frowning.
“You mean statements like ‘the clouds are dark over dear old Leningrad’?”
“Yes. If ‘the rifling commences two feet down the barrel’ actually means ‘don’t expect more from me quickly,’ we won’t know. But I don’t think that kind of information interests us. We’re looking for plans and formulae, probably reduced to microdots.”
“How big is a microdot?” Delia asked.
“According to Kelly, whatever size will look logical, from the dot over an i to a fly speck or the bull’s-eye in a two-inch drawing of a target. They don’t have to be round, anyway. Round is less likely to be detected, Nature being nonlinear.”
Her face puckered in dismay. “Oh, Carmine! There must be literally a million dotted i’s here! Even if Mr. Smith’s comatose state lasts several days, we have no chance of finding anything.”
There was a fresh carafe of coffee on the counter. Carmine poured himself a mug and sat down on the wheeled chair he had stolen from the typists’ pool because he could move around with his chair still attached to his butt. “That’s why I don’t think microdots are above an i. Or at least, an i with an ordinary dot. We should be looking for dots that are too big. That look like typos or smears. Kelly’s so cagey that I haven’t got much useful out of him, so we’re winging it, Delia. To the best of my knowledge, cameras have finite limits, so maybe the reduction process can only be taken so far before another shot has to be taken and the reduction process recommenced. Since the space race began, things have miniaturized fast, but… I’m in true ignorance as to how it’s done or how small a reduction in size can go.” Carmine shrugged. “The best advice I can offer you is to use your common sense, Delia. If it looks wrong, we should see if it comes off. If it comes off, we should examine it under fifty or a hundred power on one of Patsy’s microscopes.”
They started to read, Delia on the letters, Carmine on the reports. An hour went by in silent intensity.
“How extraordinary!” Delia said.
Carmine jumped. “Huh?”
“Hasn’t Mr. Smith always had a reputation for doing nothing?”
“So my sources have led me to believe.”
“Well, for someone who has coasted through the however-many years of his-er-emboardment-he’s kept a close eye on all sorts of people. Nor, it seems, is he happy to leave some of his observations behind during his absence. I’m reading a letter Mr. Smith apparently means to send to an M. D. Sykes, who bears the title of general manager of Cornucopia Central. I gather this means Mr. Sykes orders the stationery, checks the salaries and wages, looks after cleaning contracts and all sorts. Though from time to time over the years Mr. Sykes has had to substitute for men more senior than he.”
“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Carmine exclaimed, careful of his expletives when ladies were present. “I wouldn’t have thought that Smith so much as noticed Cornucopia Central employed a general manager, let alone noticed it’s Sykes. But to notice what Sykes has done! Is the letter interesting?”
“Yes and no. It’s quite long. Mr. Smith lays out the feats Mr. Sykes has accomplished over the years when substituting for more senior executives, and praises his diligence and experience. Mr. Smith informs Mr. Sykes that, in his capacity as Chairman of the Board, he is promoting Mr. Sykes to the position of managing director, immediately under the Board. Mr. Sykes will now be responsible for overseeing all the Cornucopia subsidiaries on an executive level, and will answer only to the Board.”
“That’s a real bombshell,” Carmine said, grinning. “Michael Donald
“Who, Mr. Smith?”
“No, Mr. Michael Donald Sykes. On his new salary, he’ll be able to stage his hero’s coronation in Notre Dame, complete with gold and jewels.”
“How odd!” Delia exclaimed, still on the letter to Sykes.
“What’s odd?”
“Mr. Smith’s system of tabulation-to which, by the way, he is much addicted. I’ve always preferred the letters of the alphabet to numbers when I tabulate because, provided one does not need more than twenty-six items, the tabulation column remains the same width. With numbers, once the number ten arrives, the column is one character wider, and to the left side at that. Most annoying! Whereas Mr. Smith neither enumerates nor eletterates-he uses a big, round black spot to tabulate-” She drew a hissing breath. “A big, round black spot!” she squealed.
Carmine scooted around the table on his wheeled chair and looked. “Holy shit!” he cried, forgetting ladies.
“There’s another thing, Carmine,” Delia said, voice shaking. “What machines can make a spot this size? A typewriter can’t, nor anything I can think of apart from a printing press setting type. These tabulation spots must have been applied by hand. If they’re not microdots, then Mr. Smith has gone to the trouble of using Letraset, and a man as fanatically tidy as that would be insane, even if he did force his secretary to do it.”
“One thing for sure, Delia, Mr. Smith is not insane,” said Carmine in grim jubilation. “I’ve got the bastard!”
“You mean he’s Ulysses?”
“Oh, I’ve known that for some time.”
He propelled himself across to a little table on which he had assembled a box of glass microscope slides, another of glass cover slips, some fine tweezerlike forceps, and a thin, pointed scalpel. Picking up the tray holding them, he returned to Smith’s letter to M. D. Sykes and, working very delicately, tried to get the tip of the scalpel under the edge of a spot. It slid in easily; the spot came away, balanced on the scalpel tip. Carmine transferred it to a slide and dropped a cover slip on top. He took a total of five of the eleven spots in the Sykes letter, chosen at random.
With five glass slides on a paper plate, he walked to the Medical Examiner’s department, Delia at his side.
“Tell me these aren’t Letraset spots,” he said to Patrick, giving him the plate. “Tell me they have typing on them, or schematics, or anything that shouldn’t be there.”
“You have found yourself a genuine, one hundred percent, twenty-four karat, first-water microdot,” Patsy said after examining the first slide. “A hundred-power-man, what a camera! What reduction ratios! Even so, it must have taken a dozen separate shots to get this down so small. No resolution has been lost, the definition’s perfect.”
“So now we know why Smith didn’t send M. D. Sykes’s letter by internal mail before he left,” Carmine said to Delia as they went back to his office. “It had to travel out of the country with him. In Zurich the microdots in it would have been removed and Letraset spots substituted. Once back in Holloman, he could personally hand Mr. Sykes his promotion.”
“Oh, Carmine, I am so delighted for you!”
“Save your ecstasies, Delia. Now I have to call Ted Kelly and tell him what we’ve found. I’m afraid that our participation in the case of Ulysses the spy is at an end.”
An accurate prophecy. The astounded Ted Kelly arrived in minutes, gasping at what he called Carmine’s luck.
“No, it wasn’t my luck!” Carmine snapped, temper flaring. “It was the initiative of Sergeant Corey Marshall that got you your proof of espionage, Special Agent Kelly, and I insist that he be properly credited! If his name and his feat don’t appear in your report, I’ll tear Washington down around your ears!”
“Okay, okay!” Kelly yelled, backing away with palms up. “It will be written into my report, I promise!”
“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Kelly!” Carmine thrust two typewritten sheets of police paper at him. “This is Corey’s report of what happened, and that’s how your own report starts. Fuck the FBI, and fuck you! You’ve piggybacked on our work, and I want that acknowledged.”
“I’m so happy I’d consent to anything,” Kelly said. “Are Smith’s papers here?”
Carmine handed him a Holloman Police Department cardboard box. “Every last one, minus five spots off the Sykes letter. Which, by the way, I photocopied to make sure Mr. Sykes gets it. There’s probably a copy in Smith’s office, but I wanted to make sure. M. D. Sykes has been screwed around enough.”
Kelly took the box as if it contained the crown jewels, then looked enquiring. “Um-the five spots?” he asked.
“Are going, together with a microscope, with me to the chambers of Judge Thwaites. I need proof of wrongdoing to get a search warrant. As soon as I’ve done that, I’ll send you the evidence,” Carmine said.
