The sensor at the door had tripped a mental alarm, and Hansen immediately decided to abandon stealth in favor of shock and awe. He gave Valentina the high sign, and they stormed through a short hall illuminated by a lone bulb, hit a stairwell, and thundered down it to reach Boutin's door.

Hansen's single kick sent the door smashing inward, and he dropped to his haunches as Valentina came in over him.

MOREAUsat at the desk in his hotel room and faced his computer while wearing the Trinity System's virtual-reality headset and gloves. The gloves were fixed with dozens of wireless sensors, and the headset resembled a narrow pair of sunglasses with attached microphone that could be mistaken for an integrated Bluetooth device. The headset was both comfortable and discreet, so wearing it in public was not entirely out of the question. The gloves were another story. Images were produced by a low-intensity laser projecting them through Moreau's pupil and onto his retina. The laser scanned vertically and horizontally at high speed using a coherent beam of light, and all data was refreshed every second to continually update him.

The system was the result of a joint venture between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, the army's Natick Soldier Center, and Third Echelon (whose involvement was kept classified from Kovac and the rest of the NSA through Grim's careful maneuvering). Trinity allowed Moreau and Grim not only to meet in a virtual environment, but to interact directly with that environment in order to more expeditiously and visually share data with each other. Trinity was protected by a hybrid version of QKD, or quantum key distribution, that enabled participants to produce a shared random-bit string known only to their computers. That string became a key to encrypt and decrypt messages. Should anyone attempt to hack their link, they would be notified immediately while the system attempted to trace the hack to its source.

At the moment they stood improbably in midair, about five hundred feet above Boutin's apartment and its environs, the backdrop shimmering with a phosphorescent glow. Gravity meant nothing in this place. Moreover, these weren't wire-frame images but a near-real-time streaming satellite feed enhanced by night vision, so that even the light from traffic well in the distance, gliding down the boulevards and auto-routes, was represented with only a slight delay.

Moreau could look down past his avatar's boots to see the apartment entrance, the positions of each member of the team denoted by green triangles, and the team's cars parked on the street. He glanced over at Grim, her avatar remarkably lifelike, right down to the hair color and brand of glasses. Some of the best producers, programmers, and artists from the video game industry had obviously been tapped for this project, and the results were no less than stunning.

Ahead of them, superimposed against a backdrop of stars and narrow rafts of clouds, were stacks of slightly translucent data boards similar to the home pages of websites. The boards floated like tabbed windows and were organized into groups created by Grim. She reached out with her finger, lifted one board from the stack, and drew a small circle with her finger that caused the board to hover before her. This one contained classified information regarding an NSA employee code-named Stingray. She widened the board by extending her thumb and index finger, then lifted her hand to a navigation bar and began to tap deeper into the information, flicking documents aside with her finger, the illuminated pages arcing high and away from the board and vanishing into the night. She wasn't just surfing information; she was bulleting through it with a vengeance.

"I think our subroutine on Kovac's network finally picked up something," said Grim. "This code name was attached to an agent who died three years ago. Why is it that agents who die always come back to life?"

"That's the zombie factor," quipped Moreau.

Grim stood back from the data board to reveal the face of an old man, probably in his sixties, with closely cropped white hair and beard. He had penetrating blue eyes and an earring in his left ear.

"So that's our tail," Moreau sang darkly. "I know him. William Harvey Deacon. Special Forces. Black ops. Deacon the Beacon. I'll kill his ass and be done with it."

"No, let's see if we can put him on a diet of junk food."

"I like your style, Grim."

"The feeling's mutual--except for the part about, ahem, killing his ass. We'll just keep him misinformed."

"All right. But big and noisy is more fun."

"One other thing troubles me. I told Kovac you went home sick. No one ever followed up on that. I had someone take your car home. No tails, nothing."

"Maybe he bought it."

"Or maybe he already knows you're in Reims."

"How?"

Grim faced him, the avatar's eyes narrowing. "I don't know. But I'm going to find out."

HANSENand Valentina confronted Abelard Boutin in his sitting/TV/work room. The little forger was seated on his couch and just reaching over to his metal TV stand, where a pistol sat next to a large bag of potato chips. On the TV was a rerun of Miami Vice, in French. Hansen had hoped that Boutin would be sleeping when they broke down the door, but it seemed the gnome was a fan of pastel-colored suits and white Ferrari Testarossas. Nearby was a maple workbench with attached magnifying lamps, clamps, spools of multicolored thread, and the sheets of hooks of a fly-fishing-lure maker. This, of course, was part of Boutin's cover, and those same tools could also be used as part of his forgery business.

The old man stopped in midreach as Valentina hollered in French, "No no no, monsieur. I'll take it."

Boutin blinked hard, hesitated, then sighed and collapsed back into the sofa as Valentina took his pistol and shoved it into her waistband.

Hansen shifted up beside her and asked, "Did Francois Dayreis come to see you?"

Boutin removed his thick glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then said wheezily, "Who's going to pay for my broken door?"

Hansen took a deep breath. "I'm going to blow your brains out if you don't talk." He glanced over at Valentina, whose eyes were emphatic: What're you doing?

Boutin returned the glasses to his nose. "I think you have the wrong apartment."

"Someone gave the police an anonymous tip about the warehouse assault. Was that you?" asked Valentina.

The old man sighed. "I don't know anything."

Hansen leaned in closer. Held up his free hand. And in the blink of an eye came a blade jutting from his fist. "You're an artist. Your hands and eyes are your most important assets."

"You don't sound like a torturer."

With that, Hansen grabbed the old man by the wrist, dragged him from the sofa and over to the workbench, where he pinned the man's hand to a broad plank of maple, the stubby fingers with long gray hairs nice and flat, like sausages ready to be sliced. "Which one first? And then maybe a hook in each eye? It happens. Fishing is more dangerous than you think."

Boutin began to lose his breath.

Hansen spoke more slowly for effect. "So, I ask, is Dayreis worth it?"

The old man's face flushed, and his cratered pate was growing slick with sweat. "So you're looking for Dayreis? Okay, I'll tell you what I know. Let go."