Chapter 10

"Mr. McDonald, I'm glad you could speak to me."

"My pleasure, Mr. Daniels." Evan McDonald smiled leaning back in his chair. Jack's face floated in the holo screen over his desk. "To what do I attribute the honor? Is everything all right? I hope you haven't had any trouble since that, ah, misunderstanding we had. That was bad form on my part," he said with a shake of his head. "No excuses. I should have learned by now not to take anything for granted."

"No problem with that," Jack replied. "We're all human and we all make mistakes. Actually that's why I'm talking to you now; I get the feeling you won't make that mistake twice and I need some legal advice. I'd like to put you on retainer if you're interested."

"Thank you for your confidence," McDonald snorted. "I'm not so sure I'd be so generous if I was in your shoes. A retainer? Sure, one credit will do it for now." Jack held his credring against the data port and tapped the number sending the required one credit to the lawyer. "That will do it, Mr. Client. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Is this line secure?"

"As secure as I can be sure of," McDonald shrugged. "I'm sure the Feds can get a copy of this recording if they wanted to so if you're admitting to stealing the national treasure, I wouldn't advise it."

"What national treasure?" Jack snorted. "Well, it will have to do; the authorities will know about this soon enough. Let me give you a hypothetical situation..."

"Quite, ah, interesting, hypothetically speaking," McDonald grimaced after Jack had finished speaking. "And do I want to know how someone stumbled across this hypothetical information?"

"I don't know, do you?" Jack replied. "I think you can safely assume that this hypothetical data was obtained without using established legal channels. By the way, I'm transmitting the hypothetical data to you right now so you can review it and reach your own conclusions about it."

"I'll read it later," McDonald waved his hand. "I'll take it on faith for now. This is only a hypothetical situation anyway.

"You're right of course. If such a situation were to occur the police wouldn't be able to use any of it up front. They wouldn't even be able to start an investigation unless we could show your source came by this information legally or by accident."

"My source was afraid of that," Jack sighed. "Is there anything we can do to stop this?"

"Hmm ... Not with the police, that's for sure," McDonald frowned. "But let's say this hypothetical villain, shall we say Mr. S?"

"Mr. S would certainly be appropriate," Jack agreed.

"Good, than this Mr. S works for syndicate, oh, B. Well, Syndicate B undoubtedly has an internal security division who would be most interested in this sort of scenario and they wouldn't be bothered about those tiny technical details."

"Actually they might be," Jack admitted. "You'll see after looking at the files I gave you there might be a piece or two that were copied from their own databases."

"Really?" Jack nodded. "Yes, I suppose they might be interested in that after all. But that's a separate matter entirely. We can deal with that later." He chuckled, "They might want to hire someone to beef up their security."

"Just so they don't want to hire someone to break his legs," Jack answered dryly.

"They might want to," McDonald laughed. "But I'll bet they will be much more interested in plugging the leak than getting revenge. By the way, how is my firm's security?"

"I wouldn't know," Jack shrugged. "My source had no reason to look at it."

"That's good to know," McDonald sighed with relief. "After this is over I'm going to want your source to look at it, just to make sure."

"I'm sure that can be arranged," Jack nodded.

"Okay," McDonald suddenly sat upright. "Enough of this bullshit. Jack ― can I call you Jack? Just call me Evan; just us good old boys now. Jack, we both know the police aren't going to give a rat's ass about the petty theft of a couple of ISs. Now diverting the money, yeah, probably, but not until after it's happened. How the hell did you find out about this?"

"It's more like two hundred and forty eight ISs and the asshole made the mistake of targeting my mother," Jack replied. "I planted a worm on him to alert me if specific phrases were ever used. Her name popped up and here we are."

"This is supposed to happen when?"

"Tonight it actually starts," Jack interrupted. "This month's payments are all due today close of business. They've already been diverted and he has everything in place to declare default tomorrow morning. The notices will go to the court immediately and from there to the sheriffs and Labor, Inc's collection departments. The body snatchers should be hitting the streets by noon. It looks like all the wheels have been greased for priority collection. One hundred twenty-two in Chicago; one twenty-five in Tampa and one in St. Augustine."

"St. Augustine? Your Mom?" Jack nodded. "I'm not sure we can act fast enough to stop that."

"Don't worry, I've already taken care of that," Jack assured him. "They won't be picking her up."

"I don't see how you can stop them," McDonald said shaking his head.

"Well, if you must know..."

"Holy shit! You can't do that!" McDonald exclaimed after Jack told him of his plan.

"For some reason I've been hearing that a lot lately," Jack frowned. "But I assure you it's already done."

"Son-of-a-bitch! Labor, Inc. is going to be after your ass, boy," McDonald stated in shocked amazement.

"Can't be helped, Evan," Jack shrugged again. "Besides, I looked. There's nothing illegal about it."

"That's because they don't write laws against the impossible," McDonald chuckled as he shook his head. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. "Son, you are a two-legged nuclear weapon as far as our society goes."

"Yeah, well, I'm not so impressed with our society right now anyway," Jack snorted.

"This is going to be interesting," McDonald sighed as he cleared his work area and brought up the files Jack sent him.

+ + +

"Hey, Mike. Planning to go somewhere?" Al Bernard tapped Mike Smithson on the shoulder as he was waiting in line for the intercontinental sub-orbital shuttle.

"Oh, ah, hi there Al," Smithson answered nervously. Bernard was Smithson's immediate supervisor and should be safely in his cube in the home office. "No, I mean, yeah, I'm checking out some new opportunities. You know, doing my best to get that bottom line up just like you've been telling me."

"Good, good," Bernard smiled. "But before you go, Mr. McAlister has a few questions he'd like to ask you about some glitches we've found in some fund transfers." McAlister was the head of internal security for the syndicate. "Why don't we drop down to the office and see if we can't straighten this out before you go?"

"I'm sure it's nothing," Smithson blustered. "Don't want to miss my shuttle and all that."

"Oh, there'll be other shuttles," Al smiled resting his hand lightly on Smithson's sleeve. "I really don't think this can wait."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Smithson shouted and yanked his arm out of Bernard's grasp.

"Mike, Mike, Mike," Bernard was still smiling. "Wrong answer." Two big, beefy men in dark suits suddenly materialized next to Bernard. "Boys, why don't you help Mr. Smithson to the car? He looks tired."

"You can't do this to me!" Smithson screamed as the big men gently, but firmly, took control of his arms. "I know my rights! You can't arrest me!"

"Arrest you?" Bernard laughed. "Nobody's arresting you, Mike. These aren't the police. These are a couple of the boys from Mr. McAllister's group. They're just here to help you." One of the big men flashed a badge to a startled security guard as they frog-marched the struggling Smithson out of the shuttle concourse.

+ + +

"She's got to be right here," the Labor, Inc. representative of the St. John's County IS retrieval team whined.

"Yeah, well unless she buried herself in the fucking sand I don't see her," the sheriff's deputy said looking from the flimsy with Lynn Daniels picture on to the surrounding semi-deserted beach. There were two couples strolling the beach and one stray dog lifting its leg to pee on a park bench. One of the couples was obviously far too young for either of them to be the pretty woman as well as both being male. The other couple was far too old and oriental to boot. "Unless she's grown a hair suit and a cock I don't see her."

"She has to be here!" the rep whined as he waved his meter in the air. It kept pointing to the dog that was now kicking sand back at the bench he had just marked. Baffled, he looked up and glanced again at the dog now nosing around a trash can. Suddenly his jaw dropped and he whispered. "Oh, fuck." Quickly he turned to the deputy and shouted, "Stun that fucking animal!" and pointed towards the dog.