Germ

war. More likely, he would continue to poke around, maybe find Despesorio's trail or something he'd left behind. Litt hoped Atropos was as good as his reputation.

'Soon it won't matter,' he said out loud. 'Old man, you're about to find out how just how rock-hard my heart has become.'

Kendrick disconnected and sat in his wheelchair, staring

at the phone. One hand picked at the wool blanket covering his legs. His other hand went to his mouth. He snipped off a sliver of finger-nail between his teeth and examined the result. God was gazing at him, and he shifted his eyes to gaze back. Nestled in a felt-lined cup holder in the arm of his chair, a God-head pipe cast a disapproving look on Kendrick's agitation.

'I know,' he whispered at the face, 'but it's him, not me. What choice do I have?'

Kendrick had first beheld the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1958, when he attended the funeral mass of Pius XII as Eisenhower's secretary of state. The potency of Michelangelo's brush had stunned him: the luster of Ezekiel's garments, evil Haman's dramatic crucifixion, the rising saints and tortured sinners of The Last Judgment; all of it rendered among intricate columns and arches and pedestals that the artist had painted on the ceiling's smooth plane. But nothing took his breath away like the visage of God as He was creating Adam. Its combination of strong features and tender expression portrayed the perfect balance of power and compassion, superiority and love.

Back in the States, he found himself pondering that sweeping beard of Michelangelo's God, the granite nose and forehead, the purposeful eyes. In God's face, Kendrick discovered the potential of man, the symbol of the way he wanted to live out the rest of his life. He secured the finest raw meerschaum Eskisehir had to offer—this was three years before the Turkish government banned the export of meerschaum block—and sent it to the most renowned Viennese carver. What he received back was a three-inch-tall, three-dimensional carving in white meerschaum clay. It matched the Sistine head of God right down to the bulging vein in His temple, the arch of concentration in His brow, the way His beard rose up the jawline only to the earlobe. It was a masterpiece of a masterpiece.

It was also a pipe, with an amber stem curving up from the back of the head and a bowl whittled into the crown. Over the years, the meerschaum had absorbed nicotine from countless bowls of tobacco, coloring and highlighting the creases of God's face in a cinnamon glow. It was aging much more gracefully than Kendrick's own craggy countenance.

He was convinced the face on the pipe changed ever so subtly, even if only in his mind's eye, to help guide him. When he was having doubts, God gave him a look of strength, of encouragement; when he was righteously angry, God scowled at the offender with him. Now God was saying, Take care of this, Kendrick. It's why I gave you so much strength, so many resources.

After a long moment he gestured, and a man in Air Force blues stepped over.

'Sir?'

'He was trying to find out if we had something on him. And he claims to have set something in motion. Send in another team. We need to locate whatever it is he's missing.'

The captain walked away, his heels clicking on the hardwood floor and echoing slightly in the big, antebellum ballroom that Kendrick had converted into his command center. Leaving his home had come to require more energy than he could afford to expend. But he could not retire or die until he had tied up the one loose end that could wipe out everything he had worked for, his country, his name. He had to find Litt and eliminate him forever.

He considered calling the captain back to remind him that the last team had been sloppy, hardly the surgeon Karl had found. More like surgeons with chain saws. But he decided the method wasn't his business; he cared only about the outcome. Granted, last time the outcome stank, but he wasn't in the field. He had learned a long time ago to let the experts do their thing. Give them an objective and get out of their way.

Would innocent civilians die? Maybe. He hoped not, but he hoped even more for a way to stop Karl.

He avoided making eye contact with God.

seventeen

For a man of letters, Jeff Hunter found himself often thinking about numbers. On his mind at the moment: six. That was the average number of work-related questions or suggestions he fielded during his morning journey from the doors of the New York Times building to his desk on the third floor. More than the hellos or the great-story-yesterdays. No, what he could count on hearing was something like, 'That drug dealer didn't really tell you that, did he?' or 'I heard from a source that you got that detail wrong,' or—the winner by a mile—'I've got a great story for you, Jeff!' Six times on average. Once, the day after his Pulitzer nomination, twenty-eight people suddenly had brilliant story ideas Jeff just had to pursue. Twenty-eight. Only a dozen had congratulated him.

Today the lobby security guard scored number one: 'Hey, Mr. Hunter, that story you did on college hazings? I was wondering, my nephew—'

'Can I get back to you about that, Tom? Kinda in a hurry.' He didn't slow down. To the elevators, push the button. Janet from HR evened things out: 'Hi, Jeff. Are those new glasses?' Then she blew it: 'If you have a minute, I thought of something you should write about. You know EQ—emotional intelligence quotient? I just heard of this test—'

As if he needed ideas.

He arrived at his cubicle, having fielded five opportunities for distraction. Not bad. But then he checked his e-mail—not part of the morning's count, but with a scoring system all its own. Forty-four new messages, even with a kick-butt spam blocker and his own kill filters that automatically deleted e-mails containing such obnoxious words as 'idea,' 'lawyer,' and George Carlin's 'Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.' He tended to get a lot of messages with at least one of those nasty seven. At least he used to, prior to creating the kill filters.

One wife. Three kids. Two mortgages. A salary just over six figures.

Numbers. Maybe I should have been an accountant.

Except he loved being an investigative reporter. Corruption, greed, abuse of power—what could be better than uncovering these deeds and exposing the perpetrators? In Hunter's book, nothing.

He started sorting through the e-mails. Delete. Delete. Delete.

He came to one with the subject line, 'The story of the century'— a slight twist on the usual 'Story of the year!' He opened it and was surprised to find it blank. Some story. Then he noticed the attachment, something called 'First_Strike.xls.' A spreadsheet. Or, more likely, a virus.

'I don't think so,' he said out loud and hit the delete key. He'd gone through a dozen more e-mails when he thought about the spreadsheet again. What if it really was a big story? The blank message was a deviation from the norm; most people didn't seem to know how to stop once they started typing a message to him.

He opened his trash folder, then double-clicked on 'The story of the century.' He checked the return address. It was an anonymous e-mail resender he recognized. He received at least a few nasty-grams a week with return addresses that were untraceable, thanks to web sites that believed in a person's right to anonymity. In his experience, anonymity over the Internet meant trouble. Then again, Deep Throat

went nameless for thirty years. Most whistleblowers preferred it that way. He eyed the icon that represented the attached file. If it was a virus, the company's computer guys could take care of it. And his computer backed itself up every evening, so he wouldn't lose much, in a worst-case scenario. He selected the file and opened it.

His monitor displayed a list of names, addresses, and, on most records, what appeared to be social security numbers. He scrolled down. The list went on and on. He hit the button that jumped him to the last entry. Exactly ten thousand.

Scrolling back up, he recognized some names—politicians, celebrities, business leaders. Of course, these could be average joes who only shared the names of famous people. There was also a large number of names he didn't recognize. What did any of these people have in common? Why were they on this list? Why was he sent the list, and who sent it? The social security numbers bothered him. The list could have come from one of the stolen data files that made the news every week—hacked credit card companies, hospitals, schools. Hardly the story of the century.