"My God. It's a corporation."

"Bingo."

Sebeck's cell phone twittered. He welcomed the intrusion. He was just holding hats in this conversation. "Excuse me." Sebeck turned and walked away as he pulled his phone out. He glanced at the number on the LCD panel. The caller was unknown. He answered it. "Sebeck."

A familiar, rasping voice came to his ear. "Forgive my appearance, Sergeant."

Sebeck sucked in a breath and gazed at Sobol's corpse lying in state six feet away. He glanced at the FBI and NSA agents standing around the chapel. Ross and Agent Philips were still locked in an animated technobabble conversation nearby.

Sebeck moved right up to the coffin and stared down at Sobol's corpse. "Is hell a toll call for you, Sobol?"

Sebeck stood waiting. There was a moment's delay.

The voice returned, weak and wavering. "Detective Sebeck. It's too late."The sound of labored breathing and wheezing came over the line. "There is no stopping my Daemon now."

Sebeck looked again toward Philips and Ross, but Sobol was already talking.

"I'm sorry, but I must destroy you. They will require a sacrifice, Sergeant."Sobol wheezed. "It's necessary. Maybe before it's over, you'll understand. I don't know if I'm right. I don't know anymore."

Sebeck looked down at Sobol's tortured remains. The insane eye matched the voice of madness.

Sobol's voice hissed urgently. "Before you die…invoke the Daemon. Do it in the months before your death. Say this…exactly this: 'I, Peter Sebeck, accept the Daemon.'"Sobol gasped for air. "Either way…you must die."

The line went dead.

Sebeck folded his phone and stared hard at Sobol's corpse for a few moments. Then he spoke loudly. "Agent Philips."

Philips and Ross stopped talking.

Sebeck turned to face them. "That call I just received. It was Sobol."

Ross and Philips exchanged looks. He had their attention now.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was listening carefully."

"What did he say?" Philips motioned to The Major, who came sprinting up. He took the dais steps in a leap. They all converged on Sebeck's location at the coffin.

"He sounded just like that." Sebeck pointed at the corpse. "He was wheezing and semi-coherent. He kept telling me that I was going to die. That it was necessary that I die."

"What else did he say? Try to remember it, word-for-word."

Sebeck thought on it. "He said I needed to 'invoke' the Daemon. That I needed to 'accept' it. He said I had to speak directly to it in the months before my death. But that either way I was going to die."

Philips looked grim.

Sebeck pondered the situation. "You think it's more mind games?"

She turned to The Major. "Find out if those wiretaps on Detective Sebeck's phone and computer lines have gone through. If they haven't, fast-track them."

The Major nodded and immediately bolted down the center aisle and out the front doors with a bang.

Sebeck watched the man leave, then turned to Philips. "You think Sobol will call again?"

"Maybe. He's most likely manipulating you."

"He definitely wants me to do something."

Philips stared. "Don't. In fact, we'll prevent the press from communicating with you or any members of your family."

Ross raised his eyebrows at that. "That's to prevent him from inadvertently triggering a new Daemon event?"

"Precisely. There's no doubt it's reading the news. So you'd be advised to stay out of the headlines."

"You're quarantining me?"

"Only for a little while. At least until we can reliably monitor Sobol's communications. You'll be very useful in that regard, Sergeant."

Two suited agents double-timed it up the dais steps. One whispered in Philips's ear. Her face displayed momentary shock before she regained her composure. She glanced at Sebeck and Ross. "I have to go, gentlemen. Sobol is up to something." She and the agents scurried down the steps of the dais. Several other darkly suited men converged on her from far-flung corners of the chapel.

Ross called after her. "Do you still need a guide, Agent Philips?"

She didn't turn around. "I'll contact you soon." She and the other agents banged through the doors and out of the chapel.

Ross gestured to the door swinging closed in her wake. "Doctorate in mathematics from Stanford, and she's a graduate of the Cryptologic School at Fort Meade. That woman is sharp as hell. I think I'm in love."

Sebeck chuckled to himself.

"What?"

"Good luck with that." He started for the front doors.

Chapter 21:// Hotel Menon

The Republic of Nauru was the smallest, most remote republic in the world. A spit of coral in the South Pacific, it was barely ten kilometers long and half as wide and had all the topographical complexity of a soccer field. Nauru was basically a phosphate mine that convinced the U.N. it was a country.

Dominated first by the Germans and after World War II by the Australians, the Nauruans had come to accept the fact that their chief industry was selling off the ground they stood on. With their phosphate deposits nearly exhausted by the turn of the millennium, the interior of the island-what the locals called "topside"-was now a ravaged, strip-mined wasteland carved down to the coral bedrock. Fully 90 percent of Nauru was a lifeless expanse swept by choking, talcumlike dust. The place had been so systematically scoured of life by mining equipment that the Nauruans considered buying a new island and physically relocating their entire country-leaving a forwarding address with the U.N. However, after most of the tiny nation's wealth evaporated in investment scandals, the Nauruans had to face a grim reality: they were here to stay.

The entire population of ten thousand South Sea, islanders now lived on a narrow band of sand and palm trees ringing the island-a quarter of which was taken up by an airfield-and tried to ignore the ecological nightmare of the interior.

Anji Anderson had never toured an entire country in twenty minutes before. Afterward she realized there were only three things to do on Nauru: drink heavily, lament the past, or engage in international money laundering. Judging from the private jets at the airport and the forest of satellite dishes, the latter was Nauru's future.

The community of nations officially took a dim view of money-laundering centers with lax banking and incorporation laws and powerful privacy regulations-but then again, at some point every government had need of such things. The Daemon had directed Anderson to an informative Web page prior to her whirlwind tour of offshore tax havens, and it opened her eyes. Tax havens were tolerated-and in some cases facilitated-by powerful nations and global corporations. Intelligence agencies needed to wire untraceable money to informants or to fund operations in various troubled or soon-to-be-troubled regions. Corporations needed to incentivize key people without interference from investment groups and regulators. All of this was possible in areas far from the public eye. At twelve hundred miles from the nearest neighboring island, Nauru was both incredibly remote and, due to decades of mining, physically unsightly. And tourists and journalists weren't allowed: Nauru issued only business visas. No rebels could take to the hills here, either, because the Nauruans had sold the hills years ago.