“What did they say?”
“I don’t know.” Janet shrugged helplessly. “How would I know that?”
“Aw, come on.” Pacey waved a hand impatiently. “Don’t tell me you weren’t curious. You’ve got the equipment to read a memory onto a screen.”
“I tried to,” she admitted after a few seconds. “But they had a
lockout code that wouldn’t permit a read from the console routine. They must have had a built-in, one-time activating sequence from the transmission call. They’d self-erased afterward.”
“And that didn’t make you suspicious?”
“At first I thought it was just some kind of routine UN security procedure. . . . Then I wasn’t so sure. That was when it started bothering me.” She looked across at Pacey nervously for a few seconds, then added timidly, “He did say it was only some trivial additions.” Her tone said she didn’t believe that now, either. Then she lapsed into silence while Pacey sat back with a distant expression on his face, gnawing unconsciously at the knuckle of his thumb while his mind raced through the possible meaning of what she had said.
“What else has he said to you?” he asked at last.
“What else?”
“Anything. Try and remember anything strange or unusual that he might have done or talked to you about-even things that sound stupid. This is important.”
“Well . . .” Janet frowned and stared at the wall behind him. “He told me about all the work he did for disarmament and how he was mixed up in turning the UN into an efficient global power since then . . . all the people in high places that he knows all over.”
“Uh huh. We know about that. Anything else?”
A smile ffickered on Janet’s mouth for a second. “He gets mad because you seem to give him a hard time at the delegation meetings. I get the impression he thinks you’re a mean bastard. I can’t think why, though.”
“Yes.”
Her expression changed suddenly. “There was something else, not long ago. . . . Yesterday, it was.” Pacey waited and said nothing. She thought for a moment. “I was in his quarters-in the bathroom. Somebody else from the delegation came in the front door suddenly, all excited. I’m not sure which one it was. It wasn’t you or that little bald Russian guy, but somebody foreign. Anyhow, he couldn’t have known I was in there and started talking straight away. Niels shut him up and sounded really mad, but not before this other guy had said something about some news coming in that something out in space a long way off would be destroyed very soon now.” She wrinkled her brow for a moment, then shook
her head. “There wasn’t anything else. . . not that I could make out, anyway.”
Pacey was staring at her incredulously. “You’re sure he said that?”
Janet shook her head. “It sounded like that. . . I can’t be sure. The faucet was running and. . .” She let it go at that.
“You can’t remember hearing anything else?”
“No. . . sorry.”
Pacey stood up and walked slowly over to the door. After pausing for a while he turned and came back, halting to stand staring down in front of her. “Look, I don’t think you realize what you’ve got yourself into,” he said, injecting an ominous note into his voice. She looked up at him fearfully. “Listen hard to this. It is absolutely imperative that you tell nobody else about this. Understand? Nobody! If you’re going to start being sensible, the time is right now. You must not let one word of what you’ve told me go a step further.” She shook her head mutely. “I want your word on that,” he told her.
She nodded, then after a second or two asked, “Does that mean I can’t see Niels?”
Pacey bit his lip. The chance to learn more was tempting, but could he trust her? He thought for a few seconds, then replied, “If you can keep your mouth shut about what you heard and what you’ve said. And if anything else unusual happens, let me know. Don’t go playing at spies and looking for trouble. Just keep your eyes and ears open, and if you see or hear anything strange, let me know and nobody else. And don’t write anything down. Okay?”