Shadowfires

course, neither car offered any hope of a lead.
    Sharp called the airport and spoke with the pilot of the Bell
JetRanger. Repairs on the chopper were nearly completed. It would be
fully fueled and at the deputy director's disposal within an hour.
    Avoiding the french fries because he believed that eating them was
begging for heart disease, ignoring the coleslaw because it had
turned sour last April, he peeled the crisp and greasy breading off
the fried chicken and ate just the meat, no fatty skin, while he made
a number of other calls to subordinates at the Geneplan labs in
Riverside and at several places in Orange County. More than sixty
agents were on the case. He could not speak to all of them, but by
contacting six, he got a detailed picture of where the various
aspects of the investigation were going.
    Where they were going was nowhere.
    Lots of questions, no answers. Where was Eric Leben? Where was Ben
Shadway? Why hadn't Rachael Leben been with Shadway at the cabin above Lake Arrowhead? Where had she gone? Where was she now? Was there any danger of Shadway and Mrs. Leben putting their hands on the kind of proof that could blow Wildcard wide open?
    Considering all of those urgent unanswered questions and the
humiliating failure of the expedition to Arrowhead, most other men
would have had little appetite, but with gusto Anson Sharp worked
through the last of the chicken and biscuits. And considering that he
had put his entire future at risk by virtually subordinating the
agency's goals in this case to his own personal vendetta against Ben Shadway, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to lie down and enjoy the deep and untroubled sleep of an innocent child. But as he turned back the covers on the queen-sized motel bed, he had no fear of insomnia. He was always able to sleep the moment he rested his head on the pillow, regardless of the circumstances.
    He was, after all, a man whose only passion was himself, whose
only commitment was to himself, whose only interests lay in those
things which impinged directly upon him. Therefore, taking care of
himself-eating well, sleeping, staying fit, and maintaining a good
appearance-was of paramount importance. Besides, truly believing
himself to be superior to other men and favored by fate, he could not
be devastated by any setback, for he was certain that bad luck and
disappointment were transitory conditions, insignificant anomalies in
his otherwise smooth and ever-ascending path to greatness and
acclaim.
    Before slipping into bed, Sharp sent Nelson Gosser to deliver some
instructions to Peake. Then he directed the motel switchboard to hold
all calls, pulled the drapes shut, took off his robe, fluffed his
pillow, and stretched out on the mattress.
    Staring at the dark ceiling, he thought of Shadway and laughed.
    Poor Shadway must be wondering how in the hell a man could be
court-martialed and dismissed from the Marine Corps with a
dishonorable discharge and still become a DSA agent. That was the
primary problem with good old pure-hearted Ben: He labored under the
misconception that some behavior was moral and some immoral, that
good deeds were rewarded and that, ultimately at least, bad deeds
brought misery down upon the heads of those committing them.
    But Anson Sharp knew there was no justice in the abstract, that
you had to fear retribution from others only if you allowed them to retaliate, and that altruism and fair play were not
automatically rewarded. He knew that morality and immorality were
meaningless concepts; your choices in life were not between good and
evil but between those things that would benefit you and those things
that would not. And only a fool would do anything that did not
benefit him or that benefited someone else more than it did him.
Looking out for number one was all that counted, and any decision or
action that benefited number one was good, regardless of its effect
on others.
    With his actions limited only by that extremely accommodating
philosophy, he'd found it relatively easy to erase the dishonorable discharge from his record. His respect for computers and knowledge of their capabilities were also invaluable.
    In Vietnam, Sharp had been able to steal large quantities of PX
and USO-canteen supplies with astonishing success because one of his
coconspirators-Corporal Eugene Dalmet-was a computer operator in the
division quartermaster's office. With the computer, he and Gene Dalmet were able