Megan dropped into a chair, started to reach for the computer mouse, and then realized she’d carried the heaping plastic coffee spoon from the kitchen.

“Will somebody take this damned thing from me?” She passed it off to one of the men without turning her eyes from the display. “Thanks.”

The op stood with his hand out and glanced downward with mild surprise.

She had let go of the coffee spoon before he’d managed to reach for it, spilling a small heap of dark roast on top of his shoe.

Roger Gordian watched the e-mail open on the screen of the notebook computer he’d set up in his guest suite at Thomas Sheffield’s place.

The image that filled most of the display was of a large upraised hand of fire, its glowing orange fingers spread wide. Gradually materializing across its open palm in black text was this message:

The conditions of Julia’s release are simple. We demand no ransom, no portion of the father’s wealth. Only a promise made to all the ears of the world—and has not reaching them been his lifelong goal?

At nine o’clock tonight aboard the Sedco oil platform, Roger Gordian is to renounce his dream of freedom through information, declare UpLink International and its subsidiaries utterly and permanently dissolved, and require that its stockholders forsake their shares by legal agreement without any form of compensation, including financial reimbursement from insurers.

All UpLink’s corporate operations will then cease. All personnel must be evacuated from its facilities worldwide. All its projects must be abandoned, its communications networks dismantled.

Full implementation of these terms is to occur within a time frame not exceeding 48 hours after the announcement or Julia Gordian will be executed.

The black text remained in place for thirty seconds and then coalesced into a rotating sphere that rapidly underwent another smooth transformation against the fiery palm, changing colors, reshaping itself into the UpLink logo: an Earth globe surrounded by intersecting satellite bandwidth lines.

Another half minute passed. The hand clenched into a fist, morphed into an red-orange fireball, and brightened. Then it suddenly plunged to the bottom of the screen like a falling comet, leaving behind an empty white void.

Gordian turned from the screen and looked over at Pete Nimec in the chair beside him.