But he was still deskbound. And thanks to fiber optics and computers, he didn't leave his office the way he did when he was revving up FIAT. Because of diskettes and Email, he didn't even have to walk over to the Xerox machine or even lean over to the out box. He wished he could have lived in the time of his childhood heroes, G-man Melvin Purvis and Treasury Man Eliot Ness. He could almost taste the exhilaration of chasing Machine Gun Kelly through the Midwest, or Al Capone's thugs up rickety stairways and across dark rooftops in Chicago.

He frowned as he pushed buttons on his phone. Instead, I'm entering a three-digit code to call the NRO. He knew there was no shame in that, though he didn't see himself inspiring kids to make their own balsa-wood telephones.

He was put right through to Stephen Viens. The NRO had been downloading satellite views of the Demain plant in Toulouse, but they weren't enough. Mike Rodgers had told him that if Ballon and his people had to go in, he didn't want them going in blind. And despite what Rodgers had told Ballon, none of Matt Stoll's technical team knew to what degree the T-Rays would be able to penetrate the facility, or how much it would tell them about the layout or distribution of forces.

Viens had been using the NRO's Earth Audio Receiver Satellite to eavesdrop on the Demain site. The satellite used a laser beam to read the walls of a building the way a compact disc player read a CD. However, instead of data pits in the surface of a disc, the EARS read vibrations in the walls of buildings. Clarity depended upon the composition and thickness of the walls. With favorable materials such as metals, which vibrated with greater fidelity and resonance than porous brick, computer enhancement could recreate conversations which were taking place within the buildings. These triple paned windows were no good: they didn't vibrate sufficiently to be read.

"The structure is red brick," Viens said thickly.

McCaskey's head dropped.

"I was just about to call and tell you, but I wanted to make sure we couldn't get anything," Viens continued. "There are newer materials inside, probably Sheet rock and aluminum, but the brick is soaking up whatever's coming off them."

"What about cars?" McCaskey asked.

"We don't have a clear enough shot at them," said Viens. "Too many trees, hills, and overpasses."

"So we're screwed."

"Basically," said Viens.

McCaskey felt as if he were in command of the world's most sophisticated battleship in dry dock. He and Rodgers and Herbert had always bemoaned the lack of on-site human intelligence, and this was a perfect example of why it was needed. "Billions for modern hardware but none for Mata Hari," as Herbert had once put it.