Charles still looked grim. "There's bad in him. I know it."

She touched his arm. "Listen to me. Steve was what I call a wild child-disobedient, impulsive, fearless, bursting with energy-wasn't he?"

Charles smiled ruefully. "That's the truth."

"So were Dennis Pinker and Wayne Stattner. Such children are almost impossible to raise right. That's why Dennis is a murderer and Wayne a s.a.d.i.s.t. But Steve isn't like them Steve isn't like them-and you're the reason why. Only the most patient, understanding, and dedicated of parents can bring up such children to be normal human beings. But Steve is is normal." normal."

"I pray you're right." Charles opened his billfold to replace the photo.

Jeannie forestalled him. "May I see it?"

"Sure."

Jeannie studied the picture. It had been taken quite recently. Steve was wearing a blue-checked shirt and his hair was a little too long. He was grinning shyly at the camera. "I don't have a photo of him," Jeannie said regretfully as she handed it back.

"Have that one."

"I couldn't. You keep it next to your heart."

"I have a million photos of Steve. I'll put another one in my billfold."

"Thanks, I really appreciate it."

"You seem very fond of him."

"I love him, Charles."

"You do?"

Jeannie nodded. "When I think he might be sent to jail for this rape, I want to offer to go instead of him."

Charles gave a wry smile. "So do I."

"That's love, isn't it?"

"Sure is."

Jeannie felt self-conscious. She had not meant to say all this to Steve's father. She had not really known it herself; it had just come out, and then she had realized it was true.

He said: "How does Steve feel about you?"

She smiled. "I could be modest...."

"Don't bother."

"He's crazy for me."

"That doesn't surprise me. Not just because you're beautiful, though you are. You're strong too: that's obvious. He needs someone strong-especially with this accusation over his head."

Jeannie gave him a calculating look. It was time to ask him. "There is something you could do, you know."

"Tell me what it is."

Jeannie had rehea.r.s.ed this speech in the car all the way to Washington. "If I could search another database, I might find the real rapist. But after the publicity in the New York Times, New York Times, no government agency or insurance company is going to take the risk of working with me. Unless..." no government agency or insurance company is going to take the risk of working with me. Unless..."

"What?"

Jeannie leaned forward in her lawn chair. "Genetico experimented on soldiers' wives who were referred to them by army hospitals. Therefore most or all of the clones were probably born in army hospitals."

He nodded slowly.

"The babies must have had army medical records, twenty-two years ago. Those records may still exist."

"I'm sure they do. The army never throws anything away."

Jeannie's hopes rose a notch. But there was another problem. "That long ago, they would have been paper files. Might they have been transferred to computer?"

"I'm sure they have. It's the only way to store everything."

"Then it is possible," Jeannie said, controlling her excitement.

He looked thoughtful.

She gave him a hard stare. "Charles, can you get me access?"

"What, exactly, do you need to do?"

"I have to load my program into the computer, then let it search all the files."

"How long does it take?"

"No way of knowing. That depends on the size of the database and the power of the computer."

"Does it interfere with normal data retrieval?"

"It could slow it down."

He frowned.

"Will you do it?" Jeannie said impatiently.

"If we're caught, it's the end of my career."

"Will you?"

"h.e.l.l, yes."

48.

STEVE WAS THRILLED TO SEE J JEANNIE SITTING ON THE PATIO, drinking lemonade and talking earnestly to his father as if they were old friends. This is what I want, he thought; I want Jeannie in my life. Then I can deal with anything.

He crossed the lawn from the garage, smiling, and kissed her lips softly. "You two look like conspirators," he said.

Jeannie explained what they were planning, and Steve allowed himself to feel hopeful again.

Dad said to Jeannie: "I'm not computer-literate. I'll need help loading your program."

"I'll come with you."

"I'll bet you don't have your pa.s.sport here."

"I sure don't."

"I can't get you into the data center without identification."

"I could go home and get it."

"I'll come with you," Steve said to Dad. "I have my pa.s.sport upstairs. I'm sure I could load the program."

Dad looked askance at Jeannie.

She nodded. "The process is simple. If there are any glitches you can call me from the data center and I'll talk you through it."

"Okay."

Dad went into the kitchen and brought out the phone. He dialed a number. "Don, this is Charlie. Who won the golf?...I knew you could do it. But I'll beat you next week, you watch. Listen, I need a favor, kind of unusual. I want to check my son's medical records from way back when.... Yeah, he's got some kind of rare condition, not life threatening but serious, and there may be a clue in his early history. Would you arrange security clearance for me to go into the Command Data Center?"

There was a long pause. Steve could not read his father's face. At last he said: "Thanks, Don, I really appreciate it."

Steve punched the air and said: "Yes!"

Dad put a finger to his lips, then went on speaking into the phone. "Steve will be with me. We'll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes, if that's all right....Thanks again." He hung up.

Steve ran up to his room and came back with his pa.s.sport.

Jeannie had the disks in a small plastic box. She handed them to Steve. "Put the one marked number one in the disk drive and the instructions will come up on the screen."

He looked at his father. "Ready?"

"Let's go."

"Good luck," Jeannie said.

They got in the Lincoln Mark VIII and drove to the Pentagon. They parked in the biggest parking lot in the world. In the Midwest there were towns towns smaller than the Pentagon parking lot. They went up a flight of steps to a second-floor entrance. smaller than the Pentagon parking lot. They went up a flight of steps to a second-floor entrance.

When he was thirteen Steve had been taken on a visitor's tour of the place by a tall young man with an impossibly short haircut. The building consisted of five concentric rings linked by ten corridors like the spokes of a wheel. There were five floors and no elevators. He had lost his sense of direction within seconds. The main thing he remembered was that in the middle of the central courtyard was a building called Ground Zero which was a hotdog stand.

Now his father led the way past a closed barbershop, a restaurant, and a metro entrance to a security checkpoint. Steve showed his pa.s.sport and was signed in as a visitor and given a pa.s.s to stick to his shirtfront.

There were relatively few people here on a Sat.u.r.day evening, and the corridors were deserted but for a few late workers, mostly in uniform, and one or two of the golf carts used for transporting bulky objects and VIPs. Last time he was here Steve had been rea.s.sured by the monolithic might of the building: it was all there to protect him. Now he felt differently. Somewhere in this maze of rings and corridors a plot had been hatched, the plot that had created him and his doppelgangers. This bureaucratic haystack existed to hide the truth he sought, and the men and women in crisp army, navy, and air force uniforms were now his foes.

They went along a corridor, up a staircase, and around a ring to another security point. This one took longer. Steve's full name and address had to be keyed in, and they waited a minute or two for the computer to clear him. For the first time in his life he felt that a security check was aimed at him; he was the one they were looking for. He felt furtive and guilty, although he had done nothing wrong. It was a weird sensation. Criminals must feel like this all the time, he thought. And spies, and smugglers, and unfaithful husbands.

They pa.s.sed on, turned several more corners, and came to a pair of gla.s.s doors. Beyond the doors, a dozen or so young soldiers were sitting in front of computer screens, keying in data, or feeding paper doc.u.ments into optical character recognition machines. A guard outside the door checked Steve's pa.s.sport yet again, then let them in.

The room was carpeted and quiet, windowless and softly lit, with the characterless atmosphere of purified air. The operation was being run by a colonel, a gray-haired man with a pencil-line mustache. He did not know Steve's father, but he was expecting them. His tone was brisk as he directed them to the terminal they would use: perhaps he regarded their visit as a nuisance.

Dad told him: "We need to search the medical records of babies born in military hospitals around twenty-two years ago."

"Those records are not held here."

Steve's heart sank. Surely they could not be defeated that easily?

"Where are they held?"

"In St. Louis."

"Can't you access them from here?"

"You need priority clearance to use the data link. You don't have that."

"I didn't antic.i.p.ate this problem, Colonel," Dad said testily. "Do you want me to call General Krohner again? He may not thank us for bothering him unnecessarily on a Sat.u.r.day night, but I will if you insist."

The colonel weighed a minor breach of rules against the risk of irritating a general. "I guess that'll be okay. The line isn't being used, and we need to test it sometime this weekend."

"Thank you."

The colonel called over a woman in lieutenant's uniform and introduced her as Caroline Gambol. She was about fifty, overweight, and corseted, with the manner of a headmistress. Dad repeated what he had told the colonel.

Lieutenant Gambol said: "Are you aware that those records are governed by the privacy act, sir?"

"Yes, and we have authorization."

She sat at the terminal and touched the keyboard. After a few minutes she said: "What kind of search do you want to run?"

"We have our own search program."

"Yes, sir. I'll be glad to load that for you."

Dad looked at Steve. Steve shrugged and handed the woman the floppy disks.

As she was loading the program she looked curiously at Steve. "Who wrote this software?"