he doorbell rang, and Thom went to answer it.

Rhyme heard some heated words from the front entryway. A man’s voice, angry. A shout.

Frowning, he glanced at Ron Pulaski, who had his weapon out of his high-riding holster, and pointed it up, ready to fire. He held it expertly. Amelia Sachs was a good mentor.

“Thom?” Rhyme called.

He didn’t answer.

A moment later a man appeared in the doorway, wearing a baseball cap, jeans and an ugly plaid jacket. He blinked in shock as Pulaski aimed the gun toward him.

“No! Wait!” the man cried, ducking and lifting a hand.

Then Thom, Sachs and Pam entered immediately behind him. The policewoman saw the weapon and said, “No, no, Ron. It’s okay… He’s Calvin Geddes.”

It took Rhyme a moment to recall. Ah, that’s right: with the Privacy Now organization, and the source of the lead about Peter Gordon. “What’s this all about?”

Sachs said, “He’s the one who broke into my place. It wasn’t Five Twenty-Two.”

Pam nodded, confirming this.

Geddes stepped closer to Rhyme and reached into his jacket pocket and extracted some blue-backed documents. “Pursuant to New York State civil procedure laws, I’m serving you this subpoena in connection with Geddes et al. versus Strategic Systems Datacorp, Inc.” He held them out.

“I got one too, Rhyme.” Sachs held up her own copy.

“And I’m supposed to do what with those?” Rhyme asked Geddes, who continued to proffer the documents.

The man frowned, then looked down at the wheelchair, aware of Rhyme’s condition for the first time. “I, well—”

“He’s my attorney-in-fact.” Rhyme nodded to Thom, who took the papers.

Geddes began, “I’m—”

“You mind if we read it?” Rhyme asked acerbically, with a nod toward his aide.

Thom did so, aloud. It was a subpoena requesting all the paper and computer files, notes and other information that Rhyme had in his possession that related to SSD, its Compliance Division and evidence of SSD’s connections with any governmental body.

“She told me about Compliance.” Geddes nodded toward Sachs. “It didn’t make any sense at all. Something was fishy about it. No way would Andrew Sterling volunteer to work with the government on privacy issues if he didn’t get something big out of the arrangement. He’d fight them tooth and nail. That made me suspicious. Compliance is about something else. I don’t know what. But we’re going to find out.”

He explained that the suit was under federal and state privacy acts and for various civil violations of common law and constitutional rights of privacy.

Rhyme reflected that Geddes and his attorneys would have a pretty pleasant surprise when they had a look at the Compliance dossiers. One of which he just happened to have in a computer not ten feet from where Geddes now stood. And which he would be more than delighted to hand over, given Andrew Sterling’s refusal to help find Sachs after she’d disappeared.

He wondered which would be in worse trouble, Washington or SSD, when the press learned of the Compliance operation.

Dead heat, he concluded.

Sachs then said, “Of course, Mr. Geddes here will have to juggle the case with his own trial.” Giving him a dark look. She was referring to the break-in at her town house in Brooklyn, whose mission presumably was to find information about SSD. She explained that, ironically, it had been Geddes, not 522, who’d dropped the receipt that had led her to SSD. He regularly hung out at the coffee shop in Midtown, from which he kept up a furtive surveillance of the Gray Rock, noting the comings and goings of Sterling and other employees and customers.

Geddes said fervently, “I’ll do whatever’s necessary to stop SSD. I don’t care what happens to me. I’ll happily be the sacrificial lamb if it brings back our individual rights.”

Rhyme respected his moral courage but decided he needed more quotable lines.

The activist began to lecture them now—reiterating much of what Sachs had reported earlier—about the arachnid sweep of SSD and other data miners, the death of privacy in the country, the risk to democracy.

“Okay, we’ve got the paperwork,” Rhyme interrupted the tiresome rant. “We’ll have a little talk with our own lawyers and, if they say everything’s in order, I’m sure you’ll be getting a care package by your deadline.”

The doorbell rang. Once, twice. Then loud knocking.

“Oh, brother. Goddamn Grand Central Station… What now?”

Thom went to the door. He returned a moment later with a short, confident-looking man in a black suit and white shirt. “Captain Rhyme.”

The criminalist turned his wheelchair to face Andrew Sterling, whose calm green eyes registered no surprise whatsoever at the criminalist’s condition. Rhyme suspected that his own Compliance dossier documented the accident and his life afterward in considerable detail, and that Sterling would have boned up on the particulars before he arrived here.

“Detective Sachs, Officer Pulaski.” He nodded to them, then returned to Rhyme.

Behind him were Sam Brockton, the SSD Compliance director, and two other men, who were dressed conservatively. Neat hair. They could have been congressional aides or corporate middle managers, though Rhyme was not surprised to learn they were lawyers.

“Hello, Cal,” Brockton said, looking over Geddes wearily. The Privacy Now man glared back.

Sterling said in a soft voice, “We found out what Mark Whitcomb did.” Despite his diminutive stature, Sterling was imposing in person, with the vibrant eyes, the perfectly straight posture, the unflappable voice. “I’m afraid he’s out of a job. For starters.”

“Because he did the right thing?” Pulaski snapped.

Sterling’s face continued to show no emotion. “And I’m afraid too the matter’s not over with yet.” A nod to Brockton.

“Serve them,” the Compliance director snapped to one of the attorneys. The man handed out his own batch of blue-backed documents.

“More?” Rhyme commented, nodding at the second set of paperwork. “All this reading. Who’s got the time?” He was in a good mood, still elated that they’d stopped 522 and that Amelia Sachs was safe.

The sequel turned out to be a court order forbidding them to give Geddes any computers, disks, documents or any material of any kind relating to the Compliance operation. And to turn over to the government any such material in their possession.

One hired gun said, “Failure to do so will subject you to civil and criminal penalties.”

Sam Brockton offered, “And believe me, we will pursue all remedies available to us.”

“You can’t do this,” Geddes said, angry. His eyes shone and sweat dotted his dark face.

Sterling counted the computers in Rhyme’s lab. There were twelve. “Which one has the Compliance dossier that Mark sent you, Captain?”

“I forget.”

“Did you make any copies?”

Rhyme smiled. “Always back up your data. And store it in a separate, secure location. Off site. Isn’t that the message of the new millennium?”

Brockton said, “We’ll just get another order to confiscate everything and search all the servers you’ve uploaded data to.”

“But that’ll take time and money. And who knows what could happen in the meantime? E-mails or envelopes might get sent to the press, say. Accidentally, of course. But it could happen.”

“This has been a very trying time for everyone, Mr. Rhyme,” Sterling said. “No one’s in the mood for games.”

“We’re not playing games,” Rhyme said evenly. “We’re negotiating.”

The CEO gave what appeared to be his first genuine smile. He was on his home turf now and he pulled up a chair next to Rhyme. “What do you want?”

“I’ll give you everything. No court battles, no press.”

“No!” Geddes was enraged. “How can you cave in?”

Rhyme ignored the activist as efficiently as Sterling did and continued, “Provided you get my associates’ records cleared up.” He explained about Sellitto’s drug test and Pulaski’s wife.

“I can do that,” Sterling said as if it were no more trouble than turning up the volume on a TV.

Sachs said, “And you have to fix Robert Jorgensen’s life too.” She told him about how 522 had virtually destroyed the man.

“Give me the details and I’ll make sure it’s taken care of. He’ll have a clean slate.”

“Good. As soon as everything’s cleared up you’ll have what you want. And nobody will see a single piece of paper or file about your Compliance operation. I give you my word.”

“No, you have to fight it!” Geddes said bitterly to Rhyme. “Every time you don’t stand up to them, everybody loses.”

Sterling turned to him and said in a voice just a few decibels above a whisper, “Calvin, let me tell you something. I lost three good friends in the Trade Towers on September eleventh. Four more were badly burned. Their lives’ll never be the same. And our country lost thousands of innocent citizens. My company had the technology to find some of the hijackers and the predictive software to figure out what they were going to do. We—I—could have prevented the whole tragedy. And I regret every single day that I didn’t.”

He shook his head. “Oh, Cal. You and your black-and-white politics… Don’t you see: That’s what SSD is about. Not about the thought police kicking in your door at midnight because they don’t like what you and your girlfriend are doing in bed or arresting you because you bought a book about Stalin or the Koran or because you criticized the President. The mission of SSD is to guarantee that you’re free and safe to enjoy the privacy of your home and to buy and read and say whatever you want to. If you’re blown up by a suicide bomber in Times Square, you won’t have any identity to protect.”

“Spare us the lectures, Andrew,” Geddes raged.

Brockton said, “Cal, if you don’t calm down, you’re going to find yourself in a lot of trouble.”

Geddes gave a cold laugh. “We’re already in a lot of trouble. Welcome to the brave new world…” The man spun around and stormed out. The front door slammed.

Brockton said, “I’m glad you understand, Lincoln. Andrew Sterling is doing very good things. We’re all safer because of it.”

“I’m so happy to hear it.”

Brockton missed the irony entirely. But Andrew Sterling didn’t. He was, after all, the man who knew everything. But his reaction was a humorous, self-assured smile—as if he knew that the lectures eventually got through to people, even if they didn’t appreciate the message just yet. “Good-bye, Detective Sachs, Captain. Oh, and you too, Officer Pulaski.” He glanced wryly at the young cop. “I’ll miss seeing you around the halls. But if you want to spend any more time honing your computer skills, our conference room’ll always be available to you.”

“Well, I…”

Andrew Sterling gave him a wink and turned. He and his entourage left the town house.

“You think he knew?” the rookie asked. “About the hard drive?”

Rhyme could only shrug.

“Hell, Rhyme,” Sachs said, “I suppose the order’s legit but after all we’ve been through with SSD, did you have to cave so quickly? Brother, that Compliance dossier… I’m not happy all that information’s out there.”

“A court order’s a court order, Sachs. Not much we can do about it.”

Then she looked at him closely and must have noticed the glimmer in his eyes. “Okay, what?”

Rhyme asked his aide, “In your lovely tenor read me that order again. The one our SSD friends just delivered.”

He did.

Rhyme nodded. “Good… There’s a Latin phrase I’m thinking of, Thom. Can you guess what it is?”

“Oh, you know, I should, Lincoln, considering all those hours I have free here, sitting in the parlor and studying the classics. But I’m afraid I’m drawing a blank.”

“Latin… what a language that is. Admirable precision. Where else can you find five declensions of nouns, and those amazing verb conjugations?… Well, the phrase is Inclusis unis, exclusis alterius. It means that by including one category you automatically exclude other, related categories. Confused?”

“Not really. To be confused you have to be paying attention.”

“Excellent riposte, Thom. But I’ll give you an example. Say you’re a congressman and you write a statute that says, ‘No raw meat shall be imported into the country.’ By choosing those particular words you’re automatically giving permission to import canned or cooked meat. See how it works?”

“Mirabile dictu,” said Ron Pulaski.

“My God,” Rhyme said, truly surprised. “A Latin speaker.”

He laughed. “A few years. In high school. And, being a choirboy, you tend to pick things up.”

“Where are we going with this, Rhyme?” Sachs asked.

“Brockton’s court order only bars giving Privacy Now information about the Compliance Division. But Geddes asked for everything we have about SSD. Therefore—ergo—anything else we have on SSD is fair to release. The files Cassel sold to Dienko were part of PublicSure, not Compliance.”

Pulaski laughed. But Sachs was frowning. “They’ll just get another court order.”

“I’m not so sure. What’re the NYPD and the FBI going to say when they find out that somebody who works for their own data contractor has been selling out high-profile cases? Oh, I’ve got a feeling the brass’ll back us on this one.” This thought led to another. And the conclusion was alarming. “Wait, wait, wait… In detention—that man who moved on my cousin. Antwon Johnson?”

“What about him?” Sachs asked.

“It never made any sense that he’d try to kill Arthur. Even Judy Rhyme mentioned that. Lon said he was a federal prisoner temporarily in state detention. I wonder if somebody from Compliance cut a deal with him. Maybe he was there to see if Arthur thought somebody was getting consumer information about him to use in the crimes. If so, Johnson was supposed to clip him. Maybe for a reduction in his sentence.”

“The government, Rhyme? Trying to take out a witness? That’s a bit paranoid, don’t you think?”

“We’re talking about five-hundred-page dossiers, chips in books and CCTVs on every street corner in the city, Sachs… But, okay, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt: Maybe somebody from SSD contacted Johnson. In any case we’ll call Calvin Geddes and give him all that information too. Let the pit bull run with it if he wants. Only wait until everybody’s files are cleaned up. Give it a week.”

Ron Pulaski said good-bye and left to see his wife and baby daughter.

Sachs walked up to Rhyme and bent down to kiss him on the mouth. She winced, probing her belly.

“You okay?”

“I’ll show you tonight, Rhyme,” she whispered flirtatiously. “Nine-millimeter slugs leave some interesting bruises.”

“Sexy?” he asked.

“Only if you think purple Rorschachs are erotic.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

Sachs gave a subtle smile to him, then walked into the hallway and called to Pam, who’d been in the front parlor, reading. “Come on. We’re going shopping.”

“Excellent. What for?”

“A car. Can’t be without wheels.”

“Neat, what kind? Oh, a Prius’d be way cool.”

Both Rhyme and Sachs laughed hard. Pam smiled uncertainly and Sachs explained that though her life was green in many ways, gasoline mileage didn’t figure into her love of the environment. “We’re going to get a muscle car.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll find out.” She brandished a list of potential vehicles she’d downloaded from the Internet.

“You going to get a new one?” the girl asked.

“Never, ever buy a new car,” Sachs lectured.

“Why?”

“Because cars today are just computers with wheels. We don’t want electronics. We want mechanics. You can’t get grease on your hands with computers.”

“Grease?”

“You’ll love grease. You’re a grease kind of girl.”

“You think so?” Pam seemed pleased.

“You bet. Let’s go. Later, Rhyme.”