Fatal Error rj-13 Page 21

"Much bad luck in family. Parents and sister dead, brother missing, wanted by Philadelphia police and may be dead too. Perhaps your Jack from New Jersey is also dead."

  "No. Connell told me he's some sort of repairman. His Social Security number will-"

  "I could not find Social Security number."

  "Ridiculous. Every American has one."

  "Was not necessary when he was child. Maybe he never get."

  How interesting. No SSN and working as a repairman. Thinking back on his encounters with the teen, he remembered how strong a Taint he had. And he'd sensed a deep independent streak coursing through him. Repairs were often paid for in cash. Yes, he could well imagine a grown-up Jack dodging taxes and Ernst stiffened in his seat.

  And killing to protect his friends?

  No.

  He forced himself to relax.

  Rich though he was with the Taint, Jack had exhibited no violent tendencies. But could something in his life have brought the Taint to the surface, changing him?

  Possible…

  But highly unlikely.

  Szeto had described this guardian angel as highly skilled-a "ninja," he'd called him. That bespoke training. In real life the grown-up Jack was most likely just as he appeared on paper: a college dropout living off the books as a repairman.

  Still… too many blank spaces in that picture. Ernst did not like blanks. And did not want another crossed path from that little town in New Jersey circling back on him.

  "Keep after both of them," he told Szeto. "In the meantime…" He reached for the radio button. "Let's see what's going on in the world."

  He scanned the channels until…

  "… and so far, beyond filling in-boxes with avalanches of blank emails, the virus appears to be more of a nuisance than a threat to the computers it has infected. And it has infected many. Experts estimate that more than half of the world's personal computers and networks have already been infected with this as yet unnamed virus, and the number is rapidly growing.

  "If in the last forty-eight hours you've opened an email with no subject line and no content, you are probably infected. If you haven't, then it's very easy to avoid infection: Do not open any email with a blank subject line, no matter who it's from. Even if it's from your mother or your best friend-especially if it's from your mother or your best friend-DO NOT OPEN IT.

  "Antivirus software companies are scrambling for a cure to release to their subscribers. Stay tuned here for the latest. We'll keep you posted on what you can do to clear this nuisance from your computer.

  "So far, no one has stepped forward to take credit-maybe we should say 'blame'-for the virus."

  Ernst smiled as he turned off the radio. The world was aware of the virus. This was what he'd been waiting to hear.

  "We'll remedy that right now. Has the video been uploaded?"

  Szeto had been on his cell phone. He ended the call and said, "The video is up."

  "Excellent."

  He had obtained the number of Ellen Rifkin, one of the reporters for the ABC television network. He turned on a voice distorter and punched in the number. A woman answered.

  "Rifkin."

  "Ms. Rifkin," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I have news about the email virus."

  "I'm listening," she said in a bored tone.

  Ernst wondered how many of these calls the network was receiving.

  "The virus is called Jihad four/twenty. To see a video with more details, search 'Jihad four/twenty' on YouTube."

  He ended the call, then made similar calls to specific reporters at the New York Times and Fox News Network. That pretty much covered the political spectrum.

  He opened the back of his prepaid phone and removed the battery. Then he pulled out the chip. He was carrying caution to an extreme, he knew, but it gave him comfort.

  A Lebanese brother high in the Order had recorded the deliberately out-of-focus video just yesterday. He had recited the message in Arabic first, then repeated it in English.

  Ernst turned the radio back on.

  "It won't be long now."

  2

  Jack arrived at Weezy's a little early. Dawn had accepted her invitation for coffee and Jack wanted to be there when she arrived.

  He didn't get a chance to knock. As he raised his hand, the door swung open and Weezy grabbed his arm.

  "Jack!" She pulled him in. "You've got to see this! It's all over the news."

  "What is?"

  He followed her to her computer where a YouTube video was running. She backed it up some and started it running again.

  "Watch."

  He saw some guy with his head and face wrapped in a patterned white keffiyeh babbling in a foreign language. What was this? Another al Qaeda slimeball with a threat against the world?

  "What language is that? Arabic? You going to translate for me?"

  He knew Arabic was one of the half dozen or so languages she spoke.

  "I don't have to. He starts repeating it in English just about… now."

  And sure enough, he broke into pretty decent English. He rambled on about Jihad4/20, the virus he'd released into the "Godless Internet," and how on April twentieth it would awaken and exorcise Satan and his demons from the world's computers by filling them with prayers of praise to Allah.

  "So I was right," Jack said as the video ended. "The virus is some sort of prayer wheel. But instead of 'Cthulhu fhtagn,' it'll be 'Allah Akbar' or the like over and over."

  She was staring at him.

  "What?" he said.

  "You're not serious."

  He decided against putting her on any longer. She didn't seem in the mood. And besides… this wasn't funny.

  "Of course not."

  She looked relieved. "I never know with you."

  "The video's bullshit."

  She nodded as she glanced at her monitor. "Yes, it's bullshit. But remarkable bullshit. When I first watched it I thought of Eddie. You said he told you he'd overheard something about 'jihad' at the Lodge. This has to be it."

  "And mentioning it to someone in the Order is most likely what earned him a death sentence."

  "Poor Eddie," she said. "He had no idea what he was getting into."

  "None of us did. Or do. What's this all about?"

  "I don't think there can be any doubt: They're going to try to crash the Internet."

  "But how? Not with prayers to Allah. And what's with the four/twenty? What's that mean?"

  "April twentieth is Mohammed's birthday by the Gregorian calendar. At least it's supposed to be. I don't think anyone knows his exact birth date for sure. Happens to be Hitler's too, by the way. And the date of the Columbine massacre."

  Anyone else and Jack would assume she'd Googled it before he came in, but he knew if he asked Weezy how she knew she'd just tell him she'd "read it somewhere."

  "Well," he said, "the video with the Islamic angle is brilliant. It gives the virus a name, it gives the hacker a face-sort of-and makes praising Allah the motivation."

  "Exactly. And so we all pigeonhole the group behind it as Islamic nuts and look no further."

  Another angle hit him. "And maybe people don't look so hard for a cure because it's only going to be prayers, and they have a couple of months before anything happens."

  "Do you believe that?"

  He shook his head. "No way. If they've found a way to crash the Internet with this virus, they're not going to wait until April twentieth. They'll go for it ASAP."

  "Exactly."

  "But what are they going to do?"

  Weezy shrugged. "I have to assume it has something to do with Munir Habib's video transfer code, but how they intend to use it, I haven't the vaguest."

  "Maybe his code is a red herring. Get the experts looking at that, thinking it'll be used to download the promised praise-Allah video, when all the while the virus is really aimed at something else."

  "Like what?"

  "Like wiping a zillion hard drives."

  Weezy shook her head. "But that will
affect only the infected computers, leaving the Internet up and running for the uninfected. And the fix for a wiped drive is a simple reinstall of software. Traffic would be back to normal in no time. The Internet itself has to be the target."

  As he listened, a depressing thought took hold.

  "Even if we knew what the Order was going to do, could we stop it?"

  "Not unless we can convince everyone with an infected computer to turn it off and keep it off."

  Jack made a face. "Oh, yeah. That'll happen."

  "Even that might not work, because the virus could have the ability to turn on infected machines."

  "So unless everyone unplugs their computer, we're screwed."

  Weezy shrugged and looked down. "On that front, yes, considering the number of computers already infected. Plus we're a couple of nobodies against a global organization."

  "Then we're back to finding Dawn's baby."

  She nodded. "Speaking of which, she'll be here any minute."

  3

  Dawn arrived right on time.

  Jack had managed only a brief glance at her yesterday-just long enough to recognize her face-but now he could see she'd put on a good twenty pounds since last summer. He rose as she entered the room.

  "Dawn," Weezy said, "this is my friend, Jack."

  Dawn frowned at him as they shook hands. "Do I know you? You look familiar."

  "We met last spring in a bar in Queens… a place called Work."

  A pause, and then her eyes widened and she stepped back. "You're that friend of Jerry's."

  "I wouldn't say 'friend.' "

  She took another backward step as she looked from Jack to Weezy. "Hey, what's going on here?"

  "Just coffee and conversation," Weezy said. "Jack recognized you yesterday but wasn't sure you'd remember him."

  "And I am no friend of Jerry's," he said. "Not by a long shot."

  She stopped her retreat and pointed at him. "That's right! He went after you with a tire iron and you totally beat the crap out of him!"

  That surprised him. He hadn't noticed her around at the time, but figured Jerry would have made up a story about being jumped or sucker punched. He hadn't known he'd had a witness. Jack had planned to tell her that he'd done that. Looked like he wouldn't have to.

  "How nice," Weezy said.

  "No, it was awesome! Like a jerk I felt sorry for Jerry then, but now I wish you'd wailed on him with his own tire iron."

  "You saw that?"

  "Yes! I was waiting in the car. But… but your name wasn't Jack, it was Joe something."

  "Yeah. Joe Henry or something like that. I was, um, undercover."

  "You're a cop?"

  "No…" Here comes the hard part, the tough sell. "I was hired to check out Jerry Bethlehem. To dig up some dirt on him."

  "That shouldn't have been too hard. He was a world-class creep. But who-?" Her already pale skin blanched a little further. "Oh, no. You're not going to tell me it was my mother."

  "Afraid I am. She wanted something to use to drive a wedge between you two."

  She looked shaky.

  "Maybe you should sit down," Weezy said, stepping closer with a concerned look.

  Dawn held up a hand. "No, I should go. Because you're lying to me."

  "Hey, look," he said. "Maybe your mother could have handled it differently, but she was worried-"

  "Oh, I know she hired someone. It just wasn't you."

  Baffled, Jack looked for a way to respond.

  "Um, yeah, it was," he said slowly. "When she approached me, she told me she needed to keep her daughter from making a terrible mistake. That sound familiar?"

  He could tell by her expression that it did.

  He related the details of what Christy Pickering had told him about how Jerry had insinuated himself into Dawn's life with the ploy of designing a video game together. He could see his words hitting home, but she still wasn't sold.

  "Jerry could have told you that."

  "Yeah, he could have, but he didn't." Time to start fudging the truth. "When I did a background check on him I couldn't learn anything about him-like he had no past. But eventually I found out he wasn't who he said he was."

  "Who was he then?"

  He didn't want to open that can of worms.

  "A wanted criminal."

  That didn't seem to faze her. "I'm so not surprised. Did you tell my mom?"

  "I didn't get the chance. She was… gone before I could reach her."

  He figured it best to keep the part about finding her body to himself.

  She sat down, looking shaky again. "Then what?"

  "I went looking for you but you dropped off the face of the Earth."

  "I've been hiding from Jerry." Her tone had gone flat.

  "All this time?"

  She looked up. "I couldn't let him find me."

  "But he's been dead since last spring."

  Her eyes widened. "Last spring? I thought it was more recent."

  "So you know?"

  "I just heard. Mister Osala said Jerry died under a phony name, so nobody knew. He said-"

  "Who's Mister Osala?"

  "Why should I tell you anything about him?"

  "Why not? Is it a secret?"

  She shrugged. "I guess not. He was hiding me from Jerry. My mother hired him to investigate-"

  "Two of us?" Jack said. "Does it seem logical that she'd hire two investigators?"

  Jack didn't think of himself as a PI, but in this case he guessed he'd served as one.

  "Totally not." She rubbed her temples. "I don't know… this is so not making sense. One of you has to be lying."

  Jack pulled out his ace. He hoped it was enough.

  "Remember that letter you received from Doctor Vecca?"

  Her head snapped up. "How do you know about that?"

  "It wasn't from her. I wrote it. I even delivered it to you personally-in a blond wig. Remember? It contained everything I'd learned about Jerry."

  She stared at him, her eyes growing wider and wider. "Then you know…?"

  He nodded.

  She looked up at Weezy. "You too?"

  Weezy nodded.

  Dawn buried her face in her hands. "Oh, God! I didn't want anyone else to know! Ever!"

  Weezy put a hand on her shoulder. "No one blames you. You were the victim of a sick, sick man."

  "And it's over," Jack said. "He's gone for good-out of your life, out of everyone's life."

  "But I was so stupid!"

  "You were young," Weezy said, squeezing her shoulder. "That was the problem."

  Still young, Jack thought, leaning forward. "So who's this Mister Osala?"

  "Jack," Weezy said with a warning tone. What was with the look she was giving him?

  "What?"

  "She's upset. Maybe later."

  What was up with her? This was important.

  "Just this one thing, okay?" Jack sat next to her. "Tell me about this Osala, Dawn."

  She took a deep breath. "Well, he's very rich, lives in a duplex on Fifth Avenue overlooking the park. He said he'd made a promise to my mother to protect me and that's what he did."

  "Why aren't you there now?"

  She looked away. "He kicked me out. He said with Jerry dead, I was in no danger, so his obligation was up. He found me this apartment and-"

  "He chose it for you?"

  "Totally. Even paid the first six months' rent."

  Jack couldn't help a glance at Weezy.

  "What's wrong?" Dawn said.

  "Weez, can you get me a pen and a piece of paper?"

  "Right here."

  She plucked a Sharpie and a yellow legal pad from the table. Jack took them and drew a crude figure. He held it up for her.

  "Did you see anything like this around Mister Osala's house?"

  She shook her head. "Never."

  Damn.

  "But," she added, "my obstetrician had something like that on his pocket watch."

  Jack tensed. "And who set you up with the
obstetrician?"

  "Mister Osala."

  He choked back a whoop. There was the connection: The Order had had its sights on the baby all along. They'd placed Dawn under the wing of a well-heeled member until she delivered, then they dumped her and spirited the baby away.

  The question was, had they searched out Weezy just so they could install Dawn across the hall? Seemed so. But to what end?

  "What's that symbol mean?" Dawn said.

  He didn't want to start in on the history of the Septimus Order. Weezy could handle that beautifully, but it wasn't where he wanted the conversation to go.

  "Just a fraternal order… like the Masons."

  Yeah, I wish.

  "Enough of this," Weezy said from the kitchen. "Let's eat. I'm starving."

  4

  Dawn sipped coffee and nibbled on half of a sesame bagel with nothing on it. Weezy did the same, but was more aggressive with the coffee, draining cup after cup. Jack knew from the time they'd been apartment mates that she had an astounding capacity for caffeine.

  Jack loaded his poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese and chomped.

  "How are you feeling?" Weezy said.

  They hadn't planned out a good-cop, bad-cop thing, but she seemed to be falling into the more touchy-feely role.

  Dawn looked at her. "You never had a baby?"

  Weezy shook her head.

  "Well, then," Dawn said, "I'm sore. Not totally sore like I was yesterday, but sore."

  Jack tried to imagine giving birth. Gave up. He'd tried many times while Gia was pregnant but his mind couldn't go there.

  He wanted to ask Dawn about her baby but held back. He sensed Weezy tacking in that direction.

  She tapped a finger against her temple. "How are you feeling up here?"

  Dawn frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "Emotionally. You've been living in somebody's house, now you're on your own. You were pregnant, now you're not. You just delivered a baby and…" Weezy shook her head. "That's got to get to you."

  Jack could see Dawn withdrawing, shutting down. Weezy must have sensed it too. She reached out and touched her arm.

  "I'm messing this up. What I'm trying to say is, if you're ever feeling down or lonely or just want to talk, I'm here all by myself too. I hardly ever go out, and sometimes I get lonely, so any time you want to talk or just come over to sit and read or watch TV with someone else around, feel free."