The light in the auxiliary campaign headquarters on Sullivan Street was always the color of a wet sidewalk.
It was a basement room, rented under a secondary trade name that didn't appear on the federal disclosure forms, filtered through two layers of frosted wire-glass that looked out onto the rear garbage chute of a commercial bakery.
Sophia Lang sat at the unvarnished pine table, her fingers clicking with a light, rhythmic cadence against the plastic casing of her private terminal. She wasn't using the state senate network. The high-security token she had been issued three weeks before the Greenwich engagement gala lay flat on the green blotter beside her saucer, its internal battery dead, its cryptographic indicator light dark.
She reached out, her index finger tracing the smooth, u
