The Third Twin - Ken Follett [83]
Fortunately she had read the proposal carefully and made notes. Annette was planning to trawl through existing data on twins to see if she could find correlations in the areas of political opinions and moral attitudes. It was an interesting notion and her plan was scientifically sound. Jeannie suggested some minor improvements and gave her the go-ahead.
As Annette was leaving, Ted Ransome put his head around the door. “You look as if you’re about to cut someone’s balls off,” he said.
“Not yours, though.” Jeannie smiled. “Come in and have a cup of coffee.”
“Handsome” Ransome was her favorite man in the department. An associate professor who studied the psychology of perception, he was happily married with two small children. Jeannie knew he found her attractive, but he did not do anything about it. There was a pleasant frisson of sexual tension between them that never threatened to become a problem.
She switched on the coffee maker beside her desk and told him about the New York Times and Maurice Obeli. “But here’s the big question,” she finished. “Who tipped off the Times?”
“It has to be Sophie,” he said.
Sophie Chapple was the only other woman on the faculty of the psychology department. Although she was close to fifty and a full professor, she saw Jeannie as some kind of rival and had behaved jealously from the beginning of the semester, complaining about everything from Jeannie’s miniskirts to the way she parked her car.
“Would she do a thing like that?” Jeannie said.
“Like a shot.”
“I guess you’re right.” Jeannie never ceased to marvel at the pettiness of top scientists. She had once seen a revered mathematician punch the most brilliant physicist in America for cutting in line in the cafeteria. “Maybe I’ll ask her.”
He raised his eyebrows. “She’ll lie.”
“But she’ll look guilty.”
“There’ll be a fight.”
“There’s already a fight.”
The phone rang. Jeannie picked it up and gestured to Ted to pour the coffee. “Hello.”
“Naomi Freelander here.”
Jeannie hesitated. “I’m not sure I should talk to you.”
“I believe you’ve stopped using medical databases for your research.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“I mean I haven’t stopped. Your phone calls have started some discussions, but no decisions have been made.”
“I have a fax here from the university president’s office. In it, the university apologizes to people whose privacy has been invaded, and assures them that the program has been discontinued.”
Jeannie was aghast. “They sent out that release?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I saw a draft and I didn’t agree to it.”
“It seems like they’ve canceled your program without telling you.”
‘They can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a contract with this university. They can’t just do whatever the hell they like.”
“Are you telling me you’re going to continue in defiance of the university authorities?”
“Defiance doesn’t come into it. They don’t have the power to command me.” Jeannie caught Ted’s eye. He lifted a hand and moved it from side to side in a negative gesture. He was right, Jeannie realized; this was not the way to talk to the press. She changed her tack. “Look,” she said in a reasonable voice, “you yourself said that the invasion of privacy is potential, in this case.”
“Yes.…”
“And you have completely failed to find anyone who is willing to complain about my program. Yet you have no qualms about getting this research project canceled.”
“I don’t judge, I report.”
“Do you know what my research is about? I’m trying to find out what makes people criminals. I’m the first person to think of a really promising way to study this problem. If things work out right, what I discover could make America a better place for your grandchildren to grow up in.”
“I don