“You think this is the only time the president has murdered someone? She sends drones out every day to kill people; you’re a Muslim, you should know that. Look, this whole thing needs to go away.” She waved her cigarette, trailing smoke. “And you need to tell me who else is aware of this intrusion.”

Farid was shaking his head and wishing he had a second cigarette going. “No, no, no. There’s more going on here. I’m all up in the AFGC system now. Those guys are deep into some serious nanotech.”

He saw a flicker on her face at that.

“They’re building nano robots. Ever heard of the gray goo?”

“Sounds like the name of a band.”

He stared hard at her. What she’d said sounded like a joke, but her eyes weren’t on the same page as her tone. He didn’t know her. She was someone supposedly sent from people up the food chain in Anonymous, but how did he know that for sure?

Now she was telling him to walk away? Destroy data? Give up names?

“I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore,” Farid said.

“What’s the matter? Getting paranoid? Walk another block with me. Let’s get this straightened out.”

“What’s a block from here?” Farid demanded.

“Okay, just stay where you are,” she said in a very different voice. A cop voice: ordering and controlling.

Suddenly Farid was aware of two men moving swiftly up the street behind him. A black sedan roared up and hit its brakes.

His next move was purely instinctive. He was standing just outside a bookstore and coffee shop. He ran for the door. The woman cursed and leapt after him, but he caught a break, a shopper emerging through the narrow door let him in and unintentionally blocked the woman’s path.

It was just a few seconds, but it was enough.

He glanced around frantically, looking for a way out, a weapon, a savior, something. The coffee shop was full of the usual latte-sipping, laptop-tapping crowd.

“Listen to me! Everyone! My name is Farid Berbera. I’m a Lebanese citizen with diplomatic immunity. That woman is trying to kill me.”

He pointed a finger at the woman with two men at her back, all now clearly revealed as security types.

“Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation is creating nano robots. They have video from inside the president’s eyes as she murdered her husband!”

He didn’t expect to be believed; he barely believed it himself. But he expected to be heard, and Tweeted and texted.

“They’re trying to stop us from finding out,” Farid yelled. He held his hands up in the air, the universal language of helplessness.

The black woman no longer carrying the Bob Marley backpack hesitated, nonplussed, and then Farid saw the reason for her hesitation: a Washington DC cop was picking up a coffee to go and holding a small bag of some sort of pastry.

“Officer! Officer! You have to help me, I have diplomatic immunity!” He fumbled in his pocket and out came the passport, the blessed diplomatic passport with that lovely word, Diplomatic, in big, gold-embossed letters. The policeman would have seen passports like that many times before.

“People are watching!” Farid warned. “People are watching! Farid Berbera, Lebanese Embassy.” People were watching, but they were not on his side. So he said the thing he would never before have imagined saying. “I’m part of Anonymous. They’re trying to stop me before I can tell what I know.”

The woman and her two agents moved then, grim-faced, but the policeman was setting down his coffee and pastry and said, “Hold up, just a second there. This is my beat. I’m calling this in.”

“You are not calling it in,” the woman snapped.

“What are you, FBI? Let me see your shield,” the policeman said, and a voice in the crowd said, “Hell yeah.”

Phone cameras were coming out.

“This man is a dangerous criminal,” the woman said. “We are federal officers. Put down those cameras and—”

“Show us your badge,” a second voice yelled.

The policeman was definitely on guard now, torn between his instinctive need to control the rowdiness and an unfamiliar sensation of having people actually take his side.

“Just show some ID, ma’am. If you’re feds, we’ll work it out.” He was preparing to call it in but a bit perplexed at what code would apply. Was this a 10-31? Or more of a 10-34?

“We’re with the ETA,” the woman said. She flipped her ID open.

The policeman frowned. “Sorry, I’m not up on all the—”

“Emerging Technology Agency.”

The policeman blinked. Stared. Laughed. “You gotta be pulling my leg.”

“They’re trying to stop me from telling what I know. AFGC. Nanotech. Video of Falkenhym killing her husband. Gray goo scenario.” Farid was just repeating it over and over, frantically, in a loop, as the cop confronted the feds, and the store denizens blasted the entire scene out over the Internet. “Farid Berbera. Anonymous. Lebanese diplomat.”

“Lady,” the cop said, “in this city I got to put up with FBI, Secret Service, DEA, but I have surely never heard of an ETA, and you aren’t arresting—”

BANG!

It wasn’t until the explosion that Farid even noticed the gun in the woman’s hand.

The police officer was wearing a Kevlar vest. It did not protect his face. Or stop the bullet from punching a hole out the back of his neck, spraying bits of spine and blood all over the coffee counter.