"Already done." I smiled. He looked unconvinced, so I added in what I hoped was a genuine tone. "Ted, seriously, do you think I want to deal with all that crap again? I'm already excommunicated. You think I'm going to risk losing anything more?"
My ploy worked, Dorshak looked really uncomfortable now. "Right. Well, just see that you don't. Maybe we'll see you around, McMannus."
"Sure." I took a long sip of coffee. Ted and I used to be friends. He used to tag along with Danny and me to pubs after hours. I always thought he had a crush on one of us. I used to think it was me, but after Daniel was arrested I began to wonder. Dorshak's accusations of my disloyalty were vehement, as if he took my testimony against Daniel personally. Given our history, it seemed odd that he would warn me away from potential trouble.
"Time to do some more digging," I said out loud. Reaching around the chair to my coat pocket, I rooted around for my credit counter. The flat plastic card was deceptively light. My life savings should be more substantial-feeling, I thought, as I bent the thin sheet with my fingers. I flipped the card over and touched the buttons in sequence. After taking a few seconds to think about it, the digital display told me my current balance. It was enough for what I was about to do, I decided, and slid the thin plastic into the slot on my wristwatch-phone. That was the other area in which technology advanced at lightning speed. If there were some new way to take money from you, someone would invent it. My credit counter could be used for anything, even phone-to-modem transfers to Swiss bank accounts, which was what I was intending, if Mouse took the bait. I dialed the numbers from memory.
He picked up on the first ring. Not many people had access to this particular phone number. "Mouse's house, Mouse speaking."
His page looked very dapper. Black hair short-cropped above the ears, which stuck out with trademark roundness. His face broke out in a wide, dimpled grin when he recognized me. "Deidre! Tell me you're back on the LINK!"
"Hey, home." I laughed. It was an old joke I shared with Mouse's page. I called him "home" as a play on the fact that he was a super-advanced version of a web home page. "If I was back on the LINK," I asked, "do you think I'd have to call you for information?"
"You break my heart, Deidre." Mouse's page feigned a hurt look. It was almost natural-looking, if you didn't know the telltale signs of digital imaging. There was only the slightest electronic halo. Damn, Mouse was one master surfer. If only he wasn't also a master criminal.
"I need intel, Mouse."
"And here I was thinking you had finally come to your senses and decided to move to Cairo and live with me in the sun forever. We could rule the world, you and I, Deidre. Tell me you will."
"I will." I smiled. "Soon."
"Ah, I know you. You might as well say never, McMannus." The page frowned. There was flickering on the screen, and the page gave me a worried look. "I have to reroute, catch a new wave. Someone's bagging your trail, girlfriend. Stand by."
I drank my coffee and waited. The thunderstorm rattled the window, and I found myself daydreaming about the hot African sun and a lithe, sun-browned young man. When I last saw Mouse real-time, he was begging me to spare his life. Not that I had that much power over his fate, as it turned out. The little con artist had weaseled himself diplomatic immunity, and the case Daniel and I had carefully built against him collapsed like a house of cards.
Sometime, during my pursuit of his case, Mouse decided my attempts to nab him were flirtatious. I did gain a healthy respect for his intellect and skill, but the rest ... well, normally, I didn't go for his type. Clean-cut, barely
legal boyishness was never that much of a turn-on for a meat-and-potatoes girl like myself. All the same, Mouse managed to grow on me; his relentless admiration was hard to resist. I was pleasantly surprised when Mouse himself, not his page, returned the call.
"Deidre." He smiled. The page was an almost perfect copy, but the original smile held a lot more snake-oil charm. "It really is you ... and on something as crude and mundane as a phone line. Have you no sense at all? Luckily my page was able to reroute us to this complete relic of a pay phone. And, because I like you so much, I've got him running a boomerang trace on your trail. What can I do for you?"
Tousled black curly hair framed a youthful face. Two wires embedded in his temple were the only hint that Mouse was a heavy-hitter hacker. Despite the sundrenched Cairo scene behind him, Mouse wore a leather jacket and a tee shirt that said Letourneau in 76.
"You support Letourneau, Mouse? You can't even vote in America."
"You'd be surprised what I can hack into."
I laughed. "And scandalized, I'm sure. But really, Mouse, you can't tell me you believe in the LINK-angels."
"Letourneau makes sense on the issues important to me, Dee. Expansion of the LINK and the preservation of America as a Free State. As for the rest ..."He shrugged. "I'm reserving judgment about his divinity."