Edge

and paint. It just isn’t home.
    And, most difficult of all—if you want to lead this double life—you must deceive.
    Peggy knows I work for the government but, because of my degree in math, she thinks it has something to do with scientific analysis of secure federal facilities here and abroad. I’ve told her I can’t say anything more and I assure her it’s not dangerous, just highly classified. A lot of numbers crunching. Boring.
    She understands, I think, and accepts that I have to be tight-lipped.
    And, conversely, I share little about my home life with my coworkers—all but the closest, like Freddy. Buried deep somewhere in federal government human resource departments, of course, are full records about me and about Peggy, the boys, my mother—she lives in San Diego—and my three older brothers, one an insurance executive and two college professors. Those files will be relevant should benefits and retirement and beneficiary issues arise but like so much else in my life, I’ve done everything I humanly can to make sure facts about me are NTK.
    Need-to-know . . .
    To most of the people I come across in my job I’m single, childless, a resident of Old Town Alexandria and probably a widower with a tragic past (the stalker story I told Maree was true, though it didn’t end as dramatically as I suggested when making my point to the young woman). I’m a stiff federal employee who doesn’t tell jokes or smile much. I prefer to be called by the pretentious, one-syllable “Corte.”
    Gratefully, I was now drawn from these thoughts by a high-pitched shout of youthful joy from behind me. I rose, turning and smiling.
    My youngest, Sammy, had awakened and stood in the doorway. “Daddy, you’re home!” He was in SpongeBob pajamas and his hair was tousled and he looked adorably cute.
    I immediately set the wineglass down. I knew the boy was going for a running leap. Greeting me this way had become a recent tradition. And sure enough, bare feet thumping, he sped toward me, ignoring his mother’s laughing plea from the kitchen to be careful.
    But I encouraged him. “Sammy, come on, come on!” I called, sounding, I’m sure, as enthusiastic as I felt. And, as he took off into the air, I braced myself firmly and made absolutely certain that my son landed safe and unharmed in my waiting arms.

Acknowledgments
    Corte’s strategies involving game theory and his ideas about rational irrationality come largely from The New Yorker writer John Cassidy and his marvelous (and sobering) book, How Markets Fail.
    Many thanks to the folks who have made this book what it is: Sarah Hochman, Carolyn Mays, Deborah Schneider, Vivienne Schuster . . . and, as always, Madelyn, Jane and Julie.

CARTE BLANCHE
    JEFFERY DEAVER
    Available in hardcover from Simon & Schuster
    Turn the page for a preview of the latest 007 novel . . . Carte Blanche

Chapter 1
    HIS HAND ON the dead-man throttle, the driver of the Serbian Rail diesel felt the thrill he always did on this particular stretch of railway, heading north from Belgrade and approaching Novi Sad.
    This was the route of the famed Arlberg Orient Express, which ran from Greece through Belgrade and points north from the 1930s until the 1960s. Of course, he was not piloting a glistening Pacific 231 steam locomotive towing elegant mahogany-and-brass dining cars, suites and sleepers, where passengers floated upon vapors of luxury and anticipation. He commanded a battered old thing from America that tugged behind it a string of more or less dependable rolling stock packed snugly with mundane cargo.
    But still he felt the thrill of history in every vista that the journey offered, especially as they approached the river, his river.
    And yet he was ill at ease.
    Among the wagons bound for Budapest, containing coal, scrap metal, consumer products and timber, there was one that worried him greatly. It was loaded with drums of MIC—methyl isocyanate—to be used in Hungary in the manufacture of rubber.
    The driver—a round, balding man in a well-worn cap and stained overalls—had been briefed at length about this deadly chemical by his supervisor and some idiot from the Serbian Safety and Well-being Transportation Oversight Ministry. Some years ago this substance had killed eight thousand people in Bhopal, India, within a few days of leaking from a manufacturing plant there.
    He’d acknowledged the danger his cargo presented but, a veteran railway man and union member, he’d asked,