"Is that all?" Pamela said.
"And it's got to play Pac-Man," Remo said.
"We'll see what we can do," Pamela said and she took him to a corner where there was a library of programs that could do things from calculating building construction to playing games of shooting things.
In doing her duty, she explained how computers worked. She started at the idea of gates with a simple binary command. There was a yes command and a no command. The "no" closed the gate; the "yes" opened it. Then she was off and running into how these yeses and nos made a computer work and as she delivered this incomprehensible gibberish, she smiled at Remo as if anyone could follow what she was talking about.
Remo let her go on as long as he could stay awake, then he said, "I don't want to balance my checkbook. I don't have a checkbook. I just want to start World War III. Help me with that. What do you have in the way of nuclear devastation?"
Before she could answer, someone called out that she had a telephone call. She picked up the phone on an adjacent desk and began to blush. Remo noticed the television monitors in the ceilings. Their random movement, sweeping the office area, stopped and they focused on Pamela Thrushwell. He glanced at Pamela Thrushwell and saw her reddened face turn from embarrassment to anger and she snapped, "Naff off, you bloody twerp." As she slammed the telephone toward the receiver, Remo felt high-wave vibrations emanating from the telephone. If Pamela had still had the phone next to her ear, her eardrum would have burst.
She did not notice it. She smoothed her skirt, let her flush subside, and returned to Remo, the proper British salesperson.
"Not a friend, I take it," he said.
"Somebody who's been bothering me for months," she said.
"Who is it? Why don't you call the police?"
"I don't know who it is," she said.
"Who runs these cameras?" Remo asked, nodding toward the ceiling.
"No one. They're automatic," she said.
"No, they're not."
"Excuse me, sir, but they are."
"No," Remo said.
"They are our equipment and we know how it works, so if you will kindly pay attention, I will explain again how the simple computer works," she said.
"Those cameras are focused by someone," Remo said. "They're watching you right now."
"That's impossible," said Pamela. She glanced up at the cameras in the ceiling. When she glanced again a few moments later, they were still pointed at her.
Remo said, "This place is obviously set up for something. Can you trace the controls on that monitor?"
"I'm afraid to," Pamela said. "Last week, I traced that telephone caller who keeps bothering me, and our office manager picked up the phone and got broken eardrums. I don't know what to do. I've complained to the police and they say ignore it. But how can you ignore it when somebody has people come right in and grab you and touch and pinch and do all sorts of things? I know that obscene caller is behind it."
"And you don't know who it is," Remo said.
"No, do you?" she asked.
Remo shook his head. "Why don't we find out together?" he said.
"I'm sorry. I don't know you and I don't trust you," she said.
"Who are you going to trust?"
"I don't trust the police," she said.
"I'm the guy who showed you how you're being watched," he said.
"I don't know who to trust at this point. I get phone calls at all hours. The caller seems to know what I'm doing. Strange men come up to me and do stranger things in public. The caller knows. He always knows. I don't trust you. I'm sorry."
Remo leaned close and let her feel his presence. Her blue eyes fluttered.
"I don't need a romantic involvement at this point," she said.
"I was thinking more of raw sex," Remo said.
"Beast," said Pamela Thrushwell, but her eyes sparkled when she said it and her dimples virtually popped in her cheeks.
"Let me show you how to start a nuclear war," she said.
"Sure," Remo said. "And I'll show you how we can both go out in a blaze of glory."
She took Remo into a back room of the computer center. There was a large computer screen and a pimply-faced young man with dilated pupils hung over a keyboard like a ham in a smokehouse, as still as dead meat. But unlike a ham, his fingers moved.
Pamela told him to move over. He did but his fingers stayed in the same position. It took him a good two minutes to realize he was no longer facing the machine. When he did and looked around in bewilderment, Pamela told him to go to lunch.
"Smoke, smoke," he said. "I need smoke."
"Good," she said. "You go get smoke," and when he left, she explained to Remo that the young man was a "hacker," a self-taught computer expert whose specialty was breaking into other computer networks.
"He's found a way to get into the Defense Department computers," she said.
Remo nodded and she said, "See these numbers? We can call them up whenever we want. The first one tells you it's military and the second that it's the Air Force. The third says Strategic Air Command and the fourth tells you it's a missile base. The fifth tells you Russian activity and the sixth tells you where, which is where we are, in New York City, and the seventh tells what's happened to New York City."
Remo didn't understand but he glanced at the numbers. Numbers five and seven were zeros, which meant the Russians weren't doing anything, he guessed, and that New York City was still in one piece.
"So what good does this all do?" Remo asked.
"Well, we don't have all the controls down yet. You know, we do this stuff as pure research, to find out how far computers can be pushed. But Harold, he's the one who just left, he thinks he'll be able to get into the Air Force and make them fire missiles if he wants them to."
"Let's hope nobody gets him mad," Remo said. "I hope he finds some good smoke out on the street."
The screen suddenly became a jumble of letters and numbers.
"What's going on?" Remo said. He noticed that the fifth number-- Russian activity-- had jumped to nine.
"Oh, God," said Pamela.
"What's happening?" Remo asked.