Mike led them outside, through a door that bypassed the room full of abandoned furniture. There was no porch on this side of the house, and Gideon stepped out into the snow after Mike and Ruth. Here they faced the barn a few hundred feet away.
Gideon stood in the snow, breath fogging in the sharp, cold air. Gideon looked around and saw the guards moving out there by the treeline. Mike led them toward the barn, oblivious.
He followed Mike and Ruth, turning his attention to the barn. It appeared worse off than the house. The sides had been weathered to an uneven gray, and the roof was shot through with missing shingles, and bowed in the center. There was a shed adjoining the rear of the barn, which might have once housed tools, a tractor, or cattle, but it was now little more than a roof supported by apparently random two-by-fours planted into the ground.
Under the shed's roof stood a cluster of sleek metallic antennas and a small dish. Mike saw Gideon looking and said, 'That's our uplink, can't get a high volume ground line in here without someone noticing.'
Gideon shook his head, still trying to understand exactly what was happening here. Mike had dropped some broad hints about viruses and from the sound of it, what was going on was a domestic experiment in information warfare. That's the only thing that Gideon thought would require this kind of rogue operation.
Mike led them around to the front of the barn. As they closed on the entrance, a small door set next to the huge barn doors, Gideon began to hear a noise, like a car idling. It got louder as they approached the barn.
Then Gideon started to feel a slightly warm wind brush against his face. He stopped, suddenly still, and looked up at the wall of the barn.
The door they faced was new construction, a pre-made vinyl-coated door, set rather abruptly into the weathered gray wood. That wasn't the only modification. Gideon could see a series of new metal vents set high up, above the top of the barn door, set in a line across the front of the barn. That's where the warm breeze came from, Gideon was certain. The wind shifted and the warmth left him.
Why would they be venting warm air? The only thing that Gideon could think of was a refrigeration system of some sort. . .
There was only one thing that Gideon knew of that would require refrigeration in this climate, but he didn't think it could be possible.
Mike led them through the door, and Gideon saw, immediately, that it was possible.
Behind the barn doors, sitting on a platform that was adjusted to give a level surface on the dirt floor, was a Daedalus supercomputer. Gideon recognized it immediately, even when it was half-hidden by silvery vents that led up into the gloom of the barn's loft, venting the waste heat, keeping the superconductors from frying while the machine operated.
From under the platform came a twisted mass of cable snaking back into the bam. The end of the bam without the Daedalus looked as if someone had decided to transplant someone's office pool. There were more leveling platforms set up, the cables snaking across the dirt to disappear under them in a half-dozen places. They had set up partitions making a half-dozen cubicles. And hanging from the rafters above were long fluorescent light fixtures.
The idling sound came from two generators that sat on the dirt floor of the bam, between the computer and the office area, snaking their own cables to both.
'Welcome to Project Aleph,' Mike said.
The people back in the office weren't guards. Gideon could tell because all the people were more interested in what was going on on their desks than they were in the door. Gideon could tell the guards by their Kalishnikovs, and by the fact that they started straight toward the door from their positions flanking the generators.
Ruth called out, toward the cubicles, 'Julie!'
Everything stopped.
The guards looked off toward the office area. The people in the office area turned and looked off toward the intruders.
One woman separated herself from a terminal where she'd been looking over the shoulder of some guy about Mike's age. She took a few steps toward them. She was taller than Gideon had expected. Her hair was loose and hung down around her shoulders, and her depthless gray eyes stared at all of them with what seemed to be a cold curiosity.
'Thank you, Gribaldi,' she said. 'Both of you should come with me. I suppose you have some questions.'
3.05 Fri. Mar. 26
THERE was a dark corner of the barn, by the ersatz offices. It was walled off completely, for privacy. Julia took them inside, leaving Mike out on the floor of the 'lab' with the other computer people. She shut the door on the activity outside, and the room became disturbingly silent. Gideon felt as if they were completely alone with Julia Zimmerman.
He couldn't help staring at the woman. There was only the barest hint that there was anything extraordinary about her—and it might only have been there because Gideon expected it, and was looking for it. Her posture broadcast confidence, perhaps—as Dr. Nolan would have said—arrogance. Her eyes were deep and powerful, and seemed to look through him, or into him.
Julia turned on a fluorescent that flickered a half-dozen times before it came on fully.
She strode through the small cramped room, around the desk, and said, 'I'm glad you're all right, Ruth.'
'Julie—' Ruth began.
'No thanks to the bastards you work for,' Gideon blurted. He was saying it before he even realized the anger that he was holding back.
Ruth reached for his arm, 'Gideon, wait a m—'
Gideon shook off her arm and took a limping step forward. 'You do work for them, don't you? Or is it the other way around?'
'You don't know what's going on here, Detective Malcolm,' Julia said. Her voice was much colder than the one she had used to address Ruth.
'I don't?' Gideon said. He took another step and leaned forward, his hands on the edge of the desk. He gripped the edge until the healing muscles in his arm vibrated. 'You and Emmit D'Arcy came to some sort of agreement to continue your 'work' outside of the NSA's control. Both of you staged your defection to a phantom terrorist group, and even went so far as to contract the theft of a Daedalus supercomputer. Have I got the gist?'
'Please,' Ruth said. 'Let her explain what's happening.' If anything, it was Ruth who seemed to be hurt by Gideon's tirade. Julia simply watched him, unmoved.
'If I have that much right—' Gideon glared at the woman. React, damn you. 'Those thieves killed a highway patrolman, you realize that, don't you? In fact, they botched the whole job—bad enough that the CIA managed to set a trap with the Daedalus. But D'Arcy tipped you off, didn't he?'
'I'm sorry that you and your brother—' Julia began.
'You are? Are you sorry about Mr. Jones and Mr. Williams? They might have been criminal scum, but the fact that you involved them meant they had to die. Your pet terrorist, Volynskji, put a bullet into Morris Kendal because he was just a little too close to figuring out D'Arcy was behind this. Are you sorry about him? Then there're a half- dozen dead Israelis in New Jersey-----'
Julia nodded and said quietly, 'Much of this has been unfortunate.'
'Good Lord, do you understand that these bastards almost killed your sister—'
'They panicked,' Julia said. 'After the travesty with the Israelis, I made them understand that they had to bring the two of you here, in one piece.'
'Do you know how many people have died because of this?'
Julia sat down, behind the desk. 'I am not in control of these people, Detective Malcolm.'
'Bullshit!'
'Gideon, please.' Ruth sounded shocked. She pulled at his arm trying to get him back into a seat.
'You have these people wrapped around your finger. You dictated that we be brought into audience with you,
