The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [133]
“The inspector knew Professor Miller. She’s better placed than anyone else to assess what might be missing,” Hapgood said, letting a trace of resentment show. “It’s our investigation too, remember. We’re all supposed to be on the same side.”
Lisa suppressed a smile. “Mr. Smith co-opted me to help him out at Ahasuerus and the Institute of Algeny,” she said apologetically. “I was with him most of yesterday and last night. This is the first chance I’ve had to get out here.”
The door finally swung open.
“Thanks, Jerry,” Lisa said dismissively.
“You’re welcome,” Hapgood assured her, presumably having taken some small satisfaction in exercising his meager authority upon the invaders from London.
“We’re very busy,” the man from the Ministry informed Lisa as soon as he had reclosed the door.
“That’s all right,” Lisa told him. “I know my way around. That’s the whole point of my being here. I won’t get in your way. You’ll hardly know I’m here.”
It would have been a good deal easier to follow Morgan’s instructions if she’d had his study to herself, but that, inevitably, was where the majority of the Ministry men were busy. There were three of them. She had to make a show of prowling around, studying the dust patterns on the desk where Morgan’s oldest surviving PC had stood for thirty-some years and pushing objects back and forth to expose similar traces on the unevenly cluttered shelves. Eventually she convinced herself that the operatives engaged in methodically copying wafers and sequins into their own equipment were so used to her presence that they had stopped paying attention to what she was doing, and it was at that point that she began to look for what she actually wanted.
Morgan had never set aside his twentieth-century habits. He had always taken it for granted that although burglars would plunder electronic-storage devices with alacrity, because they were so easily portable, they would never bother with books. He wasn’t vandal enough to to make a safe by cutting the centers out of the pages of a book, no matter how disposable the text might be, but he regarded the space within a reference book’s spine as the kind of repository that no one would ever think to investigate.
In order to get the wafer out, Lisa had not only to pick up volume M-Z of Morgan’s Webster’s New International Dictionary, but to let the pages fall open far enough to get her fingers into the opened crack. The cut between her thumb and finger hadn’t bothered her for some time, but the maneuver tested the flexibility of the sealant to the limit. She had to fight hard to maintain the appearance of a purely fortuitous movement. Fortunately, none of the Ministry men paid the slightest heed. The youngest of them was forty-five and the oldest must have been eight or ten years older than Lisa, but that didn’t prevent their deciding, consciously or unconsciously, that she was too old to be worth looking at.
When the wafer was safely lodged in a hidden pocket, Lisa continued her charade, dutifully pretending that she really was making a mental list of missing objects. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Judith Kenna would one day ask her for exactly such a report. She gave the job an extra five minutes before deciding that enough was enough. She didn’t bother to announce that she was leaving, although she did favor the man who’d let her in with a slight nod when he looked up to take note of her departure. No one challenged her on the way to the front door. She simply walked straight out—but it seemed unwise to treat Jerry Hapgood quite so loftily, so she walked over to his car.
“I can’t give you a lift, Dr. Friemann,” he said before she had opened her mouth. “Got to stay here.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “My car’s only a couple of minutes away. If you see Mike back at the station, tell him I’ll catch him when I can. Have to get back to my other boss now—no rest for the wicked.”
“Sure,” he said with a tolerantly patronizing smile. Lisa knew perfectly well that nobody of his generation ever declared that