He checked his knife and the squeeze bottle containing the pungent liquid concoction, all carefully arranged in the pockets of his gray coveralls, on whose back he'd carefully embroidered the words "AAA Cleaning and Maintenance Company."

He looked at his watch, then closed his eyes again, leaning back in the sumptuous leather of his car. Thinking: only forty minutes till Jamie Turner sneaks into the school yard to meet his brother.

Only forty minutes until Phate would find out if he'd win or lose this round of the game.

He rubbed his thumb carefully against the razor-sharp blade of the knife.

In operation how like an angel.

In access how like a G.o.d.

In his persona as Renegade334, Wyatt Gillette had been lurking - observing but saying nothing - in the #hack chat room.

Before you social engineer someone you have to learn as much about them as you can to make the scam credible.

He'd call out observations and Patricia Nolan would jot down whatever Gillette had deduced about Triple-X. The woman sat close to him. He smelled a very pleasant perfume and he wondered if this particular scent had been part of her makeover plan.

So far Gillette had learned this about Triple-X: He was currently in the Pacific time zone (he'd made a reference to c.o.c.ktail happy hour in a bar nearby; it was nearly 5:50 P.M. on the West Coast).

He was probably in Northern California (he'd complained about the rain - and according to CCU's high-tech meteorology source, the Weather Channel, most of the rain on the West Coast was currently concentrated in and around the San Francis...o...b..y area).

He was American, older and probably college educated (his grammar and punctuation were very good for a hacker - too good for a high school cyberpunk - and his use of slang was correct, indicating he wasn't your typical Eurotrash-hacker, who often tried to impress others with their use of idioms and invariably got them wrong).

He was probably in a shopping mall, dialing into the Internet Relay Chat from a commercial Internet access location, a cybercafe probably (he'd referred to a couple of girls he'd just seen go into Victoria's Secret; the happy-hour comment too suggested this).

He was a serious, and potentially dangerous, hacker (ditto the shopping center public access - most people doing risky hacks tended to avoid going online out of their houses on their own machines and used public dial-up terminals instead).

He had a huge ego and he considered himself a wizard and an older brother to the youngsters in the group (tirelessly explaining esoteric aspects of hacking to novices in the chat room but having no patience for know-it-alls).

With this profile in mind, Gillette was now almost ready to trace Triple-X.

It's easy to find someone in the Blue Nowhere if they don't mind being found. But if they're determined to remain hidden then tracing is an arduous and usually unsuccessful task.

To track a connection back to an individual's computer while he's online you need an Internet tracing tool - like Gillette's HyperTrace - but you might also need a phone company trace.

If Triple-X's computer was hooked up to his Internet service provider via a fiberoptic or other high-speed cable connection, rather than a telephone line, then HyperTrace could lead them to the exact longitude and lat.i.tude of the shopping mall where the hacker's computer sat.

If, however, Triple-X's machine was connected to the Net over a standard phone line via a modem - a dial-up connection, like most personal computers at home - Gillette's HyperTrace could trace the call back only to Triple-X's Internet service provider and would stop there. Then the phone company's security people would have to trace the call from the service provider to Triple-X's computer itself.

Tony Mott then snapped his fingers, looked up from his phone with a grin and said, "Okay, Pac Bell's set to trace."

"Here we go," said Gillette. He typed a message and hit ENTER. On the screens of everyone logged on to the #hack chat room appeared this message: Renegade334: Hey Triple how you doing.

Gillette was now "imping" - pretending to be someone else. In this case he'd decided to be a seventeen-year-old hacker with marginal education but plenty of b.a.l.l.s and adolescent att.i.tude - just the sort you'd expect to find in this room.

Triple-X: Good, Renegade. Saw you lurking.

In chat rooms you can see who's logged on even if they're not partic.i.p.ating in the conversation. Triple-X was reminding Gillette that he was vigilant, the corollary of which was: Don't f.u.c.k with me.

Renegade334: Im at a public terminal and people keep walking bye, its p.i.s.sing me off.

Triple-X: Where you hanging?

Gillette glanced at the Weather Channel.

Renegade334: Austin, man the heat sucks. You ever been hear.

Triple-X: Only Dallas.

Renegade334: Dallas sucks, Austin rules!!!!

"Everybody ready?" Gillette called. "I'm going to try to get him alone."

Affirmative responses from around him. He felt Patricia Nolan's leg brush his. Stephen Miller sat next to her. Gillette keyed a phrase and hit ENTER.

Renegade334: Triple - How bout ICQ?

Triple-X: Why?

Renegade334: can't go into it hear. A moment later a small window opened on Gillette's screen. Triple-X: So what's happening, dude?

"Run it," Gillette called to Stephen Miller, who started HyperTrace. Another window popped up on the monitor, depicting a map of Northern California. Blue lines appeared on the map as the program traced the route from CCU back to Triple-X.

"It's tracing," Miller called. "Signal goes from here to Oakland to Reno to Seattle..."

Renegade334: thanks man for the ICQ. Thing is I got a problem and Im scared. This dudes on my case and the word is your a total wizard and I heard you might know somthing.

You can never ma.s.sage a hacker's ego too much, Wyatt Gillette knew.

Triple-X: What dude? Renegade334: His names Phate.

There was no response.

"Come on, come on," Gillette urged in a whisper. Thinking: Don't vanish. I'm a scared kid. You're a wizard. Help me...

Triple-X: What aobut him? I mean, about.

Gillette glanced at the window on his computer screen that showed HyperTrace's progress in locating the routing computers. Triple-X's signal was jumping all over the western United States. Finally it ended at the last hub, Bay Area On-Line Services, located in Walnut Creek, which was just north of Oakland.

"Got his service provider," Stephen Miller called. "It's a dial-in service."

"d.a.m.n," Patricia Nolan muttered. This meant that a phone company trace was necessary to pinpoint the final link from the server in Walnut Creek to the computer cafe where Triple-X was sitting.

"We can do it," Linda Sanchez called enthusiastically, a cheerleader. "Just keep him on the line, Wyatt."

Tony Mott called Bay Area On-Line and told the head of the security department what was going on. The security chief in turn called his own technicians, who would coordinate with Pacific Bell and trace the connection from Bay Area back to Triple-X's location. Mott listened for a moment then called, "Pac Bell's scanning. It's a busy area. Might take ten, fifteen minutes."

"Too long, too long!" Gillette said. "Tell 'em to speed it up."

But from his days as a phone phreak, breaking into Pac Bell himself, Gillette knew that phone company employees might have to physically run through the switches - which are huge rooms filled with electrical relays - visually finding the connections, in order to trace a call back to its source.

Renegade334: I heard about this totally robust hack of Phates I mean totally and I saw him online and I asked him about it only he just dissed me. then Weird stuff started happening after that and I heard about this script he wrote called trapdoor and now Im totally paranoyd.

A pause, then: Triple-X: So what're you asking? "He's scared," Gillette said. "I can feel it."

Renegade334: this trapdoor thing, does it really get him in your machine and go through all your s.h.i.t, I mean like EVERYTHING, and you don't even know it.

Triple-X: I don't think it really exists. Like an urban legend.

Renegade334: I don't know man I think its real, I saw my f.u.c.king files OPENING and no way was I doing it.

"We've got incoming," Miller said. "He's pinging us."

Triple-X was, as Gillette had predicted, running his own version of HyperTrace to check out Renegade334. The anonymizing program that Stephen Miller had hacked together, however, would make Triple-X's machine think Renegade was in Austin. The hacker must have gotten this report and believed it because he didn't log off.

Triple-X: Why do you care about him? You're at a public terminal. He can't get into your files there.

Renegade334: I'm just hear today cause my f.u.c.king parents' took away my Dell for a week cause a my grades. At home I was online and the keyboard was f.u.c.ked up and then files started opening all by themself. I freaked. I mean, totally.

Another long pause. Then finally the hacker responded.

Triple-X: You oughta be freaked. I know Phate.

Renegade334: Yeah how?

Triple-X: Just started talking to him in a chat room. Helped me debug some script. Traded some warez.

"This guy is gold," Tony Mott whispered.

Nolan said, "Maybe he knows Phate's address. Ask him."

"No," Gillette said. "We can't scare him off." There was no message for a moment then: Triple-X: BRB Chat room regulars have developed a shorthand of initials that represent phrases - to save keyboarding time and energy. BRB meant Be right back.

"Is he headed for the hills?" Sanchez asked.

"The connection's still open," Gillette said. "Maybe he just went to take a leak or something. Keep Pac Bell on the trace."

He sat back in the chair, which creaked loudly. Moments pa.s.sed. The screen remained unchanged.

BRB.

Gillette glanced at Patricia Nolan. She opened her purse, as bulky as her dress, took out her fingernail conditioner again and absently began to apply it.

The cursor continued to blink. The screen remained blank.

The ghosts were back and this time there were plenty of them.

Jamie Turner could hear them as he moved along the corridors of .

Well, the sound was probably only Booty or one of the teachers, making certain that windows and doors were secure. Or students, trying to find a place to sneak a cigarette or play their Game Boys.

But he couldn't get ghosts out of his mind: the spirits of Indians tortured to death and the student murdered a couple of years ago by that crazy guy who broke in - the one who, Jamie now realized, also added to the ghost population by getting shot dead by the cops in the old lunchroom.

Jamie Turner was certainly a product of the Machine World - a hacker and scientist - and he knew ghosts and mythical creatures and spirits didn't exist. So why did he feel so d.a.m.n scared?

Then this weird idea occurred to him. He wondered if maybe, thanks to computers, life had returned to an earlier, more spiritual - and more witchy - time. Computers made the world seem like a place out of one of those books from the 1800s by Washington Irving or Nathaniel Hawthorne. Sleepy Hollow and The House of the Seven Gables. Back then people believed in ghosts and spirits and weird stuff going on that you couldn't exactly see. Now, there was the Net and code and bots and electrons and things you couldn't see - just like ghosts. They could float around you, they could appear out of nowhere, they could do things.

These thoughts scared the h.e.l.l out of him but he forced them away and continued down the dark corridors of , smelling the musty stucco, hearing the muted conversations and music from the students' rooms recede as he left the residence area and slipped past the gym-Ghosts...

No, forget it! he told himself.

Think about Santana, think about hanging out with your brother, think about what a great night you're going to have.

Think about backstage pa.s.ses.

Then, finally, he came to the fire door, the one that led out into the garden.

He looked around. No sign of Booty, no sign of the other teachers who occasionally wandered through the halls like guards in some prisoner-of-war movie.

Dropping to his knees, Jamie Turner looked over the alarm bar on the door the way a wrestler sizes up his opponent.

WARNING: ALARM SOUNDS IF DOOR is OPENED.

If he didn't disable the alarm, if it went off when he tried to open the door, bright lights would come on throughout the school and the police and the fire department would be here in minutes. He'd have to sprint back to his room and his entire evening would be f.u.c.ked. He now unfolded a small sheet of paper, which contained the wiring schematic of the alarm that the door manufacturer's service chief had kindly sent him.

Playing a small flashlight over the sheet he studied the diagram once more. Then he caressed the metal of the alarm bar, observing how the triggering device worked, where the screws were, how the power supply was hidden. In his quick mind he matched what he saw in front of him with the schematic.

He took a deep breath.

He thought of his brother.

Pulling on his thick gla.s.ses to protect his precious eyes, Jamie Turner reached into his pocket, pulled out the plastic case containing his tools and selected a Phillips head screwdriver. He had plenty of time, he told himself. No need to hurry.

Ready to rock 'n' roll...

CHAPTER 00010000 / SIXTEEN.

Frank Bishop parked the unmarked navy blue Ford in front of the modest colonial house on a pristine plot of land - only an eighth of an acre, he estimated, yet being in the heart of Silicon Valley it'd be worth an easy million dollars.

Bishop noted that a new, light-colored Lexus sedan sat in the driveway.

They walked to the door, knocked. A harried forty-something woman in jeans and a faded floral blouse opened the door. The smell of cooking onions and meat escaped. It was 6:00 P.M. - the Bishop family's normal suppertime - and the detective was struck by a blast of hunger. He realized he hadn't eaten since that morning.