deserted him overnight to live with a Greek shipping magnate, was still his wife. He had never bothered with a divorce.
It was a subject his staff never brought up. The only person he occasionally talked to about it was Paula. You're an idiot even to contemplate the idea, he told himself.
He thought of Philip, enamoured with Eve. Maggie Mayfield would be a much better choice but he had no intention of interfering. Philip must make his own decision, for better or worse.
Marchat. He couldn't get the name out of his head. He still thought that Marchat could be the key to solving the mystery. If they ever found Marchat. If he was still alive.
'Hello, Tweed,' Professor Grogarty greeted him in his high-pitched croaky voice. 'Grab a chair, if you can find one unoccupied. Care for a Scotch? No? I permit myself one each day after eleven in the morning. Never a minute before…'
Tweed took off his coat, looked round the room, which had once been a consultant's. Armchairs everywhere, the covering worn and faded, and all piled up with books and files of papers. He removed a pile of newspapers, placed them carefully on the floor.
'Bet you wonder how I find anything,' Grogarty croaked. 'Well, I can lay my hand on a specific sheet of statistics, go to it within seconds. Cheers! Sorry you won't join me with a Scotch…'
Tweed was sitting in an armchair, studying his host. He never ceased to be fascinated by his extraordinary personality, his appearance.
Grogarty was a bulky man, six feet tall with wide, stooped shoulders. He had a large head, a mop of unruly grey hair, thick brows, pouches under intensely blue eyes, and a prominent hooked nose on which perched a pair of pince-nez at a slanted angle – so one eye peered through the lens while the other gleamed over the top of the second lens. His mouth was broad and below it he had a couple of jowls.
'You always come to me with a problem, Tweed, and I am thinking you have done so today. Why not surprise me sometime and drop in for a chat and a tot? All right, what is it?'
With his free hand he shoved books off a chair onto the floor and sat down.
'Now your filing system's gone to pot,' Tweed chaffed him.
'No it hasn't.' Grogarty lowered his bulk into the chair, sat upright. 'There are twelve books down on the carpet and I can see from here which is which. I am ready, sir!'
'You've heard, I'm sure, that twenty top-flight scientists have gone missing. Despite the weird fact that the news has been kept out of the newspapers – even in the States, which is quite something.'
'I have indeed heard. Most sinister. I called Joe Katz, astrophysics, in South Carolina. A stranger told me he owned the house, that Mr Katz had gone to live abroad. Indeed, a top man. Katz had invented a system whereby a satellite in orbit two hundred miles up can be guided by the star constellations.'
'He's on this list of everyone missing – with a note of his particular speciality.'
Grogarty took the folder Tweed had handed him, opened it, adjusted his nose clip so both eyes peered through a lens and ran down the list in a matter of seconds. He gave Tweed back the folder. The speed with which he could grasp every single item on a close-packed sheet of typing never ceased to astonish Tweed. Grogarty took another sip.
'You're looking for a pattern, something which would make these sixteen men and four women a team, I would suspect.'
'You've got it first time. I've looked at that list for hours and sense something, but I'm damned if I know what it is.' Tweed confessed.
'There is something, I agree.' Grogarty stared at the moulded ceiling as though the answer were there. 'Of course it's communications. Global. Worldwide. The system upon which we are becoming far too dangerously dependent. The Internet. The information superhighway, a stupid phrase invented by ignorant journalists. But this list is more than that.'
'What is it then?' Tweed prodded.
'Give me time, my friend.' Grogarty was still gazing at the ceiling. Somehow he managed to sip more Scotch with his head bent back. 'One man in that list is the key player in the game. Would that I could identify which name triggered something off at the back of my mind.'
Tweed kept silent. He glanced round the large room which overlooked Harley Street. The furniture pushed against the walls consisted of genuine antiques. The framed pictures on the walls were priceless. One was a Gauguin. Grogarty was a wealthy man.
No one would have thought so from the way he dressed. He wore an old grey cardigan with loose skeins of wool at the hem and two buttons missing, a third ready to join its lost fellows. His blue check shirt was open at the thick neck and the collar was crumpled. His fawn trousers had not seen a trouser press for years.
'Odd that Irina Krivitsky, the world's greatest authority on lasers and their adaptation to controlling satellites, should be on that list,' Grogarty said suddenly. 'You will excuse me if I talk to you while I'm thinking.'
Tweed stared quizzically at Grogarty. He knew that he sometimes adopted this weird mental technique when he was working on a tough problem. One part of his brain would converse while another part concentrated furiously on the problem he was wrestling with.
'You can talk back to me.' his host reminded Tweed. 'I won't be distracted. Indeed, rather the reverse.'
'What's odd about this Irina Krivitsky?' Tweed asked.
'The last I heard of her – by devious means and routes – was that she was working in one of the secret Russian laboratories behind the Ural Mountains in Siberia…'
Grogarty paused. He shook his head and his pince-nez went askew again over the bridge of his nose. He didn't seem to notice but he was nodding to himself. Something was coming.
'Go on.' said Tweed.
'Those hidden laboratories – buried underground, beneath the tundra – can't be spotted by Yank satellites from the air. They are as heavily guarded as they'd have been in Stalin's time. So why should they let her leave to work outside Russia?'
'If she is outside Russia.' Tweed pointed out.
'Oh, but she must be. Several of the names on your list would never agree to cross the frontier into Russia, let alone work there.'
'They may have been kidnapped.' Tweed suggested.
'Oh, but they weren't. Reynolds, an American, talked to me just before he disappeared. Over the phone. Said he'd received an offer he couldn't refuse so he was leaving his company in California and taking his wife with him. He said it was rather secret but Ed never could keep a secret.'
'This is all science fiction to me…' Tweed began.
'No! It isn't. Science is advancing by leaps and bounds. That's what worries me. The momentum is insane. Lord knows where we're going to end up.'
'We'll find out in due course.'
He never finished his sentence. Grogarty suddenly seemed to wake up, as though coming out of a trance.
'Ed Reynolds!' he almost shouted. 'Ed Reynolds – he's the key player. His speciality is sabotage of the whole communications network.'
'Sabotage?'
Tweed's nerves were tingling already for another reason. But the word made him sit on the edge of his chair. His host looked excited.
'I mean he worked on techniques which could sabotage world communications, throw the world into chaos. His objective was to find means of countering any such techniques. Like a doctor working on a vaccine to protect people against a certain disease. Do you understand me now?'
'Yes. But does that link up with the other scientists?'
'Yes, it does. If the real secret of the research going on somewhere is sabotage.'
'That's it, then?'
'That's it,' Grogarty agreed, standing up. 'Nice to see you, Tweed. Better get cracking – this thing is global. May be a complete change in the balance of world power.'
