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clenching her
teeth against their impending chatter.
    Sun-tzu drew back the pistol with a snort. “Save it for the
jury, Ana.”   An eerie stillness
settled in his eyes and their sudden vacancy of emotion became even more
terrifying than his words. “Judgement’s at dawn.”

 
 
 

CHAPTER 6

 
    Mark brought the tip of his index finger to the video
display monitor. “There. Hang on a minute, Bill,” he said to Bill Rush, Chief
of DOS Building Security. “Go back a frame.”
    Bill flipped the switch and leaned forward, apparently
trying to make out what Mark had seen.
    “What’s that right there? In the edge of the frame?”
    Bill, who always looked one day short of a shave, scratched
his stubbly chin. “Looks like the end of a car. Car trunk, sir.”
    “Yes, dammit.”   Mark scooted in his chair and grabbed the controls from Bill, flipping
back another frame, then another.
    “Watch this,” Mark said, pointing to the time display at the
bottom of the screen. Sixteen-twenty-two, thirty-five, no car.”   He hit the forward button.
“Sixteen-twenty-two, thirty-six...”
    “There it is, sir!” Bill said, in amazement. “Absolutely.
Tail end of some sort of vehicle, sedan maybe.”
    “And tell me, Bill. As far as you know, has anyone come up
with a car that can fire its engine and disappear in one second flat?”
    “Not even the Japanese, sir.”
    “Nor the Germans,” Mark said, standing. “I want this whole
tape sent to the lab. Enlarge every frame in the vicinity of this one. Pronto.”
    “Got it,” Bill said, getting to his feet.
    “Any idea how in the hell the tape could have behaved that
way?”
    “None whatsoever, sir. Like you said, it’s theoretically
impossible.”
    Yes, Mark thought, getting together his papers and preparing
to leave the room. But there was one hell of a lot of difference between
practice and theory. And Mark had the theory somebody’s practice had pulled a
fast one.

 
    ***

 
    Ryan Gitchell held up the black and white negative with a
long tweezer-like instrument. “It’s a Mercedes alright, one of the newer
models. Should be able to get an exact make based on our photographic paint
scan within the hour.”
    But, within the hour would be too late. If they were smart
enough to rig the camera system, they weren’t dumb enough to stay in the same
vehicle for any period of time.
    “How about the timing glitch?” Mark asked.
    “Easy, sir. Somebody froze the visual frame on the camera
while getting the clock to appear to keep on ticking. This frame,” he said,
pointing to the one sequential to the one in which the car appeared “is
essentially a reflection of an earlier moment. Anything that went on from this
period forward in that corner of the garage is basically not on camera.”
    “And this happened at the DOS ?! ”
Mark asked, unable to keep his voice from rising to a threatening timbre. Mark
had the overwhelming urge to grab somebody’s head and slam it into the wall.
But it wasn’t Ryan he was after, he reminded himself. Ryan was one of the good
guys and not-so-incidentally in a position to help
him.
    Gitchell shook his head. “This took some pretty
sophisticated maneuvering. Not the camera job itself. That’s pretty much an old
smoke and mirrors trick. But finding a way to get into the DOS system...”
    Just like somebody had found a way to break through that
information system firewall, Mark caught himself thinking.
    “How could that be done, Ryan? Gaining access to the camera
system?”
    “Well, from the inside, sir-”
    “From the outside.”
    Gitchell choked out a laugh and shook his head. “No way,
sir. Absolutely no way. We’re drawn up as tight as a
clam shell in here.”
    Yeah right, Mark thought, as he studied the trunk of the car
in the frame, and somebody out there- somebody who had Ana- knew all about the
pearls on the inside.

 
    ***

 
    Al Fahd slid the long yellow envelope across his desk. “Your
first exam, Mr.