Hanley frowned. He thought he was through with this annoying pair. “I can't give you the original. I'll have it copied. It might take a couple of hours.”

“That would be fine. We'll be back for it in two hours.”

Hanley's frown deepened. Then he smiled again, rose from his desk, and showed them to the door.

Back in the elevator, Austin said, “We'll call Hiram Yaeger. Hanley's bound to censor the stuff he gives us, so we might want to conduct our own investigation into this Mulholland Group.” Hiram Yaeger was NUMA's computer whiz. The tenth-floor computer complex he called Max was plugged into a vast data base of oceanic knowledge from every source in the world. Max routinely hacked into outside databases.

They stepped out of the building lobby into the Southern California sun. As Zavala walked to the curb to hail a cab there was a loud whup-whup sound from directly overhead. A green helicopter hovered over the street, about a hundred feet from the glass face of the building. Like the other pedestrians they stared at the aircraft with curiosity. Then recognition flashed in Austin's mind.

He grabbed Zavala's arm. “We've got to go back.”

Zavala glanced at the helicopter and bolted for the revolving door behind Austin.

They dashed into an open elevator and punched the button for the lawyer's floor. Halfway up there was a dull thud, and the elevator's sides rattled in the shaft. Austin hit the stop button for the floor below Hanley's office. They ran past startled office workers and raced up the stairway to the next level.

Acrid black smoke filled the stairwell. Austin felt the door to the law-office floor. Unable to detect heat that would indicate a fierce blaze on the other side, he opened the door a crack. More smoke poured out. They opened the door wide enough to pass through, got down on their hands and knees, and crawled through the choking fumes into the receptionist's area. The sprinkler system had been set off, and they were drenched under a cooling spray. The receptionist lay on the rug next to her desk.

“What about Hanley?” Joe shouted. Smoke was billowing from the office door.

“Don't bother. He's gone.”

They dragged the receptionist to the stairwell and got her limp body down to the floor below. She came around after a few minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Soon firemen pounded onto the floor, and they turned her over to an EMT. They walked down rather than take an elevator where they would be stuck if the power went off. More firemen poured into the lobby. The police had arrived and were evacuating the building. They joined the crowd milling around outside, but seeing there was nothing they could do, they walked a couple of blocks and hailed a cab.

The driver, a Senegalese from the looks of his ID card, glanced at their soot-covered faces. “You in there? Man, I just heard over the radio. Some kind of explosion.”