4
Washington, D.C.
Abe Kent sat in his new apartment in the city and stared at the guitar in the chair. He had taken it out of its case and set it there and, no doubt about it, it was beautiful. He had done enough research when he’d been chasing the Georgian, Natadze, so that he knew what a good guitar looked like, and he liked listening to people who were adept with them, but he had no musical talent himself.
And yet here he was, with a ten-thousand-dollar guitar.
He sighed. He had taken the instrument out and looked at it a dozen times since he’d gotten it. He didn’t know why, but he felt as if he somehow owed it to the man he’d killed to . . . make use of the thing. He could sell it, or give it to charity, but neither of those felt right. And if he was going to keep an instrument worth that much? It ought not to be sitting in the corner in its case gathering dust.
He sighed again. It didn’t make any sense, but he knew what he had to do. He stood, picked up the guitar, and put it back into the case.
The store was small, in a sleepy neighborhood on the outskirts of D.C., in a little commercial strip mall backed by a residential neighborhood. It was called the Fretboard. It had wrought-iron grates on the windows, curvy patterns made to look like a design element rather than bars to keep thieves out. There were several neon signs in the windows advertising products whose names Kent mostly didn’t recognize.
A bell chimed as he entered. The place smelled like fresh-cut fir, and there were a couple of customers at the counter talking to a long-haired clerk of eighteen or nineteen. The clerk had a soul-patch that had been dyed green, and maybe nine piercings in his ears and nose.
A third man stood nearby, picking out tunes on an electric guitar—he was pretty good. The guitarist was playing a collage, a medley of old rock numbers Kent mostly recognized, and the clerk was laughing.
He looked up and saw Kent with his guitar case. “You lookin’ for Jennifer?” he asked, still smiling.
Kent nodded.
“In the back, down the hall, door on the right.”
“Thanks.”
Kent moved down the hall. He opened the door and stepped into a small practice room with thick egg-carton soundproofing on the walls and ceiling. The sound of the electric guitar went silent as he closed the door behind him.
A woman sat on a stool with one foot propped on a little metal stand, and she would be Jennifer Hart. He had found her through the local classical guitar society. She was at least fifty, and even though that was a decade younger than he was, she was the closest teacher he could find locally anywhere near his own age. Somehow, the idea of it being somebody younger than some of the boots he owned just didn’t seem right. Certainly not some kid with lip hair dyed green and enough hardware in his face to build a waffle iron.
The woman was trim, dressed in tennis shoes, jeans, and a button-up long-sleeved white shirt. Her hair was to her shoulders, brown, with a fair amount of gray in it. She had a lot of smile lines on her face. A classical guitar rested on her left leg.
“Mr. Kent?”
“Yes.” He was in civilian clothes and he hadn’t mentioned that he was in the military, much less a general.
She put the guitar onto a stand, stood, and stuck out her hand.
She was short, maybe five-two or -three. “Hi. I’m Jennifer Hart.”
“Pleased to meet you.” He transferred his guitar case to his left hand and shook hands with her. She had a strong grip.
There was a second stool and she pointed at it. “Have a seat.”
He set his case down and then perched on the stool.
“That’s an expensive case,” she said. “Is the guitar handmade?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please, call me Jen. Could I see it?”
He popped the six latches open and opened the lid, lifted the guitar free, and offered it to her.
She took it. “What a beautiful instrument! What kind of wood is that?”
“Port Orford cedar on top, Oregon myrtlewood on the sides and back. Made by a man named Les Stansell, out in the Pacific Northwest.”
“May I?” She put it on her leg, preparing to play.
“Sure.”
She did a little run on the fretboard, adjusted the tuning a hair, then played some kind of Spanish-y thing, short but impressive.
“Good tones. Nice basses and trebles, clean mid-range, great resonance. Sounds more like spruce than red cedar, though.” She handed it back to him. “The top hasn’t opened up yet. You haven’t had it very long, have you?”
“No, ma’am—Jen.”
She smiled. He liked the way her face crinkled.
She picked up her own instrument. It had the same color top, but the sides and back were much darker than his guitar, all brown and patterned. “This is also a cedar top, different than yours, but I’ve had it a while. See if you can hear the difference.”
She played the same piece. It was warmer this time, darker, not as bright. Both sounded great, but there was a definite difference. The bass notes seemed deeper, fuller, and the high tones somehow richer.
Done, she said, “My instrument was made by Jason Pickard, it’s got claro walnut sides and back—makes it a little mellower.”
“What did you mean about the top opening up?”
“Well, that usually applies more to spruce than cedar, but basically, up to a point, classical guitars sound better with age. A brand-new one that sounds pretty good will, after a few years of playing it, usually sound better.”
“Ah.”>
“How far along are you in your studies?”
He smiled. “What I know about playing it you could carve on the head of pin with a battle-ax.”
A slight frown flitted across her face. “You’re joking.”
“No, ma’am. I don’t even know how to tune it.”
He had a pretty good idea of what bothered her. This guitar he had was expensive. Why would a man who didn’t know how to play the thing put out big bucks for it until he was able to do it justice?
“The guitar was . . . a gift.”
Now she frowned. “Somebody gave you a handmade guitar that runs what?—eight, ten thousand dollars?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She raised an eyebrow. “They must really like you.”
“Not so you’d notice in this case, I don’t think.”
She just stared, not speaking.
“It’s a weird story.”
“I’m not on the clock, Mr. Kent.”
“Abe,” he said.
She didn’t even blink. “All right. Abe.”
She waited.
He thought about it for a moment. He didn’t know this woman, he had no reason to sit here and spill his guts to her, but something about her manner invited intimacy. She seemed genuinely interested.
He took a deep breath. Who would it hurt? “The man who gave it to me was moments away from dying when he did so. The reason he was dying was because I had just shot him.”
If that bothered her, it didn’t show. “I thought you looked like police or military. Go on.”
He wanted to grin again. He remembered a story he’d heard, about an ex-GI who had been involved in a shooting at his home. Guy had been jumped by some local bikers, so he’d pulled a piece and fired three rounds, killing one of them. Friends called later to talk to the shooter, and the comments ranged on one end from folks saying how awful it must have been to have to shoot and kill a fellow human being, to old soldiering buddies who said, “What kind of grouping did you get?” Jennifer Hart’s comment sounded more like the latter than the former.
“I work for a government agency. The man—who was shooting at me when I shot him—was a hired killer. He was also a very good classical guitarist.”
“And you feel that you need to learn how to play it? I don’t see the reason.”
He didn’t blame her. He didn’t see the reason, either, exactly. And what could he tell her? Would she understand that Natadze was a good enemy? Smart, tough, adept.
He shrugged. “It seems like the right thing to do.”
She nodded, as if understanding exactly what moved him, though it may have simply been acceptance. For the moment, anyway. “Okay. Let’s get started, then. Can you read music?”
He smiled again. “Not a note.”
“TAB?”
“That a soft drink?”
She laughed. He enjoyed being able to make her do that. “Not exactly,” she said. “It’s a kind of notation for stringed instruments—guitars, lutes, like that. We’ll get into theory as we go. Let’s do the basic stuff first. There are six strings on your guitar, numbered usually from the thinnest and highest to the thickest and lowest. When you hold the guitar on your leg—I’ll show the basic position—the lowest bass string will be up. Going down from that toward the floor, the strings are usually tuned to E, A, D, G, B, and E, in that order. Here’s a way to remember them: Elvis Ate Dynamite, Good-Bye, Elvis. . . .”
Kent grinned again. He could remember that. Hell, he could remember Elvis Himself. Saw him once, in Las Vegas . . .
Louisiana Jay’s Dig
Whispering Dunes, Egypt
Jay stood at the top of the tallest sand dune, looking at the huge archaeology dig below. Hundreds of natives wearing flowing white robes toiled in the hot sun, carefully unmasking the ruins of the temple beneath the sand. Some used shovels, some used small hand trowels, and others used whisk brooms made of papyrus to brush away dust on the stones.
Right out of an old adventure movie. Or maybe one about mummies and tomb raiders . . .
Like most of his VR scenarios, it wasn’t really a temple but a metaphor for something else—in this case a huge comparison database.
The work hadn’t been easy, and the pressure was on.
Because the distributed program had mixed and matched various features of U.S. military bases around the globe to create the alien bases, the question was: How many more bases had been incorporated into the alien designs? How many more potential targets were there?
He would be passing on what he already had to the Army’s computer people pretty soon, but another run wouldn’t hurt.
If Jay could deconstruct the game and identify features of the bases that hadn’t been attacked, the good guys might be able to get ahead of the bad guys.
Unfortunately, as with every solution, there were problems.
First was finding copies of the game software. The program hadn’t been released all at once—new bases had been constructed and sent out to the game players in installments. To complicate things, the game server that had sent the files out had shut itself down when the first base was attacked. In addition, the game files were coded to stop working after a certain date.
So not only did he have to find copies of the software, he had to keep them from shutting down as well.
Big problems are our specialty.
His grin grew wider, and the desert wind blew pieces of sand into his teeth.
Several servers on I2’s West Coast backbone had been taken off-line for maintenance a week or so before. He’d managed to snag the game variants by copying their hard drives and sifting them for the program. He’d changed the computer’s date before starting them up again.
He’d also gotten several copies from a VR site that billed itself as a multiplayer on-line game museum. The site had used similar tactics to freeze the alien games.
After all of his efforts he figured he had about thirty percent or so of the games that had been released. He’d popped them onto a closed network loop and then had gone after problem number two.
Jay looked over toward the main encampment. White tents fluttered in the desert wind. One was larger than the rest, and in front of it stood dozens of glass tables, each one covered with models. Scores of heavily armed guards patrolled the areas around the models.
In order to figure out which military bases made up the alien bases, he needed their specifications, security, entrances, and exits.
And no one had wanted to give him the information. He turned and spit the grit out of his mouth.
It was a classic military move, closing the barn door after the horse had gotten out. Here he was, trying to track down terrorists who had attacked their bases, but no one would give him information to do it.
He’d been tempted to hack their database, but had decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble. So he’d e-mailed General Ellis instead, taking him up on his offer of more resources. In the meantime, he had gone after the information through conventional means, compiling lists of military bases from FBI archives and gathering site plans filed with land-use and planning commissions.
After all, one could take many paths to the same destination.
He’d started a team of techs transferring the data to VR, and then he’d adapted the desert scene to actively deconstruct each of the bases in the game.
And then, wonder of wonders, Ellis had come through. True to his word, the old man had freed up stats on every Army base in the country: buildings, security orders-of-the-day, and even electronic passwords—all as of the date of the first attacks, of course—nothing current. Still, it wasn’t a bad compromise, all things considered. Jay had his data, and the military kept its secrets.
Right now his VR scenario was running on the first or second iteration of the game. The sun beat down and white-robed workers measured features of the temple—which was actually the alien base—and scurried to carry those measurements to others who were near the models. The measurements would be adjusted to scale, and then compared to each model, one piece at a time.
It was a huge amount of information to process, exactly what VR was best at.
“Dr. Jay, Dr. Jay!” One of the natives by the model waved.
Jay headed over, feeling sweat bead on his back in the hot sun.
The man pointed at one of the models, a squared-off base set against a hillside. There was a main entrance, well guarded, and along the side was another entrance, which looked like it was used for vehicles.
The native gestured at the entrance and handed Jay the piece of paper.
Jay read the measurements on the scrap of paper and looked over at the entrance. He pulled a set of calipers from his pocket and measured the doorway.
It was a match.
The VR jock looked down at the base designation. It was in Germany.
Then, as he watched, it flickered slightly, the doorway shifting size, shrinking. It held for a few moments, and then shifted back to being larger.
He frowned. The models weren’t supposed to shift—unless—
Jay paused the VR scenario, and everything froze while he focused on the model. He triggered some code and abruptly the model on the table grew larger, until he was standing at the entrance, scaled to appropriate size.
He walked forward and tapped the left side of the entrance. A tiny window appeared midair, spelling out the gate’s dimensions. Underneath the black figures were blue ones.
Let’s see. . . . Aha—
The blue figures were the ones he’d pulled from public sources, and the black ones were from the files that General Ellis had arranged for him to receive. He’d kept the public records in the few instances where they differed.
And they were different. The black figures read sixteen feet, eight inches. The blue ones read eighteen feet six inches. A simple transposition.
Could it be the wrong base?
He checked the other parameters—distance to the rock wall, thickness of the door, composition of the wall. No. The match was good.
Which was very interesting indeed.
Whether it was the military’s measurements that were correct, or whether the public records were right, wasn’t what was important—the difference of twenty-two inches didn’t matter. What was important was that the figures from the game matched the military numbers.
Whoever had coded the game had used the military’s files.
Nothing like finding a clue to brighten your morning. The devil was in the details, and today Old Scratch was on Jay’s side. He’d take it. But the general was sure gonna be pissed off about this.