Turpin getting into a company veetol at a run-and on a Sunday afternoon) Head down, strolling randomly along the beach and attracting cat-calls on every side. not only from girls, proposing reasons why he should havg, his pants on-mostly connected with needing a magnifyingglass-Danty struggled to make sense of the situation.
If it did have anything to do with him, and past experience indicated that he wouldn't have felt it if it didn't, then it must connect up by way of the reserved area that he'd left turned off. Why? Why? That was the best possible guarantee that the security force would come running)
Of course, no one would be able to link him personally with what he'd done. Before leaving, he had meticulously wiped everything he recalled touching, and his memory was good. The rock he'd hidden beside was below the tide-mark, and he'd gone to it over firm, dry ground patched with dune-grass, so . . .
He stopped dead. Just ahead of him, some tender-foot had stepped in a patch of damp sand, and the mark of a plastic sandal stood out as clear as a plaster-of-Paris cast. And he remembered.
That puddle, where he'd collected mud to smear on his facel He'd seen-and he'd done nothing about-that print he'd left on its edge . . . and since Friday morning there had been no more rainl
"Josh)"
"Ah, shit! Wh'n Ah sa' fay-yud, Ah mean fay-yud!" Josh sat up, hand snaking towards his pants and the hilt of his knife.
"Nah, coolunl" Shark hissed. "Tha' slug dun-s'all wrong -tha' Dan'y Wohd!"
Instantly Josh forgot everything else. He turned very slow to face them, eyes blank behind his dark glasses.
"Sawun?"
"Sho'! Raht hyah onna be-yutchl"
There was a pause full of the cries of kids playing ball. At length Josh nodded and began to pull on his clothes.
"Shown way, hm?" he said. "We got sco' t'level wi-yat mother."
A XV11 A
A few minutes after the discovery of the footprint, a second security veetol dropped out of the sky-not such a fast model as Clarke's, but much larger, bringing a top forensic team with all their gear. Under Clarke's direction they set about turning the site inside-out.
Turpm found himself compelled to trail at Clarke's heels, not a r81e he relished. He was used to being the focus of attention where anything connected with Energetics General was concerned. Now and then he tried to involve himself in one of Clarke& conversations.
`"Think that print will give you a lead to-?"
"Hell, no. Second commonest brand on the market, fourth commonest sizel" And back to a technical discussion with the forensic experts. '
"Whoever did it came down the track, as I see it, and then-"
"Doesn't follow." With even greater curtness. "We shan't know until we've finished searching the beach."
So Turpin. anxious, withdrew into the background and smoked a rapid succession of cigarettes, his earlier confidence oozing away under the simultaneous pressure of Clarke's snubbing and the glare from the sunlight on the sand, which threatened to give him a headache. He was on the point of confronting Clarke directly and saying that he was going home because he was tired of wasting time, when the men working over the beach discovered something that made his heart lurch.
In a direct line between the dirt road and the sea, a probing metal rod had come back from six inches underground smeared with some sort of sticky plastic goo.
Oh, my God. Sheklov's survival suld
None of his reaction showed in his face, of course, or his manner. He had had far too long to practise concealment of his emotions. Moreover. he had been assured that the destruct process left no single compound in the mess that could be identified as of foreign origin.
But suppose they underestimated the impact of thirty years' paranoia on our forsenic techniques?
He wondered briefly what "they" and "our" meant to him nowadays.
Now it was definite. He would not dare to leave here before he had planted in Clarke's mind the seed of the suspicion Sheklov had proposed: the idea that some rival corporation, or the Navy, had decided to undermine confidence in EG's ability to fulfil its defence contracts.
Waiting for his chance, he stood by while the forsenic team, with the patience of archaeologists, uncovered the mass of mingled plastic and sand. It bore no resemblance to the form of a human being, Turpin realized with relief. It had been folded roughly square, and the destruct process had caused streels of plastic to flow away from its edges like pseudopods around a sick amoeba. He waited tensely for Clarke's opinion of the find.
"What do you think?" the security man said finally to the nearest of his aides.
The man shrugged. "Garbage," he answered. "One of those self-destruct bags you have on yachts, chucked overboard and washed up here."
"That's what it looks like to me," Clarke agreed. "But take a sample to the lab just in case. And keep on looking. Say-uh-Turpinl I'd like a word with you now."
He gestured for the older man to fall in at his side, and led the way towards the vegetation fringing the shore. As he walked be produced and offered a pack of cigars, a good West Coast brand.
Accepting one, Turpin decided to risk a bit of deduction himself. He said, "Did you get hauled back from a vacation?"
"Not exactly," Clarke grunted. "Just my first free weekend in two months. I was out in Oregon last week, and I have cousins in Frisco, so I thought I'd take the chance to call on them. Then this blows up, so fast I don't even have the time to change clothesl Hahl" He bit the end off his cigar and spat it savagely into a nearby bush.
Well, that would excuse some of his bad manners . . . . Offering a light, Turpin ventured, "Have you drawn any conclusions yet? Naturally, on behalf of EG, I'm very concerned about all this."
"Whereas I have to be concerned about it on behalf of
the whole nation," Clarke said, with the air of a man scoring a debating-point.
"Naturallyl" Turpin agreed, lighting his own cigar. "But, you see-"
"Just a moment." Clarke pushed his cigar to the corner of his mouth. where it jutted up at the traditional tycoon's angle, and reached into one of the pockets of his windbreaker. He drew out something of shiny metal, about six inches long when unfolded. touched a switch at its base, and-holding it about the height of his mouth-turned through a complete circle. A high-pitched hum made Turpin's teeth ache slightly.
"Parabolic mike detector?" he said after a pause.
"Yes. And it's okay. No one is eavesdropping right now." Clarke folded the gadget and put it away. "Sorry, but I had to make absolutely certain, because of what I want to ask you. Turpin, how well do you know these service crews of EG?"
"I know some of them in fair detail," Turpin said, wondering if he was about to receive a gift from the gods. It certainly sounded as though he was. "As to this one, thirtythree-well, rather less than some."
"I noticed you call the crew-boss by his first name," Clarke probed.
"Oh, that's company policy," Turpin said with an easy smile. "Executives call crew-bosses by their first names, their juniors by their surnames. It goes for both sexes."
.. "I see. But it's rather an unusual name, isn't it-Gunnar?"
AM
Smoothly, never saying anything outright that might be interpreted as an accusation, Turpin laid down parameters for Clarke's thinking: someone who felt handicapped by a foreign name. possibly suspecting that he'd been passed over for promotion because of it, might so easily have listened to blandishments from another company, hoping to augment the income he regarded as less than his just due, . . . He managed to refer to EG's excellent record on industrial espionage, then to the intense competition against which the firm had secured the automatic defences contract, then to the clean bill that every House committee had given them after an investigation, and all the time Clarke listened intently, now and then making a further check with his detector.
At last be- gave a thoughtful nod. He said, "I guess you must have studied Sandstrom's file."
"Seen it, certainly," Turpin said, blinking. "Can't swear to having memorised it, naturally."
"I seem to recall, though"-with a frown-"he gave one special reason for-moving into high-grade electronics, didn't he?"
"Ah . . ." Simultaneous, a search of memory and preparation of an adequate excuse for not remembering. Memmory dealt him a trump just in time. "Why, yesl I do know what you meanl Didn't it have something to do with a childhood fascination with the space programme?"
"So he deposed," Clarke agreed, slipping his detector back in his pocket for the fourth or fifth time. And then, just as Turpin was preparing to congratulate him on being able to pick that single entry out of heaven knew how many security files-which, indeed, was a rather sobering feat and indicated just why Clarke was as high as he was in the hierarchy of his force-he did something that took Turpin absolutely by surprise. He bent to the ground, caught up a small rock, and hurled it as far as he could.
"Did you see that go into orbit?" he demanded savagely. And added, before Turpin could frame words to reply with: "Come on-better get back and see if my men have turned up anything else."
A )kV111 A
"I guess that's the place," Lora said doubtfully, slowing the car alongside a vacant parking-bay and pointing across the street to an ugly old building with a hoverhalt on its roof.
"Yell" she added, craning to read a sign pointing to it. "I remember the name. Right first time-not bad, lm?"
She backed into the bay and jumped out. Copying her, Sheklov stared at the building. It was shabby, with great cracks in its walls that were only prevented from spreading by the reinforced concrete beams doing double duty as supports for the steel stairs up to the hoverhalt. They had arrived at the same moment as a hovercar, and he could see the walls trembling under the extra load.
He shook his head. He hoped he wasn't going to have to spend long in this paradoxical country: so rich, yet with so many people in it prepared to suffer intolerable indignities)
Having stuffed five bucks into the nearby meter-the regular fee for two hours' parking on a Sunday-Lora caught his arm and hurried him across the street. On the steep stairs of the hoverhalt he lost sight of her as the hovercar discharged a crowd of people numbering only about twenty but blocking the width of the steps as efficiently as a small army, then caught up with her again on the landing outside the topmost apartment, where she was already ringing the bell.
Shortly, the door was opened to a security stop by a woman with a strong face and coarse black hair, who could have been any age from thirty to fifty, wearing a casual red sweater and tan pants. Her expression, resigned at first, changed in a moment to one of welcome.
"Ohl I wasn't expecting anyone, so I thought it might be the pigs--or one of my clients turning up without an appointment. But you're Lora Turpin, aren't you? Come on inl"
She released the security stop and flung the door wide.
Lora hesitated, while Sheklov's eyes seized greedily on what details of the interior of the apartment he could
make out from where he stood. Books-twenty times as many as in the whole of the Turpins' home! A ouija board, hung from the wall on a bit of string! Visible on a low table abandoned presumably when the bell rang, a tarot pack!
It was like coming home.
So who was this woman, anyway-Danty's mistress? That seemed unlikely. Vaguely he heard Lora asking whether Danty was in; equally vaguely, he registered the reply: "No, but he could be back at any time. Please come in and wait if you'd like to."
"Well . . ." Lora looked to Sheklov for guidance.
"That's very kind!" he exclaimed, and this time took her arm, encouraging her over the threshold. "Apparently you know Lora," he added. "I'm Don Holtzer."
"Oh, yes. Danty said he met you at the Turpins'. I'm Magda Hansen." Shutting the door and waving them to chairs. "Do sit down. Maybe you'd like some coffee?"
"Please," Sheklov said firmly.
"I'll go plug the percolator in. Just a moment." And she headed for the miniature kitchen in the corner.
Out of the side of her mouth, looking ill-at-ease, Lora whispered, "But that's the-uh-the girl Danty's living with. I saw her when I woke up this morning. That was why I.. "
"Turned tail?" Sheklov supplied equally softly, finally putting two and two together. "Well, she doesn't seem to mind your coming to call, does she?"
And that was all he had the chance to say before she was back and sitting down on one of the built-in couches, facing them. Recollecting her tarot cards, she leaned forward to gather them up. Sheklov decided to risk commenting on them.
"That's an unusual deck you have there. Is it what they call-uh-tarrot?" Mispronouncing it deliberately.
"Yes." Collapsing the cards with strong, thick fingers into a neat pile. "Haven't you seen them before? Like to look?"
"Well, thanks," Sheklov said, reaching to the full stretch of his arms to take them from her. He realized at once they were a design he didn't know. But good. The hanged man, in particular: a black surrounded by hooded Klansmen. Very apt. He gave them back, and Magda turned to
park them on a vacant section of one of the many bookshelves at her back.
"Did you say you thought it might be police at the door?" he inquired, since Lora appeared to be tongue-tied.
"Could have been," Magda said with a sigh. "Those radiated pigs are on a harassment kick right now-come crashing in, mostly on Sundays or in the middle of the night-just to turn everything over and make a mess. If they break a few things, so much the better."