There was a long silence around the cable. Finally Decker said, `We don't know.'

`You don't know?' Graves lit a cigarette. `But that's the most important question -'

`Let me explain,' Decker said. `Drew was an exArmy officer with knowledge of computer systems. He knew that he couldn't call in on any old number. The call-in numbers are changed at irregular intervals, roughly once a week. But the possible permutations of the call-in number aren't great. With trial and error, he might have found it.'

`You know he found the number,' Graves said, `because you know he tapped in. The question is, what did he tap out from the system?'

`Well, once he was hooked up, he still had a problem. You need subroutine codes to extract various kinds of information, and -'

`How often are the codes changed?'

`Not very often.'

Graves found himself getting impatient. `How often are the codes changed?'

'About once a year.'

Graves sighed. `So Drew might have used his old codes to get what he wanted?'

`Yes.'

`Then we want to know what codes he knew. What sort of work did Drew do when he was in the Army?'

`He did topological work. Surface configurations, shipment routings, that sort of thing.'

Graves glanced at Phelps. `Can we be more specific?'

`I'm afraid not,' Phelps said. `Defence is unwilling to release Drew's work record to us. Defence is a little defensive, you might say, about the fact that this tap occurred in the first place.'

There was a long silence. Graves stared at the men around the table. There were times, he thought, when working for the government was an exercise in total stupidity. Finally he said, `How can you get Defence to release the information?'

`I'm not sure we can,' Phelps said. `But one of the reasons you're being briefed is that we were hoping you might be able to shed light on the situation.'

`I might?'

`Yes. Drew was working for Wright, after all.'

Before Graves could answer, the telephone rang. Phelps answered it, and said, `Yes, thank you,' and hung up. He looked at Graves. `Do you have any thoughts about this?'

`None,' Graves said.

`None at all?'

`None at all.'

`Well,' Phelps said, `perhaps something will occur to you in the next hour.' He gave Graves a heavily disapproving look, then stood up and turned to Decker and Venn. `Thank you, gentlemen,' he said. And to Graves: `Let's go.'

Another conference room, another group. This room was decorated entirely in Tahiti posters; it occurred to Graves that whoever had owned the travel agency before it went bankrupt was a Tahiti-nut. Perhaps he was himself Tahitian. Graves began to wonder why the Tahitian owner had gone out of business. Too much time away from the office, basking in the sun? Discrimination against him by Angelenos? Some rare disease carried by coconuts which had made him an invalid?

`Gentlemen,' Phelps said, and cleared his throat. Graves was snapped back to the present. He looked around the room. There were, he saw, a number of high-ranking Washington people. They all looked tired and disgruntled. Phelps had brought them out to California on a red-eye flight, let them sleep a few hours, then dragged them up for a meeting with… John Graves?

`John Graves,' Phelps said, `has come up from San Diego this morning to brief you on John Wright. Mr Graves has been in charge of Wright's surveillance in New York and San Diego for the past three months.' Phelps nodded to Graves, and Graves stood.

`We have some footage which is quite revealing,' Graves said. `I thought we'd begin with that, if we can screen it…'

The men in the room looked confused. Even Phelps, who never lost his aplomb, seemed uncertain. Graves settled it by tearing down several Tahitian posters from the wall, clearing a blank white space. He was embarrassed for a moment - the tearing noise sounded somehow indiscreet with all these Washington guns, and the whole business emphasized the makeshift nature of the surroundings.

Phelps seemed to sense it, too. `You must excuse us,' he said, `but these are temporary quarters for the duration of the Republican Convention.'

Graves stepped to one side as the room lights dimmed. A black-and-white image was projected on the wall. It showed a dapper, rather handsome man standing at a podium. For a moment there was no sound, and then it came on abruptly. The voice was sharp, vigorous, and slightly petulant.

`- can a person do in the twentieth century? The question is not rhetorical, my friends. Each and every one of us is powerless in the face of giant corporations, giant institutions, giant government. Do you think automobiles are badly made? Do you think your electricity bill is too high? Do you disagree with the nation's foreign policy? Well, there's nothing much you can do about it. No matter what you think, or I think, the wheels continue to spin of their own inertia.'

The film image of John Wright paused to take a drink of water. `Perhaps you think that a few people have power - high government officials, high corporate executives, wealthy individuals. But that also is untrue. Everyone is locked into a system which he has inherited and is powerless to change. We are all trapped, my friends. That is the meaning of the twentieth century. It is the century of impotence.'

Wright's voice dropped lower, became more ominous. Isis face was grim. `Impotence,' he repeated. `Inability to act. Inability to be effective. This is what we must change. And with the help of God, we shall.'

There was some applause on the sound track before the film ran out of the camera and the room lights came back on. Graves lit a cigarette and flipped through the pages of his own file on Wright before speaking.

`I showed you that film for psychological, not politcal, reasons,' he said, `because it summarizes most of what we know about John Wright's mental state. The speech was given last year before the annual conference of the Americans for a Better Nation, an- extremist group which Wright started and still leads. You've probably never heard of it. It's small, and has no significance whatsoever in national politics. Over the last few years, Wright has poured 1.7 million dollars into the organization. The money apparently doesn't matter to him. But the lack of impact - the impotence - matters a great deal.'

He paused and glanced around the faces at the table. They seemed to be paying attention, but just barely. Two were doodling on the pads before them. `John Wright,' he said, `is now forty-nine years old. He is the son of Edmund Wright, of the Wright steel family. He is an only child. His father was a crude, domineering man and an alcoholic. John grew up in his shadow, a very strange child. He was a good student and learned quite a lot of mathematics, even made a minor reputation for himself in that field. On the other hand, he was an inveterate gambler, horse racer, and womanizer.'

The assembled men began to fidget. Graves nodded to the projectionist, who began flashing up slides. The first showed Edmund Wright glaring into the camera. `Edmund Wright died of cirrhosis in 1955. John Wright changed completely when that happened. He moved to New York from Pittsburgh and became a kind of local celebrity. He was married four times to well-known actresses; all the marriages ended in divorce. The last divorce, from Sarah Layne, occurred in 1967 and coincided with a six-month nervous breakdown for Wright. He was hospitalized in McClain General outside Atlanta for paranoid ideation and feelings of impotence. Apparently he had been impotent with his last wife.'

A picture of Sarah Layne flashed up. The men all stirred uncomfortably as they stared at the image: handsome, but haughty and undeniably challenging.