The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, Manhattan Division, at ten minutes before five on a Friday afternoon, a time chosen so that the filing would attract as little attention as possible from the press. A "late Friday dump." The lawyer who signed it was a noted litigator named Wilson Rush, a senior partner with Scully & Pershing, and throughout the day he had telephoned the clerk to make sure it would be properly received and docketed before the court closed for the week. Like all cases, it was filed electronically. No one from the firm was required to walk into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse on Pearl Street and hand over a thick pile of papers to commence the action. Of the forty or so civil lawsuits filed that day in the Southern District, it was by far the most serious, most complex, and most anticipated. The parties involved had been feuding for years, and while much of their bickering had been well reported, most of the issues were too sensitive to bare in public. The Pentagon, many senior members of Congress, and even the White House had worked diligently to prevent litigation, but all efforts had failed. The next battle in the war had begun, and no one expected a quick resolution. The parties and their lawyers would fight with bare knuckles for years as the dispute crept its way through the federal judiciary and eventually landed at the Supreme Court for a final ruling.

The clerk, upon receiving the complaint, quickly rerouted it to a secure bin to prevent its contents from being exposed. This procedure was extremely rare and had been ordered by the chief district judge. A bare-bones summary of the lawsuit was ready and available to the press. It had been prepared under the direction of Mr. Rush, and it, too, had been approved by the judge.

The plaintiff was Trylon Aeronautics, a well-known defense contractor based in New York, a privately held company that had been designing and building military aircraft for four decades. The defendant was Bartin Dynamics, a publicly held defense contractor based in Bethesda, Maryland. Bartin averaged about $15 billion a year in government contracts, a sum that represented 95 percent of its annual revenue. Bartin used different lawyers for its different needs, but for the biggest fights it was protected by the Wall Street firm of Agee, Poe & Epps.

Scully & Pershing currently had twenty-one hundred lawyers and claimed to be the largest firm in the world. Agee, Poe & Epps had two hundred fewer lawyers but boasted of more offices around the world; thus, it claimed to be the largest. Each firm spent far too much time jockeying with the other and boasting of its size, power, prestige, billings, partner profiles, and anything else that might jack up its rankings.

The core of the dispute was the latest Pentagon boondoggle to build the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber, a space-age aircraft that had been dreamed about for decades and was now closer to becoming a reality. Five years earlier, the Air Force had launched a contest among its top contractors to design the B-10, a sleek bomber that would replace the aging fleet of B-52s and B-22s and serve the military through the year 2060. Lockheed, the largest defense contractor, was the expected front-runner in the competition, but it was quickly outpaced by a joint venture put together by Trylon and Bartin. A consortium of foreign companies  -  British, French, and Israeli  -  had smaller roles in the joint venture.

The prize was enormous. The Air Force would pay the winner $10 billion up front to develop the advanced technologies and build a prototype, and then contract for the procurement of 250 to 450 B-10s over the next thirty years. At an estimated $800 billion, the contract would be the richest in the Pentagon's history. The anticipated cost overruns were beyond calculation.

The Trylon-Bartin design was astounding. Their B-10 could take off from a base in the United States with a payload the same size as a B-52, fly at seventy-six hundred miles per hour, or Mach 10, and deliver its payload on the other side of the world in an hour, at a speed and from an altitude that would defy all current and foreseen defensive measures. After delivery of whatever it happened to be hauling, the B-10 could return to its home base without refueling either in flight or on the ground. The aircraft would literally skip along the edge of the atmosphere. After ascending to an altitude of 130,000 feet, just outside the stratosphere, the B-10 would turn off its engines and float back to the surface of the atmosphere. Once there, its air-breathing engines would kick on and lift the plane back to 130,000 feet. This procedure, a skipping motion much like that of a flat rock bouncing across still water, would be repeated until the aircraft arrived at its target. A bombing run that originated in Arizona and ended in Asia would require about thirty skips with the B-10 popping through the atmosphere once every ninety seconds. Because the engines would be used intermittently, significantly smaller amounts of fuel would be required. And, by leaving the atmosphere and venturing into cold space, the heat buildup would be dissipated.

After three years of intense and often frantic research and design, the Air Force announced that it had selected the Trylon-Bartin design. This was done with as little fanfare as possible since the dollar amounts were staggering, the country was fighting two wars, and the Pentagon decided it would not be wise to broadcast such an ambitious procurement plan. The Air Force tried its best to downplay the B-10 program, but it was a waste of time. As soon as the winner was announced, fighting erupted on all fronts.

Lockheed roared back with its senators and lobbyists and lawyers. Trylon and Bartin, historically fierce competitors, began sniping almost immediately. The prospect of that much money splintered any notion of cooperation. Each corralled its politicians and lobbyists and joined the fight for a bigger piece of the pork. The British, French, and Israelis eased to the sidelines but certainly did not go away.

Both Trylon and Bartin claimed ownership of the design and the technologies. Efforts to mediate succeeded, then failed. Lockheed loomed in the background, waiting. The Pentagon threatened to yank the contract and have another contest. Congressmen held hearings. Governors wanted jobs and economic development. Journalists wrote long pieces in magazines. Waste and watchdog groups railed against the B-10 as if it were a shuttle to Mars.

And the lawyers quietly prepared for litigation.

TWO HOURS AFTER the lawsuit was filed, Kyle saw it posted on the federal court's Web site. He was at his desk in his office at the Yale Law Journal, editing a lengthy article on his computer. For three weeks now he had been checking the filings in all the federal courts in New York, as well as the state courts. During their first wretched session, Bennie had mentioned the upcoming filing of a massive lawsuit in New York, the one that Kyle was now expected to infiltrate. In meetings since then, Kyle had repeatedly prodded Bennie for information about the lawsuit, but each inquiry had been met with a dismissive "We'll talk about it later."

Oddly, the online posting of the lawsuit revealed nothing but its title and the name, address, law firm, and bar certification number of Wilson Rush. The word "SECURE" was inserted after the title, and Kyle was unable to access the contents of the complaint. In the Southern District of New York, no other case filed in the past three weeks had been locked away in such a manner.

Red flags began to wave.

He searched Agee, Poe & Epps and studied their exhaustive list of corporate clients. The firm had represented Bartin Dynamics since the 1980s.

Kyle forgot about the law journal work piled on his desk and around his chair, and lost himself on the Internet. A search of Trylon soon revealed its B-10 HyperSonic Bomber project and all the problems it had caused, and, evidently, was still creating.

Kyle closed the door of his small office and checked the printer for paper. It was almost eight on Friday night, and though the law journal types were known for their odd hours, the crew had cleared out for spring break. He printed all available corporate info on Trylon and Bartin, then added more paper. There were several dozen newspaper and magazine articles on the B-10 fiasco. He printed them all and began reading the most serious ones.

He found a hundred defense and military Web sites, and on one for futuristic warfare there were pages of background on the B-10. He checked prior court filings to see how often Scully & Pershing had sued on behalf of or defended Trylon, and did the same for Agee, Poe & Epps and Bartin. On into the night he dug and dug, and the thicker his file became, the worse he felt.

There was a chance he was chasing the wrong lawsuit. He couldn't know for sure until Bennie confirmed it. But there was little doubt. The timing was on schedule. The law firms were in place.

Billions were at stake, just as Bennie had said. Two corporations that were old competitors. Two law firms that hated each other.

Military secrets. Stolen technology. Corporate espionage. Foreign intelligence. Threats of litigation and even criminal prosecution. It was one monumental, sordid mess, and now he, Kyle McAvoy, was expected to insert himself into the fray.

In recent weeks, he had often speculated about what type of case was worth the high cost of such elaborate espionage. Two corporate rivals fighting over a pot of gold could describe any number of disputes. Perhaps it was an antitrust case, or a patent dispute, or a couple of drug companies brawling over the latest obesity pill. The worst-case scenario was the one he had just been handed  -  a gold-plated Pentagon procurement program complete with secret technologies, warring politicians, ruthless executives, and so on. The list was long and disheartening.

Why couldn't he just go back to York and practice law with his father?

At 1:00 a.m., he stuffed his notebooks into his backpack and for a few seconds went through the fruitless ritual of straightening his desk. He looked around, turned off the light, locked his door, and again realized that any decent operative could intrude whenever he wanted. He felt certain Bennie and his thugs had been there, probably with bugs and wires and mikes and other crap that Kyle tried not to think about.

And he was sure they were watching. In spite of his demands that Bennie leave him alone, Kyle knew they were following him. He'd seen them several times. They were good, but they had made a few mistakes. The challenge, he told himself repeatedly, was to act as though he had no clue that they were watching. Just play the role of a naive, unconcerned college kid hauling a backpack around campus and looking at girls. He never changed his routines, or his routes, or parking lots. Same spot for lunch almost every day. Same coffee shop where he met Olivia occasionally after class. He was either at the law school or at his apartment, with few diversions along the way. And because his habits remained the same, so did those of his shadows. They became lazy because he was such an easy target. Kyle, the innocent, lulled them to sleep, and when they nodded off, he caught them. One face he'd seen three times already, a young ruddy face with different eyeglasses and a mustache that came and went.

At a used bookstore near the campus, Kyle began buying old paperback spy novels for a dollar each. He bought them one at a time, kept the current one in his backpack, and when he finished, he tossed it in the wastebasket at the law school and bought another.

He assumed that none of his communications were confidential. His cell phone and laptop were compromised, he was certain. He increased, slightly, his e-mails to Joey Bernardo, Alan Strock, and Baxter Tate, but all messages were quick howdies with almost no substance. He did the same for other Beta brothers, all under the guise of encouraging his buddies to do a better job of keeping in touch. He called each of them once a week and talked sports and school and careers.

If Bennie was in fact listening, he heard not one word to indicate Kyle was even remotely suspicious.

Kyle convinced himself that to survive the next seven years, he must learn to think and act like his adversaries. There was a way out. Somewhere.

BENNIE WAS BACK in town. They met for a sandwich on Saturday at a pita place north of town, away from campus. He had promised to drop in every other week or so throughout the spring, until Kyle graduated in May. Kyle had asked why this was necessary. Bennie had offered some meaningless blather about maintaining contact.

In each of their subsequent meetings, Bennie's personality had softened slightly. He would always be the no-nonsense hard-ass handler with a mission, but he was acting as though he wanted their time together to be somewhat pleasant. After all, they would spend hours together, he said, and this always evoked a frown from Kyle, who wanted no part of any pleasant chitchat.

"Any plans for spring break?" Bennie asked as they unwrapped their sandwiches.

"Work," Kyle said. The break had started the day before, and half of Yale was now somewhere in southern Florida.

"Come on. Your last spring break and you're not headed for the beach?"

"Nope. I'll be in New York next week looking for an apartment."

Bennie looked surprised and said, "We can help."

"We've had this conversation, Bennie. I don't need your help."

Both took enormous bites and chewed in silence. Finally, Kyle asked, "Any news on the lawsuit?"

A quick dismissive nod. Nothing.

"Has it been filed yet?" Kyle asked. "Why can't you tell me about it?"

Bennie cleared his throat and sipped his water. "Next week. Let's meet next week when you're in New York, and I'll walk you through the lawsuit."

"Can't wait."

Another hefty bite and they chewed for a while.

"When do you take the bar exam?" Bennie asked.

"July."

"Where?"

"New York. Somewhere in Manhattan. It's not something I'm looking forward to."

"You'll do fine. When do you get the results?"

Bennie knew the dates and places the exam was given in New York. He knew when the results were posted online. He knew what happened to young associates if they flunked the bar. He knew everything.

"Early November. Did you go to law school?"

A smile, almost a chuckle. "Oh, no. I've always tried to avoid lawyers. Sometimes, though, well, that's what the job requires."

Kyle listened carefully for the accent. It tended to come and go. He thought of the Israelis and their talent for languages, especially among the Mossad and the military.

Not for the first time, he wondered whom he would be spying for and against.

THEY MET five days later at the Ritz-Carlton in lower Manhattan. Kyle asked Bennie if he had an office in the city, or whether he did all of his work in hotel suites. There was no response. Before the meeting, Kyle had looked at four apartments, all in SoHo and Tribeca. The cheapest was $4,200 a month for an eight-hundred-square-foot walk-up, and the most expensive was $6,500 a month for a thousand square feet in a renovated warehouse. Whatever the rent, Kyle would be handling it himself because he did not want a roommate. His life would be complicated enough without the strains of living with someone else. And besides, Bennie did not like the idea of a roommate.

Bennie and company had followed Kyle and the broker around lower Manhattan and knew precisely where the apartments were located. By the time Kyle arrived at the hotel, operatives were calling the same realtor, inquiring about the apartments, and making plans to visit them. Kyle would indeed live where he chose, but the place would be infested by the time he moved in.

Bennie had some thick files on the small table in the suite. "The lawsuit was filed last Friday," he began, "in federal court here in Manhattan. The plaintiff is a company called Trylon Aeronautics. The defendant is a company called Bartin Dynamics."

Kyle absorbed this with no expression. His file on the case and the litigants now comprised three four-inch spiral notebooks, over two thousand pages, and was growing by the day. He was sure he didn't know as much as his pal Bennie here, but he already knew a hell of a lot.

And Bennie knew he knew. From his comfortable office on Broad Street, Bennie and his tech guys kept close tabs on Kyle's laptop and his desk computer in his office at the law journal. They monitored nonstop, and when Kyle opened his laptop in his apartment to send a note to a professor, Bennie knew it. When he was working and editing a case note, Bennie knew it. And when he was monitoring the court filings in New York and digging through the dirt on Trylon and Bartin, Bennie knew it.

Sit there and play dumb, son. I'll play along, too. You're smart as hell, but you're too stupid to realize you're in way over your head.