Still on the phone, Agent Atta sauntered in from the kitchen, saying 'I got it, I got it, I got it,' in an irritated tone. 'Okay. Bye.' She clapped her palmtop shut, glanced at each of them in turn. 'Well,' she said, 'I've talked to some of the more expensive suits in Washington.' She fixed Thomas with a hard look. 'Just so you know, professor, from this moment forward, you're not to talk to anyone about what you witnessed here, understand?'

'What do you mean? Why?'

'National Security.'

Thomas blinked. It was funny how charged certain words could become. Thomas's father had always sworn aloud whenever he heard the phrase on old broadcast TV. During the Cold War, he would explain, back when nothing less than the fate of humanity was at stake, they hadn't required a fraction of the measures supposedly necessary for the War on Terror. 'There's always a lunatic fringe,' he would rant. 'You might as well declare war on jacking off?

'Oh,' Thomas said. 'I get it.'

'I'm not sure you do.'

'Oh, but I do, Agent Atta. Neil told me he was NSA.'

'So then you understand. We're dealing with highly classified subject matter here.'

'Important weapons in the never-ending war against terror, I suppose.'

Atta scowled. 'Something like that.'

She had the cornered look of someone forced to resort to a threadbare rationale, to be earnest about words that no one took seriously anymore. A certain willful fanaticism was required to act contrary to the obvious, a determination to make true.

'Bullshit,' Thomas said. 'Terrorism is theater, and if the government was really interested in helping citizens, instead of manipulating them, it would tear down the stage, remind people that statistically, owning a gun is a greater danger than terrorism. This is about political embarrassment. About illegal skunkworks projects. About the lack of judicial oversi—'

'That's not what my—'

'Your handlers tell you what you need to hear! Nothing more, nothing less!'

Agent Atta stepped into his personal space, jabbed a long-nailed finger into his chest. 'You want to get into a pissing contest with me, professor? Hmm? Right or wrong, how difficult do you think I could make your life?'

Thomas stared down at her apprehensively. Suddenly Gerard's earlier quip about child pornography seemed more premeditated than otherwise. Ominous.

'There's a madman out there,' he said, finding courage in the steadiness of his voice, 'abducting and killing innocent—'

'You must be talking about the Chiropractor,' Atta said, 'because as far as the world is concerned, Neil Cassidy does not exist.'

'This is insane. Absolutely in—'

'Go ahead,' Atta said, jabbing him in the chest yet again. 'Test me.'

'That's enough, Shelley,' Thomas heard Sam say from his periphery.

'You,' Atta snapped at her subordinate, 'shut your barbie-ass up.'