Though the naked eye couldn’t process a sliver of the information whipping across the monitors, Van Sciver liked to watch the large-scale data processing in real time. Though he knew the buzzwords—“cluster analysis,” “anomaly detection,” “predictive analytics”—he couldn’t even comprehend what was before him. But he could grasp the output reports, which he checked meticulously on the hour, searching for filaments in the ocean of cyberspace. These threads of the Nowhere Man had to be delicately backtraced. If Van Sciver allowed the slightest quiver showing that he had something on the hook, the line would snap.

Lately his team of engineers had been focused on data warehousing, piecing together bits of information from offshore bank accounts, trying to reconstruct enough of the mosaic to point them in the right direction. They had leads on Evan, of course. A few floating strands on the water. But every time they tugged slack out of the line, they came up with more slack, a money transfer zigzagging off into the depths, a shell corp vanishing behind a mailbox corporation, another trail ending at a disused P.O. box off some dusty Third World dirt road.

Van Sciver paced the perimeter of the room, his ever-paler skin drinking in the antiseptic blue glow of the screens. The lack of human contact ensured that he would never be deterred from his goal. Ultimately it would come down to discipline and abstinence, and so he had cleared out any distracting clutter from his existence. His willingness to deny all pleasure and warmth was why he would win. That was why he would beat his nemesis. Victory would be pleasure enough.

Van Sciver halted. Facing the horseshoe of the rippling walls, he basked in the power represented before him. Time was meaningless in here. The present was spent reconstructing the past and extrapolating the future, a dragon ever swallowing its tail, an infinity of numbers that summed to zero.

But one day they would add up to everything.

One day they would search out the right thread of ones and zeros that would lead to Orphan X.

It was only a matter of time.

6. Struck Oil

6

Struck Oil

Evan noticed everything when he drove. Especially gray Ford Transit Connect vans with no side windows and dealer plates. Like the one that had been hovering in his rearview mirror for the past few blocks.

He threw on his right-hand turn signal. The van did not. Either it wasn’t following him or it was driven by a pro unwilling to take the bait. Evan drove straight past the entrance of the Norwalk FedEx office, and the van kept right on behind him. Evan muted the signal, keeping his head down but his eyes nailed to the rearview. He waited a few beats and then abruptly veered off onto a side street. The van coasted by, not even slowing.

He could never be too careful.