front of him. ‘Up all night — the devoted agents, I mean — collecting snippets of this and that. Some possibly useful information, some dead ends. What did you think of friend Morro’s demonstration?’
‘Impressive. What do you have?’
Dunne sighed. ‘The niceties of salon conversation, Sergeant Ryder, are not for all. Report from Daimler, remember him?’
‘Security chief in the AEC reactor plant in Illinois?’
‘Yes. Nothing wrong with your memory.’
‘Even less with Jeff’s. I’ve just been reading some notes he typed out. Well?’
‘He says that Carlton did associate with some far-out group. As I said, we preferred to have one of our boys do the direct legwork. Interviewed Carlton’s landlady’s son. He wasn’t very forthcoming — he’d only attended two or three meetings then gave it up. Couldn’t stand the mumbo-jumbo, he said.’
‘What were they called?’
‘The Damascene Disciples. Nothing known of them. Never registered as a church or religious organization. Disbanded after six months.’
‘They had a religion? I mean, they preached, they had a message?’
‘They didn’t preach. They had a message, all right. They advocated the eternal damnation of all Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists — in fact, as far as I can make out, everybody who wasn’t a Damascene.’
‘Nothing original about that. Were the Muslims on their list, do you know?’
Dunne looked at a list. ‘Oddly enough, no. Why?’
‘Curiosity. Could this landlady’s son recognize any of them?’
‘That would have been difficult. The Damascenes wore cloaks, masks, and those pixie witches’ hats affected by the Ku-Klux Klan. Only this lot were dressed in black.’
‘Something in common, all the same — as I recall it the Ku-Klux Klan weren’t all that devoted to Jews, Catholics and negroes. Anyway, no possible means of identification?’
‘None. Except that this lad told our agent that one of them was the biggest man he had ever seen, a giant, maybe six-eight, and shoulders like a cart-horse.’
‘This person didn’t note anything peculiar about any of their voices?’
‘This person, according to our agent, just escaped being classified as a moron.’
‘But Carlton was no moron. Interesting, isn’t it? What word about Morro?’
‘Well, his accent. We’ve now had reports from — what shall we call them? — linguistic experts throughout the State. Thirty-eight so far, and more coming in every minute. All of them willing to stake their reputations etc., etc. Point is, no less than twenty-eight plump for a south-east Asian origin.’
‘Do they, indeed? Any attempt to pin-point the exact source?’
‘That’s as far as they will go.’
‘Again, still interesting. Interpol?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You have a list of all the places they’ve contacted?’ Dunne looked at Leroy, who nodded. ‘The Philippines, for instance?’
Leroy consulted a list. ‘No.’
‘Try Manila. Ask them to try around the Cotabato area in Mindanao.’
‘The what in what?’
‘Mindanao is the large southern island in the Philippines. Cotabato is a seaside town. Manila may not be too interested in what goes on in Cotabato — it’s at least five hundred and fifty miles away as the crow flies, maybe a thousand by road and ferry. Try, anyway.’
‘I see.’ Dunne paused. ‘You know something that we don’t know?’
‘No. Chances are I’m making a complete fool of myself, just a wild guess based upon ludicrous improbability and I’d rather not make an utter clown of myself. LeWinter?’
‘Two things. The first one is extraordinarily odd. You will recall that in his telephone notebook he’d listed the numbers of all kinds of people with whom — outside his court cases, of course — LeWinter would not be expected to be on either social or professional terms. Engineers, drillers, oil-rig men. There were forty-four of those in all. Barrow, for reasons best known to himself — he’s almost as close-mouthed as you — assigned a federal agent to interview each and every one of them.’
‘Forty-four. That’s a lot of FBI agents.’
Dunne was patient. ‘There are approximately eight thousand FBI men in the States. If Barrow cares to allocate one half of one per cent of his men to a particular case, that’s his privilege. He could allocate four hundred and forty if he wanted. Point is, twenty-six of those agents came up with the same puzzling — I’d call it astonishing — discovery: twenty-six of the men being investigated are missing. Wives, children, relatives, friends — none of them has any idea where they might be, none was given the slightest indication of their intention to depart. What do you make of that?’
‘Well, that’s interesting too.’
‘Interesting, interesting, interesting. Is that all you can say?’
‘Well, as you say, it’s extremely odd.’
‘Look, Ryder, if you have any idea, if you’re holding anything back —’
‘Obstructing the course of justice, you mean?’
‘Just that.’
‘I thought I might be a complete fool, Dunne. Now I know you are.’ There was a silence, not long but extremely uncomfortable. ‘Sure, I’m obstructing the course of justice. How many of
The quietly-spoken, cold ferocity in Ryder’s voice had a chilling effect on everyone in the room. Jeff licked his lips and looked at a man he’d never seen before. Parker regarded the ceiling. Delage and Leroy looked at Dunne. Dunne looked at the hand before his face and used the back of it to smooth his brow.
Dunne said: ‘Maybe I’m not myself. Maybe we’re not any of us ourselves. The apologies go without saying. Next you’ll be accusing us of being a bunch of lily-livered incompetents. But, hell, Sergeant, there’s a limit to how far you can step outside the law. Sure he has a list which included the twenty-six men who have disappeared. A dozen others may have similar lists and all for innocuous purposes. You’re proceeding on the basis of assumptions. There isn’t a shred of evidence, direct or otherwise, to link LeWinter and Morro.’
‘I don’t need evidence.’
Once again Dunne used the back of his hand. ‘You have just said, in the presence of three Government officers, that you’re prepared to use torture to obtain your information.’
‘Who said anything about torture? It’ll look like a heart attack. You said you had two things to tell me about LeWinter. Well, that’s one.’
‘Jesus!’ Dunne wasn’t smoothing his brow now; he was mopping it. ‘Delage, you have the information. Me, I need time to think.’
‘Yes. Well.’ Delage didn’t look any happier than his superior. ‘Miss Ivanhoe, if that’s her name, well, LeWinter’s secretary, has talked. There’s a Geneva connection all right. It all sounds very much like something out of science fiction, but if it’s even half-way true then it’s frightening enough. It must be if most of the nations of the world — major ones, that is, thirty to be precise — sit down at a disarmament conference in Geneva and talk about it.’
‘I have all morning,’ Ryder said.
‘Sorry. Well, the lady talked and it didn’t seem to make much sense so we contacted ERDA with the result that one of Dr Durrer’s senior assistants was called in, shown what Miss Ivanhoe said, and had no trouble at all in making sense of it. He’s an expert on the subject.’
‘I haven’t got the afternoon as well.’
‘Give me a break, will you? He wrote a condensed report. This is what he has to say.’
‘Classified?’
‘Declassified. It’s a bit formal, but here it is. He says: “It has long been accepted that any nuclear war, even
