angles figured.’
‘I wish I had. But I haven’t.’
One of the desk-phones rang. Dunne listened in silence and his lips compressed as all trace of expression left his face. He nodded several times, said, ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ and replaced the receiver. He looked at Ryder in silence.
Without any particular inflection in tone, Ryder said: ‘I told you. I didn’t have all the angles figured. They’ve got Peggy?’
‘Yes.’
Jeff’s chair crashed over backwards. He was on his feet, face almost instantly drained of colour. ‘Peggy! What’s happened to Peggy?’
‘They’ve taken her. As hostage.’
‘Hostage! But you promised us last night — so much for your damned FBI!’
Dunne’s voice was quiet. ‘Two of the damned FBI, as you call them, were gunned down and are in hospital. One is on the critical list. Peggy, at least, is unharmed.’
‘Sit down, Jeff.’ Still no inflection in the voice. He looked at Dunne. ‘I’ve been told to lay off.’
‘Yes. Would you recognize the amethyst she wears on the little finger of her left hand?’ Dunne’s eyes were bitter. ‘Especially, they say, if it’s still attached to her little finger?’
Jeff had just straightened his chair. He was still standing, both hands holding the back bar as if he intended to crush it. His voice was husky. ‘Good God, Dad! Don’t just sit there. It’s not — it’s not human. It’s Peggy! Peggy! We can’t stay here. Let’s leave now. We can be there in no time.’
‘Easy, Jeff, easy.
‘San Diego.’
Ryder allowed an edge of coolness to creep into his voice. Deliberately, he allowed it. ‘You’ll never make a cop until you learn to think like one. Peggy, San Diego — they’re just tangled up on the outside strand of the spider’s web. We’ve got to find the spider at the heart of the web. Find it and kill it. And it’s not in San Diego.’
‘I’ll go myself, then! You can’t stop me. If you want to sit around —’
‘Shut up!’ Dunne’s voice was as deliberately harsh as Ryder’s had been cool, but at once he spoke more gently. ‘Look, Jeff, we know she’s your sister. Your only sister, your kid sister. But San Diego’s no village lying out in the sticks — it’s the second biggest city in the State. Hundreds of cops, scores of trained detectives, FBI — all experts in this sort of man-hunt. You’re not an expert, you don’t even know the town. There’s probably upwards of a hundred men trying to find her right now. What could you hope to do that they can’t?’ Dunne’s tone became even more reasonable, more persuasive. ‘Your father’s right. Wouldn’t you rather go kill the spider at the heart of the web?’
‘I suppose so.’ Jeff sat in his chair but the slight shaking of the hand showed that blind rage and fear for his sister still had him in their grip. ‘I suppose so. But why you, Dad? Why get at you through Peggy?’
Dunne answered. ‘Because they’re afraid of him. Because they know his reputation, his resolution, the fact that he never gives up. Most of all they’re afraid of the fact that he’s operating outside the law. LeWinter, Donahure, Hartman — three cogs in their machine, four if you count Raminoff — and he gets to them all in a matter of hours. A man operating inside the law would never have got to any of them.’
‘Yes, but how did they —’
‘Simple with hindsight,’ Ryder said. ‘I said that Donahure would never dare tell I — we — were in LeWinter’s place. But he told whoever ordered him to fix the tap. Now that it’s too late I can see that Donahure is far too dumb to think of fixing a tap himself.’
‘Who’s the whoever?’
‘Just a voice on the phone, most likely. A link man. A link man to Morro. And I call Donahure dumb. What does that make me?’ He lit a Gauloise and gazed at the drifting smoke. ‘Good old Sergeant Ryder. All the angles figured.’
CHAPTER SIX
Golden mornings are far from rare in the Golden State and this was one of them, still and clear and beautiful, the sun already hot in a deep-blue sky bereft of cloud. The view from the Sierras across the mist-streaked San Joaquin Valley to the sunlit peaks and valleys of the Coastal Range was quite breath-takingly lovely, a vista to warm the hearts of all but the very sick, the very near-sighted, the irredeemably misanthropical and, in this particular instance, those who were held prisoner behind the grim walls of the Adlerheim. In the last case, additionally, it had to be admitted that the view from the western battlement, high above the courtyard, was marred, psychologically if not actually, by the triple-stranded barbed wire fence with its further unseen deterrent of 2000 volts.
Susan Ryder felt no uplift of the heart whatsoever. Nothing could ever make her anything less than beautiful, but she was pale and tired and the dusky blueness under her lower lids had not come from any bottle of eye- shadow. She had not slept except for a brief fifteen-minute period during the night from which she had woken with the profound conviction that something was far wrong, something more terrible than even their incarceration in that dreadful place. Susan, whose mother had been a Scot, had often, and only half-jokingly, claimed that she had the first sight, as distinct from the legendary second sight, inasmuch as she knew that something, somewhere, was terribly wrong at the moment it was happening and not that it was about to happen at some future time. She had awoken, in fact, at the moment when her daughter’s two FBI guards had been gunned down in San Diego. A heaviness of heart is as much a physical as a mental sensation, and she was at a loss to account for it. So much, she thought morosely, for her reputation as the cheerful, smiling extrovert, the sun who lit up any company in which she happened to find herself. She would have given the world to have a hand touch her arm and find herself looking into the infinitely reassuring face of her husband, to feel his rocklike presence by her side.
A hand did touch her arm then took it. It was Julie Johnson. Her eyes were dulled and tinged with red as if she had spent a goodly part of the night ensconced behind the wet bar so thoughtfully provided by Morro. Susan put an arm round the girl’s slender shoulders and held her. Neither said anything. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.
They were the only two on the battlements. Six of the other hostages were wandering, apparently aimlessly, around the courtyard, none speaking to any of the others. It could have been that each wished to be alone with his or her personal thoughts or that they were only now beginning to appreciate the predicament in which they found themselves: on the other hand the inhibitory and intimidatory effects of those bleak walls were sufficient to stifle the normal morning courtesies of even the most gregarious.
The ringing of the bell from the door of the great hall came almost as a relief. Susan and Julie made their way down the stone steps with care — there was no guard-rail — and joined the others at one of the long tables where breakfast was being served. It was a first-class meal that would have done justice to any hotel of good standing, but apart from Dr Healey and Dr Bramwell, who ate with a gusto becoming guests of long standing, the others did no more than sip some coffee and push pieces of toast around. In atmosphere, it was the early morning equivalent of the Last Supper.
They had just finished what most of them hadn’t even started when Morro and Dubois entered, smiling, affable, courteous, freely bestowing good-mornings and hopes that they had all spent the night in peaceful and relaxing slumber. This over, Morro lifted a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I observe that two of our new guests, Professor Burnett and Dr Schmidt, are absent. Achmed’ — this to one of the white-robed acolytes — ‘ask them if they would be good enough to join us.’
Which, after five minutes, the two nuclear scientists did. Their clothes were crumpled as if they had slept in them, which, in fact, was what they had done. They had unshaven faces and what was known to the trade as ‘tartan eyes’ — for which Morro had only himself to blame in having left refreshments so freely available in their suites. In fairness, he was probably not to know that the awesome scientific reputations of the two physicists from San Diego and UCLA were matched only by their awesome reputations in the field of bacchanalian conviviality.
Morro allowed a decent interval to elapse then said: ‘Just one small matter. I would like you all to sign your names. If you would be so good, Abraham?’
Dubois nodded amiably, picked up a sheaf of papers and went round the table, laying a typed letter, typed
