envelope and pen before each of the ten hostages.
‘What the devil is the meaning of this, you witless bastard?’ The speaker was, inevitably, Professor Burnett, his legendary ill-temper understandably exacerbated by a monumental hangover. ‘This is a copy of the letter I wrote my wife last night.’
‘Word for word, I assure you. Just sign it.’
‘I’ll be damned if I will.’
‘It’s a matter of utter indifference to me,’ Morrow said. ‘Asking you to write those letters was purely a courtesy gesture to enable you to assure your loved ones that you are safe and well. Starting from the top of the table you will all sign your letters in rotation, handing your pens to Abraham. Thank you. You look distraught, Mrs Ryder.’
‘Distraught, Mr Morro?’ She gave him a smile but it wasn’t one of her best. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because of this.’ He laid an envelope on the table before her, address upwards. ‘You wrote this?’
‘Of course. That’s my writing.’
‘Thank you.’ He turned the envelope face down and she saw, with a sudden dryness in her mouth, that both edges had been slit. Morro opened the edges, smoothed the envelope flat and indicated a small greyish squidge in the middle of the back of the envelope. ‘Paper was completely blank, of course, but there are chemical substances that bring out even the most invisible writing. Now, even the most dedicated policeman’s wife wouldn’t carry invisible ink around with her. This little squiggle here has an acetic acid basis, most commonly used in the making of aspirin but also, in some cases, nail varnish. You, I observe, use colourless nail varnish. Your husband is a highly experienced, perhaps even brilliant detective and he would expect similar signs of intelligence from his wife. Within a few minutes of receiving this letter he would have had it in a police laboratory. Shorthand, of course. What does it say, Mrs Ryder?’
Her voice was dull. ‘“Adlerheim”.’
‘Very, very naughty, Mrs Ryder. Enterprising, of course, clever, spirited, call it what you like, but naughty.’
She stared down at the table. ‘What are you going to do with me?’
‘Do with you? Fourteen days bread and water? I think not. We do not wage war on women. Your chagrin will be punishment enough.’ He looked round. ‘Professor Burnett, Dr Schmidt, Dr Healey, Dr Bramwell, I would be glad if you would accompany me.’
Morro led the way to a large room next to his own study. It was notable for the fact that it lacked any window and was covered on three sides by metal filing cabinets. The remaining wall — a side wall — was, incongruously enough, given over to repulsively baroque paintings framed in heavy gilt — one presumed they had formed the prized nucleus of Von Streicher’s art collection — and a similarly gilt-edged mirror. There was a large table in the centre, with half a dozen chairs round it and, on it, a pile of large sheets of paper, about four feet by two, the top one of which was clearly some sort of diagram. At one end of the table there was a splendidly- equipped drinks trolley.
Morro said: ‘Well, now, gentlemen, I’ll be glad if you do me a favour. Nothing, I assure you, that will involve you in any effort. Be so kind as to have a look at them and tell me what you think of them.’
‘I’ll be damned if we do,’ Burnett said. He spoke in his normal tone, that of defiant truculence. ‘I speak for myself, of course.’
Morro smiled. ‘Oh, yes, you will.’
‘Yes? Force? Torture?’
‘Now we are being childish. You will examine them and for two reasons. You will be overcome by your natural scientific curiosity — and, surely, gentlemen, you want to know why you are here?’
He left and closed the door behind them. There was no sound of a key being turned in a lock, which was reassuring in itself. But then a pushbutton, hydraulically-operated bolt is completely silent in any event.
He moved into his study, now lit by only two red lamps. Dubois was seated before a large glass screen which, in fact, was completely transparent. Half an inch from that was the back of the one-way mirror of the room where the four scientists were. From this gap the maximum of air had been extracted, not with any insulation purposes in mind but to eliminate the possibility of the scientists hearing anything that was said in the study. Those in the study, however, had no difficulty whatsoever in hearing what the scientists had to say, owing to the positioning of four suitably spaced and cunningly concealed microphones in the scientists’ room. Those were wired into a speaker above Dubois’s head and a tape-recorder by his side.
‘Not all of it,’ Morro said. ‘Most of it will probably be unprintable — unrepeatable, rather — anyway. Just the meat on the bones.’
‘I understand. Just to be sure, I’ll err on the cautious side. We can edit it afterwards.’
They watched the four men in the room look around uncertainly. Then Burnett and Schmidt looked at each other and this time there was no uncertainty in their expressions. They strode purposefully towards the drinks trolley, Burnett selecting the inevitable Glenfiddich, Schmidt homing in on the Gordon’s gin. A brief silence ensued while the two men helped themselves in generous fashion and set about restoring a measure of tranquillity to the disturbances plaguing their nervous systems.
Healey watched them sourly then made a few far from oblique references to Morro, which was one of the passages that Morro and Dubois would have to edit out of the final transcript. Having said that, Healey went on: ‘He’s right, damn him. I’ve just had a quick glance at that top blueprint and I must say it interests me strangely — and not in a way that I like at all: and I do want to know what the hell we are doing here.’
Burnett silently scrutinized the top diagram for all of thirty seconds and even the aching head of a top physicist can absorb a great deal of information in that time. He looked round the other three, noted in vague surprise that his glass was empty, returned to the drinks trolley and rejoined the others armed with a further glass of the malt whisky, which he raised to the level of his speculative eyes. ‘This, gentlemen, is not for my hangover, which is still unfortunately with me: it’s to brace myself for whatever we find out or, more precisely, for what I fear we may find out. Shall we have a look at it then, gentlemen?’
In the study next door Morro clapped Dubois on the shoulder and left.
Barrow, with his plump, genial, rubicund face, ingenuous expression and baby-blue eyes, looked like a pastor — to be fair, a bishop — in mufti: he was the head of the FBI, a man feared by his own agents almost as much as he was by the criminals who were the object of his life-long passion to put behind bars for as long a period as the law allowed and, if possible, longer. Sassoon, head of the Californian FBI, was a tall, ascetic, absent-minded-looking man who looked as if he would have been far more at home on a university campus, a convincing impression that a large number of convicted Californian felons deeply regretted having taken at its face value. Crichton was the only man who looked his part: big, bulky, tight-lipped, with an aquiline nose and cold grey eyes, he was the deputy head of the CIA. Neither he nor Barrow liked each other very much, which pretty well symbolized the relationship between the two organizations they represented.
Alec Benson, Professor Hardwick by his side, bent his untroubled and, indeed, his unimpressed gaze on the three men, then let it rest on Dunne and the two Ryders in turn. He said to Hardwick: ‘Well, well, Arthur, we are honoured today — three senior gentlemen from the FBI and one senior gentleman from the CIA. A red-letter day for the Faculty. Well, their presence here I can understand — not too well, but I understand.’ He looked at Ryder and Jeff. ‘No offence, but you would appear to be out of place in this distinguished company. You are, if the expression be pardoned, just ordinary policemen. If, of course, there are any such.’
‘No offence, Professor,’ Ryder said. ‘There are ordinary policemen, a great many of them far too ordinary. And we aren’t even ordinary policemen — we’re ex-ordinary policemen.’
Benson lifted his brows. Dunne looked at Barrow, who nodded. ‘Sergeant Ryder and his son Patrolman Ryder resigned from the force yesterday. They had urgent and private reasons for doing so. They know more about the peculiar circumstances surrounding this affair than any of us. They have achieved considerably more than any of us who have, in fact, achieved nothing so far, hardly surprising in view of the fact that the affair began only last evening. For good measure. Sergeant Ryder’s wife and his daughter have both been kidnapped and are being held hostage by this man Morro.’
‘Jesus!’ Benson no longer looked untroubled. ‘My apologies, certainly — and my sympathies, certainly. It may be us who have not the right to be here.’ He singled out Barrow, the most senior of the investigative officers present. ‘You are here to ascertain whether or not CalTech, as spokesmen for the various other State institutes,
