Digital Fortess - Brown Dan - Страница 40

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Stoned punks at nearby tables began turning to watch the excitement.

“You don’t want to do this, kid,” Becker said quietly.

“I’m warning you!” The kid seethed. “This is my table! I come here every night. Now pick 'em up!”

Becker’s patience ran out. Wasn’t he supposed to be in the Smokys with Susan? What was he doing in Spain arguing with a psychotic adolescent?

Without warning, Becker caught the kid under the armpits, lifted him up, and slammed his rear end down on the table. “Look, you runny?nosed little runt. You’re going to back off right now, or I’m going to rip that safety pin out of your nose and pin your mouth shut.”

The kid’s face went pale.

Becker held him a moment, then he released his grip. Without taking his eyes off the frightened kid, Becker stooped down, picked up the bottles, and returned them to the table. “What do you say?” he asked.

The kid was speechless.

“You’re welcome,” Becker snapped. This kid’s a walking billboard for birth control.

“Go to hell!” the kid yelled, now aware of his peers laughing at him. “Ass?wipe!”

Becker didn’t move. Something the kid had said suddenly registered. I come here every night. Becker wondered if maybe the kid could help him. “I’m sorry,” Becker said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Two?Tone,” he hissed, as if he were giving a death sentence.

“Two?Tone?” Becker mused. “Let me guess . . . because of your hair?”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Catchy name. Make that up yourself?”

“Damn straight,” he said proudly. “I’m gonna patent it.”

Becker scowled. “You mean trademark it?”

The kid looked confused.

“You’d need a trademark for a name,” Becker said. “Not a patent.”

“Whatever!” the punk screamed in frustration.

The motley assortment of drunken and drugged?out kids at the nearby tables were now in hysterics. Two?Tone stood up and sneered at Becker. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

Becker thought a moment. I want you to wash your hair, cleanup your language, and get a job. Becker figured it was too much to ask on a first meeting. “I need some information,” he said.

“Fuck you.”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“I ain’t seen him.”

“Haven’t seen him,” Becker corrected as he flagged a passing waitress. He bought two Aguila beers and handed one to Two?Tone. The boy looked shocked. He took a swig of beer and eyed Becker warily.

“You hitting on me, mister?”

Becker smiled. “I’m looking for a girl.”

Two?Tone let out a shrill laugh. “You sure as hell ain’t gonna get any action dressed like that!”

Becker frowned. “I’m not looking for action. I just need to talk to her. Maybe you could help me find her.”

Two?Tone set down his beer. “You a cop?”

Becker shook his head.

The kid’s eyes narrowed. “You look like a cop.”

“Kid, I’m from Maryland. If I were a cop, I’d be a little out of my jurisdiction, don’t you think?”

The question seemed to stump him.

“My name’s David Becker.” Becker smiled and offered his hand across the table.

The punk recoiled in disgust. “Back off, fag boy.”

Becker retracted the hand.

The kid sneered. “I’ll help you, but it’ll cost you.”

Becker played along. “How much?”

“A hundred bucks.”

Becker frowned. “I’ve only got pesetas.”

“Whatever! Make it a hundred pesetas.”

Foreign currency exchange was obviously not one of Two?Tone’s fortes; a hundred pesetas was about eighty?seven cents. “Deal,” Becker said, rapping his bottle on the table.

The kid smiled for the first time. “Deal.”

“Okay,” Becker continued in his hushed tone. “I figure the girl I’m looking for might hang out here. She’s got red, white, and blue hair.”

Two?Tone snorted. “It’s Judas Taboo’s anniversary. Everybody’s got—”

“She’s also wearing a British flag T?shirt and has a skull pendant in one ear.”

A faint look of recognition crossed Two?Tone’s face. Becker saw it and felt a surge of hope. But a moment later Two?Tone’s expression turned stern. He slammed his bottle down and grabbed Becker’s shirt.

“She’s Eduardo’s, you asshole! I’d watch it! You touch her, and he’ll kill you!”

Midge Milken prowled angrily into the conference room across from her office. In addition to the thirty?two foot mahogany table with the NSA seal inlaid in black cherry and walnut, the conference room contained three Marion Pike watercolors, a Boston fern, a marble wet bar, and of course, the requisite Sparklett’s water cooler. Midge helped herself to a glass of water, hoping it might calm her nerves.

As she sipped at the liquid, she gazed across at the window. The moonlight was filtering through the open venetian blind and playing on the grain of the table. She’d always thought this would make a nicer director’s office than Fontaine’s current location on the front of the building. Rather than looking out over the NSA parking lot, the conference room looked out over an impressive array of NSA outbuildings?including the Crypto dome, a high?tech island floating separate from the main building on three wooded acres. Purposefully situated behind the natural cover of a grove of maples, Crypto was difficult to see from most windows in the NSA complex, but the view from the directorial suite was perfect. To Midge the conference room seemed the perfect vantage point for a king to survey his domain. She had suggested once that Fontaine move his office, but the director had simply replied, “Not on the rear.” Fontaine was not a man to be found on the back end of anything.

Midge pulled apart the blinds. She stared out at the hills. Sighing ruefully, she let her eyes fall toward the spot where Crypto stood. Midge had always felt comforted by the sight of the Crypto dome?a glowing beacon regardless of the hour. But tonight, as she gazed out, there was no comfort. Instead she found herself staring into a void. As she pressed her face to the glass, she was gripped by a wild, girlish panic. Below her there was nothing but blackness. Crypto had disappeared!

The Crypto bathrooms had no windows, and the darkness surrounding Susan Fletcher was absolute. She stood dead still for a moment trying to get her bearings, acutely aware of the growing sense of panic gripping her body. The horrible cry from the ventilation shaft seemed to hang all around her. Despite her effort to fight off a rising sense of dread, fear swept across her flesh and took control.

In a flurry of involuntary motion, Susan found herself groping wildly across stall doors and sinks. Disoriented, she spun through the blackness with her hands out in front of her and tried to picture the room. She knocked over a garbage can and found herself against a tiled wall. Following the wall with her hand, she scrambled toward the exit and fumbled for the door handle. She pulled it open and stumbled out onto the Crypto floor.

There she froze for a second time.

The Crypto floor looked nothing like it had just moments ago. TRANSLTR was a gray silhouette against the faint twilight coming in through the dome. All of the overhead lighting was dead. Not even the electronic keypads on the doors were glowing.

As Susan’s eyes became accustomed to the dark, she saw that the only light in Crypto was coming through the open trapdoor?a faint red glow from the utility lighting below. She moved toward it. There was the faint smell of ozone in the air.

When she made it to the trapdoor, she peered into the hole. The freon vents were still belching swirling mist through the redness, and from the higher?pitched drone of the generators, Susan knew Crypto was running on backup power. Through the mist she could make out Strathmore standing on the platform below. He was leaning over the railing and staring into the depths of TRANSLTR’s rumbling shaft.

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