Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (34 page)

Lesserec remained silent, looking at the others who were obviously not happy.
 
But Craig ignored them, fixing his attention on Gary Lesserec alone.
 
He thought he saw an inner smile behind the redhead’s carefully controlled expression.

“All right,” Lesserec said.
 
“Does anyone here have serious
technical
objections to Mr. FBI being our guinea pig?
 
Or are they all just childish complaints?”

Nobody answered.
 
“Okay,” Lesserec said.
 
“Walter and Danielle, after this meeting gets out, take Mr. Kreident into the chamber and give him a user-friendly tour of everything he’s going to need to know.”

As eyes fastened on him, Craig pondered whether he should feel elated with his victory—or trepidation about what he had gotten himself in to.

#

After Gary Lesserec finished returning a few of the calls that had piled up during the meeting, he returned to his small cubicle.
 
He wondered when he could appropriately shift everything into Michaelson’s empty office, since it appeared he would be Acting Group Leader for quite a while.
 
Michaelson’s office was a lot larger than his own dumpy little desk and cloth-partition walls, and his new position demanded more prestige.

With a splatting sound, Lesserec dropped his folder full of plastic viewgraphs onto the narrow workspace.
 
Then he noticed Craig Kreident’s dark blue suitjacket draped over the chair; the FBI man’s briefcase and notes took up half the space in the cubicle.

Annoyance and simmering anger bubbled within him.
 
Even now, with all the work left to be done, the FBI agent had taken two of his best programmers to show him how the VR chamber worked, as if he owned the place.
 
Luckily, the engineers had installed the rest of the new beta-test enhancement chips yesterday.

Of all the workspaces available for Kreident to set up camp, the FBI man spent most of his time in Lesserec’s cubicle, as if it were his own.
 
He wondered if it was some kind of childish power play, Kreident showing off that he could walk wherever he wanted, horn in on whichever office or space he chose, like a bully on a playground.

Consciously, and with a smirk on his face, Lesserec used his left arm to sweep Kreident’s briefcase and notepad onto the floor.

“Oops!” Lesserec said with mock dismay.
 
He enjoyed the feeling for a moment, but then thought better of it.
 
He didn’t need to act as childish as the FBI man did.
 
He bent over to pick up the briefcase and the notepad.
 
He stuck it in an out-of-the-way corner by the other computer user’s manuals.

A white paper on top caught his attention as he saw a list of telephone numbers—a printout from the phone company, and another one from the LLNL telephone system.
 
He noticed his own name at the top . . . and felt the cold of liquid nitrogen seep through his body.

“What the hell?” he said and picked up the numbers, scanning them.
 
It seemed to be his complete telephone records for the last month or so.
 
Several numbers had been highlighted, and although Lesserec didn’t have a photographic memory for specific phone numbers, he knew exactly which ones Craig Kreident had identified.

“Holy shit!” he said, swallowing hard.
 
Then he carefully replaced the briefcase and notepad exactly where Kreident had left them, hoping the FBI man would not notice his belongings had been disturbed.

Lesserec backed out of his cubicle and decided to use one of the other phones.
 
He scratched his head, feeling sweat prickle through his reddish hair.
 
His mind whirled.

He was trapped and could not decide how best to handle the situation, how to exercise sufficient damage control.

He was afraid he would have to take some drastic measures, change a few plans.

CHAPTER 36

Thursday

Building 443—T Program

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Special Agent Ben Goldfarb wished for a cigarette for the first time in fifteen years.
 
He’d stopped smoking the day he’d gotten married and hadn’t had the urge since—well, not often anyway—even through all the stakeouts, the finely focused investigations, and criminal interviews.

But today, babysitting the egocentric scientists in this neurotic government lab, he felt that if he didn’t have a smoke within the next few minutes, he just might rip the head off that jerk Lesserec.

Clad in a Superboy t shirt, bluejeans, and Velcro tennis shoes, Lesserec joked with the other programmers, treating multimillion dollar equipment as toys instead of cutting-edge technology.
 
The Bureau would kill for access to half these computers, and these Lawrence Livermore kids treated them like fast food wrappers.

Goldfarb crossed his arms and held back a scowl; his dark suit was hot, but Bureau rules against “down dressing” during an investigation ran all the way back to J. Edgar Hoover.
 
Agents were professionals, after all.

He felt a nudge at his shoulder.
 
He turned to see Special Agent Jackson waving a sheaf of computer paper.

“Hey, man.
 
Craig needs to see us.
 
Says he’s got a hot project.
 
Just like on TV.”

“He probably wants some fresh donuts or something,” Goldfarb muttered, then threw a glance back toward the Virtual Reality chamber.
 
Freckle-blotched Lesserec rocked back in his chair, staring at his computer screen and picking his nose.
 
“But I suppose even that sounds exciting right now.”

When they reached Michaelson’s abandoned office, Craig Kreident hung up the phone, looking grim.
 
He looked at the two special agents.
 
“Looks like we’ve got a rabbit on the run.
 
Diana Unteling’s secretary said she just left for Dulles Airport.
 
She’s flying to Livermore.
 
Her flight arrives at San Francisco this afternoon.”

Craig’s gray eyes narrowed.
 
“You can swing by the Oakland office to get the file I set up on her.
 
It has a recent DOE photo.
 
Get out there and tail her, but be discreet.
 
I don’t want you to do anything yet—just find out where she’s going and get back to me.”

“Anything special we’re watching for?” Goldfarb asked.
 
He realized he no longer wanted a cigarette.

Craig ticked off points in rapid-fire sequence.
 
“She’s involved in this, and she lies.
 
She said she hasn’t spoken to Michaelson in some time, but we’ve got her voice on an answering machine tape made the day he died.
 
She came out here and broke in to T Program after the murder, even though I had this building sealed.
 
Supposedly.”
 
He made a grumbling sound.
 
“All of those missing classified memos originated in her office, but she claims not to remember anything about them.
 
Smells a little rancid to me.
 
This might be our break.”

“Right,” said Goldfarb, already heading for the trailer’s CAIN booth exit with Jackson in tow.
 
He ducked as a wad of paper sailed across his path and neatly hit a trash can set up on the far side of the work area.
 
He shuddered, thinking that the nation’s defense rested on the shoulders of these goofballs.

#

Surrounded by the bustle in San Francisco International, Goldfarb drew back as the first passenger walked briskly through the gate from the direct flight from Dulles airport in Washington, DC.
 
The stern-faced woman’s short gray-blond hair flopped up and down as she moved rapidly into the press of people, ignoring all the others waiting to greet friends or relatives.
 
She moved at her own speed, a few notches ahead of the rest of the crowd.

Goldfarb squinted at her: dark eyebrows, ice-blue eyes, five feet five, and slender build.
 
Diana Unteling looked exactly like the picture in her dossier.
 
Of course she would have sat in First Class, and she had barged up the ramp before any other passenger.
 
She carried a gray-tweed hangup bag and moved aside for no one.

“Well, that was easy,” Goldfarb muttered to himself.

He folded his newspaper and fell in behind her, allowing twenty feet distance between them.
 
He walked along with eyes narrowed but a blank expression on his face, just a businessman going to an out-of-town meeting.
 
He wouldn’t need to hurry until Unteling was about to leave the terminal.
 
Jackson would be waiting with the car out by the curb.

Unteling plowed through a crowd of Japanese tourists like an icebreaker ship at the beginning of spring.
 
Goldfarb took the long way around the crowd, reaching the terminal doors ahead of Unteling.
 
Apparently, she had no baggage to pick up.

Jackson spotted him and maneuvered their nondescript blue Ford Taurus around the other waiting vehicles.
 
Goldfarb climbed into the passenger side as Diana Unteling flagged down a man lounging outside a long black limousine.
 
“That’s our baby,” he said.

Goldfarb and Jackson sat parked with the engine running, watching her dicker with the limo driver for a minute.
 
The driver opened the back door to help his passenger inside, then jogged around to the front and got in.

“She might as well have used a neon sign with that limo,” said Jackson with a whistle.
 
The Taurus merged into the airport traffic, keeping a good distance.
 
“Finally got a tail I don’t have to work at.”

Goldfarb relaxed back into his seat and tapped his fingers on the door armrest.
 
“We’ve got a good idea where she’s going anyway.”
 
Cars whizzed by as they drove along, pacing the limo.
 
The traffic snaked down Highway 101, then turned east for the Hayward/San Mateo bridge.

Goldfarb shook his head.
 
“She must be nuts thinking she can keep a low profile anymore.
 
With her political appointment and Michaelson’s death, she’s lucky Sixty Minutes isn’t tailing her.”

Jackson glanced at the other cars on the freeway and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
 
“Maybe they are.”

Jackson eased onto the long span of the San Mateo bridge. The sky overhead reflected a porcelain blue off the flat slate of the Bay shallows.
 
A seagull flew overhead, oblivious to the thousands of cars below.

They fell silent, listening to the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the bridge sections beneath the wheels.
 
When they reached the opposite shore on the Livermore side of the San Francisco Bay, they followed the limo north to Interstate 880 before turning onto I-580 toward Livermore. Goldfarb reached for the car phone.
 
“I’ll check in with Craig and let him know his pigeon is on the way.”

But when they reached the freeway exits for the city of Livermore, the limo kept driving, continuing east over the grassy Altamont hills that divided the Livermore Valley from the larger Central Valley and the rural city of Tracy.

“Where is she going?” Jackson said.
 
“You’d better call Craig again.”

Goldfarb nodded.
 
“She’s going to Michaelson’s ranch.”

Jackson dropped even farther behind, keeping the limo just in sight so as to not arouse suspicion.

The Interstate wound eastward up into the golden brown hills.
 
They passed hundreds of white and silver windmills, blades turning lazily in the breeze.
 
The freeway scrolled through the low mountains, then descended on the other side into a flat ocean of farmland.

Goldfarb tapped the car phone on his leg.
 
“Come on,” he muttered.

“There, she’s turning off,” said Jackson.

“Keep back—I don’t see any other cars getting off.
 
We know where she’s going.”

Jackson slowed to increase the separation distance.
 
A car behind him honked at the sudden change in speed, then roared by on the left.
 
The driver flipped them off.
 
“Same to you, buddy,” muttered Jackson.

The limo drove to the top of the off ramp, then turned right, heading deeper into the hills and the farm roads.

Goldfarb punched numbers into the car phone.
 
Seconds passed.
 
“Craig, yeah, listen.
 
We’ve got Unteling in sight.
 
She by-passed Livermore and seems to be making a bee-line for Michaelson’s farm.
 
Thought you might want to come out for a visit.”