Free The Fool's Run by John Sandford Page B

for Dace. We put the hundred thousand of expense money in with Dace's cash.
    "A hundred thousand for expense money," LuEllen said. She looked at it, looked at me, and started giggling.
    When she finally stopped, we checked out of the hotel, dropped our personal shares at the bank, and mailed the safety deposit keys back home-mine to Emily and hers to somebody in Duluth. I didn't ask who, and didn't tell her where mine went. The rest of the money, less a few thousand for pocket and purse, went into a small, hidden box just forward of the spare tire well in the trunk of the car.
    Late in the afternoon, armed with the Chicago Tribune's want ads, we drove around the suburbs and paid cash for two used Kaypro IBM-compatible computers and a Toshiba printer. Then we drove south, made the big turn at Gary, and headed for Washington.
    "You sure about this friend of yours in Washington-Dace?" LuEllen asked.
    "I'm sure."
    "He's got a place for us?"
    "Yes. Furnished, telephones, dishes, the whole works. We can move in the same day."
    "How much?"
    "Two thousand a week."
    She whistled. "That's steep."
    "It's a special deal. The landlord runs a call girl operation for the Pentagon brass, in Alexandria. The apartments are for the girls, but he let Dace have one. He's a crook himself, so he won't talk to anyone. There won't be any records, there won't be any receipts. He won't be around, won't see our faces; he stays out of sight himself."
    Personal cars are invisible in America as long as you don't buy gas on credit cards or get traffic tickets. And if you drive off the main interstate highways, down into the midsized towns when you're looking for a motel, you can find one where all transactions are done in cash. They don't want to see a Visa card, they don't check your license plate to see if you wrote down the right number. Hand over forty dollars in advance, and they're satisfied.
    There was a reason for our caution. Despite what Anshiser said about the powers of political protection, it was still possible that he didn't understand the magnitude of what we were doing. A computer attack on a major corporation is a technological-age nightmare. If word of a corporate war got out to the computer community, the reaction could be violent. Some very unpleasant people could come looking for us. Given that possibility, the whole job was best done with as few personal traces as possible.
    We took out time getting to Washington, and talked about the attack.
    "So if things started to get hairy," LuEllen said, "you might not even need me around at all? Especially toward the end?"
    "Right. You could take off. You could probably take off anyway. Your job will be right up front, before the attack starts. I'd like you to hang around for a while, but you won't have to stay until the end."
    "I'd like to know how it comes out."
    "You'll know, one way or the other," I said. "Either I'll call you and tell you or you'll read all about it in the newspapers."
    "You fill me with confidence," she said.
    LuEllen was pleasant company; she didn't feel pressure to talk all the time. In the evenings, after dinner, we would catch a movie on Home Box Office and afterward make love, a reasonably athletic event that made a nice transition into sleep. We were feeling almost domestic by the time we got to Washington.
    We arrived in the late afternoon on a hot, damp Thursday. Our new headquarters was in a pretty neighborhood of narrow, green lawns, neatly trimmed hedges, and tastefully shabby private homes interspersed with well-kept apartments. The apartment buildings were mostly of dark brown or wheat-colored brick. Tenant parking was tucked discreetly behind screens of bridal wreath or in reproduction carriage-house garages with weathered wood siding. At the address Dace had given us we parked the car in a guest slot. The building was a long, two-story rectangle, with the narrow end toward the street. There were four separate entrances, each with eight apartment numbers above