“I don’t like this public exposure,” the Major said sharply.

“It’s not as if we were going very far,” Ben said. “Just to the administration building, which as you can see is right down the drive.”

“And damn close to the front gate and almost in sight of the public road.”

“Major, I’ve explained this before. There is no other way that this can be done. We need to use the conference room. Everyone is cooperating. Following your instructions, all the Megalobe employees were sent home at noon. The techs have swept the room and the entire building. What more could you possibly ask for? An antiaircraft battery?”

“We’ve got that already. SAMs on four buildings. Come on.”

There were heavily armed soldiers everywhere — even the cooks had been pulled out of the kitchen for this operation and formed part of the guard. Although it was only a few hundred yards to the building the Major insisted that they drive there in an armored personnel carrier.

Brian had never been in the Megalobe conference room before and looked around with interest. It was decorated with quiet luxury; the Van Gogh on the wall might possibly be real. Subdued lighting, thick carpeting, mahogany conference table with chairs along one side of it. The table itself was drawn up against the picture window that stretched the length of the wall. Here on the fifth floor they had a perfect view across the desert to the mountains beyond.

“Just about time,” Ben said, looking at his watch. Even as he spoke the desert view vanished and was replaced by another conference room. Only then did Brian realize that the entire wall was a high-resolution TV screen scanned by 3-D eye tracking cameras, just now coming into production.

Although everyone was apparently in the same room, the conference was taking place across the entire width of the country from the nation’s Capital. The table that the others were sitting behind was also placed flush with the screen, the two tables apparently forming a single table for all of them to sit around. There was obviously a standard height and length for all tables used in teleconferencing, Brian thought. They sat down.

“Brian, I don’t think you’ve met Agent Manias, who has been heading the FBI end of this investigation from the first day.”

“Pleased to meet you at last, Brian.”

“Hello,” was all that Brian could think of to say. They weren’t really meeting — or were they? The agent was obviously more used to this kind of thing than he was.

“Going to bring us up to date, Dave?” Ben asked.

“That’s what this is all about. You have received copies of all our information as it was processed. Are there any questions?”

“There certainly are,” Brian snapped, still angry. “Isn’t the time long past to take some action, pull in these criminals?”

“Yes, sir, the time has certainly come. That is what this meeting is about.”

“Good,” Brian said, sinking back into his chair as some of the tension of the past days drained away.

“Let me bring you up to date where we stand at this moment. We now have in our possession the complete company records of DigitTech, as well as up-to-date files on every employee. The time has now come when we can’t get anything more from public — or private — records. We also feel that it is counterproductive to continue the surveillance much longer. Our people are very good and very professional, but with each day that passes the chance of accidental discovery grows. Therefore it was decided that four P.M. mountain time today would be optimum, to conduct this operation.” Brian looked at his watch — forty-five minutes to go. “Agent Vorsky will explain what will be taking place.”

Vorsky nodded at them, a lean man with an upright military bearing. He glanced at the notes on the table before him.

“At the present moment there are four agents employed inside the plant.”

“That many?” Ben said. “There are sure to be suspicions.”

“Yes, sir, there would be if there were any delay. That’s one of the reasons that we are going in today. There is the one agent in the office that you know about. Two days ago there were three cases of mild food poisoning, inadequate refrigeration in one of the roach-coaches that service the plant. The employment agency that is used by DigitTech already had our agents on their books.”

No one else wanted to ask how these fortuitous cases of food poisoning had happened, so Brian kept his mouth shut as well.

“The plan is a very simple one that has proven effective in the past. Precisely at four the fire alarm will sound and everyone will be asked to evacuate the buildings. As soon as that happens two agents will secure the office, allowing no access to any files or records, while the other two agents will occupy the research premises. The team that goes in will be wearing these helmets so we will all be able to watch every phase of the operation.” Agent Vorsky reached down and picked up a helmet that he placed on the table. It looked like a black-plastic baseball cap with a light mounted on top.

“This is made of very tough plastic and protects the wearer’s head. More important to us is this omnidirectional pickup on top. This device works completely independent of the wearer. The image is stabilized by a laser-gyroscope and is controlled by our operators here. No matter which way the wearer walks — or turns his head — we will pick up the image that we choose.”

He twisted the helmet up and down, turned it around quickly — but the lens always remained facing at the screen.

“There are six separate hit teams and these units will be worn by one man on each team. These six images will all appear on our screens. Our mixers here will enlarge the most relevant one and you will hear the sound from that one. All of the images will of course be recorded for later study. What we will be doing now is letting you follow the operation in real time.”

“Any questions?” Manias asked. “There is just enough time left for me to tell you what we will do. Firstly we secure all equipment and records so that nothing can be sabotaged. Then everyone working there — as well as the four employees off sick today — will be taken into custody and interrogated. We have a lot of questions to ask and I know that we will get answers to all of them. Countdown has now begun at minus ten minutes.”

The other conference room vanished and was replaced by six very uninteresting pictures. Two must have been located inside darkened trucks because the harsh black-and-white pictures were obviously being taken with infrared light. The picture on the upper right was of shrubbery and tree leaves; the other three were black. Brain pointed.

“Burned out?”

“Probably turned off. Agents in cars or visible to the public. Don’t want to attract attention yet by putting on those Mickey Mouse hats. Six minutes to go.”

At zero minus two things got busier. All the screens were on now, two of them showing the view through the windshields of moving cars. All of the hit teams were now converging on the plant.

When the countdown hit zero things began to happen very fast. The hooting of fire alarms sounded. The images on the screen stayed pointed straight ahead under the operators’ remote control, but some of them bobbed up and down as the agents wearing the devices ran forward. Doors were forced open, there were shouts of surprise, firm orders to remain calm.

Then one of the images enlarged suddenly to show an armed agent forcing open a door. Inside was a group of men standing against the wall, hands raised. A man with a gun faced them, obviously an agent since the others hurried past him.

“That’s an electronic lab,” Brian said.

As the lab scene shrank to its original size a scene of men hurrying through an office door expanded to take its place. A shocked woman just going out tried to stop them.

“What’s this? You can’t go in there — who are you?”