‘My interest,’ said Carson stiffly, ‘is purely in the security aspect ...’
Silverman wagged his head in amusement. ‘Joe, now
you’re
taking things too seriously. You can handle this quietly and unofficially. Pebbles isn’t a Commie or anything--he hasn’t enough brains to think political thoughts!--and Donovan dramatises things. It is just that Pebbles is so gullible and childish that if he were to find out anything of a confidential nature he would tell it to the first person he met. His foot is permanently in his mouth ...’
‘Sounds like an interesting character,’ said Carson. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing him.’
Silverman shook his head. ‘No need for that now you understand the position. We are more realistic about these things than is Bill. This really is the best thing for Pebbles, you’ll see.’
‘By the way,’ he added. ‘I didn’t see your car outside. Can I give you a lift back?’
Carson did not reply at once. He was thinking that this was not a security matter and that it was an indication of how Silverman regarded Carson and his department that he would use it simply to keep a good if not particularly bright worker from moving out of his section. Carson had yet to meet Pebbles but he already knew where his sympathies lay.
‘I’m putting on weight,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll walk ...’
On the way back to the office he stopped for a moment to watch a production EH93, its violent yellow paint job indicating that it had just come off the line and had still to be given its customer livery, warming up its engines. He noted with approval that two of his crash tenders were already in position on the edge of the runway, their rotating beacons winking dully in the bright sunshine. But he did not stay to watch the take-off. Despite the sun there was a cold wind blowing across the airfield and he had been stupid to refuse that lift.
On his return to the admin building his first call was at Personnel to ask Bill Savage for Pebbles’s location and a copy of his dossier ... ‘I want to see him as soon as possible,’ he went on. ‘And look at me, dammit! I’m on your side, but I still have to go through the motions.’
Savage looked up and added. ‘I’m glad. But treat him gently, Joe--he isn’t exactly as Laughing Boy described him...’
Pebbles worked in the large, bright room which was the nerve centre--if such a hypothetical plant could be said to possess one--of the company grapevine. The gory details of an accident to one of the operators in Factory Three, the latest news of a government missile contract, the real reason behind an impending strike of riveters and a truly shocking--in both senses of the word--quantity of scandal was the type of up-to-date and surprisingly accurate information constantly available in this room. Because of the overwhelming urge in most people to gossip and to impress each other with the quality of confidential information to which they were privy the room was, from the security standpoint, about as porous as a rabbit hutch. At times it was Carson’s biggest single headache and some of the names he called it were neither polite nor printable, although the sign on the door read simply MALE STAFF TOILET.
Carson did not look at Pebbles until he was washing his hands. He had chosen a washbasin near enough for easy conversation but not so close that it would hamper the other’s work.
Pebbles was dressed in neat blue overalls. Two highly polished but badly tied shoes projected from the lower ends and a clean collar and tie showed at the top. The tie had a quiet but distinctive pattern on it and the limp, slightly frayed appearance of a status symbol worn with pride but perhaps a little too often. Carson had a tie just like it at home. Pebbles was mopping the tiled floor and whistling part of the third movement from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and doing both with enthusiasm.
Taking a deep breath, Carson said pleasantly, ‘I prefer the last movement myself. Especially the ending--you know, where the solo violin holds that very high note. It’s so high I sometimes think my neighbour’s dog is the only one able to appreciate it...’
He stopped, waiting for the other’s reaction.
Pebbles looked up quickly but did not speak. His expression reflected an odd mixture of pleasure, confusion and wariness--the expression, perhaps, of one who is uncertain whether he is being praised or having his leg pulled. His features did not seem to be those of an idiot--the face had an innocent rather than a vacant look. It was the look of a child--a child with problems, perhaps, but not necessarily a stupid child. Carson tried again.
‘I hear that you may be going to a new job soon. You’re looking forward to that, I expect ...’
Pebbles began to stammer and for several interminable seconds nothing came out. Carson had spent some time thinking about his approach and subsequent treatment of Pebbles. He had not wanted to unsettle or frighten the man nor did he want their meeting to appear contrived. He knew that children were sensitive to any trace of condescension or insincerity on the part of adults trying to communicate with them, and presumably people with childish or retarded minds would have a similar sensitivity. Rather than being guilty of condescension Carson felt that he had gone too far in the opposite direction by projecting the conversation several yards above the poor slob’s head.
In any case he had come simply to satisfy his curiosity enough about the man to be able to move Donovan’s report from the in to the out tray marked ‘No Action Required’. The whole business was becoming downright embarrassing for both Pebbles and himself. Obviously he was wasting his time trying to start a conversation with the man and he had, after all, more important things to do.
Carson turned to go. He said, ‘I ... ah ... hope you do well in the job ...’
Pebbles was staring at him, still trying to speak, his expression apologetic and determined. He seemed to be apologising for the barrier that would not let his words come through and determined that they were going to get through anyway--he reminded Carson of a child given a difficult word to spell. Finally he succeeded.
‘I... I can do multiplication and division,’ he said, very proudly, ‘and I’ve been able to do joined-up writing, not block capitals, for over two years. I can work out a triangle of velocities and calculate...’
‘That’s good,’ said Carson, patting him on the shoulder as he headed for the door. He was wondering what a triangle of velocities was and how Pebbles had come by that tie.
The telephone was ringing when he returned to the office. It was Patrol Officer Sands reporting that just before he was due to go off duty he had spoken to the man responsible for moving the waste to the storeroom.
‘... Before talking to him,’ Sands went on briskly, ‘I checked his clock card for last night. He clocked out nearly three hours before the fire was reported and so could not have been directly responsible for it. However, he admitted to working late and to moving a load of waste to the storeroom in response to a telephone call from Production Control. He also said that he had heard about the fire but had not realised that it had been in that particular storeroom. He did not appear to be worried about the incident and he certainly did not look guilty. His name is Pebbles and if you were to speak to him, sir, you would understand why I don’t suspect him of … ‘
‘I already have, and do,’ said Carson, unable to resist the temptation of stealing the other’s thunder. ‘But you’ve done very well. Go on, please.’
‘Yes, sir. When I questioned him further about the telephone call … ‘
Sands went on to report that the voice had sounded pleasant but authoritative; it had identified its department of origin but not itself and it had asked Pebbles if he would mind emptying the litter bins in Production Control and transferring their contents to a certain storeroom in Factory Three. Apparently one of the PC girls had lost the stone of her engagement ring and wanted a chance to search the litter thoroughly before the waste-disposal people took it away. Pebbles had been asked to avoid factory personnel as much as possible and speak to no one on the way because the girl concerned did not want her leg pulled about it.
Pebbles added that he had been asked to do the same exercise for different departments on a great many occasions for very similar reasons, and suggested that the girl looking for her property might have been smoking at the time and the stub or ash could have smouldered for hours before setting fire to the waste.
Nobody in Production Control admitted either to losing valuables or asking to have their litter removed, Sands said, but in the circumstances that was to be expected. Sands thought the whole affair was stupid and childish--the company did not know how lucky it was that the waste had not been moved to an empty refuelling bay!--but it explained everything and it was so ridiculous that it was almost certainly the true explanation.
Carson agreed that it was very neat, thanked him for staying late to report and rang off. He got up from his desk, walked to the window and stared out across the busy airfield without seeing a thing.
The man who had phoned Pebbles had not, of course, belonged to Production Control. He had said so but the call could have originated from any one of the eight hundred-odd internal telephone extensions within the Hart-Ewing complex. That same man, or one of his colleagues, would know by now that the fire had been put out rather than being allowed to burn itself out. He would also know that a member of Carson’s comic Gestapo had been asking questions and knew that Security now knew that the waste had been moved to the storeroom. But he did not know whether the material he had wanted destroyed by the burning waste had been burned or not.
The question now was whether he or his friends would risk going back to the storeroom to make sure. If there really was a Most Secret project being worked on at Hart-Ewing--if Carson had not been working himself into a lather of excitement over a list of mis-copied figures and some engineer author’s plot notes for a science-fiction story--the answer was that they most certainly would.
Assuming the existence of such a project there could be no doubt at all that the people concerned were very security conscious regarding their activities and paperwork. They could not risk sending Pebbles to check on the situation--apparently the man was incapable either of telling a lie or concealing a fact--so the chances were that one of the project personnel would be sent to check for himself. If they were really worried it would be as soon as possible--tonight, in fact.
Carson went to the wide, flat drawer built into the top of his triple filing cabinet and withdrew a large-scale drawing of Factory Three. As well as giving the positions of walls, partitions and storerooms it showed the power and lighting cable runs, high pressure air supplies, fire pumps and emergency exits. He studied it carefully for several minutes, looking for a good hiding-place. His problem was complicated by the fact that he did not want to trap a man, just to have a good look at him without the other realising it. He replaced the drawing, looked at his watch and began to compose a memo to the chief maintenance engineer.
In it he drew attention to the recent fire and suggested that the power, lighting and internal telephone lines in the section should be checked immediately for possible damage. He knew that if he waited until late afternoon before sending it the internal postal system would not deliver it until early next morning, so that the maintenance people could not send an electrician to check the area tonight. But the memo would have today’s date on it and, if someone later became worried about lights flashing on and off all around them, it should stand up to the perfunctory investigation well enough to reassure the culprit.
The disquieting thought occurred to him that the man was not a culprit, a saboteur or a wrong-doer of any kind. Instead he was on Carson’s side, helping guard a secret so important that the chief security officer had not been made aware of it. With that thought came another which suggested that Carson had no business poking his nose into the affair and might be serving the best interests of his country and his company by letting it drop.
He did want to serve the best interests of his country, and of the company which entrusted him with its internal and external security. He knew that he was good at the job--conscientious, meticulous, exacting where even the relatively unimportant details were concerned, so much so that in certain quarters he was described as a fussy old woman. But
was
he considered good at his job by the people who really mattered, Carson asked himself suddenly, or merely as a nosey old woman whose curiosity about everyone and everything rendered suspect his ability to keep his own mouth shut? Was that the real reason he was being kept in the dark?
That was the most disquieting thought of all. Carson tried to force it out of his mind by concentrating on his paperwork. But much later that evening, when he was sitting on a hard and very cold tool-box in Factory Three with only the top of his head showing above a nearby bench, the thought recurred. This time there was no way of avoiding it.
Either he was good at his job or he was not. If he was not, then the company would have eased him out before now--they would not wait six years before deciding whether he was efficient. And if he was fulfilling his function as a security officer, then it could be argued that his duties included the protection of any and all secret work in which Hart-Ewing’s was engaged, that it was his duty to protect it even when he had no real idea what ‘it’ was all about.
Carson sighed. Around him the metal benches and structural supports creaked and tinkled faintly as they gave up the heat of the working day. The night-shift at the other end of the section contributed its quiet clangour and the kittens, who were the furry debris of the continuing population explosion among the factory cats, romped among the now safe and silent machinery.
Security and counter-espionage, so far as Carson was concerned, was far from being an exciting and glamorous job. Security meant checking fire extinguishers and hoses, checking lights and doors left on or open, checking safety precautions during aircraft refuelling, checking pilfering when it began to assume the proportions of grand larceny, checking trespassers on other people’s parking spaces, checking everything everywhere several times a day or week.