Cybernation nf-6

by Tom Clancy

  Santos scanned for backup. It took all of ten seconds before he spotted a woman about the man’s age, fifty feet away, pretending to be window-shopping as she held a cell phone to one ear, but obviously watching Yellow Shorts. She wore a sundress and straw hat, and carried a big straw handbag.

  A wife, maybe? But — no. On reflection, they had a kind of sameness about them.

  A sister, he decided.

  He would bet that Yellow Shorts had his cell phone turned on, so that the woman could listen to the conversation. Amateurs, to be sure.

  Sundress could have a gun in that bag, just as Yellow Shorts could have one in the briefcase, but Santos did not think so. The coins, he decided, might be theirs, but they needed the money, and for some reason could not get it from a dealer. A dead relative, or one gone senile, possibly?

  He did not intend to let his guard down, but he was less concerned than before.

  He waited until a couple of minutes before they were to meet, then strolled out into the mallway and toward Yellow Shorts.

  “Mr. Mayberry?”

  Yellow Shorts looked at him as if Santos were a wild gorilla escaped from the zoo. He thought for a minute the man might jump up and run away.

  “Yes. Mr. uh, uh, Ouro?”

  “At your service.”

  “You’re… black.”

  “I am? Oh, dear.”

  Mayberry gave him a tepid smile.

  “Let me sit next to you,” Santos said. “I will show you mine, and you show me yours.”

  He sat, opened the top of the backpack, pretended to be searching for something within, and held it so that the man could see the bills.

  In response, Mayberry opened the lid of the briefcase and showed him the coins.

  No gun.

  The Maple Leafs were in pockets of clear plastic sheets, ten to a sheet in two rows of five, stacked ten deep. Santos could tell at a glance they were real. Faking such things was possible, but these were not fakes. To be sure, he said, “May I?”

  Mayberry nodded. It seemed to Santos that the man’s head would fall off, it bobbed so hard.

  Santos removed one coin and felt it. It was real enough. He tucked it back into its pocket and closed the briefcase.

  Pedestrians streamed by, unaware of the transaction taking place.

  “It would probably not be a good idea to count here, but if you wish, you may take it into the bathroom over there and do so.” He handed Mayberry the backpack.

  “I, uh…”

  “It would be no problem. You could leave the coins with me for security, and your sister can watch to make sure I don’t run off.”

  Mayberry gasped.

  Santos glanced over at Sundress in time to see her jump as if stung by a bee.

  He smiled.

  “How could you know that?” Mayberry said.

  Santos shrugged, a lazy gesture.

  “I — there’s no need to count it. I’m sure it is all there.”

  Indeed, it was, but the man was a fool to trust him. In fact, Santos knew he could take the coins, and the backpack, and walk away, and Mr. Mayberry — or whatever his real name was — would do nothing to stop him. He could hardly call the police if there was some taint to the gold, and he could not physically stop him. But Santos was an honest man. He was saving twenty-five percent on the value of the Maple Leafs, a bargain. He was no thief.

  “Very well, then. Our transaction is concluded, no? Enjoy the day.”

  With that Santos stood and walked away with the briefcase.

  All his business should be so easy. But just to be safe, he would take his time getting back to his automobile, and he would make sure he wasn’t followed. He had another backpack in the car’s trunk, and he would transfer the coins to it — just in case. Perhaps Mr. Yellow Shorts was not a terrified amateur at all, but some kind of wonderful actor and criminal genius. Perhaps he might have put a tracking device into the briefcase to allow some… more violent confederates to follow along to relieve Santos of his gold elsewhere?

  In which instance, the footpads would find themselves following a delivery truck, or wondering why their target had taken refuge in a garbage bin…

  He smiled at the thought. If pressed, he would bet all the gold in the case against a dime that this imagining was not so. Still, it paid to be cautious when carrying a couple of kilos of gold around, no? Men had been killed for much, much less.

  He went into a shop and found an exit in the back with a bar across the door that said an emergency buzzer would sound if the door was opened. He pushed the door open and stepped out into the warm sunshine. A short ways down was another entrance into the mall. He walked there and went back into the building.

  He had heard that there were supposed to be a couple of good Brazilian restaurants in Fort Lauderdale. Perhaps he could get a real caipirinha, heavy on the lime and light on the vodka, maybe some churrasco steak or chicken and even some torta de banana? He had not had good banana pie since he had been in the U.S.

  He would ask the car’s computer where to find such a restaurant. With the money he had saved on the coins — at least ten thousand U.S., for sure — he certainly could afford to indulge himself in some real food for a change…

  Ah. Life was good.

  17

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  John Howard walked down the long hall to his office, oddly glad to be here.

  Tyrone was out of danger, and home, and Howard felt as if he could go back to work without worry. Julio had had an adventure, breaking up an extortionist’s operation, and Gridley and crew had been working hard on the latest net assaults.

  Fortunately, he hadn’t missed much.

  He’d had a couple of long talks with his son. One of the perks of having a teenager confined to bed and depending on you for everything he couldn’t reach was that he was forced to talk to you now and then, if for no other reason save to ask for his laptop computer, more DVDs for his video player, or another soft drink or glass of iced tea. The boy drank like he was trying to set a record for most liquid downed. Had three piss jars by his bed full most of the time.

  Tyrone had asked about work, and Howard had given him what was available for public consumption, plus a little more. After all, his son was a computer whiz who had once helped Jay Gridley track down one of their miscreants.

  When they had gotten to Jay’s theory about CyberNation maybe being somehow responsible, and the prevailing attitude as to where CyberNation could go and what it could do to itself when it got there, Howard had gotten an earful.

  “You’re wrong. These people are on the right track.”

  “A bunch of thieves? Putting copyrighted or trademarked stuff out without paying for it?”

  “It’s not theft, Dad. Knowledge should be free. If you’re some poor backwoods family in Kuala Lumpur or somewhere and there’s a way of growing rice that doubles your harvest, shouldn’t they know about it?”

  Howard had shrugged. “I can see that, but—”

  “That’s an easy one. Same thing for drugs. Suppose you run a Third World country, and half your population has a deadly disease, and the formula for a drug that will cure it is available, shouldn’t you be able to get it, make the stuff, and cure your citizens? The big drug companies say no, you have to buy it from them.”

  “There’s two sides to that argument, son. The big drug company maybe spent millions creating and developing that formula. Years of work and testing, getting government approval. So you’re saying that they should just give it away for free?”

  “No. I’m saying that they are making huge profits, so why shouldn’t they be willing to cut some slack to sick people who will die because they can’t afford it? Doesn’t the end of saving lives justify the means here?”

  Howard said, “But if you extend that logic, there might not be any profits. If they have to give away their stuff for free to everybody who can’t afford it, they go bust, and then no new cures are developed. Nobody get
s a haircut if the barbershop is out of business.”

  “You’re twisting what I’m saying.”

  “No, I’m telling you that in our world, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody somewhere always pays for it, that’s how it works. Yes, maybe some rich company could afford to make less profit to benefit others, but when you start drawing that line for them, you’re forcing people into communism. That’s a bad system.”

  Tyrone, sprawled on the bed and unable to escape, crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t understand.”

  “So educate me.”

  Tyrone scooted up a little. Like his mother, he had to use his hands to talk, so the tight body language went away. He said, “All right. Look at CyberNation. They are offering international citizenship. You join up, pay them, and you get connected to the world. You can get a college degree, find any information that’s available, and they’ll even offer you a kind of social security. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, except that it’s a castle in the sky, son. You can’t live on-line. No matter how many hours of the day you’re plugged in, you still have to have a physical location somewhere. You can roam the planet in virtual reality, but your butt will be in a chair in Washington or Texas or Sierra Leone.”

  “So?”

  “So, as a citizen of a geographic location — a country — you have to obey the rules and regulations of that place.”

  “But CyberNation is going to cover that—”

  “They can’t. They gonna pay your taxes for you? Keep up the roads and schools and national defense? Lookit, what if CyberNation decides to issue driver’s licenses to its ‘citizens.’ That mean you don’t have to get one from the state?”

  “The U.S. recognizes licenses from other countries,” Tyrone countered. “If you come here from France or somewhere, you can drive, as long as you have insurance and your license is valid at home. Jeez, Dad, every state gives out licenses, but you can drive in every other state with it. It’s called reciprocity.”

  “But that’s temporary, son. If you are passing through Arizona and you’re licensed in Mississippi, that’s fine, but if you move to Arizona, you have thirty days to change your paperwork. That’s how it works most places.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No ‘but’ about it. You live in a place, you have to toe whatever line that place calls for. But skip all the citizenship stuff for a minute. Let’s get into the ‘universal access to knowledge’ business. Let me ask you something. You see anything wrong with recording a movie you like to watch off the cable without buying the commercial DVD of it?”

  “No, I don’t see anything wrong with that. You do it all the time.”

  “Right. But I’m paying for it. I pay the cable bill, and if I set up the HD to record a program I want to watch later, or because I won’t be there when it comes on, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if I take that pay-per-view program, run off a copy, and sell it to somebody else, is that right?”

  “Why not? You buy a book, a knife, a frying pan, it’s yours, you can do anything you want with it. You can sell it to somebody. That’s legal.”

  “One that I paid for, yes. But let’s say I run off fifty copies of a novel, or a DVD movie, and sell them at a discount, then what I’m doing is depriving the cable or satellite company of potential revenue. Fifty people who might have paid for it won’t. Not to mention I’m getting a profit off of something I had no hand in creating.”

  “But what if you give them away? You aren’t making any profit.”

  “Same difference. I’m not earning money, but I’m in essence stealing from the people who paid to produce it, because those fifty copies come out of the company’s profit.”

  “But what if the people you sell them to wouldn’t have bought it at full price?”

  “You’re saying it’s okay to shoplift if you don’t have the cash to buy something?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. But listen. Here’s an example: There’s this piece of music I got from the web. It’s a parody thing. Somebody took the words to a hot rock song, and put them to the music of a TV sitcom. It’s really funny. But the rock stars didn’t think so, so they sued them. You can’t buy the song anywhere. So if I download it, who do I hurt? Nobody makes any money on it, it isn’t available commercially.”

  Howard nodded. “I can see that. Parody is a valid argument and protected under our laws. But the rock stars could argue that the words are their property so it shouldn’t be available without their approval. They own ’em, they can sell the song or let it sit on a shelf until it turns to dust.”

  “That’s not right. What if somebody bought a famous work of art, a Picasso, or the Mona Lisa or something, then they took it out into the yard and slashed it up, set it on fire? Could they do that?”

  “Legally, yes. It would be theirs, they could do that. Morally? I wouldn’t want to be them on Judgment Day standing in front of God trying to explain why they’d destroyed one of the world’s treasures.”

  “That’s my point, Dad. Something can be legal but not moral. Didn’t Jesus say if you had two shirts and your neighbor didn’t have any, you should give him one?”

  “Not exactly, but close enough. The thing is, while we follow Jesus’s teachings, not everybody does. Laws have to be based on moral and ethical principles, but they have to cover all the people. And at the heart of western civilization is the concept of private property. And that includes intellectual property, too. You take a man’s living when you steal his songs or books or secret formulas. Most laws are moral by society’s standards.”

  “Like laws that allowed… slavery?”

  Howard stared at him. “You gonna throw that up into my face? You’re not any darker than I am, son.”

  “Sorry. But slavery was legal for a long time. That didn’t make it right.”

  “No, it didn’t. And those laws were changed.”

  “And it took them, what, two hundred and fifty years to get around to it? We’ve got laws now that will be changed, too. This is the information age, Dad. Old concepts will have to make way for the new ones. The cat is out of the bag, and it isn’t gonna go back in.”

  Howard smiled at the memory of his conversation with his son. He was coming along pretty well, Tyrone was. He wasn’t always right, but he did know how to think, and that was important. He had some good points—

  Somebody said, “Penny for your thoughts, General, sir.”

  He looked up, saw Julio standing there.

  “Maybe a nickel, you grinning like that.”

  “Just remembering a conversation with Tyrone.”

  “He’s doing better, I take it?”

  “Not a whole lot since you saw him yesterday, but overall, yes.”

  “Good. You here to work?”

  “I am. Let’s go into the office and you can catch me up.”

  “Well, I can try. I can’t work miracles, sir. Hard to teach an old dog much of anything.”

  “If you learned how to change a diaper, Lieutenant, anything is possible.”

  They grinned.

  * * *

  Jay Gridley stared at his computer console. He should be working. He should be climbing all over the web like a million baby spiders, running down every lead, trying to find the bad guys who’d been screwing things up. But instead, here he was mired waist-deep in inertia, unable to get moving.

  Thinking about getting married.

  It still seemed like the thing to do, to get married. He loved Saji. He wanted to be with her.

  Well, fool, you are with her, aren’t you?

  Maybe that was part of the problem. Nothing much was really going to change if they had a big wedding, signed documents, and made it legal. Oh, they’d get toasters and teapots, and they’d go on an RW honeymoon — Saji wanted to spend a week on the beach in Bali — and all that, but everything else would be the same, wouldn’t it? The lovemaking, the time they spent laughing, none of that would be any better if they were ma
rried, would it?

  Not that he could see.

  Of course, you could twist that both ways. If it didn’t make much difference, then why not get married? They’d belong to each other legally, in the eyes of man and God, and if they had property, or even children, there would be certain protections that came from that. On balance, there was maybe a bit of a plus on the marriage side.

  So why did he feel as if he had just gone over the first drop on a SuperTall roller coaster at Six Flags, with his stomach trying to crawl into his throat?

  What was there to be afraid of? Especially since it had been his idea in the first place? He could remember how scared he was that Saji was gonna say no when he asked, and how relieved he’d been when she hadn’t.

  What’s the deal here, Gridley?

  He shook his head. He needed to talk to somebody who was married. Maybe Fernandez, he hadn’t been with Joanna that long, and he’d been a bachelor for a lot more years than Jay had. Maybe he could offer some insight.

  Jay hoped so. It was bugging him that he couldn’t concentrate on the job as much as he needed to, not to mention that it bugged him these guys were screwing with him personally.

  On the Bon Chance

  Chance had in mind to ream ’Berto out, figuratively, anyhow. Yes, he was a perpetual motion machine in bed and that counted for a lot, and yes, he was as good a hammer for smashing enemies as she could want, but he had to understand that she was the boss.

  When she found him, he was in the ship’s gift shop, buying shaving lotion.

  “Roberto,” she said, a little louder and sharper than she had intended.

  The shop’s clerk, a young man in black-rimmed glasses, glanced up at them from where he was stacking candy on a shelf.

  ’Berto turned slowly and gave her a lazy and insolent raised eyebrow. “Ah. Hello, Missy.”

  The clerk turned back to his chore.