A Creed for the Third Millennium by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page A

room.'
    'Good! I wouldn't have put it past him to
change it at the last minute so he could override me and be there.'
    'He won't do that, ma'am. This is too
important, and his boss is watching things rather carefully.'
    She sat down behind her desk, swung the
swivel chair sideways and unzipped her black kid boots. The plain but equally
high-heeled black kid pumps which replaced them were laid ready neatly side by
side in the roomy bottom drawer of her desk; Dr Carriol was obsessively tidy and
formidably efficient.
    'Coffee?'
    'Mmmm! What a terribly good idea!
Anything new I ought to know before the meeting?'
    'I don't think so. Mr Magnus is anxious
to speak to you first, but that's as predicted. You must be very glad the
preliminary phase of Operation Search is finally over.'
    'Profoundly glad! Not that it hasn't been
interesting. Five years of it! When did you join me from State,
John?'
    'It would be… eighteen months
ago.'
    'We might have taken less time setting it
up if I'd had you from the beginning. Finding you was like tripping over the Welcome Stranger nugget
in the middle of the usual State Department minefield.'
    He went slightly pink, dipped his head
awkwardly, and slid round the door as fast as he could.
    Dr Carriol picked up the receiver of a
green telephone to one side of the beige multi-lined console on her desk. 'This
is Dr Carriol. The Secretary, please, Mrs Taverner.'
    The connection was made quickly, without
protest, and in scarcely more time than it took to engage the scramble
button.
    'Dr Carriol, Mr Magnus.'
    'I want to come!' He sounded plaintive,
petulant even.
    'Mr Secretary, my investigative teams and
their chiefs are still very much under the impression that Operation Search has
been a purely theoretical exercise. I want them to remain under that impression,
at least until they can't help but see the results we thrust under their noses,
and we're some months off that. If you turn up in person today, they're going to
smell a great big rat.' Her breath caught as she made the Freudian slip. Fool,
Judith, fool! No one was quicker at words than Harold Magnus.
    But his mind was too busy dwelling on his
exclusion to notice. 'You're just afraid I might upset your carefully stacked
apple cart before you can point out the best apple to me. Because you think I'm
going to pick the wrong apple.'
    'Nonsense!'
    'Tchah! Let's hope phase two will go
faster than phase one, anyway. I'd like to be sitting in this chair to see the
final result.'
    'Sifting the haystack always takes a lot
longer than arranging the apple cart, Mr Magnus.'
    He muffled a giggle. 'Keep me
informed.'
    'Of course, Mr Secretary,' she said
blandly, and hung up, smiling.
    But when John Wayne came in with her
coffee she was sitting looking at the green telephone pensively, and chewing her
lip.

     
     
    At four o'clock that afternoon Dr Judith
Carriol entered the Section Four executive conference room, with her private
secretary in grave attendance. He would take the minutes in old-fashioned
shorthand, a decision he and Dr Carriol had taken long before if a meeting was
classified top secret. A tape recorder was too vulnerable; even if someone
managed to lay hands on his shorthand notes and could read shorthand, that
person would also have to contend with the fact that it was modified markedly by
his handwriting. From his minutes he would do the typescript himself onto an
old-fashioned typewriter minus any kind of memory device and not susceptible to
a listening microphone, as was the modern voicewriter. Then he would shred his
dictation and his rough draft before personally copying and collating the final
draft for distribution in files marked top secret.
    It was a small gathering. Including John
Wayne, only five people attended. They were seated two down either side of the
long, ovoid table, with Dr Carriol in the chair at one end. And she got down to
business at once, the fingers of her left hand