The Minotaur (20 page)

On a scratch pad Camacho wrote, “26″.” “Point made,” he
muttered.

“Oh, I know, I know. Even after we have all the messages
cracked, we won’t have him. But we’ll have his scent.
Once we know which files he’s been in, we can trot over to the
Pentagon and glom on to the access sheets for those files. Our boy
has seen them all.”

“Maybe. But not very likely. Probably he got the access codes
during an unauthorized peek in the main security files. But the
document key words and numbers—” He sighed. “I would bet my
last penny he hasn’t seen all the files he’s given away. I’ll bet there
isn’t a man alive who’s had authorized access to all those files.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Agreed. But we’ll never get the Cray mainframe for two weeks.
The fingerprint guys would cry a river. So let’s get started with
what we have. Get the access sheets for these five files we know
about and let’s see who’s on them. And for Christ’s sake, keep your
head down. Don’t let anyone know what you’re after. We don’t
want to spook our man.”

“Okay,” Dreyfus agreed. “While we’re at it, why don’t we just
pick up Terry Franklin and sweat the little bastard?”

“Not yet.”

Dreyfus’ pipe was dead. He sucked audibly, then got out his
lighter. When he was exhaling smoke again, he said, “I think we’re
making a mistake not keeping Franklin under surveillance.”

“What if the little shit bolts? What then? Is Franklin the only
mole Ivan has over there? Is he?”

Dreyfus threw up his hands and gathered up his papers.

“Get somebody to tackle this decoding project with the main-
frame when it’s not in use. The front office will never give us two
weeks, but let’s see what we can do with a couple hours here and
there.”

“Sure, Luis.”

“Again, nice work, Dreyfus.”

Camacho stared at the door after Dreyfus left. He had slipped
and made a mistake; he had lied to Dreyfus. The only way to keep
two separate lives completely, safely separate was to never tell a lie.
Never. You often had to leave out part of the truth, but that wasn’t
a lie. A lie was a booby trap, a land mine that could explode at any
time with fatal results. And this lie had been a big one. He sat now
staring at the objects on his desk with unseeing eyes as he ex-
amined the dimensions of the lie and its possible implications. Stu-
pid! A stupid, idiotic lie.

He rubbed his forehead again and found he couldn’t sit still. He
paced, back and forth and back and forth, until finally he was
standing in front of the Pentagon organization chart. If there were
forty files or sixty-three or any number, there would be a small
group of people who would have access to all of them, if you
constructed just one more hypothesis—that all the files concerned
classified projects in research or development. Tyler Henry the ad-
miral suspected they did. Albright the spy already knew and had
told him so. Camacho the spy catcher must verify or refute that
hypothesis soon, or Dreyfus and Henry and Albright and a lot of
the others are going to think him incompetent, or worse.
He stood staring at one box on the complex chart. Inside the box
was printed: “Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition.”

He sat at his desk and unlocked the lower right drawer and
removed a file. Inside were photocopies of all sixty-three letters.
They were in chronological order. All had been written on plain
white copy machine paper in #2 lead pencil, which had been a
wise precaution on the part of the person or persons who wrote
them. Ink could be analyzed chemically and the sellers of pens
could be interviewed, but a #2 lead pencil was a #2 lead pencil.
And copy machine paper—the stuff was everywhere, in every office
of the nation.

On an average day the Soviet embassy received several dozen
casual cards and letters mailed from all over the United States.
Most of the messages were short and to the point. Many were
crude. “Eat shit, Ivan,” seemed to be popular. The Chernobyl di-
saster and the Armenian earthquake had elicited thousands of
pieces of mail, much to the chagrin of the postal inspectors and
FBI agents assigned to screen it.

Over the last three years these letters in this file had been culled
for further scrutiny. All the messages were printed in small block
letters, all were long enough to contain an internal code and all of
them had been written in English by someone with a fairly decent
education. Some were signed and some weren’t. Interestingly,
about 80 percent of these letters had been mailed in the Washing-
ton metropolitan area. Not a one had been mailed from over a
hundred miles away. All had been enclosed in cheap, plain white
envelopes available in hundreds of bookstores, convenience stores,
supermarkets, etc., all over town.

Camacho looked closely. It was easy to see that the same person
had written them all; the penmanship was so careful and neat, the
style of the writer so consistent from letter to letter- And every
now and then, maybe once in every other letter, the syntax was
tortuous, not quite right. It was as if the writer purposefully chose
a difficult sentence construction. The conclusion that these letters,
or at least some of them, contained an internal code was ines-
capable.

The mechanics of the matrix demanded a reasonably long letter
if one were going to encrypt a long message, say three dozen char-
acters. If it took an average of three words to signal one character,
then the message must run to at least nine dozen words, too many
for a postcard.

The sheer number of letters was daunting. Some of them were
probably dross. knew these letters would arouse
suspicion, so he wrote lots of them. And it was impossible to tell
which contained a code and which didn’t. He was hiding in plain
sight.

Maybe that was the key. Maybe wasn’t just some
career civil servant, some clerk. Maybe he was a man in plain sight,
out in the open, known to one and all. But why? Why was he
committing treason? That’s what the Soviets wanted to know.

Camacho picked up the phone and punched numbers. “Dreyfus,
pull the files on all the political people in the Defense Department
and put them in the conference room.”

“All of them? Again?”

“All.”

“Yessir,” Dreyfus said without enthusiasm.

Even a blind hog finds an acorn occasionally, Camacho told
himself as he cradled the phone. And if there’s an acorn in those
files, this time I’m going to find it.

The youngest child, a four-year-old boy, threw a fit as Lucy Frank-
lin drove toward Dulles. The nine-year old, Karen, had been devil-
ing him all morning, and apparently he decided he had had
enough. He wailed at the top of his lungs and punched at his sister.
One of his swings connected with her nose. Blood spouted and she
screamed too. Lucy pulled off the freeway and put the car in neu-
tral.

“Shut up!” she roared. “Both you kids, stop it!”
Satisfied with the outcome of the battle, the boy sat back and
stared at the blood dripping on ha sister’s dress as she sobbed
uncontrollably.

“Look at you two. Fighting again. Now Karen’s hurt. Aren’t
you sorry, Kevin?”

He didn’t look a bit sorry, which made Karen cry harder. Lucy
got her into the front seat and held a tissue on her nose until the
bleeding stopped. She cuddled the child. Karen had vomited twice
during the night, so this morning Lucy had kept her home from
school.

The traffic roared by. “Say you’re sorry, Kevin.”

“I’m sorry.” His hand came over the seat and touched Karen’s
hair. The sobbing gradually eased. Holding a tissue against Karen’s
nose with her left hand, Lucy leaned over the seat and cuddled the
boy. This week had been tough on them. Terry was so distant,
saying little, shouting at the children as they ran through the house
and made their usual noise.

He was a volcano about to erupt. His tension and fear were
tangible, visible, frightening to the children, terrifying to Lucy.
Even as she sat here on the freeway, the unreasoning panic that
Terry caused washed over her again. What had he done? What
would he do? Would he hurt the children? Would he hurt her?

“Mommy, don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying, sweetheart. I just have something in my eye.”

“I’m okay now,” Karen said, casting an evil glance across the
seat back at her brother.

“No more fighting. You two love each other. No more fighting.
It makes me sad to see you two trying to irritate each other.”

Now Kevin’s hand touched her hair. “Let’s go get Grandma.”

“Yes. Let’s do.” She started the engine and slipped out into
traffic.

At lunch Toad and Rita shared a table-just the two of them. From
a table fifty feet away Jake Grafton watched the body language and
gestures as he listened to George Wilson and Dalton Harris talk
baseball. So Toad Tarkington had fallen in love again! That guy
went over that precipice with awe-inspiring regularity. The impact
at the bottom was also spectacular.

You really had to tip your hat to the guy. He arrives, takes in the
female situation at a glance, then immediately makes a fool of
himself over the best-looking woman in sight. Jake allowed himself
a grin. The ol’ Horny Toad.

Back in the office after lunch, Jake called Tarkington over to his
desk- “I’ve been looking over this memo about the A-6 system.
How did it go when you turned off the radar and Doppler?”

“Well, sir, without the Doppler to dampen the velocities, the
inertial tends to drift somewhat. But without the radar all you have
is the IR and it’s tough. When it isn’t raining or snowing you can
run attacks okay once you’ve found the target. The nav system just
isn’t right enough to let you find the targets without the radar. The
IR doesn’t have enough field of view. With a global positioning
system to stabilize the inertial you might have a chance, but not
now.”

“It looks to me like you’ve got a handle on the major problems.
This evening how about jumping a plane and flying up to
Calverton, New York? With Commander Richards. The guys at
Grumman are expecting you two. I want you to look over the
A-6G system and play with it and let me know what you think.
Come back Monday. Tuesday you and I are going to take a little
trip out West.”

The lieutenant’s face reflected his dismay.

“That’s not going to put you out or interfere with anything, is
it?” Jake tried to appear solicitous.

“Geez, CAG, The whole weekend—“

“You didn’t have anything going, did you? I mean, you haven’t
been around here long enough to—“

“Oh no, sir. I just thought I’d do my laundry and all. Maybe
take in a movie. Write a letter to my mom.”

Jake couldn’t hold back a smile. “Running out of clean under-
wear, huh?”

Toad nodded, trying to maintain a straight face.

“Buy some more- See you Monday, Toad.”

“Yessir. Monday.”

At four o’clock Jake received a call from Commander Rob Knight.
“Could you come over to my office?”

“Well, I was getting ready to go home.”

“On your way?”

“Sure.”

Jake locked the files, turned off the lights and snagged his hat on
the way out. Smoke Judy was still there. “Lock up, will you,
Smoke?”

“Sure, Captain. Have a good weekend.”

“You too.”

Jake walked to the Pentagon. He was getting very familiar with
this route. The parking lot was emptying as he crossed it and he
had to do some dodging.

On the fourth-level corridor the pile of used furniture was still
gathering dust. Jake turned right on the D-Ring and walked down
three doors. He knocked.

Rear Admiral Costello opened the door. “Ah, Captain, please
come in.”

The room was packed. People were sitting on desks. Everyone
had a beer can in his hand. Vice Admiral Henry was there, Costel-
lo’s three aides—all captains fresh from carrier commands and
waiting for the flag list or new orders—together with the four office
regulars and two admirals Jake didn’t know. He accepted a beer
and found himself talking to Henry. “Glad you could join us, Cap-
tain.”

“Delighted, sir.”

It was Happy Hour. These men who had spent their lives in the
camaraderie of ready rooms needed two hours at the end of the
week to review the week’s frustrations and reduce them to manage-
able proportions. Soon the subject turned from shop to mutual
friends, ships, ports, and planes they had flown.

Just before six Jake excused himself. He and Callie were going to
the beach this evening. Tyler Henry grabbed his hat and started
with Jake for the door. As Jake opened it, Henry paused and took
a long, smiling look at the bulletin board. He was looking at a
photo. It was a black-and-white eight-by-ten of singer Ann-Mar-
gret holding a microphone in her hand and singing her heart out,
wearing a sleeveless shorty blouse and no pants at all.

“I was there,” Henry said. “Kitty Hawk, ‘67 or ‘68. That
woman . . .” He pointed at the picture. “She’s all lady. She’s my
favorite entertainer.”

The photo was autographed and signed. “To the guys of OP-
506.” Yes, thought Jake Grafton, remembering those days. No
doubt that was a great moment for her, performing before five
thousand screaming sailors, but it was an even greater moment for
them, a moment they would remember and cherish every day of
their lives, each and every man jack of them. Of course, bombing
North Vietnam twelve hours a day, some of them didn’t have very
many days left- The loss rate then was almost a plane a day. No
doubt Ann-Margret had known that.

“Mine too,” said Jake Grafton, and together with the admiral
walked into the corridor where he said goodbye. The admiral went
back toward his office as Jake set off alone for the subway.

At six o’clock, as Jake Grafton was boarding the subway at the
Pentagon station, Luis Camacho closed the last of the files piled up
on his desk. It was hopeless: 218 files, 218 political appointees in
the Department of Defense, including the service secretaries and
unders and assistants. He had selected just eighteen files: the Under
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, his political aides, and the
assistants and under secretaries in SECDEF’s office. And
SECDEF. All these men had held their positions for at least three
years. But it was still hopeless.