Even in this rain, DHS’s domestic surveillance drones flew. Nakamura could picture them out there, all-weather models, circling below the clouds, cameras tracking objects on the ground, interleaving data with the road camera network, with the cell phone tracking databases, with the auto transponder systems, forming a pervasive information web, tracking all activity in the nation’s capital.

Except for the few dark spots. The spots like this one, devoid of cameras, protected from overhead surveillance. The men like him, devoid of tracking devices, their true identities carefully camouflaged below innocuous public personas.

Nakamura waited, watched the cars go past, watched the rain drip down the pillars holding up the road, listened to the rumble of the highway overhead.

Then a car slowed, pulled onto the shoulder of this lower road. Black sedan, tinted windows, government plates. The passenger door opened even before it had come to a stop. A man in a dark suit stepped out. The door closed behind him and the car accelerated back into traffic.

Nakamura watched the man approach. Tall, fifty-something, with sandy hair going to gray, a paunch slowly spreading on what had once been a lean frame. McFadden. Deputy Director for the National Clandestine Service. The CIA’s top spymaster, reporting straight to the Director of Central Intelligence himself. He looked older every time Nakamura saw him.

They stood between two of the massive pillars holding up the highway, hidden from above and from the road, visible only to the rats that dwelled deeper in the underpass.

“Kevin,” McFadden said. “Thanks for coming.”

Nakamura nodded. As if he’d had any choice.

McFadden pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Nakamura.

Nakamura shook his head as McFadden lit up and took a hearty draw. Cancer-free nicotine delivery, they said. But still not for him.

McFadden exhaled out of the side of his mouth, away from Nakamura, then withdrew a folded sheaf of papers from inside his jacket. Nakamura could see the faint glimmer of monolayer gloves molded to the Deputy Director’s hands. No fingerprints.

McFadden handed the top sheet to Nakamura. Blank. Nakamura swiped his thumb across it, and an image appeared. A heavy-set, middle-aged man, jowly.

“Two weeks ago,” McFadden said, “this man, Robert Higgins, turned himself in to police in Des Moines. Higgins is a fifty-three year-old computer security consultant with a history of emotional imbalance. He told Des Moines PD that he’d created a hacked version of Nexus and used it to coerce, abduct, and rape three women. He’d stopped a month earlier when a ‘cyber Buddha’, in his words, mentally neutered him. Nexus won’t work for him anymore, and he can’t even think violent thoughts without convulsing.”

“Jesus,” Nakamura replied.