He went back downstairs and waited while Zimmy parked the Sentra, then led the three of them up the stairs toward Reflections. He heard some male giggling in the escort service waiting room. As soon as Jack opened the door the laughing stopped.

Sprawled on a couch across from a desk were four young men. "Meet Chip and Jeff, Steven and Mark," Miro announced to Jack, pointing a ringed index finger at each one as he ticked off their names. The escorts all smiled and gave Jack a quick visual frisk.

"Come on." Miro picked up a ring of keys and led the fugitives up the hall and opened the door to the office that adjoined Jack's. It was empty, but there was a wall-to-ceiling mirror, a sofa, a folding clothes rack with gowns, Spandex dresses, and hats. A shelf on one wall contained boxes for wigs and a huge shoe rack filled with stiletto heels and clear plastic mules in large sizes.

Miro didn't seem to want to leave, so Jack did the introductions: "Casimiro Roca, this is Herman Strockmire. You met Susan, I think, and this is Dr. Gino Zimbaldi."

Miro lowered his eyes demurely and extended his hand palm down to each of them.

Jack said, "We're being chased by thugs and I don't want something ugly to happen. You'd be much safer in your office down the hall."

"Don't worry about Miro. Miro has his green belt in tae kwan do and a certificate from the Royal Academy of Dance. The boy can kick ass," he replied. "And after all, this is Miro's office and Miro's dying to know what private eyes do when they're not drinking coffee and taking infrared pictures."

Jack looked at the others for approval. They all shrugged.

"Okay, but it's gotta stay between us."

"Stop teasing," Miro gushed.

Jack smiled in spite of himself, then turned to the Strockmires. "Herm, we've gotta go over some things. We need to figure this out fast, because I think we have some big gaps in logic that need to be discussed before we make a mistake that kills us."

"I agree," Herman said as Miro sat.

"How did these guys know we were following Paul Nichols in Malibu? We weren't on that baseball diamond three minutes and in comes the… whatever."

"The Whispership."

Miro said, "Sounds naughty."

Jack turned to Miro. "You can listen, but be a bud and stay out of this, okay?"

"Okay."

"I don't know how they knew we were there," Herman said. "You're right, it's pretty damn strange. The helicopter… the ground troops. They got there seconds after we did."

"As far as I can see, only one or two things could be responsible for that, and both of them are bad."

"Like what?" Susan asked.

"They could have had some way of picking off my cell phone transmission when I was giving Herman directions, which means they know a lot more about what we're up to than we thought, because we've been discussing everything on the phone. Or somebody could have hung a bug on Herman's car, which makes me wonder how long they've been tracking us."

"The government has a spy network that reads computer or cell transmissions from outer space," Herman said. "It's a computer lab called Echelon. Maybe that's what Octopus is, a new, more accurate version of Echelon."

"I have a stupendous idea," Miro interjected.

They all looked over at him. "Go ahead," Jack said. "We can use the help."

"We have finger foods next door. If anybody is hungry, Miro could go get them."

Stunned silence, then: "Great. Good idea," Jack said. Miro jumped up and hurried out of the room.

"But we didn't use the cell phone before we went to Gino's wife's apartment in Montrose," Susan said after he left. "So how did they know to go there? How did they find that apartment seconds after we did?"

"The Mercedes has to be bugged," Herman pondered aloud.

"I don't like this, Dad." Susan took her father's hand.

"I don't like it either," Jack acknowledged. "I don't like that computer lab at Pepperdine, and I don't like guys shooting at us with weapons that look like they belong on the set of Star Trek."

"Those guns sound like PB ordnance," Herman said. "That's a particle beam weapon. Gil and Tom told me they were developing something like that at Area Fifty-one."

"Great," Zimmy groused.

Jack turned to Herman. "I know what happened to me, but explain again what happened to you while we were out there at the military base. Give it to us point by point."

"Not much, other than what I already told you." Herman took them through it again, up to where the doctor discovered his arrhythmia and said, "That won't work," and left. Then he got the injection and had the dream.

"The doc said what?" Jack interrupted.

The door opened and Miro returned with some finger sandwiches on a tray. He passed them around.

"He said, 'That won't work,' " Herman repeated.

"What won't work?"

"My heart being in arrhythmia, I guess."

"Okay, so then they fixed it, right?" Jack said.

"Well, it feels like they did."

"But that doesn't make sense, Dad. They follow you, kidnap you, debrief you under drugs, then fix your heart condition? Why would they do that?"

Zimmy cleared his throat. "I may have the answer to that."

They turned in unison to look at him. "I know when the CIA debriefs they often use a lie detector to determine the veracity of the answers. I don't think you can administer a polygraph to someone who has a heart condition. The lie detector uses heart rate and skin electrical conductivity to measure a response. If Herm's heart was out of rhythm I don't think they could have gotten an accurate result."

Herman leaned forward. "Maybe my heart had to be fixed so they could find out if I was telling the truth."

"We need to get to a hospital and see what they really did." Susan sounded worried.

Miro pointed to the sandwich tray. "Try the little deviled ham ones-they have caviar."

"Thanks," Jack said as he took one, then continued. "Next are the fifty pages of encryption Zimmy decoded."

All eyes turned to Dr. Zimbaldi. "It was just a bunch of genetic base pairs. A slice of a gene map of some kind. I checked it against the Celera map of the human body that I keep in my research computer. But it wasn't human, wasn't anything I could determine, so I e-mailed a copy to your computer, Herm, and then I ran my copy over to a friend in Santa Monica, Dr. Carolyn Adjemenian. Her field is genetics."

"Can you get her on the phone?" Herman asked.

"We can't use our cell if it's being tracked by satellite," Susan reminded them.

"You can use the phone in here," Miro offered. He handed the phone to Zimmy. "But what on earth is going on? This sounds juicy."

"Herm thinks we may have been invaded by aliens," Jack offered glumly.

Miro nodded. "We don't have many down here, but I know a lot of illegal aliens have been moving into Pico Rivera."

Nobody cleared up the misunderstanding. Zimmy got Dr. Adjemenian on the office phone, then explained who Herman was and handed over the receiver.

Herman spoke quietly, cupping the receiver so that Miro couldn't hear. Finally, he hung up and looked over at them. "She wants to see us. She won't tell me what it is over the phone, except to say it's like nothing she's ever seen." Herman seemed jazzed.

Jack was just about to open the door when he heard something next door.

"Shhh." He put his ear to the wall. Somebody was moving around his office. He heard drawers opening and whispered, "Somebody's in there again."

"It's that bunch of drug addicts from down the hall," Miro said angrily, then started to storm out to protect Jack's stuff. Jack made a grab for him and stopped him just in time.

"Wait a minute. Hold it," Jack whispered urgently.

They waited for almost ten minutes until they heard the office door close and footsteps retreating down the hall.