The Third Twin - Ken Follett [104]
Lisa looked thoughtful.
“I hate to ask you,” Jeannie said.
Then Lisa’s expression changed. “Hell, yes,” she said at last. “Of course I’ll try it.”
Jeannie felt choked up. “Thanks,” she said. She bit her lip. “You’re a friend.” She reached across the desk and squeezed Lisa’s hand.
Lisa was embarrassed by Jeannie’s emotion. “Where in your office is the FBI list?” she said practically.
“The information is on a floppy disk labeled SHOPPING.LST, in a box of floppies in my desk drawer.”
“Got it.” Lisa frowned. “I can’t understand why they’re so against you.”
“It all started with Steve Logan,” Jeannie said. “Ever since Berrington saw him here, there has been trouble. But I think I may be on the way to understanding why.” She stood up.
“What are you going to do now?” said Lisa.
“I’m going to Philadelphia.”
32
BERRINGTON STARED OUT OF THE WINDOW OF HIS OFFICE. NO one was using the tennis court this morning. His imagination pictured Jeannie there. He had seen her on the first or second day of the semester, racing across the court in her short skirt, brown legs pumping, white shoes flashing.… He had fallen for her then. He frowned, wondering why he had been so struck by her athleticism. Seeing women play sports was not a special turn-on for him. He never watched American Gladiators, unlike Professor Gormley in Egyptology, who had every show on videotapes and reran them, according to rumor, late at night in his den at home. But when Jeannie played tennis she achieved a special grace. It was like watching a lion break into a sprint in a nature film; the muscles flowed beneath the skin, the hair flew in the slipstream, and the body moved, stopped, turned, and moved again with astonishing, supernatural suddenness. It was mesmerizing to watch, and he had been captivated. Now she was threatening everything he had worked for all his life, yet he still wished he could watch her play tennis one more time.
It was maddening that he could not simply dismiss her, even though her salary was essentially paid by him. Jones Falls University was her employer, and Genetico had already given them the money. A college could not fire faculty the way a restaurant could fire an incompetent waiter. That was why he had to go through this rigmarole.
“The hell with her,” he said aloud, and he went back to his desk.
This morning’s interview had proceeded smoothly, until the revelation about Jack Budgen. Berrington had got Maurice good and riled in advance and had neatly prevented any rapprochement. But it was bad news that the chair of the discipline committee was to be Jeannie’s tennis partner. Berrington had not checked this out in advance; he had assumed he would have some influence over the choice of chair, and he had been dismayed to learn that the appointment was a done thing.
There was a grave danger Jack would see Jeannie’s side of the story.
He scratched his head worriedly. Berrington never socialized with, his academic colleagues—he preferred the more glamorous company of political and media types. But he knew Jack Budgen’s background. Jack had retired from professional tennis at the age of thirty and returned to college to get his doctorate. Already too old to begin a career in chemistry, his subject, he had become an administrator. Running the university’s complex of libraries and balancing the conflicting demands of rival departments required a tactful and obliging nature, and Jack did it well.
How could Jack be swayed? He was not a devious man: quite the reverse—his easygoing nature went along with a kind of naivete. He would be offended if Berrington lobbied him openly or blatantly offered some kind of bribe. But it might be possible to influence him discreetly.
Berrington himself had accepted a bribe once. He still felt knots in his guts whenever he thought of it. It had happened early in his career, before he had become a full professor. A woman undergraduate had been caught cheating—paying another student to write her term paper. Her name was Judy Gilmore and she was really cute. She ought to have been expelled