Goodbye California. Alistair MacLean

my friends. Lasts a long time,’ he added inconsequentially.

      Jablonsky took a folder from his briefcase. ‘This is the file you wanted. Wasn’t easy. Ferguson’s like a cat on a hot tin roof. Jumpy.’

      ‘Ferguson’s straight.’

      ‘I know he is. This is a photostat. I didn’t want Ferguson or the FBI to find out that the original dossier is missing.’

      ‘Why’s Ferguson so jumpy?’

      ‘Hard to say. But he’s being evasive, uncommunicative. Maybe he feels his job is in danger since his security defences were so easily breached, Running scared, a little. I think we all are in the past few hours. Even goes for me.’ He looked gloomily. ‘I’m even worried that my presence here’ – he smiled to rob his words of offence – ‘consorting with an ex-cop might be noted.’

      ‘You’re too late. It has been noted.’

      Jablonsky stopped smiling. ‘What?’

      ‘There’s a closed van about fifty yards down the road on the other side. No driver in the cab – he’s inside the van looking through a one-way window.’

      Jeff rose quickly and moved to a window. He said: ‘How long has he been there?’

      ‘A few minutes. He arrived just as Dr Jablonsky did. Too late for me to do anything about it then.’ Ryder thought briefly then said: ‘I don’t much care to have those snoopers round my house. Go to my gun cupboard and take what you want. You’ll find a few old police badges there, too.’

      ‘He’ll know I’m no longer a cop.’

      ‘Sure he will. Think he’d dare to say so and put the finger on Donahure?’

      ‘Hardly. What do you want me to do? Shoot him?’

      ‘It’s a tempting thought, but no. Smash his window open with the butt of your gun and tell him to open up. His name is Raminoff and he looks a bit like a weasel, which he is. He carries a gun. Donahure reckons he’s his top undercover man. I’ve had tabs on him for years. He’s not a cop – he’s a criminal with several sentences behind him. You’ll find a policeband radio transmitter. Ask him for his licence. He won’t have one. Ask him for his police identification. He won’t have that either. Make the usual threatening noises and tell him to push off.’

      Jeff smiled widely. ‘Retirement has its compensations.’

      Jablonsky looked after him doubtfully. ‘You sure got a lot of faith in that boy, Sergeant.’

      ‘Jeff can look after himself,’ Ryder said comfortably. ‘Now, Doctor, I hope you’re not going to be evasive about telling me why Ferguson was being evasive.’

      ‘Why should I?’ He looked glum. ‘Seeing that I’m a marked man anyway.’

      ‘He was evasive with me?’

      ‘Yes. I feel more upset about your wife than you realize. I think you have the right to know anything that can help you.’

      ‘And I think that deserves another drink.’ It was a measure of Jablonsky’s preoccupation that he’d emptied his glass without being aware of it. Ryder went to the bar and returned. ‘What didn’t he tell me?’

      ‘You asked him if any nuclear material had been hi-jacked. He said he didn’t know. Fact is, he knows far too much about it to be willing to talk about it. Take the recent Hematite Hangover business, so-called, I imagine, because it’s given a headache to everybody in nuclear security. Hematite is in Missouri and is run by Gulf United Nuclear. They may have anything up to a thousand kilograms of U-235 on the premises at any given time. This comes to them, bottled, in the form of UF-Six, from Portsmouth, Ohio. This is converted into U-235 oxide. Much of this stuff, fully enriched and top weapons-grade material, goes from Hematite to Kansas City by truck, thence to Los Angeles as air cargo then is again trucked a hundred and twenty miles down the freeways to General Atomic in San Diego. Three wide-open transits. Do you want the horrifying details?’

      ‘I can imagine them. Why Ferguson’s secretiveness?’

      ‘No reason really. All security men are professional clams. There’s literally tons of the damned stuff missing. That’s no secret. The knowledge is in public domain.’

      ‘According to Dr Durrer of EKDA – I spoke to him this evening – the government’s computer system can tell you in nothing flat if any significant amount of weapons-grade material is missing.’

      Jablonsky scowled, a scowl which he removed by fortifying himself with some more Scotch. ‘I wonder what he calls significant. Ten tons? Just enough to make a few hundred atom bombs, that’s all. Dr Durrer is either talking through a hole in his hat, which, knowing him as I do, is extremely unlikely, or he was just being coy. ERDA have been suffering from very sensitive feelings since the GAO gave them a black eye in, let me see, I think it was in July of ’76.’

      ‘GAO?’

      ‘General Accounting Office.’ Jablonsky broke off as Jeff entered and deposited some material on a table. He looked very pleased with himself.

      ‘He’s gone. Heading for the nearest swamp I should imagine.’ He indicated his haul. ‘One police radio: he’d no licence for it so I couldn’t let him keep that, could I? One gun: clearly a criminal type so I couldn’t let him keep that either, could I? One driving licence: identification in lieu of police authorization which he didn’t seem to have. And one pair of Zeiss binoculars stamped “LAPD”: he couldn’t recall where he got that from and swore blind that he didn’t know that the initials stood for Los Angeles Police Department.’

      ‘I’ve always wanted one of those,’ Ryder said. Jablonsky frowned in heavy disapproval but removed that in the same way as he had removed his scowl.

      ‘I also wrote down his licence plate number, opened the hood and took down the engine and chassis numbers. I told him that all the numbers and confiscated articles would be delivered to the station tonight.’

      Ryder said: ‘You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You’ve gone and upset Chief Donahure. Or he’s going to be upset any minute now.’ He looked wistful. ‘I wish we had a tap on his private line. He’s going to have to replace the equipment, which will hurt him enough but not half as much as replacing that van is going to hurt him.’

      Jablonsky said: ‘Why should he have to replace the van?’

      ‘It’s hot. If Raminoff were caught with that van he’d get laryngitis singing at the top of his voice to implicate Donahure. He’s the kind of trusty henchman that Donahure surrounds himself with.’

      ‘Donahure could block the enquiry.’

      ‘No chance. John Aaron, the Editor of the Examiner, has been campaigning for years against police corruption in general and Chief Donahure in particular. A letter to the editor asking why Donahure failed to act on information received would be transferred from the readers’ page to page one. The swamp, you say, Jeff? Me, I’d go for Cypress Bluff. Two hundred feet sheer into the Pacific, then sixty feet of water. Ocean bed’s littered with cars past their best. Anyway, I want you to take your own car and go up there and drop all this confiscated stuff and the rest of those old police badges to join the rest of the ironmongery down there.’

      Jeff pursed his lips. ‘You don’t think that old goat would have the nerve to come around here with a search warrant?’

      ‘Sure I do. Trump up any old reason – he’s done it often enough before.’

      Jeff said, wooden-faced: ‘He might even invent some charge about tampering with evidence at the reactor plant?’

      ‘Man’s capable of anything.’

      ‘There’s some people you just can’t faze.’ Jeff left to fetch his car.

      Jablonsky said: ‘What was that meant to mean?’

      ‘Today’s generation?