“Same principles apply. You’ve got a connection that can’t be jammed, disrupted, or blocked. I figure Joseph Vengerov chose Mr. Sysevich very carefully for his transmitter. He found a likable, charismatic child of one of his employees—someone he had easy access to. He targeted a bright, driven, and optimistic young boy who was likely to go places in life. Next thing he did was shell out big bucks so this kid could go to the best schools, get in top physical shape, and really develop into something exceptional. That gave him a chance to place this kid—and the eyes and ears of this kid—most anywhere he wanted him.”

Wyatt’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Then he decided to stick his walking Trojan horse in the Pentagonal Spire, the better to keep his window into the installation after I took it over. As an added bonus, since the kid now had a neural processor funded by the US taxpayer, old Joe could do more than spy—he could remotely program that kid’s behavior, too . . . dictate his actions, use him to disrupt operations in space, maybe even conduct surveillance on persons of interest, wouldn’t you say, Raines?”

Tom felt strange, numb. So many things, so many vague suspicions, so many feelings he ignored began to resolve themselves into a now terribly clear picture. Yuri hadn’t told Vengerov about him. Vengerov had directly seen and heard him through Yuri.

“I found the transmitter in his head my first week here. We found pretense after pretense to run new scans of Sysevich’s brain, hoping to find some point of vulnerability so I could cripple that transmitter. But there isn’t any way to disable it. It was installed in his head when he was so young, his neurons developed around it. It’s as much a part of his brain now as his brain stem, as his cerebellum. It’s a separate device from his neural processor, yet it can be used to control his processor. Taking either of those devices out would kill him. And I’ve got to hand it to old Joe: it was a spectacularly ruthless way of making sure no one would ever remove it. After all, only a monster would kill a kid to neutralize a security threat.”

He began rubbing his palm over his mouth. A note of dark anger stole into his voice.