full of testing equipment sat next to it, and nearby, two engineers in blue smocks argued about readouts. They stopped when we walked in.

Maggie introduced me as Mr. Lamb and told them I was cleared for all access. "What do you think?" she asked me.

I walked around the instrument package and shook my head. "Beats the shit out of me," I said.

"We could give you the Bigshot show," one of the engineers suggested. He had tape wrapped around the bridge of his glasses, which gave him a slightly crazed look. "It'd take about two minutes to rig up."

"Sure, why not?"

The testing equipment was quickly disconnected. The two engineers rolled in a dolly that carried what looked like a cartoon fishbowl, except that it bristled with short metallic rods. At the end of each rod was a glassy bubble. The engineers fitted the fishbowl around the String package like a Plexiglas jacket, and plugged in a half dozen multicolored flat cables.

"Okay," said one of the engineers. There was a keypad with a tiny digital LED panel on the side of the package. He punched a few buttons and peered at the readout, punched a few more, and nodded.

"Mr. Lamb, if you could stand right here." He pointed at a spot on the floor and I stood there. "Okay. Now look at this screen."

He turned on a monitor. It showed what looked like a head as painted by a two-year-old.

"That's your head as interpreted by high-frequency audio waves, infrared sensors, radar and laser rangers. Right now we're looking at the laser sensing. You can read it like a contour map. The brightest yellow part is your nose, then it moves through the red, green, and blue as it goes further back.

"Now here," he said, flipping on another monitor, "is a simulated three-dimensional readout of your head, and its direction, size, range, velocity, and probable identity shown down here in the corner of the screen."

Most of the numbers were meaningless unless you knew the code sequences, though under "identity" it said "head."

"We rigged it to say head," said the engineer with the crazed look.

"Now move around the room," said the other one. I moved, and the readouts changed. "It's following you," he said.

I stepped behind Maggie and looked over her head. It was still following me, and when I came out from behind her, continued to follow.

"Your personal characteristics were read into the computer, so it followed only you. We have it programmed for a single target, or it would have picked up Ms. Kahn as a second target and started a separate reading on her, while registering that you were eclipsed behind her."

"Neat," I said. "Listen, what is this audio thing, and what use can you make of audio pickups if you've got two planes on diverging courses, each at, say, Mach 2?"

"Okay," said one of the engineers, slipping into a professorial tone. "You have to understand.

Maggie and the director excused themselves after fifteen minutes of it. I stayed for another two hours looking at the machinery and talking about the software that would run the stuff. It was not my field at all, but I could see the concepts. If I started studying right away, it would only take six years to catch up with what they were doing. The AI and game-playing concepts were easier, and we got tangled in a complicated argument about gaming concepts.

We gave up at lunchtime, and I went looking for Maggie. She was in the director's office working with a business terminal. The director was hovering in the outer office, pretending to supervise a harassed-looking secretary.

"Ah. There you are," she said when I walked in. "All done?"

"Yeah. We ought to get a cheeseburger or something."

The director fussed over her as we went out, and shook my hand. As he turned back and Maggie went out through the door, his face flattened in a distinct look of relief.

"I think that guy was happy to see us go," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I scare him. Can't think why."

At Anshiser's we went through the wait-in-the-sitting-room routine again, and I spent some more time looking at the Whistler. When she came and got me, I thought I'd figured out how he did it.

"Maggie said you were a little worried that I might be nuts," Anshiser said cheerfully, when we walked into his office.

I glanced over at her and she grinned. "Yeah, a little."

"Good. If you didn't, we'd be worried about your stability. But we want you to understand how strongly we feel about this. I think about it constantly. I can't sleep, I can't do business. It might be crazy. But we've talked it out and we don't think so."

"So what do I do? Specifically?" I asked, dropping into his visitor's chair.

"First, we want your agreement that if you decide not to take the job, what we discuss never goes out of this office."

I wouldn't talk anyway. Talk wouldn't get me anything but a conspiracy indictment. I relaxed and crossed my legs. "Sure. If you want to take my word for it."

"Our research indicated that we could."

"I'd like to know about that research," I said. "How did you find me?"

"Dillon found you. Dillon is the best researcher in the United States. The Library of Congress calls him," Anshiser said. "When we found out what had happened, that String had been stolen, we knew we'd probably lose the competition for the contract. Oh, we wriggled and turned and twisted, and talked to lawyers and patent specialists, and the answer kept coming up the same. So I assigned Dillon to the problem. I told him to forget any parameters at all-just find a solution. As it happens, there is one. Maybe. It just isn't legal."

I glanced over at Dillon and the gray man smiled again. "That's true," he said.

Anshiser continued. "To save ourselves, we have to put their ass in a sling. Then, maybe, I can work some kind of deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"We'll have to see. An acquisition. Maybe we can buy them. Maybe a merger. I don't know. But I need an edge."

"I thought these guys were your blood enemies?"

"I can live with enemies. I just can't watch the company go down. If I can hustle them into a merger, I can take care of them later. Right now, there's no reason in the world they should talk to us. We need to give them a reason."

He turned back to the desk and picked up a black-bound typescript. "This is Dillon's report. In general, it says the best way to stop Whitemark is through their computer systems-design systems, accounting systems, information systems, scheduling, and materials. Altering them, destroying them, faking them out."

"This is a defense industry," I said. "If we're caught, they'll drop us in Leavenworth for the rest of time."

"Ah. Now that's something Dillon's report covers quite thoroughly," said Anshiser. "I will give you a contract outlining the kind of attack I want. If you are arrested, you will present the authorities with a copy of the contract. I will voluntarily confirm that I hired you to do this work. You will instantly become a very small fry."

"And you join me at Leavenworth."

"No. I don't think so. I'm not absolutely sure, of course, but I don't think so. If I am arrested, or any of my people are arrested, I will publicly discuss the contributions I have given our president over the past ten years. He's exceptionally popular, you know, and intends to run for reelection. The contributions I made were quite illegal, but they kept his political career alive at several critical junctures. I am confident that any investigation will be quashed."

"Blackmail."

"Exactly. You've been around politicians enough to know that it happens every day."

"It's usually not quite so blunt."

"Oh, there won't be anything blunt about it. If they get to me at the end of the investigation, they'll punch me into their computers and a flag will pop up. Some flunky will run over to the White House, and the whole investigation will disappear."

I grunted and thought about it. It could work, but I didn't intend to commit myself without more thought. "It's shaky. I'd have to think about it."

"Think about the fee when you're thinking about the job," Anshiser said. He leaned back and tented his fingers. "If you take the job and it doesn't work out, one million dollars. If you take it and it does work, another million. I assume you would have to hire other people, buy equipment, whatever. When you sign the contract, Ms. Kahn will give you the first million in cash, plus one hundred thousand in expense money."

"Jesus," I said. Now I was thinking furiously. "Why so much? If I was willing to do it, it wouldn't take a million to convince me."

"Mr. Kidd," he said quietly, "I'm eighty-three years old and supposedly have a billion dollars. Maybe two billion. If I gave away a million a week for the rest of my life, I wouldn't keep up with accruing interest. I don't care what I pay you-but I suspect you do. With two million, you'll be free. Forever."

"Or in jail for eight to ten."

"Jail would protect you from distractions while you paint." He sat and looked at me, smiling. I thought about it. two million dollars.

"I might also mention that you seem to have precisely the right qualifications for the job. Not only are you able to do it, you have the will to do it. I had the most flattering report from our String engineers, by the way. They want to hire you to work on the AI software."

"That's nice," I said distractedly.

Two million. I had to be missing something.

"You need time to think," he offered.

"Yeah, I do. And the deal's not quite right," I said. "If I take the job, I'll want a second contract. Two million for computer consulting work. Security or something. So if I declare it with the IRS, it'll be clean."

"Agreed."

"And I want the Whistler."

"The what?" He seemed puzzled.

"The Whistler pastel down in the sitting room."

Anshiser glanced at Maggie, who said, "It's the one next to the mantel, to the right."

"Oh, that, the gray one," he said, the wrinkles disappearing from his forehead. "My wife bought it years ago. That was the last time I looked at it. Sure. Two million and the Whistler."

"I'll think about it," I said. "I have to do more research. On you, on Whitemark, on what we might do. I'll get back."

"How long?"

I shrugged. "A week."

He nodded. "A week, then. If you would go with Ms. Kahn, she will give you a copy of a report on Whitemark. And you can take this copy of Dillon's report." He pushed the black-bound typescript across the desk at me, stood, and rubbed his big wrinkled hands together. "Goddamn," he said. "I'm going to enjoy this."

Maggie said, "Follow me, please."

Dillon, who hadn't said a thing, followed us out of the office and turned the other way down the corridor, leaving Anshiser alone. Maggie led me to a smaller office and gestured at a chair as she settled behind her desk. There were two walls of bookshelves packed with texts and references, another window overlooking the lake, and a long oak table stacked with more books.

"You need a painting in here," I said.

"Send me one." She turned on her desk terminal, typed in a series of passwords, and punched a PRINT command. The Whitemark report churned out of a high-speed printer. In thirty seconds I had a sheaf of computer paper that ended with a list of names and job titles.

"That's as up-to-date as we can make it. It was good last week." She looked a bit haggard. For the first time I noticed the fine lines near the corners of her eyes, incipient crow's-feet.

"Frightened?" I asked.

"No, no. I'm a believer," she said, looking up at me. "But there will be problems. They're inevitable. We have a lot of complicated operations in our business. I've learned one thing about them: something will go wrong. Nothing ever works out quite the way you wanted it to. Nothing. With this operation, the consequences of error could be severe."

We talked for another minute, then she led the way back to the stairs and we circled down the staircase to the front entry. The chauffeur was waiting there with a package wrapped in brown paper.

"What's that?" Maggie asked.

"A painting from the waiting room," the chauffeur said. He handed it to me. "Mr. Anshiser said you should look at it while you think." He spread his hands in a gesture of incomprehension. "I don't know what it means. That's just what he said."

The picture, even with the thick fruitwood frame, was light in my hands. A Whistler.