seen him since he left, and they stopped to say it was great that he was able to return. How was his grandmother?
"Gave us all quite a scare," he said over and over. "Almost died. She's on the mend now."
When he had arrived two days ago at this rustic Colorado State University campus, all of the events in France, Spain, and Algeria were still fresh, although the stress was beginning to fade. Memory could be a blessing that way. Hold on to the good; let go of the bad. He had spent ten days with Fred Klein, going over everything in detail. Covert-One's files were growing, and each new piece of information, name, location, and comprehension of those who would harm others on scales large and small was grist for future grinding. At the top of the list was the terrorist leader, the pseudonymous M. Mauritania, who had somehow escaped the devastation at the castle. He had disappeared, as vaporous as the billowing white robes he favored.
From what Jon could figure out, a few others of the Crescent Shield must have managed to get out with him. There were not as many dead terrorists as Jon, Randi, and Peter had speculated in their various reports. The corpse of Abu Auda, however, had been found with several shots to the back. No one knew who had fired those bullets, of course, since no one aliverenegade Legionnaires or terroristswas captured in the burning hulk of the castle.
Even the French general who had been ultimately behind it all, Roland la Porte, was dead. He had taken a bullet to his head that blasted off half his skull. Somehow he'd had time to dress in his uniform, his chest full of medals and ribbons, before he shot himself. The pistol was in his hand, and his impeccably pressed tunic was blood-soaked.
It was a sad ending in some ways, Jon reflected as he climbed the stairs to the meeting room. So much potential perverted. But that was what it was all about, why Covert-One existed. Fred Klein had sent a watered-down version of Jon's report over to army intelligence, as a cover for his supposed employment there. That way, if General Carlos Henze or Randi Russell or even Theacute;regrave;se Chambord went looking, they would find that he had been legitimately hired as a freelancer.
No one liked to believe life was as fragile as it really was. So the various intelligence agencies had circled their media wagons, and the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Oval Office had stuck to their stones about wizard hackers and brand-new viruses and the solid strength of the U.S. military and all its communications. With time, the ruckus would die completely. People moved on. Other crises happened. Already it was off the front page and soon it would be firmly, irrevocably old news.
Jon pushed his way into the conference room and took up a post in the back as his fellow researchers filed in. It was the weekly meeting for them to discuss new experimental avenues that looked promising in their quest for a molecular computer. They were a motley crew, jovial, highly intelligent, and pretty much uncontrollable. Talk about mavericks. The best scientists always had a rogue streak. Otherwise, they would not be intrigued by the unexplored. Someone was brewing coffee. The smell drifted into the room. A couple of the scientists ran out to grab cups.
By the time everyone had settled in, there were some thirty men and women packed on folding metal chairs. After business was conducted, the team's lead scientist turned the meeting over to Jon.
He went to the front of the room. Behind him, windows looked out onto the green Colorado campus. "You've all probably been wondering where the hell I've been the last few weeks," Jon began, his face serious. "Wellhellip;"
From the left, Larry Schulenberg called out, "Were you gone, Jon? I had no idea."
Amid the general laughter, others took up the cryhellip;"Never noticed."hellip;"Are you sure, Jon? I wasn't just daydreaming?"hellip;"Were you? Really?"
"All right," Jon said, laughing, too. "I guess I deserved that. Let me rephrase. In case anyone happened to notice, I've been away." His expression turned serious again. "One of the things I've been doing is thinking about our work. I may have come up with some ideas. For instance, it occurred to me that we've been neglecting the possibility of using light-emitting molecules for our switches. With them, we could do more than have an on-off switch, we could have