He sipped at his coffee again, noticing vaguely that the cup seemed to be getting heavier. Dr. Barbara Underwood. The same given name, Esteban had pointed out, as the patron saint of engineers and architects.

  She’d certainly lived up to that heritage. Tonight’s work alone would guarantee her a prominent spot in that future encyclopedia listing.

  A programming genius, and a really nice person besides. A shame Angie seemed to have taken a dislike to her. But that would change. She just needed to get to know Barbara better, that was all. Maybe the three of them could go rent a couple of Angie’s parents’ cabins at Tahoe sometime. He and Angie could teach Barbara how to fish.

  He started suddenly. In a single instant the room had twisted crazily, and it took a minute of careful thought to realize he was now lying on the floor, gazing at his cup and the puddle of coffee around it. There was a sort of throbbing in his cheek and head, but no real pain. He must be more tired than he thought.

  But that was okay. The Army guys weren’t due until . . . he couldn’t remember, exactly, but he knew it wasn’t for a while yet. He would take a little nap, then get up and get the Cloaks ready. Yes. That’s what he would do.

  Closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep.

  ~

  Setting up the satellite uplink took several minutes, and it was several minutes more before the general came on. “Yes?”

  “Eleven, sir,” Eleven identified himself, glancing at the container tops around him. Pure reflex; there was nothing he would be saying that would be dangerous for an eavesdropping crewman to overhear. “We’ve changed course for Pusan.”

  There was a short silence, long enough for Eleven to wonder if the freighter’s gentle rocking had disrupted the connection. “You’re two days early.”

  “Unavoidable, sir,” Eleven told him. “We had an incident with pirates. Chinese, by the looks of them.”

  “You’ve dealt with the problem?”

  “Thoroughly,” Eleven confirmed.

  “Bodies?”

  “In the sea,” Eleven said. “Scattered among the wreckage of their ship.”

  “Yours?”

  “Renamed and on secondary track.”

  “The captain?”

  Eleven smiled, remembering the long and often heated discussion that had taken place among the Pakistanis after the renaming and reflagging work had been finished and he and Ten had retired again to their seagoing apartments. It was a conversation the two of them had listened to with great interest by means of the Russian FSB listening devices Ten had scattered around during his sweep of the ship’s living areas. “Not happy, but willing to go along.”

  “Very well,” the general said, his tone dismissing the unexpected change in plans with the calmness of a strategist who has all possible contingencies already mapped out. “Make certain you’re ready when he decides to stop cooperating. I’ll alert Twelve to move into quick-response position ahead of you. You’ll of course inform him at once of any course changes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Eleven said. “How are matters proceeding there?”

  “According to schedule,” the general said. “We’ll be ready when you reach the rendezvous point.” The general’s tone darkened. “Make certain you are likewise ready.”

  ~

  With a suddenness that always meant trouble, Madison Talbot snapped fully awake, his hand darting automatically for the holster hanging underneath the nightstand shelf as he scanned his darkened bedroom for unexpected company. He had a grip on his Glock 22 before his brain caught up with the fact that it was the warbling cell phone and not an intruder that had awakened him. Blinking a couple of times, he let go of the gun and snagged the phone, looking at the softly glowing blue numbers on his clock as he did so. Ten minutes to six. The phone cut off in mid-warble as he thumbed it on. “Talbot.”

  “It’s Nate,” San Jose detective Natal Delgado’s familiar voice came. “We’ve got trouble at Sand/Star.”

  Talbot had already thrown off the blankets. “What sort?” he asked as his feet slapped down onto the cold floor.

  There was a barely audible sigh. “James Chandler and two of his colleagues have just been found in their lab by the cleaning crew. Dead.”

  Something squeezed hard at Talbot’s gut. “Murdered?”

  “That, or they got a really bad pizza,” Delgado said grimly. “Can you get down here?”

  Talbot flipped on a light and headed for his closet. Damn, and damn, and damn again. “I’m on my way.”

  THE THIRD DAY

  05

  By seven o’clock the Building D parking lot was awash with cops, medical examiner types, and enough vehicle-mounted flashing lights to start a dance club. Talbot drove carefully through the gauntlet and parked his car in an unobtrusive spot near the rear. For a wonder, the ubiquitous TV camera crews weren’t in evidence, and he wondered whether Delgado had deliberately frozen them out or if they were just sleeping in this morning. His badge got him through the standard police receiving line at the various doors and elevators, and at last he was ushered into the third-floor Tarnhelm lab.

  The bodies had already been removed, with only tape outlines showing where they’d been found: two on different sides of the pushed-together tables in the center of the room, the third over to one side by a table decorated with a coffee maker, three mostly empty soda bottles, a couple of pizza boxes, and assorted scientific hardware. Open doors at opposite ends of the lab led to adjoining offices, the one on the left much larger than the one on the right. He caught a glimpse of Delgado through the smaller office door, and maneuvered his way that direction through the fingerprint and sample collectors.

  “Nate,” he greeted the other as he stepped into the office, giving the room a quick once-over as he did so. The cramped space was dominated by a large paper-strewn desk with an expensive-looking computer workstation on it; an older man in rumpled clothing was seated in front of the latter, pounding away at the keyboard. Flanking the desk were a pair of file cabinets and a small drafting table, with a coat tree holding a windbreaker and overcoat tucked into a corner by the door. Stretched out in the back, looking rather out of place, was an old army cot.

  “About time,” Delgado said, glancing at his watch. “Car trouble?”

  “You forget how early East Bay traffic gets started,” Talbot countered. “What have you got?”

  “So far, precious little,” Delgado said. “This is Dr. Theodore Tarlington, in charge of this division of Sand/Star. Doctor: FBI Special Agent Madison Talbot.”

  “Special Agent Talbot,” Tarlington said, not looking up as he continued assaulting the keyboard. His hair was as rumpled as his clothing, and his face had a sheen of sweat and a slightly greenish tinge. Early-morning murders apparently didn’t agree with him.

  “Dr. Tarlington,” Talbot said, nodding politely. “What are we looking up?”

  “He’s trying to access Building D’s security records,” Delgado said. “We’ve got the gate guard from last night on his way in to pull the complete record for the whole complex—the various shifts are staggered, and he went off duty at four. Right now, I’m mostly interested in who in this building went home when.”

  “Here it is,” Tarlington said, leaning forward. “The final check-outs, anyway. Looks like everyone except the six in this room were out by seven p.m. Of those six, two of them—Ramon Esteban and Scott Kingsley—signed out of the building close together, at one-thirty-five and one-thirty-six this morning. The door openings were at one-thirty-six and one-thirty-eight.”

  “When did they check through the gate?” Delgado asked.

  “That’s not in this file,” Tarlington said. “The gate guard will have to pull that up.”

  “What about the third tech?”

  “Jack Burke,” Tarlington said. “He signed out twenty minutes later, at one-fifty-five, and opened the door within the same minute.”

  “Got it,” Delgado said, making some pigeon scratches in his notebook. “Was the door opened any time after that, either with a card or from the desk?”

  “Yes,” Tarlington said, frowning at the display. “It was opened once, at three-fifteen. No sign-out, though.”

  “What was the downstairs guard doing at the time?” Talbot asked.

  “Propped up in a stall in the first-floor restroom, drugged to the eyebrows,” Delgado said grimly. “The obvious suspect is the coffee pot down there. We’re having it checked.”

  “Same drug that killed the scientists?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Delgado said. “For one thing, he’s still alive, though he’s under observation at the hospital while he sleeps it off. For another, the trauma marks indicate his brew took effect a whole lot faster than the stuff the scientists got.”

  Talbot nodded. “Inevitably.”

  “Why inevitably?” Tarlington asked.

  “You can’t take out a group of people with anything fast-acting unless they all take it at the same time,” Talbot explained. “Otherwise, the balloon goes up as soon as the first one keels over. On the other hand, there are lots of good reasons for knocking out a trained guard as fast as possible, especially when he’s got access to panic buttons. What about the guard our sleeping warrior replaced? Is he all right?”

  “He was as of fifteen minutes ago, when we hauled him out of bed,” Delgado said. “The shift change downstairs was midnight, and he said he drew his last cup of coffee from the pot around eight o’clock.”

  “Four hours before the shift change, and an hour after everyone except the people in this lab left the building,” Talbot noted. “That’s handy. So our poisoner could have drugged the pot at any point after that.”

  “Assuming he knew the evening guard’s habits,” Delgado agreed.

  “What do you mean?” Tarlington asked. “What habits?”

  “His coffee-drinking schedule,” Talbot said. “If he followed a more or less strict regimen of knocking off caffeine at eight, say, it would give the poisoner a larger window of opportunity than if he sometimes had his last cup at, say, ten or eleven.”

  “Right,” Delgado said, scribbling more notes. “So we need to know how consistent he was, and who in this room might have known it.”

  “In this room?” Tarlington echoed, looking aghast. “Surely you’re not suggesting one of their own lab assistants did this to them.”

  “Who else?” Talbot countered. “You said yourself no one else was in the building.”

  “Well, I mean—” Tarlington floundered. “Maybe it was one of the cleaning staff. Or a visitor from outside. It has to be someone from outside.”

  “We’ll check out that possibility,” Delgado assured him. “Thank you, Doctor. You can go home now if you’d like.”

  “Thank you.” Tarlington leaned back wearily. “If it’s all right, I’d rather go to my office and work up a press release.”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Delgado said. “We’ll call if we need anything more. Leave that workstation on, if you would.”

  Tarlington hesitated, then nodded. He stood up and headed out through the main lab, his shoulders slumped.

  “Not a happy camper, is he?” Talbot murmured.

  “Not very,” Delgado agreed. “I trust you noticed the curious timing here. The last lab assistant signs out just before two, with the guard presumably awake and kicking. An hour and a half later, when our unknown Mr. X either comes in or goes out, he’s apparently not there to wave his magic pen and sign-in pad at him.”

  “The question being how Mr. X got the door open,” Talbot said. “Either he had a card to swipe in with, which means a Sand/Star employee, or else someone in here opened the door for him.”

  “Right,” Delgado said. “According to Tarlington, the cleaning crew came in about midnight. But since they work in pairs they’re likely to all have alibis for the three-fifteen time slot. Another possibility, I suppose, is that one of the three victims opened the door.”

  “What, after he’d downed the poison but before he dropped dead?” Talbot scoffed. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “I agree,” Delgado said. “Which leaves us the option that Mr. X slipped in earlier while the door was open anyway, with the guard either distracted or in the washroom. The three-fifteen opening would then be Mr. X going out.”

  “Leaving him the problem of getting through the gate,” Talbot said. “Over the fence, maybe?”

  “Not likely,” Delgado said doubtfully. “There are supposed to be sensors woven into the chain, and there’s razor wire on top. Still . . . Greer?”

  A large plainclothes cop poked his head around the door. “Yes, sir?”

  “Get a team out checking the perimeter fence,” Delgado ordered. “Look for signs someone might have sneaked over or through it last night.”

  “Got it,” Greer said, and vanished again.

  “We need a look at that complete security list,” Talbot commented. “And we need to talk to the techs. I presume they’re on their way?”

  “They should be here any time,” Delgado said, stepping out of the office into the lab. “Something else I want to show you.”

  “You didn’t say where the poison was in here,” Talbot commented as Delgado led him through the milling evidence-gatherers toward the lab tables.

  “Probably the coffee,” Delgado said. “The lab’s working on it, but the stuff smelled funny when I sniffed it.”

  “Our poisoner has a one-track mind,” Talbot said. “I don’t suppose the doors of this suite are locked during the day or evening.”

  Delgado shrugged. “We’ll ask the techs, but Tarlington said most of the people in this building tend toward the casual end of the paranoia spectrum. Apparently,” he added in a slightly bitter tone, “nothing secret or of military importance was being done in here.”

  “Yeah,” Talbot said. “Right.”

  They stopped beside the lab tables. “You’ll find this particularly interesting,” Delgado said, pointing to two of the tape outlines. “The ME’s preliminary check of Chandler and Fowler showed head and shoulder trauma marks where they fell onto the floor before they died.”

  He pointed to the third outline. “But Underwood has no such marks. What she does have are pressure marks on her left cheek and arm that indicate they were pressed together a short time before she died.”

  Talbot eyed the stool beside the outline. “As if she was sitting with her upper body lying across the tables?”

  “That’s my guess,” Delgado agreed. “Furthermore, the way she was positioned on the floor looked to me like someone pulled her off and laid her more or less gently down there.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Which either means they didn’t want her falling with a thud that might draw attention . . . ?”

  “Or else she was lying on something they wanted,” Talbot finished the sentence.

  Delgado nodded. “Very good. We’ll make a police detective of you yet.”

  “I may have to take you up on that offer one of these days,” Talbot warned, surveying the scene. So Mr. X’s goal had been the Cloaks. Big fat hairy surprise. “What’s happening upstairs on this?”

  “I’ve called Garcia,” Delgado said. “He’ll be coming down later. As far as your presence on the case is concerned—” He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t suppose you want to get Lyman out of his morning shower for this.”

  “Not especially,” Talbot said. “We’d better wait until his second cup of coffee.”

  Delgado made a face. “Under the circumstances, you should probably rephrase that.”

  “Probably,” Talbot conceded.

  “Lieutenant?” the door guard called, poking his head inside. “The lab assistants are here. Kiyohara’s got them down in the cafeteria. First floor.”

  “Thanks.” Delgado gestured to Talbot. “Shall we go have a chat?”

  “Let’s,” Talbot agreed. “You might want to offer them something to drink, too. See if any of them happens not to be a coffee drinker.”

  “Way ahead of you.”

  ~

  The three lab techs were seated at one of the cafeteria tables, huddled together like children at midnight who’ve watched one hack-and-slash movie too many. All of them had the same rumpled look Dr. Tarlington had exhibited earlier, and if anything looked more miserable even than he had. There was a steaming cup in front of each of them, and the aroma of vending-machine coffee pervaded the air, but it was unclear whether any of them had even touched their drinks. Three uniformed cops, probably the ones who’d rousted them out of bed and driven them here, sat casually at other tables nearby, paying close but unobtrusive attention to the soft and probably rather brittle conversation.

  They looked over in unison as Delgado pushed open the door and he and Talbot stepped into the room, their faces taking on the deer-in-the-headlights look Talbot had seen so often before. “Good morning,” Delgado said, putting on his best the-policeman-is-your-friend smile. “I’m sorry to drag you all out of bed, especially after such a late night. And especially when I have bad news for you.”

  “What sort of bad news?” one of the techs demanded in a quavering voice. He was Hispanic, late twenties, with bright eyes that darted nervously around the room as he spoke.

  “Let’s have some introductions first, shall we?” Delgado said. “I’m Detective Lieutenant Natal Delgado of the San Jose Police Department. This is Special Agent Madison Talbot of the FBI.”

  All three sets of eyes bugged on that one. “FBI?” one of the other techs echoed. He was tall and blond, with chiseled features and deep blue eyes, and a heritage as obviously north of the Alps as the Hispanic’s was south of the Rio Grande. He was also slightly younger than the Hispanic, probably no more than twenty-seven. “What in the name of God—?”

  “Your turn, now,” Delgado interrupted him smoothly. “You are—?”

  The blond man grimaced. “Jack Burke,” he said.