The single room inside was like Ted Kaczynski meets Radio Shack. A table, a chair, a cot, a couple of throw rugs, and a pair of filing cabinets completed the list of furnishings. The rest, taking up a good three quarters of the space, was an electronic nightmare of wires and metal boxes and blinking lights. And in the center of it all was this glass tube with a beam of brilliant white light shooting through it. The beam looked almost… solid.

Now Yoshio moved ahead of them, inspecting the humming equipment, staring at the beam.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Is this the Ronald Clayton technology? What does it do?”

He wasn’t putting me on, Jack thought. He really doesn’t know.

He glanced at Alicia. “Should I tell him? He’s a buyer.”

She nodded. “Go ahead.”

Jack went to the lamp sitting on the table and checked to see if it had a cord. It did… but it wasn’t plugged in. A small aerial jutted up from the base.

“Here,” he said, motioning Yoshio over. “This says it all.”

He handed him the lamp. Yoshio took it and stared at it.

“I have seen a lamp like this before.”

“Then you should know.”

The Japanese looked at him questioningly. “Know what?”

“Figure it out,” Jack said, then moved toward the filing cabinets.

He wasn’t in an explaining mood. Better to let Yoshio figure it out on his own. An epiphany beat out a lecture any day.

Alicia had one of the file drawers open and was staring at something that looked like a blueprint.

“Circuit diagrams,” she said. “Do these… mean anything to you?”

“I can program my VCR and turn on my computer,” Jack told her. “Beyond that… I don’t do wires. I am the Sergeant Schultz of electronics: ‘I know nussing.’“

Suddenly Yoshio let out an “Ayiiiieeee!” followed by a Sten gun barrage of Japanese.

Jack said, “The light, so to speak, has dawned.”

He watched Yoshio carry the lamp over to the electronic jumble, where he stood wide-eyed and red-cheeked, his head jerking back and forth between the lamp and the Clayton gizmo as he mumbled in Japanese.

“This is real?” he said, returning to English as he approached Jack and Alicia. “This is true?”

“Near as we can tell,” Jack said.

“No wonder Iswid Nahr killed a plane full of people,” he said, his voice filled with awe. “They would kill thousands, millions to stop this.” He stared at the lamp in his hands. “And to think I was this close to an identical lamp and did not realize. I thought they were staring at something by the light of the lamp… not at the lamp itself.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jack said. He hadn’t the faintest idea what Yoshio was talking about. He pointed to the file cabinets. “Looks like all the specs are right here. Think your people would be interested?”

“Interested? Oh, yes, I am—”