the Third Twin (1996)

boldness and panache. However, there was no stylish way to sneak into someone else’s room and search it.

He checked his watch. The lab would be closed now. Most of his colleagues had left, heading for their suburban homes or for the bar of the Faculty Club. This was as good a moment as any. There was no time when the building was guaranteed to be empty; scientists worked whenever the mood took them. If he were seen, he would have to brazen it out.

He left his office, went down the stairs, and walked along the corridor to Jeannie’s door. There was no one around. He swiped the card through the card reader and her door opened. He stepped inside, switched on the lights, and closed the door behind him.

It was the smallest office in the building. In fact it had been a storeroom, but Sophie Chapple had maliciously insisted it become Jeannie’s office, on the spurious grounds that a bigger room was needed to store the boxes of printed questionnaires the department used. It was a narrow room with a small window. However, Jeannie had livened it up with two wooden chairs painted bright red, a spindly palm in a pot, and a reproduction of a Picasso etching, a bullfight in vivid shades of yellow and orange.

He picked up the framed picture on her desk. It was a black-and-white photograph of a good-looking man with sideburns and a wide tie, and a young woman with a determined expression: Jeannie’s parents in the seventies, he guessed. Otherwise her desk was completely clear. Tidy girl.

He sat down and switched on her computer. While it was booting up he went through her drawers. The top one contained ballpoints and scratch pads. In another he found a box of tampons and a pair of panty hose in an unopened packet. Berrington hated panty hose. He cherished adolescent memories of garter belts and stockings with seams. Panty hose were unhealthy, too, like nylon Jockey shorts. If President Proust made him surgeon general, he planned to put a health warning on all panty hose. The next drawer contained a hand mirror and a brush with some of Jeannie’s long dark hair caught in its bristles; the last, a pocket dictionary and a paperback book called A Thousand Acres. No secrets so far.

Her menu came up on screen. He picked up her mouse and clicked on Calendar. Her appointments were predictable: lectures and classes, laboratory time, tennis games, dates for drinks and movies. She was going to Oriole Park at Camden Yards to watch the ball game on Saturday; Ted Ransome and his wife were having her over to brunch on Sunday; her car was due to be serviced on Monday. There was no entry that said “Scan medical files of Acme Insurance.” Her to-do list was equally mundane: “Buy vitamins, call Ghita, Lisa birthday gift, check modem.”

He exited the diary and began to look through her files. She had masses of statistics on spreadsheets. Her word-processing files were smaller: some correspondence, designs for questionnaires, a draft of an article. Using the Find feature, he searched her entire WP directory for the word “database.” It came up several times in the article and again in file copies of three outgoing letters, but none of the references told him where she planned to use her search engine next. “Come on,” he said aloud, “there has to be something, for God’s sake.”

She had a filing cabinet, but there was not much in it; she had been here only a few weeks. After a year or two it would be stuffed full of completed questionnaires, the raw data of psychological research. Now she had a few incoming letters in one file, departmental memos in another, photocopies of articles in a third.

In an otherwise empty cupboard he found, facedown, a framed picture of Jeannie with a tall, bearded man, both of them on bicycles beside a lake. Berrington inferred a love affair that had ended.

He now felt even more worried. This was the room of an organized person, the type who planned ahead. She filed her incoming letters and kept copies of everything she sent out. There ought to be evidence here of what she was going to do next. She had no reason to be secretive about it; until today there had been no suggestion that she had anything to be ashamed of. She must be planning another database sweep. The only possible explanation for the absence of clues was that she had made the arrangements by phone or in person, perhaps with someone who was a close friend. And if that were the case he might not be able to find out anything about it by searching her room.

He heard a footstep in the corridor outside, and he tensed. There was a click as a card was passed through the card reader. Berrington stared helplessly at the door. There was nothing he could do: he was caught red- handed, sitting at her desk, with her computer on. He could not pretend to have wandered in here by accident.

The door opened. He expected to see Jeannie, but in fact it was a security guard.

The man knew him. “Oh, hi, Professor,” the guard said. “I saw the light on, so I thought I’d check. Dr. Ferrami usually keeps her door open when she’s here.”

Berrington struggled not to blush. “That’s quite all right,” he said. Never apologize, never explain. “I’ll be sure to close the door when I’m through here.”

“Great.”

The guard stood silent, waiting for an explanation. Berrington clamped his jaw shut. Eventually the man said: “Well, good night, Professor.”

“Good night.”

The guard left.

Berrington relaxed. No problem.

He checked that her modem was switched on, then clicked on America Online and accessed her mailbox. Her terminal was programmed to give her password automatically. She had three pieces of mail. He downloaded them all. The first was a notice about increased prices for using the Internet. The second came from the University of Minnesota and read:

I’ll be in Baltimore on Friday and would like to have a drink with you for old times’ sake. Love, Will

Berrington wondered if Will was the bearded guy in the bike picture. He threw it out and opened the third letter. It electrified him.

You’ll be relieved to know that I’m running your scan on our fingerprint file tonight. Call me. Ghita.

It was from the FBI.

“Son of a bitch,” Berrington whispered. “This will kill us.”

26

BERRINGTON WAS AFRAID TO TALK ON THE PHONE ABOUT Jeannie and the FBI fingerprint file: So many telephone calls were monitored by intelligence agencies. Nowadays the surveillance was done by computers programmed to listen for key words and phrases. If someone said “plutonium” or “heroin” or “kill the president,” the computer would tape the conversation and alert a human listener. The last thing Berrington needed was some CIA eavesdropper wondering why Senator Proust was so interested in FBI fingerprint files.

So he got in his silver Lincoln Town Car and drove at ninety miles an hour on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. He often broke the speed limit In fact, he was impatient with all kinds of rules. It was a contradiction in him, he recognized that. He hated peace marchers and drug takers, homosexuals and feminists and rock musicians and all nonconformists who flouted American traditions. Yet at the same time he resented anyone who tried to tell him where to park his car or how much to pay his employees or how many fire extinguishers to put in his laboratory.

As he drove, he wondered about Jim Proust’s contacts in the intelligence community. Were they just a bunch of old soldiers who sat around telling stories about how they had blackmailed antiwar protesters and assassinated South American presidents? Or were they still at the cutting edge? Did they still help one another, like the Mafia, and regard the return of a favor as an almost religious obligation? Or were those days over? It was a long time since Jim had left the CIA; even he might not know.

It was late, but Jim was waiting for Berrington at his office in the Capitol building. “What the hell has happened that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?” he said.

“She’s about to run her computer program on the FBI’s fingerprint file.”