“FBI. Stand aside, please.”

A hand reached out and opened the inner door. Which must have been soundproof because the gray-haired man sitting at the large desk was punching a number into his phone and did not even look up. The scene moved into the room before he heard something and looked their way, putting the phone down.

“Where is the fire? And what are you doing in my office?”

“There is no fire, Mr. Thomsen.”

“Then get out of here — now!”

“Are you Mr. Thomsen, Managing Director of DigitTech?”

“I’m calling the police,” Thomsen said, grabbing up the telephone.

“We are the police, sir. Here is my identification.”

Thomsen looked at the badge, then slowly lowered the phone.

“All right, you’re FBI. Now tell me just what the hell you think you are doing here.”

He dropped back into his chair and had gone very pale. He did not look well.

“You are Mr. Thomsen?”

“My name is on the goddamned door. Are you going to tell me what you are doing here?”

“I am going to caution you now so that you know your rights.” Thomsen was silent as the agent read him his rights from the card. Only when he was done did he repeat the question.

“Your firm and you are under investigation…”

“That’s damn obvious! You had better tell me what you are playing at.”

“We have reason to believe that a person or persons employed with this firm was directly involved with criminal acts in California on February 8 of this year at Megalobe Industries.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

It happened with horrifying speed. There was a thunderous explosion, a sheet of flame, smoke.

Loud cries, someone screaming.

The picture on the screen swung dizzily, showed floor, wall, spun about.

Another screen expanded to prominence, the shouting continued, the displayed picture moved quickly into the room through the doorway.

The office was a gutted shambles, men coughed in the smoke that filled it. “Medic!” someone shouted. Agents were climbing to their feet. The view swung about the room, moved back and zoomed in on the white wall.

“Blood,” Benicoff said. “What in hell happened in there?”

Other voices shouted the same thing. The camera was jostled to one side as two medics ran in, bent over the figures on the floor. A moment later an agent with smoke-blackened face, a trickle of blood on his forehead, turned to face the camera.

“Bombs. In the telephones. The one on the desk was close to us, I have two men badly injured. But the suspect — he was wearing his personal phone on his belt.” The agent hesitated, took a grim, deep breath.

“He was practically blown in half. He is really but dead.”

They watched in numb silence as the reports came in one by one. Other than this incident, this disaster, the rest of the operation had been a complete success. All of the suspects had been secured and were in custody: no records, files or machines had been touched or sabotaged. A police guard had moved into position and now surrounded the premises. The only alteration to the original plans was that a reinforced bomb squad was going over everything before the technicians entered any of the buildings. They would be alone inside the complex until the premises had been secured.

One of the agents was dead, another mangled severely.

“Suicide?” Brian finally said. “Did Thomsen kill himself, Ben?”

“I doubt that. He was all bluster at first, but beginning to ravel at the edges — you saw how worried he looked. If he was planning suicide he was a remarkable actor. My snap guess is that he was killed to shut him up. He must have had information on the people we are looking for, was probably one of them himself. This is not the first time they have killed — or tried to kill — to ensure silence. They are a brutal lot.”

“But how did they know what was happening?”

“Lots of ways, bug the office, maybe bug the whole building. But I think we will find out that it was the telephones. They are all solid-state now and never malfunction. Filled with gadgetry. They record calls, answer calls, remote page, conference, fax facility, you name it. Easy enough to fix a phone so that it is always turned on, always being monitored and listened to by another number. Put some plastic explosive inside with a coded detonator. It could sit there for years waiting for the right moment. Then when the day comes and whoever is listening doesn’t like what he hears he presses the button — and boom. End of conversation, end of party.”

“That’s terrible!”

“These are terrible people.”

“But they would have to listen in twenty-four hours a day… no, I take that back. Easy enough to use automatic word-recognizing machines. Let it be on the lookout for certain words like FBI or Megalobe, that’s all you have to do. It would sound the alarm when one of the words triggered the program, get someone on the line at once to listen in, decide what to do. The people behind this are horrible. While we were listening to what was happening in that office — somewhere else, someone evil, was listening as well. When he heard what was happening, understood the situation—”

“He ended the conversation. This is bad but don’t let it depress you too much. This is not the end of the investigation but only the very beginning. They hid their tracks well — but you and Sven found them. One villain dead, more in hiding, but all the evidence to hand. We’ll get them yet.”

“Meanwhile I’m still locked inside Megalobe. It’s like a life sentence.”

“It won’t be forever, I can guarantee that.”

“You can’t guarantee anything, Ben,” Brian said with a great tiredness. “I’m going to lie down for a while. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

He went to his quarters and dropped onto the bed, fell asleep at once. When he awoke it was after ten at night and he realized that it was his stomach that had growled him awake, protesting the fact that he hadn’t eaten in over fourteen hours. He had drunk a lot, too much probably. There was cereal and a fresh quart of milk in the fridge and he poured himself a bowl. Turned on the recently installed window that really wasn’t a window and pulled a chair up before it. Ate the cereal slowly and looked out at the moonlit desert. Stars right down to the horizon. What was going to happen next? Had they reached another dead end with Thomsen’s murder? Or would the investigation turn up the people behind it? The dark and murderous group mat had planned the theft, the killings.

It was very late before he pulled his clothes off and finally fell into bed. Slept like a rock until the buzzing telephone woke him up; he blinked at the time, after eleven in the morning.

“Yes?”

“Morning, Brian. Going into the lab today?”

He hadn’t thought about it at all, too tired, too depressed. Too much else happening.

“No, Shelly, I don’t think so. It’s been a seven-day week for too long a time. We both could use a day off.”

“Talk about it over lunch?”

“No, I’ve got — things to do. You take care of yourself and I’ll phone when we are ready to get back to work.”

The black depression just would not go away. He had got his hopes up so high when they had traced his AI to DigitTech Products. He had been so sure that this would be the end, that his imprisonment was going to be over soon. But it wasn’t. He was still inside and not getting out until they found the conspirators. If ever. It didn’t bear thinking about.

He tried watching television but it made no sense. Nor did the National Almanacs that he had printed and bound. Usually he enjoyed browsing through them to catch up on his missing years. Not today. He made himself a margarita, sipped at it, wrinkled his lips at the taste so early in the day, then poured it down the sink. Turning into an alcoholic wouldn’t help. He slapped together a cheese and tomato sandwich instead and permitted himself one beer to wash it down.