she’s invaluable, knows it, and so she gets away with everything.’
The young woman ignored everyone. Binning stared at her in private thought. Rowena somehow involved everyone and ignored them at the same time. She seemed to live under a cloud, contemptuous of everything.
‘I asked Rowena to pop in because she’s, well, a part of why you’re here,’ Jason said, looking at Stratton. ‘I can’t help feeling there’s bad feeling between you and us. I’d like to move beyond it. I think there’s been an overreaction to the hull-recording incident. It’s quite acceptable that under such hostile circumstances an operative could forget to arm the self-destruct option—’
‘I didn’t forget to arm it,’ Stratton said, surprised by his own sudden anger. It was a warning that his previous acceptance of the situation was a smokescreen that he’d created in self-defence. Deep down he still felt sensitive about the incident, at least where these people were concerned.
Everyone else in the room felt the sting of Stratton’s glare although they did not appear to be unduly fazed by it.
Jason took a moment to compose his next words. ‘The likelihood of the device failing to self-destruct after it was armed is very low. But obviously nothing is impossible.’
‘Total crap,’ Rowena snapped, looking at Stratton as if he was dirt. ‘I designed the self-destruct system on that device. It’s simple, functional, and the one that I prepared for the operation worked perfectly. And I’m not going to be blamed by this Neanderthal for some fictitious malfunction.’
Stratton got to his feet, barely able to hold on to his anger. ‘I’m not taking any more of this shit.’
‘Oh, grow up,’ Rowena said, taking a pull on her cigarette. ‘If you prima donnas only knew how difficult it is to dumb down designs just so you can use them you wouldn’t be so damned arrogant.’
The other scientists in the theory room outside the office had stopped talking and were looking towards them.
‘Easy,’ Jason said, getting up and walking around the desk as if to get between the pair.
‘I can see what’s going on,’ Stratton said. ‘You eggheads screwed up and as far as you’re concerned my coming here acknowledges that it was my mistake. Fine. You win. I came. Now I’ll go. That recorder didn’t work. You know it. I know it. It’ll be our little secret.’
‘You bloody coward,’ Rowena retorted, standing now. ‘You may have the guts to do the job but not to admit when you screw it up.’
‘Please! Can we stop this?’ Jason had raised his voice to match the volume of theirs and now he moved to the doorway to prevent Stratton from leaving. ‘Let’s all calm down.’ He faced Stratton. ‘There’s no underhandedness going on here. I understand your feelings, both of you,’ he added, glancing round at Rowena. ‘I think I know how difficult it was for you to come here. You’re an operative and, well, I expect that in your eyes we’re nothing more than a bunch of white coats . . . and in the eyes of some of the people here you’re no more than a mindless thug. I’m being perfectly frank because I want to be fully understood. I believe we’re wrong about each other. I would like to see closer cooperation between us than there has been in the past. For our part we need to know more about how you think, react, analyse. That goes for all operatives and for you in particular, Stratton. You have an impressive record when it comes to thinking on your feet, reacting to life-threatening situations, solving problems under pressure. Yet forgive me if I sound insulting, but . . . well, you don’t have a great education. Your IQ is average . . . don’t get me wrong, please: I’m trying not to sound condescending. What I’m saying is, you have something that isn’t easily quantifiable when it comes to IQ or physical tests. I want to know what that something is.’
Rowena rolled her eyes and sat back down. ‘No one ever heard of dumb luck?’ she muttered.
Stratton realised he was grinding his teeth. Yet the woman had disengaged herself from everyone else, seemingly to concentrate on her cigarette.
A beeper sounded at Jason’s hip. He unclipped the device and checked its screen. ‘I would appreciate it if everyone just took a deep breath and settled down,’ he said, moving back behind the desk.
Stratton picked up his coat and headed out of the office.