Zimmerman's Algorithm

2.05 Wed. Mar. 18

WHEN they left the restaurant, it was close to two-thirty. Gideon walked with Ruth back toward her apartment. He felt as if he was closer to understanding Doctor Julia Zimmerman, if no closer to understanding what she was doing.

He was thinking over what Ruth had said, about Julia's belief in her mathematics, when he noticed something across the street. A man in a heavy leather coat was pacing them. The man's hands were in his pockets, and he seemed to be conspicuously not looking at Gideon and Ruth as they walked down the street.

Ruth was saying something, but Gideon wasn't paying attention to her. He was looking ahead of them. On the sidewalk, walking toward them, was a man in a jogging suit, wearing a windbreaker. His hands were in his pockets, too.

Gideon took Ruth's arm and started slowing down.

"Are you all right?" Ruth asked as Gideon began exaggerating his limp.

"Follow my lead," Gideon whispered.

They were limping past a small bookstore. The front window display was filled with the covers from a lot of underground magazines. Inside, Gideon could see ranks of bookshelves facing the doorway.

The man in the jogging suit was about ten yards away. His right hand was coming out of his pocket. Across the street, the man with the leather coat had stopped and looked as if he was about to cross the street.

A small bell rang as a man walked out of the bookstore. While the door stood open, Gideon half tackled Ruth into the store while he grabbed for his own gun. "Back in the store," Gideon said, 'Take cover."

Ruth froze for a moment. The man behind the counter began to say something, "Hey—what?"

Then there was a sound like a soft explosion—like a sledgehammer pounding loose sand. It was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A hole appeared in the glass of the closing front door.

With that, Ruth scrambled for the back of the store to take cover somewhere behind the shelves. The guy behind the counter dropped, and Gideon hoped it wasn't because he was hit.

Gideon saw the guy with the jogging suit through the front window. His hands were out of his pockets, and he carried a wicked looking automatic sporting a silencer. He was running for the door.

Gideon leveled his revolver and fired. Unlike the silenced automatic, this sounded like a gunshot. The bullet punched a hole in the window just behind the jogger. The jogger dropped out of Gideon's line of sight. There were others moving on the other side of the bookshop door.

They dropped as well, before he could get a good look at them.

Gideon didn't wait for them to reappear. He backed up, past the lines of shelves, toward the rear of the store. He was hoping there was a back way out of this place.

As he ducked around the last bookshelf, Ruth grabbed him. "What the hell's going on?" she demanded.

"We have to get out of here," Gideon looked around the rear of the bookstore and saw what he was searching for. A large fire door stood at the end of the corridor formed by a tall bookshelf and the rear wall. It said, in bright red letters, "Emergency Exit Only."

There was the sound of breaking glass by the front of the store. Gideon grabbed Ruth and pushed her toward the exit.

"Who are these people?"

"CIA, NSA, I don't know—just that they're trying to shoot us."

Ruth slammed through the door first. As soon as the door opened, the room was filled with the sound of a fire alarm. She pushed through, Gideon following on her heels, backing toward the fire door, his gun pointing back into the store.

He saw the gunman start to duck around the bookshelf and he put two shots near the corner.

Fragments of wood and paper flew into the air, and the follower ducked back around the corner of the bookshelf.

The fire exit led into a narrow alley that was only open at one end. "Run," he yelled at Ruth. They had to get to the end of the alley before these guys cut off their only escape route. Ruth didn't need the encouragement, she was already running for the street. Gideon started running after her, but he could feel his injured leg resist the movement. He was barely twenty yards away from the door, and Ruth was almost at the street.

The fire door began moving, and Gideon fired another shot next to the open side of the door. The shot echoed in the alley, and orange sparks flew from the brick near the handle of the door. For the moment it stopped moving.

Then he heard Ruth scream, "Shit!"

Gideon turned to look toward the mouth of the alley. A black Lincoln Town Car had pulled up, passenger side facing the alley, blocking their escape. Ruth was only a few feet from it.

The rear door opened and someone yelled from inside. "Quick, get in!"

Whoever they were, they weren't trying to shoot them. Ruth didn't appear to debate the matter. She dove into the back seat, Gideon started running, his limp trying to slam him into the wall of the alley with every other step. As he closed on the car, the front passenger door opened, and a large man stepped out.

He wore a charcoal-gray suit and a black tie, and in his hands he held a silenced Uzi.

Gideon threw himself on the ground as the guy started firing. He was close enough to him that he could hear the hot brass casings bounce around and over him as the gunman emptied the Uzi's clip into the alley.

"Come on, move it," the gunman called as Gideon heard him change clips.

Gideon pushed himself up and scrambled for the back seat of the Lincoln, landing on his side next to Ruth, somehow keeping his grip on his gun. Outside the car, he heard the sound of the muffled Uzi reverberate through the car. He managed a look back down the alley and could see someone attempting to return fire, using the metal door for cover. The door itself was peppered with dozens of holes, and the men following them didn't dare give up their cover while the Uzi was firing.

The man with the Uzi kicked the passenger door shut after Gideon was fully inside. He let a few more shots go into the alley, and then he slipped into the passenger seat. The Lincoln was accelerating away before he'd even closed the door.

"Well," said the driver, sparing a glance back at Gideon and Ruth, "I guess we're in it now."

"Who are you people?" Ruth asked.

The man who'd carried the Uzi shook his head. "It would be inadvisable to tell you that. Suffice it to say that it's not in our best interests to allow you to fall into the hands of those people."

"And who are they?" Ruth asked.

Gideon sat up. There was something vaguely familiar about these guys.

Now that he could see where the Lincoln was going, they were shooting north, weaving in and out of traffic. They blew through lights as yellow cabs blared horns at them.

Gideon noticed a livid bruise on the neck of the man with the Uzi. "You were at my house," Gideon said.

"You're worth keeping track of," said the driver. "We're not the only ones of that opinion."

"What's going on?" Ruth yelled with frustration bordering on hysteria.

"We'll explain what we can, when we can," the gunman told them as they tore through another intersection and made a screeching turn following signs toward the Holland Tunnel. While the one drove like a maniac, the other picked up a cellular phone and dialed someone. "Hi, Mom," the guy said. "Uncle had a bit of a breakdown. We had to pick him up. We got some groceries and we're heading to Abe's house. Yeah, I think you better call Triple-A." He hung up.

"Uncle?" Gideon said.

"We're going to take you to a safe house, check you both out for listening devices, then we'll see what we can talk about."

The Lincoln slid into the tunnel. Gideon raised his gun and said, "I'd like an explanation now."

"You better put that away," said the driver. "We don't want things to get ugly." The Lincoln started slowing down. "I could let you both out here. But neither of us is going to discuss anything before we get where we're going." The car was almost stopped, and behind them horns were blaring at them. "Now either put that away, or get out."

Gideon considered forcing the issue, but he didn't know if he wanted to. He would be putting Ruth in danger if he started pulling macho shit now. And whatever was going on, these guys seemed to be at least partially on his side.

He holstered the gun.

On the far side of the Hudson, they drove through Jersey City. They wove through so many twists and turns that Gideon was unsure exactly where they were when they entered a residential area and pulled into a weed-shot driveway. The house was in a run-down neighborhood, and looked as decrepit as the buildings to either side. The paint had once been red, but had faded to a chipped, weathered brown. Two windows were covered by sheets of plywood.

The garage didn't look all that safe. The walls were tilted to the left, as if the whole thing was about to collapse. Despite that, the door slid up silently on its own as the Lincoln drove up the broken driveway. The car slid into the broken-down garage and the door started closing immediately. Gideon looked outside and saw that there seemed to be a few new timbers bracing the garage upright in its awkward position.

The driver waited until the door was completely closed behind the Lincoln before he said, "Could we have the gun, please?"

Gideon didn't like the way things were going, but he decided that there was little to gain by not playing along. Ruth was looking at him as if she blamed him for what was happening. For all he knew, she might be right. He handed the butt of the gun to the driver.

The other man got out and opened the passenger door next to Gideon. "Come on," he said. As Gideon got out of the car, the man took a small wand from off of a shelf of old tools lining the wall of the garage. Unlike the rusty hacksaws and miscellaneous junk scattered on the shelf, this thing looked brand new. He flipped a switch on the thing and swept Gideon up and down as if it was a metal detector.

He did the same to Ruth as she stepped out of the car.

"You'll both be happy to know that neither of you have any transmitters on you." He put the device back on the shelf where it blended in with the rest of the junk. "Come with me."

He led them out of the garage and through a weed-filled backyard whose main feature was a stack of old tires piled next to the rear wall of the house. Their guide took them to the back door. The door had an iron security grate; the window behind the grate was covered by a sheet of plywood. Despite the security, their guide opened the door without a key.

From the outside, the place made Gideon feel uneasy. You found bodies inside this kind of place. Inside he expected to see mattresses and used needles scattered on the floor—a shooting gallery or a crack house.

The interior was different.

They stepped through into a kitchen and their guide hit a light switch, filling the room with bright white light from a brand-new fluorescent fixture. The place was clean, even though the plaster was cracked and a half-dozen tiles were missing from the walls. There wasn't a stove or a refrigerator, but a new microwave sat on one of the kitchen counters.

They stepped through the kitchen, and into the front of the house. The living room and dining room were both as clean and as empty as the kitchen. A card table and a few chairs sat in the dining room, and a lone futon sat in the living room. The futon faced a small television that sat on a small dorm fridge that was only slightly bigger than it was.

One of the folding chairs was occupied.

"Have a seat," said the man, waving at two of the other chairs. Their guide, who probably still had his Uzi, remained standing.

Gideon sat next to Ruth and studied this new person. He was probably in his eighties. His hair was snow white and somewhat wild. His eyes were hard and penetrating, but seemed to glimmer at some private joke.

"Gideon Malcolm," he nodded at Gideon, "Ruth Zimmerman."

"Who are you?" Gideon asked. "Why are we here?"

The man leaned back in his chair. "My name wouldn't be a prudent revelation. And I think you both know why you are here."

"What do you have to do with my sister's disappearance?" Ruth finally said.

Gideon could see her muscles tense, and sensed that she was on the verge of some sort of outburst.

She had been quiet most of the way here, all the tension building up. . .

Gideon put a hand on her shoulder and hoped that was enough to calm her.

"That," said the old man, "I can tell you. Neither I, nor the people I work with, have anything to do with your absent sister. If we had, your sister never would have disappeared."

"What do you mean by that?" Ruth said. "What's happened to her? Why are people shooting at me?"

Gideon squeezed Ruth's shoulder and asked his own question. "Why did you step between us and a bunch of gunmen? What do you get out of all this?"

The old man stood and started pacing around the table. "Dr. Zimmerman is a very dangerous person," he said. "Her flight has threatened a great many people. Including the people I work for, including your own government."

Ruth shook her head. "Julia wouldn't threaten anybody."

"What she knows is threatening, regardless of what her motives are. And the presence of those gunmen bring her motives into question."

"Who are they?" Gideon asked.

The old man ran his hands through his white mane of hair. "In the 1980s there were a number of states in the Middle East that sponsored—publicly and privately— various terrorist organizations. Back then there was a lot of financing by the Soviet Union and these groups had common training grounds in Lebanon, Libya, Angola. When the USSR split apart, the loose network of organizations remained, sharing intelligence, expertise, and occasionally personnel. What had begun as group of terrorist organizations soon became an independent multistate intelligence network with a Pan-Islamic agenda. It calls itself the International Unification Front. It stretches from Bosnia to Iran, from Kazakstahn to Angola. It represents a continual threat to your country and the European democracies."

"So these people are Arab terrorists?" Gideon asked.

The old man shook his head. "Both terms are probably inappropriate. While this organization contains Palestinians, Syrians, and Libyans, it also contains its share of Europeans, Africans, Russians. Its goal is the domination of the Middle East and Central Asia, and its ideology is inherently anti-Western. Its function is predominately espionage: economic, industrial, technological."

"They have Zimmerman, don't they?" Gideon said.

The old man turned and faced both of them. "Yes, God help us all. The people that have died, they've been assassinated by the IUF. All of them. I'm unsure if your own government realizes who is responsible."

Ruth shook her head and said, "Oh, God."

"Then why didn't they come after me until now?" Gideon asked. "Or Ruth?"

The old man got up and walked into the living room. He picked up a small camcorder, one with the flat LCD playback screen, and brought it back to the table. He pointed the screen at Gideon.

"Too dangerous to bring your car back here, but we taped the pickup to show you what you're dealing with."

Gideon watched as the shaky handheld shot approached his car. Suddenly, three other men appeared in the shot. One popped the driver's door with a slim-jim so fast that it was hard to tell he didn't have a key. One man entered the car while the two others went to opposite ends of the Nissan. One popped the hood and the other popped the trunk. They were going over the car with electronic devices akin to what they'd used on Gideon and Ruth in the garage. This time they found something.

The one inside the car took apart his crutches. They stripped off the padding on top of one and held it up for the camera. Gideon saw a small device, little bigger than a cold capsule, hidden in a slit in the padding.

"What's that?" Gideon asked, pretty sure what the answer was already.

"Listening device," said the old man. "If we watch the rest of the tape, we'll see them find a tracking device and another microphone in your car."

Gideon nodded as the tape ran. He watched them do as the old man said. However, after going through all he had at this point, he couldn't quite escape the impression that it all could have been staged for his benefit.

"What was the point of watching me?"

The old man shut off the tape. "Up until now you were a useful tool. Watching you, they had a good idea of exactly how close anyone was to Zimmerman."

"The same reason you were watching me?" Gideon looked pointedly at the gunman by the door, the one with the bruised neck. "Why you broke into my house—"

The old man steepled his fingers. "You've managed to scare elements into the open that would've otherwise remained hidden. You're close enough to Zimmerman now that the IUF is nervous."

Gideon shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. I've been playing catch-up since this whole thing started—"

"Why do you think your own government hasn't debriefed you?"

Gideon sat there and looked into the old man's steely eyes. He wasn't sure what he'd meant by that. "Why should they?"

"It's standard procedure when a civilian gets as close as you have to sensitive information. Instead, they've made a point of ignoring you and allowing you to be a loose cannon. They should have brought you in as soon as you hired Morris Kendal. But they're desperate enough to believe you'd be more useful stirring things up."

Gideon stood, his chair crashing to the ground behind him. "What the hell do you know about Kendal?"

It was now Ruth's turn to grab his arm and try and calm him down. The other guy, the Lincoln's driver, took a few steps toward the table until the old man held up a hand to stop him.

"Kendal became a threat to the IUF as soon as he began working with the government."

Gideon stood there, speechless.

"Why don't you pick up your chair?"

"What do you mean, 'working with the government?' "

"When Morris Kendal started asking your questions to his contacts in the CIA, they brought him in. We only know this because, by that point, we were already watching Kendal's movements."

"But when he met me—"

"We believe he was there to encourage you to go after Zimmerman. To make sure the loose cannon went off in the direction they wanted."

"Why kill him, then?"

"Sit down," the old man said.

Gideon backed up and righted his chair. "Why did they kill him?"

"Sit."

Gideon finally sat.

"Morris Kendal carried out contract security assignments for various Arab and African delegations. It's almost certain that he had seen a number of the people who're working on Zimmerman. If he started working with the U.S. Government directly, the IUF believed it would only be a matter of time before Kendal led the government to them."

"He knew—" Gideon said. "He told me that this International Unification Front was involved."

"Kendal was in a position to know things much more damaging than simply the IUF's involvement."

"Like what?"

Ruth looked up at the old man and said, "Why are we here? What do you want? Who are you?"

"What I want is to prevent Zimmerman's knowledge from falling into the hands of the IUF. Seeing how things have progressed, my secondary goal is to discover what they have gotten from her, how they are using her." The old man looked at Gideon. "I also want to punish those responsible for the death of Mr. Kendal. He was, I think, a friend of mine. I tried to steer him away from dangerous waters. I probably failed him by not being imperative enough."

"What do you want from us?" Gideon asked.

"Your help," the old man said. "Between the both of you, you know something that the IUF believes is dangerous enough for them to come after you. We know that they were watching Ruth, and that there was one of their people in the restaurant—"

"Oh, shit," Ruth whispered.

"In a position to hear your conversation."

"Why should we trust you?" Ruth asked him. "Why should I help you hunt down my sister?"

"Because the other players in this game would gladly execute her to prevent her knowledge from being propagated." He turned to face Gideon. "It was your own government that used that Daedalus computer to lure Dr. Zimmerman out into the open. They would have shot her down the way they shot down you and your brother."

"What do you want from us?" Gideon asked. His mind was already racing over what he and Ruth had said.

"Your conversation in the restaurant. What was it about?"

Gideon glanced at the windows of the living room. Shadows blackened the shades. It was dusk outside, soon to be night.

"I can't believe—" Ruth started.

Gideon grabbed her low on the arm, below the old man's line of sight, and—he hoped—out of view of the other guy who was currently pacing around the room, behind the old guy. He squeezed.

Ruth stopped talking and looked at him.

"On a condition," Gideon said. "You tell me why everyone's after Zimmerman. What does she know that's so important?" He could feel Ruth tense up, but she didn't interrupt.

"There are two reasons. One's provincial to the NSA, the other is more of a universal threat. The first reason, the provincial one, is that Dr. Zimmerman was involved in all the security architecture installed on the NSA's computers over the past five years. She knows what they were protecting against, which is almost as important as how. The NSA's security procedures have filtered through to a series of agencies. As long as Dr. Zimmerman is out there, none of those systems can be considered secure. Both the NSA and the CIA are behaving right now as if all their operations are compromised to some extent."

"That's a provincial reason?"

The old man nodded. "Provincial and transitory. It will take a few months for them to reconstruct their security, no matter what happens with Zimmerman. That kind of intelligence information is devalued the moment the target knows you have it. There's more . . . Have you heard about information warfare?"

"I probably heard about it on Nightline once."

The old man chuckled. "The agency that Dr. Zimmerman works for was intended to be completely passive. It listened. It would gather in signals intelligence from everywhere it could, landline, radio, satellite, Internet— almost every type of electronic signal generated on this planet will pass through its computers. However, as strong cryptographic methods became prevalent, available to individuals and organizations, the agency was forced to become a more active gatherer of intelligence."

"What do you mean, 'more active' ?"

"One example—they have one program, the community's nicknamed it the 'shadow.' It's a virus that hides on a host system and does nothing but monitor keystrokes and hide the information in a buffer on the victim's hard drive. Whenever the victim makes contact with the Internet, the virus transfers the buffer's data back to a repository where the information can be gathered. A system can seem incredibly secure, and still be vulnerable to that kind of program. It's very hard to defend against."

"They can do that?" Ruth asked. Her voice seemed to carry the same sort of unease that Gideon felt. "Isn't that illegal?"

The old man chuckled. "Many of their current intelligence-gathering methods come from the repertoire of the last wave of hackers. They have a program that can crack eighty percent of all passwords—and it just relies upon the weaknesses of human nature, the tendency to make passwords actual words." He shook his head. "The line between information intelligence and information warfare disappears once you don't stop at simply listening to a target system. And there're other, more active, measures they use. . ."

"Like what?"

"I have little access to that kind of information," he steepled his fingers again. "But try a little thought experiment. Take the shadow virus—change it a little. Now every personal computer nowadays keeps track of the nation it lives in, so it can operate in the proper language, use the correct currency and measurement units . . . Let's just say that this virus will only copy itself to a computer that identifies itself as Iraqi, or Iranian, or Chinese. Now, whenever that computer logs on to the Internet, this virus checks a specific site for a date. If it finds a date there, it decides that it will wipe that computer's hard drive on or after that date."

Gideon leaned back and shook his head. "They're doing this?"

The old man nodded. "There may even be some chance that they've hidden some of this computational ordnance in the operating systems of these computers. It doesn't even require a mole in the software company. It just requires them to engineer it in and deliver it into the target area before the commercial package arrives. Eighty percent of the software in the third world is pirated. A conservative estimate is that a third of it has been tampered with. An early copy of a basic software package will propagate itself throughout the area with little or no help from outside."

"Then a war starts," Gideon said. "And every computer in the target area dies." The old man paused to allow that to sink in. "Now this is all speculation. I don't have exact information on Zimmerman's work. But what we do have suggests that her knowledge was being used to develop this kind of information warfare software—military and paramilitary computer viruses. She seems to have been involved in some sort of breakthrough. Something we don't want the IUF to have access to." He waved to the other man, the driver. He left the room. Gideon couldn't see where he went, but he got a sense that he went down into the basement. "It's now your turn. Tell me what you two discussed in the restaurant."

After Gideon had gone over the conversation, with Ruth's reluctant help, the old man left them and the anonymous driver returned and escorted them to a room upstairs. It was a small bedroom with only a pair of cots, a table, and a table lamp sitting on a stool. The one window was covered with plywood, and the door didn't lock—it only had an empty hole where the doorknob would go.

The driver said, "You can rest here while we decide what's going to happen."

Once the door closed, Ruth started yelling. "What the hell do you think you're doing? You're playing games with Julie's life—our lives. You don't even know who these bastards are."

Gideon sat on the bed and massaged his leg. "My personal bet is Israeli, and they stepped in when we were getting shot at. That counts for something."

"Because they want something. These guys aren't the government. Have you thought about the fact it might be treason to help these people?"

"Whatever Julia was doing, the contents of our conversation weren't classified material. And last I checked, Israel was still our ally." Gideon looked up at Ruth. "Forgive me if my faith in my own government is slipping."

"Damn, damn, damn—" Ruth started pacing, pounding her right fist into her upper thigh. "Why the hell do they care what we were talking about? I don't know any government secrets. The only way I knew Julie was AWOL was because the Feds—and you—came to question me about it. . ."

Gideon shook his head. By most reasonable measures he had all the answers right now. Julia Zimmerman worked for the NSA, she went AWOL—abducted, recruited, or sold her services to—the International Unification Front. The U.S. intelligence community must have gone absolutely nuts trying to locate her. Whatever Zimmerman was doing, she needed a Daedalus, and the IUF hired some Central American thugs to liberate one while one of Zimmerman's old grad students hired a driver. The CIA—or whoever—captured the Daedalus thieves and set up an ambush for the delivery. And, unfortunately, Lionel decided to sell his information to Gideon.

It was a more complicated screwup, but still just a screwup. . .

Why did it still feel as if he hadn't come close to what was really going on?

"Damn it, are you even listening to me?"

Gideon looked up. "What?"

Ruth made a disgusted face and said, "Sheesh. I was asking you about what you plan to do to—" The lights flickered. "What?"

Gideon stood up, somewhat unsteadily. The lights flickered again, and stayed out this time. Suddenly the only light was a dim sodium glow filtering through gaps in the window's plywood.

"What are they doing?" There was a thin note of hysteria in Ruth's voice.

"Quiet." Gideon whispered harsh and sharp, and went so far as to place his fingers on Ruth's lips.

There was a dim sound from downstairs. Running feet. Unmistakable confusion. Whatever was happening, it wasn't just for the prisoner's benefit.

" I think," Gideon whispered, "we better get out of here."

He felt Ruth edge up behind him. "What's happening?"

"I'd like to believe it's just a blackout—but I'm not a strong believer in coincidence." He edged into the darkened hall holding up a hand for Ruth until he was sure the way was clear. The hallway was long, narrow, and almost pitch-black. One end faced stairs down, the other faced stairs to the attic. Cautiously, he waved Ruth after him.

From somewhere came the sound of breaking glass, then a dull thud.

There was something visceral in the sound that made Gideon back up from the downward staircase.

"Wh—"

Ruth didn't manage to voice the complete syllable before an explosion tore through the first floor and the concussion knocked Gideon backward on top of her. Suddenly the air was hot and thick with smoke and the hallway was illuminated by a dim ocher glow that reflected from the walls of the staircase.

Then the gunfire started.

"Oh, God . . ." Gideon could feel Ruth shaking beneath him.

Gideon rolled onto his knees and shook Ruth's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I think s—"

"Then move toward the attic before we're trapped in here." Gideon half-dragged Ruth away from the downward stairwell. Despite his words, he was feeling all too trapped already. This second, his main

concern was moving away from the flames, and the too-familiar dull thudding of silenced gunfire.

Up the stairs was more of the sodium glow from the streetlights outside. The light came in three directions through glassless windows. Light also leaked in through the unfinished rafters where old fire damage had eaten holes through the roof. Gideon ducked instinctively as he rounded the top of the stairs. There was a nasty feeling of exposure up here that sank home when he saw the floor near the front side of the house.

Sprawled beneath the street-facing window was a body. Ruth must have seen it about the same time he did, he heard her gasp behind him. The corpse's head was a misshapen shadow, and on the ground nearby lay a broken pair of expensive binoculars.

"Stay down," Gideon whispered. "That guy must have been keeping an eye on the street for them." Must have been the first one to be taken out.

Gideon crawled out into the attic. The floor was rough, unfinished plywood that hadn't even been nailed down. As he inched from the stairwell, he saw two video surveillance cameras looking out the other two attic windows. Cables snaked around to a card table where a trio of dead monitors faced the front of the building, and where the dead guard had been sitting.

Gideon crawled up to the side of the dead man. Ruth whispered at him, "What are you doing?"

From below came the sounds of staccato thumping, more gunfire, punctuated by the sound of another explosion. The smell of smoke was drifting up from the stairwell.

"Getting a weapon—I hope." Gideon looked at the corpse and grimaced. The man had taken a round—probably from a rifle—in the right eye. The shot had gone through the lenses of his binoculars, and obscure pieces of shrapnel were sticking out of what was left of the man's face. He had been wearing a throat mike, but he hadn't lived to get a warning off to his fellows.

Gideon patted him down and found a shoulder holster. He pulled out what appeared to be an automatic pistol with a silencer. In hunting for the safety, he discovered that he was handling a Micro-Uzi that wasn't any larger than his own gun.

"Gideon! There're people coming."

Gideon turned toward Ruth and had the ominous realization that the gunfire below had ceased.

He switched the safety off of the Micro-Uzi. "Get over here, and keep down."

Ruth started moving uncertainly toward him. She had barely made it a quarter of the way to him when a shadowy form turned the corner of the stairwell. Gideon fired one burst from the Uzi that at his awkward angle missed, but the shadow froze. "Don't shoot!"

Gideon recognized the voice of their anonymous driver.

"What's happening down there?"

"IUF," he said. "They've covered all the exits, killed Sal, Nev . . ."

"Where are they?" Gideon asked.

"Outside, surrounding the building. Trying to burn us out."

"Great," Gideon said through clenched teeth. "Any of your friends left down there?"

"I don't know."

"The old guy?" Gideon asked.

The driver coughed a few times. "He left to make a briefing." There was a hint of irony in his voice. "About getting you two to a more secure location."

Gideon noticed the coughing and looked up. The roof above them had become hazy with smoke. At most they had a few moments to get out of here.

The driver started up the stairs, and Gideon leveled the Uzi at him. "Where are you going?"

"This place is on fire—the first floor's a death trap already."

Ruth looked back and forth between them. "How're we getting out of here?"

Gideon started sliding back toward the center of the floor, keeping his gun trained in the driver's direction. "Where were you planning to go from here?"

He pointed off to Gideon's left, where fire had damaged the roof enough to let outside light in. Gideon scrambled over to that wall. The plywood floor ended short of his destination, and he put his foot through a section of dry-rotted lathe. He cursed, but kept moving along the framing. He got as close as he could, and from where he was, it was obvious that there was little wood left on this corner of the roof. What separated him from the outside was little more than a layer of chaotically peeling asphalt shingles.

The smoke was getting worse, and Gideon could feel the temperature rising.

Gideon looked back at the driver. The driver said, "They'll be watching the windows, but they might miss that."

Great, but where to from there? Gideon turned around carefully and kicked some of the shingles out

of the way. Smoke began blowing in from outside. Even if the attackers had this portion of the roof covered, the thick smoke roiling up from the lower floors reduced visibility down to a few feet.

Gideon looked back at the others. The stairwell was flickering orange and the smoke in here was nearly as bad as the smoke outside. He heard sirens in the distance. He hoped that they were headed here, the arrival of the fire department might cause the IUF to scatter before they shot them.

"Come on," Gideon waved at the other two.

Ruth hesitated—but she could hear cracking wood and breaking glass coming from downstairs as well as Gideon did. The sound of fire tearing through the building below them. She went first, pushing through the remains of the shingles. Gideon followed, letting the driver take up the rear.

Outside, the air was too warm. The heat radiated from below, through the choking smoke. Every few seconds the wind would tear away some of the smoke cover and Gideon could see a neighboring house with a second-floor porch to their left. He could also see two Dodge Ram pickup trucks on the lawn. With them he saw a hint of movement.

The three of them were hugging the side of the roof, a forty-degree slope into a gutter that was half-peeled off the building.

"The porch next door," said the driver.

It was the only route left open to them, but it wasn't something Gideon wanted to hear. His leg was already throbbing in anticipation.

Ruth looked over at the two of them, then across the driveway, through the smoke, at where the neighboring porch should be. Her eyes glistened—it might have been fear, or it might have been the biting smoke. She shook her head and got to her feet, unsteadily balanced on the edge of the roof.

"Let me go—" Gideon began to say. But Ruth had already taken the leap. It was as if she silently vanished into the smoke. "—first," he said into the choking wind. His heart throbbed in his neck as he pulled himself toward the front of the building, where he could make the jump himself.

Behind him the building groaned, and he could feel it shake beneath him. Something below gave way, and black smoke belched around him and the driver. He pushed himself upright, his half-working leg vibrating with the effort, and he strained to see something of Ruth through the smoke.

"Come on," he whispered.

"There's no time! Jump." The house made creaking noises behind him.

Gideon turned toward the driver, "What's your name?"

"Alexander—Now go!"

Gideon couldn't even see where the neighboring roof was, he couldn't even see if Ruth had made it. Fifteen feet across, ten feet down. Simple . . .

Simple if his leg still worked, or if he could see where he was going.

Gideon crouched and launched himself into the roiling blackness. He kept his eyes closed, and held his breath against the choking smoke. It burned against his skin as if he were falling through the fire itself. It felt as if he were suspended in the air there for an hour or two—

Then his shoulder plowed into asphalt shingles with enough force to ignite a starburst rainbow across the inside of his eyelids. He felt his legs roll off the edge of the porch. For a terrifying, disorienting moment his lower body was suspended in midair—then a hand grabbed his belt and dragged him up over the edge.

He opened his eyes in time to see a shingle explode near his right hand. He looked up at Ruth, who was still pulling him toward the wall of the neighboring house. "Take cover," he yelled at her. He pushed her toward the windows facing them and another bullet hole sprouted in the roof between them.

Ruth headed for the darkened window, but she didn't let him go. That was probably a good thing, because the impact had stunned him, and all Gideon could manage was a wild scramble, his bad leg doing little more than kicking weakly at the edge of the roof.

Just at the time that Gideon thought the sniper had enough time to aim a shot right into one of their heads, something else slammed into the roof. Gideon turned to see Alexander, and another shot go wild into the roof between them.

Glass shattered, and Gideon found himself half-led, half-pulled through a window into a darkened bedroom. He turned around, from where he had fallen on the floor, to see Alexander diving for the window.

He didn't make it.

A shot tore into his neck. He spun half away from them, falling out of sight beyond the window.

"What the fuck?" A man sprang out of the darkness, yelling at them. He was swinging something threateningly. Somehow, Gideon had managed to keep hold of the Uzi, and he swung it at the man.

"Shit, I'm cool—" The object, ax handle or baseball bat, dropped. It took a moment for Gideon to realize-that the man was completely naked.

He scrambled away from the window with Ruth, keeping the Uzi leveled at the bedroom's occupant. The man backed away from them as they reached the doorway. Outside, the sounds of sirens became louder and Gideon could hear the screech of the trucks pulling away from the house.

It took a few moments to get to his feet, even with Ruth helping him up. "I can't believe this is happening," Ruth said.

"You ain't the only one," said the naked man. He stood on a pile of blankets that had spilled from his bed. Behind him, Gideon could see someone else, probably his wife, cowering away from the two of them.

"Let's get out of here," Gideon said.

By the time they made it outside, the fire department had arrived, the IUF had gone, and the Israeli safe house was a blackened shell holding an inferno inside itself.