Net Force - Tom Clancy [81]
Shes not nine years old anymore, Mom.
I would hope not. Well. Do you need a ride?
Ill take the Trans, he said. Its not far.
All right. Leave a number, and be back for dinner at seven.
Yes, Mom.
Lighten up, Ty. I know I used to ride dinosaurs to school, but my memory hasnt all gone. Its not as dangerous as you think, talking to a gurrul She laughed.
So much for what you know, said the voice from behind its rock.
Saturday, October 2nd, 1:33 p.m. Quantico
For once, a meeting actually got started on schedule. Michaels looked around the conference room at his people. Okay, lets not waste any time. Jay?
Jay Gridley waved the presentation projector on. Good news and bad news, he said. The cane came from this store, made by a company that mostly supplies serious martial artists.
An image appeared.
This is the model
Another image, this one of the cane, flashed on-screen.
After eliminating a whole bunch of customers-legitimate teachers, people who really need to use canes, collectors, and the usual number of loose nuts and bolts who buy things out of paranoia, all of whom could account for their purchases-we are left with eight possibilities.
Names flashed on-screen.
Of the eight, our agents have so far interviewed five. Four of these produced the canes they are recorded as having purchased. One gave the item as a gift to a friend, and we have found that one.
Five of the names faded away.
Of the three remaining subjects, one is a survivalist in Grants Pass, Oregon, who refuses to allow local, state or federal agents on his property. The gentleman in question is seventy years old and according to his medical records, has had a surgical hip-replacement. We have a judge signing a search warrant as we speak, to look for the cane on his property. Id guess theyll find him leaning on it when they get there.
The name on-screen began to blink, alternating red and blue.
So thats pending. The remaining two names He shook his head. Well, they are interesting.
Michaels said, Interesting?
Jay waved at the screen. One of the names began to pulse in yellow. Wilson A. Jefferson, of Erie, Pennsylvania. Mr. Jefferson, in the last three years, has bought a cane, two sets of escrima sticks and a set of custom-designed yawara sticks. These were delivered to a post office box. The cane is the right model. The escrima sticks are used in a Filipino fighting art called, oddly enough, escrima; the last items are used in several different fighting styles, but the name is Japanese. According to the post office box rental agreement and state drivers license records, Mr. Jefferson is a white male, forty-one years old, and he resides at this address.
A street number and name blossomed.
However, a check at this address came up negative. Nobody by that name has ever lived there. On the surface, Jeffersons credit records seem fine, but below the surface, they vanish. What we have here is an electronic man.
So this is our assassin, Toni put in.
Sort of, Jay said. Then there is Mr. Richard Orlando.
More screen action.
Mr. Orlando has bought, over a period of four years, five canes, including two of the models we have in hand. All were delivered to a post office box in Austin, Texas. And a check of his background says he is an Hispanic male, twenty-seven years old, and as far as we can tell, also exists only in a few record computers and apparently nowhere else. The photographic image on his drivers license is blurred so badly he could look like anybody in this room. Oddly enough, so are the photographic records of Mr. Jefferson.
Same person, using two fake IDs, Michaels said.
That would be my opinion, Jay said. Very dissimilar and a thousand miles apart. Fakes, and unless you were looking for them, youd never accidentally spot them.
Great, Toni said. So, whats the good news?
That is the good news, Jay continued. Nobody remembers either Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Orlando. Weve interviewed postal workers, and come up blank. There are no trails leading away. As far as we can tell, the only reason these two E-men ever existed was to take