Not a word was spoken within the quiet, fuel-cell-powered
vehicle until after it had merged into the computer-controlled traffic
headed up Interstate Ninety-five and had pulled into its assigned ten
meters of space between a Jaguar and a Mercedes traveling at one
hundred kilometers per hour. To the faint background noise of
Howard pounding against the trunk's interior walls in terrified
frustration, a faint question was asked. "So, how was he?"
"Better than you," Svetlana replied as the Department of
Transportation computer accelerated traffic with the northward
passing of the rain storm.
Chapter II
Bradford Bettmann pushed his glasses closer to his face, as was
his habit when he was sliding into deep concentration, and leaned
closer to the screen. That concentration was broken when his
supervisor in the CIA's Intelligence Directorate remarked from the
doorway to Bettmann's cubbyhole office, "Workin' late again,
Bettmann?"
Bettmann's eyes shifted to the virtual clock in the lower righthand
corner of his mounted e-book's current two-page spread, a clock which
read "Nine-eleven." "One last report from the FBI Miami office."
"Go home, Bettmann," Randall Peters instructed him. "Give the
brain a break."
"Will try, boss. Just one last--" The rest of Bettmann's
sentence trailed off and he leaned over again, as his eyes refocused
on the text of a report that had been recently filed by an FBI agent
and placed in a database accessible by several government agencies,
including the CIA:
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