Chapter 15

A short while later Blake came into the room and just looked at me. "Ok, pull it up, I want to see this letter you sent to Brannon. You had that little drek eating grin on your face when you came back."

I pulled up the letter and Blake read it over my shoulder. 'Dear Isaac, ' I had written. 'By now your toes must be sore from stumbling around in the dark. Someone must take pity on you so I am taking this opportunity to give you some information that should prove helpful. Alain de Chateau and his alias' are listed here. He made a lot of calls from the telecoms listed to his alias'. Here they are, along with the reverses on each number. I even enclosed the listing of calls to his forwarding services with the names, addresses and telecom designations of the people he was contacting. If additional assistance is needed you can reach me by using the daily Newsfax 'Help Wanted' section. I signed it 'A Candle in the Darkness''.

Laughing Blake said, "You better hope and pray that Brannon never finds out who you are. You won't be able to do anything without him checking on you from now on if he does, you drek stirring fool."

"That takes care of two of the numbers, how do we check the telecom outside the Library?" I asked. "There isn't any way to trace the calls to a person."

"You're giving up too easily. Check the outgoing calls and see if there is a certain number that's called after each call is received. Someone important isn't going to hang around on the corner all the time, so there has to be someone relaying messages like the forwarding services," said Blake.

"I can do that. I didn't even think of that. They must keep records of some kind for the public coms if for no other reason than for billing purposes. That way if the outgoing call isn't paid for, they'll have someone to bill for the additional charges."

With some direction again I plugged in and slid into the Matrix. Nearly overcome by the euphoria and beauty as always I shook it off and headed for the main administrative offices for the communications services. It took no time at all to find the records for the public com services and for the particular one that I wanted. The records for the past six months were quite extensive and when I again tickled it to furnish the names and addresses of the numbers called it took some time. Again I was visited by Ice while I was waiting for the returns that I wanted but this time I had fashioned an employee id card just like the company Deckers use and they passed me by. When all the listings were finally returned I jacked out.

Again I had the computer check for frequently called numbers. This time I even provided a list of the times that number had been called to see if there was a pattern of a number being called after each use.

It turned out that there was a pattern of several numbers, not just one. For the first three months after the weekly call there was one number contacted, Albert Ryan in Auburn. When the calls became more frequent there was two numbers, Ryan and a Nolan Casey in Fort Lewis. When they became daily there were four numbers called, the first two as well as Beverly Hammond in Snohomish and the Pusan Industrial Corp. They were taken in turn. Every fourth day the number was called.

Again I plugged into my Deck and rode the Matrix lines to the LTG terminal contacted. In three cases it was simply a telecom set. I stripped each memory of all that was stored there and moved to the next. As the fourth number was a Corp there was no way that I could tell who the extension was listed to so I had to do it the hard way. I entered the files and downloaded a listing of all the employees along with their numbers and extensions to check at my leisure.

After jacking out I moved to a telecom and asked the computer to search the listing for a certain number. I then fed in the list of employees and their numbers and extensions. It took longer for me to type in the instructions than it did for the computer to come up with the correct name and department for the number. The number called was listed to a Sun Yat Soon who worked in their Special Projects Division. In some Corps this was where Research and Development went on, in others it was the place where raids and other covert operations were handled. For Pusan Industrial I didn't know which was the case. Just as a flyer I also checked the listing and found that Ryan, Casey and Hammond were listed as employees not only of Pusan Industrial Corp. but were working with Sun Yat Soon in the Special Projects Division.