Giddings had turned back to face the desk. “Logical bastard, aren’t you?”
Behind the shock now came the beginnings of anger. “I’ll carry it further,” Nat said. “Why would I have signed them? What reason would I have had?”
“I don’t know. That,” Giddings said, “is why I’m not beating the truth out of you right here and now.”
“Don’t even try,” Nat said. His voice was quiet. With a steady hand he picked up one of the papers, looked at it, dropped it again on the pile.
Giddings said in a new, quieter voice, “What kind of rot have we got buried in the walls of my building? How many comers did we cut without knowing it? How deep does it go?”
Nat’s hands rested on the desktop. “I don’t know the answer,” he said, “but I think we’d better try to find it.” Giddings took his time, his eyes steady on Nat’s face. “You try your way,” he said at last. “I’ll try mine.” He indicated the papers. ‘Keep those. I had copies made.” He paused. “Your boss already has a set, in case you were wondering whether to plug him in.” He walked to the door and stopped there, his hand on the knob. “If I find out those are your signatures,” he said, “I’ll be coming after you.” He walked out.
Nat stayed where he was and looked again at the papers, poked them idly with one forefinger. The signatures were plain enough: N H Wilson. Nathan Hale: the names had been his father’s idea. The original Nathan Hale was hanged. And from the looks of things somebody was trying to hang this one too. Well, if they thought he was going to walk meekly up the gallows steps, they were mistaken.
He picked up his phone and called Jennie at the switchboard. “Give me Mr. Caldwell’s office, honey.” And to Mollie Wu, Caldwell’s secretary, “Nat here, Mollie. I have to see the boss. It’s urgent.”
“I was just going to call you.” Mollie’s voice held nothing “He’s, expecting you.”
Caldwell’s office was the comer room, immense, impressive Caldwell himself was a small man, slight, with slicked-down sparse gray hair, pale-blue eyes, and small, almost dainty hands. He was neat, quiet, precise, and in matters having to do with art, engineering, or architecture implacable. He was standing at the windows, facing the downtown skyline, when Nat knocked and came in. “Sit down,” Caldwell said and remained at the windows, motionless, silent.
Nat sat down and waited.
“The great lighthouse at Alexandria, the Pharos,” Caldwell said. “For almost a thousand years it guided ships into the Nile.” He turned then to face the office. Backlighted by the windows, he was merely a shape, small against the immensity of the sky. “I met the captain of the France one day a few weeks ago,” he said. “He told me that the first bit of America they see on their westward crossing is the top of that tower building we designed and supervised during construction. He called it the modern Pharos.” Caldwell walked to his desk and sat down. His face now was clearly visible, expressionless. On the blotter in front of him Xerox copies were strewn. “What have we done to it, Nat?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Caldwell indicated the papers. “You have seen these?”
“Yes, sir. And I’ve talked to Giddings.” Pause. “Correction: I’ve listened to Giddings.” Another pause. “For the record, those are not my signatures. I wouldn’t have messed with electrical changes without Lewis’s approval.” Joseph Lewis & Co., Electrical Engineers. Nat had the absurd feeling that he was talking to himself.
“‘Wouldn’t have,’” Caldwell said, “is a meaningless phrase in this context. Theoretically, nobody would have made changes without Lewis’s approval. But somebody wrote those change authorizations, and on the face of it, it was with the authority of this office as supervising architects.” Clear, logical, precise.
“Yes, sir.” Like a small boy in the principal’s office, but what else was there to say? The anger was banked now, a strong, steady force. “But why my name?” Nat said. Caldwell studied him quietly. “Explain that question.”
“Why not Lewis’s or one of his people’s? It would be more logical, less open to question.”
“According to Will Giddings,” Caldwell said, “there was no question. These”—he pushed at the pile of copies—“did not come to light until now.”
“Then,” Nat said, “we don’t even know that the actual changes were made, because if they were, a change authorization would have had to be shown—”
“‘Would have,” ‘ Caldwell said, “‘wouldn’t have.’ I repeat: the phrases are meaningless.” He was silent for a few moments, thoughtful. “I agree,” he said at last, “we don’t know that the changes were actually made. Neither do we know how serious they might be.” He was watching Nat’s face. “We would do well to find out, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes, sir. Nat paused. “And there are other things to find out. too.”
“Such as?”
“Why these change authorizations were written in the first place Why my name was put on them. Who—”
“Those are questions that can wait,” Caldwell said. “I appreciate your personal concern, but I don’t share it. My concern is for the building and the integrity of this architectural firm.” He paused. “Is that understood?”
It was almost like a chanted response: “Yes, sir,” Nat said.
He walked out of the great office and past Mollie Wu’s desk. Mollie watched him, tiny, pretty as a doll, bright and quick. “Problems, friend?”
“Problems.” Nat said. “In batches.” The implications were beginning to appear now, the almost endless possible permutations and combinations that could arise from deviations from the impeccably considered and intricately woven electrical design. “And at the moment,” he said, “I don’t know where to begin solving them.” Simple truth.
“The longest journey begins with but a single step,” Mollie said, “and whether that’s Confucius or Chairman Mao, I haven’t the foggiest notion, but I offer it for what it’s worth.”
Nat walked back to his own office and sat down to stare at the drawings thumbtacked to the wall and at the heap of design-change-authorization copies lying on his desk. The two formed an explosive mixture, and whether he had signed the changes or not was unimportant. What was important was that they had been issued and perhaps followed, comers cut, as Giddings had said, where no comers ought to have been cut, substitutions made where no substitutions ought to have been allowed. Why? Wrong question, he told himself. Right now his concern was properly with effect, not cause. And there was only one place where the effects could be discovered, and that was not here at his desk.
He gathered the change-order copies, stuffed them into the manila envelope, and tucked the envelope in his pocket. Out at the reception desk he paused only long enough to tell Jennie where he was going. “To the Tower, honey. I doubt if you’ll be able to reach me. I’ll call in.”
2
The sun was high enough now to penetrate the cluster of downtown buildings and reach the floor of the Tower Plaza where the police barricades were in place, breaking the area into two great halves separated at the center by a passageway from the temporary platform against the arcade to the street.
“Where the VIPs will get out of their cars,” Patrolman Shannon said, “and smile at the little people and walk like kings and queens to the platform—”
“Where the speeches will all be the same,” Barnes said. “They will praise motherhood, the United States of America, and man’s unquenchable spirit. One or two of the pols will slip in a little pitch for votes—” He stopped. His smile was apologetic.