Chapter 27

I always liked running with Smokey. She could be as serious as need be but without going overboard with it. She wanted to appreciate the beauty of the Matrix and all the myriads of colors that flashed by. She wanted to 'stop and smell the roses' I think is the old expression. She likes to have fun and enjoy her work.

By now I was an old hand at entering Aztech so that was simple. When we arrived at the main datastore it was like going into an enormous file room with files and drawers stacked from floor to a very high ceiling. I was armed to cover and let her do the checking through the master listing to find what we wanted. The file on Saeder-Krupp wasn't very thick so we played with a couple of key words looking for more. We tried Blake, de Chateau, Gruber, Chiron and several more. Each time we found a small file which we took. There had to be something we were overlooking. In frustration we grabbed the master file and decided to look it over outside where there was more time. Again I let her jack out first and then I pulled the plug also.

Back in the real world I took the chip she gave me and set it up in a computer and started to bring up the files. While I was doing that she got her first good look around the room.

"Do you think you have enough telecoms? I only count four here, why so many?"

As I explained where the others had come from she understood.

"Yeah, always take the computer if you can. Most of the time the codes are built into the computer and it saves you all kinds of time."

"That plus they were good sets so when we moved from place to place I bring them along. Funny, I've been doing so much work that at times I've had all four of them working on something at once. It helps to have them all."

By now the files were up and we started to find out what we had grabbed. There was very little in the way of new info. Blake, de Chateau and Chiron were all old hat. We found out a little more on Gruber than Brannon had told us. And there was a long run down on S-K listing many of the companies that they owned, those they owned parts of and those they influenced but nothing on the info that we were hoping to find. There were no trailers to any of these files. I was hoping that there would be a note or something referring us to another file but there was nothing like that.

We then brought up the master file, pages and pages and pages of it. This wasn't going to be easy.

Smokey started scratching her head. "What if we eliminate all files that started more than a year ago or when ever Chiron started? That would weed out most of the business files and cut this thing down quite a bit."

So we did that and cut out about eighty percent of the listing. As there was too much still remaining I printed up a hard copy and we took the sheets into the kitchen where the others were still gathered, drinking soykaf and talking.

Passing some of the sheets to each of them I told them what they were looking at and what we needed. "Look over each of these names and mark the ones you think might be what we're looking for. We could find nothing helpful from the key word search we just did in there."

An hour later we had gone over all the sheets and discussed each file marked. We had eliminated all but about six when Smokey asked, "Could they be in another location? You know, not listed in the master file?"

"They could but usually everything that is on file is logged through the master file even the things with much tighter security. There might be nothing more than a reference to another file in another location but it is listed in the master file."

"What if this time it's not? Would they have another file somewhere that could have this stuff in it? I don't see any of the things that their R&D is working on so could this other data be kept like that is?"

Blake was getting interested in the conversation now. "You know she might have something there. One of three people might have that info. Ramirez, who is in charge of Seattle Aztech, Avelino Galvez, who is the head of local manufacturing and distribution of weapons and vehicles or Reynoldo Martinez who is the head of Security for Seattle Aztech. There's a good argument for each of them having the files."

"Yeah, but which one?" I asked. "We can't hit all three. We can hit one, possibly two before they know what we're after and either crash it or have an army protecting it. Ice is bad enough but Ice plus active Company Deckers protecting the files is too much even for us."

"Is there anyway to find out ahead of time? Could we feed them some info and put a tag on it to let us know which file it goes to?" asked Dane.

I looked at Smokey, "Is there? I never heard of doing something like that, have you?"

She shook her head, "Good idea though, however just like magic won't work in the Matrix, bugs won't either."

"I just thought of something," added Cain. "Remember the last two houses we hit. Someone had been there before us yet as we were leaving the last one another vehicle pulled up and that's when we got the license number that came back to Aztech. That plus the hit team on our first safe house is when we started concentrating on Aztech, right? Well who hit the house before us and Aztech got there? de Chateau was supposed to be working for Togiwara while he was supplying info to Seoulpa. Could they still be in the running? Could they still be making a play for the chips?"