“Now place the gel packs on top of it,” Charlie said.

Cutler looked from one to the other. “What the hell is this?”

“Please,” Charlie said, her tone more insistent. “I only have a twenty-second window.”

“For what?”

Whitman stepped in, took the gel packs off Cutler’s knee, dropped them onto his mobile, and, taking him firmly by the elbow, moved him back to where Charlie stood, cool and relaxed as Sinatra had been onstage.

The instant they were far enough away, Charlie pressed her mobile’s touchscreen, and something terrifying happened. The gel packs shivered, then burst into flame. Cutler looked so astonished Whitman thought he was about to have a heart attack.

Charlie went over and stamped out the fire before any alarms could go off, then she turned to Cutler. “Imagine what would have happened if your mobile had been against your ear.”

“Assuming she passes the vetting process, you have your ten thousand,” Cutler said to Whitman. “She’s worth every penny.”

“The bet was Charlie’s. The ten large goes to her.” Whitman grinned. “Call it a signing bonus.”

8

What Dr. Paulus Lindstrom lacked in the tradecraft of spies he more than made up for by a finely honed sense of self-preservation. In this, in particular, his Asperger’s was a help rather than a hindrance. Part of that was because his vigilance was entirely internal. He was required to neither ask other people for assistance nor to wonder how his actions or words might affect those around him.

Freed from these restraints, which he found painful, he was able to revel completely in his element. His talk with Valerie had made him feel like a spider to which flies were, sooner or later, going to approach.

For the first several days after he came under discipline, nothing out of the ordinary happened. In fact, he was so immersed in the latest fruit of the Mobius Project that when something interrupted his daily schedule it tended to throw off his intricately timed day. Which was why he tensed up whenever Omar Hemingway showed up for his chatty version of an update. Today, however, someone other than Hemingway entered his lab. He introduced himself as Luther St. Vincent. Lindstrom read something dark and distasteful in his eyes, and quailed inside. He did not like this man at all. In fact, something about St. Vincent frightened him.

“I’m here for an update, Doctor,” St. Vincent said without even a pretense at politeness.

“Where is Mr. Hemingway? He’s my liaison with NSA.”

“Not anymore, Doctor. As of this moment I have taken over the Mobius Project.”

A ball of ice formed in the pit of Lindstrom’s stomach. “I’ll have to call Mr. Hemingway’s office.”

“Do that, Doctor.”

But as Lindstrom reached for the phone, St. Vincent leaned in, looming over him. “However, I wonder whether that’s the best course of action.”

Lindstrom froze, the receiver halfway to his face. “What do you mean?”

“Loyalty. Service. Obedience.” St. Vincent smiled an icy smile. “These are the qualities NSA looks for in its stringers.”