She felt a glow of pride, but not surprise. Vampire or not, he was an obstacle. Helen took obstacles quite personally.

And, now that she was thinking of it: Griff.

That nimrod Wyman was right about one thing. She would have liked to send a black-ops team after Griffin, but that would have been too much. It might alert the president.

Besides, she didn’t need anything that obvious to end a man’s life. She turned to her computer instead.

Like everything else in her office, the PC was a little more than standard government issue.

She held still while a thin red laser scanned her retina, and entered a series of passwords and keys.

In less time than it took for Windows to boot up, she was deep inside Basketball, the software behind the Total Information Awareness Program.

It never failed to amuse her when Americans got indignant about the idea of someone eavesdropping on their dreary little lives. The fact was, everyone in America was already under surveillance.

Giant computers at Fort Meade scanned billions of phone calls, e-mails and faxes every day, searching for key words like “terrorist,” “bomb” or “Allah.” If one of those messages hit statistically determined criteria, it was forwarded on to a live analyst, who would check it while pulling up the credit report, criminal history and tax records of whoever sent the message.

Most of the time, it didn’t mean dick. Pointless little conversations between people discussing a movie or a TV show, usually.

BASKETBALL was the code name for the program that made it all happen. It was the mother of all search engines; the geeks who built Google would have wept if they could have stolen a look at its algorithms. Entire rooms of computer servers made up its brain. It could find anything, any scrap of data, anywhere in the world, as long as it crossed an electronic line somewhere, at some time.

But what Helen really loved about BASKETBALL wasn’t that it could retrieve any private conversation or database in the country. No, what was amazing about the software was that it could leave evidence behind as well.

Agent William H. Griffin’s private info was locked down better than a civilian’s. He was, after all, a secret agent with classified access, who answered directly to the president.

But in some ways, that just made it easier for Helen. Nobody really expected the government to start spying on itself. The same protocols that opened tax returns and phone bills also let her insert anything she wanted.

She looked over her work, satisfied. The only thing really missing was a motive. Griffin had been a loyal soldier his whole life. Why would he sell out now?

Then she peeked into his medical file and cross-checked his doctor’s billing codes.

Helen smiled when she saw the diagnosis: cancer. Griffin was dying.

Bad news for him. But, really, perfect for her.