The Intruder (31 page)

"Yes," Jeremy said. "Of course. But if you recognize the name, you must be thinking of someone else. Amy lived her
w
hole life in the Community."

Peter held out his hand,
signaling
Jeremy to be quiet for a minute. He turned away, and then stiffened.

"You killed the man who murdered your wife, right?" Peter asked.

"How did you know that?" he asked, wondering if Lenzke had told his story.

"I didn't, but I remembered something from a report Lenzke filed a few months ago. He was working on a secret project -- advanced implant technology."

Peter slammed his hand against the roof of the hovercar with a curse. "I really shouldn't tell you about this, but I have to. We were working on a direct link to the human brain -- an advancement on the net spy technology. It was a very scary thing, let me tell you. Instead of sending verbal messages, it implanted the message straight into the subconscious mind. We could literally put thoughts into people's heads, but we had to abandon the project after an agent was killed. Give me another minute," he said, now obviously scanning something on his implant.

"Yes, here it is. Listen to this: 'Communication with agent Stormwater's implant has not been perfected. As a test of the brain feed, we directed him to perform surveillance on Sue Anderson. Stormwater's brain misinterpreted the signal and killed
Anderson
. Stormwater himself was killed by
Anderson
's husband.'"

The similarities were too striking to ignore. Weatherstone had become Stormwater. Amy, a three-letter woman's name, became Sue. Mitchell, a common surname, became
Anderson
. This was obviously an unartful re-write of Jeremy's experience.

Jeremy's hot blood was rising again.

"How did you make the connection with Amy's name?" he asked. "The report doesn't mention her."

"An earlier version of the report had her proper name. Lenzke corrected it, but somehow I remembered the original. I think he wasn't as careful about the names because the players were all in the Community. No one would have suspected that."

So Weatherstone wasn't truly responsible for his crime, it seemed. His brain misinterpreted a directive that Lenzke had fed him through his implant. But the thought that he had killed the wrong man didn't lead Jeremy to remorse. Weatherstone had been one of Lenzke's pawns.
And that's what happens to pawns,
he thought as his mind descended into dark thoughts of revenge.

Chapter 20

"They're willing to meet," Jeremy said as the sunlight began to give color to the cold countryside around the hovercar.

"Read it to me," Peter said.

"To Jeremy from Hanna," he said, reading the message out of his inbox. "The three of us, Duncan, MacKenzie and I, want to meet with you and Peter, but we want to meet you virtually, as net spies. That way there can't be any tricks. You pick the location, and we'll meet you there at
9:00
."

"Clever," Peter said. "It's a good suggestion, but it exposes us to some risk." Jeremy looked confused, so he explained. "All the VR tanks are in the
Washington
office, and that means we might run into Lenzke, or one of his cronies." Jeremy's expression said that he would love to meet Lenzke this morning, but Peter read his thoughts and shook his head.

"This isn't the right time for that. There are more pressing concerns, Mr. Mitchell, than your private dispute with Lenzke. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," he said coldly, but he noted with satisfaction that he didn't rule out the possibility that another time would come.

"Good," he said. "Go ahead and agree to their terms. Just make sure you pick a private place -- the inside of a
water tower
, maybe. I don't want to take any chances. Who knows what other tricks Lenzke's got."

*
             
*
             
*

Duncan
laughed when Hanna passed on Peter's suggestion of an underwater meeting, and the inside of a
water tower
seemed about as private as he could imagine. 

MacKenzie spent her time before the
9:00
meeting on the intruder project, and she poured herself into it. Hanna, on the other hand, had nothing to do, and was getting nervous. This wasn't helped by the fact that she had started drinking coffee just after
2:00
in the morning. She had to do something to relax, and she realized that she hadn't checked the news for several days. She called up her favorite news site on the hole -- it was updated continuously by
The New York Times
and usually had some entertaining graphics.

The lead story made her heart stop. There had been a coup in
China
. The old government hadn't exactly been pro-American, but the new regime, based on preliminary reports, was positively bristling for a fight.
Australia
and
India
had gone on full military alert.
China
's first official act was to announce an immediate
cessation
of all trade with the
United States
until the
U.S.
government made certain concessions. The
Times
analysis piece that accompanied the report said it would be a cold day in Hell before the
United States
acceded to their demands, and that a serious trade war was inevitable.

A link to a series of graphics showed the impact the coup had on the financial markets. The average price of all shares had taken a hit on news of the coup, but the Chinese
stock market
had dropped through the floor. Investors were
losing
billions of dollars.

It's started,
she thought.
We're too late.

To Jeremy. Check the Chinese stock market this morning,
she sent, and then ran to
Duncan
's office. She noticed that he had the stock figures up on his workstation, and he looked as if he had seen a ghost. When Hanna entered he looked at her, then theatrically made the sign of the cross and folded his hands in prayer.

*
             
*
             
*

The five figures would have been quite a sight if anyone could see them as they sat on the inside bottom of the
Greenbelt
,
Maryland
,
water tower
. They couldn't even see each other, since no one had thought to put a light on the inside of the reservoir. MacKenzie, who had missed the story about the market crash and didn't know how serious things were getting, had decided to be a wise-acre and programmed her VR suit to dress her in a hot pink scuba outfit. She looked quite fetching, Hanna had said as soon as they "left" the warehouse for the meeting sight, but
Duncan
was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice, and Peter and Jeremy couldn't see her in the dark.

"Are you here yet?"
Duncan
asked as soon as the threesome arrived.

"We're here," Jeremy answered. "Peter is with me."

They settled themselves on the floor of the water reservoir.

"I assumed when you suggested that we meet virtually that you'd found a way to ensure that we'd see and hear each other," Peter said. "Congratulations, although it doesn't help us much here. That's something our computer specialists haven't figured out yet."

"Have you seen the market?"
Duncan
asked in a gruff voice. He wasn't in the mood for chit-chat.

"Yes. We may be too late," Peter said.

"Hanna said that we might have a common enemy; that one of your subordinates might be running your intruder network. Do you have any idea how large your intruder force is?"
Duncan
asked.

"I'm not sure ..." Peter began, but
Duncan
cut him off.

"There's no more time for secrecy, Peter," he said in an icy tone. "It's really hit the fan, now, and if we can't work together to stop this maniac, we might be facing a war. Tell me: How many intruders can you field at any one time?"

"Ten," he said, and then added in a humbled voice, "to my knowledge."

"Wrong,"
Duncan
said. "You have 45 in the field right now. Would you like me to tell you where they are?"

There was a painful silence for a moment, and then Peter spoke. "Yes, I'd like to know."

"One is assigned to each of the incumbent President's potential rivals in the primaries. A few are monitoring Senators, or their political enemies. A few are watching businessmen in
New York
. We're not sure yet what they're up to. All the rest, more than 20, are in
China
, mostly at military installations. Now who is this lunatic who's doing this, and how do we stop him?"

"His name is Carl Maria Lenzke," Jeremy said, "and he's mine."

"Killing him isn't going to stop the damage, Jeremy," Peter said. "He's got other people working with him ...."

"
Berry
?"
Duncan
asked.

"Yes," Peter continued, "and lots more, but I don't have many names. What we need to do is find a way to block his use of the hole. Have you made any progress on that?"

There was silence in the dark tank for a full minute. Finally,
Duncan
spoke. "Let's go for broke, MacKenzie. Tell him what you've got."

MacKenzie tried to speak and realized she had a scuba regulator in her mouth. She spat it out, simultaneously reconfiguring her VR program to dress her more conventionally.

"Obviously I've found a way to locate intruders," she said. "Now that I can do that, we could broadcast their location to everyone. We could even attach a visual to the message, which would almost allow people to see the intruders, like Jeremy can. But that's a very temporary measure. What we really need to do is block out that bandwidth on the repeaters. If the visual information isn't broadcast to the net, the intruder technology is worthless."

"I'm not up on all the technical details, but I think I follow what you're saying," Peter said. "The implants are in contact with signal repeaters that send our individual datastream into hole traffic. The net spy protocols use that datastream to construct a VR image of the real world. But if we changed the repeaters so they didn't transmit the visual information, then the net spy programming wouldn't have any data to work with. Is there any way we can do that without replacing all the hardware? Can we just reprogram the repeaters remotely?"

"I don't think so,"
Duncan
said. "We've protected our headquarters from your intruders by physically altering all the repeaters within signal range. It's not a simple operation. If it was, we'd have re-wired the District already. We have five workstations dedicated to monitoring what those three repeaters pick up and re-transmit, and sometimes it makes for spotty communications even at that. Our solution isn't feasible on a large scale."

"I'm afraid the news only gets worse," Peter said. "The intruders are only part of the problem. I have reason to believe that Lenzke has revived an experiment we ditched a few months ago. It allows us to send unmediated brain signals through the hole."

"What does that mean, 'unmediated brain signals'?"
Duncan
asked.

"It means the recipient doesn't even know he's received a message. It just goes straight into the brain. We officially abandoned the project a month ago because it was too risky, but I suspect Lenzke has been using it. It's hard to imagine that he could contrive the fall of the Chinese government just by spying on people. I've got to assume he's been controlling some people, and I know he has some operatives over there."

Duncan
slammed his hand against the wall of the tank. "I thought we were closing in, but this sets us back, and we don't have time for it. What do you think, MacKenzie? Can we do anything about Lenzke's puppets?"

"I have no idea," she said. "I'd have to see how the thing works. But, before we move too far along here, I do have a possible solution to the intruder problem that I haven't discussed. Instead of altering the repeaters, we could just send a lot of noise over the bandwidths the VR programs use, which would completely mess up the visual signal."

"That sounds good," Jeremy said. "Would it work?"

"What about this brain-link you've got, Peter,"
Duncan
said. "Can you give any information on that to MacKenzie? She's a
wiz
with this stuff. If anybody can throw a wrench in it, she can."

There was an uncomfortable silence for some time. It was difficult enough carrying on a conversation in the dark, seemingly underwater. The VR suite made them all feel as if they were underwater, except when they spoke, which was a curious sensation. It was like trying to speak underwater, except that there were no bubbles, and the water never came into your mouth. But the silences were truly disconcerting.