"My colleagues don't know you. As for the nar¬colepsy, you haven't killed yourself yet."

I reached under the sofa cushion, brought out my pis¬tol, and thrust it into my waistband. "You don't know me either."

She studied the butt of the gun, then looked into my eyes. "I think I do. And I want to help you."

If she were only my psychiatrist, I would have left her there. But during our long sessions, we had recognized something in each other, an unspoken feeling shared by two people who had experienced great loss. Even though she thought I might be ill now, she cared about me in a way no one else had for a long time. To take her with me would be selfish, but the simple truth was, I didn't want to go alone.

CHAPTER 3

Geli Bauer sat within the dark bowels of the Trinity building, a basement complex lit only by the glow of computer monitors and surveillance screens. From here electronic filaments spread out to monitor the people and the physical plant of Project Trinity. But that was only the center of her domain. With the touch of a computer key, Geli could interface with the NSA supercomputers at Fort Meade and monitor conversations and events on the other side of the globe. Though she had wielded many kinds of power during her thirty-two years on earth, she had never before felt the rush of knowing that all the world bounded by electronics could be manipulated by the touch of her finger.

On paper, Geli worked for Godin Supercomputing, which was based in Mountain View, California. But it was her company's quasi-governmental relationship with the NSA that had lifted her into the stratosphere of power. If she deemed a situation an emergency, she could stop trains, close international airports, retask surveillance satellites, or lift armed helicopters into the skies over U.S. soil and order them to fire. No other modern woman had wielded such power-in some ways her authority rivaled that of her father-and Geli did not intend to give it up.



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