It was locked.
"No dice." I looked around at Tam, who was still wearing her lamb coat, gray against her dark hair, sleet melting on the shoulders.
"Let me try." She gave it a twist. Nothing. "I don't suppose we'd be very smart just to kick it in. Though that's what I feel like right now, after all our trouble." She turned to me. "Maybe there's a key somewhere in Noda's office? Think there's a chance?"
"Could be." I was rummaging my pockets. "First, though, let me check something."
I pulled out a ring and began to flip through it. "I ended up with a master, courtesy of the RM&S floor manager that day they turned in their keys. Now, if this internal door lock hasn't been changed yet, maybe . . ."I selected one and kissed it for luck. "Here goes."
The key, a large silver model, was resistant, the way masters always are. Undeterred, I wiggled it forcefully, and slowly it slipped into the knob. A couple of jiggles more and the thing began to revolve under my hand.
We emitted matching sighs of relief as Tam shoved the door wide and reached for the light switch. "Now I've got to regress into the past. A lot of their reports are in Japanese." She went on to explain that although she could read the kana syllabaries easily enough, she'd forgotten a lot of the kanji ideograms. She could piece together enough to work through a simple newspaper story, but heavy technical prose was always tough.
She quickly sorted through the papers piled in neat stacks
atop Mori's desk, but who knew what most of them said? Nothing looked like my stolen list. Next she checked the drawers of the desk. One contained a heavily marked printout; the others, nothing.
Time was ticking. If Yamada decided to make the rounds, no quantity of creative fiction would save us.