The Blue Nowhere

theroom. 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 assumed 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 assumed 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. That ’s what he got from me.
    Then a guard stepped into the room and told them visiting hours were over. 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 visitors’ door, the guard led Wyatt Gillette back into the dim corridor toward his cell, where his machine awaited.

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    I n 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 assume 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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    A s one’s career in this business lengthens so does the list of those for whom a novelist feels undying gratitude 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 gratitude 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: