“Oh,” Keats said.

“Indeed. There are never fewer than ten security—TFDs as we call them: Tourists from Denver, since that’s the look they put on—on that floor at any time. Another two dozen or so patrol the building or watch the entrances. They are all armed. They are mostly very well trained, many are former special forces or commandos. U.S. Marines, ex-Delta Force, Royal Marines, SAS, ex-Mossad … dangerous people.”

“So, how do we do it?” Plath asked. “How do we get in there and destroy those servers?”

“I believe what Mr. Stern is about to tell us is that we don’t,” Keats said. “We’d have to get past ground-floor security, go up to seventeen where we would be shot at. A lot. Then somehow we’d have to reach the connecting stairwell and climb to eighteen, where we would have another fight on our hands, with forces coming from all over the building to attack our rear.”

“Exactly. Now, we’d have some advantages—we can use our network access to shut down elevators, block some doors, turn off cameras, that sort of thing. But to actually have a decent chance of success? We would need a hundred men.”

He laid that last fact out like a poker player showing the ace that would win the pot.

Keats snorted. “A hundred men?”

“In Midtown Manhattan. Imagine a hundred armed men appearing on the street outside the Tulip. There would be no way to avoid the police being involved, especially once bullets started to send plate glass falling down onto pedestrians.”

“Isn’t there some kind of … I don’t know,” Plath said, frustrated. “Some Tom Cruise kind of thing? Crawling up the side of the building?”

“The shape of the Tulip, with that suggestive bulge at the top, means that’s physically impossible, even if we were insane enough to try such a stunt.”

Stern turned away from the monitor with an air of finality, but Keats leaned past him and pointed at the screen. “Did you see this? Eighteen isn’t the only floor that’s shut off from elevators. This is, what? Thirty-four, yes?”

Stern spun back and peered closely at the monitor. “I believe you’re right. But the heat signature is quite average on thirty-four, so that’s not our server farm.”

“No,” Keats agreed. “But it’s something.”

“In the end, as you can see, the building is effectively impregnable. Not that we would ever have participated in such a thing, anyway, but just so that you know: that server farm cannot be taken out by direct attack.”

“Which means our friend Lear has ordered us to do something impossible,” Keats said.

Plath looked troubled and uncertain. But she finally stood up, took Stern’s hand, and thanked him.

Back on the street Plath said, “So why did Lear tell us to do the impossible?”

Keats had no answer to that.

Unless, of course, it isn’t impossible.

In Plath’s mind the towers fell.

BRAZIL

Lystra Reid was nowhere near when the president of Brazil was discovered naked and babbling on a street in São Paulo, apparently collecting dog feces in a Gap shopping bag.

The president was taken to a hospital, where no explanation could be found for his condition. He was diagnosed first as suffering a breakdown as a result of stress and overwork. But it soon became clear that this was no mere nervous breakdown but a complete psychotic break.

He had gone mad.

A solemn vice president assumed the office and attempted to reassure a worried nation. But halfway through her speech she appeared to become distracted.

There were, she said …, “Bugs.”

And soon after she began to weep and curse violently, and from there began to scream and had to be taken away by her chief of staff and security personnel.

LOS ANGELES

The Los Angeles County coroner, Dr. Baldur Chen, issued two different reports on the death of actress Sandra Piper. One was very thorough and public and reached the obvious conclusion: suicide.

The second was a report prepared with help from an agency in Washington. That agency sent its own pathologist to “assist.” This second pathologist focused on an exceedingly careful examination of the actress’s brain. Dr. Chen had never seen an autopsy that involved centimeter-by-centimeter microscopic investigation of the brain tissue.

It would have taken a much more obtuse man than Dr. Chen to fail to recognize that the agency pathologist was looking for something very specific.

Both pathologists signed off on a second, eyes-only report that dealt with this second, microscopic examination. The conclusion was that there was no evidence of nanotechnology present.

Dr. Chen was required to sign an official secrets document and was solemnly warned that he would go to a federal prison if he revealed the existence of this second report.

NINE

The Twins arrived back in New York with no more fanfare than Plath and Keats. It had been expensive, but crossing into the U.S. without a passport was possible. Not impossible. Not with enough ready cash.

They had been helped into their specially built shower, then slept for many hours until Jindal had them awakened as per their orders.

Cranky, but relieved to be home again where the environment had been shaped to their needs, they drank coffee, ate pastries, and sat in their tent-size bathrobe while Jindal gave them the rundown. This program and that business.

“We don’t care about the P and Ls,” Benjamin snarled after a few minutes of spreadsheets. “Do you think we give a damn about long-term profits? Have you found BZRK?”