“Anatomy and physics,” I said. “How did you find me?” I looked at the phone in my hand. “Of course.”

The two men who had tried to rob me came trotting toward us. Sill stopped them with a raised open hand. “What kind of muscle are you two? You let a mathematician kick your asses?”

“Sorry, Mr. Sill,” the wide one said.

“Go on back to the nest,” Sill said.

“Yes, sir.”

The two men trotted away.

“Where is Eigen?” I asked.

“Business first.” He led me through the brush and to another trail. We were on yet another campus of some kind, it seemed.

“I believe I’m being followed or tracked,” I said.

“Of course you are,” he said. “What kind of badass villain would you be if you didn’t warrant a tail.”

“I’m no villain.”

“But you are a badass.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I saw the way you took care of those guys. You’re a badass, all right.”

He stopped us at an old door in an old gray stone building. He used an ancient-looking key to let us in.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is the Naval Observatory.”

“Why do you have a key?”

“Why not?” He led the way along a narrow corridor. “Wala, do you know anything about astronomy?”

“Only what I’ve read.”

“How much have you read?”

“A couple of books,” I told him. “Doesn’t the vice president live here?”

“Yes. Near here.”

“How are we able to move around like this?”

“It’s the fucking vice president. Nobody gives a shit about him. He’s the valet in arms, the official Ed McMahon. The Secret Service detail assigned to him are just mall cops with dark glasses.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“Villain stuff.” The corridor led to a wider hallway obviously meant for tourists. “The United States government has for years maintained an orbiter that passes for a simple commercial communications device.”

“But it’s not that,” I said.

“Of course it’s not that. Outside the range of normal orbits there is a craft that circles the planet and uses the innocent-looking device as a simple relay. It has a telescope as powerful as the Hubble, but it’s not pointed at space. They call it a complex projective plane orbiter. COPPO.”

“It’s pointed at Earth.”

“Of course. You know that expression ‘If you can see them, they can see you’? Well, it ain’t so, Bazooka Joe. That fucking telescope can spot a pimple on a Chihuahua’s ass at night. If the president of South Korea opens her mouth, it can tell you if she has a cavity and how big it is.”

“You’re going to tell me something else about it.”

“Clever man.”

“Is it a weapon?”

“No.” He paused, smiled, opened the door to the giant telescope room. “Not a weapon. Not exactly. I do have a rather expansive definition of the term weapon. It’s not one in the conventional sense.”

“What is it?”

“Wala, it’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“You saying.”