her. I said thanks, we’d send one of our boys — an NFI card carries more weight. He’s going there this evening — boy still lives at home.
‘That’s all. Except for his mother’s comment about him — says he’s a religious nut and should be put away somewhere.’
‘It’s the maternal instinct. What else?’
‘LeWinter’s fancy codes. We’ve traced nearly all the telephone numbers — I think you’ve been told they were mainly Californian or Texan. Seem a respectable enough bunch — at least, preliminary enquiries haven’t turned up anything about the ones investigated so far — but on the face of it they would seem an odd lot for a senior judge like LeWinter to be associated with.’
‘I’ve got a lot of friends — well, friends and acquaintances — who aren’t cops,’ Jeff said. ‘But none of them, as far as I know, has ever seen the inside of a courtroom, far less a prison.’
‘Yes. But here’s an eminent lawyer — or what a cock-eyed world regards as an eminent lawyer — with a list of people who are primarily engineers, and not only that but specialists in the engineering field. Specializing in petro-chemicals and not only chemists, metallurgists, geologists, what you would expect to find, but also oil-rig owners, drillers and explosives experts.’
Ryder said: ‘Maybe LeWinter is figuring on moving into the oil exploration field — the old rogue has probably accumulated enough in the way of ill-gotten pay-offs to finance a stake in something of that nature. But I think that’s altogether too far-fetched. Much more likely that those names have something to do with cases that have come up before him. They could be people that have been called as expert witnesses.’
Leroy smiled. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but we thought of that all by ourselves. We turned up a list of his civil, as distinct from criminal, court cases over the years and he has been involved in quite a number of law-suits primarily involved with oil — exploration, leases, environmental pollution, marine trusts, Lord knows what. Before he became a judge he was a defending counsel, and a highly successful one — as you would expect from such a devious villain —’
‘Assumption, assumption,’ Ryder said.
‘So? You just called him an old rogue. As I was saying, he made quite a reputation for himself for protecting the legal interest of various oil companies who had quite clearly transgressed the law until LeWinter proved otherwise. In fact, the amount of oil litigation that goes on in this fair State of ours is quite staggering. But it would seem that that’s all irrelevant. To me, anyway. You, I don’t know. But one way or another he’s been swimming around in this oil business for close on twenty years: so I can’t see how it bears on this present business.’
‘Nor do I,’ Ryder said. ‘On the other hand, he could have been preparing for this day for all those years and is only now putting his knowledge to use. But again I think this is farfetched. If there’s any connection between oil- prospecting or oil-recovery I have never heard of it. How about this code-book-Ivanhoe thing? I was given to understand that the Washington Russian code-breakers were making progress on that.’
‘They may well be. Unfortunately they’ve come all over coy. The centre of their enquiries appears to have shifted to Geneva.’
Ryder was patient. ‘Could you enlighten me, or did they choose to enlighten you on just what the hell Geneva has to do with a nuclear theft in this State?’
‘No, I can’t enlighten you because they clammed up. It’ll be this damned inter-service jealousy, if you ask me. “Internecine” would be a better word.’
Ryder was sympathetic. ‘You’ll be telling me next that the accursed CIA are shoving their oar in again.’
‘Have shoved, it would appear. Bad enough to have them operating in friendly countries — allies, if you like — such as Britain and France, which they freely do without the permission of their hosts, but to start poking around in a strictly neutral Switzerland —’
‘They don’t operate there?’
‘Of course not. Those agents you see lurking around the UNO, WHO and Lord knows how many international agencies in Geneva are only figments of your imagination. Heady Alpine air, or something like that. The Swiss are so sorry for them they offer them chairs in the shade or under cover, depending on the weather.’
‘You sound bitter. Let’s hope you all resolve your differences in this particular case, and quickly. How have Interpol been doing with Morro?’
‘They haven’t. You have to remember that a good bit more than half the world has never even heard of the word “Interpol”. It might help if we had the faintest clue as to where this pest comes from.’
‘The copies of the tapes of his voice? The ones that were to be sent out to our learned scholars?’
‘There hasn’t been time yet for any significant amount of comments to come in. We have had only four replies yet. One is positive that he is the voice of a Middle Easterner. In fact, he’s positive enough to state categorically that the guy comes from Beirut. As Beirut is a hodge-podge of most of the nationalities in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and a fair sprinkling of Africans, by which I mean people in African nations, it’s hard to see what he’s basing his conviction on. Another says, although not prepared to swear, that he’s Indian. A third says he’s definitely from the south-east of Asia. The last says that, as he’s spent twenty years in Japan, he’d recognize Japanese-learnt English anywhere.’
Ryder said: ‘My wife described Morro as being a broad-shouldered six-footer.’
‘And Japanese answering to that description are not thick on the ground. I’m beginning to lose faith in the University of California.’ Leroy sighed. ‘Well, with the possible — and I’m now beginning to regard it as only faintly possible — exception of Carlton, we don’t appear to have been making much headway. However, we may have something more encouraging for you in the way of those odd-ball organizations you wanted us to enquire about. You specified a year in existence and a large group. We’re not saying you’re wrong, but it did occur to us that it could conceivably be a smaller group, or one that has been in existence for a considerably longer period than a year and that may have been infiltrated or taken over by Morro and his friends. Here’s the list. I’m not saying that it’s a complete one: there’s no State law that says you have to register yourself, or yourself and your like-minded friends as a nut or nuts. But I should imagine it’s as complete as we can get, certainly within the limited time available.’
Ryder glanced at the list, handed it to Jeff, turned to say a few words to Sergeant Parker, who had just entered, then returned his attention to Leroy.
‘List’s fine as far as it goes, dates and existence, approximate numbers, but it doesn’t tell me what they’re nutty about.’
‘Could that be important?’
‘How should I know?’ Ryder was understandably a mite irritable. ‘Might give me an idea, even an inkling, just the shadow of a clue just by looking at such a list. God knows, I can’t come up with one by myself.’
With the air of a conjurer producing a rabbit from a hat, Leroy produced another sheet of paper. ‘And here we have what you want.’ He looked at the paper with some disfavour. ‘They’re so damned long-winded about their reasons, their motivations for existence as groups, that it was impossible to get it all on one sheet. They tend to be a forthcoming, not to say garrulous, lot about their ideals.’
‘Any religious nuts among them?’
‘Why?’
‘Carlton is said to be associated, or have associated, with one. Okay, so it’s a far-out connection, but any straw for a drowning man.’
‘I think you’re mixing your metaphors,’ Leroy said kindly. ‘But I see what you mean.’ He eyed the sheet. ‘Well,
‘Call them what you want.’ Ryder took the sheet, and examined it more in hope than expectation. He said in complaint: ‘Can’t pronounce half of them, far less understand them.’
‘This is a very cosmopolitan State, Sergeant Ryder.’ Ryder looked at him in suspicion but Leroy’s face was perfectly straight.
‘Borundians,’ Ryder went on. ‘Corinthians. The Judges. The Knights of Calvary. The Blue Cross. The Blue Cross?’
‘Not the hospital insurance people, Sergeant.’
