Urgently, desperately, he jammed on the REWIND button and replayed the last ten seconds of video feed.

The light glowing on the glowing phone. Peter Novak reaching for it, bringing it to his ear …

Something was wrong.

But what? Janson’s unconscious mind was like a tocsin, wildly tolling its alarm, but he was tired, so very tired, and the fog of exhaustion closed in.

He replayed the last ten seconds once again.

The glowing light of a purring internal phone.

Peter Novak, protected by a battery of security guards but, for the moment, alone in the executive suite, reaching for the handset, for the instructions to prepare himself for his moment in the world’s spotlight.

Reaching with his right hand.

Peter Novak holding the handset to his ear.

His right ear.

Janson felt as if his very skin had been coated with a layer of ice. A terrible, painful clarity now commanded his mind as it filled with a cascade of images. It was maddening, faces and voices intermingling. Demarest at a desk in Khe Sanh, reaching for a phone. These H&I reports are worse than useless! Holding the phone tight against his ear for a long while. Finally, speaking again: A lot of things can happen in a free-fire zone. Demarest in the swampy terrain near Ham Luong reaching for the radiophone, listening intently, barking a series of commands. Reaching with his left hand, holding the phone to his left ear.

Alan Demarest was left-handed. Invariably so. Exclusively so.

The man in the executive suite was not Alan Demarest.

Christ almighty! Janson felt the blood rush to his head, his temples throbbing.

He had sent a double. An impostor. Janson had been the one to warn the others about the danger of underestimating their opponent. Yet he had done just that.

And the stratagem made perfect sense. If your enemy has a good idea, steal it, Demarest had told him in the killing fields of Vietnam. The Mobius programmers were now Demarest’s enemies. He gained his freedom by destroying his own duplicates, but then he had been planning his takeover for years. During that time he had not only been accumulating assets and allies : he had created a duplicate of his own—one who was under his power.

Why hadn’t Janson thought of it?

The impostor who sat in the executive suite was not Peter Novak; he was working for him. Yes, this was precisely what Demarest would have done. He would have … reversed the angle. See the two white swans instead of the one black one. See the slice of pie instead of the pie with the slice missing. Flip the Necker cube outward instead of inward. Master the gestalt.

The man who was on his way to address the General Assembly was the Judas goat, leading them to their slaughter. He was the cat’s paw, drawing out their fire.