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Chapters (50)
  1. DEBT OF HONOR
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Prologue
  4. 1—Alumni
  5. 2—Fraternity
  6. 3—Collegium
  7. 4—Activity
  8. 5—Complexity Theory
  9. 6—Looking In, Looking Out
  10. 7—Catalyst
  11. 8—Fast-Forwarding
  12. 9—Power Plays
  13. 10—Seduction
  14. 11—Sea Change
  15. 12—Formalities
  16. 13—Winds and Tides
  17. 14—Reflections
  18. 15—A Damned, Foolish Thing
  19. 16—Payloads
  20. 17—Strike One
  21. 18—Easter Egg
  22. 19—Strike Two
  23. 20—Strike Three
  24. 21—Navy Blue
  25. 22—The Global Dimension
  26. 23—Catching Up
  27. 24—Running in Place
  28. 25—All the King's Horses
  29. 26—Catch-up
  30. 27—Piling On
  31. 28—Transmissions
  32. 29—Written Records
  33. 30—Why Not?
  34. 31—The How and the What
  35. 32—Special Report
  36. 33—Reversal Points
  37. 34—All Aboard
  38. 35—Consequences
  39. 36—Consideration
  40. 37—Going Deep
  41. 38—The River Rubicon
  42. 39—Eyes First
  43. 40—Foxes and Hounds
  44. 41—CTF-77
  45. 42—Lightning Strikes
  46. 43—Dancing to the Tune
  47. 44—…from one who knows the score…
  48. 45—Line of Battle
  49. 46—Detachment
  50. 47—Brooms

"What do you mean?" Hanson demanded.

"Nuclear weapons and the delivery systems. The rest was embroidery, really meant for a different audience. We still don't know what they're really doing."

25—All the King's Horses

It hadn't made the media yet, but that was about to change. The FBI was already looking for Chuck Searls. They already knew that it wouldn't be easy, and the truth of the matter is that all they could do, on the basis of what they had, was to question him. The six programmers who'd worked to some greater or lesser extent on the Electra-Clerk 2.4.0 program had all been interviewed, and all of them denied knowledge of what they all referred to as the "Easter Egg," in every case with a mixture of outrage at what had been done and admiration at how. Only three widely separated lines of code, and it had taken all six of them working together twenty-seven hours to find it.

Then had come the really bad news: all six of them, plus Searls, had had access to the raw program. They were, after all, the six senior programmers at the firm, and like people with identical security clearances, each could access it whenever he or she wished, up to the very moment that it left the office on the toaster-disk. In addition, while there were records of access, each of them also had the ability to fiddle the coding on the master computer and either erase the access-time reference or mix it with the others. For that matter, the Easter Egg could have been in there for the months it had taken to perfect the program, so finely crafted it was. Finally, one of them admitted quite freely, any of them could have done it. There were no fingerprints on computer programs. Of greater importance for the moment, there was no way of undoing what Electra-Clerk 2.4.0 had done.

What it had done was sufficiently ghastly that the FBI agents on the case were joking grimly that the advent of sealed thermopane windows in Wall Street office buildings was probably saving thousands of lives. The last identifiable trade had been put up at 12:00:00, and beginning at 12:00:01, all the records were gobbledygook. Literally billions—in fact, hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions had disappeared, lost in the computer data records of the Depository Trust Company.