The Third Twin Page 0,153

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."

Hank's voice was slurred. "Jeez, I've been partying so hard I wouldn't remember." Berrington rolled up his eyes. It was Hank's birthday yesterday, of course. He was sure to be drunk or drugged or both. "No, wait a minute! There was something. I remember. It was the middle of the fucking night. She said she was with the Boston police."

"She?" That could have been Jeannie, Berrington thought with a premonition of bad news.

"Yeah, it was a woman."

"Did she give her name? That would enable us to check her bona fides."

"Sure she did, but I can't remember. Sarah or Carol or Margaret or - Susan, that was it, Detective Susan Farber."

That settled it. Susan Farber was the author of Identical Twins Reared Apart, the only book on the subject. Jeannie had used the first name that came into her head. That meant she had the list of clones. Berrington was appalled. Grimly, he pressed on with his questions. "What did she say, sir?"

"She asked my date and place of birth."

That would establish that she was talking to the right Henry King.

"I thought it was, like, a little weird," Hank went on. "Was it some kind of scam?"

Berrington invented something on the spur of the moment. "She was prospecting for leads for an insurance company.

It's illegal, but they do it. AT and T is sorry you were bothered, Mr. King, and we thank