The lawyer laughed. "Lord I hope they don't regret asking us into this place." He waited for Dar and Kerry to enter the big doorway then followed before the soldiers could. "Sorry boys, beauty and treachery before virtue. "

The soldiers bumped into the frame in their haste to follow. "Sir! Ma'am! Wait!"

Kerry shifted the strap on her briefcase and shook her head, resisting the urge to move faster just to get to the end of the waiting. "Going to be one of those mornings."

DAR HAD HER hands stuck in her pockets, her head tipped back a little as she studied the shelves full of books in the room they'd been shuffled off to.

Kerry was sitting at a mahogany table behind her, working on her laptop as Hamilton spoke softly into his cell phone on the other side of the room.

Hurry up and wait, was that the tactic? Dar rocked up and down on her heels. In the distance, she could hear the muffled sounds of activity, the halls they'd been walked through to this waiting room had been full of men and women rapidly moving from one place to another, all with grim, intent faces.

Hamilton joined her at the shelves. "Al just buzzed me. He's still hanging around in that lovely airport of yours," he informed her. "But he does think he's going to get to sit on an airplane in the next twenty minutes."

Dar glanced at him. "Given how screwed up everything is, can't really expect flights to be taking off on schedule. He's probably going to get on something that's supposed to be in New York."

The corporate lawyer nodded. "It's a fine mess," he agreed. "But listen, thanks by the by for taking care of old Al through all this. He said you were just a peach."

Dar's brow lifted sharply.

"In an Al sort of way," Hamilton conceded, with a smile. "And speaking of, shall we play this as a bad cop with a worse cop routine? Neither you, nor I, are going to be mistaken for a good cop any time soon."

Dar pointed over her own shoulder with her thumb. "Brought the good cop," she explained succinctly. "Though the way she was telling off some senior senator last night I'm not sure they want to piss her off."

"With any luck they'll all realize they've got a lunch date and leave us alone," Hamilton said. "I do think what I am hearing about them being all up in their shorts at us is making me itch in places men should not."

Dar folded her arms. "I gotta agree with that. I don't know what the hell they think they're mad at. I've had a thousand people working round the clock for two days busting their asses to keep everyone's pie plates spinning. What damn more do they want?"

They both turned as the door opened, and a lot of footsteps echoed into the room just ahead of a crowd of men. "I do believe we're going to find out," Hamilton said. "C'mon, Igor. Let's go be bad."

Dar was already heading toward the table where Kerry was seated, since the group of men who had entered the room were also headed in that direction. She got in front of them before they reached her partner, bringing them up short as she simply stepped into the way and blocked it. "Gentlemen."

She missed the sweetly amused expression on Kerry's face as she looked up and observed this bit of unconscious chivalry, and it only lasted a moment before Kerry removed her ear buds and stood up as Hamilton joined her.

The man in the lead, a slim, tall, dark haired guy in a suit in his mid forties or so, took a step back and held his hand up to stop the crowd. "Are you Roberts?"

"Yes." Dar stuck her hands in her pockets and regarded him. "And you are?"

"John Franklin," the man said. "I'm from the NSA. Now, you listen to me--"

"Hold up." Dar didn't raise her voice. She put her hands back in her pockets and tilted her head a little, regarding the man carefully. "Can we discuss a few ground rules before we start swinging?"

Franklin frowned. "I don't think you understand the situation here."

"I do." Dar answered, in the same even, almost gentle tone. "You obviously want something from me. Since I'm as horrified as any other American over what happened two days ago, and since I'm from a military family, chances are I want to do whatever's in my power to help you in whatever your problem is."

"Well, okay." Franklin's posture moderated. He leaned back a trifle, shifting his weight to his back foot.

"So please don't start out by yelling and trying to browbeat me," Dar said. "I don't respond well to threats, so chances are you'll have a lot faster results if you just tell me what you need, let me see what I can do to give it to you."

Franklin motioned the rest of his group to sit down. He put his briefcase on the table across from where Kerry was standing and rested his hands on the handle of it. "All right, Ms. Roberts we can try that route."

"Great." Dar pulled a chair out and sat down, patting the one next to her which Kerry promptly took. "This is our vice president of operations, Kerrison Stuart, and our senior corporate legal counsel, Hamilton Baird."

Franklin nodded at them. "Mr. Baird. Ms. Stuart." He opened his briefcase, as the rest of the men with him settled at tables nearby. One stayed by the door, as though guarding it. "This is what we need." He took out a folder and opened it. "We need you to turn over the operation of all your computer systems to us."

Dar didn't answer. She tipped her head back and looked at Hamilton, one of her eyebrows lifting. "I think this is your gig."

"I think you're right," the lawyer agreed, with a smile. "Mr. Franklin." He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table, clasping his hands. "If that was, in fact, a serious request, we can end this discussion right now, and I'll go call my office so they can start burping up little baby lawyers to handle all the paperwork for the lawsuits."

Kerry folded her hands together and kept quiet. She watched Franklin's face as he stared at Hamilton, and noted that neither the lawyer nor her partner appeared in any way tense.

Amazing. Mostly because Kerry knew Dar was strung up like a horse about to start the Kentucky Derby, and she could feel the faint vibration of her muscles through the kneecap that was firmly in contact with her own.

"What on earth would make you even think we'd consider that?" Kerry asked, to break the silence. "Mr. Franklin, the government pays us a lot of money to do what we do. What makes you think that we would betray that trust and those contracts, and that you have anyone who could take over them even if we would?"

"Look," he said. "They're just computers. You're not rocket scientists."

Dar rolled her head to one side, and chuckled. Kerry turned and regarded her. "You could be a rocket scientist," she remarked. "But in answer to your statement, Mr. Franklin, no. They're not just computers. You don't really even understand what we do."

"I understand very well what you do," Franklin protested. "We need to have those computers. We have to be able to see everything."

Dar stood up, and rested her fingers on the desk. "Are you talking about the Virginia facility?"

"Yes," Franklin said. "We went there. We were supposed to meet Ms. Stuart there, but she never showed up."

"I did," Kerry said. "I was there for hours. You were the ones who never showed up."

The tension was rising. Hamilton lazily removed his hand from his pocket, displaying a tape recorder. "Just so we're all on the same page."

"We don't have any government computers in the Virginia facility," Dar said. "What we do there is move data traffic between a number of government offices, mostly for the purposes of accounting. Can you explain to me what the national security need is to see that?"

"Okay," Franklin remained calm. "We think there are people, maybe a lot of people, here in the United States who have been here for a while, and who are working behind the scenes to promote terrorist activities."

Hamilton cleared his throat. "I do have to remind you there have always been people inside these United States who work behind the scenes to promote all kinds of agendas."

"This is not a joke," Franklin frowned at him.

"That's a fine thing, because I am not joking Those very same people, starting way back in the 1700's, have included the Continental Congress and lots of crazy half frozen men up in Massachusetts who used to run around in wigs and short pants setting fire to Tory underwear and dumping tea in Boston Harbor."

"Sir."

"That is not a joke, mister," Hamilton's voice got louder. "In case you grew up in Arkansas and didn't get history books in school, this country was born in terrorism. It ain't nothing new." He leaned forward on the table. "So please don't start waving the flag at me saying my company's got to do this illegal thing and that illegal thing because of this new fangled scary threat. "

"What we're asking is certainly not illegal. I have the request right here, signed by the president's Chief of Staff." Franklin took out a paper and pushed it across the desk. "We are to be given access to everything."

Dar let Hamilton take the paper and study it. "Who is performing the access?" she asked.

Franklin turned, and indicated the men with him. "This is my team," he said, with a hint of a smile.

Dar studied the first of them. "What do you do?"

"Data analysis," he responded promptly. "Myself, David, and Carl here are senior data analysts."

"Robert and I are database specialists," the man next to him promptly supplied.

Dar nodded slowly. "Any of you network engineers?" she asked. "Infrastructure specialists? Layer 3 people?"