‘You read minds?’
‘I don’t need to. I suspect it would be very tedious. No; everybody thinks the same when they meet me for the first time.’ He smiled wanly. ‘I used to find it annoying.’
‘What am I doing here?’
‘You did not say how honoured you are to be in my presence,’ he noted.
Jack shrugged.
‘Good. I hate obsequiousness. It is perfectly simple. I want an explanation of the lamentable chaos that seems to be overwhelming Hanslip’s laboratories. Let me list the things that concern me,’ Oldmanter said. ‘One of my advisers has gone missing. Dr Hanslip is refusing to respond to any communications. There was a catastrophic accident last week that resulted in widespread disturbance and Hanslip is ostentatiously trying to blame it all on renegades. He has also, I learn, lost his star mathematician.’
He paused. ‘I do not care too much about any of that, but I am very concerned about the state of Dr Hanslip’s project.’
‘I’m sure that I don’t know...’
‘I am sure that you do.’
‘I am bound by my oath of confidentiality.’
‘I am well aware of where your loyalties lie, and I honour you for that. Nonetheless, circumstances have changed. Hanslip’s operation will soon enough belong to us, as will all the information it owns.’
‘In which case surely it would be better to wait until then?’
‘I would, if I was confident that the situation wasn’t going to degenerate further. What are you looking for?’
Jack hesitated for a moment. ‘Why do you think I am looking for something?’
‘In the middle of a crisis you suddenly leave and travel south. You try to ensure that you cannot be tracked from the moment you get to the mainland to the moment you arrive here. Naturally we have your institute watched. It is standard procedure when we are negotiating to acquire something.’
As the man seemed to know a great deal, there was little to be gained by pretending otherwise. ‘We were subject to attempted sabotage and theft. I was sent to make enquiries. My main task is to track down Angela Meerson, who, as you say, has vanished.’
‘Theft of...?’
‘Some data.’
‘Have you succeeded?’
‘I have scarcely started.’
‘I see. You understand that with the resources I have at my disposal I could track Meerson down very much faster than you could.’
‘I doubt that. You would make a great deal of noise and put her on the alert. She is, as perhaps you know, very intelligent and almost paranoid in her lack of trust in others.’
‘You have a low opinion of our skills.’
‘I do. I have learnt over the years that the bigger the organisation, the clumsier it is. I will find her faster and more efficiently than you can.’
Oldmanter considered this remark for a moment and then said: ‘You are not telling me the entire truth, of course.’
‘Of course not,’ Jack replied with a smile. ‘It is the truth, nonetheless.’
‘Very well. Bear in mind that I wish to secure control of this technology for the good of humanity. Hanslip has neither the vision nor the resources to develop it properly. I do. Your assistance will be valued and rewarded, if and when it is forthcoming.’
‘I have nothing useful to offer you at the moment.’
‘Then I would urge you to remember my words when you do.’
Jack moved swiftly when he left Oldmanter’s quarters. The first task was to escape the residence unnoticed. For this he assumed he had an advantage; if Oldmanter truly thought that he was a high-ranking scientist, and the polite way he talked suggested he did, then no one would assume he had the skills necessary to evade them. With luck, he could disappear thoroughly before they even noticed he had gone.
Signing out, he decided, he could do without. Instead, he left through the doors that led to the service area, full of the sort of people that Oldmanter scarcely knew existed, the cooks and cleaners who toiled unseen in the bowels of the building. There he ducked and weaved through the corridors, borrowing at one stage a floor sweeper’s brown coat and cap that he found hanging on a peg by a cupboard. Then he went to the loading bay, where the food came in and the rubbish went out. It was not hard to hitch a lift in one of the trucks, and he was certain he could rely on the suspicion and surliness of such people for protection. Did you see anyone unusual this morning? No. Not a soul... Many a time he had been faced with such obstruction. It was the first and often enough the last response to any question.
He got out at a busy intersection where there were only multiple lanes of transports but no pedestrians. No one paid any attention to him as he slipped out, thanking the driver with a clap on the shoulder as he slid to the ground. The man never even looked at him, just grunted as he slammed the door. Then he spent the next hour criss-crossing the area, a commercial zone full of factories and processing plants, surrounded by massive high-rise blocks for the workers who kept them going, ducking into buildings and out the back, walking, then doubling back. He left his wallet with his money card in it on a bench where he knew it would be found and, inevitably, stolen. Once it was used, his location would be tracked wherever it went, and his followers would go off on a wild goose chase, convinced they knew exactly where he was.
He hadn’t really believed Hanslip when he had told him to be careful just before he left. But if Oldmanter in person was intervening, then it was serious indeed; this was not a man who occupied himself with details. He had tens of thousands of people who could have come and interviewed him. Now he knew the institute was being monitored, and Oldmanter considered Angela’s technology to be so important that it required him to get involved personally. This was no longer tidying up after a security lapse and an embarrassing accident.
He now had the entire night to pass before he could get into the Depository. It was cold, it was wet and he had no money. All of a sudden, life was much less pleasant.
The moment he arrived the following morning at the daunting steel gates which led to the main entrance, he realised that, if Emily did not show up, there was not a chance he could find anything on his own. It was huge. A vast building, so tall and long that the edges were lost in the fog, the windowless walls in grimy concrete, bleak and unwelcoming, surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. It would be like looking for a piece of paper in a city, even if the place was well organised, and he suspected strongly that it would not be.
That was all he needed. He was cold and miserable from having been on the streets the entire night. There was nowhere to sit by the road, which was covered in rubbish and filth, and nowhere to get anything to eat or drink, even if he had had any money, just a bleak, broad multi-lane highway which led nowhere. He began to feel his spirits sag, and to wonder what he would do if Emily Strang did not turn up. Why should she, after all?
Then there was a shout from behind him. As he turned his heart lightened, and not just because it was now possible that he might succeed in his task. The sight of her walking along, in a thick coat, bag over her shoulder, smiling as she waved, revived his spirits. Still, there was nothing that remarkable about her, he reminded himself. Just a renegade, who showed her nature in the loose way she walked, the ostentatious scruffiness of her clothes.
‘I’m late. Sorry about that,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Dear God! What’s happened to you? You look as though you slept on a bench all night.’
‘I was on a bench, but I didn’t sleep. I had a meeting last night. I thought it would be a good idea to make myself scarce.’
‘Why?’
‘I met the great Zoffany Oldmanter. In the flesh.’
‘Aren’t you important then.’