Private Lives nfe-9 Read online

  Leif always cut his schedule pretty fine when he arrived for meetings. Like all cybertravelers, theoretically he “moved” at the speed of light — or at least as close to it as the processing speed of the Net servers would let him. So it wasn’t getting there that slowed him down. It was finding all the people he wanted to see and getting them together. He liked to show up on meeting night with just enough time to hook up with his friends before the business of the evening started.

  This time around Matt Hunter was the first to spot Leif’s thatch of red hair.

  “So how are things in New York?” Matt asked, slipping his way through the crowd to stand at Leif’s side. He hesitated for a moment. “Did Megan ever give you a copy of the captain’s interview?”

  “No, she did not,” Leif said definitely. “I’ve gotten a couple of calls and a whole bunch of e-mail on the subject from nearly everybody I know. But when I asked Megan if I could see the actual show, you’d think I was asking for the filthiest of feelthy peectures.”

  Matt shrugged. “Well, the broadcast did get Megan — and a lot of other people, including Captain Winters — pretty upset.”

  “Upset doesn’t quite cover it,” Leif told him. “I finally decided to call the local HoloNews outlet. When I got hold of the switchboard and requested a copy, you’d have thought I’d initiated a level-three security breach.”

  That got a quick laugh from Matt. “A lot of the kids in this group have organized to express their…opinion — perhaps disapproval might be a better word — of the show.” He gave Leif a lopsided smile. “The station people have reason to act pretty defensive when it comes to callers about that show.” Leif nodded.

  “Particularly callers who sound on the young side.”

  Leif gave Matt a long look. “Normally, I’d pester David for the real story on the interview. But when I tried calling him, he said he was too busy to talk. I’d bet he’s pretty involved in that ‘disapproval’ thing. Can you take me through what went down?”

  Matt retold the story of the interview quickly. “Up to the end, it was a typical puff piece. ‘What a nice civic group you’ve got here, Captain Winters.’ Then the interviewer went into attack mode.”

  Matt paused for a second. “The guy must have been annoyed at the way Winters was handling him, because he made some snide comment about the captain being too cool. Then he asked if Winters knew about Stefano ‘Steve the Bull’ Alcista being paroled that day.”

  Matt looked sick. “From there on, it’s sort of engraved in my memory. The news-drone asked, ‘Isn’t he the organized-crime figure who was accused of conspiracy and murder in the car-bombing that killed your wife?’”

  “Whoa!” Leif burst out.

  Matt nodded. “Guy’s lucky that looks can’t kill. Otherwise he’d have wound up as a burnt patch on the carpet. Captain Winters looked downright scary. I’ve known the man for years and never seen anything like it.” Matt’s voice went lower. “It was worse than scary, Leif. Winters looked as if he was fighting for control of his expression, muscle by muscle. But his eyes…” He shook his head. “I would not want anyone that angry at me, much less someone who looked as dangerous as Captain Winters looked at that moment.”

  Leif silently shook his head. “So there was a Mrs. Winters? It seems almost impossible to believe.”

  “They say it’s Marine sergeants who grow from spores,” Matt tried to joke. “Not officers.”

  Leif didn’t even comment on Matt’s jibe. He stuck with the topic at hand. “I always thought of the captain as — I dunno—The Captain, a work of art carved and perfected. Talking about him with a wife — somehow it just feels wrong. It’s like talking about The Thinker being married.” He gestured helplessly. “Just like I always think of Captain Winters being at work. It’s hard to picture him goofing off, much less sharing his life with someone.”

  “Maybe he became all business after he lost his wife,” Matt suggested.

  A thoughtful light appeared in Leif’s eyes. “You might be right. And this Alcista guy was supposed to be involved in her death?”

  Matt’s expression began to look worried. “Leif — you’re not thinking—?”

  That’s the unfortunate part of having a reputation for plots and tricks, Leif thought. Everybody expects you to jump right in and start being clever.

  He was glad of Matt’s interruption when the other members of their crew came swarming around — at least, at first.

  “Here’s the guy we need!” Maj Green called out in her usual blunt way. “Leif will come up with something to make that news guy wish he’d never been born.”

  “What a wonderful idea — two wrongs to make a right. It’s even traditional.” David Gray sounded exasperated, as if this particular argument had been going on for some time.

  “You want to turn the other cheek, Gray?” Maj retorted. “You’ll probably end up with somebody’s boot on it.”

  Leif was wondering how to calm them both down when a new interruption distracted everybody.

  One of the virtual walls in this corner of government cyberspace suddenly retreated to create a small stage. Captain James Winters stood surveying the crowd of Net Force Explorers. If Leif had thought David was exasperated, Winters looked like he had the market cornered on the feeling — locked and loaded, squared and cubed.

  Thanks to one of the small miracles of veeyar, the captain’s voice drowned out all the other conversations, almost as if he were speaking through a heavy-duty PA system.

  “Before I start this meeting officially,” Winters said, “I want to devote a few words to my recent holo appearance — or rather the reaction to it. This stuff has gotten way out of hand.”

  A protesting rumble came from the young Net Force Explorers, but Winters talked right over it. “HoloNews has temporarily suspended Mr. McGuffin’s e-mail after all the spam and flame that ended up there. And I myself have had to delete Mr. McGuffin’s personal address several times from the Net Force Explorer Net — even in nodes for chapters outside of D.C.”

  “I have a direct order to impart here,” he said, stabbing his finger in the air, a short, emphatic gesture. “I’ll be as plain as possible. Stop trying to punish Jay-Jay McGuffin.”

  “He pulled a lousy trick!” an angry voice rose from the crowd.

  “Maybe. But he was doing his job — badly, I might agree — still, I knew I might end up tripping over a land mine when I went in there. It comes with the territory when you deal with the media. They want ratings, which means their shows — even the puff-piece shows — have to be exciting.”

  Winters took a deep breath. “Anyway, I would take it as a personal favor if you all left Mr. McGuffin alone.”

  His voice grew grimmer. “As for Stefano Alcista, his files are still under judicial lock, and I expect you to respect that. It’s against the law to tamper with those files, and I know you’ll keep that in mind. I am also sure that none of you would be stupid enough to try tangling with a professional criminal and known Mob insider. You’d end up worrying about a lot worse things than my reaction to an overeager reporter.”

  Leif stared as Winters’s face became all planes and angles, as if the flesh had drawn tight over the bones of his skull. Wherever Winters had gone in thought in that instant, it was a mental landscape Leif hoped he never discovered himself. “I’d rather not have another person on my conscience when it comes to Steve the Bull.”

  Winters shook his head a little as if he was trying to fling that thought away. His voice changed, too, as he said, “Now that we’ve dealt with that, welcome to the national meeting of the Net Force Explorers, October 7, 2025.” That was the official opening of the meeting. From this point on, everything would be recorded. The captain was clearly determined to route a path back to normalcy both for himself and for the Net Force Explorers, as quickly as possible.

  Leif glanced around. Everyone was quiet as the captain dealt with various matters. By all appearances this was a typical meeting — just business as usual. B
ut as the guest speaker was introduced, Leif couldn’t help noticing the tension that remained in the air. He was reminded of an old saying of his father’s: “You could cut the atmosphere with a knife.” Right now, given the stress in this room, a chisel or laser — one with a lot of firepower — would be a more appropriate tool. Despite the captain’s pleas, it was clear that this wasn’t over, not by a long shot. Leif could only hope that nothing terrible would happen before it was.

  3

  Several days later Leif sat beside his father in the Andersons’ living room, watching the family’s holo system. A recording of the now-infamous Winters interview played to its end.

  “I can see why Captain Winters got so upset on-camera,” Magnus Anderson said. “Given the program, and the purported purpose of the interview, that was a pretty low blow, even for a would-be newshound. The captain made a pretty good recover, except for that single, unguarded moment.”

  “I’m just glad I finally got a chance to see what all the fuss is about.” Leif glanced at his father. “Thanks for busting it out of Fortress HoloNews. I hope it wasn’t a problem.”

  Magnus Anderson shrugged. Leif thought his dad looked a little embarrassed, which was odd. His father usually wasn’t shy about using his wealth or position to get something when he felt the results justified the means.

  “It just took a little honcho-to-honcho communication, calling in a few favors,” his dad said. “Deborah Rockwell runs the Washington operation.” He hesitated. “She used to be an on-air reporter, and I knew her.”

  Leif raised his eyebrows at the tone in his father’s voice. “Knew her?”

  An uncomfortable pause ensued.

  “It was back in the dawn of time, before I met your mother,” Magnus Anderson finally said. “We dated for a while.”

  “It all comes clear.” Leif laughed. “You bummed a copy off an old girlfriend.”

  “Which might teach you something,” his still-embarrassed father replied. “When you break up with someone, try to do it so that you keep a friend instead of making an enemy.”

  Now it was Leif’s turn to be embarrassed. Leif’s last relationship had been fairly tumultuous, and the resulting break-up had been a messy one. The girl in question had been a pretty but spoiled debutante far too used to getting her own way and having exactly what she wanted. By the time Leif figured this out, it was too late for him to simply disappear from the picture. When he had finally tired of catering to her every outrageous whim and had tried to distance himself gracefully, the results had been — well, Leif had seen Fourth of July celebrations with less fireworks. Both the spoiled debutante and her parents were still after his scalp.

  Thankfully, his father changed the subject. “How much ‘fuss’ has this thing generated?” he asked, gesturing toward the holo display, which now showed Jay-Jay McGuffin moving on to his next guest. The newsman still looked disappointed that his final question hadn’t rattled Winters into saying something inflammatory.

  Little had McGuffin realized at that point what he had stirred up with his sledgehammer-style interview tactics. If he’d had the slightest inkling then of the trouble he was in for, he’d have looked nervous instead of disappointed.

  “Fuss?” Leif said. “Oh, about as much as if that genius had rammed his face into a hornets’ nest. The kids who saw the interview were calling those who hadn’t while the show was still on. By evening every chapter of the Net Force Explorers in the country had heard of McGuffin’s dirty trick. A fair number of the kids decided to get back at him.”

  “And how exactly was he stung?” Magnus Anderson wanted to know.

  “At last count, about forty-five hundred phony subscriptions to various publications were entered in his name. He — um—‘enrolled’ in a lot of different newsgroups and got on a lot of e-mail lists,” Leif said. “All of a sudden, he started getting recipes for rhubarb pies, begging letters from every charity known to mankind, and information from the Flat Earth Society. Entomologists Online was keeping him up to date on the latest in insect research, complete with detailed scenarios on the private lives of fruit flies. My favorite touch was the guy who volunteered him to the Amalgamated Historical Simulation Organizations. They were pretty surprised at Jay-Jay’s registration form. Not too many people sign up to get virtually massacred by the Mongol hordes every time they go online.”

  His father silently shook his head.

  “Well, you’ve got to give the kid who came up with that one credit for originality,” Leif said. “I guess McGuffin wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Not when he chose to very publicly offend a guy with a couple of thousand protohacker friends.”

  “Especially when said friends are mostly under the age of seventeen,” Magnus Anderson said dryly. He looked for a long moment at his son. “And you didn’t get involved at all?”

  Leif could understand his father’s skeptical tone. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that he’d gotten into big trouble for hacking into the private files of the Washington Post to help a Net Force Explorer friend. That had not, technically, been illegal. Leif had gotten the codes to get in. But it had been way over the line as far as his parents were concerned. And Leif had paid for it, big-time.

  “I didn’t do a thing,” Leif told his father, trying to look as virtuous as possible. “I’ve learned lately to look before I leap.”

  Leif didn’t mention that he’d been out the night that the “Get McGuffin!” campaign had started. Or that, when he’d finally checked his e-mail messages, all the best cybervengeance schemes had been used already.

  “How about this other character?” Magnus Anderson asked. “The gangster — Alcista?”

  “Net Force Explorers are not stupid. Even we know he’s out of our league. Besides, Winters personally asked us to butt out. No more ragging on McGuffin, and absolutely no fooling around with Alcista.”

  Leif’s father nodded. “What’s the old quote? ‘Leave him to heaven.’”

  “Shakespeare,” Leif said. “And it’s ‘Leave her to heaven.’ The ghost says it in Act One of Hamlet.”

  Magnus Anderson gave his son one of those looks. “Well, at least you’re learning something while you’re giving your mother and me gray hair.”

  Leif had nothing to say to that. Luckily, he also had a distraction. “My wallet-phone just went off,” he said, reaching into his back pocket.

  It only took a moment to convert the wallet’s circuitry. Leif held the foilpack phone up to his ear. “Hello? Matt! What are you—?”

  That was as far as he got. Leif sat for a long moment, listening, his face going grimmer with every word he heard.

  “Yeah. I don’t think it would have made the New York news, either. Thanks for letting me know.” He sighed. “Maybe this will mean the end of all this nonsense. We can only hope so, at any rate.”

  Leif said goodbye to Matt Hunter, then cut the connection.

  Magnus Anderson looked carefully at his son. “A problem?” he asked.

  “Looks as if someone decided to ignore both Shakespeare and Captain Winters,” Leif said. “According to Washington HoloNews, Steve the Bull Alcista got into his car earlier this evening, and it blew up with him inside it. He’s history.”

  Guess you can’t be lucky all the time, Matt Hunter thought a couple of days later as he sat in front of his family’s holo system. Steve the Bull’s release from prison had been lost among a flurry of hot news items. But the Alcista murder happened on a slow news day. Leif had called him to report that Alcista’s death had indeed made the New York newscasts, even led off a couple of the shows. The story was national.

  Even now, two days later, interest was still high. The top HoloNews magazine show, Once Around the Clock, had done a special report on the New Mafia. Several reporters hosted segments on the computer-literate leaders who had arisen from old-style crime families to take advantage of the criminal aspects of the Net. In these segments Steve the Bull was depicted as a throwback to the pre-Net days, too quick with his trigg
er finger to succeed in the new criminal empire.

  Then Tori Rush came on. She was the latest addition to the staff of the newsmagazine, with only a couple of years on the air under her belt. Blond and petite, she looked like America’s kid sister — America’s sexy kid sister.

  But she certainly wasn’t very cute and cuddly right now. Her story was an exposé on the bombing of Alcista’s car. And she was questioning the current police theory that Alcista’s murder was an organized-crime hit. Tori had done her homework — she’d gone all the way back to the case that had put the crime boss in jail this time: the computer-driven looting of a legitimate corporation.

  In addition to background information on the case itself, she had a lot of footage about how Alcista had allegedly tried to kill the pair of Net Force agents investigating that case. Alcista or one of his minions had supposedly rigged the Net Force agents’ vehicles with car bombs.

  Tori Rush’s slightly pouty lips formed a hard, thin line as she went into crusading-reporter mode. “The charges that Alcista planted the devices were, in the end, never successfully proved in a court of law, but the bombs were a definite fact. One Net Force agent lost his wife as a result of them.” The hologram image filled with a photo — a younger James Winters with a pretty dark-haired woman holding on to his arm.

  “Cynthia Winters drove her husband’s car on the morning of Monday, April 19, 2021. The bomb wired to the ignition killed her instantly. It has been more than four years since that terrible incident. But it’s safe to say that Net Force Captain James Winters hasn’t forgotten, as this recent interview shows.”

  Matt’s skin crawled as a familiar scene appeared on the display. Jay-Jay McGuffin asked Captain Winters how he felt about Steve the Bull Alcista getting out of prison.

  The image zoomed in and froze on the raw rage engraved on the captain’s face.