He shrugged.

“In many ways it is, in many ways it is not. My life was all about myself, much like yours. I loved the bad things, just like you. Pleasure, selfishness, pride — that was my life, and it’s been yours, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes.”

“It’s all sin, and it all leads to the same end — misery, pain, destruction, ruin, then death. That’s where you’re headed, son, and you’re in a hurry to get there.”

Baxter nodded slightly. “So what happened?”

“I got lucky and lived, and not long afterward I met an inmate, a career criminal who would never be eligible for parole, and he was the gentlest, sweetest, happiest person I’d ever talked to. Had no worries, every day was beautiful, life was grand, and this from a man who’d spent fifteen years in max security. Through a prison ministry, he’d been exposed to the gospel of Christ, and he became a believer. He said he was praying for me, as he prayed for a lot of the bad guys in prison. He invited me to a Bible study one night, and I listened to other inmates tell their stories and praise God for his forgiveness and love and strength and promise of eternal salvation. Imagine, a bunch of hardened criminals locked away in a rotten prison singing songs of praise to their Lord. Pretty powerful stuff, and I needed some of it. I needed forgiveness, because there were lots of sins in my past. I needed peace, because I’d been at war my entire life. I needed love, because I hated everybody. I needed strength, because deep inside I knew how weak I was. I needed happiness, because I’d been miserable for so long. So we prayed together, me and those bad boys who were like little lambs, and I confessed to God that I was a sinner, and that I wanted salvation through Jesus Christ. My life changed in an instant, Baxter, a change so overwhelming I still can’t believe it. The Holy Spirit entered my soul, and the old Manny Lucera died. A new one was born, one whose past was forgiven and his eternity secured.”

“What about the drugs?”

“Forgotten. The power of the Holy Spirit is far greater than human desire. I’ve seen it a thousand times with addicts who try everything to quit — rehab clinics, state facilities, shrinks and doctors, fancy meds sold as substitutes. When you’re an addict, you’re powerless in the face of booze and drugs. Strength comes from somewhere else. For me, it comes from the power of the Holy Spirit.”

“I don’t feel very strong right now.”

“You’re not. Look at yourself. From Washoe Retreat to a cheap bar in a run-down casino in a few hours. That might be a record, Baxter.”

“I didn’t want to go to that bar.”

“Of course not. But you did.”

“Why?” His voice was soft, fading.

“Because you’ve never said no.”

A tear rolled down Baxter’s cheek, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “I don’t want to go back to L.A.”

“You can’t, son.”

“Can you help me? I’m pretty shaky here, okay? I mean, I’m really scared.”

“Let’s pray together, Baxter.”

“I’ll try.”

Six months after the Trylon-Bartin dispute went public with the filing of the lawsuit, the battleground had been defined and the troops were in place. Both sides had filed ponderous motions designed to capture the higher ground, but so far no advantage had been gained. They were of course haggling over deadlines, schedules, issues, discovery, and who got to see what documents, and when.

With the waves of lawyers working in sync, the case was plodding along. A trial was nowhere in sight, but then it was far too early. With monthly billings to Trylon averaging $5.5 million, why push the case to a conclusion?

On the other side, Bartin Dynamics was paying just as much for a vigorous and gold-plated defense coordinated by the bare-knuckle litigators at Agee, Poe & Epps. APE had committed forty lawyers to the case and, like Scully, had such a deep bench that it could send in another wave whenever necessary.

The hottest issue so far was no surprise to either set of litigators. When the forced marriage of Trylon and Bartin unraveled, when their clumsy joint venture blew up, there had been a virtual slugfest for the documents. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of documents had been generated during the development of the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber. Researchers employed by Trylon grabbed all the documents they could. Researchers for Bartin did the same. Software was routed and rerouted, and some of it was destroyed. Hardware controlled by one company found its way to the other. Thousands of secured files disappeared. Crates of printed documents were hoarded and hidden. And throughout the melee each company accused the other of lying, espionage, outright thievery. When the dust settled, neither knew exactly what the other possessed.

Because of the supersensitive nature of the research, the Pentagon watched in horror as the two companies behaved outrageously. The Pentagon, as well as several intelligence agencies, leaned heavily on Trylon and Bartin to keep their dirty laundry private, but they were ultimately not successful. The fight was now controlled by the lawyers and the courts.

A major task for Mr. Wilson Rush and his Scully & Pershing team was to accumulate, index, copy, and store all documents in the possession of Trylon. A warehouse was leased in Wilmington, North Carolina, about a mile from the Trylon testing facility where most of the B-10 research had taken place. After it was leased, it was completely renovated and made fire-, wind-, and waterproof. All windows were removed and replaced with a six-inch cinder-block wall. A Washington security firm wired the warehouse with twenty closed-circuit cameras. The four large doors were equipped with infrared alarms and metal detectors. Armed guards patrolled the empty warehouse long before any of the documents arrived.

When they did arrive, they came in unmarked tractor-trailer rigs, complete with more armed guards. Dozens of deliveries were made over a two-week period in mid-September. The warehouse, nicknamed Fort Rush, came to life as ton after ton of paperwork was stacked neatly in white cardboard boxes, all waiting to be organized into a system understood only by the lawyers up in New York.

The warehouse was leased by Scully & Pershing. Every contract was signed by Wilson Rush — contracts for the renovations, security operations, transporting of documents, everything. Once the documents entered the warehouse, they were deemed AWP — Attorneys’ Work Product — and thus subject to a different set of rules regarding disclosure to the other side.

Mr. Rush selected ten associates from his litigation team, ten of the brightest and most trusted. These unlucky souls were shipped to Wilmington and introduced to Fort Rush, a long, windowless hangar of a building with shiny concrete floors and a pungent industrial smell to it. In the center was the mountain of boxes. Along both sides were rows of empty folding tables, and beyond the tables were ten large, fierce-looking copy machines, with wires and cables running everywhere. The copiers were, of course, state-of-the-art color and capable of instant scanning, collating, even stapling.

Far away from their New York offices, the associates were allowed to wear jeans and running shoes, and they were promised bigger bonuses and other goodies. But nothing could compensate them for the dismal job of physically copying and scanning a million documents. And in Wilmington! Most were married, with spouses and children back home, though of the ten, four had already suffered through a divorce. And it was quite likely that Fort Rush would be the cause of even more marital problems.

They began their forbidding task under the direction of Mr. Rush himself. Every document was copied twice, in a split second, and instantly scanned into the firm’s virtual library. Several weeks down the road, when the task was complete, the library would be accessible by a secured code, and once inside, a lawyer could locate any document in a matter of seconds. The firm’s computer experts designed the library and were supremely confident that its security was impenetrable.