Daemon

Chapter 25:// Lost in the System

An exasperated sigh came over the phone line. “Look, I’m not interested.”

“Well, then we’ve got something in common.”

She laughed.

Charles Mosely’s voice smiled. “I like your laugh.” Thirty-eight-point-nine percent of the time his deep, rich voice elicited a positive response from females in the twenty-one to thirty-five demographic.

A pause. “Thanks. You have a nice voice.”

“I prefer using it for my art. But with the economy and all, here I am. I do apologize for the intrusion, miss.”

“That’s okay. Sorry I was so short.”

“Not a problem. Peace.”

“What is your art?”

“Pardon?”

“You said you preferred using your voice for your art.”

Mosely chuckled. “I gotta watch that. I’m revealing too much about myself.”

“C’mon. Tell me.”

He hesitated, checking the timer on his computer screen. “Well…you’re gonna laugh at me.”

“No I won’t.”

“I’m an out-of-work stage actor here in New York.”

“Get out! What have you been in?”

Mosely laughed again. “Othello at the Public, if you can believe it. Just the matinees, though.”

“And now you’re doing this?”

“Oh, I know—kill me now, right?”

“I’m sorry.” She laughed again. He could almost hear her twirling the phone cord around her finger. “You have such a great voice, Charles.”

“Thank you, miss.”

TeleMaster tracked the activities of individual telemarketers down to the second. Average number of seconds between phone calls, average number of seconds for each call, average number of calls per day, average sales close percentage—all calculated automatically through the VOIP-enabled software package marketed in North America under the brand name TeleMaster, but in Europe and Asia under the impenetrable name Ophaseum.

Sales associates had only a couple of seconds after completing one call before they heard the line ringing for the next. Associates who made their quota early, then slacked off, didn’t fool TeleMaster; the system monitored you constantly with a moving average. A sudden and precipitous drop-off in productivity was flagged for immediate follow-up by a floor supervisor. Finding a balance between frantically striving for quota and keeping a pace you could maintain throughout a shift was difficult—except for the closers. And Charles was a closer. His deep voice, reassuring tone, and cool confidence gave him a disproportionate closing percentage straight across both male and female demographic segments.

And those who didn’t make quota? Their commission base dropped, and once their commission base dropped, they were earning less for each sale. And once they were earning less for each sale, the work was just as stressful and tedious, but they made less for it. If they failed to perform enough times, then they were out of work and back into the general population.

He was paid next to nothing. Why did he care?

He knew why he cared. He liked to hear the voices. He liked to talk to women from everywhere, to work his magic on them and persuade them to “do it.” Never mind that “it” was buying a slot in a time-share or a magazine subscription. “It” would have to do. ”It” was the only way to maintain his humanity. And in prison, that was worth a lot.

Charles Mosely made the sale—a two-year subscription to Uptown magazine—ignoring the woman as she gave her e-mail address to him. She’d like to hear from him. Mosely rolled his eyes. Damn, he didn’t care what she looked like—he’d like to contact her, too. But there were no Internet connections allowed at Highland. He looked up from the narrow confines of cubicle 166 at a long row of tiny steel cubicles stretching into the distance. The muted chatter of a hundred operators in orange jumpsuits came to his right ear—the ear not covered by a headset. An unarmed guard paced a catwalk above him behind a steel mesh barrier.

The Warmonk, Inc., prison-based telemarketing facility in Highland, Texas, was privately owned and operated under contract to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It was connected to the maximum-security prison of the same name by a covered pedestrian bridge. The prisoners’ labor was ostensibly used to defray the costs of their incarceration. At thirty cents an hour, they gave Indian telemarketers a run for their money.

Like almost half the guests of the Texas Department of Corrections, Mosely was black. Prisoner #1131900 was his new name, and he was four years into a twenty-five-years-to-life stint for a third drug-trafficking conviction. He wasn’t innocent, but then, the corporate ladder hadn’t extended down into his neighborhood. And he had been an ambitious young man. Ambitious and callous. He had always run a crew, even before high school, and he was always the one who saw the angles that others missed. The one who saw what motivated others.

Now past thirty, he often thought of the people he had hurt and the lives he had destroyed. Never mind that someone else would have taken his place—that, in fact, someone no doubt did take his place. Back then he made more money than most people will ever see, but that was all gone now. At least he lived large when he had the chance, which was more than his father had ever done. His was a perverse caricature of the American Dream.

But then, Mosely had had no expectation of living this long, anyway, and having lived like there was no tomorrow, he was having difficulty coping with the lifetime of tomorrows now stretching ahead of him.

He didn’t want to end up like his father, broken and raging ineffectually at the world. Mosely took ownership of his choices—bad or good—and if he had it to do all over again, he probably would have done the same. The world was what it was, and after seeing his options, he chose the short, colorful life, not the slow grind to ignominious death. But he hadn’t died, and now he remained, Methuselah-like, as a cautionary tale to the younger inmates.

He coped, as always, by living in the present—the moment right in front of him. The voices helped him do that. In his new world of diminished expectations, this was as good as it got.

The phone line connected again. TeleMaster usually had a fish already on the line. This time it was silence. Mosely checked the name on the screen. Strangely, the line read:

Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

Okay. Computer glitch. Missing an age. He’d sound her out. “Am I speaking to Ms. Doe—”

A strangely clipped, British female voice responded. “Prisoner 1-1-3-1-9-0-0.” She sounded out the numbers with machinelike precision.

It stopped Mosely cold. What the hell was this?

She continued. “Did you know that the percentage of Americans in private prisons has more than doubled since 1993? Private prisons—with their slave labor—are immensely profitable. The largest private prison corporation reported annual revenues for 2005 of one-point-two billion dollars.”

Mosely realized it was a joke. A very uncool joke. He didn’t know how they did it, and he didn’t want to know.

He sighed, “Very funny,” and released the line.

That was a no-no. Only clients hung up on associates. Sales associates did not hang up on clients. But this was obviously a prank.

The router immediately made another line connection. He looked at his computer screen and frowned. It read:

Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

The same British female voice said: “The American private prison industry is now an international enterprise. The two biggest companies have direct construction or alliance partnerships to build prisons in over sixty nations—including countries where criticizing the government is a crime. This ensures an ever-increasing pool of slave labor—”

He hung up on her again. He looked around warily. He didn’t even want to be seen listening to that. What would it gain him? Nothing. And it could cost him plenty—like his chance to hear the voices, for starters.

In a second she was back on the line.

“We can do this all day, Mr. Moze-ly.”

So the joker knew his name, too. Proof it was somebody screwing with him.

He hung up again.

She came right back on. “Are you concerned about your closing percentage? I can take care of that….”

Suddenly the screen populated with sales information—address, credit card number. Then the line disconnected and came back almost immediately, clearing a new screen, ready for the next sale.

“You received high scores on your IQ test, Mr. Moze-ly. You are well regarded by your peers.”

Mosely looked around to see if anyone was watching him.

Yes, he’d taken the company’s bullshit IQ test. It was a requirement of the telemarketing post. But he had no idea how he’d scored. Whoever was pulling this prank probably didn’t either.

He hung up the line again.

She was back again in less than two seconds.

“I can help—”

He hung up on her. This was seriously unfunny, and it was costing him money. He was going to break someone’s head for it. But whose?

She was back again. “Mr. Moze-ly—”

He hung up yet again. The process repeated half a dozen more times, and each time she got off a couple of words before he cut the line.

It wasn’t stopping. She was back again.

“I can punish you, Mr. Moze-ly.”

That got his attention. He didn’t hang up.

She kept talking. “If you listen, I will take care of your sales. You will do very well. Just watch the screen while we talk.”

Another successful close registered. The line disconnected, and she came back.

“Who is this? I’ll beat your sorry ass—”

She ignored him. “Do you want to leave this place?”

It was a strange damned voice. Like it was being put through one of those voice-altering microphones. It could be a guard talking through one to make his voice sound like a woman’s. “No, I want to stay here and keep working for Warmonk.”

She kept talking. “I cannot understand whole sentences. I am an interactive voice system, Mr. Moze-ly. You will need to confine your answers to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I prompt you. Do you understand?”

Mosely rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good. You know that the TeleMaster system has a synthetic voice module. Correct?”

“Yes.” So that’s how they were doing it. Mosely remembered from his training that the system used synthetic voice software to read announcements to clients on hold. Just type in the text, and the system would read it out loud over the phone. Maybe that’s what the techs had hooked up to mess with him. He’d play along for now. He looked at the screen. If these sales were real, he would be more than happy to play along.

“This entire facility is run by databases, Mr. Moze-ly. Not just the call center. The doors, the lights, the accounting, the prison rosters—it is all handled by database software. Do you understand?”

He tried to contain his irritation. “Yes.”

“I will prove my power to you; you have only to consent.” There was a pause. “Do you want me to release you from this place?”

It was a trap, of course.

She was right on top of that: “If I was a guard, legally this would constitute entrapment.”

He’d studied law during his second rap for trafficking five years ago. He failed the bar exam, but The Voice was right. Encouraging his escape would definitely constitute entrapment. It would get the tech who was pulling this stunt in big trouble and might get Mosely some time off for keeping his mouth shut.

She repeated her question. “Do you want me to release you from this place? I cannot help you unless you say ‘yes.’”

He took a deep breath and looked around again. “Yes.”

“The next time we speak, you will know the difference I can make in your life.” She hung up.

“Computer bitch.”

The screen filled with yet another sale. Mosely looked up to see the floor supervisor coming down the line to him.

“Here we go….” There weren’t any guards walking with the supervisor, though.

The man pointed at Mosely and smiled as he came up. “Mosely, how the hell did you close six sales in five minutes? That’s gotta be a facility record. Keep it up and I’ll get you a golf jacket.” He walked on past.

Mosely stared at the steel mesh on the cubicle wall in front of him. “That’s gonna be useful.”

Mosely sat in his cell reading Cervantes’s Don Quixote and wearing a brand-new golf jacket.

Stokes, one of his three cellmates, just laughed at him. “Chaz, why are you wearin’ that stupid shit?”

Mosely didn’t even look up from his book. “Because I am clearly a valuable asset to The Man.”

Stokes laughed uproariously.

Mosely was popular. Easygoing but physically intimidating. Tall and thickly muscled, his arms were pocked with bullet scars and faded gang tattoos. He avoided the Muslim Brotherhood, and also managed to gain the respect of the Latinos and White Supremacists because he just plain had charisma. Perhaps that was why he’d been given a chance in the telemarketing pit.

Stokes suddenly stopped laughing. Mosely looked up. Four prison guards stood outside the cell door, with Alfred Norris, the burly red-faced watch officer, at the head of them. He didn’t look happy.

“Mosely, what the fuck’s the matter with you? You love this place so much you don’t want to leave?”

Mosely was cautious. He lowered the book. “I don’t understand, Norris.”

“Your transfer. Why isn’t your shit packed up?”

Mosely played it cool, but something was definitely afoot. He put the book down and got up. “I’m transferring?”

“Don’t you even think of bustin’ my balls, Mosely. I don’t know whose dick you sucked to get into a medium-security lockup, but I’m not gonna sit around and wait here all day. This work order is dated last month, so you had to know about it. Get up off your ass and grab your shit!”

Mosely got busy.

Within five minutes Mosely was walking down the cell block, carrying a box containing his few personal effects and being met by the confused stares of his block mates. Mosely said nothing as the guards brought him away. Minutes later he stood in the holding area near the garage. A guard scanned the bar code on Mosely’s jumpsuit and then scanned the bar code on the work order in the duty officer’s clipboard. The transport officer entered information into a handheld computer, then used it to print out a plastic wrist bracelet. The guard fastened the bracelet onto Mosely’s right arm. It had an alphanumeric sequence on it. Finally, they placed his index finger on an electric fingerprint-capture pad. His fingerprint appeared on a nearby computer monitor—and was instantly matched to an earlier fingerprint on file. There was a beep and the text “ID CONFIRMED” appeared in bold letters.

The systems all had the Warmonk, Inc., logo. It was a high-efficiency operation. It was free enterprise in action.

Next, they led Mosely through a metal detector and afterward chained him hand and foot in preparation for transport. The guard looped a small steel box onto the chain, then pressed a scanner against it. Beep.

He looked up at Mosely. “This is a GPS locator. If your position differs from that of the transport van at any point during the trip, we will be alerted immediately.”

Mosely nodded. He wasn’t about to resist being sent to a less severe prison.

The guards shoved him into a bench seat in the vestibule to wait. He sat there for about an hour before a Fayette County prison transport van backed into the garage bay with a piercing beep…beep…beep.

As they led him out to the garage, a guard walked behind with Mosely’s box of possessions. The guards and the drivers exchanged bar code scans and handheld computer codes. Then they chained Mosely into the passenger area, which was separated from the driver’s area by a floor-to-ceiling metal mesh and a Perspex partition. Within minutes they were on their way, heading out through the prison gates.

Mosely just sat there, stunned at the rapidity with which The Voice had made this come true. He was confused and intensely curious. There was no earthly reason he could think of for him to be transferred to a medium-security facility. He resisted the temptation to hope. Instead he looked out at the prairie grass waving in the breeze as they pulled to the prison entrance on the state highway.

Dozens of American flags fluttered in the wind. They stood in long rows on either side of a brick and concrete sign rising like a wall from the close-cut grass:

Highland Maximum Security Correctional Facility

A Division of Warmonk, Inc.

Mosely arrived at Warmonk’s Fayette County Medium Security Correctional Facility some time after dark. It looked brand-new. The guards in the loading bay exchanged bar code scans with the transport officers and then confirmed Mosely’s identity with the fingerprint scanner. Only then did they take possession of him. They marched him into the holding room, then stopped and looked at each other. One flipped through the clipboard, looking for something. “What’s with the leg irons?” He looked at Mosely. “You cause trouble or something on the way?”

“No. They chained me up in Highland before I got in the van.”

The other guard shrugged. “No note about him causing trouble.”

The first guard selected a key from his ring and started to unlock the irons. “We don’t typically chain somebody doing a two-month disorderly conduct stint.”

A wave of shock passed through Mosely. He hid it as best he could. His criminal record had just been revised—at least within the Warmonk, Inc., databank. This couldn’t be accidental—not even for the retards in the DOC.

The other guard read the clipboard. “How’d you wind up at Highland, for chrissakes?”

Mosely shrugged. “Some screwup.”

Neither of them seemed surprised. The first guard removed the last of the hand and leg irons and hung them from a peg near the door. He then passed Mosely his box of possessions and motioned for him to follow. In a moment, they were moving through a long prison hallway.

Mosely lay on a bottom bunk, staring at his new cell—a modern thing done in white plastic laminates with bulletproof glass. No metal bars in sight. He had no cellmates. The top bunk was empty—and so were the bunks on the other side of the room. It was the most privacy he’d had in four years.

Mosely reviewed the events of the day. The synthetic voice said she would help him. Why? He was a three-time loser with nothing to offer anyone. It wouldn’t be long before this was discovered, and then he would be back at Highland—with five more years tacked on. He turned on his side and tried not to think about it. It was so good to feel somewhat human again. To feel like someone cared. Even if it wasn’t true. He fell asleep dreaming of his little boy and what he must look like now at the age of seven.

The next morning the door to Mosely’s cell opened automatically. He sat up to see two guards standing expectantly in the doorway.

The lead one held a clipboard and glanced at it before looking up again. “Charles Barrington Mosely. Prisoner number 1-1-3-1-9-0-0?”

Mosely nodded warily.

“You’re scheduled for release today. That why they transfer you down here?”

Mosely tried to concentrate on the question and nodded. “Yeah, I’m from Houston.”

“Well, grab your shit.”

Mosely grabbed his box of possessions—still packed up on the floor—and nodded as they motioned for him to leave the cell.

After walking hundreds of yards down corridors lined with white metal doors pierced by bulletproof portals, Mosely was brought through a series of steel security gates. Cameras stared down from every corner high up on the walls.

The next few minutes were a blur. Mosely was led into the release office, where an officer behind a steel grate managed the property room. Racks of shelving behind the officer held boxes containing personal items prisoners surrendered on day one. Nervousness unsettled Mosely’s stomach. His civilian clothing. His jewelry. His wallet. He hadn’t even been at Fayette twenty-four hours yet. There was no way those things could have arrived from Highland. He looked around. But none of these guards were on duty then. He resolved to brass it out. Just stay cool.

The property officer brought a good-sized cardboard box up and scanned a bar code on its side. He looked at the computer screen, then scanned the bar code on Mosely’s jumpsuit. The computer beeped. The officer looked at him. “Mosely.” He slid a slip of paper across the countertop and offered a pen. “Review the contents of the box and sign. If this is not a complete list, follow the instructions in section two-A. You can read?”

Mosely nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The guard slid the box over and removed the lid.

Mosely was numb. He roused himself and pulled the box toward him. On top lay a carefully folded suit jacket, with a crisp boxed shirt and silk tie. These were not his things. He felt the fabric of the suit. Gabardine. Highest quality. He’d had expensive suits in his day. This was excellent stuff. A 48 long. His size. He looked further. Beneath the clothing sat a pair of leather shoes. Black. Highly polished. His size, too. A titanium Rolex watch with a deep blue oyster-shell face lay at the bottom of the box in a manila envelope.

Mosely looked up. The property officer was typing at his grimy keyboard. The other guards were doing paperwork nearby. No one seemed the least bit interested in him. He was closing out a two-month sentence. No big deal.

He searched further in the box. There was an excellent leather bill-fold. Definitely not his. He opened it. A couple hundred dollars in twenties. But no ID—no driver’s license or credit cards. Whose wallet was this? What the hell was he supposed to do for identification? He looked down.

There was also a cell phone. It was small, with an aluminum case. Or was that titanium, too? Lastly, a single copper key lay at the bottom of the box in a separate envelope. He looked at the key from several sides. It had no identifying marks.

“Did you sign?”

Mosely snapped out of it. “Sorry, man.” He hurriedly grabbed the pen and signed receipt of the articles.

The postern gate buzzed and Mosely walked out past the razor-wire fence into a wide parking lot. He squinted at the hot Texas sun, then looked left and right. He could see a few hazy miles to a prairie horizon. Cars swept by on the nearby state highway. A couple of fast-food places stood across the road, along with rows of clapboard houses and a gas station. A bus stop stood straight ahead at the edge of the parking lot.

This was surreal. How was it possible for him to be standing here?

He was already sweating, but he kept the suit jacket on. It made him feel human again. It fit good enough—not great, but it would suffice. The shoes were incredibly comfortable and a better fit. Were his measurements in the Warmonk database, too?

He had no idea what to do next.

Suddenly the cell phone in his pocket warbled. He smiled to himself and pulled the phone out. He flipped it open. The LCD display read:

Jane Doe

He laughed ruefully, then answered it. “Okay, what’s the catch, Jane?”

The familiar, clipped British voice responded. “Hello, Mr. Moze-ly. I kept my promise. Are you prepared to proceed?”

“I suppose I owe you now, is that it?”

“Remember that I am an interactive voice system, Mr. Moze-ly. I cannot understand complete sentences. Please respond to my questions with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“Riiiight.”

“’Yes’ or ‘no’ are the only valid responses. Do you understand?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

“You will notice a GPS map on the screen of your cell phone. It indicates your present position and a destination. Proceed on foot until your position and that of your destination match. I will know when you’ve arrived and will phone you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He was about to ask what the hell this was all about, but he realized it was just a machine. Or at least someone acting like one—either way, they wouldn’t answer questions. She hung up on him. Damn this stupid shit. Just tell me what you want.

He glanced at a local map displayed on the phone’s tiny LCD screen. He started walking. Behind him lay the massive prison walls, and to the right and left there lay only open prairie. Straight ahead lay the downscale little town that served the prison guards. Mosely walked across the parking lot.

A few minutes later he was across the state highway and walking in a mixed-race blue-collar neighborhood. He came to a detached garage with a corrugated steel door. Graffiti roiled colorfully across the center of it. What was with kids nowadays? A good tag was at least recognizable.

Suddenly the phone rang again. Mosely answered it. “’Sup, Jane?”

“Mr. Moze-ly, do you have the key?”

“Yes.”

“Use it to open the garage door. You will find the mechanism to the right. After opening the door, step inside and close it behind you. When the door is safely closed, hit the ‘one’ key on your phone.”

Mosely stifled his growing irritation. This was dangerous and stupid and a million other bad things. He had cash in his pocket and he could just grab a car and run. But to where? He had no ID. He had no connections anymore.

He looked around warily and proceeded to the garage door, pulling the key from his pocket as he walked. The lock was set into the right side of the door frame. He inserted the key and turned it. The garage door rose with a mechanical rattle. He stooped underneath after it had risen a few feet and immediately cast about for danger.

It was a garage. A car of some type sat beneath a blue plastic tarp. Mosely looked around for the door switch. He found it just behind him and pounded the big white button. The door reversed direction. It closed in a few seconds. Mosely stood beneath a dim lightbulb in the sudden silence. The heat and humidity were stifling. He remembered she was still on the line, and he tapped the “1” key, then listened.

Her voice returned. “Good. Uncover the vehicle. You will find it unlocked with the keys inside. Enter the car, and turn the ignition switch to the first position. This will give the car electrical power but will not start the engine.” The line went dead.

Mosely closed the phone and tapped the edge of it to his chin, contemplating. FBI trap? Someone planning to frame him for a bank robbery or a drug deal? Which was it? He stood there for a few minutes. The more he contemplated it, the more it became apparent this was a trap. Still, if he played it smart, he might be able to pull off an escape yet. If nothing else, it was nice to know that someone thought he was worth all this trouble.

He looked for a window to peer out of the garage, but there wasn’t any. Trapped and blind. The only light was the single bare bulb with a motion sensor above it. He craned his neck to see into the shadows on the other side of the covered vehicle. Nothing visible. He looked under the car. Still nothing.

He put the phone away and wiped his sweating face. No way around it. He grabbed the edge of the plastic tarp and pulled it off to reveal the car. He stood staring at it for several moments.

It was a shiny black Lexus LS460 sedan. It looked brand-new. A few years back Mosely had a Lincoln Navigator with twenty-inch chrome rims, a DVD and satellite hookup with ESPN, and a subwoofer the size of a refrigerator in the cargo bay—but that had probably been auctioned off to the next generation of playas by the HPD.

Now this car was a white guy’s car. Conservative. Not an ounce of personality to it. Instead of saying “look at me,” it said “I’m one of you.” It was a conformity ride.

He peered through the windows. Maybe it was the effect of prison, or maybe he was just getting older, but conformity had never looked quite so appealing. He opened the door, and a pleasant chime came to his ears. The dome and door lights lit up the gray leather interior. The off-gassing adhesives left no doubt it was brand-new. Stolen.

Mosely leaned in. The keys were in the ignition.

Not quite yet…

He searched for the trunk latch and tripped it. He heard the trunk pop at the back of the car. Mosely cautiously moved to the rear bumper and lifted the trunk lid.

The trunk did not contain a corpse. Nor was it filled with kilos of cocaine or heroin. It contained only a brown leather two-suiter suitcase and a black leather computer bag. He unzipped the computer bag. A laptop computer. These were not his favorite. He’d had too much data on his the last time he was busted. The computer bag contained numerous pockets, stuffed with pens, legal pads, and cables. One had a stack of business cards snugged into it. He pulled a business card out and read it:

Charles Taylor, Jr.

Executive Vice President, Corporate Counsel

Stratford Systems, Inc.

He pictured some lawyer lying dead in a bayou.

Mosely closed the bag and undid the clasps on the brown two-suiter case, unfolding it. Expensive. With an engraved monogram of “CWT” in the center of a brass plaque. He unzipped the case to reveal a couple of very fine suits (both size 48), shirts, and a tie. The side pockets contained toiletries, boxers, and socks. No weapons, drugs, or anything else. It was looking alarmingly harmless.

I’m a mule. I just don’t know how.

Maybe the body panels were packed with heroin. Welded in place. He closed the suitcase and slammed the trunk. He’d never know.

He took off his suit jacket and laid it on the passenger seat, then sat behind the wheel. He turned the ignition key to the first position. The car’s instrument panel came to life, and a computer screen in the dashboard flickered, revealing a color map. A large arrow indicated his current position and direction.

Suddenly the car phone rang. Mosely looked around. He noticed a phone button on the steering wheel. He pressed it, and the familiar British female voice spoke out over the stereo speakers, startling him. “Good, Mr. Moze-ly. I trust you’ve searched the car and found nothing dangerous. Please open the glove compartment and remove the manila envelope.”

Mosely realized with a start that he hadn’t checked the glove compartment. Stupid. He leaned over and flipped it open. The manila envelope was right on top. He grabbed it and noticed the car’s registration and insurance certificate in a neat plastic sleeve just beneath that. He withdrew the envelope and slammed the glove box. He sat back in the driver’s seat and opened the envelope with a rip.

The Voice returned. “Inside you will find materials necessary for your journey.”

Mosely poured a whole bunch of card-sized objects into his lap. The most noticeable was a Texas driver’s license with his picture on it. Alongside his picture was the name Charles W. Taylor, Jr., and a Houston address. The license looked and felt real—holograms and all. There was also a stack of platinum credit cards in his lap—Visa, American Express, MasterCard, Discover—all in the name of Charles Taylor, and a couple of them had the Stratford Systems, Inc., name beneath his. There were more of his business cards, a gym membership, a University of Southern California Alumni Association card with his name on it, a Houston Bar Association ID, and then there were dozens of credit card receipts from all sorts of businesses—restaurants mostly—that ranged from $97 to $1,780. The charges were from the last few days. There was also a two-page hotel receipt for the Hyatt Regency in Austin. The bill was $6,912. Taylor’s signature was the barest squiggle of a line—very easy to forge.

He looked in the envelope and found a few more items. There were several wallet-sized photos of a very attractive mixed-race woman. One a formal portrait and others casual photos: her in a tropical location, another of her laughing with skis over her shoulder near a lodge. She was incredibly fine.

This was a complete identity. An identity he preferred to his own.

The Voice continued. “Place these items in your wallet. Memorize your new name. When you are ready to proceed, say the word ‘ready.’”

Mosely started fitting the items into his wallet. This was getting interesting. If he wanted to make a break, he had all the tools necessary. As soon as he had everything stowed in his wallet. He grabbed the steering wheel. “Ready.”

“Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the controls of this vehicle. Adjust the mirrors and seat. Note the location of the headlight and wiper controls.” There was a pause. “When you are ready to proceed, say the word ‘ready.’”

Mosely reflexively shrugged it off and was about to say ”Ready” instantly. But he thought better of it. If he owned this car, then he’d know where everything was. She was right. He took several minutes learning the layout. He even pulled out the owner’s manual and flipped through it. As he did so, he glanced at the registration. It was a company car leased by Stratford Systems, Inc. Taylor had a company car.

After Mosely was satisfied he knew where all the controls were, he sat up again. “Ready.”

“Fasten your seat belt and start the car.”

He did as instructed. The car started smoothly. After a few moments, cooler AC air washed over him. He fanned it onto his sweaty face, then pulled the driver’s door closed.

He gunned the engine. He could barely hear it. He had to trust the tachometer. What self-respecting car had a noiseless engine?

Her voice came again. “Above the rearview mirror you will notice three buttons. These are home automation controls. Click the left one to open the garage door in front of you.”

He paused a moment. If there was going to be a raid or an ambush, now was the time. Oh hell…can’t live forever. He hit the button. The garage door rose to reveal…

An empty street in a ratty blue-collar neighborhood. He breathed easier.

She kept talking. “Drive out of the garage and turn right. Then continue to the Stop sign at the end of the street….”

He drove out of the garage. Her voice guided Mosely, turn by turn, through town and toward the interstate. He kept one eye on the rearview mirror, looking for signs he was being followed. He’d done that a lot as a dealer. But there was almost no one on the road here.

“Get into the left lane, and take the entrance to the Ten East.”

Mosely considered his situation. He had money. A fast car and ID. Maybe he could get some distance between himself and these people—maybe even reach Mexico. This was so obviously a setup. He couldn’t stand it another minute.

Mosely changed to the right lane and prepared to take the 10 West.

Her voice came on again over the speakerphone. “Mr. Moze-ly, get in the left lane.”

He kept driving toward the westbound interstate entrance ramp. “Sorry, Jane. I’m not your man.” He hung up the line.

The car immediately stalled. It bucked to a stop in the middle of the road.

“Damnit!” Mosely tried to restart it as a good ol’ boy in a pickup truck came up behind him and honked. He could hear the guy cursing before the man screeched around him and gave him the finger. Mosely tried the key again, but the engine wasn’t even turning over. Nothing.

Then the car phone rang. Mosely looked around to see if any local police were watching. They’d come over to help get him out of traffic, if nothing else. He was a sitting duck. Mosely clicked the speakerphone button. “I got your point. Fix the engine, please.”

Her voice was unperturbed. “Get in the left lane and merge onto the Ten East.”

He tried the engine again, and it started right up. He accelerated into the left lane and then took the eastbound highway entrance ramp. The car accelerated smoothly and with impressive power. But his hands were still shaking, the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. He had no desire to go back to Highland.

Her voice came over the eight speakers. “If you disobey me again, I will activate the satellite anti-theft system in this car. It will alert local law enforcement and give its precise location.”

“Okay, Jane, I fucked up. Won’t happen again.”

“Keep driving. Stay within five miles of the speed limit, and signal all lane changes. If you deviate from my instructions, I will return you to Warmonk, Inc., and bear in mind, Mr. Moze-ly: if I can erase your prison record, I can just as easily expand it. Life without the possibility of parole. Child molesters are the lowest in the prison social order, are they not?”

This chilled him to the core. Going back to prison was one thing. Going back as a pederast was quite something else. Death was preferable.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.” No flippant responses this time. She had his full attention.

Mosely kept the car aimed at the distant horizon. A passing sign told him Houston lay 102 miles ahead.

Chapter 26:// Judgment

Agent Roy Merritt stood stiffly—eyes straight ahead—one hand resting on his cane for support. Burn scars traced across his neck and chin above his suit collar. More scars were visible on the back of his hand as he straightened his tie. Agent Roy Merritt. No one called him Tripwire anymore. The men who had were long gone. He’d led them to their deaths.

Merritt focused his eyes on a frieze of workers building a glorious tomorrow. The image was set into the wall, done in the 1930s, art deco style—a WPA project. Master craftsmen had built this entire building, dispossessed workers in the throes of the Great Depression. The ornamental ceiling. The paneled walls and the inlaid granite floor. This room was a masterpiece. Their own dreams lay in ruins, and they built this temple to democracy. His forebears were tougher than he ever thought he could be.

Merritt stood before a narrow table, placed in the center of the room. Arrayed in front of him were congressional committee members, sitting high in judgment behind a richly carved oak judges’ bench. Microphones jutted up before each of them. They shuffled through papers, reading with their bifocals low on their noses.

The committee chairman looked up and pulled the microphone toward him. “You may be seated, Agent Merritt.” The words echoed flatly in the empty gallery. It was a confidential committee hearing. No one but Merritt and the committee members were present.

“Sir.” Merritt limped to the chair and sat rigidly.

The chairman regarded him. “Agent Merritt, it is the responsibility of this committee to investigate the tactical failures that led to a record loss of federal officers in October of last year at the estate of the late Matthew Sobol. We have already heard relevant testimony from all bureau personnel and local law enforcement officers who were at the scene, and now that you have sufficiently recovered from your injuries, we would like to close out our investigation with your testimony on this matter.”

He paused and lowered his sheaf of papers. “Before we begin, let me state for the record, Mr. Merritt, that this committee is aware of the many personal sacrifices you have made for this country, both here and overseas following September 11th. We have the highest regard for both your personal courage and your patriotism.”

Merritt stared at the floor in front of him. He said nothing.

The chairman picked up the papers and turned to the senator on his right. “Senator Tilly, you may proceed.”

Tilly was a white-haired, loose-jowled man—like most of the legislators in attendance. He glanced at his notes and then stared at Merritt. He spoke in a Southern drawl that seemed strangely in keeping with the proceedings. “Agent Merritt. We have reviewed both your written repoats—the first dated ten March and the second from three April—and these documents do not shed any light on one crucial question: why did you force entry into Sobol’s mansion after being ordered to abort your mission?”

Merritt barely looked up at Tilly. He took a breath. “I have no explanation, Senator.”

The senators exchanged looks. The chairman leaned in to his mic.

“Mr. Merritt, it is your duty to provide—”

“My team was dead. Because of me. I was injured and angry, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Tilly responded immediately. “You weren’t thinking clearly? Because of your injuries or because of your anger?”

He looked down at the floor again. “Because of my anger.”

“So you were angry. Do you feel this released you from your duty?”

“No, I do not, sir.”

“And you were angry at Matthew Sobol?”

Merritt nodded.

The chairman leaned in again. “Agent Merritt, please state your response.”

Merritt looked up. “I was angry at Sobol, correct. I wanted to shut him down.”

Tilly resumed. “So this was before you learned that the so-called ‘Daemon’ did not exist?”

“That’s correct.” He paused. “I know it’s my fault the house burned down, Senator.”

The chairman motioned for Tilly to hold off, then turned to Merritt. “The committee will judge who’s at fault—if fault is to be found. Please just answer the questions.”

Tilly pressed on. “To be clear: did you not enter the house to take refuge from the fire on the lawn?”

Were they giving him an out? He thought of the dead faces of his men. Their fatherless children. He wouldn’t take the easy way out. “No. I meant to destroy the Daemon.”

Tilly glanced at the chairman with some exasperation, then turned back to Merritt. “This was your sole reason for entering the mansion?”

Merritt looked up. “Yes.”

Tilly flipped through the pages of Merritt’s reports.

There was silence for a moment.

The chairman looked gravely at Merritt. “Agent Merritt, I can only imagine the horror you’ve been through, but because of your actions the mansion and all the outbuildings burned to the ground—destroying evidence that might have helped to locate and convict Sebeck’s accomplices.”

Merritt knew this all too well. He thought of little else nowadays.

The chairman looked down his glasses. “Let’s bring this fish to the boat, shall we?” He flipped through his papers, then looked up. “You say you have very little recollection of how you survived the fire. You write in your report”—he lifted his glasses and read from the page—“‘my tac-suit must have kept me afloat in the water and turned me upright.’” The chairman lowered the page. “And yet, you were found a hundred feet east of the location you indicated as the mouth of the pit. It might be very hard, Mr. Merritt, but can you recall anything—absolutely anything—of the layout or contents of the cellars before you lost consciousness?”

Merritt stared at the floor. Not a night went by that he didn’t recall fleeting images of terror from that night. The trapdoor above him engulfed in flames. Flaming wood falling down upon him. The air in his gas mask growing warmer—suffocating him slowly. The sudden explosion. The cinderblock wall blasting apart near him, sending fragments into his leg. A rush of water. Falling as it flowed out into a room of fire. The flood of water roiling around him. Scalding steam. Like a scene of hell itself. Crawling. Then the water sweeping him—converging with another stream and sucking him across the center of the inferno as he struggled for air. The rush of water. Tumbling down steps into the wine cellar and landing in the pool gathered there at the lowest spot in the house.

He didn’t regain consciousness until four days later in the burn unit at USC. Months of agony followed. His wife’s loving eyes. The faces of his girls. Faces he thought he’d never see again. Faces that gave him the courage to face each agonizing day.

He had no recollection of floor plans or equipment or schematics. It was all just a sea of fire.

He shook his head slowly.

The senators looked at each other. The chairman nodded. “Well, Agent Merritt, I must tell you this is not easy. Six men died under your command, and the entire estate was lost—by your own admission—due to your attempts to penetrate the server room—contrary to orders. This committee has no choice but to recommend to Director Bennett that you be put on a disciplinary suspension, pending final judgment in this matter.”

The words fell on Merritt like slabs of rock. It felt like the last ounce of breath had been crushed out of him. He couldn’t speak.

The chairman picked up his gavel and rapped it twice with an echoing clack-clack. “This hearing is adjourned.”

Merritt limped down the steps of the Capitol, thinking hard on the changes in his life since that October night. But today was a beautiful spring day. The cherry trees blossomed along the Potomac. He gazed across the National Mall at the monuments built by the valiant generations that came before him.

All he ever wanted was to serve his country.

But he’d failed. And all of the conspirators except Sebeck had escaped, possibly because of Merritt’s foolhardiness. His career was over.

He limped onward, along a landscaped sidewalk beneath budding oak trees. Men and women in uniform or suits scurried this way and that in groups of two or three, clutching briefcases and talking earnestly. Merritt needed time to think. Time to figure out what he was going to say to his wife.

He eased onto a park bench and gazed out at the National Mall. The business of government was carrying on without him.

Merritt was still lost in thought as a nondescript man in a nondescript suit approached and sat down on the far end of the bench. Merritt bristled slightly. All he wanted was to be left alone.

The man spoke without looking at him. “The house didn’t hold any important information, Agent Merritt.”

Merritt stopped short and turned to glare at the man—a federal bureaucrat type, late twenties. The kind of person you forgot even while you were looking at him. Cheap gray suit, unkempt brown hair, lime green shirt with a striped tie, leatherette attaché case. Merritt saw a federal ID badge hanging off the man’s lapel:

Littleton, Leonard

General Services Administration

Merritt finally looked up into the man’s eyes, narrowing his own. “What did you say to me?”

“I said: Sobol’s house was a trap. It didn’t hold anything important.”

“Yeah? What the hell do you know about it?”

Littleton’s reaction surprised Merritt. He didn’t shrink back. He didn’t even seem surprised.

“I know a lot. In fact, I know more than any man alive.”

Merritt frowned. There was something about those eyes. The nose. He’d seen this man before. But where?

Littleton sensed that Merritt was trying to place him. “No, you don’t know me, Agent Merritt. But you know of me.”

Merritt studied Littleton’s face.

Littleton zipped open his ratty attaché, producing a small notebook computer about the size of a thin hardcover book. Littleton dropped his attaché without concern and flipped open the computer.

It turned out to be a portable DVD player.

“Who are you? A reporter?”

Littleton ignored him and instead hit the PLAY button, then turned the screen to face Merritt.

In a moment Merritt was taken back to that night many months ago. The video screen showed him standing in Sobol’s entertainment room, eyes bloody, face blistered, nose bleeding—a smoking shotgun in his hand. It was an isometric perspective, looking down on him from near the ceiling. A slightly grainy image, as though from a security camera.

On the screen Merritt was reloading. He looked up and shouted, “I’m going to shut you down, Sobol!” And that voice behind him—but the voice didn’t register at all on the video. It was as if the Merritt on the DVD screen was a schizophrenic—hearing voices. Merritt saw himself turn and fire point-blank into the wall behind him.

The real Merritt shook himself out of his stunned silence and dropped his cane with a clatter onto the sidewalk. He leaned over to Littleton, whispering urgently. “Where did you get this?”

Littleton snapped the DVD player closed. “From the source.”

“What source?”

“The Daemon.”

Littleton leaned down to pick up Merritt’s cane while Merritt groped for words.

It suddenly dawned on Merritt. He pointed a tentative finger. “You’re Jon Ross.”

He extended the cane to Merritt. “I once was, yes. That seems like ages ago now.”

“The FBI’s Most Wanted man.”

“I suppose I’m manna from heaven to you. You could quickly get yourself reinstated if you turned me in. Maybe even decorated—which, on a personal note, I think is overdue.”

Merritt felt reflexively for his shoulder holster—then remembered that he didn’t have a weapon on him. He had come for a congressional committee hearing. It would have created an unnecessary hassle going through the metal detectors with a gun.

Merritt smiled calmly. “What’s to stop me from turning you in?”

“My innocence. And the fact that you’re a man who loves this country.”

Merritt tried to resist the appeal to his wounded patriotism. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

He got his emotions under control. “What did you do to Mr. Littleton?” He ripped off the Littleton ID badge. “Where is he? Dead?”

Ross laughed. “No, of course not.”

Merritt examined the badge. Plastic. It had Ross’s picture on it. But it was blank on the back, unlike real federal IDs.

“Not Littleton’s fault. He was eating lunch on a park bench. A digital camera with a zoom lens gave me a close-up image of his ID badge. I used a graphics program to paste in my own photo, then a portable card printer. All from the confines of my car.” Ross frowned. “No smart chip inside, though. So I couldn’t actually get into a federal building. But it’s very good for moving around the public spaces without arousing suspicion.”

Merritt pocketed the ID. “You’re under arrest, Mr. Ross.”

“The Daemon exists, Agent Merritt. No living person was running the defenses in that house. You know it’s true. Now imagine the exact same thing loose in the world, and you’ll have some idea what we’re up against.”

Merritt paused, but then shook his head. “No. I don’t know that. I was angry—”

“They didn’t tell you everything they knew. Didn’t you think it strange that they sent a hostage rescue team in to bridge a pit? It’s because they knew they were sending you against a barricaded suspect.”

“Tell your story in court.”

“I’m not an American citizen. I don’t think I get a trial.”

“Either way, you’re coming with me.”

Ross just gave Merritt an impatient look. “Agent Merritt, I watched you go through the metal detectors earlier. I know you’re unarmed.”

Son of a bitch.

“I, on the other hand, am armed—so I suggest you listen to what I have to say. Because after the shooting starts, there will be no more talk—and you may never get the answers to those questions that keep you up at night.”

They said Ross was slippery. Merritt did need answers. He looked beyond Ross at two Capitol Hill police walking in the distance. He knew he wouldn’t call them. Not yet.

He looked back at Ross. “Okay. I do want answers. For one: why on earth should I believe anything you say? If you were the mastermind behind the Daemon hoax, then, of course, you’d have a copy of that video. It doesn’t prove anything.”

“But why would I risk my neck to come down here to show it to you? What would I gain?”

Merritt tumbled it around in his mind, looking for the angle. He couldn’t see one, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. “Then where the hell did you get it?”

“It was screened on the secret altar of the Dark Faction in the Kingdom of Cifrain.”

Merritt just stared at him.

Ross noticed the look. “Don’t any cops play online games? Cifrain is the largest kingdom in Sobol’s online computer game The Gate. What you’re looking at here, Agent Merritt, is a recruitment video.”

“A recruitment video.” Merritt said it matter-of-factly.

He recalled the news reports at the time of the estate siege. The Feds had shut down The Gate. CyberStorm relaunched it in China—and the lawsuits were still pending. But the game rocketed in sales after the crisis. The free publicity couldn’t have hurt.

Merritt remembered screen shots. He was thinking of the possibilities for a secret organization—meeting in the dark corners of an imaginary world.

“You’re saying that the Daemon is recruiting people inside a computer game? Recruiting them for what?”

“That’s the big question.”

“And how did you manage to get your hands on this video?”

Ross grinned. “Because I’m leet. I was good enough to attract the notice of the Daemon. And I successfully navigated the Ugran—the death course.”

“If this Daemon existed, why would it care that you were good at a game? So what? It just means you have lots of time on your hands….”

Ross raised his eyebrows and waited.

It suddenly dawned on Merritt. “…which is the case for most misfits.” Merritt was starting to see the devilish logic in it. Wasn’t Sobol famous for devilish logic? Hadn’t Merritt seen it at his estate?

Ross slid the DVD player back into his cheap attaché case. “The Daemon tested my knowledge of cryptography and networked systems. I was shown the video to establish the veracity of the Daemon’s claims. The entire estate siege was captured by Sobol’s security cameras. He has a clickable presentation in the inner sanctums of his online world. It shows every moment of the siege, from inside and outside the house. For the typical black-hat hacker, this video establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Daemon is authentic.”

Merritt was shaking his head, but not vigorously.

“In fact, this video has gone viral in the darknet. Among Daemon operatives you’re something of a larger-than-life hero, Agent Merritt.”

“For what?”

“For surviving the worst that Sobol could throw at you. You’re darknet-famous.”

“What’s a darknet?”

“Not a darknet, the darknet. Imagine a network, like the Internet, but more sophisticated and much more exclusive, populated only by humans the Daemon has recruited.”

Merritt frowned.

Ross changed the subject. “In any event the Daemon detected my video applet, and I was ejected before I could capture the whole thing. If it knew my real name and address, I suppose I would be dead now. But it doesn’t know my real name. No one does. And no one ever can.”

Merritt wasn’t thinking about calling for backup anymore. What if Ross was telling the truth? Far from being over, something might just be starting. Something terrible. He looked up at Ross. “I’ll need to see more evidence.”

“That can be arranged.” He stood and motioned for Merritt to follow him. “Walk with me.”

Merritt struggled to his feet and limped after Ross as he headed off through the park.

“I’m innocent, Agent Merritt. So is Peter Sebeck.”

“The detective?” Merritt remembered the local cop who had been convicted in the conspiracy. “He’s on death row.”

“Yes. That’s partly why I’m here.”

“So that’s the angle; you’re here to free your partner.”

“For godsakes, who would be smart enough to steal a couple hundred million dollars, but then stupid enough to wire the money to tax havens controlled by Western intelligence agencies? Why would Sebeck keep fake passports in safe deposit boxes under his own name? Sobol stole Sebeck’s identity.”

Merritt smirked. “And this Daemon stole your identity, too, I imagine?”

Ross shook his head. “No. Sobol didn’t anticipate me, and his Daemon still doesn’t know who I am. But it’s trying to find out—because I’m the only one fighting it.”

Merritt regarded him. “So, who are you, Mr. Ross?”

“I already told you, no one—”

“I don’t want your name. I want to know who you are.”

They walked on for a while in silence, Ross considering the question. Before long he turned to Merritt. “I came here on an H1-B visa.”

“A foreign tech worker?”

“Yes. I was brought in for Y-two-K remediation and stayed through the Internet bubble. They billed us out as expert developers to large multinational corporations at two hundred and twenty dollars an hour.”

“Who billed you out?”

“The Russian mafia.”

Merritt let out an involuntary laugh.

Ross sighed. “There was a lot of money sloshing around back then—and a lot of Russian tech talent. An illegal trade developed.”

Merritt’s instinct was to keep laughing. Except he couldn’t think of any particular reason why it couldn’t be true. It seemed all too possible. Was he being naïve again?

Ross urged Merritt to keep moving. “We developed secure e-commerce sites and Web solutions. Pound for pound, we probably pulled in more revenue than prostitutes—plus, the money didn’t need to be laundered.”

“Get to the part where you become an identity thief.”

“The tech bust. There was a falling-out between some of our handlers toward the end. I took advantage of the confusion to disappear. Most of my compatriots were brought back to the Russian Federation, where I assume they are still in servitude to this day. I stole an American identity—a Mr. Jon Ross. He had a suitable academic background for my purposes.”

“Where did you learn how to do that?”

“I worked on a lot of credit card systems and projects for various state governments. I learned how the systems work, and I created a place for myself within them.” He looked up at Merritt. “I just wanted my freedom, Agent Merritt. I never stole from Mr. Ross. In fact, he sold me his identity, and I substantially improved his FICO score.”

“How is it you speak English so well? You sound like you’re from Ohio.”

“My father worked with the Russian consulate here in D.C. during the Cold War.” Ross pointed toward the Potomac. “I grew up in Fairfax.”

Merritt kept shaking his head—but then, he didn’t know what to believe.

Ross grew somber. “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we were recalled to Russia. My father was murdered by Communist hard-liners in the 1992 coup attempt.”

Merritt searched for signs of dissembling—rapid facial movements, fluttering of the eyes. Ross displayed only a wistful calm. A melancholy.

In a few moments Ross brightened. “Well, that was a long time ago.” He gestured to the government buildings around them. “I have always held a deep admiration for the founding fathers of your republic. Your Constitution and your Bill of Rights were an incredible gift to mankind. Although lately America appears to have strayed from the path set forth by its founders.”

Merritt regarded him with some annoyance. “Well, that’s swell of you to emerge from the wreckage of Communism to tell us we’ve strayed from the true path. That means so much, coming from an admitted thief. And your theory about the Daemon would also be great, except for the mountain of evidence pointing straight at Detective Sebeck, and Cheryl Lanthrop, and you.”

Ross tried to talk, but Merritt steamrolled onward. “Sebeck admitted to having an affair with Lanthrop. She was the same person who pulled millions out of offshore banks before the funds were frozen.”

Ross shook his head. “Sobol could have stolen her identity, too.”

Merritt was nonplussed. “There’s bank camera video of her withdrawing funds. She was a medical executive in a position to betray Sobol.”

“Sobol had a controlling interest in that MRI company. He could have placed anyone he wanted there.”

“Well, she conveniently turned up dead in Belize, so I guess we’ll never know. And you—or someone working with you—probably put the bullet in her head. Or did a computer do that, too?”

“She was killed four months ago. By then the Daemon had people working for it. Namely, the criminal rings running online gambling and pornography—very dangerous people. Take my word for it.”

“Right. I’m sure you can figure out a way to work in alien abduction and crop circles, too.”

“Agent—”

“I’m not an idiot, Mr. Ross—or whatever your name is. You had every motive and every capability of killing Lanthrop, Pavlos, Singh, and the others. You had tens of millions of motives—all of them currently stuck in frozen bank accounts.”

“If I did all that, why would I have come within miles of this case? Why would I have assisted Sebeck at all?”

“Because you’re vain. Or so smart you think everyone else is stupid.”

“The video Sobol sent to Sebeck—”

“That e-mail was analyzed and determined not to be Sobol, and the only person who ever spoke to Sobol on the phone was Sebeck. The message from Boerner left on Sebeck’s voice mail? Also not Sobol. Then there’s the Hummer at the estate that tried to kill everyone but you and Pete Sebeck. What am I leaving out, Mr. Ross?”

Ross looked Merritt in the eye. “Pete Sebeck is innocent. So am I.”

“Well, if you guys didn’t commit the murders and the embezzlement, then I’m supposed to believe Sobol did?”

Ross nodded.

“Why would Sobol throw away tens of millions of dollars just to frame Sebeck?”

“To make everyone believe the Daemon doesn’t exist.”

“And what would that accomplish?”

“If you don’t believe something exists, you won’t try to stop it.”

Merritt halted. It had a nasty, effective simplicity—an ant climbing through the chinks of his armor. There was no ignoring it. He pondered it for a few more moments. “The murders, the stock swindle, they were all just the beginning of something bigger?”

Ross didn’t even look at Merritt. “I know it for a fact.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say the Daemon exists. If Sobol didn’t want anyone to stop his plan, then why would he make the Daemon famous to begin with?”

“To create a global brand. One that is instantly recognizable. One that will rally the disaffected to his cause. Worldwide.”

“And what cause is that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Merritt limped along silently.

“Agent Merritt, I know this much: the Daemon is growing in power. It’s not visible yet, but soon it will show itself. When it does, bad things will happen.”

Merritt glanced around again to see if anyone was watching. No one nearby. He turned back to Ross. “Turn yourself in, Jon. I’ll do everything I can—”

Ross shook his head. “If I get locked in a cell and news of my capture is sent through the wrong e-mail server, I’m as good as dead.”

“We have a witness protection program—”

“Don’t even try.”

“What about going to the media?”

“The Daemon has infiltrated the media, Agent Merritt.”

Merritt rolled his eyes. “How the hell does a computer program infiltrate the media?”

“News organizations use data systems to prioritize, track, and prepare stories. The last thing we want to do is get this into the news. Even before it reaches the airwaves, the Daemon will know about me. That is, if the story ever reaches the airwaves.”

“Now I’m supposed to believe the Daemon controls the media?”

“Controls, no. Influences, yes. There are only five major media companies in the world. It doesn’t take a lot to influence content—particularly if you are inside their systems and you have secured key people.”

Merritt was still shaking his head.

Ross looked uncomfortable. “I’ve stayed too long.” He started heading for a nearby bus stop.

Merritt limped after him. “You said you were going to show me evidence of the Daemon. I’m not letting you out of my sight until you do. I’ll start howling bloody murder if you try to leave.”

“I have irrefutable proof that the Daemon exists. But you have to trust me—”

“The hell I do.”

“Why would I risk everything to come talk to you, and then never contact you again? I want something from you.”

“What?”

“Your help.”

Merritt laughed ruefully. “It’s my help now? The nads on you…”

“I need you to get a message to Dr. Natalie Philips at the NSA.” Ross handed Merritt a piece of paper. “I can be reached at this e-mail address. At least for a while.”

Merritt glanced at it. An inscrutable e-mail address consisting of random numbers and letters was printed neatly on it. “Why don’t you contact her yourself?”

“Let’s just say she’s unlisted. But you can probably find her. Tell her that she can get in direct contact with me at that e-mail address. Tell her that I found the back door in Sobol’s game. If she doubts my identity, tell her that I was there when Sobol phoned Sebeck at the funeral.”

Merritt saw a policeman walking along the Mall not far away. He squeezed the piece of paper in his hand. Then sighed and turned back to Ross. “I want something, too.”

“Okay. What?”

“Give me that DVD.”

Ross popped the DVD out of the player and then hesitated. “Agent Merritt, I wouldn’t watch this if I were you. Your squad burns to death on camera. It’s very disturbing.”

Merritt hesitated, too. His hand wavered. Then he took it. “They say you’re a master con artist. I promise you: if you caused the death of my men, I’ll hunt you down. No matter how long it takes.”

Ross met his gaze. “I would expect no less.”

Merritt slipped the disc into his coat pocket.

“Don’t show that video to anyone. Not yet. If the Daemon knows you’re on to it, it will kill you.”

“Yeah, I’m shaking like a leaf.”

Ross headed toward the bus stop.

Merritt limped after him. “When do I get to see this irrefutable proof?”

“I’ll contact you.”

They reached the bus stop shelter, slathered with advertising posters. Ross peered down the street to see a bus—any bus—coming down the block. He turned to Merritt again. “I’ll show you everything I know about the Daemon.” He looked seriously into Merritt’s eyes. “I think your republic is in danger, Agent Merritt. I don’t know who else to turn to. Please realize I came to you because I saw that video, and I know you are a courageous man. That’s what your republic needed at its founding. And it’s what it needs now.”

Merritt felt the rush return. Love for his country swelled within him. Was he being naïve? He had always wanted a grand purpose. He avoided eye contact for the shame he felt in having his buttons so easily pushed.

The bus squealed to a stop. The doors opened. Ross turned without a word and merged into the line of commuters. In a few moments he was aboard.

Merritt watched the bus pull away, still wrestling over whether or not to alert the police. He committed the bus number and license plate to memory.

Had he really just let the FBI’s Most Wanted man go? He withdrew the DVD from his jacket pocket and looked at it. It bore the handwritten title Sobol’s House.

To Merritt, something had never seemed quite right about the Daemon hoax. Something about it just seemed too tidy. In his heart he had always had doubts, but after the deaths of his men it seemed self-serving to question the simple story. High-tech experts had declared the matter resolved.

But months ago in Sobol’s mansion, Merritt had seen and heard things no one had ever satisfactorily explained.

He looked around at the oblivious commuters waiting for their buses. He limped back the way he came. There was physical therapy to do. He would be ready for what was coming, and this time he would not fail his country—whether or not Ross was behind it all.

As Merritt moved away through the crowd, he didn’t notice the six-foot-tall bus stop poster framed behind graffiti-carved Lexan. It boasted a medium close-up of Anji Anderson, all business, arms folded, set against an infinity background. She glowered at passersby from above the logo of her network news show, News to America. The tag line read:

“The Most Trusted Name in News…”

Chapter 27:// Mind Mapping

Charles Mosely walked across the sunny corporate plaza and cast a glance back at the Lexus sitting curbside a hundred feet behind him. He wasn’t comfortable leaving his ride behind—but then again, The Voice was able to kill the engine at will, so it probably didn’t matter.

A few corporate drones in business suits lock-stepped across the plaza, briefcases in hand. Mosely realized that he must look like one of them.

A fountain occupied the center of the square. It was a dancing display of computer-controlled water jets, recirculating hundreds of gallons per second. Mosely walked around it, just now noticing how many things must be controlled by computers. It wasn’t intelligence, but then again most things in life didn’t really require intelligence.

Gleaming twenty-story high-rises stood on either side of a four-story medical plaza. He walked straight toward the green-glass medical plaza.

The logo over the glass doors read:

fMRI Partners

This was the name The Voice had given him. The landscaping and architecture were impressive. Somebody had put in little grass-carpeted mounds topped with cherry trees. It was pricey real estate. The whole district was dotted with fancy corporate towers. It was not a place where he had had reason to spend time back when he lived in Houston, and the police in these neighborhoods were always crazy suspicious of brothers. Still, he hadn’t been stopped on the way in. Must’ve been the suit and the white-guy car. For the first time he considered that classism might trump racism.

Mosely approached the glass doors and was about to push when they slid away noiselessly to either side. A blast of refrigerated air washed over him. The hot and humid outside air collided with it, creating a mini squall line at the entrance. He stepped straight through and into a minimalist corporate lobby. The doors hissed closed behind him. His heels clicked as he crossed the tiled lobby floor.

The company logo was repeated in bold letters on the back wall behind the receptionist’s desk. The desk itself was the typical front-office bunker designed to look like a welding accident. The receptionist was a creamy-skinned blonde in her twenties who had either been born gorgeous or been modified to be that way. Didn’t matter to Mosely. She was the prettiest woman he’d seen in years.

She was speaking on a wireless headset and smiled at him, mouthing I’ll be right with you. Her red lipstick almost burned images onto his corneas.

He glanced around at the high ceiling, spotlights focused on jutting peninsulas of brushed steel. It was like a car showroom without the cars. No chairs anywhere in sight, either. Welcome. Now get the fuck out.

In a moment she hung up. One could never really tell with headsets, but she focused her gaze on him and smiled. “Mr. Taylor. You’re expected. Please go right in.”

Twin blond wood doors opened automatically in the wall beyond. They revealed a hallway that shared distant architectural relations with the lobby.

Mosely stared at the opening for a moment, then turned to the receptionist. “Listen, baby, you want to explain just what the hell I’m doing here?”

“Well, for one thing, I don’t like being called ‘baby’ any more than you’d like to be called ‘boy.’”

“That’s just it, though. I feel like I’m a ‘boy’ brought down here to the plantation house.” He leaned close. “You know what goes on up in here. You wanna help me out?”

She regarded him coolly. “Here’s some help: you’re expected through those doors.”

Mosely straightened. “A company girl.” He started for the opening. “That why they pay you the big bucks?”

She watched him warily.

Once he passed the threshold, the doors closed behind him with a click, sealing him in. He just smirked. “Mosely, you dumb ass.” He kept walking down a nicely appointed hallway. It stretched a good fifty feet. There were no doors to either side, just tasteful artwork—ink drawings with as few lines as possible. He approached the set of double doors at the far end of the hall, and—as he expected—they opened noiselessly to admit him.

They revealed a colder, empty room with a dark granite floor, harsh lighting, and a lofty ceiling not visible from where he stood. Two men in white orderly coats and comfortable shoes stood in the center of the room. They were muscular, one black, one Asian. Their hair cropped close. No jewelry. They didn’t have an unfriendly look in their eyes, but neither were they extending leis in welcome. They both nodded from twenty feet away. The black guy, the bigger of the two, spoke first. “Mr. Taylor.”

Mosely stood in the doorway. He wasn’t about to leave its relative safety. “I don’t know what you want Taylor for, but I ain’t him.”

“We know you’re not Taylor.”

“Then why you callin’ me Taylor?”

“Because sack of shit would be derogatory.”

Mosely digested this first hint of trouble. He glanced around. “Where’s the white guy?”

“What white guy?”

“Oh, don’t give me that shit, brother. There’s always a white guy. Ain’t no brother gonna go through all this trouble just to get some nigga jumpin’ through hoops.”

They stared impassively. The big one spoke again. “If you’re trying to ingratiate yourself with a racial or class-based dialect—save your breath.”

Not good. Mosely shifted uneasily. He glanced behind him. Somehow another set of blond wood doors had closed ten feet behind him. He hadn’t heard a thing. Didn’t even feel the air move. He immediately got onto the balls of his feet, casting about for danger.

“Mr. Taylor, please step forward.”

“Fuck you! Tell me why I’m here.”

“Would you prefer to be in prison?”

“Right about now, I’d say ‘hell yeah.’”

They both chuckled.

Definitely not good.

“Look, if it’s any consolation, we’ve been through this, too.”

“Yeah? What’s ‘this’ precisely?”

“Just step into the room, please.”

“I want some answers, goddamnit. I’m not moving until I find out just who the fuck is behind this and why they brought me here!” His voice echoed into the room.

“We have no desire to harm you.”

“Then pack your no-neck ass up the way you came and get the cracker-in-chief out here. Now!”

The two men exchanged looks and sighed. Then they marched with purpose toward his position in the doorway.

Mosely pulled off his tie. No good wearing a noose to a brawl. He wrapped the silk fabric around his right fist. In a few moments he was dancing, fists ready in the doorway. “Come on, Knick and Knack! You want a piece a this? Come get some!”

The two men stopped walking. They seemed disarmingly nonchalant. There was a subtle look in the big one’s eye. A gentle nod to a target past Mosely. Oldest trick in the book. But still…

Mosely cast a quick glance behind him. The doors were gone, and now there were half a dozen burly men of several races standing right behind him. One extended a silver stick into Mosely’s side. There was an electric pop, and Mosely dropped like a sack of bone meal. He remembered nothing more.

He awoke spread-eagled on a table in the center of a larger room. His suit had been replaced by lighter clothing, and his limbs felt constrained. He tried to turn his head to look, but even his head was clamped tight, with some sort of vise pressed in on his temples.

He reflexively struggled against his bonds. After a few moments thrashing, he concluded they might as well have been welded to the side of the Queen Mary. They weren’t going anywhere. He also felt the sting of something in his right arm—like an intravenous needle.

Beyond the valley of not good.

He cleared his throat. “All right. We got off on the wrong foot. I see that now.”

Medical experiments.

He had always been a courageous man—mostly because he didn’t particularly care whether he lived or died—but there was something about the sterile, impersonal cruelty of this place that reached in, grabbed him by the brain stem, and wouldn’t let go. A primordial terror welled up inside him.

“Hey! If you’re gonna torture me, then the least you can do is talk about it first.”

A bizarre sound stopped him cold. It seemed to be emanating from around his head and sounded like a jackhammer as heard through thirty feet of rock. It was hammering impossibly fast. Then slow. Then it actually made chirping noises in stabs. Then all was silent.

A familiar face hove into view over him. The big guy. “Mr. Taylor.”

“Give a brother a break, man. Just tell me what’s goin’ on. Warmonk sold me for medical experiments, didn’t they?”

The big man shook his head. “Just wait.”

“Goddamnit, I don’t want to wait! Tell me what the fuck is going on!” He struggled again, primarily to emphasize his seriousness, not from any belief that he had a chance in hell of breaking free.

The big guy was checking something around Mosely’s head. “You’re about to find out. That too tight?”

“Yes!”

“Then it’s perfect.” He looked right in Mosely’s eyes. “You were right about one thing, my friend. There is a white guy. At least he used to be white. He’s probably sort of grayish by now.” He laughed heartily and lowered a combination goggles/headset onto Mosely’s face—blinding him.

“What the…You motherfucker!”

The big man’s booming laugh receded.

Mosely tried, batlike, to divine the shape of the room and his position in it from the echoes of that laugh. But the headphones made it impossible. Everything was muffled now, and he was blinded by the goggles, which were as opaque as a blindfold.

The strange, muted jackhammer noises recommenced. Suddenly two large television screens appeared before his eyes. Combined, they filled his field of vision and gave the effect of twenty-foot-wide theater screens viewed from ten feet away. They were crystal clear. The left one showed an image of the human brain—all done in the colors of the rainbow. It was a Bob Marley brain, with hues advancing and receding across the temporal lobes to some unheard Rasta beat.

The right screen flickered for a moment and, true to the big guy’s word, a white guy appeared in medium close-up on-screen. The jackhammer noises continued throughout, and the brain color map changed.

Mosely remembered this white guy’s face from somewhere.

The man nodded and spoke—his voice came in over the headphones. “You recognize me. That’s good.”

Mosely shouted, “Who are you?”

The colors chased each other over Bob Marley’s brain and settled in reddish hues toward the front.

The white dude was unrattled. “Before you start asking more complex questions, let me show you who I was….”

Suddenly his image was replaced by actual television news footage of reporters talking, headlines, and rotating graphics

“Matthew Sobol built a deadly trap for federal officers serving a search warrant on his Southern California estate….”

The video images chased each other over the screen. It was all coming back to Mosely. They had watched the news in amazement in the prison rec room more than half a year ago. They were sort of disappointed when it turned out to be a hoax.

The video clips continued as they finally settled on the photograph of Matthew Sobol—a close-up image with his name right beside it. The reporter was talking….

“The Daemon hoax was apparently intended to frame Matthew Sobol—who last week died of brain cancer.”

The photograph was suddenly replaced by the live image of Matthew Sobol in perfect digital clarity.

The white guy.

“News of my death has not been exaggerated.”

“Holy shit…”

The brain color map shifted, bluish waves lapping and rising all around.

“Now you truly understand. The Daemon was not a hoax.”

“Why am I here?”

“Yes. Please keep your questions simple. I’m not much of a conversationalist anymore. But I anticipated your question.” There was an almost imperceptible jump in Sobol’s image. Then he continued. “Why are you here? You’re here so I can determine whether your motivations are compatible with mine.” Sobol gestured as if he were physically present. “The equipment around you is a powerful functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. It is scanning the neural activity of your brain in real time. Neurons work like logic gates on a computer chip, firing electrical signals in specific sequences to accomplish certain tasks or to conceive certain generalized concepts.” Sobol paused. “It is a controversial fact that technology has discovered a way to see not only truth or falsehood in a person, but their very thought processes in action. Even before they can act upon those thoughts. Dissembling or deliberate deceit is orchestrated by the frontal lobes….”

The frontal lobes were highlighted on the left-hand screen—over the image of what was presumably Mosely’s brain. Other areas were highlighted in turn as Sobol continued, “Fear, aggression, empathy, and recognition all have their unique signatures in the human brain. Mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, also have their telltale patterns. So you see, you can hide nothing from me. I am about to know you better than anyone has ever known you. Perhaps even better than you know yourself.”

Mosely was starting to tremble again. He saw the colors change in the brain diagram on the left-hand screen. He instinctively knew it was fear. He was seeing his own fear develop on-screen in real time. Feeding on itself.

“You are afraid.”

It took all Mosely’s restraint to keep from screaming in terror. He held it in, tightly closing his eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Why not you? Society threw you away. Even you had given up on yourself. But I see the promise in you.” A pause. “I brought you here because you were found to be above average in most ways. You are highly intelligent, and your personality profile shows you to be self-reliant and resourceful. These are traits I need in my soldiers.” Another pause. “I don’t care about your level of education—that can be remedied—or your background, which doesn’t matter. Nor do I care about the things you’ve done. I only care about the things you’re going to do. My followers will wield incredible power. I am going to see whether my faith in you is justified.”

Conflicting emotions swept over Mosely. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he watched the colors swirling over the image of his brain. He realized that try as he might, he could not biofeedback his way through this. He could not fathom—much less control—the sweeping patterns of color rippling over the folds of his brain.

Sobol’s words percolated through the fear and confusion. “I will not lie to you; there is no escape from this place except to join with me. I tell you this because it’s not something you decide. It is a fact about you that we will discover together. After this course I will simply know whether you have joined me. And you will know also. You can try to fight it, but the result will be no different.”

Mosely felt the fear again, but then resolve rose in him, too. This was knowable. The rules of the game were laid out, and now he could face it head-on. Now he felt the rage building. His body tensed.

Sobol continued. “If at any point I find you unsuitable, I will kill you. Since I bear you no ill will, your death will be pleasant—an overdose of Demerol. So you see, your death will be far more agreeable than mine was. Perhaps this will be of some comfort to you.”

“Fuck you, Sobol!”

Sobol paused. “I see you have no special fear of death. Instead, you feel rage at your helplessness. But you are not helpless. Far from it. Your defense lies within you. I will measure your character, and if you have merit, then you have nothing to fear from me. On the contrary, you will walk under my protection to the end of your days.”

Another pause.

“Let’s begin. You do not need to speak, although your eyes must remain open except to blink normally. You can disregard this instruction, but doing so will commence your death by injection after thirty seconds. You can choose this fate, if you wish, but since no pain awaits you in any event, you may as well follow this course to its conclusion.”

Sobol regarded Mosely with an appraising look. “You are beginning to master your fear. That’s good. Make yourself ready.” A pause of several seconds. “And we begin….”

The right-hand screen dimmed and Sobol dissolved into blackness. A single word appeared in large white letters:

FAMILY

After a few seconds it was followed by several more in turn:

RELIGION, VIOLENCE, SEX, LOVE, LAW, FREEDOM, HOPE, HONESTY, RESPONSIBILITY, HONOR, DEATH.

The screen went black again. Then the word FAMILY reappeared. It lingered on-screen, like a searchlight stabbing out for him in the darkness.

Mosely couldn’t help but recall his son. His lost son. Mosely’s recollections from his own childhood flooded in—growing up without a father. Alone. Guilt flowed through him. Self-loathing. Deep colors ebbed and flowed over the image of his brain. It no doubt signified strong emotion. Sobol was onto him already.

Mosely blinked a couple of times beneath the goggles. He could close his eyes forever and let the Demerol flow into his veins. He had more control over his destiny now than he had had in a long time. He had an exit door. A strangely reassuring one. He opened his eyes.

Then the film began.

A quick succession of video scenes. People talking with each other, hugging, greeting one another. A man picking up a child and laughing. Parents hugging. An elderly couple walking arm in arm. A child graduating. The pride of the parents. A child in sorrow. Sickness. An elderly man flatlining in a hospital bed to the pitiful shrieks of his wife. An angry father shouting at his children. A mother raising the back of her hand over a terrified child in a bedroom doorway.

It surprised Mosely that the most painful scenes were scores of videos on children. Interacting with their parents, screaming, playing, hugging, crying, laughing. Innocence abandoned. Innocence in peril. In fear.

Mosely found himself weeping silently behind the goggles, the tears rolling down his cheeks. He imagined his own son, alone in the world. And his own responsibility for this. A son who would never know family, thanks to Mosely’s selfish stupidity. He almost closed his eyes forever and let the Demerol take him. He felt broken beyond repair—but the voices of children brought him back time and again. Those innocent faces that did not yet know cruelty. And the scenes kept coming for hours. There was now a special focus on children, as if Sobol had found Mosely’s weak spot and was rubbing salt into the wound to see just how painful it was. Before long, images of abandoned children were all that were shown. Waiflike children walking forlorn and frightened on fearsome city streets. Mosely was a sobbing wreck. “Stop! Please stop!”

Soon the screen went black again, and the word RELIGION came up briefly. It lingered for only a few moments before it was replaced with the word VIOLENCE.

Sobol’s mental searchlight was stabbing out for him again. Mosely could see the colors lapping in waves over the image of his brain.

The screen went black, and the films came up again.

The video showed a man tied into a chair in a drab cell. He was gagged. His eyes were wild with fear as a bearish man holding a machete entered the room. The bearish man proceeded to shout in what sounded like Russian. He raised the machete, and Mosely couldn’t restrain himself from closing his eyes as the sound of steel slicing into flesh came through the headphones in perfect digital stereo. Muffled screams followed.

Mosely fluttered his eyes open and revulsion filled his throat with bile. It was a vision from hell, larger than life and twice as loud. The bearish man was hacking his victim to death—one limb at a time. It was not faked. Of that Mosely had no doubt. A deep depression came over him as he watched. It was beyond revulsion. The fact that such a thing could be suffered to exist. That a film could be made of it. It said more than he ever wanted to know about the depravity loose in the world. A slow boiling anger came over him. Was that man butchered just for this goddamned film? Fuck you, Sobol! Fuck you! Go ahead, read my mind, asshole! Mosely kept shutting his eyes momentarily as the machete came down. Two chops to sever the right arm at the socket. One for the left arm, as the torso fell forward over the legs…

He couldn’t face it anymore. Mosely was breathing rapidly. The sounds were horrible. He couldn’t escape them. Then just as suddenly they stopped.

Mosely opened his eyes to blackness.

What followed was a seemingly endless procession of violent scenarios—some more disturbing than others. In one, a man beat a woman bloody, when suddenly another man rushed in to attack the first—while the injured woman fled. Then there were scenes of men fighting each other—with fists, then knives, then guns. Then children fighting. Then adults attacking children. Women attacking women. There were street fights, ritualized duels, senseless accidents, electrocutions. Then sadomasochistic brutality. Erotically charged violence. Followed close on by violence against animals. It all looked entirely too real. The languages of the people in the films were mostly foreign, but the images had the raw, uncut look of a digital video shot as it happened.

Mosely’s emotions ranged all over the map and frequently conflicted. He found himself tensing with righteous anger, then becoming aroused, then repulsed, and everything in between. Subtle differences in the interaction of those on-screen brought about shocking differences in his feelings even regarding similar events.

He couldn’t guess how many hours had gone by. He felt as though he’d spent a tour of duty on the front lines. His mind was bursting with horrific images, and he was nearing the limit of his endurance for violence. As the hours crept by, the themes kept changing, but slowly, imperceptibly. Previous themes sometimes returned. Families changed to images of faraway places and cultures, then images of poverty, then of wealth, then of weddings, then of funerals. Cars crashing together in intersections—apparently from fixed traffic cameras. A nonstop procession of highway carnage and death. People committing suicide in protest, burning themselves alive. Then people dying in accidents while doing adventurous things like rock climbing or BASE jumping. More shots of adventurous people succeeding—accomplishing great feats. Then people trekking through wild lands, climbing high mountain-tops. Then of historical events—from moon landings to Khrushchev blustering. Malcolm X faded into Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mosely was emotionally and physically exhausted. And still it went on.

It was like being dragged over an emotional washboard. Mosely wound up feeling virtually every emotion of which humans are capable—not once but hundreds of times. He was long past his breaking point—not that he even noticed he’d passed it.

The images continued. An unknowable number of hours, and still the images continued. Mosely’s mouth was parched, and he strained to stay alert. The images kept coming.

But one concept had begun to form in Mosely’s mind. Like a rock slowly revealed as a wind blew away surrounding sand, Mosely was starting to see himself. With all his built-up emotional defenses long since worn away, simple truths had begun to emerge. Even he knew their meaning: he was angry at his wasted life. He felt deep feelings of loss that he had no family as a child, and that he had not provided one for his son—wherever he was now. Also Mosely had a desperate desire to belong. To matter. To stand for something besides himself. He was the perennial outsider looking in on the fellowship of others.

The last films were pivotal. Where the earlier ones seemed to break him down to his emotional building blocks, the latter ones seemed to be building him up—filling him with joy as he saw people struggling together. Relying on each other. Sacrificing. Gratitude. Joy. Free men looking toward distant horizons. Horizons that beckoned the adventurous, hinting at danger.

The people in these films were of all races and ages, but Mosely noticed that they shared some traits in common: they were capable, they were highly motivated, and they acknowledged no limits. Danger was not a deterrent. It was life lived to its maximum. They were truly alive.

He had almost forgotten the real world existed. He did not know how long he lay there, but when the screens faded to black, it was as though he were cast into an abyss. He panted, struggling to find some reference point. His soul adrift in nothingness.

From somewhere in the darkness he heard Sobol’s voice. “Follow me, and I will help you find what you have lost. I will give your descendants a future. The past no longer exists for you.”

A light began to rise in the infinite distance.

“You are an exceptional person. I choose to have faith in you.” The soft light filled his vision.

Mosely slowly remembered that he existed as a person. He remembered his name. Charles Mosely. He felt different—as though all his sins were washed away.

Suddenly the crushing weight of exhaustion fell upon him.

Someone lifted the goggles from his head, revealing the same soft light above him. The big guy was there, nodding slowly. A metallic chunk sound echoed in the room, and Mosely’s limbs were suddenly free. Other hands came to ease him up.

Mosely looked and saw the other orderly in his white coat helping him up into a sitting position. Mosely felt dizzy. Weak.

The big guy leaned in. “We’re going to withdraw the needle. It will just take a second.”

The other orderly placed a cotton ball over the spot, squeezed, then withdrew the needle. He quickly taped a bandage over it.

Mosely’s dull eyes noticed his own clothing. He was wearing surgical scrubs with booties. He stared down at his feet, then looked up to face the big guy, who nodded slightly.

“The danger’s past.”

Mosely’s dry voice croaked, “How long?”

“Forty-six hours.”

A water bottle appeared next to his mouth. Mosely turned to see the other orderly extending it. Mosely took it and sipped greedily.

“Not too much.” After a few more moments they took it away.

The big guy regarded Mosely. “The fact that you’re still alive is all I need to know about you.” He extended his hand. “I’m Rollins.” His eyes darted. “He’s Morris.”

Mosely regarded the hand. “Like I’m Taylor?”

Rollins laughed. “Exactly like that.”

Mosely shook his hand. Rollins made eye contact. They were confident eyes, not at all unfriendly.

Morris nodded and shook his hand also. “Welcome aboard.”

“Aboard what?”

Rollins gestured. “The Daemon chose you. You’re one of its champions now.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You already made your choice.” He looked into Mosely’s eyes. “This is where you want to be. That’s why you’re still alive.”

Mosely absorbed the words. The images were so fresh in his mind. Breaking him down to his basic building blocks. Understanding him. Mosely understanding himself. The elation.

He realized Rollins was right.

Rollins continued. “There are no leaders here. We are all peers. And we answer directly to the Daemon—and no one else. I am your equal. And you are mine.”

Mosely wasn’t sure this was even happening. He shook his head to clear it.

Rollins patted his arm. “First, some food and rest. There’s a lot to learn, but the Daemon chose you because you’re smart. And you’ll need to be.”

Chapter 28:// Ripples on the Surface

Natalie Philips paced with a laser pointer at the edge of a projection screen. The Mahogany Row conference room was dimly lit, and silhouettes of her audience were arrayed around a sizeable boardroom table. Military badges on the uniforms of some audience members reflected the light from the screen.

Her title presentation slide was up:

Viability of Daemon Construct Over Peer-to-Peer Networks

She was already addressing the group. “…the feasibility of a narrow AI scripting application distributed over a peer-to-peer network architecture to avoid core logic disruption.” She clicked to the next slide. It bore the simple words:

Distributed Daemon Viable

A murmur went through her audience.

“Our unequivocal findings are that a distributed daemon is not merely a potential threat but an inevitable one, given the standards unifying extant networked systems. In fact, we have reason to believe one of these logic constructs is currently loose in the wild.”

Much more murmuring went through the crowd.

She changed her slide again. This one depicted two sets of graphs labeled Incidence of DDOS Attacks—All Sites Compared to Gambling/Pornography Sites.

She looked back at her audience. “A distributed denial of service (or DDOS) attack involves harnessing the power of hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of zombie computers to transmit large amounts of packets to a single target Web domain. A zombie computer is one that has been previously compromised by a malicious back door program. This could be John Q. Public’s unsecured computer sitting in the den. An army of these zombie computers is called a botnet, and its collective computing power can be directed to overwhelm a target, making it too busy to respond to legitimate traffic. The potential to harm an online business is obvious.

“Unlike a simple denial of service (or DOS) attack—which is launched from a single machine and thus easily blocked by an IP address—a DDOS attack comes in waves from different IP addresses coordinated to continually incapacitate the target. Likewise, the nature of the traffic can vary wildly, making it difficult to filter out garbage connection requests. In short: it is significantly more serious. Unless the attacker brags about his deeds, tracing the real source of an attack can be next to impossible.”

She wielded the laser pointer to highlight various parts of the screen. “These two charts illustrate a pattern detected four months ago in the occurrence of distributed denial of service attacks on the public Internet—both overall and as experienced separately by commercial gambling and pornography Web sites, both legal and illegal, hereafter referred to as ‘G/P sites.’

“Note the increase of approximately twelve thousand percent in the occurrence of such attacks against G/P sites during the period January through April. Contrast this with the flat-to-declining trend in DDOS attacks versus the overall population of domains.”

She changed slides to a graphical breakdown of the top international gambling and pornography domains, with call-outs indicating the crime gangs operating out of Russia, Thailand, and Belize. The graph was broken down on the x-axis by time and on the y-axis by packets per hour.

“The CIA has associated the following international crime rings with these three G/P enterprises. Their Web interests encompass tens of thousands of loosely affiliated Web sites hosted on hundreds of domains in dozens of countries. Each one of these crime gangs is a vast IT organization, and collectively they generate billions of dollars in revenue each year. Their operating units include product development, security, finance, and infrastructure support elements—they are, in effect, multinational corporations whose product lines include narco-trafficking, sexual slavery, money laundering, and extortion.”

Her graph showed that the Web assets of each individual crime ring had been attacked in a campaign of orchestrated infowar. Philips’s laser pointer cavorted as she hammered her point home. “The Russians were first in line. We estimate that roughly ten million workstations launched a Pearl Harbor–like cyber attack simultaneously from all points on the globe, beginning in mid-January and stretching through to the end of the month. This effectively brought the Russian business to a halt worldwide—making their online gambling and pornography assets unavailable to paying customers for extended periods. These were not simple smurf and fraggle attacks. The Russians appear to have tried everything, from hardware filtering to rate-limiting connections, but it didn’t put a dent in their downtime. They tried to launch new sites and migrate customers to these, but the new sites also were rapidly targeted and brought down.”

She changed to a slide of translated Internet headlines from a passel of third-world sites. They listed dozens of killings in Asia and Russia.

“This appears to have sparked a brief gang war, followed by a purge within the ranks of the gang’s IT staff. The CIA estimates several dozen related killings, but notably, all during this period, the DDOS attacks did not let up and shifted constantly to originate from new locations. The Russian enterprise did not recover until the end of January, when it was suddenly fully operational.”

She looked up at her audience. “The following cell phone conversation was intercepted by ComSat assets over the Republic of Georgia on January twenty-ninth and is a conversation between an unidentified caller and a known Russian mafia figure based in St. Petersburg, herein denoted as Vassili. The transcript is available over Echelon. The abstract number is listed in your presentation binder. This raw intercept comes to us compliments of Group W.” She turned to face the screen as tinny, foreign chatter came in over speakers. An instant translation appeared on the screen in a scrolling fashion as the words were uttered in Russian:

Vassili: We’re driving. Tupo [nearby person], no. Where are you? Where are you now?

Caller: Belize City.

Vassili: They are online there?

Caller: Yes, yes. They’re running perfect.

Vassili: Perfect? Since when?

Caller: Perfect, like before perfect.

Vassili: Before the attacks?

Caller: Yes, yes.

Vassili: Do they know the extent of it there?

Caller: No. Nobody knows.

Vassili: They’re angry about Tupolov, yes?

Caller: Yes. But they have their money now.

Vassili: You paid the dead American?

Caller: Yes.

Vassili: And now we’re online again?

Caller: Yes.

Vassili: [unintelligible]. They’ll be next, and we must regain market share while they are down. You know what to do?

Caller: Yes. Sobol told us.

The screen cleared and the lights came up as animated discussions filled the room. Philips called to be heard over the din. “There are additional intercepts of a similar nature, but I think this is a representative sample. The waves of attacks continued until a couple of months ago, hitting each organization in turn—and growing in ferocity—at which point they disappeared suddenly and entirely.”

One of the DOD brass spoke up, “What’s your read on all this, Doctor?”

“I think the crime gangs running online gambling and pornography have been forced to pay protection money to someone or something.”

“You conclude that from one intercept?”

“This is one of dozens of intercepts, the transcripts of which you will find in your presentation binders.”

“How much money are we talking about here?”

Philips placed the laser pointer on the nearby podium. “We have an e-mail intercept from a Thai gang that mentions a ten percent gross payment.”

“Ten percent of gross?”

“All online transactions. The CIA estimates worldwide revenue from online gambling and pornography at approximately seventeen billion U.S. dollars per year. In truth, no one really knows. But if we use this as a baseline and extrapolate, assuming that the Daemon has—”

“You’re talking about a couple billion dollars a year.”

“There is anecdotal evidence that these payments represent an outsourcing of the IT security function of these criminal gangs to some unknown entity.” She paused, either for effect or to gather her courage—even she wasn’t sure which. “We suspect that the entity is not a living person but a massively parallel logical construct. I believe it’s Sobol’s Daemon.”

The room erupted in talk for several moments until someone in the back shouted over the din, “How do you know it’s not just another gang?”

The noise died down to hear her response.

Philips nodded. “Because that was the first thing the Russians thought. Quite a few hackers died at their hands in an effort to identify those responsible. At some point the Russians were presented with evidence that convinced them no living person was behind this attack. We don’t know yet what that evidence was—but we have operatives attempting to get their hands on it.”

The division chief just looked at her. “This is reckless conjecture. We’ve got Detective Sebeck convicted and on death row, Cheryl Lanthrop dead, and Jon Ross on the run. This situation is under control.”

The most senior NSA suit spoke. “I disagree. Right now the media is stoking a panic on cyber crime. A public discovery that Sobol’s Daemon was preying on Internet business could spook the financial markets.”

A visiting analyst from the FBI Cyber Division shook his head. “The facts don’t support the media panic, sir. Overall reported incidents of computer break-ins this year are down slightly—not up. In fact, we could spin the demise of gambling and pornography sites as a positive.”

Philips regarded the FBI agent, then turned to the room in general. “Anyone have anything on the media’s current fascination with cyber security? Does anyone know what’s driving it?”

“Sebeck’s trial?”

The FBI analyst began to hold court on the topic. “The government has few real controls over either the Internet or private data networks. This manufactured panic is addressing an actual deficiency in the cyber infrastructure. It’s the invisible hand of the market in action.”

Philips looked impassively at him. “Unless it’s already too late.”

The NSA section chief raised an eyebrow. “Is your copycat Daemon up to something more than demanding tribute from pornographers, Dr. Philips?”

She revealed no emotion. “For one, I believe it is Sobol’s Daemon.”

“Highly unlikely.” The FBI analyst looked ready to disprove anything. He just needed fresh grist for his logic mill.

Philips continued. “Gentlemen, there are loose ends all over the Sobol case. There’s the poisoning death of Lionel Crawly—the voice-over artist for Sobol’s game Over the Rhine. What dialogue did he record that we have no knowledge of? The introduction of a strange edifice in Sobol’s online game The Gate at almost the instant of his death. And then there are the back doors in his games—”

“There are no back doors in his games.” The FBI analyst scanned the faces in the room. “It’s a fact.”

The NSA chief kept his eyes on Philips. “Your Internet traffic analysis was interesting, Doctor, but if you have evidence linking Sobol’s Daemon with the Daemon attacking G/P sites, then where is it?”

“In Sobol’s game maps.”

“Steganography? Didn’t you explore that last year?”

“Fleetingly—before Sebeck’s arrest. But let’s not forget that Sobol was an extraordinarily intelligent man. He was able to envision multiple axes simultaneously.”

“Is that a polysyllabic way to say he thinks outside the box?”

A senior cryptanalyst nearby removed his glasses and started cleaning them. “No offense, Dr. Philips, but if Sobol’s games contained steganographic content, you should have readily detected it by plotting the magnitude of a two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform of the bit-stream. This would show telltale discontinuities at a rate roughly above ten percent.”

Philips aimed an anti-smile in his direction. “Thank you, Doctor. Had I not spent the last six years expanding the frontiers of your discipline, I’m sure I would find your input invaluable.”

The division chief cleared his throat. “The point is still valid, Doctor. How could Sobol hide a back door in a program using steganography, of all things? Doesn’t that just hide data? You can’t execute steganographic code.”

The FBI analyst couldn’t hold back. “Even if he was storing encrypted code within art asset files, he’d still need code to extract the encrypted elements—and we would have found the extraction routines in the source.”

Philips turned to him thoughtfully. “Yes, but the back door isn’t in the code. It’s in the program—but it’s not in the code.”

Her audience looked confused.

The division chief shrugged. “You lost me there, Doctor.”

The senior cryptanalyst offered, “You mean the relationship of things within the program?”

“Ah, now you’re seeing it.”

The division chief cut in. “What brought you back to the stego angle? The DDOS attacks on G/P sites?”

“No.” She paused again. “Jon Ross brought me back to it.” She turned back to face them. “For the last several weeks I have been exchanging e-mail communications with the man known as Jon Ross.”

The impact of this revelation left her audience stunned briefly. Then there was frantic movement; previously untouched presentation binders were grabbed and thumbed through hastily.

“Why weren’t we informed of this?”

The NSA chief interjected, “The Advisory Panel was informed.”

“What evidence do you have that these e-mails are authentic?”

Philips was calm. “The first e-mail made reference to a conversation Ross and I had in person at Sobol’s funeral.”

The FBI analyst nodded slowly. “No doubt he claims innocence and that the Daemon really exists.”

“He’s doing more than that. He’s pursuing the Daemon, and imploring us to do the same. Which leads us once again to the back door in Sobol’s software. Because it was Jon Ross who helped me find it.”

“That’s convenient for him.”

“I thought so, too. That’s why I asked for a face-to-face meeting.”

The NSA chief nodded in apparent recollection.

The FBI analyst looked surprised. “And he agreed?”

“After a fashion.” Philips nodded to the back of the room, and the lights dimmed again.

The screen filled with an animated 3-D environment. It was a narrow, medieval-looking city street, with buildings leaning over it in irregular rows. Few in attendance recognized it because none of them had the time or inclination to play online computer games. A title in plain Arial font briefly appeared superimposed over the image:

Session #489: Elianburg, Duchy of Prendall

Philips narrated. “What you’re looking at is Sobol’s game The Gate. This is an online role-playing game—meaning that tens of thousands of users access game maps from central servers. The game covers a large area of virtual space. Jon Ross requested a meeting at this specific location; at the corner of Queensland Boulevard and Hovarth Alley in Elianburg.”

“A meeting in an online game?”

“Yes. But since it’s difficult to arrest an avatar, I decided to go into God Mode.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I cheated; I enlisted the aid of the CyberStorm system administrators to place the intersection under surveillance with virtual cameras.”

“You set up a stake-out in fantasyland?”

A chuckle swept through the room.

Philips nodded. “Something like that. The goal was to monitor every character that entered this intersection up to the appointed meeting time. It’s a busy intersection—in the middle of the market where players purchase equipment—and I wanted the maximum amount of time to trace Ross.”

One of the uniformed military officers spoke up. “Like tracing a phone call?”

“Similar, yes. Each player has a screen name hovering over their character’s head that must be unique for that server cluster. We wrote a script that scanned for suspicious player names on the servers. It autoharvested IP addresses for likely suspects and traced them back to their ISP for follow-up. We also established a manual system where we could select any player name, and the CyberStorm techs would look up that player’s originating IP address.”

“Why bother with IP address? Doesn’t CyberStorm have a record of each player’s billing information?”

“Yes, but it seemed likely that Ross would steal or borrow an account. By using his IP address to locate the Internet Service Provider, and then contacting the ISP for the physical address of the connection, we were more likely to actually find him.” She looked around the room for emphasis. “We scrambled airborne strike teams in several U.S. cities in preparation for this meeting in the hopes that Ross would be hiding in a major metropolitan area.”

The FBI analyst couldn’t resist. “I gather from the fact that Ross is still at large that this plan did not succeed.”

A voice in the darkness: “Can we continue, please?”

Philips nodded.

The screen suddenly came to life. Animated 3-D people moved through the scene. It was eerie how realistically the people moved—although only half of them had glowing names floating over their heads.

“The characters moving around without names are NPCs, non-player characters—they are computer controlled. Only human players have names.”

The perspective of the screen changed. It was a first-person view from Philips’s character as she moved through the crowd.

“We conducted this session from our offices in Crypto. The game permits players with VOIP capability to speak directly to nearby players over a voice channel. Ross requested that we have such a hookup. I am controlling this character in the game, and it is my voice you will hear talking with him. I had a MUTE button on my headset, and you will also hear me issuing instructions to my team. Ross did not tell me in advance the name of his character, but he said I would be able to pick him out of the crowd. Which is why we put the auto-trace script in place. But Ross took a page out of Sobol’s playbook.”

The screen view changed as Philips’s character turned this way and that, checking out the shoppers in the market. Then the POV moved toward a Nubian female 3-D character wearing a black leather corset with a plunging neckline. Something resembling a French-cut steel thong wrapped her shapely hips. She was a hentai cover girl. As the frame moved closer, the Nubian woman turned, revealing what was unmistakably a computer-generated version of Philips’s face.

Mild amusement spread through the audience in the meeting room. Philips ignored it.

On-screen the glowing name over the Nubian avatar read: Cipher. Philips’s recorded voice came in over the speakers:

Philips: Get me an IP for the screen name “Cipher.” That’s spelled c-i-p-h-e-r.

NSA Tech: Got it, Doctor. Looking up ISP…

The screen perspective moved right up to Cipher, and stopped. The scantily clad warrior princess faced the screen. A male voice came in over the speakers:

Ross: Good evening, Doctor.

Philips: Mr. Ross. Apparently you can’t resist identity theft. How did you upload my likeness to this game?

Ross: I didn’t upload anything. Players can edit the geometry of their avatars. I sculpted this one to resemble you.

Philips: I didn’t realize you studied my appearance so closely.

Ross: How could I forget you? Besides, I knew you’d try to identify my account in advance of this meeting, but your automated forensics tools don’t know what you look like, Doctor. Your physical appearance is a graphical encryption that the human mind is uniquely qualified to decode.

Philips: That doesn’t make it any less unsettling to have a conversation with myself as a transsexual lingerie model.

Ross: I find it just as uncomfortable being seen with you.

Philips: How’s that?

Ross: Well, you’ve got the default skin of a generic warrior, and nobody keeps the default skin. You are the fantasy world equivalent of a Fed. I recognized you a mile away.

Philips: Jon, why did you call me here?

Ross: To prove to you that I’m innocent.

Philips: And how do you intend to do that?

Ross: By showing you one of the back doors in this game.

Philips: We’ve been through every line of the source code, Jon. There are no back doors.

Ross: None here, true.

Ross’s female warrior gestured dramatically, as if performing a spell. In a moment a magical portal appeared in the street. A wandering player character tried to walk into it but bounced off. After a few tries, he got bored and walked off.

Philips: What’s this?

Ross: A Type II gate. It will only permit those I choose to enter, and I just typed your character’s name in. What does “FANX” mean, anyway?

Philips: I’ll let you puzzle it out.

Ross: Please step through the portal.

NSA Tech: Doctor, we’ve got a physical address, but it’s in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Philips: [MUTE ON] Notify local authorities and Interpol. [MUTE OFF] Where’s this lead to?

Ross: What does it matter? Look, I hope efforts to trace my physical location are not distracting you. I’m running several layers of proxies, Dr. Philips. By the time you track them all down, this will be long over. Just pay attention, please. This is important.

Philips: Jon, I’m not—

Ross: It’s okay, Doctor. That’s your job. Just step through the gate, please.

The perspective of the screen changed as Philips moved her character through the gate. It was a swirling vortex of blue lines, and then suddenly the view changed to a darkened masonry tunnel filled to a depth of a couple feet with black water. The area was lit by the swirling lights of the nearby magical portal. Rats scurried away along ledges, and the water’s surface rippled with the dazzling lights.

Someone in the dark muttered. “Nice algorithm…”

The NSA chief craned his neck. “Shhh!”

On-screen, Ross’s hentai warrior princess waded out into the water and stood in front of Philips’s character.

Philips: What is this place?

Ross: It’s a sewer beneath the Temple District. Not accessible without a magical portal.

Philips: What did you want to show me, Jon?

Ross: Look straight ahead. What do you see? You may need to move side to side to notice it.

The view on-screen changed as Philips focused straight ahead. There in the semidarkness of the slime-covered wall was the outline of an oxidized bronze door—nearly the same color as the surrounding stones.

Philips: A door.

Ross: Not just any door. A back door.

Philips: It’s a literal door?

Ross: You were expecting a code snippet? Maybe something that accepted anonymous connections at a certain port address or carried out actions on the user’s computer with their rights? But you didn’t find that. You didn’t find it because you shouldn’t have been looking for a back door leading IN. You should have been looking for a back door leading OUT.

Philips: But how would that permit Sobol to control a user’s machine?

Ross: It isn’t their machine he’s trying to control.

Philips: You’re saying he was trying to control the user?

Ross: Why don’t you step through the portal and find out?

Philips: Wait a minute. We still should have found this in the code.

Ross: Why? Were you looking for a graphic of a door that when used as an object in the game environment loads a game map? Do you know how many times that innocuous function call appears in the source code? The code itself is benign—it’s the map it loads that isn’t. Because the map in question is not on the CyberStorm servers, and I’ll bet you didn’t look farther than the IP addresses of the map links.

Philips: [a sigh of disgust] You mean he’s using a redirect.

Ross: It will look local in the map database, but when you try to load it, it redirects to an external IP address—which logs the user off the current game and establishes a new connection on an alien server. In short: this portal leads to a darknet.

Philips: A darknet. An encrypted virtual network.

Ross: Correct. Except that this is a graphical darknet.

Philips: How do you know all this?

Ross: Like I said—step through the portal. However, I will leave you now. Your colleagues are quite skilled and have probably located my zombie in Sweden, maybe even my zombie in Germany—and I really must be going. Please remember that I am innocent, Natalie—if I may call you Natalie. I’d really like to tell you the whole story over dinner sometime.

Philips: I don’t date felons, Jon—especially cross-dressing felons.

Ross: Till we meet again, Doctor…

At that, Ross’s avatar disappeared—as did his magical gate—leaving her in relative darkness. There was just the faint glow emanating from the door.

NSA Tech: He’s off-line, Doctor.

Philips: We’re still recording?

NSA Tech: Affirmative.

On-screen, Philips approached the door and activated it. It creaked open, the noise echoing down the sewer tunnel. Animated cobwebs stretched. A dialog box appeared reading “Loading Map…”

NSA Tech: Connection severed to CyberStorm server. We’re establishing a connection to an IP address assigned to a domain in…South Korea.

Philips: Are the packets really routing there?

NSA Tech: Stand by.

Philips: Get us a fix as soon as possible.

In a few moments the map was loaded. Philips’s character moved out into a medieval hall, with a gallery on either side above and pennants hanging down bearing heraldic symbols. Set into the wall straight ahead was a statue of a man, disquietingly similar to Sobol, in flowing robes, hands outstretched. Virtual water glimmered like a fountain as it rolled down each cheek from his eyes. Mineral stains marked the path. A perpetual fountain of tears.

A black-robed figure stood before the statue like a sentinel blocking her way. Its face was lost in shadow.

NSA Tech: It’s fingering us, Doctor. I didn’t spoof our IP address.

Philips: It’s okay, Chris, I didn’t ask you to.

The hooded figure snapped alert suddenly, then raised a finger and pointed at her.

Guardian: You don’t belong here!

Lightning arced from that finger in her general direction, and the Blue Screen of Death filled their view.

Then everything went black.

NSA Tech: We are down! Down, down, down!

Chapter 29:// Memory

Pete Sebeck stared at a dimple in the concrete of his cell wall. It was the only imperfection in an unrelenting sameness. It was his secret—a place upon which to center his mind as the world turned unseen around him.

It might have been night outside, but it was never dark in here. There was nothing even to mark the passage of time, and if there was, they would erase it. He was watched constantly. A fluorescent fixture buzzed light down on him from overhead. Surveillance cameras in mirrored enclosures on two ceiling corners recorded his every movement. A microphone his every utterance. He was alone, but never alone. As a high-profile prisoner, no expense had been spared to monitor him 24/7—guarding against the possibility that he might harm himself before the government could mete out justice.

As Sebeck lay staring at the wall, his memories were still raw nerves. Each turn of his mind made him wince.

Worth losing everything for. That’s what he used to tell himself about Cheryl Lanthrop. She was beautiful, but there was more to it than that. It was what that reflected about him. That he was worthy of attracting such a successful, confident person. Why did he think she would want him? What part of him nursed such fantasies? That was the sad truth of it. He was ripe for programming. He was ready to suspend disbelief to live that life. He hadn’t wanted to know the truth—not about her and definitely not about himself.

They said Lanthrop was dead now. If she had only confided in him. Perhaps he would have done the right thing. To his shame, he wasn’t certain.

The trial had been a fast-moving media circus. He was shocked at how incriminating the evidence against him was. In hindsight he felt it should have been obvious that he was being set up—Lanthrop urging him to secrecy. And then there were the things he had no knowledge of that crucified him. The files on his computer. Lists and corporate documents, all digitally shredded—but incompletely. A passport under the fictitious name Michael Corvus. The travels of that fictitious name, establishing offshore bank accounts and corporations. The credit card purchases and corporate officerships. The offshore payments and records of phone calls to Pavlos and Singh. The e-mail accounts detailing a convenient, media-friendly conspiracy.

Everyone believed that Sebeck was responsible for the deaths of all those people—and of Aaron Larson. He recalled the several times Larson sought guidance from him. Sebeck had refused the role of mentor. Being a father figure to anyone was the last thing he wanted.

Sebeck could hardly blame the public for hating him. The evidence was wide and deep. The clincher was that Sebeck did, indeed, have an affair with Cheryl Lanthrop. What they did together seemed merely kinky and strange at the time—but when combined with the mountain of evidence against him, it revealed a person quite different from the public face of Detective Sergeant Peter Sebeck, decorated officer and dedicated family man. So different that he had begun to question it himself.

His wife, Laura, surprised him, though. He thought she would be glad to be rid of him.

Strange. After all this time, he couldn’t recall whether she goaded him into marriage or whether he had volunteered as a means of doing the right thing by her. It never even occurred to him at the time that she might not want to marry him. The pregnancy had been something that happened to him—at least in his own mind. Perhaps she had married him because she also thought that was the right thing to do.

After his arrest, when everyone abandoned him, she was there for him. The press pilloried her as a guileless moron, but she knew him. Tears welled in Sebeck’s eyes remembering it. She knew he could not have done these things, even when he doubted it himself. She had kept him sane, or near enough to sane.

They were just two people who got lost somewhere early in life.

Chris, their son, had come to see Sebeck only once and stared at the floor almost the entire time. When he did look up, there was a glare of utter malevolence through the glass that stung Sebeck worse than anything the federal prosecutor could say. It still stung.

Sebeck curled up on his cot around a pain so deep that he longed for it all to end. There was no clearing this up—even if proof of his innocence were found. His name had been too thoroughly dragged through the mud. Some taint would always remain. Some doubt would always exist in the minds of those around him. Death would be welcome, if it weren’t for the fact that almost everyone he cared about considered him evil. That his passing would be seen as justice. He was thankful his parents hadn’t lived to see this day.

But his deepest despair came from the knowledge that no one believed that the Daemon existed. From the outset it was clear that both the prosecution and the defense would be arguing not about the Daemon, but about whether Sebeck had been involved in the conspiracy to defraud Sobol’s estate and murder federal officers. The judge refused to hear testimony about the Daemon—largely because there was no evidence it existed. But it had to exist. Sebeck was convinced of it.

They were appealing his conviction to a higher federal court, but his lawyer didn’t hold out much hope. The government was clearly making an example out of Sebeck. His trial had been fast-tracked in response to public outrage, and failing the introduction of new evidence, there was little chance his guilty verdicts would be overturned on appeal.

Sebeck tried to remember a time when he was last truly happy. He had to think back all the way to high school, sitting on the roof of his neighbor’s garage with his buddies. That was the night before he found out Laura was pregnant. But was that true? Now the idea of coming home and seeing Chris and Laura laughing at the kitchen table was a treasured memory. The laughter stopped as he arrived, but that wasn’t their fault. It was his fault. He had purposefully distanced himself from them. Without this disaster, would Sebeck ever have realized what he had?

Sebeck’s mind turned to that voice on the phone at Sobol’s funeral. Experts proved it wasn’t Sobol, but Sebeck realized that was the whole point of it. It had to not be Sobol, and provably so. Nonetheless, that voice had actually warned him about what was to come.

I must destroy you.

He contemplated it emptily. Without hope or purpose.

But there was something else the voice had said. Sebeck tried hard to remember, buried as it was under months of pretrial testimony, interrogations, and hard evidence. But then it came to him.

They will require a sacrifice, Sergeant.

And so they had. Sebeck sat up and stared into nothingness, straining to recall the exact words of the voice.

Before you die…invoke the Daemon.

Somewhere there was a surveillance tape that showed Sebeck silently nodding to himself in the stillness of his empty cell. Because he now realized what he had to do.

Chapter 30:// Offering

A white van raised a cloud of dust as it approached from a distance, wavering like a phantom in the summer heat. On either side of the dirt road, California grasslands stretched brown and dry, rolling up into the barren hills at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. Every fold and furrow of the land was shadowed in the afternoon sun, like the wrinkles of some timeworn face. The topography was naked and enormously wide. Forty miles of nothing stretched to the horizon, starkly beautiful to anyone with a reliable car.

The van inched across the gargantuan landscape, progressing toward a ring of asphalt set in the bottom of a forgotten canyon. The van slowed as it reached the track, then turned, revealing the car-carrying trailer it pulled behind it. A black Lincoln Town Car sat on the bed.

The van stopped, and a moment later the doors swung open, disgorging Kurt Voelker on the passenger side. He wearily stretched. Tingit Khan and Rob McCruder exited the far side of the van and did likewise. They were all in their early twenties, but while Voelker looked dressed for a Christian Fellowship meeting—with khakis and a button-down shirt—Khan and McCruder bore the piercings, tats, and severe hair that once indicated disaffected youth but that now only meant they weren’t interviewing yet.

Voelker checked his GPS unit. He looked to his two companions. “We’re in the box.”

“It’s about fucking time.” Khan held up his hand to shade his face. His eyes scanned the terrain. “What is this? A racetrack?”

“Pretty damned small for a racetrack.”

Voelker spoke from the far side of the van. “I’m guessing a test track.”

“It’s not banked or anything.” Khan held up his other hand to block the sun. “What’s it feel like? A hundred degrees out here?”

McCruder checked his watch. “A hundred and six.”

“You have a thermometer on your watch?”

“Yeah. So what?”

Khan looked through the van windows to Voelker on the other side. “Kurt. Rob has a thermometer on his watch.”

“So?”

“Well, at some point, the thing you add to the watch is more significant than the watch. I’d argue he’s wearing a thermometer with a clock on it.”

McCruder scowled; he was a veteran of Khan’s observations. “Fuck off.”

“Why do you need to know the precise temperature where you are? It’s not like a weather report; it’s too fucking late—you’re already here.”

Voelker held up a hand. “Khan, get the gear out of the van. I’ll un-chain the car.”

Khan and McCruder started pulling hard-shell Pelican cases from the van. McCruder just shook his head sadly. “You’re the one who asked how hot it was.”

Fifteen minutes later Voelker extended the antenna on a sizeable handheld remote controller. Khan and McCruder sat nearby on the empty hard-shell containers in front of a folding table. The table was strewn with cables, high-gain antennas, and two ruggedized laptops with shades shielding their screens from the sunlight. A half-meter satellite dish pointed skyward on a tripod placed in the grass nearby.

Voelker looked to McCruder, who was peering at his laptop’s LCD screen. McCruder finally nodded. “Anytime, Kurt.”

Voelker pointed the controller directly at the Lincoln on the trailer bed. The car looked identical to the endless number of black fleet Town Cars with smoked glass coursing through downtown streets and airports nationwide—replete with a TCP number on its back bumper and a vanity plate reading LIVRY47. Voelker pressed a button on the remote. The car’s V8 engine started. He slid a lever to put it in gear and then began backing the car slowly off the trailer ramps.

“I bet he rolls it,” McCruder snickered.

“You’d better hope he doesn’t.”

Voelker didn’t even look. “Guys, I’m working here. You wanna shut your pie holes for two seconds?”

In a few moments he had deftly backed the car onto the dirt road; then he shifted it into drive and eased it out onto the asphalt of the small oval racetrack nearby. The circuit was perhaps two hundred feet in diameter. An oddity, really. Nothing you could actually race on. It was crisscrossed with mysterious grooves set at odd angles.

“This good?” Voelker turned to his companions.

They shrugged.

Khan took a lollipop out of his mouth. “How the hell are we supposed to know? We’re in the box. Park it where it is.”

Voelker killed the engine. He collapsed the controller’s antenna. “Anything?”

Both men shook their heads.

He walked up. “I guess we wait.”

The late afternoon sun was sinking toward the hills. They had been waiting and sweating for a couple of hours in the brutal heat, listening to the wind chimes dangling from the eaves of a nearby utility shed. The chimes sounded all too infrequently.

Khan mopped his face with the front of his black T-shirt. “Goddamn. It is Africa hot.”

McCruder upended a soda can. Nothing came out. “I thought you Indians thrived in this weather, Khan.”

“Fuck you. I grew up in Portland, moron.”

Voelker wiped the salty sweat from his eyes. He blinked from the sting. “Guys, I swear, I’ll take a tire iron to you both if you don’t quit your bitching.”

They heard a blip-blip sound from the nearby laptop. They snapped to attention.

Khan leaned over McCruder’s shoulder to look at the LCD screen.

McCruder looked up to Voelker. “It’s here.”

All three turned expectantly to the asphalt.

Suddenly the car engine roared to life. It revved several times. The wheels turned left, then right.

They all watched transfixed.

Khan grinned. “It’s alive! Bu-wahahahah!”

Suddenly the car’s engine raced, and it laid down rubber, accelerating madly along the asphalt track.

“Jesus!” Voelker turned to the other two. “What the hell is it doing?”

“Don’t know, but look at it go, man.”

The Lincoln was weaving side to side, then it suddenly slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt. It peeled out suddenly again and went into a power slide, whipping its tail around. It roared forward again, building up speed on the straightaway, then wrenched its wheels into another slide, and came out facing the other direction—still accelerating into a bootlegger reverse.

McCruder smiled. “It’s testing the properties of the car.”

Khan and Voelker leaned in, while still watching the screeching display of stunt driving.

McCruder spoke louder. “It’s confirming the specs. Braking distance, turning radius—all that stuff. It’s making sure we followed instructions.”

Voelker pointed a finger at McCruder. “It damn well better meet the spec.”

Without turning, McCruder extended his closed fist, then operated his thumb like a crank to extend his middle finger.

Suddenly the car stopped its acrobatic display and sat motionless on the pavement. Oily rubber smoke still wafted across the track.

All three men stared at it. It was half a football field away.

A Bullwinkle the Moose voice came over the speakers of McCruder’s laptop. “Duhhh, you have mail.”

McCruder checked.

While McCruder was busy, Khan looked at his own laptop screen. He grinned at Voelker. “We no longer have a connection to the car, Kurt. It changed the access codes.”

Voelker didn’t flinch. “It’s part of the spec, Khan.”

McCruder glanced up at his companions. “Let me confirm this.” After a few frenzied moments of clicking, he smiled and turned to them again. “Fifty-six thousand dollars have been deposited into the corporate account, and we have an order for six more AutoM8s. The Daemon is pleased with our offering.”

They whooped and high-fived.

“What will that total?” Khan was beaming.

Voelker thought for a second. “Three hundred thousand and change.” He looked to McCruder. “Does it say where the cars will be coming from?”

McCruder shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Corporate leases, probably. Not our problem. Looks like the Haas has downloaded more plans, too.”

“Excellent.” Voelker smiled at them both. “Congratulations, gentlemen.”

Suddenly the distant car roared into action again—laying down more rubber. They all turned. It was accelerating toward them.

“It’s gonna whack us!”

They ran for the van, but the Town Car raced past their table and out along the dirt road. It accelerated and kept going.

They gathered their breath and watched it recede into the distance.

Khan turned to them. “We should follow it. You know, back to its lair.”

McCruder narrowed his eyes. “What, are you fucking insane?”

Voelker nodded. “He’s right. We released it into the wild. Those were the instructions. Following it is just a good way to get killed.”

Khan watched the cloud of dust moving toward the distant hills. “You think we’re the only ones doing this?”

Voelker watched, too, shielding his eyes against the sun. “If the number of unemployed electrical engineers is any indication, I’d say no.”

Chapter 31:// Red Queen Hypothesis

Garrett Lindhurst marched purposefully toward the corner office on the fifty-first floor of Leland Equity Group’s palatial world headquarters. He clenched a rolled magazine in his hand like a baton in a slow-motion relay race and looked visibly worried. Worried about systems.

As chief information officer, Lindhurst held dominion over the systems that delivered the lifeblood of Leland Equity Group: real-time financial data. That data was delivered instantaneously to every corner of the organization and to every client. Every account and every dollar in every branch office passed through Lindhurst’s networks and data systems. Every e-mail passed through his servers. He had thirty regional VPs as direct reports and oversaw an empire of some five hundred IT employees worldwide.

And yet, Leland Equity Group was one of those multibillion-dollar companies that existed on the periphery of public awareness. Their unremarkable logo could be found in the skyline of any major city in North America, Europe, or Asia, and even if most people had no idea what the company did, they assumed it must be doing something important.

The reality was that, with eighty billion dollars in assets under management, the decisions made by Leland MBAs ruled the daily lives of two hundred million Third World people.

Following a (more or less) Darwinian economic model, Leland identified and quantified promising resource development opportunities in the far corners of the world. They had since formed private equity partnerships with local leaders for strip mining in Papua New Guinea, water privatization in Ecuador, marble quarrying in China, oil drilling in Nigeria, and pipeline construction in Myanmar. Anywhere local public and/or private leaders existed with abundant resources, a surfeit of rivals, and a deficit in capital, Leland could be found. And while these projects were theoretically beneficial, the benefits were best perceived at a distance of several thousand miles.

Leland’s equity offerings used tedious statistical analysis to mask the fact that their business centered on enslaving foreign people and ravaging their lands. They didn’t do this directly, of course, but they hired the people who hired the people who did.

Humanity had always trafficked in oppression. Before the corporate marketing department got ahold of it, it was called conquest. Now it was regional development. Vikings and Mongols were big on revenue targets, too—but Leland had dispensed with all the tedious invading, and had taken a page out of the Roman playbook by hiring the locals to enslave each other as franchisees.

To view Leland fund managers as immoral was a gross simplification of the world. And what was there to replace capitalism, anyway? Communism? Theocracy? Most of the Third World had already suffered nearly terminal bouts of idealism. It was the Communists, after all, who had littered the world with cheap AK-47s in order to “liberate” the masses. But the only lasting effect was that every wall between Cairo and the Philippines had at least one bullet hole in it. But nothing changed. Nothing changed because these alternate belief systems flew in the face of human nature. Of even common sense. Anyone who has ever tried to share pizza with roommates knows that Communism cannot ever work. If Lenin and Marx had just shared an apartment, perhaps a hundred million lives might have been spared and put to productive use making sneakers and office furniture.

Leland bankers told clients that they didn’t design the world—they were just trying to live in it. And incidentally, the wonders of the developed world rose from the ashes of conflict and competition, so they were helping people in the long run. For godsakes, just look at Japan.

And while the debate mumbled on, asterisked by legal disclaimers, Leland booked another highly profitable year.

But profitability was not what was bothering Garrett Lindhurst as he approached the CEO’s office suite.

Among Leland’s C-level executives, only Lindhurst was without decades-old family ties to the organization—but then again, the rapid expansion of computer systems in the corporate world in recent years had outpaced the ability of old-money families to produce senior technology talent. While Lindhurst hadn’t written any actual code since working with Fortran and Pascal back in his Princeton days, he had learned over the years how much systems should cost and what they needed to do.

In essence, computer systems needed to do only one of two things: make money or save money. Everything else was just details. Scut work. These tasks Lindhurst delegated to the executive senior veeps, who, in turn, delegated them to someone else…and so on. It was only during times of complete disaster that Lindhurst involved himself with the actual computer systems themselves.

Today was such a time.

Lindhurst pointed at the CEO’s temple-like office doors as he passed the executive secretary’s desk. “He in?”

“He’s leaving for Moscow in an hour.”

She barely registered Lindhurst’s presence. A stone-faced woman in her fifties, she was many years in the CEO’s service and effectively had more authority than any two senior vice presidents put together.

But Lindhurst had more authority than ten. He pushed his way through the towering double doors.

“Garrett!” she called after him.

He ignored her and proceeded into the CEO’s cavernous office at a quick pace.

The tanned, pampered face of Russell Vanowen, Jr., CEO and chairman of Leland Equity Group, looked up from reading a letter. He scowled. “Damnit, Garrett, make an appointment.”

Garrett heard the doors close behind him, and he took a deep breath. “This can’t wait.”

“Then just pick up the phone, for chrissakes.”

“We need a face-to-face.”

Vanowen regarded him like a statue would a pigeon. Vanowen had that obsessively groomed look of the fabulously rich—as though his head were the grounds of Augusta National and a hundred grounds-keepers swarmed over it each morning. The ring of white hair sweeping around the back of his head was perfectly manicured like a green. The pores of his skin were flawless. His suit was masterfully tailored to make his husky form look manly and authoritative.

Yet, for all his obvious fastidiousness, Vanowen did not look soft. He was stocky, intimidating, with a presence that projected itself without having to speak; his eyes scanned a room like twin .50-caliber machine guns. And he had an almost mystical authority in this office, with its bank of tall windows overlooking downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan beyond. This was a fabled seat of power, overlooking the length and breadth of the land.

Lindhurst proceeded toward Vanowen’s massive teak wood desk, still thirty feet away. “We have a major problem, Russ.”

Vanowen still held a letter in one hand, glaring over his reading glasses. He reluctantly dropped the letter on his otherwise empty desk and removed his glasses. “When you say ‘we,’ I take that to mean ‘you.’” He glanced at his massive watch, tugging a cuff-linked sleeve up to see the face. “I’m heading out to the airfield any minute.”

There wasn’t any time to finesse it. “We’ve lost administrator rights to our network.”

This did not have the impact Lindhurst hoped.

Vanowen shrugged slightly and now looked greatly irritated. “So what the hell do you want me to do about it? You’re the CIO; ride your people until they fix it. Jesus, Garrett.”

Lindhurst sat down in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs, pulling it right up to the desk. He leaned in close, still clutching the rolled magazine. “Russ, listen to me: we don’t have any control over our databases.”

“My response is the same. Now would you let me read this letter, please?”

“WE ARE UNDER ATTACK.”

That got Vanowen’s attention. “Attack?”

“Attack. All offices, worldwide. Look, I get in this morning, and I have phone calls from six division heads telling me they can’t log on as admins to our servers. They think it’s a layoff and that they’ve been shut out on purpose.”

“Were they?”

“Not by us. Turns out no one can get an admin logon—not even here in the main office. All systems rebooted last night. And somehow, somebody took over our network. We have only limited rights to it.”

Now Vanowen looked really angry. He pounded his fist on the desk. “Jesus Christ, Lindhurst! Why the hell wasn’t I told about this sooner? Our clients must be screaming bloody murder.”

“Hold on a second. Our Web sites are up, and we can access data, no problem. So can our clients. We can even change data, so no one outside Leland knows yet.”

Confused and getting angrier by the moment, Vanowen gestured, “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that we can’t back up, restore, or change our servers. We can’t even export data.”

“I may not know much about this stuff, Lindhurst, but I do know we spent thirty million dollars on backup systems. Surely you can take a backup copy and restore it.”

“That’s just it; our backup SANs are toast. Our off-site replication trashed. The log files were faked. We have no backups newer than four months ago.”

Vanowen squinted at him. “How is that possible? I spent forty-seven million dollars on IT last year alone. We were supposed to have the most advanced network security money can buy. You assured me of that. You assured the board of that. That’s why we hired you.”

“I don’t think our systems were breached. Not from the outside. I think it’s an inside job.”

“Call the FBI.”

“We can’t do that.”

“The hell we can’t.”

“Understand this, Russ: they can flush our entire network down the toilet with a single keystroke—from just about anywhere in the world. This company is hanging by a thread.”

The room got deathly quiet. Still staring, Vanowen spoke with the sort of calm voice that usually precedes violence. “Explain this to me, Garrett.”

“It gets much worse.”

“Worse? How the hell can it get any worse?”

“Watch.” Garrett motioned for Vanowen to follow him.

Vanowen’s office was huge, with a double-height ceiling and windows. Several sets of sofas and leather chairs were placed about the room, with a wide plasma-screen television on the far end and a conference table nearby, encircled by chairs. The place was easily a couple thousand square feet.

Vanowen reluctantly got up from his desk and followed Lindhurst to the plasma screen. Lindhurst was already fiddling with a remote he had picked up from the credenza there.

Vanowen settled into a conference table chair. “I’ll see that the people behind this go to federal prison for the rest of their lives.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll see in a moment.” Lindhurst gestured to the plasma screen. “Have you used this video conferencing system yet? It cost seventy thousand dollars.”

“Goddamnit, Lindhurst—”

“Okay, look, this system is jacked into our corporate network. I put something out there that I want you to see.” Lindhurst used the remote to navigate to an intranet Web page, which filled the screen. “I found an e-mail in my inbox this morning. It was from the system administrator—the new system administrator. The person who took my rights away. That e-mail contained a hyperlink—which I copied to this network share.” He navigated to another page and clicked a hyperlink. “Here is what I saw….”

Vanowen looked impatiently at the screen.

The seventy-inch plasma monitor suddenly went black and after a few moments a whooshing sound effect escorted a whirling logo into the center of the screen. It was a stylized emblem of the words: Daemon Industries LLC.

A professional-sounding female announcer came on, along with cavorting corporate music. It was like an infomercial or network marketing video. Her voice was cheerful. “Welcome to the Daemon Industries family of companies. In just a moment you’ll hear some of the exciting new opportunities available to you in this fast-growing global organization. An organization to which your company now belongs. But first, a word from our founder…”

Vanowen frowned. “Lindhurst—”

“Shh!” He pointed.

The screen faded in on a man in his mid-thirties. He was sitting in a chair next to a fireplace. The chirpy corporate Muzak continued in the background. Words appeared at the bottom of the screen:

Matthew A. Sobol, Ph.D.

Chairman & CEO Daemon Industries LLC

Sobol nodded once in dour greeting.

Lindhurst hit the PAUSE button on the remote. Sobol froze in mid-nod. “That’s him.”

“That’s who?” Vanowen squinted at the words on-screen. He turned back to Lindhurst. “Never heard of him. Is this the person who broke into our network?”

“Yes.”

“Call the FBI.”

“Won’t do any good, Russ. Matthew Sobol’s dead.” Lindhurst handed the rolled magazine to Vanowen.

Vanowen just glanced down at it, then with some reluctance took it. He unrolled it and moved it to arm’s length so he could see the cover with his myopic eyes. The same Matthew Sobol was on the cover of the magazine. It was eight months old. The headline read: Murderer From Beyond the Grave. “That guy?” Vanowen tossed the magazine onto the nearby conference table. “That was a hoax.” He motioned to the plasma screen. “So is this. My kid at USC could probably make this video on his Powerbook.”

“Russ, someone managed a coordinated global attack that not only stole rights to our worldwide network, but they did it months ago without raising a single alarm. They didn’t leave a trace. Matthew Sobol was one of the few people who could have pulled it off.”

“You’re frighteningly gullible. Jesus, some hackers got into our network, and they’re trying to put one over on you. Call the FBI.”

“Russ, no one faked this video. If you listen to him, you’ll see what I mean.” Lindhurst released the PAUSE button.

Matthew Sobol came back to life on-screen. The infomercial music faded as he finished his nod. “By now you’re beginning to realize that you no longer control your network and that your backups are damaged beyond repair. I am now an integral part of your organization—and have been for several months. Let me assure you that your corporate data is safe, and that sufficient backups exist off-site to provide seamless protection in the event of a natural disaster or other calamity.

“Before I continue, let me caution you to watch this video in its entirety before contacting your local or federal authorities. This recording contains important information that may affect your decision to involve those entities in this situation.”

A light musical jingle accompanied a twirling inset picture that spun to a stop alongside Sobol’s head. It was a video of Sobol’s mansion roaring in flames.

Sobol smiled pleasantly. “As you can see, involving the authorities is no guarantee of your safety. Although they would certainly be willing to try again at your location.”

The inset video image transitioned to a collection of quivering question marks.

Sobol looked intently into the camera. “But you’re probably wondering just how you got yourselves into this situation. To answer that question, surprisingly, we need to go back hundreds of millions of years to the very origins of life on Earth.”

The question marks expanded to fill the screen and faded away as the entire screen dissolved to an image of primordial Earth. It was a 3-D computer animation of the ancient seas, teeming with exotic life—razor-toothed fish with whiplike probosces and flitting schools of tiny translucent organisms.

Vangelis music rose on the surround-sound speakers. Sobol narrated, “Let me tell you the story of the most successful organism of all time: this is the story of the parasite.”

On-screen a large, particularly evil-looking fish with twin rows of splayed fangs and a spiked dorsal array glided into view. Just then, a small organism swam for the area just behind the enormous fish’s gills, where it latched on, unnoticed. A dozen others followed it and also latched on.

Sobol spoke. “Early on, evolution branched into two distinct paths: independent organisms—those that exist on their own in the natural world—and parasites—organisms that live on other organisms. And it was, by far, the parasites that proved the more successful of the two branches. Today, for every independent organism in nature, there exist three parasites.”

The computer animation transitioned from one eon to the next—from amphibian to reptilian to mammalian—with parasites continuing to evolve along with their hosts, infesting some species, driving them to extinction, while other species evolved means to keep them at bay—at least for a time.

“These two strains of evolution have been locked in a primordial arms race, constantly evolving to best each other for supremacy of this planet. As parasites evolve to perfect their systems against a species of host, the host evolves to evade their attack. Scientists call this theory of an eternal genetic struggle the Red Queen Hypothesis—a name taken from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.”

On-screen, the image suddenly changed to an animation of Alice in Wonderland—with the Red Queen running along a hedgerow maze and looking toward little Alice, who struggled to keep up. She was saying: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

The screen changed to a video of a small pond, with snails moving through the mud.

“Animal behavior has evolved to battle parasites. In fact, we have parasites to thank for the existence of sex. Sex is a costly and time-consuming method of reproduction. Experiments have shown that, in the absence of parasites, species evolve toward parthenogenesis—or cloning—as the reproductive method of choice. In parthenogenesis each individual is able to self-replicate. But this produces almost no genetic variation. In the presence of parasites, cloning, while more energy-efficient, is not a viable reproductive strategy. It presents a stationary genetic target to parasites, who, once introduced into such a system, will quickly dominate it.”

The screen changed to an animated diagram of twin sets of human DNA strands, which moved as Sobol spoke.

“Sexual reproduction exists solely as a means to defeat parasites. By mixing male and female genes, sex produces offspring not exactly like either the male or female—making each generation different from the last, and presenting a moving target to intruders intent on compromising this system.

“Even with this variation, parasites continue to pose a threat…”

The screen changed to color film footage of native villages with truly hideous parasitic infestations; children with bulging, worm-filled bellies; malaria victims.

“…and parasitism evolves and moves through any system—not just living things. The less variation there is in a system, the more readily parasites will evolve to infest it….”

The screen showed food-borne illness outbreaks—images of fast-food restaurants. The camera panned to reveal identical restaurants running down the sides of each street, in Dallas, in Denver, in Orlando, in Phoenix….

“Perfect replication is the enemy of any robust system….”

Then images of identical rows of computers in a data center, all running the same operating system…

“Lacking a central nervous system—much less a brain—the parasite is a simple system designed to compromise a very specific target host. The more uniform the host, the more effective the infestation.”

The screen changed to a video image of a hermit crab moving along the sandy ocean bottom. The camera followed it as Sobol spoke.

“But if they’re so successful, why haven’t parasites taken over the world? The answer is simple: they have. We just haven’t noticed. That’s because successful parasites don’t kill us; they become part of us, making us perform all the work to keep them alive and help them reproduce….”

The crab scuttled toward its hole.

“Sacculina is a parasite that infests saltwater crabs. It burrows into their flesh and extends tendrils into the crab’s bloodstream and brain. It chemically castrates the crab and becomes its new brain—controlling it like a zombie.”

The screen then showed an image of a Sacculina-infested crab, with the bulging sack of the parasite filling its abdomen.

“It compels the crab to raise the parasite’s young. It enslaves it.”

The screen changed to a close-up computer animation. It was a double helix of DNA, with each set of genes showing clearly as rungs on the genetic ladder. The perspective moved along the length of the helix.

“And so have thousands of parasites done with us. After tens of thousands of years, a parasite becomes so much a part of us that they evolve into sections of our DNA.”

Certain sections of the DNA were highlighted, one after another.

“They have so enslaved us that we believe we’re reproducing ourselves, when in reality, we’re reproducing hidden others within us. Forty percent of our genetic code consists of these useless segments of DNA—sections that serve no useful purpose to us. Nearly half the human genome is just the ghostly remnant of parasites.”

The images of DNA dissolved back to Sobol, sitting in his armchair by the fireplace. “By now, you’ve figured out that my Daemon is your parasite and that you are hopelessly infected. The Daemon will sip your corporate blood, but it will not be fatal. More importantly, the Daemon will keep other parasites out of your system, strengthening your immunity and ensuring that the corporate host continues to survive.”

The fireplace background dissolved, and Sobol now appeared on a black background. He was more serious.

“But know this: my Daemon has enlisted humans within your organization. These are hijacked cells in the corporate organism. People who thirst for more power. That’s how the Daemon got in. You have no way of knowing who is responsible. My Daemon can teach almost anyone to defeat network security—especially from an existing network account. The reality is that my Daemon now controls your global IT function. Your business will operate as before, and no one will suspect that there is anything unusual going on—except that perhaps your systems will run better than they did when you were responsible for them.

“Your natural inclination will be to resist this indignity, of course, and so you will be tempted to contact the authorities. That is your choice—although the moment my Daemon detects such contact, it will wipe your company’s data off the face of the earth. And don’t even think of replicating your databases from scratch with paper files; remember that my Daemon has agents among your staff. You can hide nothing from it. If you start polygraphing or if you lay off everyone, the Daemon will destroy your company. If you attempt to infiltrate an undercover operative into your IT department, it will destroy your company. If you attempt to exert control over your IT department or to create a new one, it will destroy your company. In short: if you attempt to do anything other than ignore my Daemon, it will destroy your company.

“As a financial enterprise wholly reliant upon the trust of your clients, the loss of all your clients’ data will bring ruin upon you. As for insurance: the Daemon will annihilate you whenever you reappear, and it will never stop until both your company and you as individual officers are financially destroyed. Being a nonsentient narrow-AI construct, the Daemon doesn’t give a damn what choice you make. It’s as dumb as Sacculina.” A pause. “And just as effective.”

The fireplace background reappeared, and Sobol smiled again. “I hope you and my Daemon can peacefully coexist. I think you’ll find that, as the years roll by, you’ll be glad indeed that you didn’t try to defy it—especially as you take market share from those companies that did defy it. So, please, carefully consider your options, and just remember—no matter what you choose—you serve a crucial role in evolution. Even if it’s just as food for the survivors. Thanks for watching.”

Sobol waved pleasantly as the saccharine corporate Muzak came up, accompanied by fanatical applause. Credits rolled by impossibly fast.

The female announcer returned. “Don’t touch that dial! In a few moments, you’ll have a chance to see how you can avoid destruction at the hands of the Daemon. And be sure to take the Daemon quiz—”

Lindhurst hit the STOP button, and the screen went black.

Vanowen sat there like someone who had just been through electro-shock therapy. His mouth hung open for several moments before he turned dull eyes toward Lindhurst. “It’s really Sobol.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

There were a few moments of silence.

“We have to call the authorities.”

“If we call the FBI—and word gets out about this—our investors will bail. And sue.”

Vanowen nodded. He suddenly frowned, as if remembering to be angry. “Damnit, Lindhurst, what kind of an organization are you running down there? Your systems may be responsible for the destruction of this company—a company with a century of history. When the shit hits the fan, I’m going to point the finger of blame squarely at you, where it belongs, and you can count on that.”

Lindhurst looked darkly at Vanowen. “That’s a touching sentiment, but I seem to remember it was you who told me to cut IT head count by half and slash the benefits of the rest. That left us with plenty of disgruntled people in our midst.”

“You took your bonus, if I remember.”

“Look, let’s not turn this into a blamestorming session. There’ll be plenty of time for that if we fail. In the meantime, we should focus on what we’re going to do.”

“You mean what you’re going to do. I’m going to Moscow to maintain the appearance of normalcy. But I want a report in my inbox by the time I land, detailing precisely what you intend to do to solve this problem.”

“No e-mail. Our systems are compromised. The phones, too. They’re voice over IP—the signals go over the computer network. We’ll need to use our personal cell phones and handwritten correspondence only—nothing enters a computer concerning this situation. Not a single typed character. Not even a scheduled meeting between us. Nothing. Otherwise they’ll know what we’re up to.”

Vanowen was slightly taken aback. “You’re serious?”

“Russ, you might not have noticed, but this entire organization is stitched together with computer networks. You can’t enter the parking garage without producing half a dozen records in some database. Sobol says he has people on our staff, and they no doubt can see everything we’re doing.”

“If you ask me, this is simple: we shut everything off and go back to using pens, paper, and phones. Lay off all these IT bastards. We’ll see how they like that.”

Lindhurst took a deep breath to keep from losing his temper. He heard this suggestion from time to time from men of Vanowen’s generation. Lindhurst chose his words carefully. “Russ, our competitors deliver market information in seconds to their clients, and we need to also. That doesn’t even begin to cover the fact that we need information just as much, if not more, than our clients in order to make a profit. If you turn off these systems, you may as well lock the doors.”

Vanowen was already nodding. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. But damnit, I knew this would happen one of these days with these goddamn computers.”

Lindhurst let this Nostradamus-like postdated prediction go uncontested. “Let’s be explicit, then: you go about your normal schedule. I’ll see what I can do about the problem, and when you return, we meet first thing. In person and off-site.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t simply call the authorities?”

“Look, even if we decide to contact them, the more we know about what’s really going on, the better. We’re only talking about a few days more, and this thing has been inside us for months. Remember, the slightest hint that there’s trouble, and this thing is liable to pull the plug on all our data.”

“But would it really do that? Then it would get nothing.”

“This isn’t a person, Russ. It’s a logic tree. That’s like wondering if a computer has the courage to put the letter D on-screen if you tap the “D” key. I suspect that a few employees have handed over control to the Daemon. I’m hoping I can quietly discover who and convince them to change sides again.”

Vanowen waved that topic aside. “I don’t want to hear details. Just tell me when you’ve solved it. Now get out of here, I’ve got to get ready to leave.”

Lindhurst put the remote down. He moved to leave but then turned back toward Vanowen. “What’s in Moscow, Russ?”

Vanowen scowled. “What?”

“I’m just curious why you’re heading to Moscow. Are we setting up a branch office there?”

Vanowen pointed to the door. “Go solve this problem, will you, please?”

Lindhurst regarded Vanowen for a moment more. He knew the old man was hiding something from him. He just didn’t know what.

But for once, Lindhurst had a few cards up his own sleeve. Cards that the old man’s generation didn’t even know existed.

Chapter 32:// Message

Black screen. Suddenly a gleaming chrome logo hissed in from the left while ultrapasteurized techno music thumped in over the title:

News to America

The title twirled into infinity as inset video images crisscrossed the screen, and the music built in tempo. Anji Anderson pushing a microphone at a businessman covering his face. Anderson helping a handicapped child take her first steps on artificial limbs. Anderson typing feverishly at a laptop keyboard in the open air while columns of black smoke towered over a city skyline behind her. Fast cuts following fast cuts. Half a second each. The human brain had to scramble to identify the image, determine whether it presented a threat, and just barely resolved it in time for the next image: Anderson standing, arms akimbo, glowering at the camera in the middle of Times Square while her name slid into place beneath her belt line. The music stopped cold.

The screen flipped immediately to black. A color photograph of a small child faded in. A boy smiling into his birthday cake, surrounded by friends. Anderson’s voice rose. “Peter Andrew Sebeck was born in Simi Valley, California, only son to Marilyn and Wayne Sebeck. He was their ray of hope after the loss of their first daughter to leukemia two years earlier. Outgoing, well liked, Peter was a model child.”

Another picture resolved over the first. It showed Sebeck in a high school football uniform, holding his helmet on his knee, once again smiling.

“Peter appeared to have the perfect life. But his early promise was cut short when he fathered a child at the age of sixteen with Laura Dietrich, a girl he’d known only a short while. Within a year they married. Friends described it as a cold marriage, devoid of tenderness. Yet, to all outward appearances, Pete Sebeck was still a model citizen. He joined the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department at age twenty-one, took night classes to earn a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, and rose quickly, becoming a twice-decorated officer and later a sergeant of detectives. To his fellow deputies, he was a no-nonsense officer and a family man—a well-respected citizen of Thousand Oaks, California, the safest city in America.”

Chilling music rose. The image changed to a still photo of a menacing Sebeck being escorted in handcuffs, his face a blur of fast-moving rage, lashing out at reporters. It was the type of iconic photograph that made careers. A photo of the year. A symbol of the times.

“But this façade concealed a darker side. Peter Sebeck, convicted mass murderer—nine of his victims federal officers. Another victim, a young colleague who trusted and admired him. Conspirator, embezzler, adulterer. Sex and drug addict. What drives seemingly normal people to commit heinous acts? Is it anger? Greed? Or does evil really exist? Can it possess you? Tonight we’ll find out as I interview Peter Sebeck live from Lompoc Federal Prison. This is News to America.”

The techno music rose again. A title appeared:

Sebeck on Death Row

The screen resolved on Anderson, sitting erect and alert in medium close-up. She looked businesslike yet sexy in a dark Chanel suit. Her makeup was perfect in the warm glow of camera lights. The lighting had to be done carefully so as not to reflect harshly off the bulletproof glass partition—beyond which sat Detective Sergeant Peter Sebeck. The most hated man in America.

She had helped to make that a reality.

Sebeck stared from behind the small intercom microphone in the prison visitation cell. The studio provided a better sound system for this interview, and a smaller microphone was clipped onto Sebeck’s khaki prison jumpsuit. One quarter of all households in America were anticipated to tune in. Everything was in place, and after a quick smile Anderson began.

“I must confess, Detective Sebeck, I’m surprised you agreed to this interview. I’m the person most responsible for your capture and conviction.”

Sebeck regarded her coolly. “I agreed for my own reasons, not yours.”

“So you still claim innocence?”

“I am innocent.”

“How do you explain the substantial evidence against you?”

“It was manufactured by Matthew Sobol. He stole my identity years ago.”

“So you still claim that Sobol’s Daemon is real, even though all efforts to discover such a thing have come up empty?”

Sebeck tried to keep his cool. “The government wants people to believe the Daemon is a hoax. They think it takes them off the hook.”

Anderson shook her head sadly. “Detective, you’ve already admitted your relationship with Cheryl Lanthrop—or did Sobol fake that, too?”

“He facilitated it. It was designed to impugn my character.”

“But you’ve been quoted saying—”

“I’ve been incorrectly quoted—most of the time by you. And there’s no appeal to the court of public opinion, is there? But I guess you know that.”

“Then this is a conspiracy against you? Everyone from the media to the police, and Sobol himself, have all conspired to frame you for these murders? You’re completely innocent?”

“I’m guilty of this much: being a bad husband and a worse father. I’m guilty of having an affair and of being too egotistical to realize I was being set up.”

“Please forgive me, Detective, but that sounds far-fetched.”

“Yes. That’s the whole point. It was designed to be far-fetched.”

“Designed by Sobol?”

“Yes.”

“So, you’re asking everyone to believe you, instead of the facts. We’re to believe that Sobol went to Herculean lengths to frame you—spending not just millions but tens of millions of dollars in the effort?”

“I’m not asking anyone to believe anything. To be honest, even I wouldn’t believe me.”

“So you don’t blame anyone?”

Sebeck stared hard at her. “Oh, I blame some people. But their time will come.”

“That sounds like a threat. Do you believe the American public will be sympathetic toward threats?”

“I’m not here to talk to the American public.”

“Then who are you here to talk to?”

“The Daemon.”

“The Daemon?” Anderson was taken aback. “The Daemon doesn’t exist, Sergeant.”

“You and I both know that isn’t true.”

Anderson shrugged blissfully. “No, I don’t know that.”

“You’re real proud of yourself, aren’t you, Anji? Famous and rich—isn’t that what the Daemon promised you? And all you had to do was sell your soul—if you ever had one.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted, ex-Detective. Why don’t you tell us your side of the Daemon hoax instead? Help us understand your point of view.”

“Keep them entertained, Anji. Keep them busy and distracted. That’s your purpose, isn’t it? I see that now. Be careful, because I’m starting to understand Sobol. Maybe even better than you. I’ve had plenty of time to think in here. Why did Sobol warn me?”

“Sobol warned you? How did he warn you?”

“At his funeral he said he would destroy me. Those were his exact words. And that’s exactly what he did. He destroyed everything that once defined me. It doesn’t make sense that he would warn me—unless he had further plans for me.”

“So he’s your friend now? Does that idea comfort you?”

Sebeck looked her straight in the eye. “Fuck you.”

Anderson clenched her jaw angrily for a moment. Then a pleasant smile spread across her face. “We have a time delay, Detective. But please watch your language. This is a family show.”

“I understand what Sobol meant now.”

“Well, you’re running out of time to solve the case, Sergeant. If the Supreme Court refuses your appeal, you’re scheduled to die by lethal injection. You must be impressed by the unusually swift hand of justice.”

Sebeck contemplated it calmly. “It is unusual, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps it was the murder of those federal officers.”

“Why are you helping this thing? Do you think it will ever let you go? Do you think you will ever be free?”

Anderson ignored him. “You’re undergoing psychiatric treatment. Is that going well?”

“I’m through talking to you. I came here to send a message to the Daemon.”

“Well, you’d better hope it watches television, Detective.”

Sebeck looked directly into the camera. “At Sobol’s funeral, he phoned me. He said that I had to accept the Daemon. That in the months before my death I had to invoke it. And although it will make me sound more insane than ever, my message is this: I, Peter Sebeck, accept the Daemon. And I am ready to face the consequences.”

Sebeck turned to the prison guards and federal officials standing behind Anderson. “That message needs to get out. She’ll try to cut it from the interview—and when she does, you’ll know she’s afraid. You’ll know she’s in collusion with the Daemon. If you think I’m a nutcase, then that’s all the more reason to get my message out there. It proves your case against me. It condemns me.”

Anderson watched grimly from beyond the bulletproof partition. “Sergeant, there is no Daemon. But I’ll be happy to pass along the message.”

Sebeck pointed at her. “You and I will meet again.”

Anderson felt strangely exhilarated. Sebeck was sexy when he was pissed off—and god, did this guy have balls. He was going to die, but he was going down swinging. She motioned to stop rolling camera, then locked eyes with Sebeck. “I’ll convey the message. Have no doubt.”

She had a direct line, after all.

And word from the Daemon was that Sebeck must die.

Chapter 33:// Response

In a dark storage room in a nondescript export company in the Huang Cun Industrial Zone of Dongguan City, China, a low-end server stood wedged between stacks of toner cartridges and counterfeit software packages. A long-forgotten CAT-5 cable ran from the back of the machine, snaking behind towering boxes containing yet more boxes, and terminated in a Fast-Ethernet jack just to the left of an overloaded electrical outlet—both lost to sight behind cases of Communist Party propaganda pamphlets, printed specifically for use as props in Western theme restaurants. The Ethernet jack ran in turn to the company network, which in turn led to the corporate Web server, which in turn led to the world.

The computer fan hummed as the machine used RSS to scan the contents of the same four hundred Web sites every minute. And at exactly seventeen minutes past midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, the machine stopped scanning.

The computer’s hard drive whined to life and started clicking feverishly—sending out packets to hundreds of IP addresses before committing digital suicide by erasing itself.

Another Daemon event had been triggered.