Chapter Thirty-Nine
I checked the time. It was 0030. A little late to be calling anyone, but I speed-dialed Nick, my new intrepid journalist mentor, with the hope that he’d be up. Much to my relief, he answered.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Not an unreasonable question given the hour.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Have you ever written about smuggling or its connections to terrorism?”
“I never had a story run, but I have done some poking around.”
“To the best of your knowledge, do these smugglers use computer hackers?” I asked.
This elicited a “hmmm” from the other end. “It’s likely that they do, since so much crime involves computers these days. How exactly they might use them I couldn’t say.”
I considered the implications. Nick eventually said, “When I saw your caller ID, I was afraid you wer
