At five to nine he shoved back his rollchair, locked his desk, and crossed the floor to Alf Haugen’s desk. Haugen had already shut up shop; there was a look of keen expectancy on his heavy-jowled face.

“Going down to see Dinoli?” Haugen asked casually.

Kennedy nodded. “It’s pushing 9 A.M. The old man wouldn’t want us to be late.”

Together they walked down the brightly lit office, past the empty desks of Cameron and Presslie, who apparently had already gone downstairs. They emerged in the less attractive outer office where the fourth-level men worked, and there Spalding joined them.

“I guess I’m the only one on my level going,” he whispered confidentially. “None of the others are budging from their desks, and it’s two minutes to nine.”

They crossed the hall to the elevator bank and snared a downgoing car. Kennedy saw that the four private offices in which the agency’s second-level men worked were dim and unlit; that probably meant they had spent the entire morning with Dinoli.

Steward and Dinoli occupied four floors of the building. Dinoli’s office (Steward had long since been eased out of control, and indeed out of any connection whatsoever with the firm) was at the bottom of the heap, taking up all of Floor Nine. Floor Ten was the agency’s library and storage vault; Kennedy worked on Eleven, and the fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-level underlings labored in the crowded little cubicles on Floor Twelve.

The elevator opened into a luxurious oak-paneled foyer on Floor Nine. A smiling secretary, one of Dinoli’s flock of bosomy young females, met them there. “You have an appointment with the chief,” she said, not asking but telling. “Won’t you come this way?”