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play, you’re always the Johnson family. You can never make a single slip, do you understand?”
    I nodded.
    “The only place you can be out of character is in the car, which has anti-surveillance equipment. If you need to talk business, or to make a report or a request, then tell Richard or Hannah that you want to take a ride to the mall. You can talk in the car, and only in the car.”
    I wondered about what anti-bugging device the car had. That sort of thing interests me, but I never get to play, because it is so expensive. I had considered attending one of those private investigators' conventions, where the latest hardware is demoed by the industry leaders, but had never got around to it.
    “If anybody tries to listen in, all they’re going to hear is what sounds like white noise interference from the engine.”
    “What if somebody pulls a gun on me, or something?”
    I wasn’t worried by that prospect; I just wanted to know how much leeway I had. Philips had to have people pretending to be teachers. The question was how many and where.
    “That’s unlikely,” answered Philips.
    “Do you have someone I can contact at the school?”
    “We have one agent working on the school staff who’ll be looking out for you if anything happens at the school.”
    “Who is it?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
    “That doesn’t concern you. This agent is only there to keep an eye on you.
    You won’t see him, and he won’t talk to you. You do not need to contact him. Ever.”
    Did that ‘him’ mean the agent was male?
    I nodded. “Okay.”
    15

    I took the wallet off the table. Apart from the ID cards, I noticed some money tucked into the rear flap. I counted fifty dollars.
    “I’ll need more money than that.” Taking out a bank card, I asked, “How much is in the account?”
    “Five hundred. The access number is the last four digits of your library card. I can’t see you using more than that. But if you have a genuine need, then you can have what you want. You just have to discuss it with Richard first.”
    I stuck the wallet in a back pocket.
    “Any other questions?” Philips asked.
    I said nothing. Philips looked disappointed that I hadn’t asked anything, as if it was a bad sign. I was supposed to be an eager beaver, a smart guy.
    “You might like to know where Zaqarwi’s group meets,” he said.
    “Let me guess. He has a habit of changing meeting locations, and it’s never the same group twice.”
    Knight was the same: cagey. In the old days, Knight had a lot of fun picking bizarre places for us to meet—paranoid the cops or some shadowy organization would be bothered enough to listen in to his delusions and misdemeanors. But I guess in the end those fantasies had turned out to be true.
    “Wiretaps show that he’s used the local Internet cafés,” Philips added. I nodded. Back then, it was a big deal that coffee shops had just started offering free Internet stations and access to customers, if they paid extortionate rates for a half-gallon cup of coffee—almost the same as a jar of instant. But those spots were so popular that I had seen hackers (who wouldn’t dare use their own Internet connections) in there at 2:00 p.m., and they were still there at kicking-out time. What used to annoy me about those places was that the college students who worked there could see on the log where you were surfing to, and you had to expend time evading their amateur surveillance.
    They had a big board above the counter, with two dozen supposed varieties of coffee on it, to foster the consumerist “choice” illusion, which presumably was as addictive as the caffeine. We used to annoy them by asking for a coffee with milk.
    “You mean an Americano?”
    “No, I’d like a coffee, with milk, and no sugar.”
    “Milk is on the counter.”
    “Can’t you put it in?”
    “You might like to choose how milky you like your coffee.”
    “Just average, thanks.” It went on. They annoyed us hackers, and we annoyed