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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 ìnner 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."
