Ken Follett - the Third Twin (1996)

“Go in the den,” Berrington repeated, as if he might not have heard the first time.

Steve picked a door at random.

He had chosen the wrong door. This was a bathroom.

Berrington looked at him with an irritated frown.

Steve hesitated for a moment, then remembered he was supposed to be in a bad temper. “I can take a piss first, can’t I?” he snapped. Without waiting for an answer he went in and closed the door.

It was a guest bathroom, with just a toilet and a hand basin. He leaned on the edge of the basin and looked in the mirror. “You have to be crazy,” he said to his reflection.

He flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and went out.

He could hear male voices from farther inside the house. He opened the door next to the bathroom: this was the den. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and took a swift look around. There was a desk, a wood file cabinet, lots of bookshelves, a TV, and some couches. On the desk was a photograph of an attractive blond woman of about forty, wearing clothes that looked about twenty years out-of-date, holding a baby. Berrington’s ex-wife? My “mother”? He opened the desk drawers one after the other, glancing inside, then he looked in the file cabinet. There was a bottle of Springbank scotch and some crystal glasses in the bottom drawer, almost as if they were meant to be concealed. Perhaps it was a whim of Berrington’s. As he closed the drawer, the room door opened and Berrington came in, followed by two men. Steve recognized Senator Proust, whose large bald head and big nose were familiar from the TV news. He presumed the quiet, black-haired man was “Uncle” Preston Barck, the president of Genetico.

He remembered to be bad tempered. “You needn’t have dragged me back here in such a goddamn hurry.”

Berrington adopted a conciliatory tone. “We just finished supper,” he said. “You want something? Marianne can make up a tray.”

Steve’s stomach was knotted with tension, but Harvey would surely have wanted supper, and Steve needed to appear as natural as possible, so he pretended to soften and said: “Sure, I’ll have something.”

Berrington shouted: “Marianne!” After a moment a pretty, nervous-looking black girl appeared at the door. “Bring Harvey some supper on a tray,” Berrington said.

“Right away, monsieur,” she said quietly.

Steve watched her go, noting that she went through the living room on her way to the kitchen. Presumably the dining room was also that way, unless they ate in the kitchen.

Proust leaned forward and said: “Well, my boy, what did you learn?”

Steve had invented a fictional plan of action for Jeannie. “I guess you can relax, for the moment at least,” he said. “Jeannie Ferrami intends to take legal action against Jones Falls University for wrongful dismissal. She thinks she will be able to cite the existence of the clones during that proceeding. Until then she has no plans for publicity. She has an appointment with a lawyer on Wednesday.”

The three older men looked relieved. Proust said: “A wrongful dismissal suit. That will take at least a year. We have plenty of time to do what we need to do.”

Fooled you, you malevolent old bastards.

Berrington said: “What about the Lisa Hoxton case?”

“She knows who I am, and she thinks I did it, but she has no proof. She will probably accuse me, but I believe it will be seen as a wild accusation by a vengeful former employee.”

He nodded. “That’s good, but you still need a lawyer. You know what we’ll do. You’ll stay here tonight—it’s too late to drive back to Philadelphia anyway.”

I don’t want to spend the night here! “I don’t know.…”

“You’ll come to the press conference with me in the morning, and right afterward we’ll go see Henry Quinn.”

It’s too risky!

Don’t panic, think.

If I stayed here, I would know exactly what these three creeps are up to at any moment. That’s worth a degree of risk I guess nothing much can happen while I’m asleep. I could sneak a call to Jeannie, to let her know what’s going on. He made a split-second decision. “Okay,” he said.

Proust said: “Well, we’ve been sitting here worrying ourselves to death for nothing.”

Barck was not quite so quick to accept the good news. He said suspiciously: “It didn’t occur to the girl to try and sabotage the takeover of Genetico?”

“She’s smart, but I don’t think she’s business minded,” Steve said.

Proust winked and said: “What’s she like in the sack, eh?”

“Feisty,” Steve said with a grin, and Proust roared with laughter.

Marianne came in with a tray: sliced chicken, a salad with onions, bread, and a Budweiser. Steve smiled at her. “Thank you,” he said. “This looks great.”

She gave him a startled look, and Steve realized Harvey probably did not say “thank you” very often. He caught the eye of Preston Barck, who was frowning. Careful, careful! Don’t spoil it now, you’ve got them where you want them. All you have to do is get through the next hour or so until bedtime.

He started to eat. Barck said: “Do you remember me taking you to the Plaza hotel in New York for lunch when you were ten years old?’

Steve was about to say “Yes” when he caught the trace of a puzzled frown on Berrington’s face. Is this a test? Is Barck suspicious? “The Plaza?” he said with a frown. Either way, he could give only one answer. “Gee, Uncle Preston, I don’t remember that.”

“Maybe it was my sister’s boy,” Barck said.

Whew.

Berrington got up. “All that beer is making me piss like a horse,” he said. He went out.

“I need a scotch,” Proust said.

Steve said: “Try the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. That’s where Dad usually keeps it.”

Proust went to the cabinet and opened the drawer. “Well done, boy!” he said. He took out the bottle and some glasses.

“I’ve known about that hiding place since I was twelve years old,” Steve said. “That was when I started stealing it.”

Proust roared with laughter. Steve stole a glance at Barck. The wary look had gone from his face, and he was smiling.

60

MR. OLIVER PRODUCED AN ENORMOUS PISTOL HE HAD KEPT from World War II. “Took it off a German prisoner,” he said. “Colored soldiers weren’t generally allowed to carry firearms in those days.” He sat on Jeannie’s couch, pointing the gun at Harvey.

Lisa was on the phone, trying to find George Dassault.

Jeannie said: “I’m going to check myself into the hotel and reconnoiter.” She put a few things into a suitcase and drove to the Stouffer Hotel, thinking about how they would get Harvey to a room without attracting the attention of hotel security.

The Stouffer had an underground garage; that was a good start. She left her car there and took the elevator. It went only to the lobby, not to the rooms, she observed. To get to the rooms you had to take another elevator. But all elevators were grouped together in a passageway off the main lobby, not visible from the reception desk, and it would take only a few seconds to cross the passage from the garage elevator to the room elevator. Would they be carrying Harvey, or dragging him, or would he be cooperative and walk? She found it difficult to envisage.

She checked in, went to her room, put down her suitcase, then left immediately and drove back to her apartment.

“I reached George Dassault!” Lisa said excitedly as soon as she walked in.

“That’s great! Where?”

“I found his mother in Buffalo, and she gave me his number in New York. He’s an actor in a play off-off-off-Broadway.”