It was like a ghost. But it was a computer voice, wasn't it? He could just get a hint of artificiality in it. British. Leland had a sophisticated voice response system on their customer service phone lines. Lindhurst had demonstrated it to the board last year. It reduced call center costs by 90 percent-it was cheaper than India. But it didn't speak in midair.

This was just a trick.

Vanowen was getting his wits back. And his anger. This prank was way out of line. "Lindhurst! Get me Lindhurst, goddamnit!" Vanowen's voice echoed. "I will not be treated this way!"

"QUIET!"The word was so loud it ripped the fabric of the air around him. It was a physical presence that bowled him over and sent him sprawling backward, where he lay in the hallway, dazed. His ears were ringing. His eyes watering. It was possibly the loudest sound he'd ever experienced.

He felt a trickle running from his right nostril, and he dabbed a hand up-coming back with blood. "Jesus…" He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his face. His hands were trembling uncontrollably.

It quickly swelled to panic. He crawled on his hands and knees, then got to his feet and started running back the way he came. He hadn't actually run in years, but adrenaline carried him the hundred feet back to the elevator. He arrived panting and nearly hysterical.

But there was no button. The elevator doors were like brushed steel gates. This was impossible. There was no call button. How could there be no button?

The Voice was right beside his ear, as if he hadn't moved. He could feel the air vibrating. "Your company belongs to me now. Your divisions will obey their new budgets. If any division heads object, send them to me."

Vanowen's hands were still trembling. It was Lindhurst. Lindhurst was…or someone was behind this. It was extortion. This was a scare tactic.

"Of course, you doubt that I am real. You doubt that I am Sobol's Daemon, and you doubt that my power spans the globe. I will prove to you the extent of my reach."There was a pause. "I just caused you millions of dollars in personal losses. Losses across your portfolio and unrelated to this company. You will either learn from this event, or I will seize your personal wealth and eject you from this company. I will be watching you. Do you understand this final warning?"

Vanowen stared at the air, still trembling. Waiting for it to end.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" He was covering his ears and face with the handkerchief-practically weeping.

The elevator doors suddenly opened, and Vanowen fell inside. He scrambled on his hands and knees and curled up in the farthest corner.

The Voice spoke again, but from the hallway, as if it were standing there, seeing him off. "If you fight me, I will only hurt you more."

With that, the elevator doors slammed together with frightful force. The car began to ascend.

Vanowen sat there shaking, blood running down his face.

Vanowen spent the remainder of the afternoon in a daze in his corner office, receiving a parade of phone calls from his attorneys and brokers. Millions of dollars had disappeared from his dozens of brokerage and bank accounts. More worrisome were the missing funds in the half-dozen offshore holding companies and the two dozen limited partnerships in which he held assets-some of which were secret even to his wife, much less people at Leland. All told, almost 10 percent of his wealth had disappeared in the blink of an eye. He had just lost eighty million dollars at separate institutions-some of which he held under assumed names.

As he sat there, still shaking, he suddenly realized the enormity of the monster that had just brushed past him. It was colossally huge. And as powerful as he had always felt, he felt insignificant before it.

He was now an employee of Daemon Industries LLC.

Ops Center 1 was the National Security Agency's mission control room. Dozens of plasma screens lined its walls, displaying real-time data from around the world in vibrant colors and vector graphics. There were color-coded diagrams of telecom, satellite, and Internet traffic. Other screens displayed current satellite coverage zones and still others showed the status of seabed acoustic sensors, missile launch monitors, the location of radar, radio, seismic, and microwave listening posts. The moderately sized room had a central control board, but individual workstations were arrayed around it in aisles. Each was manned by a specialist case officer: Latin America, the Middle East, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the Drug Interdiction Task Force, and on and on.

Uniformed military personnel dominated the space. They were relatively young people for the most part, not the seasoned analysts who developed strategy but the younger officers who worked in the world of operations, monitoring the data feeds. They were the nerve endings of the United States.

They were especially keyed up as they watched the large central screen and its digital world map. Hundreds of red dots on that map were scattered throughout North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. And in this business, red dots meant trouble.

Dr. Natalie Philips stood behind the central control board operator. A three-star general and the NSA's deputy director, Chris Fulbright, stood alongside her. Fulbright had the earnest, soft-spoken manner of a high school guidance counselor, but his mild demeanor masked a steely-eyed pragmatism. Philips knew that mild-mannered people did not rise to Mahogany Row.

She gestured to the digital map filling the screen. "Approximately thirty-eight hundred corporate networks in sixteen countries have been hijacked by an unknown entity-and these are just the ones we know about. We have good reason to believe the entity is Sobol's Daemon."

The general stared at the screen. "Sergeant, notify the Joint Chiefs; inform them that we are under attack."

The board operator looked up. "Already taken care of, sir."

The general looked to Philips again. "Where are the attacks coming from?"

Philips stared at the world map. "You mean where did they come from, General. The battle is long over."

"What the hell is she talking about?"

Deputy Director Fulbright interceded. "She means these networks were compromised some time ago. We're only learning about it just now."

The general's nostrils flared. He looked darkly at Philips. "How is it possible no one noticed these networks go down?"

"Because they didn't go down. They're still operating normally."

The general looked confused.

Philips explained. "Someone took them over, and they're running them as if they own them."

The general gestured to the screens. "Why wasn't this detected? Our systems should have sounded the alarm the moment anomalous IP traffic patterns occurred. Isn't that what the neural logic farm is for?"

Philips was calm. "It wasn't detected, General, because there were no anomalous traffic patterns to detect. The Daemon is not an Internet worm or a network exploit. It doesn't hack systems. It hacks society."