Goodbye California. Alistair MacLean

Fergusont?’

      ‘In the north wing.’

      ‘Checking on missing articles, shall we say? Tell him I’m here.’

      McCafferty went to his guard box, spoke briefly on the phone and returned. ‘It’s okay.’

      ‘No comments?’

      ‘Funny you should ask that. He said: “Dear God, as if we haven’t got enough trouble here”.’

      Ryder half-smiled a very rare half-smile and drove off.

      Ferguson, the security chief, greeted them in his office with civility but a marked lack of enthusiasm. Although it was some months since he had read Ryder’s acerbic report on the state of security at San Ruffino Ferguson had a long memory.

      The fact that Ryder had been all too accurate in his report and that he, Ferguson, had neither the authority nor the available funds to carry out all the report’s recommendations hadn’t helped matters any. He was a short stocky man with wary eyes and a habitually worried expression. He replaced a telephone and made no attempt to rise from behind his desk.

      ‘Come to write another report, Sergeant?’ He tried to sound acid but all he did was sound defensive. ‘Create a little more trouble for me?’

      Ryder was mild. ‘Neither. If you don’t get support from your blinkered superiors with their rose-coloured glasses then the fault is theirs, not yours.’

      ‘Ah.’ The tone was surprised but the face still wary.

      Jeff said: ‘We have a personal interest in this, Mr Ferguson.’

      ‘You the sergeant’s son?’ Jeff nodded. ‘Sorry about your mother. I guess saying that doesn’t help very much.’

      ‘You were thirty miles away at the time,’ Ryder said reasonably. Jeff looked at his father in some apprehension: he knew that a mild-mannered Ryder was potentially the most dangerous Ryder of all, but in this case there seemed no undue cause for alarm. Ryder went on: ‘I’d looked to find you down in the vaults assessing the amount of loot our friends have made off with.’

      ‘Not my job at all. Never go near their damned storage facilities except to check the alarm systems. I wouldn’t even begin to know what to look for. The Director himself is down there with a couple of assistants finding what the score is.’

      ‘Could we see him?’

      ‘Why? Two of your men, I forget their names –’

      ‘Parker and Davidson.’

      ‘Whatever. They’ve already talked to him.’

      ‘My point. He was still making his count then.’

      Ferguson reached a grudging hand for the telephone, spoke to someone in tones of quiet respect, then said to Ryder: ‘He’s just finishing. Here in a moment, he says.’

      ‘Thanks. Any way this could have been an inside job?’

      ‘An inside job? You mean, one of my men involved?’ Ferguson looked at him suspiciously. He himself had been thirty miles away at the time, which should have put himself, personally, beyond suspicion: but equally well, if he had been involved he’d have made good and certain that he was thirty miles away on the day that the break-in had occurred. ‘I don’t follow. Ten heavily armed men don’t need assistance from inside.’

      ‘How come they could have walked through your electronically-controlled doors and crisscross of electric eyes undetected?’

      Ferguson sighed. He was on safer ground here. ‘The pickup was expected and on schedule. When Carlton heard from the gate guard about its arrival he would automatically have turned them off.’

      ‘Accepting that, how did they find their way to wherever they wanted to go? This place is a rabbit warren.’

      Ferguson was on even surer ground now. ‘Nothing simpler. I thought you would know about that.’

      ‘A man never stops learning. Tell me.’

      ‘You don’t have to suborn an employee to find out the precise lay-out of any atomic plant. No need to infiltrate or wear false uniforms, get hold of copies of badges or use any violence what soever. You don’t have to come within a thousand miles of any damned atomic plant to know all about it, what the lay-out is, the precise location of where uranium and plutonium are stored, even when nuclear fuel shipments might be expected to arrive or depart. as the case may be. All you have to do is to go to a public reading-room run by the Atomic Energy Commission at Seventeen-seventeen H Street in Washington, DC. You’d find it most instructive, Sergeant Ryder – specially if you were a villain bent on breaking into a nuclear plant.’

      ‘This some kind of a sick joke?’

      ‘Very sick. Especially if, like me, you happen to be the head of security in a nuclear plant. There are card indexes there containing dockets on all nuclear facilities in the country in private hands. There’s always a very friendly clerk to hand – I’ve been there – who on request will give you a stack of more papers than you can handle giving you what I and many others would regard as being top-secret and classified information on any nuclear facility you want – except governmental ones, of course. Sure it’s a joke, but it doesn’t make me and lots of others laugh out loud.’

      ‘They must be out of their tiny minds.’ It would be a gross exaggeration to say that Sergeant Ryder was stunned – facial and verbal over-reactions were wholly alien to him – but he was unquestionably taken aback.

      Ferguson assumed the expression of one who was buttoning his hair-shirt really tight. ‘They even provide a Xerox machine for copying any documents you choose.’

      ‘Jesus! And the Government permits all this?’

      ‘Permits? It authorized it. Atomic Energy Act, amended nineteen-fifty-four, states that citizen John Doe – undiscovered nut-case or not – has the right to know about the private use of nuclear materials. I think you’ll have to revise your insider theory, Sergeant.’

      ‘It wasn’t a theory, just a question. In either case consider it revised.’

      Dr Jablonsky, the director of the reactor plant, came into the room. He was a burly, sun-tanned and white-haired man in his mid-sixties but looking about ten years younger, a man who normally radiated bonhomie and good cheer. At the moment he was radiating nothing of the kind.

      ‘Damnable, damnable, damnable,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Evening, Sergeant. It would have been nice to meet again in happier circumstances for both of us.’ He looked at Jeff interrogatively. ‘Since when did they call in CHPs on an –’

      ‘Jeff Ryder, Dr Jablonsky. My son.’ Ryder smiled slightly. ‘I hope you don’t subscribe to the general belief that highway patrolmen only arrest on highways. They can arrest anyone, anywhere, in the State of California.’

      ‘My goodness, I hope he’s not going to arrest me.’ He peered at Jeff over the top of rimless glasses. ‘You must be worried about your mother, young man, but I can’t see any reason why she should come to any harm.’

      ‘And I can’t see any reason why she shouldn’t,’ Ryder interrupted. ‘Ever heard of any kidnappee who was not threatened with actual bodily harm? I haven’t.’

      ‘Threats? Already?’

      ‘Give them time. Wherever they’re going they probably haven’t got there yet. How is it with the inventory of stolen goods?’

      ‘Bad. We have three types of nuclear fuel in storage here: Uranium-238, Uranium-235 and Plutonium. U-238 is the prime source of all nuclear fuel and they didn’t bother taking any of that. Understandably.’

      ‘Why understandably?’

      ‘Harmless stuff’.’ Absently, almost, Dr Jablonsky fished in the pocket of his white coat and produced several small pellets, each no more than the size of a .38-calibre