An Absence of Light

Hertig nodded at his own explanation, and for a moment his blue eyes lost their focus. He put his hands or the arms of his chair. He pursed his lips, his head tilte forward in thought Then he reached out and picked u] some papers.

“We’ve all read your report on Arthur Tisler, and what we’ve got here is a differing of opinions,” Hertig said.

Graver looked at Westrate and Lukens. Both mer had fixed their eyes on Hertig like spaniels. Graver suspected they were watching him for any indication of tilte one way or the other, however subtle, however slight Ward Lukens was a couple of years older than Westrate and about half as heavy. He had thick, wiry brown hair wore unimaginative steel-rimmed glasses, and was so lacking in personality that Graver found him difficult to talk to. He was an honest man, however, and a stickler for rules, though these attributes were somewhat diminished by his maddening self-righteousness, and all of which made him the natural enemy of the conniving Westrate. Graver guessed that Hertig would have liked to strangle them both.

“About the report?” Graver asked.

“No. That seems clear enough. But about what to do now.”

Hertig was enough of a lawyer to want to see where Graver would go with this given as little direction as necessary. But Graver wasn’t going to venture anything without being presented with a specific question. He simply looked at Hertig and waited. Hertig waited. And then Graver thought he saw something like amusement come to the surface behind Hertig’s pale eyes, and then it was gone.

“Ward has the feeling that two deaths, regardless of the seemingly innocent circumstances, are too much of a coincidence,” Hertig said with a tilt of his head toward Lukens. “He thinks there ought to be a major audit of your OC unit” He paused, keeping his eyes on Graver. “How do you feel about that?”

“Obviously the deaths have startled us too,” Graver said, looking at Westrate and back to Hertig. “And Jack has already grilled me about this.” Graver chose the verb deliberately. It would be to his advantage if the other two men thought Westrate had treated the deaths with an appropriate skepticism, even though Graver knew that that skepticism had more to do with paranoia than a levelheaded consideration of the implications the deaths might have for the integrity of their intelligence system.

“I don’t think an audit of the kind you’re talking about is an advisable thing under these circumstances,” Graver continued, “for several reasons. First of all, there’s the matter of a lack of evidence-forensic or investigative-that would indicate anything is at play here other than coincidence.” Graver went on to cover the same points he had covered the night before when he had spoken to Westrate and used the example of Occam’s razor. If they decided to initiate an audit, it would be based solely on suspicion or hunch and not on fact or evidence or inexplicable inconsistencies or lacunae in the chain of procedure. Or, and Graver only implied this, it would be for some other reason… internecine squabbling, panic, butt-covering, or poor judgment.

“Two, if an audit is conducted it will have the inevitable effect of disrupting morale. It would be impossible to keep such an investigation quiet, and once it’s known, there’s no way we can avoid having it perceived as anything but a witch-hunt, no matter what we called it.”

Hertig was still sitting with his forearms on the arms of his chair and his hands gripping the ends. His face had lost its equanimous and beatific expression of a mediator and had grown sober with concentration.

“Three, there’s the inevitable question of parameters. If our internal audit of Tisler is to be redone it won’t be such a problem. He was handling eight targets, most of them inactive except for semiannual updates. But Besom supervised ten investigators in OC Some have as many as ten targets. That’s well over a hundred targets. If you’re concerned about Besom’s role in regard to his investigators and their targets, you can’t afford to let a single one of those go without a thorough audit Otherwise there wouldn’t be any use in doing it This isn’t the sort of thing that lends itself to random sampling.”

Graver paused. He looked at each of them. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it-though I personally don’t believe it’s justified-but I am saying we’d better be sure we’ve made our decision to do so based on sound reasoning.”

That was it Hertig’s eyes were on Graver, and he was nodding, little shallow bobs as he thought Without changing position in his chair he swiveled around slowly to the two men in front of him.

“Jack, I guess you go along with this.”

“Yes, sir,” Westrate said with alacrity, sensing the momentum turning in his favor.

Hertig looked at Lukens. “Ward, you have anything else to add?”