Chapter 49

"What do you want?" I asked flatly.

"For this time I wish you to access internal files of your National Security Agency," he said. "Please to do so."

I'd be Goddamned if I would, not for this terrorist asshole. But then I wouldn't have to; what I'd be accessing would be Spook's counterfeit of the site. Accurate down to the last pixel. Except, of course, for the data.

This was where Spook and I had hit our biggest snag. Both of us had been sure Estrada would initially ask for something where he had at least partial information, for verification. Spook had spent literally hours—and remember, he was a computer, for him fractions of a second were like hours to a human—vetting every fragment of information Estrada was likely to have.

Which was, he'd reported to me, a jarring amount. One hell of a lot of nominal U.S. secrets had been at least tentatively compromised. And we'd had to check everything, we'd had no idea where Estrada would want to start.

But Spook knew now, because now he had ears. A lot of laptops came without a built-in microphone, which Spook would use if he could, but every one came with built-in speakers. Speakers transform electronic impulses into audible sound, but with the proper stimulus they can be turned around, to pick up audible sound and translate it back to electronic impulses.

One of the functions of the programming I'd just uploaded from my disk was to let Spook do just that. The quality of what he was hearing would be poor by human standards, to the point of unintelligibility. But Spook, of course, wasn't subject to human limitations.

I rattled off a bunch of keystrokes, more or less at random—my objective was to disguise my input as much as I could—and lo and behold, the NSA files menu appeared on the screen. Estrada, who was looking right over my shoulder, seemed impressed, as did Joe, who was standing a couple of paces behind me.

"I'm in," I told them unnecessarily. "So?"

"Please access names of all known—" Estrada began. Then he corrected himself. "No. Access first all records of myself, Carlos Estrada. It would amuse me to discover what they know of me."

What a fucking egotist! He thought he had the world's greatest hacker in captivity, and the first thing he wanted to know was how terrific his opposition thought he was? It was like Aladdin's genie appears before you and the first thing you ask is, "am I the greatest star?"

But there was one more thing to deal with. Twice I started to key in his name, and both times made "typos" halfway through. I looked up at him from my seat.

"You've got two men pointing guns, one at me and one at my wife and child," I said. "They keep pacing around." Well, the Italian was at any rate, and Joe had been fidgety. "It's rattling me, as you can see. Can't they put the damn guns up?"

He gave me a glare.

"Guns can go off by accident," I protested. "You're dealing with a woman with a comatose child and a man who's obviously no match for you physically." Both Joe and Estrada were considerably larger, and more muscular, than I, and the Italian was bigger yet. "How about you put them down?"

I'd thought he'd at least hesitate, but there was nothing; the ego thing was too strong. He spoke rapidly in Italian. Joe shoved his weapon back into his pocket. But the Italian, with a sneer, ostentatiously laid his weapon down on the ground beside him.

"OK?" asked the Italian, his voice echoing his contempt. Maybe it was his only English, I never found out.

"Thanks," I said. This time I keyed in Estrada's name correctly. It wasn't relevant, Spook would have brought the bogus records up no matter what I typed, but I was always proud I did it right.

And the records came up on the display, showing every activity Estrada had been known to have been involved in. I'd expected to have to initiate this part, but Estrada actually pushed me aside. "This I will see," he said, and took my place at the laptop.

It wasn't going to get better than this. "Damn spook," I said as I relinquished my seat to him.

He laughed. "You mistake. In your language 'spook' is a word for spy, and I am a thing different."

"A thing different." Yeah, he was that, all right. But I'd said the word, which was all that was important; Spook knew we were a go.

He sat down at the laptop, while I walked over toward Lee and Johnnie and their Italian guard—and his gun on the ground, though not near enough to worry him—and sat down quickly by the other hay bale and cradled my head in my hands as if unwilling to watch. Lee looked at me curiously—why hadn't I come over to join her?—but, thank God, said nothing; joining her would have involved passing right by that gun, which I was sure the Italian would have snatched up long before I got near it.