“Got it,” said Neill. He sent an email to his staff of programmers and analysts in the bay who were the actual mechanics of the cyberoperation.

“I hope that cuts down on the possibilities,” said Mr. Gold.

“Absolutely,” said Neill. “The name of the game is winnowing. Winnow, winnow, winnow. When we are down to what cannot be winnowed, we ought to have something.”

The time passed—tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. In the big computer bay, people did what they had to do, lights blinked, strange whirring noises were raised by hard-drive fairies beating their wings furiously, a giant cleared his throat, printers yawned and printed in vacuum-cleaner-like hum, and the inquiry proceeded.

“Our program will examine all the potential sites for the shot attributes, as observed from the national satellite recon database. They’ll bring the matches to us—that is, satellite recon images of potential shooting sites where the target will be accessible that fit the attributes. That’s when sniper genius Swagger puts his brain to work, and let’s hope he’s still not cuckoo from the kick in the head Brother Juba laid on him, or the fall out of the tree.”

“No problem, Bill,” said Swagger to Jeff.

Nick laughed.

“The program can only do so much,” Neill continued. “That’s where human intelligence comes into play. The computers are as literal as a German schoolmaster. They don’t do ambivalence. But when we look at the results, maybe we’ll see ways in which something the computer is not impressed with might nevertheless be in play.”

A young woman came over from Machine City.

“You’d be surprised at how much stuff we’re getting,” she said, “but here is the initial output.”

She put a stack of heavy printout paper in front of them.

Nick looked. “Wow,” he said. “Well over a hundred.”

“The field is too large,” said Neill. “We’ve got to find a way to trim it down. The more attributes, the fewer the possibilities.”

“We’ll start with these, though,” Nick said. “Meanwhile, somebody smart thinks up some new attributes. I see long-set appearances by the big guy nine times, the secretary of state five, the secretary of transportation—why would anyone target the secretary of transportation? Swagger, who is he?”

“No idea,” said Swagger.

“A she,” said Chandler. “And extremely unlikely.”

Nick resumed: “The secretary of the treasury four times, and on and on—”

“It’s pretty obvious we should go straight to President Tr—” started Bob.