“His masterstroke,” said the chairman of the National Intelligence Council. “We were victims, all of us, of an elaborate ploy. When we heard our man was imprisoned there, we panicked, and acted precisely as Demarest knew we would. We entrusted him with the second set of codes, the ones that would normally have been under the control of the man the guerrillas were about to execute. It seemed necessary, as a stopgap. What we didn’t realize was that Demarest had arranged the hostage taking. Evidently he used a lieutenant of his named Bewick as the cutout, a cutout the Caliph knew only as the ‘Go-Between.’ All very, how shall I say, hygienic.”

“Jesus.”

“For that matter, we failed to realize that he was also responsible for the death of the third agent, a year earlier. We thought our marionette strings were unbreakable. We know better now.”

“Now that it’s too late,” Janson said, and in the faces of tense men and women, he saw the acceptance of the rebuke—and its irrelevance. “Question: Why did Demarest bring me into it?”

Collins spoke first. “Do you have to ask? The man loathes you, blames you for taking away his career, his freedom, almost his life—turning him in to a government he thought he’d served with incredible devotion. He didn’t just want to see you dead. He wanted you to be accused, humiliated, strung up, killed by your own government. What goes around comes around—that’s how he must have seen things.”

“You want to say ‘I told you so’?” President Berquist said. “You’re entitled. I’ve been shown copies of your 1973 reports about Lieutenant Commander Demarest. But you’ve got to understand where this thing stands right now. Not only has Demarest eliminated his understudies, but he’s moved into a second, far more deadly phase.”

“What’s that?”

“The puppet is killing off the puppet masters,” said Doug Albright. “He’s erasing the program. Erasing Mobius.”

“And exactly who is the cast of characters?”

“You’re looking at ’em. All in this room.”

Janson stared around the room. “There had to have been somebody from the NSA,” he objected.

“Killed.”

“Who designed the basic systems architecture?”

“A real wizard, from the CIA. Killed.”

“And the—oh Jesus …”

“Yes, the president’s National Security Advisor,” said Albright. “Charlotte made the wire services today, didn’t she? Clayton Ackerley didn’t—officially, he’s a suicide, found in his car with the engine running and the garage door closed. Oh, Demarest doesn’t like loose ends. He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice … .”

“At this point, most of the people who know the truth about Peter Novak have been eliminated,” the secretary of state said, his voice raspy with anxiety.

“Everyone … but the men and women in this room,” Collins said.