the Third Twin (1996)

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 it out.

He left his office, went down the stairs, and walked along the corridor to Jeannie’s door. There was no one around. He swiped the card through the card reader and her door opened. He stepped inside, switched on the lights, and closed the door behind him.

It was the smallest office in the building. In fact it had been a storeroom, but Sophie Chapple had maliciously insisted it become Jeannie’s office, on the spurious grounds that a bigger room was needed to store the boxes of printed questionnaires the department used. It was a narrow room with a small window. However, Jeannie had livened it up with two wooden chairs painted bright red, a spindly palm in a pot, and a reproduction of a Picasso etching, a bullfight in vivid shades of yellow and orange.

He picked up the framed picture on her desk. It was a black-and-white photograph of a good-looking man with sideburns and a wide tie, and a young woman with a determined expression: Jeannie’s parents in the seventies, he guessed. Otherwise her desk was completely clear. Tidy girl.

He sat down and switched on her computer. While it was booting up he went through her drawers. The top one contained ballpoints and scratch pads. In another he found a box of tampons and a pair of panty hose in an unopened packet. Berrington hated panty hose. He cherished adolescent memories of garter belts and stockings with seams. Panty hose were unhealthy, too, like nylon Jockey shorts. If President Proust made him surgeon general, he planned to put a health warning on all panty hose. The next drawer contained a hand mirror and a brush with some of Jeannie’s long dark hair caught in its bristles; the last, a pocket dictionary and a paperback book called A Thousand Acres. No secrets so far.

Her menu came up on screen. He picked up her mouse and clicked on Calendar. Her appointments were predictable: lectures and classes, laboratory time, tennis games, dates for drinks and movies. She was going to Oriole Park at Camden Yards to watch the ball game on Saturday; Ted Ransome and his wife were having her over to brunch on Sunday; her car was due to be serviced on Monday. There was no entry that said “Scan medical files of Acme Insurance.” Her to-do list was equally mundane: “Buy vitamins, call Ghita, Lisa birthday gift, check modem.”

He exited the diary and began to look through her files. She had masses of statistics on spreadsheets. Her word-processing files were smaller: some correspondence, designs for questionnaires, a draft of an article. Using the Find feature, he searched her entire WP directory for the word “database.” It came up several times in the article and again in file copies of three outgoing letters, but none of the references told him where she planned to use her search engine next. “Come on,” he said aloud, “there has to be something, for God’s sake.”

She had a filing cabinet, but there was not much in it; she had been here only a few weeks. After a year or two it would be stuffed full of completed questionnaires, the raw data of psychological research. Now she had a few incoming letters in one file, departmental memos in another, photocopies of articles in a third.

In an otherwise empty cupboard he found, facedown, a framed picture of Jeannie with a tall, bearded man, both of them on bicycles beside a lake. Berrington inferred a love affair that had ended.

He now felt even more worried. This was the room of an organized person, the type who planned ahead. She filed her incoming letters and kept copies of everything she sent out. There ought to be evidence here of what she was going to do next. She had no reason to be secretive about it; until today there had been no suggestion that she had anything to be ashamed of. She must be planning another database sweep. The only possible explanation for the absence of clues was that she had made the arrangements by phone or in person, perhaps with someone who was a close friend. And if that were the case he might not be able to find out anything about it by searching her room.

He heard a footstep in the corridor outside, and he tensed. There was a click as a card was passed through the card reader. Berrington stared helplessly at the door. There was nothing he could do: he was caught red-handed, sitting at her desk, with her computer on. He could not pretend to have wandered in here by accident.

The door opened. He expected to see Jeannie, but in fact it was a security guard.

The man knew him. “Oh, hi, Professor,” the guard said. “I saw the light on, so I thought I’d check. Dr. Ferrami usually keeps her door open when she’s here.”

Berrington struggled not to blush. “That’s quite all right,” he said. Never apologize, never explain. “I’ll be sure to close the door when I’m through here.”

“Great.”

The guard stood silent, waiting for an explanation. Berrington clamped his jaw shut. Eventually the man said: “Well, good night, Professor.”

“Good night.”

The guard left.

Berrington relaxed. No problem.

He checked that her modem was switched on, then clicked on America Online and accessed her mailbox. Her terminal was programmed to give her password automatically. She had three pieces of mail. He downloaded them all. The first was a notice about increased prices for using the Internet. The second came from the University of Minnesota and read:

I’ll be in Baltimore on Friday and would like to have a drink with you for old times’ sake. Love, Will

Berrington wondered if Will was the bearded guy in the bike picture. He threw it out and opened the third letter. It electrified him.

You’ll be relieved to know that I’m running your scan on our fingerprint file tonight. Call me. Ghita.

It was from the FBI.

“Son of a bitch,” Berrington whispered. “This will kill us.”