Rick Cook - The Wizardry Consulted

"Cutouts huh? That’s an intelligence trick. And you thought it wasn’t spies."

"A lot of people know how to do that," Ray muttered into the screen.

"Now, how do we track him from here?"

"That’s going to take a little more work," Ray said, ignoring the "we." "But what I can do is modify his script so that we can see his traffic." The keys rattled under his fingers. "There. Now the script makes an extra copy of all messages that go through that mailbox and sends one to you."

"Hot dog!" Pashley breathed, visions of reinstatement dancing before him, "I told you we’d get this hacker." He stopped. "But wouldn’t it be simpler just to ask the people at that site to track where the other side mailbox leads to?"

"I tried that," Whipple told him. "But I didn’t get anywhere. I think there’s something funny about that site."

It was a bright muggy morning in Washington, D.C. The kind of morning that finds legions of bureaucrats hard at work in their air-conditioned offices and trying not to think about what the drive home will be like.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was hard at work in her air-conditioned office, but she wasn’t worried about the drive home. For one thing she probably wouldn’t go home until well after sundown. For another she was deep in a review of industrial espionage activities in the United States, trying to decide how much of the report represented a legitimate danger and how much was eager beavers pumping for a bigger share of the department budget.

The Phone rang.

Not just any phone, The Phone. Popular legend to the contrary it was not red. It was a very ordinary looking tan telephone with a funny mouthpiece and an unusually thick cord connecting the handset to the base. It was the director’s main link to the White House and the higher echelons of the Justice Department and the national security apparatus.

The director eyed The Phone. Not even the President normally used that telephone to contact her. It rang again and she picked it up.

"Director, do you recognize my voice?"

The director pulled what looked like a cheap pocket calculator out of the top drawer of her desk, checked the date and time and punched in a highly improbable mathematical calculation. "Give me confirmation."

"Alpha," The Voice said, "gamma rho woodchuck three-four."

"Confirmed. I recognize you."

Actually the director had no idea who the person on the other end of the phone was. She only knew he represented No Such Agency, the officially non-existent organization charged with communications and cipher security. The outfit was a couple of rungs up the intelligence food chain from the FBI.

"We have a domestic security problem," The Voice said. "Someone has been using one of our accounts on the computer network. A rather sensitive account. I am afraid we need your cooperation on this one." There was real regret in The Voice.

"We’ll be happy to assist you," the director said, trying to keep the excitement out of her own voice. A favor like this to No Such Agency could be worth a lot in the barter market that made official Washington tick. "We can have a team ready to meet with you inside of an hour."

"I understand one of your people is already working on this from the other end, Special Agent Pashley."

"Pashley?" she asked in a voice that didn’t betray anything.

The director was trying to quit smoking, but she groped in her desk for the crumpled remnants of her last pack and lit a slightly bent Camel.

"Yes. He apparently found evidence of the penetration at another site and has been tracing it back."

"I’m sure he doesn’t realize the significance. I’ll put a team of specialists on it instead."

"We think that would be inadvisable just now," The Voice said. "Perhaps it would be better if we worked with this Agent Pashley alone."

"Of course we’ll need a small group to liase," the director said hastily.

"Of course," The Voice agreed. "Have your people contact ours at a suitable level and keep us informed of anything Pashley turns up."

After The Voice hung up the director ground out her cigarette and glared at the phone. Damn that man. And damn Pashley! Somehow that moron had stumbled into something.

The Bureau had teams of computer experts who could handle this. Real experts, not street agents who had been through a two-week course at the academy. No matter what No Such Agency wanted, she’d get them on the case and pull Pashley and…

Her hand stopped halfway to the phone. She couldn’t pull Pashley. The Bureau’s whole defense in the lawsuit depended on the fiction that Pashley was a competent, trusted agent. The Justice Department attorneys had explained to her that, on paper at least, she didn’t dare do anything to suggest the Bureau had less than full faith in the turkey.

All right, she’d compromise-on paper. Pashley would stay on the case, conducting an independent investigation from his damn mountaintop. Meanwhile she’d put together a tiger team to work with No Such Agency.

Wiz was staring at the screen when he heard a peremptory knock at the front door. Since he was staring at the screen because he was fresh out of ideas, he pushed his chair back from the desk and went out on the landing to see who it was. I really ought to write a screen saver for that thing, just to give me something to look at, he thought.

He got to the stairs just in time to see Anna opening the door for Dieter Hanwassel. The councilor was flanked by his nephew Pieter and a gawky young man Wiz didn’t recognize who was clutching a rather grimy roll of parchment.

Anna had been scrubbing the front hall. She was wearing an apron over her brown dress and a kerchief over her golden curls. A pail of soapy water stood halfway down the hall and she still had the scrub brush in her other hand. As the three entered she realized she was still holding the brush and blushed crimson.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Wiz said in his best snow-the-suits manner as he descended. "What can I do for you?"

Even in tights and velvet bathrobes, these guys were suits.

Suit or not, Dieter wasn’t snowed. "I want to talk to you, Wizard. On business."

"Of course."

"You know my nephew Pieter. This is Alfred Alfesbern. He’s a brilliant young man and he’s got the solution to your problem."

"Well…" Wiz began.

"We’ll talk in your office. Come along Pieter."

"Do I have to?" Pieter whined, looking over Dieter’s shoulder to where Anna had gone back to scrubbing the floor.

"All right," Dieter snapped. "Wait here then. But be ready when we’re ready to go." The other nodded, his eyes never leaving the maid.

Somewhat uneasily Wiz led his guests up the stairs and into his workroom. There weren’t any chairs for visitors and Wiz didn’t want to encourage these visitors to stay anyway.

"Now what can I do for you gentlemen?"

"It’s what we can do for you," Dieter said. "We can solve your problem for you. Show him Alfred."