“I'll see Uncle Karl later. If I go now, he'll demand that I help him escape from the hospital. I'd like to go with you to see Mr. Pitt,” she said.

“I don't know,” Austin said. “It might be safer if you stay out of sight.”

“Maybe, but I don't feel like being stashed in a safe house. There's a good chance that whoever ordered my murder doesn't know that I'm still alive.”

“I'd like to keep you that way.”

“My grandfather's work started this nonsense. I owe it to him to stop his research from being perverted.”

Seeing the determined jut to Karla's jaw, Austin knew that no argument he advanced would be able to sway her.

Fifteen minutes later, Austin and Karla were picking up a car from the motor pool in the NUMA garage. As Austin drove out of the garage exit to join the Washington traffic, he and Karla were observed from behind the one-way windows of a van crammed with the latest electronic listening and watching equipment. The letter on the van's door identified it as belonging to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Doyle sat inside the van puffing on a cigarette as he and a helper monitored several screens that showed the street scene around the NUMA building. Hidden cameras in the van and a similar vehicle parked outside NUMA's main pedestrian entrance recorded the face of everyone leaving the building and compared it to images in its database. The facial recognition system was capable of checking more than a thousand faces a second.

The monitor alarm buzzed. The signal for a hit. A picture of Austin behind the wheel of a turquoise Jeep Cherokee that had emerged from the garage was projected on one of the screens. Below Austin's face was a summary of personal data. Doyle's hard eyes gleamed with excitement. Bingo! He had just ordered his helper to get into the driver's seat and follow the Jeep when a second monitor buzzed. The picture of the attractive young woman who was a passenger in the Jeep filled the screen. The database identified her as Karla Janos.

Double bingo!

A smile came to Doyle's thin lips. He couldn't wait to see Gant's expression when he told him that Karla Janos was alive and well and consorting with the enemy. As the van pulled away from the curb and tailed the Jeep, Doyle called a motel in Alexandria where six Harley-Davidson motorcycles were parked. Minutes later, six men emerged from the motel, hopped on the motorcycles and roared off to rendezvous with Doyle.

NUMA 6 - Polar Shift

36

KARLA SURVEYED THE MEN in Confederate gray and Union blue who were crowding the suburban roads in their pickup trucks and SUVs.

“I must have been mistaken,” she said. “I thought the Civil War was over.”