WE’RE FOLLOWING UP on the cargo plane that took off from Colombia, but we haven’t been able to track it or confirm that Smith and Russell were on board,” Deuce Brennan said.

Dresner gripped the arms of his chair, feeling the pain of increasingly arthritic fingers. “So it would be fair to say you have nothing.”

“I don’t know much about Smith, sir, but I can tell you that Randi’s no amateur. If she goes to ground, she’s going to be damn hard to find.”

“Keep me informed,” Dresner said and then cut the connection.

He remained seated, looking around the nearly empty room—the white walls, the single terminal in the corner, the sliding door cutting him off from the rest of the world. What now?

It was possible that Smith and Russell had gone into hiding, correctly surmising that he was having them hunted. But it seemed unlikely. Had they informed their superiors about the hidden subsystem? About his plans? About his offer of a partnership? If so, he would expect to have been contacted—the Americans would want to negotiate the most favorable deal possible.

There was no choice now but to assume that they were going to attempt to stop him. But how? He was watching every network and power grid. Next-generation algorithms were tracking the Merge connections of every person of consequence on the planet, looking for any pattern that might suggest someone moving against him. The Internet and media were being constantly scoured for the vaguest hint that his plan had been discovered.

But there was nothing.

It would be easy to tell himself that he had planned for every eventuality, that they were acting entirely out of desperation. But Jon Smith was a more formidable opponent than that. If he was acting, he believed he had found an exploitable weakness.

Dresner activated his usage application and a set of graphs appeared in the air ahead of him. Units online were moving upward on their daily cycles and would peak in another few hours. Five and a half million people would be active at that point, approximately 1.3 million of whom were targeted by LayerCake. It wasn’t enough—he was convinced of that. But could he afford to wait? Was it possible that Smith had found some flaw that he hadn’t considered?

A quiet alarm began to sound, answering many of the questions and suspicions plaguing him. He rushed to the terminal against the wall, resenting having to use such a clumsy device, but forced to acknowledge his technology’s inability to process complex inputs.