Forever (78 page)

Right
-

She stared daggers at him. How could anybody
make this right?

Then, swiftly, her self-pity and hysteria
converted into cold, calculating rage. She would destroy.
Annihilate. Make the walls of de Veiga come tumbling down!

With the same icy clarity with which she
reached that decision, she knew the means were at her disposal. The
two tools were right there, in her pocket.

Slowly, she reached in and pulled them
out.

Her plastic key card and her address book.
My avenging swords.

She wiped away her tears with the palms of
her hands and then looked at Johnny. Her face shone like a polished
blade of steel.

'You know your way around here,' she said in
a voice so softly flat, and so utterly emotionless and coldly sure
of itself that it chilled him to the bone. 'I need to get to a
computer. One that's hooked up to the mainframe. It has to be
someplace where I can't be disturbed. Where nobody will be looking
over my shoulder or asking any questions.'

His heart swelled with a symphony of relief.
That's my Steph! he thought. I know that look. She's getting her
old fight back!

'Well?' she demanded coldly.

He frowned for a moment, and then snapped
his fingers and grinned cockily. 'I know just the place!'

'Then let's go, now for God's sake, take me
there nowV

A mile away, the Learjet swooped out of the
night and touched down on the runway like a screaming bird of prey.
Colonel Valerio had arrived.

Si'tto da Veiga, Brazil

'Whose office is this?' asked Stephanie in
amazement, 'God's?'

They stood alone inside the highest
panoramic point of the entire complex - the tip of the pyramid
which rose even higher to an exhilarating pinnacle far above
them.

In the dark, it was like being in outer
space. The three-quarter moon was a silversmith plating the spines,
spandrels, and facets of the anodised aluminium gridwork with
precious sterling and mysterious dark shadow, and outside, the
geometric, spoke- connected forms of the other buildings glowed
like platinum, adding to the moon-garden fantasy. Stephanie felt
the powerful illusion that she could reach up, up, up through the
glass skin and pluck a handful of stars and toss them like silver
confetti.

Then Johnny flipped on the lights and the
spell was broken.

The enormous, cavernous space was empty
except for two pieces of furniture. One was a gigantic
ormolu-mounted tulipwood
bureau plat
which looked as if it
should have been in Versailles, and the other was the chair behind
it, a huge contoured blue leather executive throne.

'Well?' Stephanie demanded. 'You still
haven't answered my question.'

'Which was what?' Johnny asked
innocently.

'Whose office this is.' She waited for a
reply.

'Whose do you think?' he asked.

She sighed. 'Eduardo's.'

'That's right. The caballero's.'

'Why did I even have to ask?'

He grinned. 'But you must agree, it's rather
appropriate, don't you think?'

Stephanie laughed harshly. It is! she
thought with a blaze of righteous rage. What better place to start
dismantling this obscene empire than in Eduardo's office? He
deserves what's coming as much as his parents.

Johnny turned towards her. 'Stop trying to
blame yourself,' he said quietly. 'There was nothing we could have
done down there. Oh, we might have saved that one life - for now,
at least. But as for the daily murders?' He shook his head. 'All
we'd have done was to dig our own premature graves.'

She stared at him. He was right, she knew,
but it wasn't much solace.

They had reached the desk. She stood there
frowning down at it. It was entirely clear of everything except an
opaque grey panel of glass which covered the entire surface and
sloped gently upwards: varying from half an inch to three inches in
thickness. There was not so much as a pencil, a desk lamp, a
keyboard, or a computer screen.

She whirled at Johnny. 'I told you I needed
a computer, dammit!'

'Take it easy . . .'he said. 'Everybody at
Si'tto da Veiga knows about the caballero's computer. He's always
showing it off.'

She took a deep trembling breath and let it
out slowly. 'I'm sorry.' She shut her eyes and raked a hand through
her hair. 'I guess my nerves are shot.'

'They'll be right back on-line in a sec,' he
said and smiled. 'Watch.' He pushed the desk chair back, sat down,
and felt along the edge of the glass panel. 'It's here somewhere,'
he murmured. Then something flickered inside the glass and almost
instantly, pulses of coloured light spread out in a gridwork of
fine glowing lines from the centre in all directions: north, south,
east, west.

And there it was!

She let out a cry of amazement. Whatever
Johnny's fingers had touched had activated it! Unbelievable! The
entire glass panel was one huge computer! Multicoloured screen,
televised keyboard - the works. And it utilised the entire
electromagnetic spectrum - every colour imaginable to the human
eye.

'My God!' she breathed.

'Yeah.' He wheeled the chair back, got up,
and gestured for her to take a seat. 'It's all yours.'

She stared down at the awesome sight for a
long moment, until it seemed less like a daunting amusement park
novelty and more and more like a useful tool. Finally, she sat down
gingerly and walked her chair to the edge of the desk.

She studied the glowing surface, trying to
figure it out. First, the keyboard. Except for its being
electronic, with only glowing pictures of keys in various colours,
it looked normal enough, except that there were two extra rows of
instruction keys along the top.

So far so good. But where to begin?

She searched the keyboard and hesitantly
pressed a button on the top row marked ACTIVATE. The blur of
multicoloured information streaking by abruptly ceased and went
blank.

In a blink, large green letters filled the
top half of the screen:

Oi! Alo!

'Christ, no,' Stephanie moaned. 'A
Portuguese-speaking computer's the last thing I need.'

'Hm.' Johnny leaned forward over her
shoulder. 'Maybe you could try responding to it in English?' he
mused.

'It's worth a try,' she sighed.

Not quite sure how to touch-type on this
futuristic gadget, she used her index finger to hunt-and-peck. She
tapped the surface of the glass with her fingertips where the
appropriate letters glowed to spell:

HELLO

In a blink of an eye her word disappeared
and a reply literally exploded in cathode green:

IS ENGLISH YOUR LANGUAGE OF CHOICE?

01YES

02NO

03OTHER

SELECT ONE:

She searched the keyboard, then tapped:

01

The screen switched to:

WE SHALL COMMUNICATE IN ENGLISH

'Do you believe this?' Stephanie said,
turning her head to look up at Johnny, it's unbelievable!'
Then:

ENTER YOUR PERSONAL ACCESS NUMBER

'Do you believe this?' Stephanie said again.
'Yeah. Next thing we know, it's gonna ask you out on a date.'
Stephanie ignored him. She was riffling through her address book to
find the information Uncle Sammy had passed on to her. There it
was. Aaron Kleinfelder's personal access code. If it's still on
file, she thought. We'll see in a moment.

She typed:

099/3cd/301

She sat back, murmured, 'Come on, come on .
. .' The screen then asked for her password, and she typed in:

COOKIE

And almost instantly, it changed again:

SELECT DESIRED PROGRAMME OR REFER TO MENU

Her eyes scanned the keys.

'There must be some way to bypass all this
foreplay,' she growled. She was about to press the MENU button when
she had an idea. Poising her fingers above the keyboard for
touch-typing, she quickly spelled out:

CHILDREN'S RELIEF YEAR-ROUND

'Now we'll soon see,' she said. And suddenly
the screen glowed as though a burst of green fireflies had hit it -
with no less than twenty-four categories of information concerning
CRY.

'Fantastic,' Johnny said. 'What is this? The
Ramanujan of computer programmes?'

Stephanie sat there thoughtfully, wondering
where to begin. This could go on and on to infinity, spiralling off
into geometric details and recursive loops. 'Let's keep this
simple,' she said. 'Otherwise, we'll be here for weeks. Months,
even. God alone knows how much information is stored in the CRY
programme alone.'

'With the number of CRAYS they have here,
and the four sixteen-processor CRAY3 supercomputers on order, I'd
say it can hold billions - perhaps trillions - of pieces of
information.'

'Stop depressing me. Now then. Let's take a
peek at the Board of Directors, shall we?' Stephanie typed; the
computer responded:

BOARD OF DIRECTORS, CRY INT'L, INC.

F. GROVER WETMORE (CHAIRMAN)*

CRAIG C. HARRIS (VICE CHAIRMAN)*

HUGH X. CRANDALL (PRESIDENT AND

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER)* HARROLD

HIGHTON III* NICHOLAS SHERIDAN*

MICHAEL M.J. TIMS* COLIN COATS* HER ROYAL
HIGHNESS THE INFANTA ELENA DE DIEGO,DUCHESS OF PILARES* EUGENIA
DREYSPOON KNIGHT* ERNESTO LOBO LEAO DE VEIGA* THE RT. HON. THE EARL
OF KORTH* MARION SMITHIES* THE RT. HON. CLARKE FARWATER* HIS SERENE
HIGHNESS PRINCE JOACHIM FRANZ DIETRICH ABETZ-WITTGENFELD DE
SEVERSKI* NONIE BOXALL* JOHN EUSTACE* GIANCARLO PERETTI* YOSHI
SHIOMI* BARON NILS VON SCHELL* THE EARL OF PERCE* HER SERENE
HIGHNESS PRINCESS MICHAELA VON SCHAIK* FORMER PRESIDENT DWIGHT F.
LANDON

'Yeow,' said Johnny softly, and whistled.
'Talk about heavy hitters.'

'And do you notice,' Stephanie pointed out,
'how Ernesto is nicely buried in the middle of all those names? Bet
he could be chairman, but keeps turning it down to keep a nice low
profile.'

is it possible,' Johnny said slowly, 'that
you've become even more cynical than you used to be?'

'Highly possible,' she replied crisply, and
made a moue of thoughtful impatience. 'This could go on for hours.
It's time to cut through the shit. . . pardon my French.'

'And how do we do that?'

'Simple. Aaron Kleinfelder was looking for
an orphanage- placed child who had allegedly disappeared into thin
air.

Probably,' she added darkly, 'she was
brought here on one of those damn fairy godmother flights. Anyway,
back to the menu.'

'Great,' Johnny said, leaning over her
shoulder. 'Now we're right back where we started.'

'Not quite. I'll try CRY orphanages next.'
She scanned the list and typed in 12 for CRY orphanages. After
several manipulations, Stephanie had managed to zero in on the CRY
orphanage in Washington, D.C.

She stared thoughtfully at the screen.

'Doesn't it strike you as strange,' Johnny
said, 'that Grupo da Veiga should be directly hooked up to CRY's
computer system?'

'I wouldn't be surprised if Ernesto and Dr
Vassiltchikov initially set up CRY.'

in order to provide an endless stream of
victims?'

She nodded. 'Exactly.'

'But one a day for . . . when did it say it
was founded?'

'1954.'

'That's what? Forty years? That makes . .
.'He frowned as he mentally calculated.'

'Over fourteen thousand, six hundred,'
Stephanie said.

'Jesus!'

'You can say that again.' She continued to
stare at the sceen.

'What's the problem?'

'I can't seem to remember Vinette Jones's
daughter's name.'

'Then try "Parents of CRY-OPH Persons".'

'Looks like I'll have to.' She typed.
Finally, after several more manipulations, she excitedly typed in
Vinette Jones's name.

The reply blinked:

REFER FILE CRY ORPH TS 10 NA CD
748300099440001

Slowly, Stephanie typed exactly what was on
the screen. There was a pause, and then the screen began to
flash:

ACCESS DENIED ENTER OPUS NUMBER

Colonel Valerio's unannounced arrival at
Sftto da Veiga's Security Section caused his staff to snap to
attention. Passing one desk, he said, 'Place a call to Ms Monica
Williams's quarters at once, but do not identify yourself. If she
answers, apologise and say you have the wrong number and hang
up.'

'Sir!' The guard instantly grabbed his
phone.

Passing another desk, he said, 'I want all
of Sftto da Veiga put on a quiet, general alert. No one is allowed
to leave the premises. No one.'

'Sir, yes, sir!' barked the man at the
desk.

Colonel Valerio ignored the rest of the men
and strode directly to the fibre-optic wall map of Si'tto da Veiga
and stood there, hands clasped behind his back, studying the
geometric floor plan of the entire premises.

After a minute, the guard on the telephone
called out, 'Colonel? I've let it ring eight times, sir. There is
no reply.'

'That will do.'

'Yes, sir!'

Colonel Valerio turned to the man at the
nearest desk.

'Sir!'

The Colonel's voice was even. 'Call up Ms
Williams's security key code number on your computer.'

'Yes, sir!' The man busily tapped away at
his keyboard.

Colonel Valerio turned back to the glowing
fibre-optic map. Pyramid, rectangle, square, sphere. In which was
she? I know you're here somewhere, Ms Merlin, he thought. There is
no way you can escape my electronic net. Cylinder, trapezoid,
spokes, or cone. Eenie, meenie, miney, mo. In a minute we'll know
which way to go . . .'