"Suddenly 'natural causes' doesn't trip off the tongue so easily, does it?"

Murex went to the window. Outside, afternoon traffic flowed by the hotel. This was the heart of Boston's financial district. The blue gla.s.s blade of the Hanc.o.c.k Tower stood just a few blocks north, and beyond that the city's second-largest office tower, the Prudential Building. Murex thought of the twin World Trade Center towers, and shivered.

"I'd better check in with my commanding officer," he told the ME. Using his cellphone, Murex spoke briefly, recounting his findings. He listened, then snapped the device shut.

"Captain Hurley would like a priority on this autopsy."

"Okay. I'll put a flag on it."

Minutes later, as the body was being removed out a side door, Detective Murex was talking to the desk clerk.

"Do you remember a John Doom checking in?"

"Sure. Hear he died."

"In his sleep. Anything unusual about him come to mind?"

"No."

"Any distinguishing features?"

"No. He wasn't very tall, about five-four, medium brown hair. Paid by credit card. He reminded me of my cousin."

"Why is that?"

"My cousin's in the Air Force. This guy gave me that feeling, too."

Murex nodded. "Remember him well enough to identify him?"

"I won't have to go down to the morgue, will I?"

"No. Follow me."

EMTs were rolling the body into the back of an ambulance. Murex called out, "Hold up."

Stripping the sheet off the corpse's face, he asked, "This look like him?"

"Yeah. No, wait. That's not him."

Murex said, "No?"

"No. His hair was browner and the eyebrows much thicker."

"Now take a deep breath," Murex said. "People can appear different in death. Look again. Is this the man who checked in last evening under the name of John Doom?"

"I Yeah, it is."

"You are positive?"

"Absolutely. Can I go now? I feel kinda ill."

"Stay handy."

A forensics team from the CSI Unit had taken control of Room 314. They dusted for prints, collected hair samples off the bedspread and said hardly a word.

Murex was bagging John Doom's personal effects when he noticed the black binder had a logo embossed into it: A human eye in a starburst over the letters TIRV. Uncolored, it was detectable only under direct light.

Grabbing the sleep mask, Murex gave it a second look. Over the right eye, in modest white letters, were the same initials. Outlined on the mask's brow gleamed a tiny white eye in a starburst.

"What have we here?" he muttered.

Reaching into his coat for his cellphone, Murex discovered the tape recorder. It felt warm. He realized he'd left it on pause. Hitting play, Murex sat and listened. The DOA's breathing continued for a time. He seemed asleep, but came out of it. He began speaking: "I'm standing in a chamber hollowed out of solid stone. Instead of a floor, I see grates. Iron grates . . . it feels hot . . . the air reeks of sulfur . . . Below me it's like a barbeque pit . . . black smoke . . . leaping flames . . . I perceive two burning eyes . . . like very hot coals. And a black face emerging . . . it's-"

Suddenly, the voice rose into a panicky strangled sound. The voice began gasping, struggling for air. It soon choked off. The tape hummed white noise. The absence of breathing noises was unmistakable.

One of the CSI team said, "Sounds exactly like a heart attack."

Murex called his CO. "Looks like natural causes with a funny twist. Scratch that courtesy call to the FBI."

Back at District A-l headquarters, Murex Googled the initials TIRV. He got one hit: Technical Inst.i.tute for Remote Viewing of Nashua, New Hampshire. Linking to the site, Murex was confronted by the eye-in-a-starburst motif, white against a black starfield.

EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE!.

During the Cold War, the Pentagon and the Kremlin were locked in a desperate race. Not the s.p.a.ce race, but a far more secret enterprise: the Psi Race! Dedicated to penetrating the deepest frontiers of human endeavour, the Department of Defence launched Project Stargate, where specially-selected candidates plucked from every service branch were trained to become true "spooks" shadowy secret agents who could go anywhere, penetrate any nation's security, all without leaving the confines of the ultra-secret Stargate training center at Fort Meade, Maryland!

Now, you too can become a Stargate-level psychic explorer. Captain Trey Grandmaison, one of the Stargate unit's top Remote Viewers, is now teaching qualified civilian candidates in the advanced 21st-century martial art formerly available only to the military elite!

Hearing the knock, Captain Hurley barked, "Come in."

Murex entered. "Turned up something unusual on that hotel fatality, sir."

"What is it?"

Instead of answering, Murex set down the black binder, the eye shade and a color printout of the TIRV site home page.

"What the holy h.e.l.l?" Hurley growled. "You have a nice flair for the dramatic, laying it out for me like this."

"I figure you can do the math faster than I could explain it."

"Much obliged," Hurley said dryly. He read the TIRV mission statement aloud: "'Remote Viewing is the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time. TIRV is dedicated to placing this powerful mind technology in peaceful hands.'" He leaned back. "Is this for real?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. According to this website, Captain Grandmaison is ex-Army Intelligence. He trains people to do this stuff. John Doom was apparently trying to remotely view whatever these numbers represent when he expired."

"Why don't you take a run up to New Hampshire and see this guy, Grandmaison?"

"I'll do that."

As Murex started out, Hurley called after him, "I got a feeling about this one, Ray."

Former Captain Trey Grandmaison lived in a converted farmhouse just over the Ma.s.sachusetts border. It was a sprawling structure painted Colonial white, edged with stark black trim. A big barn lay behind it, as colorless and weathered as a Cape Cod fishing shack. The drive leading back to the barn had been plowed clean of snow.

A vaguely European woman with intensely black hair answered the door. Dark circles under her eyes marred a natural beauty.

Murex flashed his shield. "Detective Ray Murex. Boston Homicide. Could I have a word with Mr Grandmaison?"

"I'm sorry. But he's in the gray room. He can't be disturbed right now."

"Gray room?"

"His private viewing room. He's working a practice target."

"I should have called first, but I need to ask him about one of his students."

The door fell open. "Perhaps I can help you. I run the registration side of TIRV."

"Then I would like to talk with you, Mrs Grandmaison."

"Call me Effie, please."

The living room was decorated in the Mission style. Murex searched for signs of a military past and found none. No medals. Not even an American flag on display.

Murex took a chair. "What can you tell me about a John Doom?"

Effie Grandmaison looked blank. "I don't place that name. Are you sure he was a TIRV student?"

"He was found dead in bed last night wearing one of your sleep masks, a TIRV binder at his bedside. According to a microca.s.sette recorder found on his person, he was actively remote viewing a number in your binder."

"We call them coordinates. Do you know the cause of death?"

"Not as yet."

"What were the coordinates?"

Murex recited the numbers from memory.

Effie frowned. "I don't recognize them, but of course we create new targets all the time. What were his perceptions?"

"Excuse me?"

"Of the target, I mean."

"I'd like to stick with John Doom for the moment," Murex said impatiently. "Do you have a cla.s.s registry?"

"Why is this important? Do you think he was murdered?"

"Right now, it looks like he died of fright."

Effie Grandmaison abruptly stood up. "I think this is important enough to disturb Trey. Please follow me."

Rising, Murex followed the woman outside to a cellar door.

"The bas.e.m.e.nt can't be accessed from inside the house," she said, throwing up the bulkhead door. She led him down into a work area, past an oil furnace, to the far end. It was very cold. Murex could see his breath. A cobwebby corner was paneled off in pine. The hard-carved sign on the door read: DO NOT DISTURB! SESSION IN PROGRESS!.

Effie Grandmaison pressed a white b.u.t.ton. No sound came back.

"Soundproof?" Murex asked, blowing into his hands.

"And lightproof. A bell would freak him out if it went off in the middle of a session. This simply activates a green light. He'll be a minute or so coming out of session."

It was two minutes before Trey Grandmaison emerged, looking upset.

"What the h.e.l.l, Effie?"

"I'm sorry, Trey. But this is Detective Murex from Boston. He's here about a man who died while working a target from one of our cla.s.s binders."

Trey Grandmaison didn't look very surprised. If anything he seemed s.p.a.cey. He was a compact individual with hair so brown it verged on black. His smoke-gray eyes had trouble focusing.

"Let's take this upstairs," he said at last.

Trey Grandmaison looked up from the computer screen. "There's no record of a John Doom ever taking one of my cla.s.ses."

They were in the den. It too was Spartan. The only photos showed Grandmaison in civilian clothes.

Murex asked, "How would he have gotten hold of one of your binders then?"

Effie inserted, "They are part of our course package of materials. There's nothing to stop one of our students from loaning or selling one to anyone they want."

Grandmaison added, "We put a copyright notice on all practice target packs, but many of our target feedback photos are things you can find in any encylopedia Seattle's s.p.a.ce Needle, Mount Rushmore, the t.i.tanic-"

Murex interrupted, "Is there anything about doing this work that might induce someone to have a heart attack?"

"No!" Effie said suddenly.

Trey Grandmaison said, "I teach two types of RV, detective. Coordinate Remote Viewing and Extended RV. If he was lying down with an eye shield, he was doing ERV. It's pretty safe. Half the time, my students drift off into a Delta state."

Murex looked up from his notebook. "I don't follow."

"We RV in different brainwave states, detective. Alpha for CRV. Theta for ERV. Theta is the gateway to the Delta sleep state. If you go too deep, you simply click off like a light."

"It's perfectly safe," Effie reiterated.

"I did hear about a candidate viewer who died of fright while working a target," Grandmaison said slowly.

"Is that so?"

"It was back in '87, just after I joined the unit. In between working operational targets, they would run us against practice coordinates to keep us in our viewing zone. The duty monitor came in one day and claimed he had worked up a really challenging target. The viewer who worked that one was never seen again. Rumor was he'd had a heart attack. But there was talk he'd died of fright."

"Fright?"