Page 39 - Three Adventures

Deflator Mouse

Oscar Beveledge did not relax his vigilance; rather, he made his own
progress toward the exit as surreptitious as possible.
Try to think like the enemy, he told himself; how the hell did his
password leak out? He had no memory of writing down or telling
anyone the secret code. How then? Spying upon his fingers as they
ponderously pecked at the letters on the keyboard? Who could be
that close? His secretary? Preposterous. Night air enveloped Doctor
Beveledge as he closed the main door behind him and nodded to the
guard in the kiosk. Harsh cones of light led him across a sparsely-
populated parking lot to the hangar. If his password hadn’t been
lifted from his possession like a pickpocketed billfold, then the thief
had to have stolen it electronically. Better narrow the search to
software engineers, he concluded grimly. Adults, perhaps; but behind
the shirt-pocket pencil-holder beat the heart of a hacker, a child for
whom cracking a computer’s self-protective protocols would be no
more than the amusement of a rainy-day lunch hour. What about
Rabinowitz? Certainly a hands-on sort of guy, but not one to sit
endlessly in front of a flat screen, typing idiotic commands to an
imbecile operating system, looking for a weakness. Ah, but what if
Deflator Mouse is more than a single saboteur? On television, these
complex sorts of mission were always carried out by a team: the
demolitions expert, the radio and electronics man, the karate and
small arms commando, perhaps a femme fatale or master of disguise,
and, of course, the great and guiding brain behind it all. Yes, a
Professor Moriarty lurked in the background, pulling the strings. A
battle of wits, thought Beveledge; I must outsmart this mastermind of
industrial espionage.
Another guard approached as he tried the hangar door, shining a
flashlight in the director’s face. “It’s me—Doctor Beveledge,” he
snapped. “Do you have the key to this building?”
“Yes, sir, I do, but Captain Lampson has ordered that nobody goes
in there after hours.”
“Well, Captain Lampson takes orders from me, and I need to look
around in there. Right now.”
The guard, grizzled and gray in navy blue and khaki, shook his
head. “No, sir. Can’t take that responsibility. If you want, we can
walk over to Security and phone Captain Lampson.”
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