The Wizardry Consulted (Wiz, #4)(32)

“That is a consequence to be sought rather than mourned,” Bal-Simba rumbled from his extra-large chair where he sat reviewing a scroll with Moira and Arianne.

“Well, yeah,” Danny agreed. Then he added disconsolately, “But I’ve got such a good one.”

“I was even hoping to learn something,” Jerry said. “I have this theory about the black-body temperature of dragons.”

“Most dragons are not black,” Moira told him. “Why you should be interested in just the black ones, I do not know. Much less their temperature.”

“No, you don’t understand. See, a black body temperature is a physical property of all things, even dragons, no matter what their color. And . .

.”



“My Lord, if this is another one of your explanations I am in no mood to hear it.”

“But,” Jerry said plaintively, “it’s such an interesting question.”

“The only question I am interested in regarding dragons is how to get Wiz back,” Moira told him firmly.

Ray Whipple had an easier time of it. Being a legitimate system administrator at a legitimate site, not to mention being actually in this world and being able to invoke the name of the FBI, Whipple had resources Danny and Jerry didn’t. By using them and calling in a few favors, Ray was able to trace Wiz back to the system he had broken into very much faster than the people at the Wizard’s Keep.

In a matter of days he had a result to show the FBI agent.

“Cute,” Ray said as he displayed his find. “It’s a cutout using two mailboxes. Incoming mail goes into one, the script automatically transfers it to the other one and then it gets forwarded out of there. But if you trace it back the trail ends at this mailbox.”

“Cutouts huh? That’s an intelligence trick. And you thought it wasn’t spies.”

“A lot of people know how to do that,” Ray muttered into the screen.

“Now, how do we track him from here?”

“That’s going to take a little more work,” Ray said, ignoring the “we.”

“But what I can do is modify his script so that we can see his traffic.” The keys rattled under his fingers. “There. Now the script makes an extra copy of all messages that go through that mailbox and sends one to you.”

“Hot dog!” Pashley breathed, visions of reinstatement dancing before him, “I told you we’d get this hacker.” He stopped. “But wouldn’t it be simpler just to ask the people at that site to track where the other side mailbox leads to?”

“I tried that,” Whipple told him. “But I didn’t get anywhere. I think there’s something funny about that site.”





Twelve: Bureau-cratic Complications


If you can delay solving a problem long enough, one of three things will happen: The problem will become so large that it destroys the organization, everyone gets so used to living with the problem that it ceases to be a problem, or the problem solves itself. In cases two and three you win. Meanwhile you don’t make enemies by rocking the boat.

The Consultants’ Handbook



It was a bright muggy morning in Washington, D.C. The kind of morning that finds legions of bureaucrats hard at work in their air-conditioned offices and trying not to think about what the drive home will be like.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was hard at work in her air-conditioned office, but she wasn’t worried about the drive home. For one thing she probably wouldn’t go home until well after sundown. For another she was deep in a review of industrial espionage activities in the United States, trying to decide how much of the report represented a legitimate danger and how much was eager beavers pumping for a bigger share of the department budget.

The Phone rang.

Not just any phone, The Phone. Popular legend to the contrary it was not red. It was a very ordinary looking tan telephone with a funny mouthpiece and an unusually thick cord connecting the handset to the base. It was the director’s main link to the White House and the higher echelons of the Justice Department and the national security apparatus.

The director eyed The Phone. Not even the President normally used that telephone to contact her. It rang again and she picked it up.

“Director, do you recognize my voice?”

The director pulled what looked like a cheap pocket calculator out of the top drawer of her desk, checked the date and time and punched in a highly improbable mathematical calculation. “Give me confirmation.”

“Alpha,” The Voice said, “gamma rho woodchuck three-four.”

“Confirmed. I recognize you.”

Actually the director had no idea who the person on the other end of the phone was. She only knew he represented No Such Agency, the officially non-existent organization charged with communications and cipher security. The outfit was a couple of rungs up the intelligence food chain from the FBI.

“We have a domestic security problem,” The Voice said. “Someone has been using one of our accounts on the computer network. A rather sensitive account. I am afraid we need your cooperation on this one.” There was real regret in The Voice.

“We’ll be happy to assist you,” the director said, trying to keep the excitement out of her own voice. A favor like this to No Such Agency could be worth a lot in the barter market that made official Washington tick. “We can have a team ready to meet with you inside of an hour.”