Avenger

"Right, Ra's al Whatever. They must have reached there from somewhere."

" Cairo. They came in from Cairo."

"So its flight plan is logged in the Cairo Air Traffic Control archives. Computerised. I'll have to visit. The good news is I doubt if they will have too many firewalls to protect them."

"You need to go to Cairo?" asked Dexter.

Washington Lee looked at him as if he were mad. "Go to Cairo? Why would I go to Cairo?"

"You said, 'visit.'

"I mean in cyberspace. I can visit the Cairo database from a picnic site in Vermont. Look, why don't you go home and wait, Counsellor? This is not your world."

Washington Lee rented his motor home and bought his PC, plus the software he needed for what he had in mind. It was all for cash, despite the raised eyebrows, except for the motor home, which needed a driver's licence, but renting a motor home does not necessarily mean a hacker is at work. He also bought a gaspowered generator, to give him standard domestic "juice" whenever he needed to plug in and log on.

The first and easiest was to crack the Aruba tailfin registration bank, which operated out of an office in Miami. Rather than use a weekend, where an unauthorised visit would show up on Monday morning, he broke into the archive on a busy working day when the database was answering many questions and his would get lost in the clutter.

Hawker 1000 P4-ZEM had once been VP-BGG, and that meant it had been registered somewhere in the British registration zone.

He was using a system designed to hide its own identity and location called PGP, standing for "Pretty Good Privacy," which is a system so secure that it is actually illegal. He had set up two lines, public and private. He had to send on the public line because that line can only encrypt; receiving answers would be on his private line, because that one can only decrypt. The advantage from his point of view was that the encryption system, worked out by some patriot who did pure theoretical math as a hobby, was so impenetrable that it would be unlikely anyone could find out who he was or where he was located. If he kept time-on-line short and location mobile, he should get away with it.

His second line of defence was much more basic; he would communicate by Email only through Web cafŽs in the towns he passed through. Cairo Air Traffic Control revealed that Hawker 1000 P4-ZEM, when it passed through with a refuelling stop in the Land of the Pharaohs, came in from the Azores -every time.

The very fact that the line across the world ran from west to east via the midAtlantic Portuguese islands to Cairo thence to Ra's al Khaymah indicated that P4ZEM was starting its journey somewhere in the Caribbean basin or South America. It was not proof, but it made sense. From a rest stop in North Carolina, Washington Lee persuaded the Portuguese/Azores air traffic database to admit that P4ZEM arrived from the west but was based at a private field owned by the Zeta Corporation. That made the line of pursuit via the filed flight plans into an impasse. The British colony of Bermuda also operated a system of banking secrecy and corporate confidentiality for the benefit of clients who were prepared to pay top dollar for top security, and it prided itself on being very top notch indeed.

The database in Hamilton could not eventually resist the Trojan horse decoy system fed into it by Washington Lee and conceded that the Zeta Corporation was indeed registered and incorporated in the islands. But it could only yield three local nominees as directors, all of unimpeachable respectability. There was no mention of any Zoran Zilic, no Serbian-sounding name.

Back in New York, Cal Dexter, armed with the suggestion from Washington Lee that the Hawker was based somewhere around the Caribbean, had contacted a charter pilot he had once defended when a passenger had become violently airsick and tried to sue on the grounds that the pilot should have picked better weather.

"Try the FIRs," said the pilot, "flight information registers. They know who is based in their areas."

The FIR for the southern Caribbean is in Caracas, Venezuela, and they confirmed that Hawker 1000 P4-ZEM was based right there. For a moment Dexter thought he might have been wasting his time on all the other lines of enquiry. It seemed so simple. Ask the local FIR and they tell you.

"Mind you," said his charter pilot friend, "it doesn't have to live there. It's just registered as being there."

"I don't follow."

"Easy," said the pilot. "A yacht can have Wilmington, Delaware, all over its stern because it is registered there. But it can spend its whole life chartering in the Bahamas. The hangar this Hawker lives in could be miles from Caracas."

Washington Lee proposed the last resort and briefed Dexter. Two days of hard driving brought Lee to the city of Wichita, Kansas. He called Dexter when he was ready.

The vice president of sales took the New York call in his office on the fifth floor of the headquarters building.

"I am ringing on behalf of the Zeta Corporation of Bermuda," said the voice. "You recall you sold us a Hawker 1000 tailfin number VP-BGG, you know, the British-owned one, some months back? I'm the new pilot."

"I surely do, sir. And who am I speaking with?"

"Only Mr. Zilic is not happy with the internal cabin configuration and would like it made over. Can you offer that facility?"

"Why certainly. We do cabin interiors right here at the works, MrÉerÉ"

"And it could have the necessary engine overhauls at the same time."

The executive sat bolt upright. He recalled the sale very well. Everything had been serviced to give a clear run of major items for a couple of years. Unless the new owner had been almost constantly airborne, the engines would not be due for overhaul for up to a year.

"May I enquire exactly who I am talking to? I do not think those engines are anywhere near to needing another overhaul," he said.

The voice at the other end lost its self-confidence and began to stutter. "Really? Aw, jeez. Sorry about that. Must have the wrong aeroplane."

The caller hung up. By now the vice president of sales was consumed with suspicion. To his recall he had never mentioned the sale of the registration of the British-sourced Hawker offered for sale by the firm of Avtech of Biggin Hill, Kent. He resolved to ask security to trace that call and try to establish who had made it.

He would be too late, of course, because the SIM-based mobile was heading into the East River. But in the meantime, he recalled the delivery pilot from the Zeta Corporation who had come up to Wichita to fly the Hawker to its new owner.

A very pleasant Yugoslav, a former colonel in that country's air force, with papers in perfect order, including the full FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) records of the U. S. flight school where he had converted to the Hawker. He checked his sales records, Capt. Svetomir Stepanovic, and an email address. He composed a brief E-mail to alert the captain of the Hawker to the weird and troubling phone call and sent it. Across the landscaped grounds that surrounded the headquarters building, parked behind a clump of trees, Washington Lee sca

Three days later in New York, the motor home returned to the charter company, hard drive and software somewhere in the Missouri River.

Washington Lee pored over a map and pointed with a pencil-tip. "It's here," he said. " Republic of San Martin. About fifty miles east of San Martin City. And the aeroplane captain is a Yugoslav. I think you have your man, Counsellor. And now, if you'll forgive me, I have a home, a wife, two kids, and a business to attend to. Good luck."