“He just said…” Mitchell hesitated, looking uncomfortable for the first time. Then she squared her shoulders and continued, “He said you would need a clerk, ma’am.”

“Ouch—sounds like you’ve been sat down,” Watts observed with a chuckle. “What did you do, kid? Forget to shine your shoes?”

“No, sir. I –”

“Never mind that, Mitchell,” Rebecca interrupted curtly. “If this is where you’ve been assigned, that’s good enough for now.”

She turned back to the video camera and said in a firm tone, “Philadelphia PD. Three to come up.”

Without the slightest hint of crackle or electronic interference, a male voice said from the invisible speaker, “Good morning, Sergeant. Please come ahead, and welcome aboard.”

They were silent on the ride up, although Watts snorted derisively at the elaborate security measures throughout the building, muttering colorfully about spy games and cop wanna-bes as he peered about. When they exited the elevator directly into a brightly lit, wide-open room that was sectioned off by partial walls of glass and steel and filled with surveillance equipment and computers, he said, “What the hell is this place?”

From their left a man said, “This is the tech center for Sloan Security Services.” Nodding to the group, and giving no sign that he was perplexed by the unexpected presence of Watts, he stretched out a hand toward Rebecca. “Avery Clark. Justice.”

“Rebecca Frye,” she replied, assessing him quickly. Standard government issue—somewhere between thirty-five and forty, brown hair, dark steel-framed glasses, conservative hair cut, well-tailored but conventional suit, dark tie, white shirt. Wedding ring, hip holster, sharp eyes. And he’d been briefed. He didn’t make the mistake of thinking that Watts was in charge, but had addressed himself to Rebecca. She gestured to the others with her. “Detective Watts and Officer Mitchell.”

“Detective, Officer,” he added as he shook both their hands, then turned, saying, “The briefing’s down the hall. Coffee and such there, too.”

“Very fancy,” Watts observed dryly.

Rebecca said nothing. It was Clark’s show.

The conference room was in the corner of the third floor, walled on two sides in floor to ceiling glass and outfitted with sleek Bauhaus furniture. The occupants who awaited them looked right at home in the high-tech, urban surroundings. Rebecca nodded to the civilians she’d met the day before. As previously, Sloan appeared deceptively casual at first glance, in jeans again, this time with a white oxford shirt, sleeves rolled up, and ankle-high leather boots. But her eyes were lasers, scanning everything, on high alert. The amazingly handsome man at her side gave off a lazy aura of insouciance, but Rebecca had no doubt that he was just as sharp. Interesting pair. Watts gave them both a suspicious nod when introduced, and then they all filed past a counter in the corner for drinks and food and eventually migrated to seats around the granite-topped table.

Clark walked to the head of the table and set a cup of coffee on the smooth surface. Smiling, he looked at the group. “Everybody get coffee, something to eat?”

There were a few grunts and one clear, Yes, sir. Watts gave Mitchell a look that suggested she needn’t be so polite.

“So.” He sipped his coffee. Suddenly his smile disappeared. “This is what we know. Six weeks ago an international web-monitoring group called the Action Coalition Against the Exploitation of Children, whose members surf the Internet looking for child pornography activity of any kind, alerted us to a number of references concerning a real-time child sex ring operating, and apparently broadcasting, from this area.”

“How’d the watch-dog group pick up on it?” Sloan asked.

“Chat rooms. Unfortunately, nothing too specific—just enough for them to realize there was a live feed somewhere in the Northeast. As you may know, most of the organized distribution of sex material on the internet occurs through private bulletin boards, and they’re all carefully screened, password controlled, and often encrypted. If you aren’t a member, you don’t have access.”

“Whoa—” Watts interrupted, ignoring the swift look from Rebecca implying that he shut up. “You want to translate that? I still can’t figure out how to put the paper in the fax machine.”

Clark regarded him expressionlessly. He’d had plenty of experience dealing with local law enforcement, and he was used to the obstacles, resistance and outright obstructionism that was almost ritual. This guy had the look of old-school hard ass written all over him. “There are two kinds of internet pornography activity. The most wide spread is the kind of stuff that anyone can find easily—chat rooms, mostly. People meet there, try to connect for sex, and even try to set up f-to-f—“

“Huh?” Watts asked, looking dazed. This time it wasn’t an act.

“Face to face,” Jason remarked quietly. “In person.”

“Right—sorry,” Clark added. “Real life assignations—dates for sex. Nothing wrong with that, unless it happens to be an adult looking to hook up with a minor. That’s where we come in.” He glanced at the expressions of the individuals seated around the table. Everyone was alert, watching him, waiting with more than a hint of reservation. He was used to being viewed with suspicion by the locals—hell, not even the locals always—sometimes by other federal agents. Unperturbed, he continued, “At any rate, those kinds of open channels usually prevent file trading, so guys who want pics, and most serious pedophiles do, usually trade privately after they initially connect in a chat room. Until the last ten years, kiddie porn was pretty much limited to still pics and homemade videos. Distribution was via the good old US Mail, and it was geographically restricted to interstate distribution as opposed to internationally. Getting tapes through Customs is tricky, although a lot easier in Europe than here.”

“I thought we were expecting someone from Customs,” Rebecca asked quietly when he paused. The young officer, Mitchell, who was sitting to her right, was taking notes on one of a stack of pads that had been scattered over the wide stone surface. Sloan and McBride looked quietly intent, but she had a feeling that none of this was news to them. It shouldn’t be, if the Internet was their street and they were any good at what they did.

“I told them we’d keep them informed if it looked like we were going to move into their territory,” Clark replied casually. “They’ve got their hands full with the terrorists.”

Politics , Rebecca thought, but she merely nodded.

“Anyhow,” the Justice agent went on, “with new digital technology, the game has changed. High quality images can be uploaded and transmitted anywhere almost instantaneously. That’s the venue of the other form of trafficking in child pornography—image production and procurement. It’s a much more covert, highly organized, and sophisticated operation. There are bulletin boards that screen members, authenticate identities—or at least aliases, which most subjects use—and limit access to those with passwords or electronic keys. This is where most of the image exchange occurs. And this is where we’ll find a way to break into this network. The Internet is a superhighway running directly right from one bedroom to the next.” He looked pointedly at Sloan. “Internet law enforcement is way behind the perps in terms of expertise. The private sector has a head start on us in terms of the ability to find and infiltrate these sites, but if anyone repeats that, I’ll deny I ever said it.”

Sloan, Rebecca noticed, smiled, but her blue eyes were dark with something unrequited. Old scores, still unsettled? Rebecca’d run a check on both the security consultant and her associate, McBride, the previous afternoon because she was certain that the Justice department hadn’t hired them without cause. Interestingly, she’d drawn blanks on most of her inquiries. Not blanks, exactly. Gaps. Erasures. Missing data. Sloan Security Consultants had filed taxes for the last four years; Sloan and McBride were registered to vote; their credit records were clean; their driver’s licenses unbesmirched; and their pasts a complete cipher. They might have been born four years ago. That had the smell of ex-Agency all over it. If she had to guess, she’d guess Justice. Because both of them looked like the kind of whiz kids the government hired right out of college to do the kinds of things the old guard wasn’t equipped to do. Just like what they were doing now. Rebecca was curious—because she was a cop, because she would be working with them, and because she needed to know who she could trust. Sloan had given her some Intel the day before, and she hadn’t had to. That was a point for her, but it was too soon to tell how far that cooperation would extend. Traditionally, local and federal officers didn’t mesh well. And now Sloan was technically neither. Rebecca flicked her gaze back to Clark.

“Why involve us at this stage?” she asked. “It could take months before you get a solid lead.” Unless there’s something you’re not telling us. And there always is.

Clark nodded. “Because we want to cover every contingency. I don’t need to tell you that child prostitution and child pornography go hand in hand. Once someone has access to kids for sale, they usually take the next step toward photographing the sex and selling that, too. You busted up a couple of kiddie rackets not long ago, didn’t you?”

“Small time houses—no big connections. At least none that we could find then.”

“We’re betting that they’re there. It’s another place to look. With those cases and the info from the watch dog groups that I’ll be giving to Sloan and McBride, we’ve already narrowed the search and cut out weeks of web trawling. If you dig around in the background of the guys you busted; talk to your contacts—” he stopped, grinned disarmingly. “Sorry. You know what to do without me spelling it out.”

“Sure,” Rebecca replied dryly while across from her Watts huffed. She shot him another look.

“Let me wrap this up then,” Clark added smoothly, ignoring Watts. “A few big busts have been made in the last five years. Two international clubs—the Wonderland Club and the Orchid Club—each with network members in the United States, Australia, Canada and Europe, were infiltrated by members of various police agencies. There were several hundred arrests and thousands of images and videos confiscated. The problem with this approach is that it’s hit or miss, and even when you make an arrest, it’s only hitting the bottom of the food chain. Pedophiles watching porn in the safety of their own homes. If it weren’t for the fact that the material featured kids, it probably wouldn’t even be illegal.” His expression became starkly predatory, and for the first time, his charming mask slipped. “We’re not after the guy looking at dirty pictures in his bathroom. We’re after the businessmen who are sitting around a boardroom just like this one right now planning on how to make even more money off the sale of children. What want to know who’s behind it, how they’re getting the kids, and where they’re broadcasting their real time images from.”

Business men. A nice word for organized crime , Rebecca thought. So why am I here and not someone from the OC division? This doesn’t add up. She knew, however, that that was not the kind of question you asked. Like a lawyer who was taught never to ask a question they didn’t know the answer to, a cop knew never to let on that there was something they didn’t know.

“Technically any information which leads to an arrest needs to be documented and a chain of evidence recorded. The detectives should make out contact reports recording any Intel from informants, per usual. Officer Mitchell can take care of organizing that. In addition, a log of all internet activity, any leads generated by that route, and any street follow-up instituted needs to be charted.”

Jason spoke up. “That’s not really possible.” And definitely not even desirable. “Some avenues of investigation are too…uh…fluid to document.”

Sloan smiled. Fluid. Only Jason could come up with that term to describe the fact that in a few hours they’d be hacking their brains out, breaking into anything and everything they could, including government databases and private systems.

“I’m sure you’ll give her the salient details,” Clark concluded easily.

Sure , Sloan thought. And we’ll take the heat for anything construed later as illegal. Which explains why Justice isn’t using their own people, even if they do have someone who could do the job. Surprise . So nice to know the Agency hasn’t changed . Disavow all knowledge…and on and on and on.

“Since this is a joint venture with the Philadelphia PD and our department, I’ll leave the day to day decisions up to Detective Sergeant Frye. Keep me informed of any major developments. We’ll brief every few days. More often if things start rolling.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got another appointment. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Watts replied. “I missed what you said about what you’ll be doing in this operation.”

“If the trail leads across state lines it becomes federal, so it seemed prudent for us to be in on the investigation from the start.”

Rebecca met Watts’ gaze for the first time. His expression was blank but his eyes spoke for him. He knew as well as she did that Clark knew much more than he was saying.

CHAPTER TEN

THE FIVE OF them left at the table when Clark walked out remained in silence for a moment. Clark had implied that Rebecca was in charge of the nuts and bolts aspects of the operation, yet there they all sat in the middle of Sloan’s territory. Rebecca and Sloan looked at one another across the expanse of smooth black stone. Watts and Jason watched them. Officer Mitchell stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed somewhere over the Delaware River.

“What’s your plan?” Rebecca asked finally. There was no point in drawing lines in the sand over false issues. She and Watts couldn’t do what Sloan and McBride could. Chances were they’d never even get to the point of arresting anyone. Clark was after something with this fishing expedition, she had no doubt of that, but there was more smoke in the room now than before the briefing.

“This kind of Internet surveillance op isn’t new,” Sloan said with a shrug. “And like Clark said, it usually involves a huge number of man hours for something that often produces short-lived results.”

“Like busting hookers,” Watts remarked. “No percentage in it.”

“Exactly.”

“So why hasn’t he given you a dozen people to sit here and surf the internet—flood the system and maximize his returns?” Rebecca persisted.

“Can’t say. It’s costly, there aren’t that many computer savvy agents readily available, or…” she considered her words carefully, because she didn’t know the blond cop at all. She was bothered by that fact as well, had been since the first phone call had come from Washington asking her to head up the computer side of the investigation. “He wants to limit the number of people exposed to the operation.”

Rebecca nodded. That played with her sense that there was a hidden agenda beneath the stated objectives of the investigation. And there was nothing to do but do the job and keep her eyes open. “Did he give you anything specific to work with?”

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