Courier (15 page)

It took several hours, but eventually the film was fully developed, or at least they hoped it was developed, since they hadn't opened the tank yet. Finally, it was left to dry overnight.

Rick began to apologize for putting them to so much trouble.

"Trouble?" Eps laughed. "This is easy. From what I read, the pervs who make
feelthy peechures
used to do all this inside a garden hose, sliding the film in and then pouring the chemicals through. Now that sounds tricky."

"Only if the hose had ‘kinks' in it," deadpanned Scotty.

The three techs laughed and headed off upstairs, while Rick did a final circuit of the neighborhood. Nothing sparked his sense of danger, but he was still tense and wary. He decided to ease his fears with an extra half hour of weights.

It must have worked because he actually slept solidly for four and half hours. He paid for it when he awoke – the echoes of his screams were still bouncing off the bedroom walls.

CHAPTER 17

 

It had been a beautiful dawn. He had sat on the Capitol steps and watched the city slowly emerge as the morning mist withdrew to the Potomac. Then a golden wave hit the top of the Washington Monument and slid down to light up the white marble buildings that lined the Mall.

He headed back home, but by the time he had crossed Independence Avenue, the sun was gone and the sky was once again the unbroken gray of a Washington winter. Nothing appeared to be out of place at the house, but he did a recon around the block anyway.

When he came in the back door, Corey was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. "Tom Swift and his Bionic Buddies are downstairs," he said dryly. Rick poured himself a cup and headed for the basement.

They'd obviously been hard at work. They had extracted all the film from the makeshift tank and tacked it carefully to the joists with thumbtacks through the sprocket holes. It hung in long loops back and forth across the basement. Steve and Scotty were using a Tensor lamp to backlight a section, while Eps was putting away the chemicals and equipment.

"What does it look like?" Rick asked.

"Well, first off, it doesn't look like movie film." Steve shook his head. "I don't get it. You didn't bring us some sort of half size photo film, did you?"

"Don't think so. Let me look."

Where Rick expected to see the repetitive pictures of someone's head or the outside of a building that were typical in developed film, the images looked more like the microfilm you'd see in a library. Most of the reel appeared to be shots of an open book – a ledger, possibly. The images only changed toward the end, where there were tight shots of what looked like currency.

"Wait a second," Steve said and snapped his fingers. "Does the Bolex shoot ‘single frame'?"

"Sure," Scotty answered, "that's how we did clay-figure animations back in high school."

"That's what it is; they shot single frames of something. Who's got a magnifying glass?"

Rick was completely unsurprised when both Eps and Scotty indicated they had one upstairs. When they returned, Corey followed, curiosity winning out over his usual cool and uninterested demeanor.

After a few minutes of intense scrutiny, they confirmed that the majority of the images were indeed shots of a ledger with what Corey said looked like serial numbers in the left column and totals and subtotals on the right.

"Well, now we just need to print these out," Steve said. "I can do that over at a buddy's darkroom this afternoon."

"Don't you have to work?" Rick asked.

"Nah, I've got their computers working so well that half the time, I have to insert errors just to keep the bosses from thinking they don't need me around. I can't have that. Maintaining an image of infallibility is half the battle in this business."

 

Rick spent most of the Friday in safe places – the White House, the Senate, places like that. He called in favors and traded runs to avoid any assignments that would leave him exposed. He stuck to big streets like K Street and Wisconsin Avenue and was on constant alert.

Since he was prepared, nothing happened.

He checked the papers and even glanced at the local newswires, but there was no mention of a death on the tracks or a disturbance at Union Station. A tall young man with curly hair had replaced Shelley over at the affiliate service.

Finally, he called the Assignment Desk to say he was checking out for the day. Casey Ross said that was fine in a bored voice, and then, "Hey, someone tried to reach you yesterday."

"Who?"

"Do I look like your secretary? I don't know. Probably your ex-wife."

"Or a bill collector. Did you tell them anything?"

"I don't know anything. Nobody knows anything about you."

"That's great. Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Good night."

Rick hung up the phone, thinking how glad he was that he hadn't given the desk his home address. He put on his cold-weather gear and headed out. He stood in the shadows of the curtains in the picture window watching Connecticut Avenue for a long time. The only person of interest was DC's only bicycle courier, a gray-haired black man with one leg shorter than the other who slowly but steadily pedaled a battered bike loaded with rolls of blueprints around town.

Eventually, he went back and got the BMW. He came down the narrow sidewalk to the street and drove slowly over the tarred boards of the Metro construction – watching for anyone pulling in behind him – and then sped up and went into a series of high-speed turns and alley cut-throughs. Finally satisfied he wasn't being followed, he headed home.

Rick did a slow cruise around the neighborhood before he pulled up behind the group house, where the lights were shining brightly in the dining room. Once again, he slid the bike into the crack between the garages and then stood, watching the street. His silent inspection revealed no lurking menaces, no knife-wielding assassins. He was anything but disappointed.

Inside, all his housemates were sitting around the dining room table, staring at stacks of eight-by-ten photograph prints. Pizza boxes on the counter showed that dinner was already over. Rick found a couple of pieces that hadn't already had the cheese and pepperoni pulled off and sat down to eat.

"We cleaned up downstairs and rewound the film," Steve said as he handed him the can. "Then we figured it was time to bring in an expert."

Eps interjected, "And since we couldn't find an expert, we asked Mr Gravelin to take a look."

Corey only snorted at the joke, his attention fixed on two of the photos. "As far as I can tell, it's a record of deposits," he said. "But I don't understand why it's set up this way."

"What way?" Rick mumbled around his pizza.

"Careful, don't smear sauce all over the table," Steve ordered. "I didn't spend all day balancing sixteen-millimeter negatives in a thirty-five-millimeter holder just to end up with the photos stained with red sauce."

Corey was slowly moving a finger down one of the photos. "Well, it looks like a record of cash donations. These are probably serial numbers of the bills over here, but no names of fund-raisers or state committees or corporations. You can't tell where the money came from or where it went. There's a column here that must be some sort of code. It has ‘BBR' or ‘MEX' on some rows, but mostly it just says ‘1701'."

"‘1701'?" Rick finished his slice and wiped his hands. "Mayweather told me that the Committee for the Re-Election of the President is known as ‘1701'.1701'. 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Corey looked up sharply and seemed about to say something, but Eps spoke up first. He'd been examining the photos from the end of the roll. "These are hundred-dollar bills, but the serial numbers aren't in sequence, so they can't be traced."

"Sure they can," Corey responded. "That's how they got the Watergate burglars. The Federal Reserve and the banks now track large transfers of hundred-dollar bills by the individual serial numbers."

"See, that's exactly the kind of dumb things bureaucracies begin to do as soon as you give them a computer." Steve shook his head in mock sadness. "No one would record all the serial numbers of all the hundred-dollar bills washing around in the system if you had to do it by hand, but it's tailor-made for a mainframe."

Scotty nodded. "Stupid, simple, repetitive actions done real, real fast."

Rick shook his head. "Great, but that doesn't help us. We're not the FBI, and I don't see a warrant around here."

Corey clearly made a decision. "That's it; I'm out of here. If you want my opinion, this is almost certainly a record of cash contributions to the Committee, and if it is, it's radioactive." He almost threw the photos he was holding down on the table, then brushed his hands as if he could remove the information he'd seen. "The FBI and CIA are stonewalling the committees so hard that they've got to have dirty hands, and the White House is playing full-court hardball."

"Mixing a few metaphors?" Eps interjected.

"This is really not the time for dumb jokes." Corey got up and grabbed his coat. "Take these photos, burn them and the film, and pretend you were never here and never saw anything at all. And do me a favor," he said, as he headed out the back door. "Forget you ever knew me."

He slammed the door behind him.

Rick looked thoughtful. "Listen, I need to warn you guys. You might want to follow Corey out that door. He's right. There are guys trying to kill me, and now" – he gestured at the photos spread across the table – "I'm pretty sure it's because I ended up with this film. At first I thought I was just paranoid, but I think they tried to take me out with a car three times, and two nights ago, I got chased through Union Station by a guy with a knife and a gun."

There was silence. Then Scotty asked quietly, "And you didn't think to mention that piece of data?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure he's still alive, but as long as there was a chance that he ended up under that train, I didn't want to get you guys involved."

Steve fanned his face with one of the photos. "Interesting way you have of defining ‘involved'."

"Yeah, but helping with the film is one thing, and being accessories to murder is another." Rick held up a hand. "
If
that guy is dead. I don't think he is, and I don't think he's the type to go filing a complaint with the DC police. No, I'm worried that whoever is after me is going to go after you guys."

"Does anyone know we're involved?" Scotty asked.

"I can't see how," Rick answered. "I think they picked me up once when I was first given the film and again when I came out of the bureau. I think they might be getting information from someone at the bureau, but I've never given the Assignment Desk a phone number, and they don't have this address on file."

"And you've been playing Daniel Boone all over the neighborhood the last couple of nights," Steve mused. "Spot anything?"

"Not a whisper," Rick answered. "For once, my continuing state of jumpy paranoia might be coming in handy. I'd swear this place is clean."

Scotty spoke up. "It's probably a good thing that none of us are actually on the lease."

Eps added, "I never thought that having to get all my mail at work was anything but a pain, but now, almost nobody knows we live here."

"And, looking at it logically, it's impossible to ‘unknow' a thing, so we're already involved." Steve looked at the other two men. They nodded in agreement.

"So, that's decided. Now, let's turn to possible solutions. When I play Dungeons and Dragons, I've always preferred to take the offensive." Steve smiled. "Maybe we can turn the tables and start putting pressure on these bastards."

"How exactly are you going to accomplish that?" Rick asked.

"We are talking computers here, and we" – he waved a hand to indicate the three techs – "are the Athos, Porthos, and Aramis of the digital realm. I can go to the office in the morning–"

Scotty interrupted. "We don't have to wait until morning. Fire up the Digi-Log, and let's do it tonight."

"But you guys don't work for the government," Rick said. "Steve, your computers are over at GE, and you two work at Riggs."

Scotty smiled smugly. "Yes, but we know all the secret codes–"

"Because we've written most of them," finished Eps.

"ARPANET?" asked Steve.

"Fuckin A," said Eps. "You know they've hooked in the Federal Reserve by now."

"Of course. Moving this kind of financial data around after a nuclear war is what it was invented for."

Rick knocked on the table. "Hello? Earth to computer dudes. Speak English, please."

Scotty got up and headed downstairs as Eps explained. "A-R-P-A. Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Defense Department's own version of Thomas Edison's labs at Menlo Park, except instead of the phonograph and the electric light, they're thinking about stuff like making sure you can still pay taxes after a nuclear attack and how to pack a transmitter in a cocktail olive."

"That one's from James Bond," Steve said. "And he's fictional."

"So they say," Eps continued. "Anyway, they formed ARPA right after Sputnik, when it looked like the US was about to get buried just like Khrushchev said we would, and they've been throwing money at people like us ever since."

Rick was dubious. "And just how does this help us?"

"Well, ARPA invented the ARPANET. That's a way of connecting computers in a self-repairing network so communications can survive a major disaster – like a nuclear attack. It's all very secret, but again, we're the guys who run it, so they can't very well keep us out."