"Really and truly," said Lowell. "Caught the red-eye out of L.A., said he'll be in this morning. Mike's going to brief the entire team in the Tank at nine."

Poor Paul, Ann thought as she picked up her double espresso and collected her change. Out and back in less than twenty-four hours. How Sharon must have loved that.

The seats around the six round tables were occupied by executives doing surprisingly little. Psychologist Liz Gordon was chewing nicotine gum in the smoke-free room, nervously twirling a lock of short brown hair, sipping her dark coffee with three sugars and reading the new week's supermarket tabloids.

Operations Support Officer Matt Stoll was playing poker with Environmental Officer Phil Katzen. There was a small mound of quarters between the men and, instead of cards, both of them were using laptops linked by a cable. As she walked past them, Ann could tell Stoll was losing. He freely admitted that he had the worst poker face on the planet. Whenever things weren't going well, whether he was playing cards or trying to fix a computer responsible for the defense of the free world, sweat collected on every pore of his round, cherubic face.

Stoll surrendered a six of spades and a four of clubs. Phil dealt him a five of spades and a seven of hearts in return.

"Well, at least I've got a higher card now," Matt said, folding. "One more hand," he said. "Too bad this isn't like quantum computing. You confine ions in webs of magnetic and electric fields, hit a trapped particle with a burst of laser light to send it into an excited energy state, then hit it again to ground it. That's your switch. Rows of ions in a quantum logical gate, giving you the smallest, fastest computer on earth. Neat, clean, perfect."

"Yeah," Phil said, "too bad this isn't like that."

"Don't be sarcastic," Stoll said as he popped the last of a chocolate-covered doughnut in his mouth, then washed it down with black coffee. "Next time we'll play baccarat and things will be different."

"No they won't," Katzen said, sitting back as he raked in the pot. "You always lose at that too."

"I know," Stoll said, "but I always feel bad when I get beat playing poker. I don't know what it is."

"Loss of manhood," Liz Gordon piped in without looking up from her National Enquirer.

Stoll glanced over. "Come again?"

"Consider the elements," Liz said. "Strong hands, stone-faced bluffs, the size of the ante… the whole cigar-smoking, Wild West, backroom, night-with-the-boys thing."

Stoll and Katzen both looked at her.

"Trust me," she said, turning the page. "I know what I'm talking about."

"Trust someone who gets their news from the tabloids?" Katzen said.