Now the whole lunar base effort-- the ingenuity, the planning, the lives, the money, and the manpower that had gone into the Jersey Colony-- was in jeopardy because of an unknown intruder.
He walked into his large but austere office and found Gunnar Eriksen waiting for him.
Eriksen was sitting on a couch, sipping a cup of hot coffee and smoking a curved pipe. His round, unlined face wore a somber look and his eyes had a benign glow. He was dressed casually, but unrumpled, in an expensive cashmere sports jacket and a tan V-neck sweater over matching woolen slacks. He would not look out of place selling jaguars or Ferraris.
"You talked to Fisher and Booth," said Hudson, hanging up the umbrella and setting the briefcase beside the desk.
"I have."
"Any idea who it might be?"
"None."
"Strange that he never leaves fingerprints," said Hudson, sitting on the couch with Eriksen and pouring himself a cup of coffee from a glass pot.
Eriksen sent a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. "Stranger yet that every image we have of him on videotape is a blur."
"He must carry some sort of electronic erasing device."
"Obviously not your ordinary private investigator," Eriksen mused. "A top-of-the-line professional with heavy backing."
"He knows his way around, produces all the correct identification papers and security clearances. The story he handed Mooney about being an auditor with the General Accounting Office was first-rate. I'd have swallowed it myself."
"What have we got on him?"
"Only a stack of descriptions that don't agree on anything except his size. They're unanimous in referring to him as a fat man."
"Could be the President has turned an intelligence agency loose on us."
"If that were the case," said Hudson doubtfully, "we'd be looking at an army of undercover agents. This man appears to work alone."
"Did you consider the possibility the President might have quietly hired an agent outside the government?" asked Eriksen.
"The thought crossed my mind, but I'm not completely sold on it. Our friend in the White House is tapped into the Oval Office. Everyone who calls or walks in and out of the executive wing is accounted for. Of course, there's always the President's private line, but I don't think this is the sort of mission he could instigate over the telephone."
"Interesting," said Eriksen. "The fat man started his probe at the facility where we first created the idea of the Jersey Colony."
"That's right," Hudson acknowledged. "He rifled Earl Mooney's office at Pattenden Lab and traced a phone call to General Fisher, even made some remark about you wanting me to pay for the airplane."
"An obvious reference to our advertised deaths," Eriksen said thoughtfully. "That means he's tied us together."
"Then he turned up in Colorado and mugged Fisher, stealing a notebook with the names and numbers of the top people on the Jersey Colony project, including those of the `inner core.' Then he must have seen through the trap we laid to trail him from New Mexico and escaped. We got a small break when one our security men who was watching the Albuquerque airport spotted a fat man arrive in an unmarked private jet and take off again only two hours later."
"He must have rented a car, used some sort of identification."
Hudson shook his head. "Nothing of any use. He showed a driver's license and a credit card from a George Goodfly of New Orleans, who doesn't exist."
Eriksen tapped the ashes from his pipe into a glass dish. "Seems odd he didn't drive to Santa Fe and attempt to penetrate Clyde Booth's operation."
"My guess is he's only on a fact-finding hunt."
"But who is paying him? The Russians?"
"Certainly not the KGB," said Hudson. "They don't send subtle messages over the phone or move around the country in a private jet. No, this man moves fast. I'd say he's running on a tight deadline."
Eriksen stared into his coffee cup. "The Soviet lunar mission is scheduled to set down on the moon in five days. That has to be his deadline."
"I believe you may be right."
Eriksen stared at him. "You realize now that the power behind the intruder has to be the President," he said quietly.
Hudson nodded slowly. "I blinded myself to the possibility," he said in a distant voice. "I wanted to believe he would back the security of the Jersey Colony from Russian penetration."
"From what you told me of your meeting, he wasn't about to condone a battle on the moon between our people and Soviet cosmonauts. Nor would he be overjoyed to learn Steinmetz destroyed three Soviet spacecraft."
"The point that bothers me," said Hudson, "is if we accept the President's interference, why, with all of his resources, would he send only one man?"
"Because once he accepted the Jersey Colony as a reality, he realized our supporters cover his every move, and he rightly assumed we could throw a school of red herrings across our trail to mislead any investigation. A wise man, the President. He brought in a ringer from left field who cracked our walls before we knew what was happening."
"There may still be time to send him on the wrong scent."
"Too late. The fat man has Fisher's notebook," said Eriksen. "He knows who we are and where to find us. He is a very real threat. He started at the tail and now he's working toward the head. When the fat man comes through this door, Leo, the President will surely move to stop any confrontation between the Soviet cosmonauts and our people in the Jersey Colony."
"Are you hinting we eliminate the fat man?" asked Hudson.
"No," Eriksen replied. "Better not to antagonize the President. We'll merely put him on ice for a few days."
"I wonder where he'll turn up next," Hudson pondered.
Eriksen methodically reloaded his pipe. "He began his witch-hunt in Oregon and from there to Colorado and then New Mexico. My guess is his next stop will be Texas, at the office of our man with NASA in Houston."
Hudson punched a number on his desk phone. "A pity I can't be there when we snare the bastard."
<<30>>
Pitt spent the next two hours on his back in bed, listening to the sounds of metal doors being opened and closed, tuning in on the footsteps heard outside his cell. The youthful guard brought lunch and waited while Pitt ate, making sure all the utensils were accounted for when he left. This time the guard seemed in a better humor and was unarmed. He also left the door open during the meal, giving Pitt a chance to study the latch.
He was surprised to see that it was an ordinary doorknob lock instead of a heavy-security or mortice throw bolt. His cell was never meant to serve as a jail. It was mostly likely intended as a storeroom.
Pitt stirred a spoon over a bowl of foul-smelling fish stew and handed it back, more interested in the closing of the door than eating slop that he knew was the first step of a psychological ploy to lower his mental defense mechanisms. The guard stepped back and yanked the iron door shut. Pitt cocked his ear and caught a single, decisive click immediately after the slam.
He knelt and closely examined the crack between the door and the strike. The gap was 1/8 inch across. Then he scoured the cell, searching for an object thin enough to slip between the crack so he could jimmy the latch.