All clear. No one had located any of the lines with any tapping device known to security force experts. He was as safe from eavesdropping here as at the SF headquarters.
Thank heaven . . .
Next. therefore: a summary of things that had occurred to him since leaving the reserved area. The forensic team, naturally would be there indefinitely, but another top SF executive had arrived half an hour ago and relieved him, and he had been permitted to depart. On the way back to Lakonia, though. his mind had whirled and whirled. like a turbine under power, and now he had to report his thoughts.
He recited, tonelessly, for about ten minutes into the
proper phone. summing up all his views concerning that notion of Turpin’s-that the site might have been inactivated by an agent of some rival corporation caring more about profits than national security, or perhaps ‘by Navy, who had of course had their noses out of joint for more than a decade. It was entirely too possible that Turpin was right; at least, nothing on his record, or that of any other EG board-member, indicated that there would be likelier suspects within the corporation.
However. he dutifully listed the various doubts he was entertaining.
That done. he switched his attention to other matters. What additional data might be relevant? To punch for records of shoe-sales that might have included the agent of thafootprint, so sharp and clear on the roadway leading into-the site-no. that was absurd. They sold millions of pairs of shoes every month, and as he’d told Turpin, the brand-name was one of he commonest. (Shit! A “clue” in classic form, and here I am helpless, staring at it in my memory!)
On the other hand, if someone had come to and gone away from the site on the morning in question …. He put his chin in his hand and stared at nothing. Well, there was so much traffic on the superways nowadays, a thorough sifting of every vehicle that passed within a few miles of any of the three thousand reserved areas would taken even computers a very long time . . . and that was assuming there were records to analyse.
Suppose, though, a patrolman had filed some sort of trivial report during the period immediately following the shut-down of the site? The auto-logs had stopped registering at about 0350; dawn had been-uh-between four and five . . .
He reached for the remote keyboard that connected him with the master forensic computer at his HQ. and punched into it an inquiry that seemed like a fair compromise: Had any patrolman in the vicinity reported anything, no matter how minor, during the appropriate period, that didn’t appear in any of the regular traffic-offence categories? He wasn’t certain quite what he was looking for, but-well, surely a saboteur must have come to the site, spent a short while in and around it, and then gone away. Something as simple as a car reported travelling in one direction, then in the opposite direction sooner than could be accounted
for by a stopover and turn-around at a nearby city: That would fit.
Sifting police records was inevitably slow, even for computers; so many matters nowadays were police business. Waiting, he decided he could legitimately take care of a personal problem that had been irking him since his return home. What about Fenella? What had she been up to?
Should have remained a bachelor . . .
But he hadn’t, and since he had a wife, she must be like Caesar’s, above reproach. It was not strictly permissible to adapt officially issued detection gear for purposes like suspected infidelity, but of course all the married executives in the security force did so, and the top brass turned a blind eye. He himself had Fenella so thoroughly bugged, she literally couldn’t go to the bathroom-let alone make a phone-call or take a cab-ride–without his being able to find out afterwards.
It took him less than three minutes to locate, on the tapes, the argument she had had with the phone company to try and get them to release the unlisted number of Magda Hansen.
~J
“There are two ways you can go,” Magda said suddenly, after a long period of near-silence during which the nightblack ribbon of the superway had unreeled like a tape punctuated with blasts of random noise, the glare of oncoming lights at the curves where suddenly they shone direct-for a mere fraction of a second-on to Sheklov’s tortured retinae.