Barrett laughed. “That's for show. I was always a computer geek. I grew up in California, where my parents were both university professors. I went to Caltech to study computer sciences, then on to MIT for my grad work. That's where I met Tris Margrave. We put our heads together and came up with the Bargrave software system. Made a zillion bucks on it. We were doing fine, enjoying ourselves, before Tris got involved with Lucifer.”

“Lucifer?As in the Devil?”

“Lucifer was an anarchist newspaper published in Kansas back in the eighteen hundreds. It's what they used to call 'matches' years ago. It's also the name of a small group of neo-anarchists Tris has been involved with. They want to topple what they call the 'Elites,' the unelected people who control most of the world's wealth and power.”

“Where do you fit in?”

“I'm part of Lucifer. That is, I was.”

Austin eyed Barrett's head tattoo. “You don't strike me as a conventional person, Spider, but don't you and your partner control a considerable amount of the world's wealth?”

“Absolutely. That's why we're the ones to carry on the fight. Tris says men of wealth and education—those that had the most to lose—started the American Revolution. Guys like Hancock, Washington and Jefferson were well-off.”

“What's Margrave's role in Lucifer?”

“Tris refers to himself as Lucifer's driving force. Anarchists don't like the idea of following a leader. It's a loosely organized group of a hundred or so like-minded people affiliated with some of the more active neo-anarchist groups. A couple of dozen of the more violence-prone guys call themselves 'Lucifer's Legion.' I was more involved in the technical than the political side of the project.”

“What makes Margrave so driven?”

“Tris is brilliant and ruthless. He is guilty about the way his family made its fortune off of slavery and rum-running, but I think he is driven mainly by an obsession with power. He got me into the Lucifer scheme.”

“Which is?”

“We were going to mess up the Elites' empire, so they'd cave in to our wishes and relinquish some of their power.”

“That's a pretty tall order,” Austin said.

“Tell me about it. We gave them a taste of what would happen a couple of weeks ago in New York. We shut down the city for a time during a big economic conference, hoping to get them to deal, but it was like an elephant being stung by a bee.”

Austin raised an eyebrow. “I heard about the blackout. You were responsible for that?”

Barrett nodded. “It was just a sample to show them we could cause chaos. Our long-range plan is to cause massive communications and economic disruption around the world.”

“How were you going to do that?”

“By using a set of scientific principles to temporarily foul up their communications and transportation systems and cause general economic chaos.”

“The Kovacs Theorems.”