I shrugged at her. “Okay. Let’s see what you get.”
She started with the biographical information from General Halliday and the others who had purchased North Lake Labs more than forty years ago. Vickie typed on the computer’s input key-board a request for correlations among the biographies of the nine men involved; in other words, how they were linked. The computer’s output screen showed the shorthand words she typed:
Her words glowed green on the picture tube for a few moments while the computer considered the problem. Then a list of the nine names flashed, so briefly that I’m not sure all nine of them were there. Then the screen filled with words, pica-sized green letters covering the whole screen, from top to bottom, side to side. And at the very last was a word in parentheses that I instantly recognized: (MORE). This one screenful of data wasn’t all the computer had dug up.
We got very excited, but quickly found that the correlations were nothing more than we would have expected. Four of the nine co-owners of North Lake Labs had worked for General Halliday at one time or another. Two more were relatives of the General’s, distant cousins. The remaining two men were real estate executives in Minnesota: the front men who did the actual buying.
Of the nine original buyers, only three were still alive: the General, of course; one of the real estate operators, who now lived in Sri Lanka; and the only woman in the deal, who had been the General’s secretary back when he had served in the Pentagon as a major in the Army Research Office. The computer had no information on her whereabouts.
“Not much goddamned help,” Hank muttered.
“No,” I agreed. “Except that I get the feeling that all the money involved came from the General himself. These other eight people were just strawmen, dummies to cover up the General’s intention to own the Labs himself. And control them.”
“Where’d he get that kind of money?” Vickie asked. “He couldn’t have been more than thirty years old or so at the time.”
The biographical data didn’t tell us much. General Halliday had been thirty-two when the North Lake Labs were sold to his group. He had been working in the Pentagon at that time. His hero-making defense of Denver was still nearly ten years in the future. He had married a fairly wealthy Virginia socialite, but as yet they had no children.
“Maybe his wife put up the money,” I said.
“More likely she put up th’ collateral for a bank t’ loan him th’ money,” Hank said. “Musta been at least ten million involved. Prob’ly more.”
I thought aloud, “The Government was phasing down research funding then. Lots of economic scares, the whole Vietnam fiasco and the turbulence of the sixties and seventies. Universities were pulling in their horns; money was tight, especially in scientific research…”
“But suppose a bright, ambitious young Army officer who worked in the Pentagon…” Vickie mused.
“In the Army Research Office,” I added.
“Suppose he went to a bank.”
Hank chimed in, “Or a dinner party full of bankers, set up by his purty young wife…”
I took over again, “And offered them a scheme where he attains a controlling interest in a research laboratory, which he can set up so that it can be guaranteed a steady flow of Army research money…”
“The bank would get its loan repaid in a few years,” Vickie said.
“At the highest interest rates of the century. And Halliday retires from the Army after the loan is paid off and goes to live in Colorado…”
“Where he continues to pull the strings…”
“And becomes a rich son of a bitch.”
We looked at one another. We were grinning and nodding excitedly. Proud of our terrific powers of deduction.
Hank broke the bubble “But what in hell’s all this got t’ do with th’ President? He wasn’t even born yet!”
We went back to being gloomy. Hank produced his thick wad of biographical information about the labs’ research staff scientists. With a resigned sigh, Vickie began typing the information into the computer. Most of the data had come from standard reference sources such as
I ducked out to the men’s room and then volunteered to take over the typing. “Just tell me what to do,” I said.
Vickie argued at first, but finally relented and let me hammer the keys while she worked the kinks out of her hands. Hank disappeared briefly and came back with sandwiches and coffee.
“How long’s this place stay open?” I wondered.
“ ’Til ten,” Hank said. “I just checked.”
“We’ve only got—”
“We’ve got as long as we need,” Vickie said. “I commandeered this room for Senator Markley. Senators and Congresspersons and their staffs can stay all night, if they want to. The computer’s on-line twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
“Wonderful,” I heard myself say.
We took a brief dinner break, wolfing the sandwiches and coffee, and then Vickie took over the input typing again.
“Should’ve brought some beer,” I said to Hank.
“Didn’t even think of it,” he admitted, looking surprised at himself.
Finally the job was done. All the biographical data about every researcher we knew had worked at North Lake was in the computer’s memory bank. Vickie punched the request to correlate the data, and while the computer chewed on the problem, she stood up, put her arms over her head and stretched hard enough to pop tendons along her spine. It was a move that stirred my blood, and I could see that it did the same for Hank. Vickie didn’t seem to notice, though. Or care.
“How long d’yew think it’ll take th’ machine to figure things out?”
Vickie shrugged. “A few minutes, maybe. That’s a lot of data to cross-correlate.”
“You really think this will give us an insight on what’s going on at North Lake?” I asked her.
“It will at least tell us the common denominators among the scientific staff there. If it turns out that they’re all specialists in building hydrogen bombs, for example, do you think the labs’ main interest would be in air pollution studies?”
“Nobody likes a wiseass,” I said.
Vickie grinned and started to rub the back of her neck. Hank was over behind her like a shot, kneading her shoulders.
“Learned massage from an ol’ Indian,” he drawled. Vickie moaned happily and I broiled medium-rare.
The computer screen came to life. A list of words appeared on it. A damned short list. We all huddled around the glowing screen, like kids peeking into a store window. The list read:
MAJOR FIELDS OF COMMON INTEREST
INPUT CODE 042205-B2 19-004
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
INFECTIOUS DISEASES
BIOCHEMISTRY
VIRAL BIOLOGY
GENETICS
