Goodbye California

‘Censorship, eh?’ Burnett’s second Scotch had had no mellowing effect.

‘Don’t be naïve.’

‘And if we – or I – refuse to write?’

‘If you’d rather not reassure your families that’s your decision entirely.’ He looked at Dubois. ‘I think we could have Drs Healey and Bramwell in now.’

Dr Schmidt said: ‘Two of the missing nuclear physicists.’

‘I promised to introduce you to some guests.’

‘Where is Professor Aachen?’

‘Professor Aachen?’ Morro looked at Dubois, who pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘We know no one of that name.’

‘Professor Aachen was the most prestigious of the three nuclear physicists who disappeared some weeks ago.’ Schmidt could be very precise, even pedantic, in his speech.

‘Well, he didn’t disappear in our direction. I have never heard of him. I’m afraid that we cannot accept responsibility for every scientist who chooses to vanish. Or defect.’

‘Defect? Never. Impossible.’

‘I’m afraid that’s been exactly the reaction of American and British colleagues of scientists who have found the attractions of State-subsidized flats in Moscow irresistible. Ah! Your non-defecting colleagues, gentlemen.’

Apart from a six-inch difference in height Healey and Bramwell were curiously alike. Dark, with thin, intelligent faces and identical horn-rimmed glasses and wearing neat, conservatively-cut clothes, they would not have looked out of place in a Wall Street boardroom. Morro didn’t have to make any introductions: top-ranking nuclear physicists form a very close community. Characteristically, it occurred to neither Burnett nor Schmidt to introduce their companions in distress.

After the customary hand-shaking, gripping of upper arms and not-so-customary regrets that their acquaintance should be renewed in such deplorable circumstances, Healey said: ‘We were expecting you. Well, colleagues?’ Healey favoured Morro with a look that lacked cordiality.

Burnett said: ‘Which was more than we did of you.’ By ‘we’ he clearly referred only to Schmidt and himself. ‘But if you’re here we expected Willi Aachen to be with you.’

‘I’d expected the same myself. But no Willi. Morro here is under the crackpot delusion that he may have defected. Man had never even heard of him, far less met him.’

‘“Crackpot” is right,’ Schmidt said, then added grudgingly: ‘You two look pretty fit, I must say.’

‘No reason why not.’ It was Bramwell. ‘An enforced and unwanted holiday, but the seven most peaceful weeks I’ve had in years. Ever, I suppose. Walking, eating, sleeping, drinking and, best, no telephone. Splendid library, as you can see, and in every suite colour TV for the weak-minded.’

‘Suite?’

‘You’ll see. Those old-time billionaires didn’t begrudge themselves anything. Any idea why you are here?’

‘None,’ Schmidt said. ‘We were looking to you to tell us.’

‘Seven weeks and we haven’t a clue.’

‘He hasn’t tried to make you work for him?’

‘Like building a nuclear device? Frankly, that’s what we thought would be demanded of us. But nothing.’ Healey permitted himself a humourless smile. ‘Almost disappointing, isn’t it?’

Burnett looked at Morro. ‘The gun with the empty magazine; is that it?’ Morro smiled politely.

‘How’s that?’ Bramwell said.

‘Psychological warfare. Against whomsoever the inevitable threat will ultimately be directed. Why kidnap a nuclear physicist if not to have him manufacture atom bombs under duress? That’s what the world will think.’

‘That’s what the world will think. The world does not know that you don’t require a nuclear physicist for that. But the people who really matter are those who know that for a hydrogen bomb you do require a nuclear physicist. We figured that out our first evening here.’

Morro was courteous as ever. ‘If I could interrupt your conversation, gentlemen. Plenty of time to discuss the past – and the present and future – later. A late supper will be available here in an hour. Meantime, I’m sure our new guests would like to see their quarters and attend to some – ah – optional correspondence.’

Susan Ryder was forty-five and looked ten years younger. She had dark-blonde hair, cornflower-blue eyes and a smile that could be bewitching or coolly disconcerting according to the company. Intelligent and blessed with a sense of humour, she was not, however, feeling particularly humorous at that moment. She had no reason to. She was sitting on her bed in the quarters that had been allocated to her. Julie Johnson, the stenographer, was standing in the middle of the room.

‘They certainly know how to put up their guests,’ said Julie. ‘Or old Von Streicher did. Living-room and bedroom from the Beverly Wilshire. Bathroom with gold-plated taps – it’s got everything!’

‘I might even try out some of these luxuries,’ said Susan in a loud voice. She rose, putting a warning finger to her lips. ‘In fact I’m going to try a quick shower. Won’t be long.’

She passed through the bedroom into the bathroom, waited some prudent seconds, turned the shower on, returned to the living-room and beckoned Julie who followed her back to the bathroom. Susan smiled at the young girl’s raised eyebrows and said in a soft voice: ‘I don’t know whether these rooms are bugged or not.’

‘Of course they are.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘I wouldn’t put anything past that creep.’

‘Mr Morro. I thought him quite charming, myself. But I agree. Running a shower gets a hidden mike all confused. Or so John told me once.’ Apart from herself and Parker, no one called Sergeant Ryder by his given name, probably because very few people knew it: Jeff invariably called her Susan but never got beyond ‘Dad’ where his father was concerned. ‘I wish to heaven he was here now – though mind you, I’ve already written a note to him.’

Julie looked at her blankly.

‘Remember when I was overcome back in San Ruffino and had to retire to the powder room? I took John’s picture with me, removed the backing, scribbled a few odds and ends on the back of the picture, replaced the back and left the picture behind.’

‘Isn’t it a pretty remote chance that it would ever occur to him to open up the picture?’

‘Yes. So I scribbled a tiny note in shorthand, tore it up and dropped it in my waste-paper basket.’

‘Again, isn’t it unlikely that that would occur to him? To check your basket? And even if he did, to guess that a scrap of shorthand would mean anything?’

‘It’s a slender chance. Well, a little better than slender. You can’t know him as I do. Women have the traditional right of being unpredictable, and that’s one of the things about him that does annoy me: ninety-nine point something per cent of the time he can predict precisely what I will do.’

‘Even if he does find what you left – well, you couldn’t have been able to tell him much.’

‘Very little. A description – what little I could give of anybody with a stocking mask – his stupid remark about taking us to some place where we wouldn’t get our feet wet, and his name.’

‘Funny he shouldn’t have warned his thugs against calling him by name. Unless, of course, it wasn’t his name.’

‘Sure it’s not his name. Probably a twisted sense of humour. He broke into a power station, so it probably tickled him to call himself after another station, the one in Morro Bay. Though I don’t know if that will help us much.’

Julie smiled doubtfully and left. When the door closed behind her Susan turned around to locate the draught that had suddenly made her shoulders feel cold, but there was no place from which a draught could have come.

Showers were in demand that evening. A little way along the hallway Professor Burnett had his running for precisely the same reason as Susan had. In this case the person he wanted to talk to was, inevitably, Dr Schmidt. Bramwell, when listing the amenities of Adlerheim, had omitted to include what both Burnett and Schmidt regarded as by far the most important amenity of all: every suite was provided with its own wet bar. The two men silently toasted each other, Burnett with his malt, Schmidt with his gin and tonic: unlike Sergeant Parker, Schmidt had no esoteric preferences as to the source of his gin. A gin was a gin was a gin.

Burnett said: ‘Do you make of all this what I make of all this?’