The Blue Nowhere

Nolan said, "This is your program?"

"Right."

"It's brilliant."

"Yeah, it was a fun hack," Gillette said, noting that his prowess had earned him a bit more adoration from the woman.

The line representing the route from CCU to Vlast's computer headed west and finally stopped in central Europe, ending in a box that contained a question mark.

Gillette looked at the graph and tapped the screen. "Okay, Vlast isn't online at the moment or he's cloaking his machine's location – that's the question mark where the trail ends. The closest we can get is his service provider: Euronet.bulg.net. He's logging on through Euronet's Bulgarian server. I should've guessed that."

Nolan and Miller nodded their agreement. Bulgaria probably has more hackers per capita than any other country. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Central European Communism the Bulgarian government tried to turn the country into the Silicon Valley of the former Soviet Bloc and imported thousands of codeslingers and chip-jocks. To their dismay, however, IBM, Apple, Microsoft and other U.S. companies swept through the world markets. Foreign tech companies failed in droves and the young geeks were left with nothing to do except hang out in coffee shops and hack. Bulgaria produces more computer viruses a

Nolan asked Miller, "Do the Bulgarian authorities cooperate?"

"Never. The government doesn't even answer our requests for information." Stephen Miller then suggested, "Why don't we e-mail him directly, Vlast?"

"No," Gillette said. "He might warn Phate. I think this's a dead end."

But just then the computer beeped as Gillette's hot signaled yet another catch.

Search results:

Search Request: "Triple-X"

Location: IRC, #hack

Status: Currently online

Triple-X was the hacker Gillette had tracked down earlier, the one who seemed to know a great deal about Phate and Trapdoor.

"He's in the hacking chat room on the Internet Relay Chat," Gillette said. "I don't know if he'll give up anything about Phate to a stranger but let's try to trace him." He asked Miller, "I'll need an anonymizer before I log on. I'd have to modify mine to run on your system."

An anonymizer, or cloak, is a software program that blocks any attempts to trace you when you're online by making it appear that you're someone else and are in a different location from where you really are.

"Sure, I just hacked one together the other day."

Miller loaded the program into the workstation in front of Gillette. "If Triple-X tries to trace you all he'll see is that you're logging on through a public-access terminal in Austin. That's a big high-tech area and a lot of Texas U students do some serious hacking."

"Good." Gillette returned to the keyboard, examined Miller's program briefly and then keyed his new fake user-name, Renegade334, into the anonymizer. He looked at the team. "Okay, let's go swimming with some sharks," he said. And hit the ENTER key.

"That's where it was," said the security guard. "Parked right there, a light-colored sedan. Was there for about an hour, just around the time that girl was kidnapped. I'm pretty sure somebody was in the front seat."

The guard pointed to a row of empty parking spaces in the lot behind the three-story building occupied by Internet Marketing Solutions Unlimited, Inc. The spaces overlooked the back parking lot of Vesta's Grill in Cupertino where Jon Holloway, aka Phate, had social engineered Lara Gibson to her death. Anyone in the mystery sedan would have had a perfect view of Phate's car, even if they hadn't witnessed the actual abduction itself.

But Frank Bishop, Bob Shelton and the woman who ran Internet Marketing's human resources department had just interviewed all of the thirty-two people who worked in the building and hadn't been able to identify the sedan.

The two cops were now interviewing the guard who'd noticed it to see if they could learn anything else that would help them find the car.

Bob Shelton asked, "And it had to belong to somebody who worked for the company?"

"Had to," the tall guard confirmed. "You need an employee pass to get through the gate into this lot."

"Visitors?" Bishop asked.

"No, they park in front."

Bishop and Shelton shared a troubled glance. Nobody's leads were pa

The team at CCU had found a lead – Wyatt Gillette's bot had turned up a reference to Phate, Linda Sanchez had told Bishop in a phone call – but that too was a dead end.

Bulgaria, Bishop thought cynically. What kind of case is this?

The detective now said to the security guard, "Let me ask you a question, sir. Why'd you notice the car?"

"I'm sorry?"

"It's a parking lot. It'd be normal for a car to be parked here. Why'd you pay any attention to the sedan?"

"Well, the thing is, it's not normal for cars to be parked back here. It was the only one I've seen here for a while." He looked around and, making sure the three men were alone, added, "See, the company ain't doing so well. We're down to forty people on the payroll. Was nearly two hundred last year. The whole staff can park in the front lot if they want. In fact, the president encourages it – so the company don't look like it's on its last legs." He lowered his voice. "You ask me, this dot-corn Internet crap ain't the golden egg everybody makes it out to be. I myself am looking for work at Costco. Retail… now, that's a job with a future."

Okay, Frank Bishop told himself, gazing at Vesta's Grill. Think about it: a car parked here by itself when it doesn't have to be parked here. Do something with that.

He had a wisp of a thought but it eluded him.

They thanked the guard and returned to their car, walking along a gravel path that wound through a park surrounding the office building.

"Waste of time," Shelton said. But he was stating a simple truth – most investigating is a waste of time – and didn't seem particularly discouraged.

Think, Bishop repeated silently.

Do something with that.

It was quitting time and some employees were walking along the path to the front lot. Bishop saw a businessman in his thirties walking silently beside a young woman in a business suit. Suddenly the man turned aside and took the woman by the hand. They laughed and vanished into a stand of lilac bushes. In the shadows they threw their arms around each other and kissed passionately.

This liaison brought his own family to mind and Bishop wondered how much he'd see of his wife and son over the next week. He knew it wouldn't be much.

Then, as happened sometimes, two thoughts merged in his mind and a third was born.

Do something…

He stopped suddenly.

…with that.

"Let's go," Bishop called and started ru

"What the hell's the hurry?" his partner gasped.

But the detective didn't answer. He ran through the lobby of Internet Marketing, back to the human resources department. He ignored the secretary, who rose in alarm at his blustery entry, and opened the door of the human resources director's office, where the woman sat speaking with a young man.