"Stranger things have happened, Mr. Dobbs." Duncan tried to be soothing. "The demands, what were they?"

"They want three million dollars, cash. If we don"t pay they said they"d give away our company secrets to our compet.i.tors.

We don"t have the cash."

Duncan felt for the man. Dobbs had been right. There was noth- ing the FBI could have done to help. No demands, no recontacts, and no leads, just a lot of suspicion. But, now, the Bureau was in a position to help.

"Mr. Dobbs, rest a.s.sured, we will pursue this case aggressively.

We will a.s.sign you two of our top agents, and, in cases like this, we are quite successful." Duncan"s upbeat tone was meant to lift Dobbs" spirits. "Was there anything else demanded?"

"No, nothing, they just told me not to go to the police."

"You haven"t told anyone, have you?" Duncan asked.

"No, not even my wife."

"Mr. Dobbs, let me ask you a couple more things, then I will introduce you to some fine men who will help you. Do you know anyone else who is in your position? Other people who are being blackmailed in similar ways?"

Dobbs shuffled his feet under the chair, and picked at the edge of the chair. Duncan hit a raw nerve.

"Mr. Dobbs, I don"t want names, no specifics. It"s a general question. Do you know others?"

"Yes," Dobbs said almost silently.

"Do you know how many?" Duncan needed details if his current line of thinking would pan out into a viable theory.

"No, not exactly."

"Is it five? Ten? More than Ten? Twenty-five? More than twenty- five?" Dobbs nodded suddenly.

"Do you mean that you know of 25 other companies that are going through what you"re going through? Twenty five?" Tyrone was incredulous at the prospects. The manpower alone to investigate that many cases would totally overwhelm his staff. There was no way. The ramifications staggered him. Twenty five, all at once.

"Yeah. At least."

"I know you can"t tell me who they are . . ." Duncan hoped that Dobbs might offer a few.

"No. But, look at their stocks. They"re not doing well. Our compet.i.tors seem to be getting the best of the deal."

Twenty five cases in New York alone, and he knows of at least 6 others, so far. The rekindled blackmail operation, after months of dead ends. Duncan wondered how big the monster behind the head could get. And how could the FBI handle it all. Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Poor us.

Tuesday, December 15 New York

It was before 8:00 A.M. and Scott cursed himself for arriving at his office at this unG.o.dly hour. He had found the last piece of the puzzle, didn"t sleep very much, and was in high gear before 6:00. Scott couldn"t remember the last time he had been awake this early, unless it was coming round the long way. He scurried past security, shaking his ID card as he flew through the closing doors on the express elevator. The office hadn"t yet come to life so Doug McGuire was available without a wait or interruption.

"I need some expense money," Scott blurted out at Doug.

"Yeah, so?" Doug sounded exasperated with Scott"s constant requests for money. He didn"t even look up from his impossibly disorganized desk.

"I"m serious . . .," Scott came back.

"So am I." Doug firmly laid down his pen on his desk and looked at Scott. "What the h.e.l.l kind of expenses do you need now?"

Scott spent more money than several reporters combined, and he never felt bad about it. While a great deal of his work was performed at the office or at home, his phone bills were extraor- dinary as were his expenses.

Scott had developed a reputation as willing to go to almost any lengths to get a story. Like the time he hired and the paper paid for a call girl to entertain Congressman Daley from Wisconsin.

She was supposed to confirm, in any way necessary, that LeMal Chemical was buying votes to help bypa.s.s certain approval cycles for their new line of drugs. She accidentally confirmed that he was a h.o.m.os.e.xual, but not before he slipped and the lady of the evening became the much needed confirmation.

As Scott put it, Daley"s embarra.s.sed resignation was unavoidable collateral damage in stopping the approval of a drug as poten- tially dangerous as thalidomide.

Or then there was the time that Scott received an anonymous tip that the Oil Companies had suppressed critical temperature-emis- sion ratio calculations, and therefore the extent of the green- house effect was being sorely underestimated. As a result of his research and detective work, and the ability to verify and under- stand the physics involved, Scott"s articles forced a re-examina- tion of the dangers. He received a New York Writer"s Award for that series.

When Doug had hired Scott, as a thirty-something cub reporter, they both thought that Scott would fit in, nice and neat, and write cute, introspective technical pieces. Neither expected Scott to quickly evolve into a innovative journalist on the offensive who had the embryo of a cult following.

But Scott Mason also performed a lot of the more mundane work that most writer"s suffer with until the better stories can justify their full time efforts. New products, whiz bang elec- tronic toys for the kitchen, whiz bangs for the bathroom. New computer this, new software that.

Now, though, he was on the track, due in part he admitted, to Doug coercing him into writing the computer virus bits. Yes, he was wrong and Doug was right. The pieces were falling in place.

So, no matter what happened, it was Doug"s fault.

"I"m going to Europe."

"No you"re not!" thundered Doug.

"Yes I am. I gotta go . . ." Scott tried to plead his case.

"You aren"t going anywhere, and that"s final." Doug retorted without a pause. He stared challengingly through Scott.

"Doug," Scott visibly calmed himself, "will you at least hear me out, before telling me no? At least listen to me, and if I"m wrong, tell me why. O.K.?" Same routine, different day, thought Scott. The calmer, sincere request elicited empathy from Doug.

Maybe he"d been too harsh.

"Sorry, it"s automatic to say "no". You know that they," he pointed down with his thumb, "have us counting paper clips.

Sure, explain to me why I"m going to say "no"," he joked. Doug"s overtly stern yet fatherlike geniality returned.

"O.K." Scott mentally organized his thoughts. He touched his fingers to his forehead and turned to sit on the edge of Doug"s desk. A traditional no-no. "Without my notes . . ."

"Screw the notes, what have you got? If you don"t know the mate- rial, the notes won"t help. They"re the details, not the story."

Scott had heard this before.

"Sure, sorry." He gained confidence and went straight from the hip. "Fact one. The FBI is investigating a ma.s.sive blackmail campaign that n.o.body wants us to talk about, and probably for good reason from what I can see. As of now, there is no clue at all to whom is behind the operation.

"Fact two. My story got pulled by CIA, NSA or someone that pushed the AG"s b.u.t.tons. And this Tempest thing gets heads turning too fast for my taste." Doug nodded briefly. Scott made sense so far, both things were true.

"Three," Scott continued, "First State has been the target of hackers, plus, we have Sidneys . . ."

"Sort of. McMillan hasn"t caved in on that yet."

"Agreed, but it"s still good. You and I both know it." Doug grudgingly nodded in agreement.

"Then we have all those papers that came from a van, or more than one van I would guess, and not a d.a.m.ned thing we can do with them according to Higgins." Again, Doug nodded, but he wondered where all of this was going. "Then the EMP-T bombs, NASA, the Phone Company, and all of these viruses. What we have is a number of apparently dissimilar events that have one common denominator: computers."