They came in this morning not half an hour after Brian arrived for work. He felt his molars grinding.

Sigmund was tall, sepulchral, flinty Weil was six inches shorter and stout enough that he probably bought his pants at a specialty store. Weil was capable of smiling. Sigmund was not.

They advanced toward Brian where he stood by the water cooler. "Mr. Gately," Sigmund said, and Weil said, "Can we talk to you privately?"

"In my office."

Brian's office wasn't large but it had a window overlooking the consulate's walled garden. The cubicle was equipped with a filing cabinet, a desk of native wood, enough floating memory to accommodate the Library of Congress a few times over, and a plastic ficus. The desk was covered with correspondence between Genomic Security and the Provisional Government, one small tributary of the information stream that circulated between the two domains like an eternal sludgy Nile. Brian sat in his customary chair. Weil plumped down in the guest chair and Sig-mund stood with his back to the door like a carrion bird, sinister in his patience.

"You talked to your ex-wife," Weil said.

"I did. I told her what you asked me to tell her."

"It doesn't seem to have done any good. Do I have to tell you she reconnected with Turk Findley?"

"No," Brian said flatly. "I don't suppose you do."

"They're together right now," Sigmund said. Sigmund was a man of few words, all of them unwelcome.

"In all probability. Her and him."

"But the point," Weil said, "is that we can't currently locate either of them."

Brian wasn't sure whether to believe that. Weil and Sigmund represented the Executive Action Committee of the Department of Genomic Security. Much of what the Executive Action Committee did was highly classified, hence the stuff of legend. Back home, they could write themselves constitutional waivers with more or less automatic judicial approval. Here in Equatoria—in the overlapping magisteria of the United Nations Provisional Government, contending national interests, and monied oil powers—their work was at least theoretically more constrained.

Brian wasn't an idealist. He knew there were levels and echelons of Genomic Security to which he would never be admitted, realms where policy was made and rules were defined. But on the scale at which he worked Brian thought he performed useful if unexciting work. Criminals often fled from the U.S. to Equatoria, criminals whose misdeeds fell under the aegis of Genomic Security—cloning racketeers, peddlers of false or lethal longevity treatments, Fourth cultists of a radical stripe, purveyors of

"enhancements" to couples willing to pay for superior children. Brian did not pursue or apprehend those criminals, but what he did do—liaising with the Provisional Government, smoothing ruffled feathers when jurisdictional disputes arose—was essential to their apprehension. It was tricky, the relationship between a quasi-police organization attached to a national consulate and the UN-sponsored local government.