"That's why it could be done."
I was tempted to tell her that Bobby had already been in the Anshiser system, but some things are best left untold. "If I were you, I might have another little chat with him."
"I made a note," she said. She smiled, and the skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes.
While I was working on the attack programs that we'd insert into the Whitemark system, Dace was working on the publicity angle. His first product was a package on the systems director, the pornographer.
"I put it together with words cut out of the Post," he said. He was wearing surgeon's latex gloves and holding the paper by the corners. It was an ugly jumble of clipped-out news type Scotch-taped to a piece of spiral notebook paper.
"The hardest part was getting the words right. Nothing too big, but nothing too small, either. Something just right for a half-bright crackhead." The text was three paragraphs long and explained:
we needed the MONEY from
the Robbery for medicine, so
we Started robbing Houses.
found these Porno magazines
Full of little children, which
was not Cool, which is
a Hundred Times more cruel than
ANYTHING we Ever done.
It specified names, the address, and the day and time of the burglary.
Maybe They HID it BY now.
But If you watch Them you
you catch TheM.
little kids are getting FuCked.
A sample magazine was enclosed, along with the list of subscribers.
"One thing that strikes me as phony is that we're sending it to the right police jurisdiction. A junkie would probably send it to the Washington cops," Dace said as he sealed the envelope. "I don't want to take a chance that the whole thing would get lost in the bureaucracy, so I'm going to send it to the right place, to the chief. Even if they're a little suspicious, they'll check. Especially with the magazine and the subscriber list."
"What do you think they'll do? The cops?" Maggie asked.
"When I was working a police beat years ago, they'd pass it off to the vice squad. The vice cops would go over to the house, see if the door looks like it had been broken in recently. I'm assuming that the break-in wasn't reported. Then they might look in the windows and see if we described the place right. Or knock on the door with some phony excuse, to see if it looks right. If everything jibes, they'll watch the place, see who comes and goes. Maybe have a quiet talk with a neighbor or two. They'll do a computer search and see if these people have ever been involved in a sex thing in the past. If they find anything, they may do a discreet black-bag job themselves, to check the place out. Then, depending on what they find, they'll go to a pet judge and get a search warrant. They won't have a real good case, but it should be enough for a warrant."
"What if they did report the break-in? For insurance?"
Dace shrugged. "In that case, they probably moved the porn out, at least during the investigation. If they did report it, the cops would have corroboration in their own files that the burglary took place. They'll still watch the place. Sooner or later, they'll bust them."
"It better be sooner," Maggie said. "If it happens two months from now, it won't help."
"It's not a sure thing," Dace said. "But I'd be willing to bet it'll happen in a week."
"How'll we know if it happened?"
"We'll give the cops a couple of days to work. Then we tip off the papers and the TV stations that they're about to bust the biggest kiddie-porn ring in the country. It's hyperbole, but the TV people love that kind of thing. A new record for kiddie porn. They'll get in touch with the cops, and that'll goose the cops along. We'll see it on the evening news."
The night after the first attack, Maggie lay on her back in bed, the lights out. The code was still running through my head.
"It's weird," she said, reaching over to pat me on the stomach. "When Rudy and Dillon and I talked about hiring you, I had this picture of somebody climbing a barbwire fence with plastic explosive in his teeth. Instead, we sit in an air-conditioned apartment and eat donuts, and you type on a computer."
"You never carry plastic explosive in your teeth," I said.
"Have you ever seen the Whitemark building?"
"Nope. Should I?"
"I guess not. There's not much to see. Just a big glass cube with a funny pyramid thing for the roof. I thought you might be curious."
"Nah. You can tell more sitting here than you can from looking at the outside of the building."
She shook her head. "That doesn't seem right, somehow. It's like. " She groped for an analogy. "It's like dropping bombs on Vietnamese peasants. You know, you push a button and people die, but you go home to lunch. If you're going to have a war, you should have the courtesy to kill your enemies in person. And maybe suffer a little bit."
"You're rambling," I said.
"I know. I don't even know what I'm trying to say. But it seems. wrong. to be able to attack somebody you've never seen, don't know, and probably won't ever meet."
"You mean I should find the president of Whitemark and personally rip his heart out."
"Oh, bullshit, Kidd. You know what I'm getting at. This seems so. sterile. I mean, it's scary. It's little electronic lights ruining a huge company."
"Welcome to the big city," I said.
"That's an ugly attitude," she said.
"Yeah, but that's the way it is. You wanted this done, and I can do it. We're both consenting adults. It's the new reality. The little electronic lights are more real than that glass building with the pyramid on top."
She shivered.
The letter about the porn merchants went in the mail the first day. Over the next two days, as I jimmied the Whitemark computer system, Dace and Maggie worked and reworked the approaches to the media on the public attack.
Dace suggested that the Whitemark letters to the generals be leaked first, anonymously, to a weekly defense newsletter called From the Turret.
"A lot of people read it, a lot of reporters. Turret's not too scrupulous about what they use or where they get it. If we drop them a note, say we have been unfairly demoted in the company, and send along the letters, they'll use them," he said.
"It doesn't sound public enough," Maggie said with a frown. "I mean, frankly, every company in the defense industry hires retired generals to lobby for them. We do. You put that story in a defense newsletter, there might be a few raised eyebrows, but nothing much will happen."
"Ah. But this isn't hiring a few generals. This involves a quid pro quo. They're saying, 'If our airplane is picked, there'll be jobs in procurement for those who helped us.' That's not recruiting, that's bribery. As soon as Turret publishes, we call the Post, The New York Times, and Knight-Ridder bureau, and so on, and tip them off. Just being in print gives the story cachet. They'll be interested, because it's the kind of thing they expect to find in a newsletter. Then the next day, we send along copies of the letters to the papers' defense specialist writers."
"Think that will break it out?"
"I think so. It won't be the biggest story of the year, but it will be a nice one. The front pages of the Post, probably a good inside spot in the Times."
"After we get that going," Maggie said, "we should get in touch with the business magazines about the problems they're having meeting the Hellwolf schedules. That will have a nasty effect on their stock prices."
Dace and LuEllen usually went out at night, and often spent the night at his apartment. I worked evenings. Maggie talked with Chicago or worked with the other computer terminal, via telephone, with her Chicago office. One night, simultaneously overcome with office fatigue and horniness, we staggered into our bedroom, pulling off clothes, and fell on the bed in a frenzy. Afterward, Maggie showered and dropped into the bed, naked, and was instantly asleep.