“So I’m to believe that a reclusive genius who’s spent most of his career on things like childhood education, antibiotics, and helping the deaf is really bent on the mass murder of his customers?” Another pause. “Even if we accept what Eichmann told you about Dresner wanting to use the Merge to alter people’s thought patterns, the goal was fundamentally altruistic. If a drug company came up with an antidepressant that did everything he was trying to achieve, it’d get approved and half the world would be on it a year later.”

It was an incongruity that Smith had been pondering for the last hour. “But he didn’t create that, sir. He failed.”

“Your point?”

“I don’t think he wants to kill all his customers. Just some of them.”

“Do I hear a theory forming?” Randi said from the backseat.

“Think about where he came from,” Smith continued. “His parents’ time in the concentration camp. Their treatment by the Soviets. His experience in the East German orphanage. If there’s anyone alive who’s seen what powerful men are capable of, it’s Christian Dresner.”

“Go on,” Klein said.

“The Merge is what everyone talks about, but LayerCake is really the cornerstone of his system—and one of its main functions is accurately judging people. Think about the weird focus of his apps when the system was released: They were for the financial people who got rich by bringing the world’s economy down on top of the common man. They were for the increasingly corrupt and entrenched political class. And they were for the military, which keeps getting more and more efficient at killing.”

Zellerbach’s face was a mask of concentration. He was brilliant with technology but his illness made understanding the motivations of others more of a challenge. “So you’re saying he’s going to kill all the people he thinks are bad? People who make the world a worse place?”

“It makes a certain twisted sense,” Randi admitted.

“I agree,” Klein said. “And I’m going to take this to my superiors immediately. It—”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Zellerbach interrupted.

Smith looked over at him and he shrank a little, assuming he was going to be chastised again.

“Go ahead, Marty. Why not?”

“Because I guarantee that Dresner can activate that system over the network in a matter of seconds. And I also guarantee that he’ll know if you start talking to people about it.”

“Are you suggesting he can monitor people’s minds?” Klein said. “What they’re hearing and thinking?”

Zellerbach shook his head. “No. But he’d have known that there was a chance his subsystem could be found. And he’s going to be watching.”

“How?” Klein said, starting to sound a little exasperated. He wasn’t used to dealing with Zellerbach directly.