Van knew for a fact that the KH-13 was a thirteen-billion-dollar boondoggle that had been budgeted for eight. Van waved his hand around the junk-towering walls of his tiny office. It was densely crowded with hopeful toys of the infowar trade: solar-powered outdoor spycams, shirt-pocket-sized anthrax sniffers, biometric access gizmos that stared into eyeballs and sucked users’ thumbs. Ninety percent of them were useless, but someone responsible had to look at them and throw them away. "As you can see, we have other proj-ects here, more in line with our core tasking." Had he really just said "core tasking"? The sense of fear and threat that poured off the sinister Hickok was really jazzing him up.