A burst of Cantonese punctuated with some English flashed down the wire. I didn't have to understand it all to know I was hearing a distraught widow on the verge of collapse. God only knew what the Trinity security people had told Lu Li, or what she had made of it. She'd come to America only three months ago, her immigra¬tion fast-tracked by the State Department, which had received a none-too-subtle motivational call from the White House.

"I know this has been a terrible day," I said in a com¬forting voice. "But I need you to try to calm down."

Lu Li was panting.

"Breathe deeply," I said, trying to decide what approach to take. Safest to use the corporate cover the NSA had insisted on from the beginning. As far as the rest of the Research Triangle Park companies knew, the Argus Optical Corporation developed optical computer elements used in government defense projects. Lu Li might know no more than this.

"What have you been told by the company?" I asked cautiously.

"Andy dead!" Lu Li cried. "They say he die of brain bleeding, but I know nothing. I don't know what to do!"

I saw nothing to be gained by further agitating Fielding's widow with theories of murder. "Lu Li, Andrew was sixty-three years old, and not in the best of health. A stroke isn't an unlikely event in that situation."

"You no understand, Dr. David! Andy warn me about this."

My hand tightened on the phone. "What do you mean?"

Another burst of Cantonese came down the wire, but then Lu Li settled into halting English. "Andy tell me this could happen. He say, 'If something happen to me, call Dr. David. David know what to do.'"

A deep ache gripped my heart. That Fielding had put such faith in me… "What do you want me to do?"

"Come here. Please. Talk to me. Tell me why this happen to Andy."

I hesitated. The NSA was probably listening to this call. To go to Lu Li's house would only put her at greater risk, and myself, too. But what choice did I have? I couldn't fail my friend. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."

"Thank you, thank you, David! Please, thank you."

I hung up and turned to go back to the living room. Rachel was standing in the kitchen doorway.

"I have to leave," I told her. "I appreciate you coming to check on me. I know it was beyond the call of duty."

"I'm going with you. I heard some of that, and I'm going with you."

"Out of the question."

"Why?"

"You have no reason to come. You're not part of this."

She folded her arms across her chest. "For me it's simple, okay? If you're telling the truth, I'll find the distraught widow of Andrew Fielding at the end of a short drive. And she'll support what you've told me."

"Not necessarily. I don't know how much Fielding confided in her. And Lu Li hardly speaks English."

"Andrew Fielding didn't teach his own wife English?"

"He spoke fluent Cantonese. Plus about eight other languages. And she's only been here a few months."

Rachel straightened her skirt with the flats of her hands. "Your resistance tells me that you know my going will expose your story as a delusion."

Anger flashed through me. "I'm tempted to let you come, just for that. But you don't grasp the danger. You could die. Tonight."

"I don't think so."

I picked up the Ziploc bag containing the white powder and the FedEx envelope and held it out to her. "A few minutes ago I received a letter from Fielding. This powder was in the envelope."

She shrugged. "It looks like sand. What is it?"

"I have no idea. But I'm afraid it might be anthrax. Or whatever killed Fielding."

She took the package from me. I thought at first she was examining the powder, but she was reading the label on the FedEx envelope.

"This says the sender is Lewis Carroll."

"That's code. Fielding couldn't risk putting his name into the FedEx computer system. The NSA would pick that up immediately. He used 'Lewis Carroll' because his nickname was the White Rabbit. You've heard that, right?"

Rachel looked as if she were really thinking about it. "I can't say that I have. Where's this letter?"

I motioned toward the front room. "In a plastic bag on the couch. Don't open it."

She bent over the note and quickly read it. "It's not signed."

"Of course not. Fielding didn't know who might see it. That rabbit symbol is his signature."

She looked at me with disbelief. "Just take me along, David. If what I see supports what you've told me, I'll take all your warnings seriously from this point forward. No more doubts."

"That's like throwing you into the water to prove there are sharks in it. By the time you see them, it's too late."

"That's always how it is with these kinds of fantasies."

I went and got my keys off the kitchen counter. Rachel followed at my heels. "All right, you want to come? Follow me in your car."

She shook her head. "Not a chance. You'd lose me at the first red light."

"Your colleagues would tell you it's dangerous to accompany a patient while he chases a paranoid fantasy. Especially a narcoleptic patient."

"My colleagues don't know you. As for the nar¬colepsy, you haven't killed yourself yet."

I reached under the sofa cushion, brought out my pis¬tol, and thrust it into my waistband. "You don't know me either."

She studied the butt of the gun, then looked into my eyes. "I think I do. And I want to help you."

If she were only my psychiatrist, I would have left her there. But during our long sessions, we had recognized something in each other, an unspoken feeling shared by two people who had experienced great loss. Even though she thought I might be ill now, she cared about me in a way no one else had for a long time. To take her with me would be selfish, but the simple truth was, I didn't want to go alone.

CHAPTER 3

Geli Bauer sat within the dark bowels of the Trinity building, a basement complex lit only by the glow of computer monitors and surveillance screens. From here electronic filaments spread out to monitor the people and the physical plant of Project Trinity. But that was only the center of her domain. With the touch of a computer key, Geli could interface with the NSA supercomputers at Fort Meade and monitor conversations and events on the other side of the globe. Though she had wielded many kinds of power during her thirty-two years on earth, she had never before felt the rush of knowing that all the world bounded by electronics could be manipulated by the touch of her finger.

On paper, Geli worked for Godin Supercomputing, which was based in Mountain View, California. But it was her company's quasi-governmental relationship with the NSA that had lifted her into the stratosphere of power. If she deemed a situation an emergency, she could stop trains, close international airports, retask surveillance satellites, or lift armed helicopters into the skies over U.S. soil and order them to fire. No other modern woman had wielded such power-in some ways her authority rivaled that of her father-and Geli did not intend to give it up.

On the flat-panel monitor before her glowed a transcript of the conversation between David Tennant and an unknown White House functionary, recorded at a Shoney's restaurant that afternoon, but Geli was no longer looking at it. She was speaking on the headset phone to a member of her security team, the man who was watching Tennant's residence.

"I only heard conversation in the kitchen," she said. That makes no sense. He and Dr. Weiss had to be talking elsewhere."

"Maybe they were getting it on."

"We'd have heard it. Weiss looks like a screamer to me. It's always the quiet ones."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get in there and check the mikes." Geli tapped a key on the pad before her, which connected her to a young ex-Delta operator named Thomas Corelli, who was covering Andrew Fielding's house.