THE WHITE HOUSE sat placidly beneath blue skies. Seated in the Oval Office, the President reviewed a speech to be delivered the following day. At fifty-eight, President Harrison Miller had seen more action—in politics as well as war—than he cared to remember. He was the last of the old school, and saw the world largely in black and white, refusing to fall prey to what he referred to as the "Billion Shades-of-Gray Complex" whose victims used it to justify any means to any end, however vile. He looked up at a knock on the door. "Come."

Stan Winton, high-school classmate, Vietnam companion and now White House chief of staff, stepped inside with a videotape. "Mr. President," he said gravely. "Mitchell Swain has just been assassinated."

The President rose, pen dropping from shock-numbed fingers.

Speeding along a two-lane blacktop in a rented Mercedes, Jen held a vidphone phone to one ear, waiting for the pickup. Hurriedly wiped-away gore stained her face and dress. She hadn't waited for the police to show up and begin asking questions. Her seat before and to one side of the podium had likely afforded her a better view of Swain than that had by any other attendee—but the assassination was on a thousand digital tapes, and the police could track her down later through Microtron's seating chart. What they really needed was the one thing they wouldn't find: a camera pointed not at Swain, but past him from the rear—at the audience and the landscape beyond.

Taking advantage of the chaos which followed the shooting, Jen had disappeared into the stampede headed for the parking lot. The security men had wanted to detain everyone, but with several thousand people rushing toward the lot they'd had few options. They could either mow down the journalists en masse—a task for which they were, no doubt, splendidly equipped—or they could let them pass. Having already ID'd everyone on the way in, they'd settled for photographing people and cars as both fled the lot.

Jen had been on the phone before leaving the premises, calling Kit James, a software programmer and one of Mitchell Swain's top lieutenants. James had also been a friend of Swain's since childhood, and was Microtron's chief financial officer. Following that conversation, the two had arranged a hasty meeting behind a restaurant in the nearest town. After that, Jen had headed straight for the airport, gambling that she'd be in Los Angeles by the time the police got their act together and tracked the flight.

The call she made now was her second.

In the TEK SYSOP office in Los Angeles, Paul picked up the vidphone. He'd long since disabled the video component, so callers with vidphones would see only a black screen.

"SYSOP," he said.

"Gig. Jen. You hear about Swain?"

"Hear about it?" He eyed three separate Internet feeds of the scene on the monitors before him. "Nobody's talking about anything else. You okay?"

"I want you to help me find out who did it, and why. The richest man on earth announces the greatest discovery of all time and is killed before he can tell us what it is? I have to know. The world has to know why he was murdered."

"That's easy: to shut him up."

"About what?"

"Who knows?"

"We will," said Jen with certainty.

"Where are you now?"

"I'm headed for the airport. I have to get...cleaned up. I'll be in tonight."

"I'll be here."

Hanging up, Jen turned on the radio, picking up in the middle of a newscast. "—assassination little more than one hour ago," said the breathless voice of the female newscaster. "In a statement released moments ago, the Microtron Corporation announced a one billion dollar reward for information leading to anyone involved in Swain's murder."

Lips parting in shock, Jen stared at the radio.

"Nothing in the reward announcement requires a conviction—leading some to speculate that Microtron plans to deal with those responsible outside, the criminal justice system."

A car horn blared. Looking up, Jen swerved back into her lane as an oncoming car dopplered past.

Inside the warehouse lab in Los Angeles, John worked at one of twenty parallel computers arranged atop and beneath the long, L-shaped running desktop. The rest of the lab, save the living room-like near corner, was occupied by binders, books, huge stacks of technical journals and computer printouts, storage media—and strange apparati the purpose of which would be indecipherable to all but a handful of theoretical scientists.

On the monitor before him his own, glowing purple words conversed with those of a remote computer, which appeared in blue capitals:

     Upload all files: encrypt mode ULTRA

     UPLOAD VIA OC-192?

     Yes.

     ESTIMATED UPLOAD TIME: FIVE HOURS.

     PROCEED?

     Yes.

On the monitor screen, a blue status bar appeared above a five-hour countdown.

The warehouse lab now was simply one more bare room in an old warehouse. Only the briefcase, the boxes, the counter and the black waistpack remained, along with a wheeled cart onto which John was busily moving boxes. The Colt rested on the countertop, beside the closed briefcase.

Hearing a soft shuffling in the hall, John grabbed the gun and spun toward the doorway in a modified Weaver stance.

A woman stepped into view. Really quite a stunning woman, he noted over the gunsights.

Seeing the gun, she froze.