The Hammer of Eden by Ken Follett

gave her the form.
    She looked at it. “You going to drive the seismic vibrator?”
    “Yeah, Mario got homesick and went to El Paso.”
    She frowned. “That’s not like him.”
    “It sure ain’t. I hope he’s okay.”
    She shrugged and picked up her pen. “Now, first we need your full name and date and place of birth.”
    Priest gave her the information, and she filled out the blanks on the form. It was easy. Why had he panicked? It was just that he had not expected the form. Lenny had surprised him, and for a moment he had given way to fear.
    He was experienced at concealing his disability. He even used libraries. That was how he had found out about seismic vibrators. He had gone to the central library on I Street in downtown Sacramento—a big, busy place where his face probably would not be remembered. At the reception desk he had learned that science was up on the secondfloor. There, he had suffered a stab of anxiety when he looked at the long aisles of bookshelves and the rows of people sitting at computer screens. Then he had caught the eye of a friendly-looking woman librarian about his own age. “I’m looking for information on seismic exploration,” he had said with a warm smile. “Could you help me?”
    She had taken him to the right shelf, picked out a book, and with a little encouragement found the relevant chapter. “I’m interested in how they generate the shock waves,” he had explained. “I wonder if this book has that information.”
    She had leafed through the pages with him. “There seem to be three ways,” she had said. “An underground explosion, a weight drop, or a seismic vibrator.”
    “Seismic vibrator?” he had said with just the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “What’s that?”
    She had pointed to a photograph. Priest had stared, fascinated. The librarian had said: “It looks pretty much like a truck.”
    To Priest it had looked like a miracle.
    “Can I photocopy some of these pages?” he had asked.
    “Sure.”
    If you were smart enough, there was always a way to get someone else to do the reading and writing.
    Diana finished the form, drew a big X next to a dotted line, handed the paper to him, and said: “You sign here.”
    He took her pen and wrote laboriously. The “R” for Richard was like a showgirl with a big bust kicking out one leg. Then the “G” for Granger was like a billhook with a big round blade and a short handle. After “RG” he just did a wavy line like a snake. It was not pretty, but people accepted it. A lot of folk signed their names with a scrawl, he had learned: signatures did not have to be written clearly, thank God.
    This was why his forged license had to be in his own name: it was the only one he could write.
    He looked up. Diana was watching him curiously, surprised at how slowly he wrote. When she caught his eye, she reddened and looked away.
    He gave her back the form. “Thanks for your help, Diana, I sure appreciate it.”
    “You’re welcome. I’ll get you the keys to the truck as soon as Lenny gets off the phone.” The keys were kept in the boss’s office.
    Priest remembered that he had promised to move the boxes for her. He picked one up and took it outside. The green van stood in the yard with its rear door open. He loaded the box and went back for another.
    Each time he came back in, he checked her desk. The form was still there, and no keys were visible.
    After he had loaded all the boxes, he sat in front of her again. She was on the phone, talking to someone about motel reservations in Clovis.
    Priest ground his teeth. He was almost there, he nearly had the keys in his hand, and he was listening to crap about motel rooms! He forced himself to sit still.
    At last she hung up. “I’ll ask Lenny for those keys,” she said. She took the form into the inner office.
    A fat bulldozer driver called Chew came in. The trailer shook with the impact of his work boots on the floor. “Hey, Ricky,” he said, “I didn’t know you were