He knew the younger men who worked for him were good, but not good enough to ever come upon the secret program he had embedded well inside the main data-base program. It operated in real time, and would never begin to take effect unless he failed to access it with a sixteen-digit variable code on the first day of each month at noon. If he ever left under his own power with kindly feelings toward all, he could erase that secret program in minutes. If he was forced out, the program would begin to take effect the next time he missed typing in the code.

It was, he knew, a simple and a deadly way to destroy all the information in a data base. It was founded on random transitions. Once the destruct program began to take effect, it would look at first like some sort of simple microchip failure, but by the time they realized there was no way to backtrack to the original data, all the storage would have turned to garbage. All the names of all the faithful would print out in Lower Slobovian, and all the files and records of the Eternal Church would be meaningless.

Lately, however, he had begun to wonder if it wasn't a poor way to repay the kindnesses of the Church by making his destruct signal so automatic. It wasn't really fair. Suppose one fine day he was run down by a madman in a pickup truck, or died of a sudden heart attack. The data base, product of his own skills and energies, the single essential factor in the Church's financial health, would self-destruct. As he smiled benignly at the Sunday shoppers, he suddenly realized how he could send his destruct signal from afar. Some of his best programming ideas came to him with a stunning abruptness.

He could invent an unusual name and address. He could bury that imaginary person so deeply in the data-base program that it could hide there as a dreadful and elegant little trigger mechanism. It would come to life only when one of Jenny MacBeth's girls typed the new donor on the terminal screen and sent it through for filing in the main data base. The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. Then if they ever threw him out, he need only mail in a donation in that trigger name.

It needed very little refinement, he thought. And it would be a pleasant irony to use Clara Conover as the trigger name, giving her two strange middle initials to obviate the chance of any random duplication. Clara Conover of 123 State Street, Middlebury, with the proper ZIP. And the great computer, with its in sectile sense of precision, would suicide the program only when that precise name and precise address were fed into its memory. Poor thing, that she had not lived long enough to see her adored son become a man of the cloth.

He decided to set it up this coming week, and dismantle the one that needed once-a-month attention to keep it from activating.

He took the slow escalator up to the main mezzanine and walked down to the locked featureless door at the far end of the wide corridor. He pressed the bell button four times in rapid succession, the door buzzed at him and he pushed it open. He went through the secretarial office with its four work stations and four ubiquitous terminals and printers, hooded and silent. He went on through the open doorway in Rolf Wintergarten's office, smiling and saying, "Guys, your guru has arrived."

Charley Winchester, the head of the ECB legal team, sat in one of the leather armchairs, his heels propped on the coffee table. He was a fat white jowly man with horn-rimmed glasses so thick his eyes looked huge. He exuded a comfortable flavor of amiability. He had an interest in his fellow man that was so genuine everyone responded to it. Charley made everybody feel important.

Rolf Wintergarten was fifty, trying with some success to look thirty-eight. He was slim and trim, with good shoulders, a careful tan, soft contacts, designer clothing and blow-dried hair with a picturesque lock falling across his forehead. He worked with weights and ran two miles every day at first light.

As was the case with the other top administrative personnel, Wintergarten had been ordained in the same manner as had Joe Deets. It gave them access to an especially generous set of health and retirement benefits, the same benefits that had made it relatively easy to induce the pastors of the affiliated churches to join with ECB.

Charley Winchester and his brother Clyde were the only two in the inner circle who had declined, politely, the opportunity to be ordained in the Church. Charley had pointed out, quite correctly, that under the right circumstances it could diminish the effectiveness of the brothers in a court of law. It was rumored that Charley had tried to make a joke of it, thus infuriating the old man.

He had said, "Being an officer of the court might be in direct conflict with being an officer of the Church, the way things are going lately." Levity in such matters was unthinkable.

"I think it's my turn," Wintergarten said.

"Isn't it my turn?"

"Aren't we waiting for Finn?" Deets asked.

"Sent word he might be able to make it, but he'll be late, and so go ahead," Charley said.

Rolf bowed his head and Charley took his feet off the coffee table and sat up. Deets bowed his head. In a voice too loud and too oratorical for the circumstances, Rolf Wintergarten said, "Dear Lord, we beseech Thee to grant us wisdom in the administration of our appointed tasks, to give us the courage to make the hard decisions, to help us nurture the funds entrusted to the Eternal Church of the Believer by those who have come to Christ, to use it in ways which will enhance Thy kingdom and further the cause of Christianity. Amen."

"Hey, that's nice!" Charley said. That's real nice!"

Wintergarten flushed and looked pleased.

"It was longer, but Molly helped me cut it down. It's written out, so we can use it again sometime. Well, shall we get started? Joe?"

Joe Deets passed out two of the blue cardboard binders he had brought in his bicycle basket and opened a third one to follow along in case there were any questions. There seldom were. They were in the usual format. Weekly receipts from all sources. Operating expenses broken down into simplified categories. Grants-in-aid and charitable contributions paid out of current receipts. Lists of holdings in the trust accounts and in the money market funds. Cash in bank accounts. Each figure was preceded by the figure from the previous week, the week before that, and the same week for the prior year. The final sheet showed the recommended investment changes.

"Little mite heavy on cash?" Charley asked.

"John Tinker's orders. He wants to be able to use cash to make the best deal possible on the twenty-two hundred acres beyond the Settlements. But the cash is making money while it's waiting."

"I don't understand why he wants that much more land," Rolf said in a plaintive tone.

"Add two and two, and keep your ears open," Charley said.

"This is my guess, and even though I don't think I'm far off, I don't want it repeated. Hell, I don't even have to say that to you two, do I? I base my guess on things he's had me checking out the last few months. I think what he has in mind for that area is one great big son of a bitch of a medical complex specializing in the degenerative diseases. Hospital, medical school, nursing school, research programs. The medical school and the nursing school will fit in with the University. It makes the Settlements a more attractive retirement area for Church members. Right now what have we got? A direct payroll of four hundred and something, not counting the University.

Another two or three hundred there. Six hundred students.

Then there's the indirect payroll. Your people, Rolf, and Lakemore Construction and Meadows Development. It's a class act. He gets a good medical insurance program out of it and a new way to tap the funds we can't touch, funds out there available for support for medical facilities. It will enhance the standing and the reputation of the whole Meadows Center, provided he can attract top people to staff the hospital and the medical school."

"Aha," Deets said.

"Mystery solved. I wondered why we were cutting so far back on the things the old man has always supported. Like Right to Life and the Missions and World Hunger. Right now we could come up with need I say it? - a very substantial sum. But how is the old man going to react to all this medical stuff ? He's always told the flock to stay away from doctors, except for bleeding wounds and broken bones."

Charley Winchester shook his head sadly.

"The odds are against his ever even knowing about it, Joe. He's deteriorating fast and the medical center is a long-term project. Also, it's my guess there are a lot of people who might have joined the Church if it hadn't been for that hangup the old man has or had about medicine. Go down his road and you'd never find out you were dying of diabetes."

Wintergarten, frowning, closed his folder, laid it down, and tapped it lightly with his fingertips.

"In management I've dealt with some large figures. But these are a little too big for my comprehension."

"If he wants his medical complex, he'll get it," Charley said.

"And then maybe they can make you two reverends into honorary surgeons."

Joe Deets was visibly amused, but Rolf said, "I don't find that particularly funny, Winchester."

"Why don't you learn to laugh at yourself, Rolf?" Charley said.

"It's good for the digestion and the complexion."

"If a man doesn't take himself seriously, nobody else will."

Charley shook his head sadly.

"Good grief, man. If I started taking myself and my profession seriously, my brother Clyde would go into hysterics. We're just plain old country lawyers, and we make a little deal here, a little deal there, and keep everybody happy. Life's too short you should get pissed off at a harmless remark."

"And I don't care for that kind of language in my office!"

Charley sighed and looked sadly at Deets. He shook his head and turned to the approval sheet in the folder and scrawled his name.

Rolf Wintergarten said, "Don't you at least have an obligation to look at the changes he wants to make?"

Charley shrugged.

"Joe does a good job for us and I don't understand most of this crap anyway."

"If you don't understand it, shouldn't you get off the committee?"

Charley stared at him.

"Good God, man, you're even worse than your usual self. What's chewing on you anyway? Finn will go over it before he signs it, and he knows more about it than either of us. You think Joe is stealing?"