The Devil's Code

disappeared through the double glass doors, I was about ready to go in after her. Then she walked back outside, with a guy in a short-sleeved white shirt, who pointed up the hill toward thefirst building. She nodded, and they talked for a few more seconds, she laughed, patted his arm, and started for the car. I slumped a little lower in the passenger seat. The guy watched her go; he wasn’t watching her shoulders.
    As she came up to the car, I slumped another six inches. She climbed into the driver’s seat, fired it up, backed out of the parking space, and we headed up the hill. “He’s back inside,” she said, as we pulled away.
    I pushed myself up. “That took a while.”
    “I knocked on the door—it’s got a Vermond combination pad, not alarmed—and asked where Clayton Accounting was, and we got to chatting,” she said. “Those computer people are amazing. They’ve got all these interesting machines.”
    “Really.”
    “Really. He’s got five of them. They look like air conditioners, all lined up in the back room.”
    “Two rooms?”
    “Three. One is a standard office, one has the computers, one has a futon on the floor and a miniature refrigerator where he keeps his Cokes.”
    “Is he in there alone?”
    “There’re two desks, but one of them looks pretty unused—like maybe a part-timer. I got the phone number.”
    She’d pissed me off a little by casually talking to the guy. “We’re gonna have to do a really light break. If we screw anything up, he’ll remember talking to you. He’ll remember your face.”
    “I thought it was worth the effort. And you know what? There is no security. The rest rooms are on thesecond floor. I went into the ladies’ room, and there’s a drop ceiling, but it’s a mess above it. If we went up, and anybody came in to clean up . . . they’d know.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “I’m thinking about it.”
    “All right.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s go get some deodorant, and then we can hang out for the day. You can think.”
    We found a drugstore, and I bought a travel-sized can of a woman’s deodorant, the kind that advertises actual freshening powder in its spray, and a couple of Cokes. We drank the Cokes on the way back to Carter-Byrd. This time, LuEllen slumped in the seat while I went inside, carrying her briefcase so I looked like I had a reason to be there.
    The building was essentially a long string of business offices opening off central hallways that ran the length of the building. There was nobody in the hall when I walked inside, and I made a left, slipped the deodorant can out of my pocket, and gave it a couple of shakes. Bloch Technology was the third door on the left. I spotted the keypad as I came up, looked both ways, and then gave it a thorough spraying with the deodorant. I waved my hand in the air a couple of times to disperse the smell as best I could, then headed back out. Total time in the building, less than one minute. Total people encountered, none.
    “So let’s go hang out,” I said.
    We hung out, more or less; I took her to a driving range, where she hit golf balls, and very well, with a five-iron older than she was, and with a three-wood thatwas not only wood, but was no bigger than her fist. I did some quick sketches of her swing. Later, we caught a movie, and in between, I got back to Bobby, who had what he called a curiosity: a sudden spate of rumors on the Net that Firewall was planning a major attack. Bobby knew about Rufus and the Monger; I suggested that he call Rufus and have him trace the latest round of rumors. And I had a new question of my own, that popped into my head just as we were signing off. Bobby said:
W ILL TRACE RUMORS SOONEST .
    OK.
    C ALL TONIGHT .
    Y ES . N EW THOUGHT : LOOK AT AIRLINES . S EE IF JM FLEW IN DAYS BEFORE HE WAS KILLED .
    Y ES . W ILL ALSO CHECK GAS CARD . A LSO , JPEG IN YOUR BOX .
    T HANKS .
    I downloaded the JPEG, which is a picture format, and saved it to examine later. After the movie, which sucked, LuEllen pointed me at a sporting goods store, where she bought a spool of black monofilament fishing line called Spider Wire. We went back to the motel, looked at the movies she’d made that morning at Bloch—five Dell servers sitting on heavy plastic benches with a monitor and keyboard off to the side—then had a slow dinner at a fast diner. The nerves were getting on top of me, like they always do. After dinner, we went back to the motel, picked up her bag, and