“I’ll pick you up and we’ll be at the airport at three a.m.” He paused, then said, “Just to let you know, I have a wife and two kids, Kurt. I’m told that there will be no way to protect them once this thing spreads to the U.S.”

“Those are three good reasons to move quickly, then.”

Austin said he would see Casey in a few hours and got out of the SUV in front of the NUMA tower. He called Zavala’s number on his way to his office to retrieve the Pyramid file but got no response. He wasn’t surprised. His friend could have joined the surveillance team and might be unable to talk. Austin left him a message to call back as soon as he was clear.

Austin picked up the file, then got on the elevator and headed to the fifteenth floor. He followed a corridor to a door marked NUMASAT and stepped into a large, dimly lit space that had a wide, curving wall lined with glowing television screens. The screens displayed information from NUMA’s satellite system, a complex network that collected information about oceans from around the world for scientists and universities.

Presiding over the communications network was an eccentric genius named Jack Wilmut, who supervised the system from an elaborate console in the center of the room surrounded by workstations. From his perch, he could also keep track of every NUMA research project, ship, and staffer working in the field. He saw Austin approaching, and a smile crossed his plumpish face.

“What a surprise to find you here at headquarters, Kurt.”

Austin pulled a chair up to the console.

“Don’t kid me, Jack, you could figure out exactly where I am in a second. I’ve got a favor. I’ve lost contact with Joe. Can you find him?”

Wilmut patted down one side of his double comb-over.

“He’s probably in a Washington boudoir,” he said. Seeing from Austin’s unsmiling face that he was deadly serious, he added, “I’ll do my best. What’s he got?”

“Transmitter in his Corvette, for one.”

“Easy,” Wilmut said.

He tapped the keyboard in front of him, and seconds later the screen displayed a blinking red star on a map of Falls Church. The location was displayed in a box next to the star.

“The car is at the Eden Center. He probably stopped in for some Vietnamese food.”

The Eden Center was a complex of shops and restaurants that served the Vietnamese population of Falls Church.

“He doesn’t like Vietnamese food,” Austin said. “Try finding his phone.”

Wilmut traced Zavala’s cell through its GPS chip.

A second blinking star appeared on the outskirts of the city, several miles from the first. Wilmut enlarged the map and switched to a satellite picture. The star was on one of a couple of dozen rectangles, apparently the roofs of large buildings. He zoomed in.