"Dunno," he said. "Some Bureau dude just fronted Tolson with a story about bombs going off somewhere. You might want to check out Fleetnet if you can get a link."

The other two roomies, Horton and Cockerill, appeared from next door. There was a door between the suites, which Rogas assumed was normally locked, until some rich mom and dad needed to rent separate space for their kids.

It was late, and the only light in the room came from the screen Rogas was watching. The hotel room was rank with the smell of four human beings who hadn't been outside for a long time. Room service trays and discarded junk food artifacts lay everywhere, threatening to pile up into a couple of serious garbage drifts. The technical specs for the gig had been minimal. The surveillance rigs and just two data slates to display the take. They needed to be able to break the observation post down for a quick exit.

Rogas waved Horton and Cockerill over to the table where he had one slate running live vision from the targets' room.

"What's going on?" asked Horton.

"Bombings or some shit," said Klausner, who was powering up the other slate to send a query to Fleetnet.

"Anything else?"

"Well," said Rogas. "Edgar and Clyde have been having a tiff, and Clyde's been hitting the bottle a little too hard. Edgar thinks he should wear that spanky little kimono he bought for him-"

"The blue one?" asked Horton. "I like that one. I reckon Clyde looks really edible in that."

"Well, he's just sitting around in his fuckin' crusties for now," said Rogas. "I thought they were going to have a real catfight over it."

"Talk about your fuckin' funniest home videos," grunted Cockerill.

The mission boss was playing with touch-screen controls while Cocky spoke, trying to isolate the audio take from the agent at the door.

"Got it!" Klausner called out. "Early reports of half a dozen soft target bombings in New York. No details yet."

"Shit," said Horton.

They watched as the two men on screen argued with each other. They dismissed the agent who brought the bad news.

"We have to get back there now," said Tolson after the man had left. "We'll get the blame for this."

Rogas waited for Hoover to reply, but an unusual stillness had come over the FBI director.

"We'll see," he said at last.

Rogas looked at his watch. They were due to send another data burst in ninety minutes. He took less than a heartbeat to make his decision.

"Cocky, start compressing the last six hours' feed for a flash traffic burst. Kolhammer needs to see this now. Shelly, let's get this fucking pigsty policed up. I think we're going to be on the move soon."

If they were going back to Washington, Rogas would need to send an alert ahead to his advance team.

They needed to finish wiring up Hoover's house and to try to get a surveillance roach into his office.

Again Rogas had no idea how Kolhammer hoped to achieve that.

"Admirals…" He smiled.

NEW YORK

Julia and Dan were in Midtown on a cold autumn evening, walking to dinner and arguing as they huddled in overcoats: his olive drab, hers black leather. The temperature had begun dropping away an hour earlier, and a gray drizzle was threatening to turn to sleet. Dan's mood matched the weather. He wasn't happy about her mixing with the wrong crowd, which in his opinion seemed to account for just about everyone who had ever associated with Slim Jim Davidson.

"If those federal agents were on his case, they probably had good reason to be," he insisted.

"Oh, puh-leeze! Come on, Dan, the good ship Lollipop pulled away from the pier a long fucking time ago. Haven't you been paying attention? Hoover is a fucking lunatic and a hypocrite and a screaming bender. He's only been able to hold on to his job because half the fucking country is terrified he's got something on them."

"But Davidson is a known criminal!" her fiance protested. "He doesn't even try to deny it."

"Was a criminal, Dan. But he's super rich now-'legitimate businessman' is now the correct phrase, I believe."

She could see that he was really ticked off, and she knew her gentle flirting with Davidson had probably been the cause. Dan's frown line, which she called the Grand Canyon, was etched deeply into his forehead. It was kind of cute, really, but it would get old if he didn't snap out of it soon. She was about to say so when her flexipad began to chime in a way that signaled a high-priority call from the office.

"Sorry," she said. "I have to take this."

The Times had secured two flexipads and one data slate, clearly at great expense. Besides giving them access to Fleetnet's publicly available Web cache, it also meant that Julia was instantly available 24-7, as long as she was within shortcast range here in Manhattan, or jacked into Fleetnet as an embed while on tour. It was rare for them to call, however. The traffic was mostly one way, when she sent in stories after the censors had cleared them.

A bitter wind blew grit into her eyes as she hauled the pad out of her overcoat.

While she was answering, Dan's pad went off, too.

"Shit," said Julia. "I'll bet something's up."

"What makes you-?"

She held up a hand and waved it to indicate that he should take his call. His frown added even more depth to the canyon, but he did as she suggested, wandering into a bookshop where it was little quieter, and probably warmer.

She remained on the sidewalk, oblivious of the passersby who were staring, some even stopping to gawk openly. The signal came through, and Graeme Blundell, the chief of staff, was frowning on Julia's display. A lot of the 'temps did that when they were confronted with the technology.

"What's up, Graeme?"

"Julia, you need to get over to Chambers Street, to the subway station. There's been an explosion. A bomb or something has gone off over there."

"What sort of bomb?" she asked as all of her nerve endings lit up.

"I don't know," he spluttered. "A big bomb, from the sound of it. There are a lot of people hurt. And that's not all. The wires are saying there are another dozen or more of these things gone off around the country. And we're getting reports from Hawaii that the Japanese have struck there again."

Julia shooed away a couple of teenaged boys who tried to crowd in for a closer look at the flexipad. "Piss off," she said. "I'm working here. No, not you Graeme, go on. How'd they get near Hawaii? I thought the Clinton left the better part of a fighter wing there. Sea Raptors and Hawkeyes."

Blundell threw up his hands. "I don't know, damn it! We don't know much about Pearl yet. It's all too early. But I can tell you, we've got a big story developing over at Chambers Street. And I'm afraid it's right up your alley, Julia. It looks like the sort of thing you say used to happen all the time, back where you came from."

"Yeah, okay," she said. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'll get over there right now. And just so you know, I've got Dan with me. We were heading out to dinner, and he took a call same time as me. That won't be a coincidence. There are no coincidences where I come from. If he can tell me anything about Pearl, I'll get back to you with an update.

"Do you think you could send me a briefing note on what you've got off the wires? I can't access them."

She could see Blundell shooting the flexipad at the other end a nervous look. "I'll get Miss Meade to do it. She's much better on these things than me."

"It's because she's a chick, Graeme. We're better at everything, y'know. See you soon."

She cut him off and looked around for Dan. He was still on the pad. If he was talking like that, it meant that Kolhammer had a live link running between the East and West Coasts. They didn't do that very often, because of the amount of dicking around involved in setting up the relay.