“Oh?”
“You understand our operation here?”
“Completely,” I said.
“Yes.” He licked his lips, then walked behind the desk and sat down with a resigned sigh. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“How much did you hear about Doug Hamilton?”
“I was notified immediately that he had died. Nothing more. Mr. Grady said that there would be an investigation including one by his own, ah... people. I was to cooperate fully.”
“Has anyone else been here?”
“You are the first. Now...”
“Hamilton filed reports on the personnel employed here. Where are they?”
“Locked in our vaults. However, another copy of each report was submitted to the proper authorities in Washington. Those people engaged in any portion of the project considered secret have been given a separate security clearance by the proper agency while those in lesser categories were investigated by us and approved by Washington.”
“I’d like to see the files.”
“They’re quite extensive.”
“Only the ones Hamilton processed.”
“Well, that’s comparatively simple then.” Stanton flipped a button on the desk intercom and said, “Miss Hays, will you come in please.”
His secretary was one out of the old school, in her mid-fifties, starched and stiff with gray hair wound in a bun on the top of her head. She didn’t even glance my way until Stanton acknowledged me with a nod. “Miss Hays, this is Mr. Mann, a representative of Martin Grady’s. Will you show him to Miss Hunt’s office and instruct her to let him go through our personnel files.”
“Certainly, sir. This way, Mr. Mann.”
“Will there be anything else?” Stanton asked me.
“I’ll let you know if there is. Meanwhile you’d better get me cleared to get around this place on my own. Do you know Hal Randolph of I.A.T.S.?”
His eyebrows went up a little at that. “Quite well.”
“He can expedite matters if there’s any trouble,” I said. “Let’s go, Miss Hays.”
I followed her into the outer office where we picked up another security guard who trailed us from five feet back, down a good hundred yards of softly lit, air-conditioned corridor to a door marked CAMILLE HUNT, PERSONNEL. My guide touched a button on the wall and when the buzzer sounded, pushed the door open and led me in while the guard waited outside.
Miss Hays’ instructions went to the secretary at the desk, passed through the desk phone to someone behind a door marked Private and I was told to wait. Miss Hays’ curt nod told me she didn’t like me a bit, but she was at my command. She swept out like a dowager queen, her nose sniffing the delicately perfumed air of the office with obvious distaste.
I didn’t have long to wait. The desk phone rang, the chubby little secretary in the thick-framed glasses listened briefly, then crooked a finger my way. “You may go in now,” she said.
Camille Hunt was a strategist. She was the personnel director and was there to see what people were made of before they were hired. It wasn’t just an office she had; it was a camouflaged command post and she was the acting C.O. Come in smiling and you’d stop; come in grim and you’d smile. Somehow you could drop your guard and any stories you had ready would bobble out and if they were off-beat she’d have you.
The walls were a dark green, decorated with large color plates of every plane our Air Force had ever operated, interspersed with violent, surrealistic oils and an oversized recumbent nude done with such detail it seemed to dominate the entire room, Air Force and all. The desk was placed in front of curtained false windows and was so skillfully lit and shadowed by a pair of lamps that you couldn’t quite tell if anyone was sitting there behind them or not.
She wasn’t. She was sitting far to the left scrutinizing me carefully, ready to catch any reaction, but making the mistake of letting enough light bounce off the sheen of her nylons so that I saw her without letting her know it. I could have told her I had seen the act pulled before and could play it as well as she could, but that would have spoiled the fun. Instead, I walked up to the nude, looked over all its good points without turning around and said, “Remarkable likeness. A little on the fat side though.”
Then I went around, sat in her chair behind the desk, swung both lamps around to catch her squarely in their beams and felt my grin stop before it started.
Camille Hunt was the nude in the picture. And she wasn’t on the fat side either. That part was just uncalled-for license on the part of the artist.
She sat there with one leg crossed over the other, the idle motion of one foot the only part of her that seemed alive for the moment. Her chin rested in the fingers of one arm propped on the chair, the scarlet of her nails matching that of her mouth. Eyes black as midnight only reflected the denser black of her hair that seemed to flow and meld with a dress of the same space-night color. But even in that colorless void there was no mistaking the exquisite shape of her body or the beauty of her face.
Yes, she could make quite an interrogator. If you fell into her trap.
“Hello, spider,” I said.
“Hello, fly,” she smiled.
“This one got away.”
“I expected it to. Mr. Grady had already briefed me on you.
I’m glad you didn’t disappoint me.”
“Never let it be said.”
“Do you mind turning the lights off?”
“I like to look at you.”
“You’ll get more out of the picture.”
“Vicarious pleasures don’t interest me that much. Walk over here.”
Watching her move was like seeing a ballet. Every movement was fluid, purely feminine, as deliberately provocative as a woman could make it. The game was over, but she was still insisting on playing it.
I followed her with the lights, then bent the goosenecks down so we could both see each other in the reflected rays and when she let her eyes meet mine she stopped with a sudden filling motion of her chest. “So you’re the great one.”
“How much did Martin Grady tell you?”
“Now I rather think he was warning me.” Very casually she pulled out a straight-backed chair and sat down beside the desk.
“Would you ever hire me?”
“What for... stud services?”
“Hell,” I grinned at her, “Grady never mentioned that department.”
“But I can see it,” she teased. “It’s my job, reading people. I’m expert at it. You’d probably perform very well.”
“I come with the best references.”
“No doubt, but that isn’t getting to why you are here. Do you mind?”
I leaned back in the chair, hooking a drawer out with a toe to prop my feet on. “Doug Hamilton submitted reports on personnel he checked out. Did they clear through you?”
“Yes, all of them. He investigated their backgrounds, former employers, associates, credit arrangements — the usual thing where top security wasn’t involved. I had the final say as to their ability or personality requirements.”
“What about top security?”
“All handled directly by Washington through Mr. Grady. I only handle the lower echelon of employees, but even then it is necessary to look for people absolutely qualified. I don’t think there is any need to brief you on the nature of the project here.”
“There isn’t. Can I see his files?”
“If I may have my phone,” she smiled again. I pushed the instrument to the edge of the desk and watched the graceful sweep of her body as she leaned forward to pick it up. “Linda,” she said, “please bring in all the A-20’s from the vault.”
“Who else ever got to see those files, Camille?”
She cocked her head, her grin impish. “No one...”
“Tiger. It’s my name. My old man gave it to me.”