“Christian has made odd requests over the years,” he said finally. “But he’s a brilliant and eccentric man. I didn’t think anything about them.”

“They make sense now, though, don’t they?” Randi said.

He nodded numbly. “LayerCake is much more than what the public—and even you, Colonel—sees. There’s a core that processes enormous amounts of data that the public system doesn’t have access to: credit scores, retail purchases, criminal and medical records, tax returns—”

“Data you hacked,” Zellerbach said, not bothering to hide his admiration.

De Galdiano gave a nearly imperceptible nod. “It was never meant to be used in the public results. Christian just wanted to use it as a check and balance. When we found significant discrepancies between the core and public systems, we could fix it by hand and instantly see what went wrong with our algorithm. It’s why the system is so accurate.”

“And Dresner has access to that core,” Randi said.

“He’s linked directly to it. The judgments his Merge makes aren’t based on the public data like everyone else’s. I never understood why he wanted that—it was complicated to do and the differences in results aren’t that significant.”

“Unless the decision you’re making is life or death,” Smith said.

“Yes,” he responded quietly. “Unless it’s life or death.”

“Then you’ll you help us?” Zellerbach said.

De Galdiano met his eye. “Help you do what?”

“Stop him.”

Despite everything, he seemed a little startled by the suggestion. “I’ve worked for Christian since I was in my twenties. I’d probably be in jail if it weren’t for him and he’s always been good to me and my family…”

“Look,” Smith said. “What if we’re lying to you? Hell, what if Marty has a bet with someone for another clown shoe and all this is just a big con. What’s the worst that can happen? We shut down LayerCake and everyone has to go back to using Google for a few hours. You get fired and retire on the fortune you already have in the bank.”

“And what about the best-case scenario?” Randi added. “That you save the lives of a million people.”

De Galdiano didn’t speak again for a long time. “What is it you want from me exactly?”

“Well, we have a few ideas,” Smith said. “But the truth is, you’re the expert. Is there any way to centrally deactivate every Merge in one shot?”

“No.”

“What about a virus?”

“Impossible. You can’t run so much as a single line of code on the Merge unless Christian personally approves it. And he’s not going to approve a virus.”

Depressing, but not unexpected. It was exactly what Zellerbach had told them.

“What about Dresner?” Randi said. “Can you help us get to him?”