Gillette recalled something Phate had told him. He'd dug up a copy of Shakespeare's plays and learned that, yes, it was Polonius who'd said, "To thine own self be true..." Gillette had them check to find the time and date of the first occurrence of the virus; it was late on the afternoon of the day that Patricia Nolan killed Phate. When her colleagues had called the first FTP site he'd given her, they'd unwittingly unleashed the Polonius virus on the world - a farewell present from Phate.

The code was very elegant and proved to be extremely difficult to eradicate. Manufacturers would have to completely rewrite their disk manufacturing systems and users would have to wipe the entire contents of their hard drives and start over with virus-free programs.

Remember that line, Valleyman. That's advice from a 'wizard. 'To thine own self be true'...

On a Tuesday in late April, Gillette was sitting at his laptop in his cell, a.n.a.lyzing some of Shawn's operating system, when the guard came to the door.

"Visitor, Gillette."

It would be Bishop, he guessed. The detective was still working the MARINKILL case, spending a lot of time north of Napa, where the suspects were reportedly hiding out. (They'd never been in Santa Clara County at all. Phate himself, it seemed, had sent most of the advisories about the killers to the press and to the police as more diversions.) Bishop, though, stopped by San Ho occasionally when he was in the area. Last time, he'd brought Gillette some Pop-Tarts and some apricot preserves Jennie had made from Bishop's own orchard. (Not his favorite condiment but the jam made excellent prison currency - this batch, in fact, had been traded for the Walkman that could be turned into a modem but would not be. Most likely.) The visitor, however, wasn't Frank Bishop.

He sat down in the cubicle and watched Elana Papandolos walk into the room. She was wearing a navy blue dress. Her dark, wiry hair was pulled back. It was so thick that the golden barrette holding it together seemed about to burst apart. Noticing her short nails, perfectly filed and colored lavender, he thought of something that'd never occurred to him. That Ellie, a piano teacher, made her way in the world with her hands too - just as he had done - yet her fingers were beautiful and unblemished by even a hint of callus.

She sat down, scooted the chair forward.

"You're still here," he said, lowering his head slightly to speak through the holes in the Plexiglas. "I never heard from you. I a.s.sumed you'd left a couple of weeks ago."

She said nothing in response. Looked at the divider. "They added that."

The last time she'd been to visit him, several years ago, they'd sat at a table without a divider, a guard hovering over them. With the new system there was no guard; you gained privacy but you lost proximity. He would rather have had her close, Gillette decided, remembering during her visits how he'd loved to brush fingertips with her or press his shoe against the side of her foot, the contact producing an electric frisson that was akin to making love.

Gillette now found as he sat forward that he was air-keying furiously. He stopped and slipped his hands into his pockets.

He asked, "Did you talk to somebody about the modem?"

Elana nodded. "I found a lawyer. She doesn't know if it'll sell or not. But if it does, the way I'm handling it is I'll pay myself back for your lawyer's bill and my half of the house we lost. The rest is yours."

"No, I want you to have--"

She interrupted him by saying, "I postponed my plans. To go to New York."

He was silent, processing this. Finally he asked her, "For how long?"

"I'm not sure."

"What about Ed?"

She glanced behind her. "He's outside."

This stung Gillette's heart. Nice of him to chauffeur her to see her ex, the hacker thought bitterly, inflamed by jealousy. "So why'd you come?" he asked.

"I've been thinking about you. About what you said to me the other day. Before the police showed up."

He nodded for her to continue.

"Would you give up machines for me?" she asked.

Gillette took a breath. He exhaled and then answered evenly, "No. I'd never do that. Machines are what I'm meant to do in life."

To thine own self be true...

He expected her to stand up and walk out. It would have killed a portion of him - maybe most of him - but he'd vowed that if he had a chance to talk to her again he'd never lie.

He added, "But I can promise you that they'll never come between us the way they did. Never again."

Elana nodded slowly. "I don't know, Wyatt. I don't know if I can trust you. My dad drinks a bottle of ouzo a night. He keeps swearing he's going to give up drinking. And he does - about six times a year."

"You'll have to take a chance," he said.

"That might've been the wrong thing to say."

"But it's the honest thing."

"Rea.s.surances, Gillette. I need rea.s.surances before I even begin to think about it."

Gillette didn't respond. He couldn't present her with much compelling evidence that he'd change. Here he was, in prison, having nearly gotten this woman and her family killed because of his pa.s.sion for a world completely alien to the one that she inhabited and understood.

After a moment he said, "There's nothing more I can say except that I love you and I want to be with you, have a family with you."

"I'll be in town for a while at least," she said slowly. "Why don't we just see what happens?"

"What about Ed? What's he going to say?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"Me?" Gillette asked, alarmed.

Elana rose and walked to the door.

What on earth was he going to say? Gillette wondered in panic. He was about to come face-to-face with the man who'd stolen his wife's heart.

She opened the door and gestured.

A moment later Elana's staunch, unsmiling mother walked into the room. She was leading a small boy, about eighteen months old, by the hand.

Jesus, Lord... Gillette was shocked. Elana and Ed had a baby!

His ex-wife sat down in the chair once again and hauled the youngster up on her lap. "This's Ed."

Gillette whispered, "Him?"

"That's right."

"But..."

"You a.s.sumed Ed was my boyfriend. But he's my son... Actually, I should say he's our son. I named him after you. Your middle name. Edward isn't a hacker's name."

"Ours?" he whispered.

She nodded.

Gillette thought back to the last few nights they'd been together before he'd surrendered to the prison authorities to start his sentence, lying in bed with her, pulling her close...

He closed his eyes. Lord, Lord, Lord... He remembered the surveillance at Elana's house in Sunnyvale the night he escaped from CCU - he'd a.s.sumed that the children the police saw were her sister's. But one of them must have been this boy.

I saw your e-mails. When you talk about Ed it doesn't exactly sound like he's perfect husband material...

He gave a faint laugh. "You never told me."

"I was so mad at you I didn't want you to know. Ever."

"But you don't feel that way now?"

"I'm not sure."

He gazed at the boy's thick, curly black hair. That was his mother's. He'd gotten her beautiful dark eyes and round face too. "Hold him up, would you?"

She helped her son stand on her lap. His quick eyes studied Gillette carefully. Then the boy became aware of the Plexiglas. He reached forward with his fat baby fingers and touched it, smiling, fascinated, trying to understand how he could see through it but not be able to touch something on the other side.

He's curious, Gillette thought. Thafs what he got from me.

Then a guard appeared and announced that visiting hours were over and Elana eased the boy to the floor and stood. Her mother took the child's hand and Ed and his grandmother walked out of the room.

Elana and Gillette faced each other across the Plexiglas divide.

"We'll see how it goes," she said. "How's that?"

"That's all I'm asking."

She nodded.

Then they turned in separate directions and, as Elana disappeared out the visitor's door, the guard led Wyatt Gillette back into the dim corridor toward his cell, where his machine awaited.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

In writing this book, I've taken some significant liberties with the structure and operation of federal and California state law enforcement agencies. I wish I could say the same for my depiction of computer hackers' ability to invade our private lives, but I've got bad news: It happens with alarming frequency. Some of the computer specialists I spoke with felt that a program like Trapdoor probably couldn't be written at this time. But I'm not completely convinced -upon hearing their opinions I couldn't help but think of the senior researcher for one of the world's biggest computer companies who in the 1950s recommended that his company stick with vacuum tubes because there was no future for the microchip, and of the head of another international hardware and software manufacturer who stated -in the 1980s - that there'd never be a market for a personal computer.

For the moment we can a.s.sume that a Trapdoor-like program doesn't exist. Probably.

And, oh, yes, the chapter numbers are in binary form. Don't feel bad - I had to look them up too.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

As one's career in this business lengthens so does the list of those for whom a novelist feels undying grat.i.tude for their herculean efforts on his behalf: David Rosenthal, Marysue Rucci, George Lucas and everyone at my top-notch U.S. publisher, Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books; Sue Fletcher, Carolyn Mays, and Georgina Moore, to name just a few at my superb U.K. publisher, Hodder & Stoughton; and my agents Deborah Schneider, Diana McKay, Vivienne Schuster, the other fine folks at Curtis Brown in London, and movie-wizard Ron Bernstein, as well as my many foreign agents, who've gotten my books into the hands of readers around the world. Thanks to my sister and fellow author, Julie Deaver, and - as always - my special, enduring grat.i.tude to Madelyn Warcholik; if it weren't for her you would just have bought a book containing nothing but blank pages.

Among the resources I found invaluable (and thoroughly enjoyable) in writing this novel are the following books: The Watchman and The Fugitive Game by Jonathan Littman, Masters of Deception by Mich.e.l.le Slatalla and Joshua Quittner; The New Hacker's Dictionary by Eric S. Raymond; The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll, The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling, Bots by Andrew Leonard and Fire in the Valley by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Jeffery Deaver's novels have appeared on a number of bestseller lists around the world, including The New York Times, the London Times and the Los Angeles Times. The author of sixteen novels, he's been nominated for four Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and an Anthony award and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year. His book A Maiden's Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, ret.i.tled Dead Silence, and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures starring Denzel Washington. Warner Brothers is currently producing a film version of The Blue Nowhere and Wolfgang Peterson (The Perfect Storm) has just bought The Devil's Teardrop. His most recent novels are The Empty Chair, Speaking in Tongues and The Devil's Teardrop. He is now at work on his next Lincoln Rhyme novel. Readers can visit his Web site at www.jefferydeaver.com.

Other Books By Jeffery Deaver

A MAIDEN'S GRAVE.

PRAYING FOR SLEEP.

THE LESSON OF HER DEATH.

MISTRESS OF JUSTICE.

MANHATTAN IS MY BEAT.

DEATH OF A BLUE MOVIE STAR.

HARD NEWS.

SHALLOW GRAVES.

b.l.o.o.d.y RIVER BLUES.

h.e.l.l'S KITCHEN.