the Third Twin (1996)

Colonel Logan, who was still under arrest, would not say anything except “I want a lawyer.” However, the results of Jeannie’s sweep were on the computer terminal Steve had been using, so Jim had been able to find out what they had discovered. “I guess you must have ordered electrocardiograms on all the babies,” Jim said.

Berrington had forgotten, but now it came back. “Yes, we did.”

“Logan found them.”

“All of them?”

“All eight.”

It was the worst possible news. The electrocardiograms, like those of identical twins, were as similar as if they had been taken from one person on different days. Steve and his father, and presumably Jeannie, must now know that Steve was one of eight clones. “Hell,” Berrington said. “We’ve kept this secret for twenty-three years, and now this damn girl has found it out.”

“I told you we should have made her vanish.”

Jim was at his most offensive when under pressure. After a sleepless night Berrington had no patience. “If you say ‘I told you so’ I’ll blow your goddamn head off, I swear to God.”

“All right, all right!”

“Does Preston know?”

“Yes. He says we’re finished, but he always says that.”

“This time he could be right.”

Jim’s voice took on its parade-ground tone. “You may be ready to wimp out, Berry, but I’m not,” he grated. “All we have to do is keep the lid on this until the press conference tomorrow. If we can manage that, the takeover will go through.”

“But what happens after that?”

“After that we’ll have a hundred and eighty million dollars, and that buys a lot of silence.”

Berrington wanted to believe him. “You’re such a smart-ass, what do you think we should do next?”

“We have to find out how much they know. No one is sure whether Steven Logan had a copy of the list of names and addresses in his pocket when he got away. The woman lieutenant in the data center swears he did not, but her word isn’t enough for me. Now, the addresses he has are twenty-two years old. But here’s my question. With just the names, can Jeannie Ferrami track them down?”

“The answer is yes,” Berrington said. “We’re experts at that in the psychology department. We have to do it all the time, track down identical twins. If she got that list last night she could have found some of them by now.”

“I was afraid of that. Is there any way we can check?”

“I guess I could call them and find out if they’ve heard from her.”

“You’d have to be discreet.”

“You aggravate me, Jim. Sometimes you act like you’re the only guy in America with half a fucking brain. Of course I’ll be discreet. I’ll get back to you.” He hung up with a bang.

The names of the clones and their phone numbers, written in a simple code, were in his Wizard. He took it out of his desk drawer and turned it on.

He had kept track of them over the years. He felt more paternal toward them than either Preston or Jim. In the early days he had written occasional letters from the Aventine Clinic, asking for information under the pretext of follow-up studies on the hormone treatment. Later, when that became implausible, he had employed a variety of subterfuges, such as pretending to be a real estate broker and calling to ask if the family was thinking of selling the house, or whether the parents were interested in buying a book that listed scholarships available to the children of former military personnel. He had watched with ever-increasing dismay as most of them progressed from bright but disobedient children to fearless delinquent teenagers to brilliant, unstable adults. They were the unlucky by-products of a historic experiment. He had never regretted the experiment, but he felt guilty about the boys. He had cried when Per Ericson killed himself doing somersaults on a ski slope in Vail.

He looked at the list while he dreamed up a pretext for calling today. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Murray Claud’s father. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered. Eventually Berrington figured this was the day he went to visit his son in jail.

He called George Dassault next. This time he was luckier. The phone was answered by a familiar young voice. “Yeah, who’s this?”

Berrington said: “This is Bell Telephone, sir, and we’re checking up on fraudulent phone calls. Have you received any odd or unusual calls in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Nope, can’t say I have. But I’ve been out of town since Friday, so I wasn’t here to answer the phone anyway.”

“Thank you for cooperating with our survey, sir. Good-bye.”

Jeannie might have George’s name, but she had not reached him. That was inconclusive.

Berrington tried Hank King in Boston next. “Yeah, who’s this?”

It was astonishing, Berrington reflected, that they all answered the phone in the same charmless way. There could not be a gene for phone manners. But twins research was full of such phenomena. “This is AT and T,” Berrington said. “We’re doing a survey of fraudulent phone use and we’d like to know whether you have received any strange or suspicious calls in the last twenty-four hours.”