Dr. Tarver started at the sound of his cell phone. He stared a few moments longer at the photo, one of many on the Wall, then looked down at the caller ID and answered, "Dr. Traver."

"It's Neville Byrd, Doctor."

"Yes?"

"I've got it, sir. I mean, I think I do."

"Got what?"

"The thing Rusk is doing to protect himself. Two days in a row, near the end of the day, he's logged on to this one Web site and entered a series of passwords. All at the same site."

Dr. Tarver's pulse quickened. "Did you record his keystrokes?"

"Yes, sir. Every one."

"Fax them to me."

"Are you at the fax number you gave me?"

"No. Take this down." Dr. Tarver read off the fax number of his university office. "Do you have that?"

"Yes, sir. I'll send the keystrokes through. But I can give you the site right now, if you want to check it out. It's called EX NIHILO. It's a Dutch site, and it exists solely to let people be anonymous on the Net."

"This sounds very promising."

"Yes, sir. And Dr. Traver?"

"Yes?"

"This guy Rusk is screwing his secretary's brains out."

"Is he?"

Neville's voice changed. "I thought you might want to know that."

"Thank you. Please send the data through."

"Coming up, sir."

Dr. Tarver chuckled as he hung up.

Ten seconds later he was staring at the black hole that welcomed visitors to the world of EX NIHILO. One click took him to a page that listed the company's available services. It was obvious that EX NIHILO could handle the kind of arrangement that Eldon suspected Rusk was paying them to handle. If the price was right, of course. Thirty seconds later, Neville Byrd's fax came through. Two pages of keystrokes: the keys to Andrew Rusk's life.

"My God," said Dr. Tarver, using Rusk's passwords to retrace the lawyer's digital footsteps. It was just as he had suspected. Each day Rusk would log on to the site and verify his existence by entering a sequence of passwords. If he failed to do this for ten consecutive days, EX NIHILO would forward the contents of a large digital file to the Mississippi State Police and to the FBI. Eldon tried to open the file, but the site refused to allow it. He cursed and tried again.

No dice.

He needed a separate password to open the file. Obviously Rusk had not accessed the file since creating it, which meant that Neville's laser system had been unable to record him opening it. Without the password, Eldon could not delete the file.

It doesn't matter, he told himself. As long as he logged on to EX NIHILO once a day-as Andrew Rusk-the system would not send out its destructive file, and he would remain safe. He could kill Andrew Rusk five minutes from now, and nothing would happen to him.

Eldon laughed. It started as a chuckle, then grew in his chest to a rolling, heaving barrel of laughter. EX NIHILO changed everything. By faxing him those passwords, an out-of-work software engineer named Neville Byrd had cut the thread holding the sword above his head. With those passwords in his possession, Eldon could write Andrew Rusk right out of his plans. Or, he thought with a unexpected thrill, I could rewrite them with a much different ending.

From the beginning, Eldon had demanded his fee in uncut diamonds. Rusk had groused at first, but he soon realized the wisdom of this system of payment. Unlike cash, rough diamonds were immune to both fire and water. They could be buried for years. If they had not been engraved with ID numbers in their source country, they could not be traced. Any cash deposit over $10,000 had to be reported to the IRS, but you could carry $10,000 worth of uncut diamonds in your mouth without detection, and more elsewhere in your body without discomfort. You could hold millions of dollars' worth in a safe-deposit box, but why risk it? You could bury them in your backyard and no one could ever deny you access to them with a judicial writ. Best of all, when it came time to move them, they looked like rocks. A box of rocks!

Eldon laughed again. He'd built up quite a rock collection over the past five years. Rusk had, too, albeit a smaller one. Rusk had taken his early payments in the form of inclusion in the business deals of his wealthy clients. He'd thought this was a brilliant stroke that could keep him on the legitimate side of the IRS. And he was right, to that extent. Rusk paid taxes on the earnings, and that kept the IRS off his back. It did not, however, make what he had done to earn those profits legal. And as the business connections multiplied, so accrued his traceable connections to a list of murders. And that, Eldon was almost sure, was what had brought Special Agent Alex Morse down on their backs.

Rusk had realized the error of his ways after a couple of years. He, too, had started taking his fee in uncut diamonds. Now and then he accepted a business deal as payment, as with the Fennell deal. But he had quite a box of rocks built up by now, as well. The only question was, where did he keep them? If Eldon could learn the answer to that question, he could make the transition to his next life as a much richer man. He would be a fool not to add Rusk's stash to his own if he could.

And I can, he thought with satisfaction. Rusk doesn't have the sand to hold out under duress. All that mountain climbing and skydiving and running marathons won't add up to five minutes of guts in the face of true pain.

It was time for drastic measures. It was time to call in his markers-all of them. And that meant Edward Biddle. Eldon hadn't spoken to Biddle in over two years, not since the TransGene man had delivered the gas canisters to him. Biddle seemed to feel that the less he knew, the safer he was. Still, the gas delivery had made one thing clear. Biddle was living up to his promise to "take care of my people." And "his people" were, of course, the former staff members of the VCP. Not everyone, but the dedicated few who had understood the true relationship between technology and life. Every scientific discovery was a two-edged sword. A scalpel could cut out a patient's tumor or slit his carotid artery. Morphine could extinguish pain or extinguish life. A viral infection could deliver lifesaving gene therapy or cause a global holocaust. It was the responsibility of some to discover and develop those potentialities; others would make decisions about how to use them. Eldon had always understood his place in this hierarchy, and Edward Biddle had valued him for that.

He flipped through the Rolodex on his desktop-he still preferred it to a computer-based organizer-and found Biddle's card. Edward Biddle, Vice President, TransGene Corporation. And below that: America Leading the World. Dr. Tarver loved them for that, for having the balls to put it right on the card in the so-called Age of Globalization. But TransGene could say it and dare anyone to gripe about it. Microbiology was one arena in which America had kept its competitive lead. Look at the Koreans and their cloning scam: Our cloning works better because we keep human beings in our labs to babysit the cells every night. Who did they think they were kidding with that warm-and-fuzzy bullshit? Sure enough, the truth had finally come out, as it always did in science. You could bluff for a while, but not forever. And therein lay the cruel beauty of science; there was nothing warm and fuzzy about it. Science was truth. And truth didn't care a fig for morality. Dr. Tarver dialed the number on Edward Biddle's card. It rang twice, and then a clipped voice accustomed to command answered.

"This is Biddle."

"This is Eldon Tarver, General."

An irony-laced laugh came down the line. "Hello, Doctor. What can I do for you?"

"It's time for me to relocate."

A brief pause. "Do you have a destination in mind?"

"I'd like to remain in-country."