the Third Twin (1996)

He checked the car’s clock for the twentieth time and decided to call Jim again. He might have heard from the FBI by now.

Berrington left his car and walked to the corner. The smell of French fries made him hungry, but he did not like to eat hamburgers out of fast-food containers. He got a cup of black coffee and went to the pay phone.

“They went to New York,” Jim told him.

It was as Berrington had feared. “Wayne Stattner,” he said.

“Yup.”

“Shit. What did they do?”

“Asked him to account for his movements last Sunday, and like that. He was at the Emmys. Had his picture, in People magazine. End of story.”

“Any indication what Jeannie might be planning to do next?”

“No. What’s happening there?”

“Not a lot. I can see her door from here. She did some shopping, Steve Logan came and went, nothing. Maybe they’ve run out of ideas.”

“And maybe not. All we know is that your scheme of firing her didn’t shut her up.”

“All right, Jim, don’t rub it in. Wait—she’s coming out.” She had changed her clothes: she was wearing white jeans and a royal blue sleeveless blouse that showed her strong arms.

“Follow her,” Jim said.

“The hell with that. She’s getting into her car.”

“Berry, we have to know where she goes.”

“I’m not a cop, goddamn it!”

A little girl on her way to the ladies’ room with her mother said: “That man shouted, Mommy.”

“Hush, darling,” her mother said.

Berrington lowered his voice. “She’s pulling away.”

“Get in your damn car!”

“Fuck you, Jim.”

“Follow her!” Jim hung up.

Berrington cradled the phone.

Jeannie’s red Mercedes went by and turned south on Falls Road.

Berrington ran to his car.

47

JEANNIE STUDIED STEVE’S FATHER. CHARLES WAS DARK haired, with the shadow of a heavy beard on his jaw. His expression was dour and his manner rigidly precise. Although it was Saturday and he had been gardening, he wore neatly pressed dark pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a collar. He did not look like Steve in any way. The only thing Steve might have got from him was a taste for conservative clothes. Most of Jeannie’s students wore ripped denim and black leather, but Steve favored khakis and button-downs.

Steve had not yet come home, and Charles speculated that he might have dropped by his law school library to read up on rape trials. Steve’s mother was lying down. Charles made fresh lemonade, and he and Jeannie went out on the patio of the Georgetown house and sat on lawn chairs.

Jeannie had woken up from her doze with a brilliant idea in the forefront of her mind. She had thought of a way to find the fourth clone. But she would need Charles’s help. And she was not sure he would be willing to do what she had to ask him.

Charles passed her a tall, cold glass, then took one himself and sat down. “May I call you by your first name?” he said.

“Please do.”

“And I hope you’ll do the same.”

“Sure.”

They sipped their lemonade, then he said: “Jeannie—what is this all about?”

She put down her glass. “I think it’s an experiment,” she said. “Berrington and Proust were both in the military until shortly before they set up Genetico. I suspect the company was originally a cover for a military project.”

“I’ve been a soldier all my adult life, and I’m ready to believe almost anything crazy of the army. But what interest could they have in women’s fertility problems?”

“Think of this. Steve and his doubles are tall, strong, fit, and handsome. They’re also very smart, although their propensity to violence gets in the way of their achievements. But Steve and Dennis have IQ scores off the scale, and I suspect the other two would be the same: Wayne is already a millionaire at the age of twenty-two, and the fourth one has at least been clever enough to totally evade detection.”

“Where does that get you?”

“I don’t know. I wonder if the army was trying to breed the perfect soldier.”

It was no more than an idle speculation, and she said it casually, but it electrified Charles. “Oh, my God,” he said, and an expression of shocked comprehension spread over his face. “I think I remember hearing about this.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a rumor, back in the seventies, that went all around the military. The Russians had a breeding program, people said. They were making perfect soldiers, perfect athletes, perfect chess players, everything. Some people said we should be doing the same. Others said we already were.”

“So that’s it!” Jeannie felt that at last she was beginning to understand. “They picked à healthy, aggressive, intelligent, blond-haired man and woman and got them to donate the sperm and egg that went together to form the embryo. But what they were really interested in was the possibility of duplicating the perfect soldier once they had created him. The crucial part of the experiment was the multiple division of the embryo and the implanting into the host mothers. And it worked.” She frowned. “I wonder what happened next.”

“I can answer that,” Charles said. “Watergate. All those crazy secret schemes were canceled after that.”