FBI: "What the hell…?"

NSA: "Same city. Same day. Note that they alltook a trip to Grand Cayman at one time or another."

There was general confusion around the table.

DARPA: "You're saying that every senior detective in Ventura County was involved?"

NSA: "No. I'm saying that the groundwork was laid to frameevery detective-a precaution against a single point of failure in the Daemon. That wasn't the only precaution…" He clicked the remote. The screen changed to a still image from a security camera showing Lanthrop checking in at a business hotel. She was beautiful even here. "Our Ms. Lanthrop. Memphis. Auburn hair, high cheekbones." The image changed to another security camera image. "Dallas. Blond hair, soft features, and ample bustline." Another photograph. "Kansas City. Brunette, tall."

DARPA: "They're different women."

FBI: "So this is the NSA's attempt to bring the Daemon back into the picture?"

NSA: "It's not an attempt to do anything. These are the facts. It's also a fact that Cheryl Lanthrop had no known medical or business experience prior to working at Sobol's company, nor can we find any trace of her family or anyone who knew her prior to that time."

CIA: "She's a doppelganger."

NSA: "It would appear so."

FBI: "But that just proves my point; these are sophisticated grifters who scammed Sobol."

NSA: "Your evidence is largely digital. E-mail, financial transactions, travel records. How do you know that Sebeck's Lanthrop was anything more than a call girl?"

FBI: "This is ridiculous. Occam's razor kicks in here. Which is more probable: that a dead man set up a system for framing multiple detectives-simultaneously flushing half his estate down the toilet-or that a group of people abused a position of trust to swindle a dying rich man?"

DIA: "But why was it necessary to have all the detectives involved? If a group of people were swindling Sobol, wouldn't they want to have cops as far away as possible?"

There was silence.

FBI: "Well, it's a fact that a cop was involved, and it's a fact that someone orchestrated the stock swindle."

DIA: "So, does the Daemon exist or not?"

They looked at each other in the semidarkness.

NSA: "I think we can agree that-as far as the public is concerned-the Daemon mustremain a hoax."

Part Two Eight Months Later

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.