"Martin, they've got her here now," Vanessa said. "Phil should be on his way. Andrew will call you after they've had a chance to talk to her. But we need to take care of this other business first. It's almost time. I'll call you as soon as it's over." She hung up without waiting for an answer.
Finnion looked at the man who had brought the news. "We've got some business to wrap up here. Tell Kyle I'll be over there as soon as we're through. She's a lawyer, and we're probably a bit out of line, so lay off any rough stuff. Give her a cup of coffee or something." The man in the gray overjacket nodded and left, closing the door.
They brought Michelle across the Evergreen Bridge and out to Redmond. She saw the Microbotics sign from the highway. The Lincoln took the next exit, followed a tree-lined avenue to the premises, and parked behind what appeared to be the main building. The man in the dark raincoat led the way up to a second-floor room with consoles and closed-circuit TV monitors that looked like a security center, to a small office at the back. Then he disappeared, leaving her with the two who had sat beside her in the car. They remained as uncommunicative as they had been through the drive.
Now she was even more scared. This whole facade of running a legitimate business was little more than a cover. The real moneymaking line that these people were in, that bought mansions in Bellevue and yachts like the Dolores, was stock manipulation and illegal use of investors' funds. Threatened with exposure, they had already shown themselves prepared to kill. And why hadn't it troubled them to bring her here? By the time Garsten showed up and told the other two to wait outside, she was close to having convinced herself that she was about to be shot on the spot.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded hoarsely. "You can't go grabbing people off the street whenever you feel like it. It's—"
"Do you think you can go breaking into buildings when you feel like it?" Garsten retorted. "This company happens to take care of my security. Legally."
"This still isn't some banana country where people run private armies. How long do you think you'll stay in practice after this?"
"Oh, you just let me worry about that. For now, I'm asking the questions. What did you expect to find there?"
"Enough that you should be very worried." From the frown that crossed Garsten's face, Michelle knew she had scored a point. But just at that moment, all that really mattered to her was finding a way to stall somehow and make her situation safer. Even though a part of her knew that she was going too far, she carried on, unable to check herself. "I wouldn't let your friends here do anything rash, Mr. Garsten. We know about Jack Anastole . . . and the scheme you've been working on since. Don't make it any worse."
That evidently did it. Garsten looked as if he had been punched in the face. He seemed to lose the thread of what they had been saying, and glanced unconsciously at his watch. The transformation was so abrupt that Michelle was at a loss to know what she had said to produce it. Seemingly losing interest in her, Garsten went over to the door and opened it, still looking dazed. He said something to the two men standing outside and went into another office opposite. The two came back in, closing the door, and resumed standing guard.
Jack Anastole had been strictly Martin and Vanessa's affair.
Garsten had been just a go-between carrying messages. He hadn't even known what they were planning until after it was over. He could clear himself of the worst from that; there was no reason why he should have to go down with them over it now. He pulled across the phone and punched in the number of the room at the top of the adjacent building, where Vanessa had her stuff set up. Finnion answered. Garsten told him to put Vanessa on. Her voice came on the line a couple of seconds later.
"Whatever it is, Phil, you'll have to sit on it. We're almost ready to go here. I'm not available for anything until we're done."
"That's the whole point." Garsten spoke in a low voice, but urgently. "You may have to call it off. I think she may know everything."
"You mean about Eric?"
"I think so."
There was a short pause. "That's not possible." For once Vanessa sounded nonplussed.
"You haven't heard what she just said. I'm telling ya, hold off for Christ's sake."
A long, dragging silence followed. Then, "Get her over here," Vanessa's voice said.
Garsten went back out and collected Michelle and her two escorts. As they were leaving to go across to the lab block, Kyle, the duty supervisor, took an incoming call. "One moment, Mr. Garsten." Garsten stopped. Kyle drew him aside while the others waited.
"I've got the Seattle police on the line," Kyle muttered. "They're at your office now, with a Mr. Corfe. He's saying something about a stolen van, and that a woman is being held inside, but they don't have sufficient grounds to enter. Would you like to talk to them?"
Garsten groaned and shook his head. "Not now. I'm not here, understand? You're the security company responsible. Can you get over there and deal with it?"
"Yes, sir, I can."
"Do that. I'll clear it with Andy later." Garsten rejoined the others at the door, and they left together.
Something didn't add up, Vanessa could see. Although she was trying hard not to show it, the Lang woman was a lot more frightened than someone ought to be for just being caught raiding an office. She looked as if she thought her life was at stake.
They were in a storage room a few doors along from the room where the VR equipment was set up. Garsten and Finnion were with them, and two of Finnion's men were outside in the corridor.
"Jack, my ex-husband?" Vanessa said, when Garsten finished repeating what Michelle had told him. "What about him?"
"You tell me," Michelle shot back.
"And exactly what is that supposed to mean?"
"I think you know very well." Michelle's show of defiance seemed to require some effort. "And even if your friendly family lawyer gets you out of that, it would be just too much of a coincidence if anything happens to me too."
Vanessa was becoming aware then of a feeling welling up within her that she was not accustomed to, that she normally managed to keep under control and out of her mind. Only now was she beginning to realize just how much she hated this woman. "And what was this about Eric?" she demanded coldly, ignoring the remark.
"Just that we know all about your plans for him too. Husbands tend not to do very well around you at all, do they?" Michelle made what looked like a feigned tired look. "You might as well acknowledge it now and save yourself a lot of trouble, Vanessa. It's over. Let's be realistic."
Vanessa searched Michelle's face. If this was bluff, she was unable to tell. She went through the implications in her mind, one way, then another, touching on all the possibilities.
And what they added up to was, she couldn't risk it. She hadn't bothered answering Martin on the phone earlier about getting rid of Michelle because then the question had been too idiotic; but now, suddenly, there was no choice. There seemed a real chance that Michelle and Corfe had indeed unearthed something damning to do with Jack's death; therefore, they would have to be silenced. One was here already, and it wouldn't take long to track down the other.
The ironic part was that Michelle herself had brought it on them both by not keeping her mouth shut, which made her a fool on top of everything else. And that made all the other things that Vanessa had been holding back come boiling out. It might be quick when it happened, maybe just a bullet without warning. There might not be time then. But just in case, before it happened, Vanessa wanted her to know.
"You stupid little bitch!" she spat. "You had to, didn't you? You just had to! You couldn't leave it alone. Can you see what your interfering in what wasn't your business has done for both of you now?" Now Michelle was looking bewildered. Vanessa pressed on, "Yes, all right, we did it! Jack was another one like you: didn't know how to be satisfied when he was on to a good thing. He had to come back and interfere in what was over his head too." She paused for a moment, enjoying the incredulous expression spreading over Michelle's
face. "Do you want to know how? You might as well, because you're not going to be telling anyone now. Well, just ask yourself, what can go in through a locked hotel-room door . . . or maybe under it?" She waited, then gave a satisfied nod. "That's right, honey. I think you're getting the picture now."
Michelle was shaking her head protestingly. "It still won't do you any good. Eric will—"
Vanessa laughed. "Forget Eric. He won't be around for much longer to be doing anything. In fact . . ." She looked at Finnion. "How are we doing?"
But before Finnion could say anything, Michelle gasped. Her face went pale. She was staring, horrified at the VR body suit that Vanessa was wearing. Its significance had just dawned on her. "Oh, my God, it's now! You're doing it today!"
Vanessa saw then that Michelle's own bluff had backfired on her. Michelle hadn't known about that part. Neither, then, would Corfe know. It followed, then, that if Eric went ahead and had his accident, neither would anyone else. They didn't have to postpone things at all.
Vanessa also saw something else. It was just a glint of light off something metallic, but enough for her to spot the mec ducking back into Michelle's coat pocket. With a masterful effort of self-control, she managed not to let her expression alter while her mind raced. Who was controlling it? It couldn't be Corfe—the van was here at Microbotics. Eric was on his way to the conference. But whoever it was had heard and probably taped everything. It could only be Kevin, relaying through the van, which meant he had to be in the lab at Neurodyne.
"I think our friend here could use a glass of water," she said to Finnion. "I'll be back in a moment." Finnion looked puzzled, but nodded. And forcing herself not to show undue haste, Vanessa left the room.
Outside in the corridor, she walked quickly back to the room where the equipment was and activated the communications software in one of the processors. She set it to call an access number into the Neurodyne research system, and it connected after about twenty seconds. This was a system that Vanessa knew intimately. Working deftly, she identified the control computer handling the DNC coupler that Kevin was using. He was still coupled in, with the executive program running. Vanessa typed in a patch of code and sent it over the link to disenable the exit routine. It meant that the operator would be locked into the system, unable to decouple using internal commands. For good measure, Vanessa also blocked the device control supervisor, making it impossible for him to communicate with any mecs.
Then she went back to the other room, called Finnion outside, and explained what had happened. "It's Kevin," she said. "Something in the van downstairs is still operating. He's linking through from the lab back at Neurodyne. But I dialed in and fixed the software to stop him coming off the machine. So we can figure out what to do with him later, after I talk to Martin. In the meantime, it doesn't change the main business. We take care of that first. It's almost time. Do you want to bring Phil?"
For a while, Kevin was too numbed by what he had heard to know what to do. The talk seemed to have stopped. He risked another peek from Michelle's pocket and saw that Vanessa, the mustached man whom he now knew to be Garsten, and the thickset one they called Andy, had left. Michelle didn't seem to be in any immediate danger. While things were quiet, he could exit quickly and warn Eric via his car phone. He called down the Control menu and flagged the exit option to decouple. Nothing happened.
He tried again. Again the system didn't respond. Something was suddenly very wrong.
When he tried reconnecting to the mec, that was dead too. Desperately he selected alternate channels to the other mecs that they had left in Garsten's office. Nothing. He tried activating others that were still in the van, development models in the lab around him, and models in other parts of Neurodyne. Nothing.
And that was when he panicked. His father was about to be murdered, and apart from Michelle, he was the only person who knew. But he was trapped, unable to move, with all his senses and motor functions locked into a machine. In effect, paralyzed—until somebody released him from the outside.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Corfe's forebodings had grown progressively worse while he sat in the back of the Seattle city police cruiser outside Garsten's office, waiting for a representative from the security company to arrive. The van that he said had been stolen was not outside; neither was the beige Cadillac or any other vehicle. There had been no answer at the door, and an officer who toured around the outside of the building had found no sign of life. By that time, Corfe's own suspicion that he had made a mistake must have shown, and the two officers who had brought him had decided there was no evidence of an emergency sufficient to justify a forced entry. Corfe's attempt to confess that he and the missing woman had broken in already hadn't helped—especially when the security company reported no alarms and nothing amiss on their internal TV monitors. Well, it wasn't actually "they" who had broken in, he'd tried to explain, but little machines.
"Machines, huh?" The officers had just barely refrained from asking openly if they'd come out of a UFO that landed on the roof.
When the opened vent that Corfe told them they'd find at the back of the house turned out not to be, with no trace of the things he said would be inside the pipe, that hadn't helped much either. Now, from the way they had been exchanging gossip in the front seats for the last ten minutes and practically ignoring him, it was painfully clear that they had written him off as a crank and just wanted to see this business through, then go find themselves a coffee and donut shop.
A black Lincoln came along the street, turned off onto the parking strip, and drew up beside the cruiser. Corfe stared at it, now totally confused. It was too much of a coincidence not to be the same Lincoln that he had seen drive away ahead of the van. What in hell was going on?
A red-haired man in a brown parka emerged from the Lincoln. The officer who appeared to be the senior of the two, whom the other called Des, got out to talk to him. There was a brief exchange that Corfe didn't catch, accompanied by gestures in his direction. Then the two who were outside the car walked up to the house. The man in the parka opened the door, and Corfe saw him switch off the alarm panel in the entrance foyer. He disappeared inside, Des following.
Well, yes, Corfe thought to himself: If the mecs had triggered an alarm that he'd failed to spot, it made sense that it would have alerted the security company. But how had Garsten's security company known about the van? He still couldn't understand that part.
Unless . . .
He felt sick suddenly, as something that should have been obvious all along finally occurred to him.
"Officer?" The officer still sitting in the driver's seat turned his head. "Could you tell me the name of the security company that this person is from?"
The officer checked a notepad clipped on a rest between the front seats. "An electronics company out Redmond way takes care of it—Microbotics."
Of course! Corfe groaned and slumped back in the seat. Garsten worked for Payne. No wonder Corfe had failed to spot any internal alarm systems when he was in there. If he'd stopped for a moment to think that Microbotics might be handling Garsten's security, he would have guessed there would be nothing obvious. Sophistication was their business.
And if Payne was the one behind this, that was where they would have taken Michelle.
"They're the ones who've got her," Corfe said.
"Who?"
"Microbotics. The owner of the company has a house across in Bellevue. That's where she'll be—and the van. We're at the wrong place."
The officer eyed him skeptically in the mirror. "Security companies don't snatch people off the streets. They'd call us. Do you know who the owner of that outfit is?"
"Sure, Martin Payne. I used to work for them. I just told you, that's where she is."
"Oh, you don't say?" The officer's tone carried a note of conviction that fell somewhat short of total.
The two who had gone into the house reappeared. The man in the parka stayed by the door, while Des came back to the car. "Nah, it's clea
n inside, Greg. Nobody." He waved a hand at Corfe. "There isn't anything in there like what you said. You wanna come and see for yourself?"
Corfe shook his head wearily. "It's okay. I know."
"He says we're at the wrong place," the officer who had stayed in the car said.
The one outside called back to the house. "It's okay. You can close it up." Then, to the car again. "What?"
"Now he thinks the Microbotics security people grabbed her. He says they took her to Martin Payne's house, in Bellevue."
Des reached inside the car and lifted the radio handset off its hook. "Oh, man," he sighed resignedly. "Here we go for the weekend. Let's just wait in there for a minute, okay? I gotta get instructions on this."
The DNC software only communicated with the mec control subsystem. It couldn't access the phone lines, the e-mail, the Internet, or any other means Kevin could think of for possibly getting a message to the outside. He tried again to activate any of the mecs around him in the lab with the idea of using one of them to call Emergency on a regular phone, but it was no use. Every channel was dead. He would have sobbed with the fear and frustration if he could. But he had no bodily sensations or feelings, no impression of possessing physical extent in space. Although he could still think and move virtual limbs in mec-software visual space, his connection to the external world was suspended in a kind of limbo—an electronic sensory deprivation tank. He felt emotions inside, but there was no way to express them.
The full horror of what he had overheard hadn't penetrated fully. He was conscious of it, but in a detached way, as if he were watching somebody else thinking it. A defense mechanism in his mind was delaying the impact somehow, almost as if it knew that he couldn't afford the distraction of dwelling on it right now. But even that realization made his despair worse. Distraction from what? What else was there for him to do that he needed to focus undivided attention on?
He pictured Vanessa again, in the VR suit—probably testing it. What could go under a hotel-room door? she had asked Michelle. That was how they had killed Jack Anastole in the hotel—with some kind of specially modified killer mec directed from another room. And they were going to do the same thing with Eric tonight in his hotel. There was time to warn him yet, if only Kevin could find a way. . . .
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