Chapter 47

The car—it was a small limo, I supposed from one of the local services—took me to a rather tawdry restaurant in a tiny strip mall in one of the 'burbs. Other than telling me "good evening, sir," when he held the door open for me the driver had nothing to say. I followed instructions and kept silent, too.

"We're here, sir," he told me as he pulled up. "I'm afraid the restaurant seems to be closed, though. Would you like—?"

"I'm being met," I said. "Thanks." I got out, and off he drove.

It was only about a minute later that another car drove up to me. Not the car they'd had in Charleston, either they'd ditched that one or they had others. When the driver's window rolled down "Joe Smith" looked out at me.

"Get in," he said briefly, nodding to the front passenger seat. I did as I was told.

We drove only a couple of hundred feet around to the back of the closed restaurant.

"OK, get out," he said, turning off the ignition. He pocketed the key. Again I did as I was told; he got out on his side. He pointed to an area between the restaurant wall and its dumpster, and I walked there.

"Strip," he said. I'd been right, my clothes were staying behind.

"I have this," I told him, pulling a DVD disk in a paper sleeve out of my pocket.

He frowned. "Carlos told you not to bring anything," he said.

"If Carlos wants what he told me, I need it," I retorted.

For a moment he glared at me. Then he pulled out a cell phone. "Stay there," he said, and dialed. He spoke into the phone in rapid Italian; I heard "disk" but couldn't make sense of the rest. He listened for a minute and then wordlessly handed me the phone.

"Hello?" I said.

"Why have you disobeyed my instructions?" came that cold voice.

"You said you wanted a demonstration of my ability," I replied. "Did you think I could do it on just an ordinary browser? This has the software I need."

"What software?"

Now it began. "It's a program I wrote," I lied; actually Spook had written it. "It gives me control of any computer at the machine level. If you want your demonstration, this is how you get it."

There was a pause on the other end of the connection while he thought that one through. "Let me speak again with Giuseppe," Estrada said. I handed the phone back.

A lot more Italian ensued. At one point Joe—it was simpler to think of him by his assumed name—demanded the disk, and went back to the car to look it over in the dome light. Ultimately he said "si" and nodded, clicked off the phone and walked back to me where I was still obediently standing between wall and dumpster.

"OK, now, strip," he directed me. "Bare," he added when I paused at my briefs.

Resentfully I pulled them off, and handed them to him along with the rest. He tossed it all carelessly into the dumpster.