Goodbye California - Alistair [100]
‘Forty-four. That’s a lot of FBI agents.’
Dunne was patient. ‘There are approximately eight thousand FBI men in the States. If Barrow cares to allocate one half of one per cent of his men to a particular case, that’s his privilege. He could allocate four hundred and forty if he wanted. Point is, twenty-six of those agents came up with the same puzzling – I’d call it astonishing – discovery: twenty-six of the men being investigated are missing. Wives, children, relatives, friends – none of them has any idea where they might be, none was given the slightest indication of their intention to depart. What do you make of that?’
‘Well, that’s interesting too.’
‘Interesting, interesting, interesting. Is that all you can say?’
‘Well, as you say, it’s extremely odd.’
‘Look, Ryder, if you have any idea, if you’re holding anything back –’
‘Obstructing the course of justice, you mean?’
‘Just that.’
‘I thought I might be a complete fool, Dunne. Now I know you are.’ There was a silence, not long but extremely uncomfortable. ‘Sure, I’m obstructing the course of justice. How many of your family is Morro holding hostage?’ Another silence. ‘I’m going to talk to our friend LeWinter. Rather, he’s going to talk to me. It’s as obvious as the hand before your face that he’s supplied Morro with that list and that Morro has either had them suborned or taken by force. Your twenty-six agents might be profitably engaged on checking on the criminal backgrounds, if any, of those twenty-six men. LeWinter will talk. Sure as God he’ll talk.’
The quietly-spoken, cold ferocity in Ryder’s voice had a chilling effect on everyone in the room. Jeff licked his lips and looked at a man he’d never seen before. Parker regarded the ceiling. Delage and Leroy looked at Dunne. Dunne looked at the hand before his face and used the back of it to smooth his brow.
Dunne said: ‘Maybe I’m not myself. Maybe we’re not any of us ourselves. The apologies go without saying. Next you’ll be accusing us of being a bunch of lily-livered incompetents. But, hell, Sergeant, there’s a limit to how far you can step outside the law. Sure he has a list which included the twenty-six men who have disappeared. A dozen others may have similar lists and all for innocuous purposes. You’re proceeding on the basis of assumptions. There isn’t a shred of evidence, direct or otherwise, to link LeWinter and Morro.’
‘I don’t need evidence.’
Once again Dunne used the back of his hand. ‘You have just said, in the presence of three Government officers, that you’re prepared to use torture to obtain your information.’
‘Who said anything about torture? It’ll look like a heart attack. You said you had two things to tell me about LeWinter. Well, that’s one.’
‘Jesus!’ Dunne wasn’t smoothing his brow now; he was mopping it. ‘Delage, you have the information. Me, I need time to think.’
‘Yes. Well.’ Delage didn’t look any happier than his superior. ‘Miss Ivanhoe, if that’s her name, well, LeWinter’s secretary, has talked. There’s a Geneva connection all right. It all sounds very much like something out of science fiction, but if it’s even half-way true then it’s frightening enough. It must be if most of the nations of the world – major ones, that is, thirty to be precise – sit down at a disarmament conference in Geneva and talk about it.’
‘I have all morning,’ Ryder said.
‘Sorry. Well, the lady talked and it didn’t seem to make much sense so we contacted ERDA with the result that one of Dr Durrer’s senior assistants was called in, shown what Miss Ivanhoe said, and had no trouble at all in making sense of it. He’s an expert on the subject.’
‘I haven’t got the afternoon as well.’
‘Give me a break, will you? He wrote a condensed report. This is what he has to say.’
‘Classified?’
‘Declassified. It’s a bit formal, but here it is. He says: “It has long been accepted that any nuclear