The van, she saw, had a satellite uplink. If she hadn’t had a very paranoid twenty-four hours, she might not have noticed the detail.

Andy’s Electronic Service, she read on the door.

Dagmar walked along the wrought-iron gate and placed herself directly between the car and her apartment door, on the third-floor corner.

The sight lines were perfect. Whoever was in the van had an unobstructed view of the front of her apartment.

Anger crackled along her nerves. She pulled her handheld from its holster, opened a file, thumbed in the license number, and mailed it to herself. Then she stalked up to the van and peered through the dark glass of the driver’s-side window. Joe Clever’s surprised face stared at her for a brief second before he vanished into the back of the vehicle. She walked to the rear of the van and banged on the door.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Come out of there!”

She kicked the door.

“I can stay here all day, motherfucker!” she yelled. “Get your ass out here!”

“Don’t dent my van!” came a muffled voice. “I’m coming out!”

One of the rear doors opened, and Joe Clever climbed out, lanky body unfolding as he dropped his sneakers onto the pavement. He was over six feet, appeared to be in his twenties, and had a stoop and dark hair that looked as if he cut it himself with scissors and a pair of mirrors.

Type One Geek.

“Hi, Dagmar,” he said. “Haven’t seen you since the dinner.”

Dagmar had given a dinner at an Indonesian restaurant for those members of the Group Mind who had helped her escape from Indonesia, or at least those who had been able to make it to L.A.

“You’ve seen me since the dinner,” Dagmar said. “It’s just that I haven’t seen you.”

He grinned. He didn’t seem the least embarrassed.

“Yeah!” he said. He stepped to the side so that Dagmar could see the interior of the van. “Pretty cool, huh? ”

“Why don’t you give me the tour? ” Dagmar said.

So he showed her the van, the two-way-mirror side and rear windows, the Pentax on its mount, the lenses sitting in foam in their shockproof steel carrying case, the telescope, the binoculars, and the elegant NKVD-surplus monocular that could be worn on the finger like a ring. Electronic images fed into a laptop computer, which could then upload anything via the satellite uplink.

There was more than one computer, and an online game was frozen on one monitor, something he’d been playing when she showed up.

The van smelled like old fast-food cartons, which it contained in large numbers.

He didn’t show her what she suspected was audio equipment, so Dagmar made a point of asking about it. He showed her his Big Ears, and some smaller surveillance gear he’d purchased in some neighborhood spy store.

So, Dagmar thought, her own office wasn’t secure, not with the big glass window that could be used as a diaphragm for the laser signal.

She’d have to call in some countersurveillance experts.

“I’ve even got some oscilloscopes,” he said. “They don’t really have any function or anything, but I think they’re cool.” Green standing waves hummed in the displays.

“Nice mad-scientist decor,” Dagmar said. “All you need is a Tesla coil.”

“Thanks!” He opened the squeaking lid of a large cooler. “Want a drink to go with your dinner? ”

She chose a lemonade, then climbed out of the van and blinked in the bright California sun. She turned to Joe Clever as he joined her on the asphalt.

“What do you do for a living, anyway? ” she asked.

He adjusted his spectacles. “I play games full-time.”

“I don’t think that pays very well,” Dagmar said.

Joe Clever grinned. “My grandma died and left me an income. Not a big one, I’m not rich or anything-the van is six years old-but I don’t have to work, and sometimes I’ll buy myself a trip to Bangalore or someplace.”

Dagmar looked at the van and the blinking oscilloscopes.

“That’s good,” she said, “because I’ve got a job for you.”

“A job? ” For the first time, he seemed surprised.

“Not for money,” she said, and then corrected herself. “Not unless you want money, I mean. What I want is for you to find the killer.”

He frowned. “That Litvinov guy? It looked like he wasn’t part of the game.”

“He is now,” Dagmar said.

Joe Clever considered this. “Interesting,” he said.

“When you find him,” Dagmar said, “don’t approach him or anything. Just let me know-me or the police.”

He scratched his chin. “Where do I start? ”

“If I knew,” she said, “I couldn’t tell you. I’m the puppetmaster. I’m the one who decides what the puzzles are.”

“Yeah.” He offered a faint smile. “It’s a cool idea, Dagmar.”

And it would get Joe Clever out of her hair while she had the office scanned for bugs and shifted details of the game around to make worthless any information he might have discovered through eavesdropping.

A look of uncertainty crossed Joe Clever’s face. “Can I play the game and look for Litvinov at the same time? ”

“Yes. But you get more coolness points for Litvinov.”

He nodded. “Okay. Great. I’ll do it.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh-” Joe Clever looked over Dagmar’s head toward her apartment. “I should tell you. Some guy went into your apartment about an hour ago.”

Dagmar was staggered. “What? ” she asked. “Who? ”

“I don’t know, but he had a key. Let me show you.”

He reached into the van’s interior for his laptop, pulled it toward him, and bent to use the touch pad. A film appeared, and she saw a dumpy, middle-aged man approach her apartment, look over his shoulder, then insert a key and enter.

“That’s the building manager,” Dagmar said. “Richardson.”

“He was in your place for six minutes.”

Dagmar stared at the picture. “What the hell for?” she wondered.

“I suppose he could have been there to repair something,” Joe Clever said, “but my guess is that he was poking around in your underwear drawer.”

“He what? ” Rage filled Dagmar’s heart. “How do you know? ”

“I think it was the expression on his face when he left.” He tapped buttons and fast-forwarded to the moment when the manager left her apartment.

The man did manage to look both furtive and smug.

“The bastard!” Dagmar said. “I’m going to check!”

She swung away from the van, but Joe Clever called her back.

“You forgot your dinner.”

She took the fast-food bag from his hand and marched to her apartment.

Normally the problem with her underwear drawer would have been that it was too disorganized to actually tell if anything was missing: it wasn’t as if she bothered to line up and number her underpants. But there was no clean underwear.

She’d remembered that she’d thought she’d had enough to last her the next few days, and then thought she’d miscounted.

But she hadn’t miscounted after all. The superintendent had been in her drawer, just as Joe Clever had suggested.

Filled with fury, she stepped out onto the balcony that overlooked the courtyard and looked down. There, carrying out a garbage bag from the clubhouse, was the creep himself.

“Hey!” she called. “Richardson!”

Faces looked up at her from around the classic 1970s coffin-shaped swimming pool. Two young women tanned there, model-slash-actresses with large breasts that pointed skyward in a clearly artificial way, and a short distance away from them was an elderly man who swam slow laps every afternoon and then sat on a chaise longue to dry out and absorb some warmth from the sun.

Richardson looked up at her and shielded his eyes from the glare.

“Do you need something? ” he asked.

“I need you to stay the hell out of my underwear drawer, you fucking creep!” Dagmar yelled. “Come in my apartment again, and I’ll kick your ass!”

She watched as a series of complicated expressions crossed Richardson’s face. Whatever the reaction was, it wasn’t that of an innocent man.