Free The Quantum Brain (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 2) by John Freitas Page A

shelf with leather bound tomes on both sides. Thomas wondered if they were just for show or if they were prized property of Hazel Conrad or whoever was now her heir. There were no pictures of children or grandchildren. A laptop sat closed on the center of a pristine wooden desk.
    “Did you bring a screen with you?” Mark asked.
    An oil painting on the wall slid sideways with the sound of an electric motor under the ticks of that solitary clock. For a moment, Thomas Kell imagined the ghost of Hazel Conrad sliding it as she haunted the office. It stopped one painting length down from its original position. Underneath the painting had been hidden a monitor like a wide screen TV sat silent and black. It went blue and then Miles Decker was sitting in a recliner with his feet kicked up.
    He was wearing a fleece parka. The storm had picked up outside nearly whiting out the scene. The camera view was closer to the windows now. Decker had an open crystalline bottle on the table next to his chair and held a tumbler half filled with a liquid Thomas guessed was scotch.
    Miles Decker said, “Hello again, Dr. Kell. Mark Spencer, I presume.”
    “Yes, sir,” Mark said.
    Thomas exhaled feeling relieved that Spencer was not talking to Decker the way he had spoken to Calvin Hall outside.
    Miles Decker said, “I’ve had a day, but I’m not interested in recounting it or receiving your sympathy – heartfelt or otherwise. If it works for you two, I’d like to explain our business here in a dead woman’s office and be done with it. Will that do?”
    Thomas Kell nodded.
    Mark Spencer said, “Works for me. Tell me what you need.”
    “Your non disclosure agreements cover this conversation. It would serve you both well to fully understand that. Do you both understand?”
    “Yes, sir,” both men said in unison as they faced across Hazel Conrad’s nearly empty desk.
    “Hazel Conrad did not use computers despite being senior partner of one of the largest technology companies in the history of the world.” Miles Decker paused long enough to take another swallow of his scotch. Thomas glanced down at the laptop in front of him and back up at Miles Decker on the screen. “Her secretary and personal assistant input all of her data, transcribed messages into e-mail, and so on. Of course, her laptop utilized for that purpose sits in front of you. Her secretary died with her in a fiery mess in the mountains of West Virginia. I need the data pulled from her computer and everything that involved her secretary’s codes. I need it sent to my private computers and swept off our systems there. Is that something you can do for me, Mr. Spencer?”
    Mark Spencer stepped around the desk and sat down as he opened the laptop. As it powered on, Mark turned the chair toward the screen. “Do you know her password?”
    “If I knew her password,” Decker said, “I’d have one of our IT guys do this. Did I mention the fiery mess in West Virginia? That’s where the password went and now I need this data and this computer opened.”
    “Is it automatically connected to the CDR servers?”
    “I believe so.”
    Mark turned the chair back toward the desk. “Give me just a moment.”
    “She would be quite upset in whatever afterlife she finds herself to know you were sitting in her chair,” Miles said from the screen behind Mark.
    Mark Spencer sighed and asked, “Would you prefer I stand while doing this task for you, sir?”
    “Just do the task.” Decker took another large swallow and refilled his tumbler from the bottle.
    “I’m in the system,” Mark said. “I have all her data and all information that passed through this laptop and from codes used on this laptop. It appears ‘Iron Ladybird’ was the label used by her secretary as Ms. Conrad’s proxy. All that data is bundled, if you want to tell me where to send it.”
    “That was fast,” Decker said. “Are our systems really that vulnerable to hacking?”
    Mark made eye contact with Dr.