The Wizardry Consulted (Wiz, #4)(37)

“And normally we could. We can use the software built into a digital phone switch to let us trace someone’s connection point in about three seconds.” He made a face. “Problem is, Wiz knows it too.”

Jerry nodded. “It’s as if he’s deliberately making this as hard as he can.”

Moira’s mouth quirked up in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Most likely he is. If the geas commands that he keep his location secret then he will bend all his efforts to that end. He cannot deliberately go against the geas.”

“Anyway,” Danny said, “Wiz always said he didn’t know much about how we tapped into the phone system.”

“That’s because he didn’t want to know,” Jerry said. “The whole thing’s blatantly illegal.”

“So what are they going to do? Send the FBI to arrest us?”

“His conscience bothered him.”

Danny shrugged. “Anyway, he must have understood more than I thought. See, we can use the automatic trace facility in the switch to find him, provided he’s coming in through a digital switch. Digital phone switches are just about universal in the United States so I took that as a given.”

“And it is not?”

Danny made a face. “His first link is to the local phone company. The next one is into the private phone system of a major oil company, where normal trace facilities don’t go. Okay, we got that one. But the next link is via the oil company’s leased lines to its satellite link to one of its exploration offices in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia. Needless to say, that is not a digital switch.”

“Oh,” Moira said in a small voice.

“It gets better. The next link is from the Ulan Bator switch to a switchboard someplace else in Outer Mongolia. We think it’s in a yurt. Anyway, that one is not only not digital, it’s still run by a human operator.” Danny made an even worse face. “Currently we are trying to figure out how to get through that one. Then we’ll see what other surprises he has in store for us.”

“It does not sound hopeful then,” Moira said.

“There’s one more complication you should know about. Even once we slog through all that we will have to run a trace from the switch he is using to his connection point back in this world. That will take a couple or three hours from the time we locate the right switch.

“Needless to say,” Jerry added, “we are still pursuing the e-mail link as well.” He reached out and patted Moira’s hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him whether he wants to be found or not.”

“Is this place secure?” the FBI director asked, looking around the conference room deep in the bowels of the FBI building.

“As secure as we can make it,” the staffer at the foot of the table told her. His name was Wilkins and he was in charge of such things.

The director grunted and pulled a package of cigarettes out of her purse.

The room was supposed to be a no-smoking area but no one objected.

She lit up, inhaled and blew smoke out through her nostrils. “Before we get to the regular business we have a non-agenda item.”

Everyone leaned forward expectantly. If it was too sensitive to go on the agenda it was very sensitive indeed.

“Moron Pashley,” the director said, taking obvious relish in mangling the name. “He’s still making trouble.”

Everyone leaned back. Several staffers stared down at the papers before them. One or two looked up at the ceiling, as if hoping to find the answer written there. No one in the room had to be told who Pashley was. He wasn’t at all important in the grand scheme of things, but since the call from the head of No Such Agency he had become a major burr under the director’s saddle. As a result, the top echelon of the FBI spent an inordinate amount of time trying to keep him discreetly under control.

“How?” asked Paul J. Rutherford, her special assistant and troubleshooter.

“He’s stuck out in the middle of the desert.”

“He’s less than two hours from a major airport and he wants to go investigate this new hacker case personally.”

“That could be tricky,” said James Hampton, her legal adviser. “We’d need a very good reason to forbid him.”

“If we can’t forbid him we can sure as hell transfer him,” the director said. “Send him to some place really remote.”

“Well, there is a site in Antarctica,” Rutherford said. The director brightened visibly.

“Won’t work,” Hampton put in. “It’s outside the U.S. and we’re legally forbidden to operate anywhere else.”

“Well, what can we find inside the U.S.?” The director asked. “There’s gotta be a deep, dark hole somewhere we can stick this clown.”

“Just any hole won’t do,” Hampton reminded her. “It’s got to have a major computer link to the outside world so we can maintain Pashley is working on computer crime.”

“The Aleutians!” someone further down the table said. “There are a couple of places out on those islands with major computer links and nothing else but fog, seagulls and Kodiak bears.”

The director thought of Pashley meeting a giant bear in the fog. She brightened again.

“Won’t work,” Rutherford said glumly. “Those computers are too important.