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people, of whom he was certainly one, Kudrow believed without a doubt. So he moved quickly through the collection of briefs from DoD, State, and other less important entities, and was only mildly perturbed when his intercom interrupted him mid-stack.
    “Yes?”
    “Mr. Kudrow, Mr. Folger says he’s coming down.” There was a distinct hesitation in Sharon’s voice.
    Kudrow stared silently at the speaker for a second. “He’s coming down? Did you inform him that I am occupied?”
    “He didn’t give me the chance, Mr. Kudrow.” She never called him sir. Military officers were ‘sirs’. Kudrow was proudly a career civilian. “He just called, said he’s coming down, and hung up. I tried to get him back on the phone but his secretary said he just hurried out.”
    “Very well,” Kudrow said tersely and heard his secretary click off. Interruptions—the bane of those with purpose. G. Nicholas Kudrow was a man with purpose. And with position. Deputy Director for COMSEC-Z of the National Security Agency. A position that was never publicly acknowledged as existing by those ‘in the know’, in the same way that his domain, Department Z of the NSA’s Communications Security directorate, was but a phantom operation within the world’s largest intelligence gathering organization.
    But for apparitions, Kudrow and Z left an undisputable mark on the basic functions of the nation’s government. He and his people were responsible for the cryptographic systems that protected the sensitive information that flowed between pieces of the United States Government and its assorted agencies, departments, and bureaus. When people committed secrets to paper, or to some other storage media, and sent it across the street or across an ocean, when imaging satellites snapped their pictures and relayed the shots to a ground station, when secure phones rang at any U.S. installation, the signals passed at each end of its transmission through something that G. Nicholas Kudrow was responsible for. In between those stations the secret was nonsensical gobbledygook.
    It was Kudrow’s job, his purpose, to see that that remained the status quo. To that end he was directly responsible for a budget of one hundred million dollars in discretionary funding a year, fifteen times that much in annual project money, two dozen cryptographers who dreamed up the ‘ultimate security’, and a hundred technicians to build the physical structures—or cryptographic machines—that gave that ultimate security to select users. He had chosen the design of the building that housed Department Z, even the color of its windowless exterior—dark brown—and nearly everything else about Z had his stamp of approval on it. It was his domain, and he balanced his rule of it somewhere between father and tyrant dependent on the situation at hand.
    The tyrant in him snapped eyes to the door when it opened without a knock. Brad Folger, Assistant Deputy Director for COMSEC-Z, entered just ahead of Kudrow’s secretary.
    “Mr. Kudrow,” Sharon said in frustrated apology. “I tried to grab him—”
    “Good morning, Nick,” Folger said, ignoring Sharon. He was in shirtsleeves, cuffs buttoned down smartly, but his red and blue tie was askew, fat and thin ends both showing. The lid above his right eye tremored noticeably. “Can we talk?”
    This was no petty disturbance, Kudrow could tell by his assistant’s appearance. “All right, Sharon.” She stepped out with a poisoned glance at Folger and closed the thick door. Kudrow watched as Folger, forty but looking twenty-five, stepped close to his desk. “You should get that eye looked at.”
    Folger consciously tried to stem the tremor, the attempt futile. The lid shook like a flap of loose skin, covering half the eye in a perpetual jitter. “I got a call a few minutes ago. From Pedanski.”
    “And?”
    Folger slid both hands into the pockets of his pleated gray trousers. “He wants me to bring you downstairs. He and Dean