“Just over two years.”
“Before that?”
“I came straight from secretarial school.”
“You have a pretty sensitive and responsible position here?”
She smiled again, but this time a little uncertainly, as if unsure where the questions were leading. “Mr. Reynolds lists me as his confidential secretary.”
“May I ask how old you are?”
“Twenty-two.”
“You must be the youngest confidential secretary of any big corporation I’ve ever come across.”
This time she caught her lip and glanced at Reynolds, who was leaning back in his chair, hands clasped lazily behind his neck, with the air of a man who was almost enjoying himself. He smiled and said, “Mr. Mackenzie is an industrial sabotage investigator. He has a job to do, and asking questions is part of that job. I know he’s just made a statement, not asked a question, but it’s one of those statements that expects comment.”
She turned back to Mackenzie, with a swing of her long chestnut hair. “I suppose I’ve been pretty lucky at that.”
She spoke with marked coolness, and Mackenzie felt it. “None of my questions are directed against you, Corinne, okay? Now, you must know the executive-level people pretty well?”
“I can hardly help it. They all come through me to get to Mr. Reynolds.”
“Including those who have business with that safe there?”
“Of course. I know them all well.”
“All good friends, I take it?”
“Well” — she smiled, but the smile had an edge to it — “lots of them are much too senior to be my friends.”
“But on good terms, shall we say?”
“Oh, yes.” She smiled again. “I don’t think I’ve made any enemies.”
“Perish the thought!” This came from George Dermott, who took over the questioning on a brisker note. “Any of the people using the safe ever give you trouble? Like trying to take away what they shouldn’t?”
“Not often, and then it’s only absentminded-ness or because they haven’t studied the classified list. And surely, Mr. Dermott, if anyone wanted to get something past me they’d hide it in their clothing.”
Dermott nodded. “That’s true. Miss Delorme.” The girl was inspecting his rough-and-ready good looks with a spark of humor in her eye, as if amused by his blunt approach. He caught the expression and, in his turn, watched her for a reflective moment. “What do you think now?” he asked her. “Do you think anyone might have smuggled something past you out of the safe?”
She looked him in the eye. “They might,” she said, “but I doubt it.”
“Could I have a list of the people who used the safe in the past four or five days?”
“Certainly.” She left and returned with a sheet which Dermott studied briefly.
“Good Lord! The safe appears to be the Mecca for half of Sanmobil. Twenty entries at least in the last four days.” He looked up at the girl. “This is a carbon. May I keep it?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Corinne Delorme smiled at the room in general, but the blue eyes came back to Dermott before she went out.
“Charming indeed,” said Brady.
“Plenty of spunk,” Mackenzie said ruefully. “She built a whole generation gap between you and ,me, George.” He frowned. “What gave you the idea . her name was Delorme?”
“There was a plaque on her desk. ‘Corinne Delorme,’ it said.” Dermott shook his head. “Hawkeye Mackenzie,” he said.
The other men laughed. Some of the tension that had grown in the room during the questioning of the girl fell away again.
“Well. Anything more I can do for you?” Reynolds asked.
Dermott said, “Yes, please. Could we have a list of the names of your security staff?”
Reynolds bent over the intercom and spoke to Corinne. He had just finished when Brinckman arrived accompanied by a tall, red-haired man whom he introduced as Carl Jorgensen.
Dermott said, “You were in charge of the night security shift, I understand. Were you around the sabotaged area at all tonight?”
“Several times.”
“So often? I thought you would have been concentrating on what we regarded — mistakenly — as the more vulnerable areas.”
“I went around them a couple of times, but by jeep only. But I had this funny feeling that we might have been guarding the wrong places. Don’t ask me why.”
“Your funny feeling didn’t turn out to be so funny after all. Anything off-beat? Anything to arouse suspicion?”
“Nothing. I know everybody on the night shift and I know where they work. Nobody there that shouldn’t have been there, nobody in any place that he hadn’t any right to be.”
“You’ve got a key to the blasting shed. Where do you keep it?”
“Terry Brinckman mentioned this. I have it only during my tour of duty and then I hand it over. I always carry it in the same button-down pocket on my shirt.”
“Could anybody get at it?”
“Nobody except a professional pickpocket, and even then I’d know.”
The two security men left and Corinne came in with a sheet of paper. Reynolds said, “That was quick.”
“Not really. They were typed out ages ago.”
Brady said to the girl, “You must come and meet my daughter, Stella. I’m sure you’d get on. Both the same age. Stella is very like you, actually.”
“Thank you, Mr. Brady. I think I’d like that.”
“I’ll have her call you.”
When she had gone, Dermott said, “What do you mean, like your daughter? I’ve never seen anyone less like Stella.”
“Dancing eyes, my boy, dancing eyes. One must learn to probe beneath the surface.” Brady heaved himself to his feet. “The years creep on. Breakfast and bed. I’m through detecting for the day. It’s tougher than capping fires.”
Dermott drove the rented car back to the hotel, Mackenzie sitting beside him. Brady took his ease across the entire width of the back seat. He said, “I’m afraid I wasn’t quite leveling with Reynolds there. Breakfast, yes. But it’ll be some hours before I — we — retire. I have come up with a plan.” He paused.
Dermott said courteously, “We’re listening.”
“I think I’ll do some listening first. Why do you think I employ you?”
“That’s a fair question,” Mackenzie said. “Why?”
“To investigate, to detect, to think, to plot, to scheme, to plan.”
“All at once?” Mackenzie said.
Brady ignored him. “I don’t want to come up with a proposal and then, if it goes wrong, have to spend the rest of my days listening to your carping reproaches. I’d like you two to come up with an idea and then if it’s a lemon we can all share the blame. Incidentally, Donald, I take it you have your bug-box with you?”
“The electronic eavesdropping locator-detector?”
“That’s what I said.” • “Yes.”
“Splendid. Now, George, let’s have your reading of the situation.”
“My reading of the situation is that for all the good we’re doing we haven’t a hope in hell of stopping the bad guys from doing exactly what they want and when they want. There is no way to forestall attacks on Sanmobil or the Alaska pipeline. They’re calling the shots and we’re the sitting ducks, if you’ll pardon the mixing of the metaphors. They call the tune and we dance to it. They’re active, we’re passive. They’re offensive, we’re defensive. If we have any tactics, I’d say it’s time we changed them.”
“Go on,” his leader urged him from behind.
“If that’s meant to sound encouraging,” Dermott said, “I don’t know why. But how’s this for a positive thought? Instead of letting them keep us off-balance, why don’t we keep them off-balance? Instead of their harassing us, let us harass them.”.
“Go on, go on,” the back seat exhorted.
“Let’s attack them and put them on the defensive. Let them start worrying, instead of us.” He paused. “I see things as through a glass darkly, but I say plant a light at the end of the tunnel. What we’ll do is, we’ll provoke them. Provoke a reaction. Provoke the hell out of them. We’ll hang it on this one factor: Our own pasts, our backgrounds, can be probed until the cows come home, and nothing will be turned up. But you can say that about how many people in a hundred?”
Dermott twisted his head briefly to locate a peculiar noise from the back of the car. Brady was actually rubbing his hands together. “Well, Donald, what’s your reading of it?”
“Simple enough when you see it,” Mackenzie said. “All you have to do is to antagonize anywhere between sixty and eighty people to hell and back again. Investigate them as openly as possible. Deploy maximum indiscretion.”
Brady beamed. “What sixty to eighty people do . we investigate?”
“In Alaska all the security agents. Here, the security agents again, plus everybody who’s had access to Reynolds’ safe in the past few days. Going to include Reynolds himself?”
“Good heavens, no.”
Mackenzie said inconsequentially, “She is a lovely girl.”