The Third Twin - Ken Follett [89]
“You didn’t like me calling you a big strong kid.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“I’m twenty-nine. It’s a big difference.”
“Do I seem like a kid to you?”
“Listen, I don’t know, a man of thirty probably wouldn’t drive here from Washington just to bring me pizza. It was kind of impulsive.”
“Are you sorry I did it?”
“No.” She touched his hand. “I’m real glad.”
He still did not know where he was with her. But she had cried on his shoulder. You don’t use a kid for that, he thought.
“When will you know about my genes?” he said.
She looked at her watch. “The blotting is probably done. Lisa will make the film in the morning.”
“You mean the test is completed?”
“Just about.”
“Can’t we look at the results now? I can’t wait to find out if I have the same DNA as Dennis Pinker.”
“I guess we could,” Jeannie said. “I’m pretty curious myself.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
25
BERRINGTON JONES HAD A PLASTIC CARD THAT WOULD OPEN any door in Nut House.
No one else knew. Even the other full professors fondly imagined their offices were private. They knew the cleaners had master keys. So did the campus security guards. But it never occurred to faculty that it could not be very difficult to get hold of a key that was given even to cleaners.
All the same, Berrington had never used his master key. Snooping was undignified: not his style. Pete Watlingson probably had photos of naked boys in his desk drawer, Ted Ransome undoubtedly stashed a little marijuana somewhere, Sophie Chapple might keep a vibrator for those long, lonely afternoons, but Berrington did not want to know about it. The master key was only for emergencies.
This was an emergency.
The university had ordered Jeannie to stop using her computer search program, and they had announced to the world that it had been discontinued, but how could he be sure it was true? He could not see the electronic messages fly along the phone lines from one terminal to another. Throughout the day the thought had nagged him that she might already be searching another database. And there was no telling what she might find.
So he had returned to his office and now sat at his desk, as the warm dusk gathered over the red brick of the campus buildings, tapping a plastic card against his computer mouse and getting ready to do something that went against all his instincts.
His dignity was precious. He had developed it early. As the smallest boy in the class, without a father to tell him how to deal with bullies, his mother too worried about making ends meet to concern herself with his happiness, he had slowly created an air of superiority, an aloofness that protected him. At Harvard he had furtively studied a classmate from a rich old-money family, taking in the details of his leather belts and linen handkerchiefs, his tweed suits and cashmere scarves; learning how he unfolded his napkin and held chairs for ladies; marveling at the mixture of ease and deference with which he treated the professors, the superficial charm and underlying coldness of his relations with his social inferiors. By the time Berrington began work on his master’s degree he was widely assumed to be a Brahmin himself.
And the cloak of dignity was difficult to take off. Some professors could remove their jackets and join in a game of touch football with a group of undergraduates, but not Berrington. The students never told him jokes or invited him to their parties, but neither did they act rudely to him or talk during his lectures or question his grades.
In a sense his whole life since the creation of Genetico had been a deception, but he had carried it off with boldness and panache. However, there was no stylish way to sneak into someone else’s room and search it.
He checked his watch. The lab would be closed now. Most of his colleagues had left, heading for their suburban homes or for the bar of the Faculty Club. This was as good a moment as any. There was no time when the building was guaranteed to be empty; scientists worked whenever the mood took them. If he were seen, he would have to brazen