I had to admit she was right: children sift out the things that aren’t essential to them.
“It must have been Professor Dzornen who sent the money for K?the to join Hugo and me on the Kindertransport to London,” Lotty said. “The decision for her to go came at the very last minute. My grandfather would not have sent K?the at the expense of my cousins: he had money only for my brother and me, and then suddenly K?the was part of the journey. If Professor Dzornen was her father, he did at least save her. Maybe that’s how he ended her pestering when she came to Chicago eighteen years later: he told her he’d saved her life and that was all she got from him.”
We talked it over for several fruitless minutes, but we had to agree in the end that the Metargon slogan applied to us. We had no data, we couldn’t prove any of our speculations.
“It’s my bedtime, Victoria. My alarm rings at four tomorrow morning.”
Before I hung up, I asked if she had any idea where Judy might have gone.
“All I can say is that if she’s running from one drug dealer to another, you must not chase her: your next encounter with one of them may not end as easily for you as yesterday’s did.”
I agreed soberly as she hung up. The last epitaph any of us wants is for our friends to be standing over our grave saying, “I told you so.”
I needed to work smarter, harder, faster. Any trail Martin had left was all but obliterated. The older and colder that trail grew, the more unpaid time I’d be spending trying to sniff it out. Trouble was, I couldn’t think of any smarter, faster, harder angles to follow.
In the morning, my fears diminished, as they often do in sunlight. The dogs and I loped over to the lake without interference. After we’d all swum, I put on my old cutoffs. I had no meetings scheduled—it was a day for digging in the data mines, and I could dress for comfort.
Before I started work for my bread-and-butter clients, I couldn’t resist calling Arthur Harriman, the German-speaking librarian at the University of Chicago. When I suggested my theory that Benjamin Dzornen might have stolen his student’s work, Harriman became quite excited: Nick and Nora come to life for him. He said his physics wasn’t strong enough to analyze the work, but he had a friend who was writing her dissertation on Dzornen; he’d ask if she’d ever seen any sign of Dzornen stealing his students’ work.
I settled happily into research that I was knowledgeable enough to analyze: no Dzornen-Pauli effects, just garden-variety fraud. It was ten-forty, when I was in the middle of a long conversation with a project manager at a Saskatchewan mine, that my computer began to chime at me. My answering service, which picks up calls when I don’t answer, had an incoming one that they thought was urgent. I looked at the monitor. Cordell Breen wanted to talk to me ASAP.
I clicked a box on the screen so the answering service would know I’d seen the message. While I finished my Canadian call, which took another fifteen minutes, Breen called again. Twice.
I typed up my notes before I forgot them, then looked up Breen. Of course: I was getting too old for this work. When I’d been at Metargon labs three days ago, I’d seen a picture of Edward Breen accepting an award from President Reagan for some fancy reactor design. Cordell was his son; he’d taken over Metargon after Edward died.
I called Cordell Breen at once, hoping the urgent messages meant he knew where Martin was. His secretary apologized, but the shoe was on the other foot: Mr. Breen wanted to know if I’d found Martin Binder. He hadn’t realized Martin was missing until his daughter told him about it. Mr. Breen would appreciate it if I’d come to his office as soon as possible so we could discuss what I was doing.
I felt so let down that I replied rather stiffly that I didn’t have any time today, unless he wanted to talk on the phone. The secretary put me on hold; in another moment a man’s warm baritone came on the line.
“Ms. Warshawski? Cordell Breen. I know it’s an inconvenience, a major one, for you to come out to Northbrook, but I’m hoping I can persuade you. My problem is that everything we do at Metargon is sensitive. We have hackers and snoopers trying to eavesdrop on us or break through our firewalls twenty-four/seven. Even when I think my phone lines are secure they may not be; I’d like to be free to speak to you frankly.”
When he put it like that, of course it was hard not to be persuaded. I muttered gracelessly that if I could move my lunch meeting to the afternoon I’d be able to get there around one-thirty.
“Terry!” I heard him shout. “Get me clear at one-thirty and give Ms. Warshawski directions.”