Metafire

"Worry is a waste of imagination, you said."

"Yea. Yea." She said.

"Yea." He said. And they went to sleep.

The next day Jack stayed in the house. He did indeed have a friend in the FBI, and the friend turned out to be the right friend. John Ferguson was operations chief of the new software center. Jack got through to him directly.

Ferguson reached for the phone immediately when he heard it was Jack Martin. They had met when Ferguson was trying to set up a business for his wife on the Internet. Jack and his girl set the business up. Ferguson's wife was now making tons of money selling blast escape plans on the Internet. Ferguson remembered Jack well. He had a real gift for "exploring the net." Without his 'maps,' Ferguson's wife would have done just so-so. His 'maps' established a contact network that created a real gold mine.

Ferguson was not the kind of person to help a friend. He was an authoritarian manager with few real friends. Jack was lucky. Ferguson's job was to staff a center that expanded the scope of the terrorist investigation into the realms of the Internet. His job was to set up a team that investigated cyberspace like other investigative teams investigated activity in a town. Ferguson knew Jack had the talent. He thought, 'Jez, I never thought Jack had a talent for this stuff. But now that I have seen what the professionals do, Jack is great.'