Cameron McIntyre barged into Jake Sharp's office, flinging the door back hard against the wall.

He wore a Burberry topcoat and a deerstalker hat, affecting the manner of a Scottish laird from the moors of the old country.

"Get your coat, Sharp. We're taking a wee trip." He turned on his heel and started down the hall, leaving the young man scrambling to catch up with him.

Sharp was accustomed to the brusque demands of his employer. During the past six months as director of Internal Audit he had often been summoned abruptly for a spurof-the-moment meeting with managers and suppliers. Sharp always delivered perfect satisfaction. The FBI had worked hard to get him this position, and it would never do to be fired for incompetence.

The past few months had passed in silent, covert action as Sharp battled account books and computer files to force their secrets from them. On the surface the McIntyre Arms Corporation was perfectly legitimate. It manufactured assemblies for the M-16 and M-60 as well as acting as a certified arms dealer to foreign customers.

The FBI was convinced that below the veneer of corporate respectability, McIntyre was delving into the murky but profitable business of selling weapons to insurgents and terrorists worldwide.

Sharp had been following paper trails that led along twisted paths from one dummy company to another offshore subsidiary, then to yet more numbered fronts in a dozen countries. Every bit of corporate lair in existence was being used to cloak sordid, cutthroat deals as legitimate business.