“Thank you, sir.”

Robert Bellamy turned to Keller. “What …?”

“This will take only a minute,” Harrison Keller assured him.

Sixty seconds later, Robert Bellamy was handed a blue and white identification badge with his photograph on it.

“Please wear this at all times while you’re in the building, Commander.”

“Right.”

They started walking down a long, white corridor. Robert Bellamy noticed security cameras mounted at twenty-foot intervals on both sides of the hall.

“How big is this building?”

“Just over two million square feet, Commander.”

“What?”

“Yes. This corridor is the longest corridor in the world, nine hundred and eighty feet. We’re completely self-contained here. We have a shopping centre, cafeteria, post exchange, eight snack bars, a hospital complete with operating room, a dentist’s office, a branch of the State Bank of Laurel, a dry-cleaning shop, a shoe shop, a barber shop, and a few other odds and ends.”

It’s a home away from home, Robert thought. He found it oddly depressing.

They passed an enormous open area filled with a vast sea of computers. Robert stopped in amazement.

“Impressive, isn’t it? That’s just one of our computer rooms. The complex contains three billion dollars’ worth of decoding machines and computers.”

“How many people work in this place?”

“About sixteen thousand.”

So what the hell do they need me for? Robert Bellamy wondered.

He was led into a private elevator that Keller operated with a key. They went up one floor and started on another trek down a long corridor until they reached a suite of offices at the end of the hall.

“Right in here, Commander.” They entered a large reception office with four secretaries’ desks. Two of the secretaries had already arrived for work. Harrison Keller nodded to one of them. She pressed a button and a door to the inner office clicked open.