Second Contact Read online

  “You came to another locked door?”

  “I came to a hell of a loop. I'm back evaluating officer candidates.” She disconnected, then gave the modem further instructions and sat back while it obtained a new connection.

  “Now where are you?” asked Becker, walking across the room and staring at the screen over her shoulder.

  “Payroll,” came the answer. “Hah! See? He's cashed his last six checks.”

  “Where?”

  “The most recent one was in Waukegan, Illinois ... and it was countersigned by a Lieutenant MacCarron.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Let's see what we can bring up on him,” said Jaimie, her fingers a blur of motion. “Here we go: Edward MacCarron, 28, Caucasian, Lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, currently stationed at Great Lake Naval Base. Graduated Annapolis in 2061, 244th in class. Injured January 3, 2065 ... seems to have lost his thumb in an accident.”

  “Has he ever been in the space service?”

  “No.”

  “Damn,” muttered Becker. “Another dead end.”

  “You're not thinking clearly, Counselor,” she corrected him. “You know almost everything you need to know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your boy Montoya is obviously at the Great Lakes Naval Base, and he's got someone signing his paychecks for him. Why isn't he at home, wherever home is? Why can't he cash his own checks?”

  “What else have you got on this MacCarron?”

  Jaimie shrugged. “Nothing much. He seems to work for hospital security.”

  “That's it!” exclaimed Becker. “Montoya must be in the base hospital! The space service uses Bethesda, but he'd be too easy to find if they stuck him there.”

  “Does it jibe with whatever other information you've got?”

  “Yes, it does,” said Becker excitedly. “Every other potential witness I've tried to locate has been transferred off the planet. But if Montoya has had some kind of accident or contracted some disease, he's either too weak to travel or too contagious to risk putting in a closed environment.”

  “Sounds logical to me,” said Jaimie. “Let's see if he's using his own name.”

  She accessed the Great Lakes Naval Hospital and asked for a list of all current patients.

  “Nope. They've got him using a phony name.”

  “Can you find out which one it is?”

  Jaimie smiled confidently. “I've just located your missing boy in something less than half an hour. Do you really think some goddamned hospital identification system is gonna stump me?”

  She turned back to the machine, rapidly typed in a set of instructions, and turned back to Becker.

  “Now what?” asked Becker.

  “Now we wait. I've got the computer checking every name on the list against every naval and spacegoing officer we can access. When it's done, we should have one name that it can't identify, and that'll be Montoya—and just to make sure they're not being tricky, once we get that name, I'll make sure that two men aren't sharing it.”

  “Sharing it?”

  “They don't have to give him a phony name, you know. They can give him the name of some officer who's serving in Antarctica—or on Ganymede, for that matter.”

  “How long will this take?”

  Jaimie shrugged. “Maybe five minutes, maybe ten. It depends how many duty lists it has to access. How about another drink?”

  Becker nodded, and followed Jaimie into her kitchen, which was filled with more machines than the living room.

  “Jesus!” he muttered. “I've never seen anything like this!”

  “What's the good of having computers if you don't make them work for you?” responded Jaimie. She touched a spot on one of the machines. “Bourbon, please.” She turned to Becker. “Do you want any ice?”

  “No.”

  She touched the spot again. “Straight up.”

  An instant later two robotic arms opened a small cabinet to the left of the sink, pulled out two glasses, and suddenly extended them across the room, to where another arm had pulled out a bottle of bourbon, uncapped it, and was waiting to pour it into the glasses.

  “Do you know how much money you could make designing the Kitchen of the Future?” said Becker.

  “Not as much as I make robbing the banks of the present,” replied Jaimie smugly.

  “I don't want to hear about it.”

  “I don't mind telling you. After all, we're probably committing some form of treason tonight. It's not as if we don't both have secrets to keep.”

  “If there's any treason around, I'm not the one who's committing it,” replied Becker heatedly. “I'm just trying to defend my client.”

  Jaimie shrugged. “Whatever you say, Counselor.” She took the drinks from the robotic arms, and handed one to Becker. “Let's go see how we're doing with that name.”

  She led the way back to the living room and sat down at the computer.

  “Problems, Counselor.”

  “You can't find the one under the alias?”

  “I told you I could,” said Jaimie contemptuously. “Problem is that they've got six guys there under phony names. You sure you're only missing one witness?”

  “One that I know of.”

  “Then probably the other five are just sitting around waiting for fresh identities. Spies, maybe—or maybe you're not the only lawyer the military courts are messing around with.” She paused. “Anyway, I need more information to identify Montoya.”

  “I don't have any.”

  “Three of these guys are under round-the-clock guard,” noted Jaimie. “It might be difficult to just walk in and ask each of them if he's Montoya.”

  “Hunt up his service record,” suggested Becker. “There's got to be a photo, or a blood-type, or something we can use.”

  “That was the first thing I tried,” she replied. “It's been classified since this morning.”

  “Can't you break into it?”

  “I've got to find it first.”

  “What do you mean, find it? Like you said—it's in the computer.”

  “When the military wants to hide something, they don't just restrict access to it, Counselor,” explained Jaimie. “They start shuttling it around.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “Let's say they think it'll take someone like me 20 minutes to get around the restriction and access it,” said Jaimie. “What they do is put it in motion. It'll be in the medical file for ten minutes, and the space file for ten minutes, and the debriefing file for ten minutes, and on and on. There's about 50 ways they can categorize an officer, from age and race and rank down to some really esoteric things like blood type and retina pattern. Your boy's file isn't just classified—it's on one hell of a ride.”

  “If you find it, can you access it in ten minutes?” asked Becker.

  “The military bets that I can't.”

  “That isn't what I asked.”

  “Probably,” said Jaimie. “But it could also be on a seven-minute transfer cycle, or a three-minute ... or they could have some file that's so obscure only three or four guys know about it and they're hiding it there.”

  “So we're at a dead end?”

  “Yep—but that doesn't mean we're beaten. Jaimie Nchobe knows more than one way to skin a cat.”

  “That's a horrible expression.”

  “I read it in a book somewhere,” she replied with a smile. “I like it. But then, I hate cats.”

  “What's your next step?”

  “Let's access the files on your witnesses who were transferred off-planet and see what they have in common,” she suggested. “Then maybe we'll be able to find one or two Great Lakes patients who have compatible files, and we can eliminate the rest.”

  “Do it.”

  “I need their names, and anything else you can give me.”

  Becker offered her all the limited data he had on Gillette and Mallardi.

  “One more thing, Counselor.”

  “What?”

 
“This guy Jennings—do you think he's innocent?”

  “He's already admitted he killed the crewmen.”

  “I mean, did he have some reason, or are you just going through the motions?”

  “I really don't know,” admitted Becker.

  “Well, if he really had a reason, let's add the two dead men to the list, just in case.”

  “Right,” said Becker, giving Jaimie all the information he could remember about Greenberg and Provost.

  “That should do it,” said Jaimie at last. She began issuing instructions to her computer, alternately feeding it orders and whispering encouragement, her dark eyes glued to the screen.

  “Well, now, isn't this interesting?” she said after a moment.

  “What have you got?” demanded Becker.

  “Your boy Gillette.”

  “What about him?”

  “He's been in the service for 21 years.”

  “So?”

  “So how come he's got banks accounts in Zurich and Brussels totalling more than twelve million dollars?”

  "What?"

  “You heard me, Counselor,” said Jaimie. “He's been doing more than telling spacemen to turn their heads and cough.”

  “It's got to be drugs!” said Becker excitedly. “That's the only thing that could produce that kind of income.”

  “Not really,” said Jaimie. “But it's the most logical thing. Let's see,” she mused, hitting still more commands. “There's your connection, Counselor. Greenberg and Provost both had records as addicts before they joined the service—and Provost was a pusher, too.”

  “So Gillette was selling drugs to Provost and Greenberg?”

  “Either that, or they were his conduits to the crew,” agreed Jaimie.

  “Where do Montoya and Mallardi fit in?”

  Jaimie shrugged. “Don't know yet. I'll have it all pieced together in less than an hour, though.”

  “Can you access the records of the Roosevelt's medical stores? Both when it left and when it returned?”

  “Given enough time,” said Jaimie. She tapped a new order into the computer. “Classified,” she said happily. “We're on the right track, all right.”

  “Let me think for a moment,” said Becker. “Gillette was selling drugs. Provost and Greenberg were either addicts or they worked for him—probably both, since he refused to perform an autopsy. Jennings went crazy and killed them, but they couldn't stand an investigation, since it would show that the ship's Chief Medical Officer was selling drugs, and probably that a hell of a lot of the crew were shooting up.” He paused. “Okay, that all makes sense. Now if we can just fit Mallardi and Montoya into the picture...”

  “What difference does it make?” asked Jaimie. “Your client's still a murderer.”

  “My client is as crazy as a loon,” replied Becker. “Whether he pleads innocent or guilty, it's a foregone conclusion that when the dust clears, he's going to be locked away in a nice quiet home for the criminally insane.”

  “Then why have a trial at all?” asked Jaimie.

  Becker sighed. “The military is convinced that their image will be tarnished if they don't prosecute.” He paused. “But if I can show them that all of these sordid details will come out in a court martial, I think I can convince them that a trial will tarnish their image even more that locking Jennings away right now.”

  “Sounds good to me,” agreed Jaimie.

  “If you can tie Montoya and Mallardi into this drug ring,” concluded Becker, “I think I can wind up this whole mess by tomorrow afternoon.”

  It was a good prediction, based on reasonable expectations—but nothing was going to be that easy for Max Becker for the foreseeable future.

  6.

  “You know, Counselor,” said Jaimie, sipping her drink as her computer tried to locate Anthony Montoya, “if you actually find this guy, I think you'd better consider your next step very carefully.”

  “My next step is automatic: I go to the prosecution, tell them what I've found out, and let my esteemed opponent go to his higher-ups with the information. Five'll get you ten that Jennings is in an asylum by nightfall.”

  “I wasn't thinking of Jennings,” replied Jaimie. “I think it'll be a race to see if they get him into an asylum before they plant you in the ground.”

  “This is just a drug case,” said Becker confidently. “The military doesn't work that way.”

  “The military has killed a lot more people than you for a lot less justification than keeping a scandal quiet,” replied Jaimie. “It occurs to me that you're going to need me even more after you find out what's going on than you do now.”

  “It's a possibility,” admitted Becker reluctantly. “How well can you hide what I find, and how public can you make it on very short notice?”

  “I can hide it where no one alive can find it, and I can put it on every computer network in the country in less than thirty seconds. That means we can distribute it to, oh, about ninety million people.” She paused. “You're probably gonna need help breaking into that hospital in Illinois, too—especially if they've got guards on some of their patients.”

  He stared at her. “How much?”

  “How much help will you need?”

  “Don't pretend to be stupid, Jaimie; it's unbecoming. How much is this going to cost me?”

  “Not a penny, Counselor.”

  Becker stared at her. “Why do I have difficulty believing that?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “Jaimie, I know you. You don't do favors for free.”

  “I won't be doing this for free, either,” said Jaimie. “What happened aboard the Teddy Roosevelt is probably just the tip of the iceberg. An awful lot of money changes hands in a well-run drug ring.”

  “Dirty money,” said Becker distastefully.

  “I'll put it to clean uses,” she assured him. “What do you say, Counselor?”

  “You're going to rob a dope ring, and you're worried about my health?” replied Becker.

  “Sooner or later you're going to have to confront your enemies,” she said. “Mine will never even know who I am.”

  He considered her proposition for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell. Why should I care what happens to their money?”

  Jaimie grinned and clapped her hands together. “You've got yourself a partner, Counselor!” She finished her drink, lit a smokeless cigarette, and turned back to the computer. “Let's see how we're doing.”

  She fell silent for a moment, then issued more commands.

  “Closing in on you bastards,” she muttered happily. “Got you in a corner now. No escape from Jaimie the Magnificent.” She paused. “Nice block. Very clever. Now let's see what happens if I do this ... “ Suddenly she snapped her fingers. “Got ’em, Counselor!”

  “Got whom?”

  “Got the records of your missing lieutenants.”

  “I always said you were a genius.”

  “Child's play,” said Jaimie with a modest shrug.

  “Bullshit. I could never have found them.”

  “You're a lawyer. I'm a hacker.” She peered at the screen. “Yep, we've got our connection.”

  “What is it?”

  “Mallardi was kicked out of college for substance abuse. He spent a year abroad, attended another college, got his degree, and joined the service as a lieutenant. Two promotions for performance, two demotions for possession of narcotics. He's got to be part of it, all right.”

  “And Montoya?”

  “Let me check. Yeah, here it is—he was a pharmacist's apprentice before he joined the service.”

  “But no drug convictions?”

  “Counselor, if they were all stupid enough to be caught and convicted, they wouldn't have so many friends in high places manipulating things so you can't question them. Montoya's got a thorough knowledge of drugs, and he's probably got a list of suppliers in his head or his computer.”

  “Okay,” said Becker. “It all fits.”

  “G
ot another question for you, Counselor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Now that you've put all this together, why do you want to bother talking to Montoya? Why not just use what you know to expose the drug ring?”

  “First, because I'm defending Jennings, not prosecuting a drug ring,” replied Becker. “And second, none of this gives me the leverage I need as long as it remains mere supposition. I need evidence.”

  “You doubt that it's true?”

  “Not for a minute. But of the five people we suspect were involved, two are dead, one's in deep space, and one is incommunicado on Mars. Whether I talk to Montoya about Jennings or confront him with the drug ring, the fact remains that I've still got to talk to him.”

  “So you can't just go to the brass and tell ’em what you suspect?”

  Becker shook his head. “If they know I haven't spoken to Montoya, they'll know I'm bluffing.”

  “Then I guess we have to find Montoya and interview him.”

  “It looks like it,” agreed Becker.

  “Well, we're down to six candidates,” said Jaimie. She stared at the screen. “Let's see if we can limit it even more.” Suddenly she stiffened. “Oh-oh!”

  “What is it?”

  “Something very funny's going on here.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “Those six files were locked up tighter than a drum not two minutes ago, and now suddenly the door is wide open.”

  “You opened it.”

  “Not this wide, I didn't.”

  A red light on the computer started flashing.

  “Ah!” said Jaimie. “Time for Doctor Feelgood!”

  She quickly typed in a number of exotic commands.

  “Doctor Feelgood?” repeated Becker. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Nifty little line of defense,” said Jaimie admiringly. “They make you think you've broken in, and the second you step through the doorway they hit you with a virus.”

  “A computer virus?”

  Jaimie nodded. “Not to worry, Counselor. Old Doctor Feelgood has antibodies that'll kill any virus the military ever created.” She watched the flashing light intently, and a moment later it went dark. “That's it,” she announced. “Healthy again.”

  “Thank God you don't work for the Russians.”

  “The Russians are even worse than the Americans,” she replied. “You want to see a virus that just won't stop, try the Chinese. Anyway,” she concluded, “we're in.”