"I know," he replied, but he seemed so sad and lost she didn't have it in her to beat him up over it.

"Dad, I talked to Dr. Shiller. He wants you there immediately."

"No he doesn't. He's washed his hands of me. Admit it."

"Dad, please."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"He said he won't chase you around, and I don't blame him."

Herman nodded, then picked up his little laptop computer that was sitting open on the sand next to him and handed it to her. On the screen was Roland's e-mail.

She read it hurriedly, then looked up. "He got the corn file. They only did minimal testing. This would have been great if we hadn't been thrown out of court."

"Yep," Herman said, then pointed to one specific sentence in the e-mail. "He sent us an encrypted file from DARPA. I transferred it to a disk. It's inside."

"What is it?"

"Fifty or more pages of code. You read the e-mail. Roland wants us to take it to his friend, Zimmy. He told me about this guy. His name is Dr. Gino Zimbaldi, out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He uses JPL's computers to break code. It's like a hobby with him, so he does it on the sly after hours."

She sat still for a long time, not sure what to say. Then she handed the computer back. "Dad, you've got to go back to Cedars and get the operation."

"Honey, they won't release Roland's body. Worse still, the feds took his murder investigation away from the San Francisco police. They scooped up the whole case. They shipped what's left of Roland's corpse to Washington. I think it was feds who killed him, and now they're investigating a murder they committed themselves. Good luck solving that one, huh?"

"Dad, you have got to get this procedure done."

"Just give it a rest with the fucking doctors, okay? I'm trying to tell you something."

Susan was stunned. In thirty-plus years she only remembered one or two times that he had snapped at her like that.

"I've been sitting out here thinking about Roland. About him going up there trying to get this stuff for us and then getting murdered. Shredded. Pulled limb from limb."

"Dad, don't. Don't do this to yourself."

"I've been thinking about why. Why would they kill him like that? What did he get from Gen-A-Tec that was so dangerous he had to be murdered for it? And why so violently? I think the answer is sitting inside. I think it's in that fifty-page encryption. In fact, I know it is. That printout is waiting to tell us the secret that got Roland killed."

"Dad, you have to let go of this."

"I can't, sweetheart. I just can't."

"Are you afraid of the surgery? Is that it?"

He didn't answer. He was looking out at the late afternoon sun hanging in the L.A. smog, floating above the rolling Pacific like a big, orange Japanese lantern.

"Are you afraid to get the operation?" she asked again.

He seemed to think that over. "I confess I'm not the bravest guy on the planet," he answered softly. "Y'know all those tubes and drip bags and the smells in there… I just… I… Yeah, kinda… I guess."

"But, Dad, it's only going to take a day, then a week or two of rest and it's over."

I know… I know. But… I just… I just can't."

Now she knew she was being conned. He was bull-shitting her and she shook her head sadly. "You're a rat, you know that?"

"Why, because I'm scared of this operation? 'Cause I need a day or two to get myself up for it, get my mind in the right place?"

"You're not afraid of surgery. You just don't want to let go of this thing and take two weeks off. Not with Roland's e-mail in there, so you're trying to get me off your back."

"Honey, this could be much bigger than even I thought. DARPA… you saw that mentioned in his e-mail."

"Yes."

"I know about DARPA. A secret government think tank. They developed weapons and special projects. Very twenty-first century. I always suspected DARPA might be behind all of that stuff going on at Area Fifty-one."

"Dad, please don't start up with that. Not now."

"Honey, what do you suppose killed Roland? 'Cause, it was a what, not a who. A what. That's what Sergeant Cole said. A thousand pounds per square inch. Gimme a break, what could do that?"

"Some kind of monkey," she said. "A gorilla or a chimp."

"Not on your sweet life. Monkeys don't have the mental acuity to undertake a military mission… commit a complicated B and E, then a premeditated murder. They live in the here and now. They don't have memories, pasts, or futures. Trust me, they would make piss-poor assault weapons."

"What then?"

"Roland says that the fifty pages of code he sent us is something called the Ten-Eyck Chimera Project. Gen-A-Tec's research on it is being funded by DARPA. I couldn't find anything on a Ten-Eyck, but I looked up chimera in the dictionary, and you know what it says?"

"What?" She was beginning to get a feeling of hopelessness. She'd been on these scavenger hunts before.

"So, what is it?" she finally said dutifully, because he was waiting for her to ask.

"It's spelled C-H-I-M-E-R-A, but it's pronounced ki-mir-a. It's from the Greek: a fire-breathing she-monster having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail."

"That's ridiculous. You're saying DARPA's making one of those?"

"It's also an illusion of the mind."

"I like that better."

"Or," now he turned and looked right at her, "any life-form consisting of tissue of diverse genetic constitution." He was still staring at her after he finished the sentence, seeing her thoughts turn stormy, but still reading them like rain through a window. "Not corn or soybeans, not plants, but flesh and blood-tissue."

"Dad, just say it, will you?"

"They're making a hybrid animal. It's just the kind of thing those DARPA guys would try for."

"Why? Why would they? Why would anybody want to make a genetic monster? For what possible reason?"

He looked out to sea, reluctant to answer.

"I'm listening." she challenged.

"Honey, you know what's been happening in this country-you more than anyone. You've seen it. You've been with me fighting against the shallowing out of American values. In the new America the total doesn't have to equal the sum of its parts anymore. 'If it bleeds, it leads.' Don't debate, obfuscate. This country is suffering from the complete loss of a moral imperative in the face of profit and power."

"You're not answering my question. And stop with the rhyming polemics, Dad."

"The war in Kosovo is when it started. That war changed everything."

"And don't shift to history. Get to the point."

"No, listen. This is the point, because it's the basis of my theory."

She nodded, so he went on. " Clinton had a huge problem in Kosovo, and it became real clear to Milosevic that, despite the ethnic cleansing and mass murders, the American public didn't really give a shit. They weren't willing to lose even one GI over it. The same problem existed in Afghanistan and Iraq. If thousands of U.S. soldiers start dying, the American public will throw in the towel. The U.S. is the last remaining superpower, we have a responsibility to be world policemen, but as a nation we no longer have the stomach for it. It's okay to fight an air war, use smart weapons, push buttons where no one is hurt-everybody gets some popcorn and watches it on CNN. But what happens once our smart bombs have knocked out all the military targets?"

"I don't know." She was getting angry. "The war's over, I guess."

"No. You have to send in ground troops to mop up. You still have to put boots on the ground to wipe out pockets of resistance and hold the terrain. That's where the problem arises. This country won't sit still for losing any troops in a place like Kosovo or Iraq. We want our new fall fashions; we want to know who Britney Spears is dating. We've got appointment television and Tiger Woods. So, what do we do?"