Second Contact

by Mike Resnick

  “You think they're just gonna let me walk in and start playing with one of their machines?”

  “That's exactly what I think—especially after we flash some money and tell them you're looking for a new modem. Great Lakes Naval Base is just a local call from here, so why should they object to your trying it out?”

  “No reason.”

  “You look uneasy.”

  “I'm just not used to direct approaches.”

  He smiled confidently at her and led her into the store, then stood aside while she told a salesman exactly what she wanted. He led her to a shelf containing dozens of different modems. She selected one, and he attached it to a computer for her.

  “Let me just play with it for a couple of minutes,” she said. “I'll let you know when I'm through.”

  “Do try to make your calls local,” said the salesman. “I'm afraid we must charge you for any long distance calls, even if you decide not to purchase the modem.”

  “I understand,” said Jaimie, her fingers starting to race across the complex keyboard.

  Becker engaged the salesman in a conversation concerning the previous football season and how the Bears might plug the holes that had cost them their divisional championship, gradually moving across the showroom so that Jaimie could work in relative privacy. About ten minutes later he realized that he had gotten so caught up in the discussion that he hadn't seen Jaimie deactivate the machine and detach the modem.

  “It's a very nice instrument,” she said, handing it back to the salesman.

  “If it's not powerful enough, we have one that will transmit at a 20 million baud rate.”

  “No, this one seemed fine. Do you mind if I think about it for a little while?”

  “Certainly not,” he assured her. “Take all the time you need.” He picked up a thick packet of brochures from a nearby desk. “Here are the specifications and prices on every modem that we handle. If you find one in here that you think you might prefer, we can set up another test.” He paused. “The 76,000 series also offers two excellent choices if you have a lot of data to download. There's a fifth-level DVD in the machine right now; you might try it out.”

  Jaimie thanked him and buried her nose in the spec sheets as they left the store and went next door to a coffee shop, where they walked past several diners, including two officers from nearby Fort Sheridan, and took a table in the back.

  “Well?” Becker asked anxiously.

  “We were right!” she said.

  “You found something?”

  “Not just something, Counselor—lots!” she replied. “Now that I know where to look, everything is much easier to find.”

  “Such as?”

  “There never were any drugs missing from Bethesda, and there is no record of drug abuse aboard the Roosevelt. Also, Lieutenant Mallardi never left school because of substance abuse; there's no record of his ever having taken drugs either in college or the service.”

  “You got all of that from Great Lakes?” he asked dubiously.

  “Of course not,” she replied. “The phone in the hotel's ladies’ room is still rigged; I went through it, so nothing will show up on the computer store's phone bill.”

  “Even so, that's a lot of data for just six or seven minutes,” he said, impressed.

  “I just took a quick peek,” said Jaimie. “When I get someplace where I can do some downloading, I'll give you more data than you know what to do with.” She paused. “I learned something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “The money in Gillette's foreign accounts just appeared magically one day a few weeks ago, totally untraceable—and if I can't trace it, nobody can.”

  “If there was no drug ring, the military had to put it there,” said Becker.

  “Of course.”

  He stared at her. “You're looking at me as if I'm missing something.”

  “You are.”

  “What?”

  She paused. “There's only one reason that money was there, Max.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “They knew someone would find it sooner or later, and an empty account wasn't going to fool anyone. The Brussels account is real, too: it's got another four million in it. I think,” she concluded, “that it means they're willing to pay us twelve million dollars to keep quiet.”

  “Twelve million? That's crazy!”

  “Lower your voice,” she cautioned him. “You're starting to attract attention.”

  He turned and saw that a number of diners, including the major and colonel at the next table, were staring at him.

  “You must be wrong,” he said more softly.

  “That's your first reaction, Max; now think about it. How much did it cost to get you this far? How many people did they have to shift around the galaxy? How many computer records did they have to tamper with? If whatever they're hiding is that important, what's another twelve million dollars to them? This isn't some mafioso protecting his source, Max; this is the military. They've got access to billions! They probably spend twelve million on paper clips every half hour.”

  “I've got to think about this,” said Becker.

  “Well, don't think too long,” she said earnestly. “We've got to decide what to do next.”

  “That's easy enough,” he replied. “I've got to speak to MacCarron or Montoya—or whoever he is—again.”

  “I don't think that would be very wise, Max.”

  “Why not? They already know I'm here.”

  “You ask to talk to Montoya again and they might get the idea you don't believe what you heard the first time.”

  “I don't.”

  “Max, these aren't amateurs you're playing with. Someone has gone to an awful lot of trouble to make you think there was a drug ring on the Roosevelt. You come back and demand the truth, and they just might eliminate you.”

  He shook his head. “This is the United States military you're talking about, Jaimie. I'm a part of it. If I stumble on something I'm not supposed to know, they'll just order me to keep quiet.”

  “Then why have they spent so much money and effort misdirecting you?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know.”

  “I'd sure want to know the answer to that before I told them I didn't believe them.”

  “You're paranoid, Jaimie.”

  “It ain't paranoia if they're really out to get you,” she said seriously.

  “These are my people,” he said. “I'm fourth-generation military. I've spent my whole life in the service. They're obviously covering something up, but they're not about to kill me.”

  She stared at him for a long moment.

  “Have it your way,” she said at last.

  “All right,” he said, getting to his feet. “Is MacCarron on duty now?”

  She nodded.

  “I'll be back in a minute.”

  He walked to a public vidphone, had the screen scroll the directory under “H” until he found the number of the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, and then put a call through to MacCarron. The switchboard transferred him to Security, which first denied that MacCarron was stationed at Great Lakes, but then, when he pointed out that he was a Major, pretended to run a search through the base for him, and finally announced that a connection would be patched through momentarily.

  Finally MacCarron's face appeared on the screen.

  “Major Smith,” he said, surprised.

  “You're a hard man to contact,” said Becker.

  “Sometimes Security gets carried away with its own precautions,” said MacCarron apologetically. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to speak to Montoya again.”

  MacCarron frowned. “I thought your business with him was finished.”

  “I just need to go over one or two details I neglected this morning.”

  “I don't think that's possible.”

  “There's another thousand in it for you if you can get me in this afternoon.”

  “I don't know...”

  “Pl
ease,” said Becker. “I'm leaving town tonight, and I only need to see him for just a minute or two.”

  “I'll have to see who's on duty and get back to you,” said MacCarron. “Where can I get in touch with you?”

  Becker read off the number of the vidphone. “I'll be here for another twenty minutes.”

  “Right. I'll get back to you before then.”

  MacCarron broke the connection, and Becker walked back to the table.

  “Can you get another thousand in cash in the next half hour or so?” he asked.

  “No problem,” she said. “Everything went smoothly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, maybe I was wrong. Where are you meeting him?”

  “I don't know,” said Becker.

  “What do you mean, you don't know?”

  “He's calling me back in twenty minutes to let me know the arrangements.”

  “He's calling you here?”

  “Yes. I gave him the public vidphone number.”

  She got to her feet and grabbed him by the arm.

  “Let's get the hell out of here, Counselor!”

  “What's the problem?” he asked, confused, as the assembled diners once again stared at him.

  “Maybe nothing,” she said as they walked out the front door.

  “Then where are we rushing to?”

  “Just humor me!” she snapped, leading him across the street and into a women's clothing store.

  “What do you think—that he's going to try to murder me in a public restaurant?” demanded Becker.

  “Stranger things have happened,” she said. “Now keep your voice down, or they might throw both of us out of here.”

  Becker stationed himself by a window and spent the next ten minutes pretending to wait patiently while Jaimie methodically examined every coat and jacket they had in the junior sizes.

  “Definitely paranoid,” he whispered as she passed by him on her way to the next row of jackets. “MacCarron's probably calling back right now.”

  As he was speaking, a nondescript blue car pulled up to the restaurant and a small, well-dressed man got out. He entered the building, then emerged a moment later and climbed into the car, which sped off and disappeared around a corner.

  “You see?” whispered Becker. “MacCarron probably sent someone to pick me up, and since I wasn't there, he'll—”

  Suddenly half a dozen people burst out of the restaurant, gesticulating wildly, and a moment later a trio of police cars pulled up, followed by an ambulance. Becker and Jaimie watched from the clothing shop as the gathering crowd was kept back, and a tall, slender man in a colonel's uniform accompanied two paramedics who carried another man on a stretcher. They loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, and after a moment's hesitation the colonel decided to ride with the bload-soaked patient.

  “That's the colonel who was at the next table,” whispered Jaimie, as the ambulance sirens faded in the distance and still more police cars pulled up. She turned to Becker. “Do you remember who he was sitting with?”

  “No.”

  “A major.” She paused. “After you left, they would have been the only two officers in the restaurant.”

  “You're sure?”

  She nodded. “You were saying something about paranoia?”

  11.

  Becker sat in his hotel room, staring at his suitcase.

  “I can't believe it,” he repeated.

  “Well, you'd better start believing it,” said Jaimie.

  “The military doesn't kill its own.”

  “Then obviously it doesn't consider you one of its own, Counselor.”

  He shook his head. “It doesn't make any sense. Why should they want to kill me—and even if they did, why not do it when I was at the hospital, when there wouldn't have been any witnesses? What do I know now that I didn't know this morning?”

  “You know they were lying to you,” she replied patiently. “And you told them so when you asked to see Montoya again.”

  “But I don't know why they were lying!”

  “Maybe they aren't aware of that.”

  “This is crazy!”

  “You get no argument from me, Counselor. I've always thought people who go around killing other people were crazy.” She paused. “The question really isn't Sane or Crazy, you know,” she continued at last. “It's True or False. And it's true that they're trying to kill you.”

  “I've got to find out what the hell is going on,” he said.

  “Not smart, Counselor,” said Jaimie. “You don't confront the people who are trying to kill you before you've done lots of preparation.”

  “Well, I can't just sit here in a Chicago suburb, waiting for them to find me,” he said irritably.

  “I agree,” she said. “Besides, they'll probably have those calls I made traced in another six or seven hours. We'd better be long gone by then.”

  “I've got to go back to Washington,” said Becker after some consideration. “That's where all my contacts are. It's the only place where I can function.”

  “Function? You mean as a lawyer?”

  He shook his head again. “As a fugitive. If I'm going to find out who's trying to kill me and why, Washington is the place to start.”

  “Okay,” she replied with a shrug. “Makes no difference to me. Their computer experts may suspect I'm helping you, but nobody is gonna be able to prove it. Washington's as good as place as any other, and at least I'll have access to my own computers.”

  “All right,” he said, getting to his feet. “I think the first thing to do is go to the airport.”

  “Which one?”

  “O'Hare. Why?”

  “You're not thinking like a fugitive, Counselor,” said Jaimie. “They have to know by now that they killed the wrong man. That means they're going to be watching all the Chicago airports and supertrain stations. I think we'd be a lot better off driving to Milwaukee and catching a plane from there.”

  “Good idea,” he agreed, and then paused. “Won't they be watching the Washington airports and stations too?”

  “Of course.”

  “So how does flying out of Milwaukee help us?”

  She smiled. “We'll fly to Baltimore and rent a car from there.”

  “I don't like showing my identification for the car.”

  “Then we'll take a bus.”

  “Let's play it by ear,” he said. “If I can figure out a way to get a car, I'd much rather do that. They may be watching the bus stations, too.” He sighed. “I don't suppose it'll make all that much difference once they know I'm alive.”

  “No sense telling them you're in Washington.”

  “They'll know that soon enough,” he answered. “I was trained as a lawyer, not a covert agent. I don't imagine I'll be able to keep my whereabouts secret for more than a day or two. The trick is for me to find out why they want to kill me before they can find me. It's as simple as that.”

  “Nothing's as simple as that, Counselor, but I get the point.”

  “I don't suppose you have any phony ID with you?”

  She shook her head. “I can print it up at home, but I don't have a laser printer with me—and I don't think it would be safe to go back to that computer store.”

  “I don't know,” he mused. “It's less that a block from where they killed the major. They'd never think we'd be dumb enough to hang around there.”

  “They'd be right,” she said firmly. “There are probably hundreds of cops and soldiers combing the area right this minute. I don't know about you, but I'm sure as hell not going back there.”

  “Well,” he said with a shrug, “there's no sense in my going without you. Let's get this show on the road.”

  He stood up, picked up his suitcase, and walked to the door.

  “You know,” she said, just before he opened it, “there's a better way than renting a car.”

  “Oh?”

  “I'll still got a bundle of cash. Why don't we just take a cab?”

 
“All the way to Milwaukee?”

  “No, that's so unusual it would call attention to ourselves. But why not change cabs every fifteen or twenty miles? Then we don't leave an ID record anywhere.”

  “Makes sense,” he said, nodding his approval.

  They stopped by Jaimie's room long enough to get her luggage, then checked out of the hotel. Becker paid with cash, hoping that that plus his bogus name might buy them a little time.

  They took a cab north to Waukegan, then took another cab to Racine, just north of the Wisconsin state line. From there to Milwaukee took two more cab rides and another hour, but at last they reached the airport, where they booked passage to Baltimore as a Mr. and Mrs. Maynard Smith. They paid with cash, took their tickets, and immediately boarded the plane.

  Jaimie slept during the flight, while Becker again went through his ritual of scrutinizing his fellow passengers, trying to decide which, if any, had been sent to kill him. He kept turning the events of the day over and over in his mind, trying to put all the pieces together and make some sense out of them. After a frustrating ninety minutes, he had come to only two conclusions: some person or persons in the military had ordered his death, and he had no idea why.

  It was dark when the plane touched down in Baltimore, and he nudged Jaimie gently.

  “Are we there yet?” she asked sleepily.

  “Yes.”

  “I'll be glad to get home and sleep in my own bed,” she said, yawning and stretching her arms.

  “A couple of hours and we'll be there.”

  “Oh, that's right,” she said, suddenly alert. “We're in Baltimore.”

  Jaimie stood up in the aisle, then noticed that Becker was still seated.

  “Aren't you coming?” she asked.

  “You go ahead. I'll be along in a couple of minutes.”

  “What's the matter?”

  “If they've done their homework, they know I'm traveling with a black woman. It makes more sense to go through the gate separately.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “It's been a long trip. I think I'll freshen up at the first ladies’ room we come to. You can pick me up there.”

  He nodded and she began following their fellow passengers into the airport. Then he checked his wristwatch, waited another sixty seconds, and walked to the front of the plane.