If Summerall's wallet was a goldmine, his hard drives were the motherload.

To all appearances, the contents of the two one-terabyte hard drives Cecil had retrieved were identical. But there were masses of data within, all of it related in one way or the other to government projects regarding the Gifted. The oldest files dated back more than 20 years. The most recent were about five months old.

Unfortunately, after nearly two days of searching, Philly had discovered no comprehensive registry or index—she'd announced that she would have to build her own. The documents she'd shared with Tommy and the others were a mish-mash of policy letters, executive directives, training and medical logs, analytical reports, logistical records, and reams upon reams of e-mail. Surprisingly, though, few of the documents she initially had reviewed were marked as containing Secret or Top-Secret material.

"It's like somebody just sat down and started randomly pulling files related to the Gifted," she said after breakfast on Monday morning. "I don't think we're dealing with a whistleblower here, though. It's all just too messy and random."

"Maybe he just took everything he found?" suggested Christy.

"I would almost guarantee it," the other woman replied. "The guy had two drives and they were locked up in a safety deposit box with his getaway cash. What do you wanna bet there are other copies in his other boxes? These are an insurance policy."

"Or an investment toward his retirement," Sam suggested.

"Either way," said Phil, "I stashed copies in a few dozen places in the cloud and elsewhere. But it'll be weeks, or months even, before we make heads or tails of all of it ... other than those few nuggets we've already found."

One of the nuggets to which Philly referred was a roster of Gifted mercenaries in the program formerly headed by the late and unlamented Ulysses Morse. The document was somewhat out of date, about four years old to be exact, and only provided barebones details on the 58 names on the roster, 15 with which they were already familiar.

One curious point of Morse's roster was the frequency of Arab, African, and Slavic names. The spelling of all, and dearth of Anglicized first names, supported their previous observations that abductees and recruits were partly culled from outside the United States, as Celia and some refugees from The Farm had been. This find appeared to confirm the program was of a global scale sans one important observation: namely, none of the names on the roster suggested participants of East Asian or South Asian heritage.

A second nugget was more tangible.

The hard drive was replete with documents signed by former Vice President Chaney, who until her disappearance 14 months ago was deeply immersed in every facet of whatever programs these many files represented. Afterward, the overall number of documents had dwindled, and the signatures on them were those of persons with less-lofty sounding titles.

One of those names, Race S. Brannon, leapt out at Tommy when he'd gone over the documents with Philly the day before. He'd cursed himself immediately.

Max had mentioned the until-recently obscure Brannon, now "strategic advisor" to the president, several times during their last phone conversation. The references had seemed casual, which should have told Tommy much. Max seldom engaged in idle chitchat and never talked politics. In hindsight, her oblique references to Brannon had been her roundabout way of pointing him out as a person Tommy should look at carefully.

With the help of the girls—it was another of their lessons—he'd spent the past 20 hours carefully and painstakingly doing just as he should've done from the beginning.

The 55-year-old Brannon was something of an enigma. He had dabbled in local Rightwing politics in his hometown of Columbus, Indiana, while still in his twenties, before going on to a career in investment banking in Los Angeles that lasted nearly a quarter century. While in Lala Land, his politics had taken a hard and abrupt turn to the Left. His beliefs, thoroughly documented in the online 'news' website he owned and sometimes edited, had congealed into a bizarre mixture of pseudo-intellectual populism, Conservative redistributionism, and thinly veiled anti-Constitutionalism.

Brannon's populism was scattershot and opportunistic. He was, to his core, a jingoist—foreign wars were a great thing—and published vehement screeds against what he termed "internationalism," despite his having personal investments that spanned the globe, from Moscow to the Pacific Rim.

His capacity to raise vast amounts of campaign funds, much of it allegedly flowing from the halls of power in foreign capitals, in direct violation of American electoral laws, had attracted politicians from across the spectrum to the otherwise peculiar and often noxious Brannon.

He also had an uncanny knack for energizing fringe voters at home. His main political tool was simply to gaslight—deny the grass is green and the sky is blue long enough and eventually many will believe you. It was an impulse that had served him well in his every endeavor. For such a man, political principles and proper legal process were contemptible impediments to be ignored only when they couldn't be jettisoned in toto.

In any normal political climate, such a peripheral oddball would never and could never rise to any degree of political influence.

And the man was a true and unalloyed oddball.

Throughout his life, the crank had espoused a frightening collection of lunatic social views and creepy conspiracy theories. His political adversaries alleged his careful use of codewords and 'dog whistles' hid deep and malignant Antisemitism, Antebellum-style racism, and a thinly veiled homophobia. He was, at least in name, a Conservative Christian but viewed many mainstream Christian faiths as exotic and therefore deeply suspect.

Wide-ranging views voiced on Brannon's website at various times had reflected a broad spectrum of weird ideas, from normal Rightwing kookiness (vaccines were a plot by the UN to sap the strength of the "American race") to typical Leftwing paranoia (genetically modified foods were a corporate plot to render docile the working-class) to true ecumenical blather (the technological advances of the 20th and early 21st centuries were part of some murky alien scheme, all Roman Catholic popes before 1300 were actually women, and superhumans lived among normal humans, and had done so since the dawn of time).

Even a moron can't always be wrong, Tommy had reminded himself.

However, the talk of "super," "augmented," or "gifted," humans, originally a hallmark of the Brannon label, abruptly had disappeared from his website about six years before. None had commented on the fact at the time, but that shift in emphasis coincided with the wealthy Brannon taking a relatively minor position as director of the "Futures" division at Hollirich, Inc., where he'd remained employed until leaving to take his current position in the White House.

Tommy had shared this information with the others as he and the girls had come by it, but it was only that morning that it all seemed to come into focus.

"He's even more toxic and deluded than his boss," said Philly after Christy and the girls had gone off to their studies, "if such a thing is possible."

"Toxic and deluded or not," replied Tommy, "the guy knows about us, participated in the persecution of our friends and family, and has the ear of an unpredictable and easily gulled president."

Sam nodded in agreement. He had been sitting quietly for most of the morning. "We need to take him seriously and find out everything we can about him and his business."

"I'll drop by and see the lawyers tomorrow and make sure they look into his every nook and cranny." It was Tommy's last day in Chicago, but it crossed his mind also to make a quick trip to see Max in person.

"Until then, what's it all mean?" asked Sam.

"I'm not certain," said Tommy. "Max wouldn't have dropped the hint about Brannon if it didn't mean something significant. It's pretty common knowledge that the new administration, especially Brannon, is hated by just about everyone in Washington."

"It isn't just Washington," the old man interjected. "What does that mean for us?"

"I'm just guessing," Tommy replied. "Look ... it wouldn't be the first time that the Gifted got pulled into some internecine political squabble. We've talked about the possibility that the people under Morse either cut loose on their own, or that they're still working for the government. Why not both? In all this political chaos, couldn't Summerall and his crowd just be moonlighting? Or playing multiple sides? It would explain the top-cover that they're getting from the government."

"So would the hard drives," said Philly. "Like Sam said. Summerall is blackmailing someone, maybe threatening to blow the lid off everything."

Tommy pondered her words briefly. His stomach did a pitch. "That's a dreadful thought."

"What?" asked Sam. "Blackmail or absolute chaos?"

"Either one. But we don't need to know which it is at this point. We know for certain a member of the conspiracy is next to the levers of power, and despite what some people say about his being an atheist, this asshole has belonged to the same fundamentalist, evangelical church for the last 30 years. I'll be fucked if I can figure that bodes well."

"But he's also a businessman," protested Sam. "Sure, he might want to hasten the eschaton and burn a few witches along the way, but isn't it more likely he's trying to turn all of this, the existence of people like us, into a business opportunity?"

"Isn't that what this whole administration is about?" sneered Philly. "The so-called president and his clan have made a living screwing over every client, partner, employee, and investor they've ever run across. Why would we think the man has changed at age 75? Like Max told you, money and political power...."

It was a bone on which Tommy needed to chew. It'd occurred to him that, at many levels, this was about money, especially given Max's warnings and the dimensions of what they'd already seen the last year. Still, the entire notion of complex finance had always been difficult for him to wrap himself around, which was why his mind so often drifted to simpler answers.

"Well, okay ... business, then. What about Tangier?" Tommy asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Summerall and his crew are attached to the place for some reason. If this is all about business, might it be they just shifted operations overseas after we closed them down last year? Tangier? Hong Kong? ... someplace else?"

"It's possible," said Philly. There was a hint of worry in her eyes. "Their bullshit could still be going on. We just don't see it. Lemme ask you something ... how many of us are there?"

Tommy made a blowing sound. "I've never had a clear read on that. Right now, I'd guess ... a few thousand."

"Worldwide?"

"Yeah, but that's just a guess. People like us tend to move around a lot, for obvious reasons. And most all of us keep a low profile. That makes us hard to count."

"How come so few Asians are showing up in the Hollirich system?" Philly seemed to be going somewhere.

"China and Japan are easy," said Tommy. "They've always tightly controlled the Gifted in their countries. China is almost unreadable. We saw some of their Gifted on the battlefield during the war against Japan and again during the Korean War, but other than that, nothing. I would guess they have a system similar to the old Soviet model."

Philly gave him a helpless look to which Tommy responded. "They basically recruit anyone found with a Gift into government service."

"Gotcha ... what about India?"

"It's anybody's guess." He spread his hands. "I haven't been there in ... well, ages. But if I had to guess, I'd say they've adopted the same model. Otherwise, why hasn't Hollirich been poaching there?"

"Are we in an arms race?" asked Sam as he rolled his eyes heavenward.

"I think we have been," Tommy stated plainly. "People like us have often been a commodity of sorts. It's only become more pronounced in the recent century or so. But, you know what ... what Philly just said...." He sat back and needed some time to think. "As far as I've been able to tell, we're a fairly consistent fraction of the population. More people means more of us. There are more people in Asia than anywhere else." He let that thought rest.

Philly got up for more coffee, and Sam spun a circle with his finger in the moisture where his iced tea glass had been.

"Most things are simple once you see their full contours," Tommy resumed. "Remember what Paloma said. She and her family began by running operations for Hollirich and the government out of eastern Europe. Then their operations spread. That network has some sort of facility in Morocco, and, voila, recruits with African and Arab names show up on their rosters. When we still thought this was all about prostitution and drugs, we didn't give their connections with Hong Kong a second thought."

Sam gave a slight, knowing gasp, followed by one of his demonic chuckles. "They're looking to start operations in Asia."

"It makes sense," Tommy said. "Maybe the reason we haven't seen any additional disappearances here in the U.S. is because they've already found all the people they're interested in here."

From the doorway to the kitchen, Philly looked at him with a confused and angry face. "So, the U.S. is all fished-out?" she concluded tersely.

"Remember, Phil, there aren't many of us ... and fewer still are like Sam and Lydia, the kind that make ideal soldiers. How many are we tracking in your network now? What ... 110? 115?"

"Yeah, 123, actually—not counting former abductees."

"Most are from the U.S.?"

"Well, mostly ... the U.S., Europe, and a few from Canada and Australia," the young woman admitted.

"You probably know a sizable number of the Gifted in the U.S.," he told her. "I'd guess there are between 200 and 300 people like us in the whole country ... 350 – 400, tops, if we count émigrés. It's tough to say with migration. Countries with relatively small populations, like Australia? There might only be a few dozen people like us in the whole place."

"And in Asia?" she asked, "thousands?"

"Like you said, Phil, it's where the money is."

Sam again sat, thinking, that look on his face like he sometimes got, as if he'd bitten into a sour grape. "I got an ugly feeling you're right," the Chicagoan said after a time. "And under Chaney, this whole thing was about contractors getting rich torturing people for the government ... and helping them build an army. Why stop there? Why not sell to the highest bidder?"