The Story So Far...

In the year 2023, Dr. Gideon Wolfe, a prominent criminal psychologist, is paid an unexpected visit by the widow of John Price, a special-effects wizard recently murdered outside his New York City apartment. She hands Wolfe a computer disc, which contains evidence that the famous footage of President Emily Forrester's assassination was doctored to falsely implicate an Afghan functionary, later convicted of the crime. Wolfe takes the disc to his friend, private detective Max Jenkins. But just as Max's investigation is starting to bear fruit, he is shot to death in his own apartment by a sniper. A shaken Wolfe flies to Florida to talk to one man who may shed light on these events: Dr. Eli Kuperman, an anthropologist whom Jenkins has linked to the Price murder. Kuperman is in prison—but not for long. Shortly after he and Wolfe meet, the prison walls suddenly vibrate and collapse, and the two are whisked into a futuristic vessel hovering outside.

Aboard the ship, which is armed with a pulverizing gun and capable of enormous speed, is a crew of brilliant scientists led by Malcolm Tressalian, the ailing son of a pioneer in satellite technology, and his alluring but deadly sister Larissa. These renegade geniuses, Wolfe soon learns, have perpetrated a series of hoaxes using advanced computer techniques to manipulate the truth. It was Tressalian and company, with the help of the murdered special-effects man Price, who altered the presidential-assassination video, replacing the image of a Chinese security officer, the actual murderer, with that of an anonymous Afghan. Now the U.S. is about to launch a secret attack against the Afghan terrorists supposedly responsible for the assassination. Tressalian and his crew are headed to Afghanistan too, to try to avert disaster.

After they land in there, Wolfe is outfitted with a suit of body armor and led to the terrorist chief's lair. Outside, the temperature is rising at an alarming rate, thanks to a special weapon that can destroy the ozone layer over a confined area. Wolfe and his team convince the women and children to flee, but their opium-addled leader remains behind to die. Safely back in Tressalian's vessel, Wolfe is exhausted by his ordeal. He returns to his room, where he is surprised to find Larissa waiting for him.

That man's brutality conceals itself behind a respectable face more often than an evil one should come as news to no one, though I've never found it any less sad or infuriating for being so apparent. Having passed my own childhood among socially admired but covertly violent adults, I've always felt a particular kinship with those who have not only suffered abuse but suffered it at the hands of people who are deemed estimable by society at large. Which is why, I'm sure, my comradeship with Larissa and Malcolm Tressalian was cemented so firmly during our journey north that morning. Among the many cases of childhood horror that I've investigated, theirs remains the only one I can call truly unique; and if ever there was a story guaranteed to rouse the pangs of sorrow and outrage in my heart, the one that I listened to Larissa tell in the candlelit stillness of my quarters was it.

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