His interest lay in the spate of Chinese cyberattacks on government, military, and contractor servers worldwide, trying to glean classified knowledge. It was this investigation he had been working on all day and evening. There had been several moments when he had been certain he’d been onto something, following threads through firewalls, breaking into encrypted files, accessing site after vault-like site, his platoon of software Trojans and worms that he himself had tweaked to his own exacting specifications allowing him access to sites in Russia, Romania, Serbia, and, finally, China. Always China. Each path he took, however, proved to be either a dead end or a false lead, leaving him, after eight hours, back where he had started. But not quite. Knowing where notto look was an excellent tool for first changing his search parameters, then narrowing them down.

He stood up, stretched, and walked over to the bulletproof window. Small sensors were embedded in the glass that sent out electronic signals proven to jam any audio surveillance system. He stared down at the deserted streets below. Occasionally a car or truck rumbled by. Unbidden, thoughts of his father and his stepfather bloomed in his mind like poisoned flowers. His father, who had left when Richards’s mother had gone blind. Richards had been four. Years later, he had used his computer skills to track his father down only to find that the man denied ever having sired him. As for Richards’s stepfather, he had entered the damaged family in order to live off Richards’s mother’s money. He had made fun of her, had repeatedly betrayed her with a virtual harem of women. When Richards had tried to tell his mother, she had not only refused to believe him but had grown visibly angry, castigating him for refusing to accept her new husband. It was only then he realized that she knew everything, but was so terrified of being on her own that she had sunk deeper and deeper into her own manufactured reality.

Abruptly, he returned to his desk. Standing at the window made him feel like an animal in a cage, imprisoned within the stronghold of the modern Treadstone castle. He was only dimly aware that it was his life in which he felt imprisoned. Unconsciously, he had chosen his mother’s solution. He had made the Internet, endlessly morphing, always fascinating, more real to him than anything else in his life.

Flexing his fingers, he cracked his knuckles, then placed his fingertips on the keys. What he needed to do was something more constructive. He decided to fabricate intel on Nicodemo that he could present to his directors, maybe get into their good graces. He felt that old familiar desperation to have superiors like him, and his cheeks flamed with shame.

He took a deep breath. Concentrate, he thought. Do what you do best; you’ll feel better for this small success. Looking for one man in the complex ISP stew of the Internet was always difficult, he knew. He also knew that no man—not even a ghost—could exist as an island. He had to have associates, friends, family—in other words, an infrastructure, just like everyone else. Even if he didn’t so far exist on the Net, they certainly would. And then there was the fact that he made money, lots of it, according to the scraps Richards had been given. Money did not exist in a vacuum; it came from somewhere and went somewhere else. Those places might be well hidden, but they existed; their routes existed online as well as in the real world. None of this, however, applied to Nicodemo; Richards knew this much about him.

Not to worry, he decided, his pulse rate climbing; he’d manufacture an oblique approach to finding the Djinn Who Lights The Way. So thinking, he returned to the pathetically few crumbs in the file, reading them over in this new light, for a way to begin writing his bogus trip through the cyberworld of the Net.

As if of their own volition, his fingers began their familiar tattoo on the keyboard. Moments later, he was once again immersed in his beloved virtual universe.

3

"THE TROUBLE IS you flew.”

“What do you mean?” Soraya shook her head. “I don’t understand.” Dr. Steen glanced up from the folder that contained the results of her EEG and MRI tests. “You were injured in Paris, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you were treated there as well.”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“Were you not cautioned about the risks associated with flying?” Soraya felt the beating of her heart. It was far too rapid, as if it had broken free of its cage and had risen into her throat.

“I thought I was fine.”

“Well, you’re not.” Dr. Steen swiveled in his chair, switching on an LED monitor. He brought up the MRI of her brain. Nodding toward the screen, he said, “You have a subdural hematoma. Your brain is bleeding, Ms. Moore.”

Soraya felt chilled to the bone. “I saw my previous MRI. It revealed no such thing.”

“Again,” Dr. Steen said, “the flying.”

He swiveled back, but the MRI of her brain remained on the screen, a horrible reminder of her un-wellness.

Dr. Steen clasped his hands on his desktop. He was a middleaged man who shaved his head rather than deal with his balding pate. “I suspect that this—tear, let’s call it—was microscopic. The previous MRI didn’t pick it up. Then you flew and...” His hands opened.

She leaned forward, anger supplanting her fear. “Why do you keep intimating that it’s somehow my fault?”

“You shouldn’t have—”

“Shut the fuck up.” She didn’t say it loudly, but the intensity of her words rocked him backward and rendered him mute. “Is this how you talk to all your patients? What kind of a human being are you?”

“I’m a doctor. I—”

“Right,” she interrupted. “Not a human being. My mistake.”

He watched her steadily, waiting for her to calm down. “Ms. Moore, my extensive experience in neurosurgery has taught me that it does not pay to sugarcoat my diagnoses. The quicker a patient understands their condition, the quicker we can work together to make them well again.”

She paused for a moment to control herself, but her heart still felt like a runaway train. Then she winced at the sudden spike of pain in her head. At once, Dr. Steen came around his desk and was at her side.

“Ms. Moore?”

She rubbed the side of her head.

“That cuts it.” He reached for his phone. “You’re going to the hospital this minute.”

“No.” She grasped his arm. “No, please.”

“I don’t think you understand the gravity of—”

“My job is my life,” she said.

“Ms. Moore, pressure is building in your brain. You won’t have a life unless we relieve that pressure. I cannot allow—”

“I’m okay now. The pain is gone.” She gave him a smile that almost faltered. “Absolutely, I’m fine.”

Dr. Steen looked around, pulled a chair over to sit beside her. “Okay,” he said, “what’s really going on?”

“What happened to the doctor with the attitude?”

“I put him on the shelf for the moment.” He allowed himself a thin smile. “Patient needs me.”

“I needed you, it seems, the moment I stepped into your office.”

She was silent for some time. She could hear the phone ring in the outer office, a voice raised suddenly, then stillness returned.

Dr. Steen tapped her wrist lightly to make certain she was still with him. “We have to resolve your physical problem. Clearly, we can’t do that until your other problem is resolved.”

Slowly, almost infinitesimally, she raised her eyes to his. “I’m frightened,” she said.

He seemed in a way relieved. “That’s perfectly normal, only to be expected, in fact. I can help—”

“Not for me.”

He looked at her, momentarily confused.

“For my baby,” Soraya said. “I’m pregnant.”

How are you feeling?” Bourne said when he appeared in the room where Alef was recovering.