The Minotaur (29 page)

“What about him?” Caplinger asked.

“He hasn’t gotten Athena yet, but the minute we start bringing
defense contractors into the loop, he will.”

Caplinger leaned forward. “Where will we be if he gives Athena
to the Russians?”

Henry had recovered his composure. “We’ll have lost our advan-
tage,” he said with a trace of irritation in his voice. “They outgun
us two to one. We need the technological edge to stay in the game.”

Caplinger got to his feet and reached for the jacket draped over
the back of his chair. “Thanks for lunch, George. Russell, you talk
to these people and get this Athena business on track. I want it in
production as soon as possible. We’ll include it with the ATA in the
budget. Black all the way.” He paused and surveyed the faces at
the table. “The navy can develop this. Keep it under wraps. Secu-
rity as tight as a miser’s money belt. Develop it for planes and
ships. But the air force must be brought into this as soon as we
have to start talking to Congress. This may kill the B-2, but it’ll
save the B-1″

“But what about the billions we’re pouring into stealth planes
now?” Russell Queen the bean counter asked his boss.

“Heck, Russell, this Athena gizmo may not work. Probably
won’t. Sorry, Tyler, but after all! A religious crackpot in a back-
yard workshop? It’s too good to be true. Sounds like something
Tom Clancy dreamed up after he had a bad pizza.”

An hour later as Tyler Henry and Jake Grafton walked along the
E-Ring back toward the admiral’s office, Jake remarked, “At
lunch. Admiral, you said we need a technological edge to stay in
the game. What if the game has changed?”

“You mean Gorbachev reforming the Kremlin, converting the
commies? Bull fucking shit.”

“The Soviets packed up and pulled out of Afghanistan. They
helped get the Cubans out of Angola. They’re relaxing their hold
on Eastern Europe. They’re even talking to the Chinese. Some-
thing’s going on.”

“So the sons of Uncle Joe Stalin have given up their goal of
world domination? The fucking thugs who murdered twenty mil-
lion of their own people? My aching ass. That’s all big-lie propa-
ganda that liberal half-wits want to believe. Twenty million men,
women and children! They make Adolf Hitler look like a weenie
waver. We’d better have the edge when the shit splatters, because
we’ll never get a second chance.”

‘”So you’re maintaining an open mind on the question.”

“You’ve been hanging around with that loose-screw Tarkington
too long, Grafton. You’re beginning to sound like him.” Dunedin
must have mentioned Tarkington to Henry, Jake surmised. He was
sure Henry had never met the lieutenant.

“But what if Royce Caplinger and the politicos in Congress
think the game has changed?”

“Caplinger isn’t a fool.” Two paces later Henry added, “Think-
ing politician is an oxymoron.”

After Jake parted from the admiral he walked to the cafeteria,
where he bought a packet of Nabs and washed them down with a
half-pint of milk. Humans are unique animals, he reflected. What
other species has man’s ability to see the world as he wants it to be,
rather than as it actually is? He couldn’t think of any. The worst of
it is that this human trait deprives you of the ability to recognize
reality when you see it. On this gloomy note his thoughts turned to
Callie.

“What d’ya think’s wrong with it?” Camacho asked nervously as
he and Harlan Albright stood listening to Luis’ car. It had a rag-
ged, sick sound, most likely because Camacho had taken out one of
the spark plugs and pounded the hide arm against the core until
there was no gap at all, then reinstalled it.

“Sounds to me like you got a cylinder missing, but I’m no me-
chanic,” Albright said, and made notations on the service form.
“We’ll have a guy look at it this afternoon and give you a call. I
can’t give you an estimate or tell you how long it’ll take to fix until
we find out what’s wrong.”

“What neighborhood of finance are we talking here? Checking,
savings, or second mortgage?”

Albright grinned and slid the form across the counter for Cama-
cho to sign. “We’ll call you.”

“Well, poo. How about running me back downtown?”

The service manager glanced at the wall clock, “I get off for
lunch in about thirty minutes. You wait and I’ll take you. Go
browse in the showroom or get some coffee.”

Albright was driving a new car with dealer plates. Camacho
settled into the passenger seat and fastened the seat belt as Albright
pulled out into traffic. “Thought I oughta drop by and fill you in.
Sally and I have to go to a church dinner tonight. The only thing
wrong with my car is a bad spark plug. Don’t let your mechanical
wizards screw me.”

“So what’s happening?”

”We’ve got a letter from Terry Franklin’s mother-in-law. She
says he’s a spy and wants us to bust him.”

Albright glanced at the FBI agent- “You must get letters like
that all the tune.”

“We do. And we check them out. Which is precisely what we’re
going to do with this one. Sometime toward the end of next week
we’ll have to interview Franklin. Thought you ought to know.”

“I appreciate that. And the search for X?”

“We need a letter from his mother-in-law.”

“Maybe you already got it. Maybe Franklin is X.”

“Yeah. And I’m Donald Trump. I just live like this because I
think money is vulgar. Jesus, you know damn well that little shit
doesn’t have the balls or the brains.”

“I’ve been thinking about it.” He coasted the car up to a
stoplight and waited until it turned green. “It’s possible he could
be hacking the codes from the computer, mailing them to the em-
bassy, then waiting for us to pay him to copy the files. Maybe he’s
slicker than anyone suspected. Maybe being a schlep is his idea of
secondary cover.”

“Seriously, I thought of that some time back. But I can’t find a
shred of evidence. And this stuff you’re getting—I thought you
said it was good.”

“Excellent.”

“So X knows quality. It’s not Franklin or any other
computer clerk. It’s somebody so high they know what you need.”

Albright acknowledged this logic. In the world of espionage,
need determines value. He spotted a Burger King and turned in.
With the engine off, he leaned back in bis seat and adjusted his
testicles to a more comfortable position. “You’re stringing me
along, Luis,”

Camacho already had his door open, but he pulled it closed.
“Say that again.”

“I think you’re a lot closer to than you’re telling
me. You may even know who he is. That leads me to some interest-
ing speculations.”

Camacho had been expecting this, but now that it was here he
still didn’t know how to play it “So I’m a double agent. Is that it?”

Harlan Albright raised an eyebrow, then looked away.

“Start the fucking car. Take me to the office. I don’t have time to
sit around and shoot the shit with you over a greaseburger.”

Albright turned the key- The engine caught. Two blocks later he
said, “You going to deny it?”

“Why bother? You have never given me a list of the stuff you got
from X. Now today you give me this crap about Frank-
lin being X and I’m supposed to go charging off like
Inspector Clouseau. Why don’t you go back to Moscow and tell
Gorby you screwed the pooch? Mail me a postcard when you get
to Siberia. I hear it’s lovely in the snow.”

“I don’t know the file names. Even if I did, I don’t have the
authority to give them to you.”

“Go tell it to somebody who gives a shit. I don’t.”

“What about Smoke Judy?”

“What about him?”

“What’s he up to?”

“He’s trying to peddle inside knowledge of defense contracts. So
far without much success, as far as I can tell. Apparently he
doesn’t think money is vulgar.”

“Are the fraud people onto him? IG or NIS?” IG was the In-
spector General. NIS meant Naval Investigative Service.

“If somebody’s opened a file on him, I don’t know about it.”

“Don’t turn him over to them-”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m asking you not to.”

“Well, kiss my ass. You’re taking a big chance, asking a double
agent for a favor. Stop up here at the corner.” They were going
west on Constitution Avenue. “This is close enough. I need some
air.”

Albright pulled over to the curb and braked to a stop. “Don’t
turn him over.”

“Up yours.”

“I was just trying to motivate you. You know I don’t doubt your
loyalty.”

“If I was a double agent we would have pulled in Terry Franklin
a long time ago and squeezed him for the name of every file that
you don’t want me to know. He’d sing like a canary.”

“I know,” Albright replied as Camacho opened the car door and
stepped out.

“You don’t know shit. You don’t know how many anonymous
fraud waste and abuse hot lines there are over at the Pentagon.
The damn numbers are posted everywhere. Don’t like your boss?
Nail him to the cross on your coffee break. Busybodies and prissy
fat ladies are burning up the wires. Somebody could drop a dime
on Judy any minute. Then I’ll be your falll guy, the double agent”

“Find X.”

“That mechanic screws me, I’ll break your nose.” Luis Camacho
shut the door firmly and walked away.

As he trudged through the tourists and secretaries on lunch
break he tried to decide if he had handled it well or poorly. The lies
were plausible, he concluded, but he was suspect. Peter Aleksan-
drovich was nobody’s fool. And “schlep”—what an interesting
word for a commie to use. Underestimating this man could be
fatal.

The new Amy Carol Grafton frowned at the peas on her plate. She
glowered at the carrots. She carved herself a tiny chunk of meat
loaf and put it in her mouth, where she held it without chewing as
sne stared at the offending vegetables.

“What’s the matter, Amy?” Callie asked.

Amy Carol sat erect in her chair and tossed her black pageboy
hair. “I don’t like vegetables.”

‘They’re good for you. You need to eat some of them.” Amy’s
brand-new mom was the soul of reason. Jake Grafton took another
sip of coffee and the last bite of his meat loaf.

“I don’t like green food.”

“Then eat your carrots, dear.” Callie smiled distractedly. If the
child didn’t eat her peas, what would be her vitamin count for
vegetables today? Callie had spent the past week researching diets
for diabetics. Right now she was swamped with strange facts.

“I don’t like orange stuff either.”

“Amy,” said the new father with a glint in his eye, “I don’t care
what you like or don’t like. Your mom put this stuff on the table, so
you’re going to eat it. Now start.”

“She isn’t my mom. And you’re not my dad. My parents are
dead. You’re Callie and Jake. And I don’t like you, Jake, not one
little bit.”

“Fine. But you’re going to sit there until you finish those vegeta-
bles and I say you can get up.”

“Why?” Her lower lip began to quiver and her brows knitted.
Callie thought Amy looked so cute and helpless when she clouded
up. Jake thought Callie had a lot to learn.

“Because I said so.” Jake picked up the newspaper, opened it
ostentatiously and hid behind it

Callie got up and went to the sink, rinsing dishes. Jake reached
around the paper every so often for a sip of coffee. Their second
meal with their new daughter. Another disaster.

The youngster was trying to establish who’s in charge, Jake told
his wife. He thought Callie was making the same mistake Neville
Chamberlain did. He used precisely those words to the new mother
last night, after the first, opening-day debacle at the dinner table,
when the youngster was finally in bed, and had been told in no
uncertain terms that he was a lout.

“Lout or not, I am wearing the trousers,” he said with his right
trigger finger pointed straight up, “and we are going to establish
very early that I have the last say on junior-senior relations around
here. Somebody has to be in charge and it’s not going to be an
eleven-year-old.”

“Just because you wear trousers, huh?”

“No. Because when I was growing up my father was the head of
his family, and I intend to be the head of mine. It’s a tried and true
system with ancient tradition to commend it. We’re going to stick
with it.”‘

“You can’t issue orders around here. Captain Grafton. Amy and
I don’t wear uniforms.” She raised a finger, mimicking his gesture.

This evening was also off to a rocky start.

Jake put down his newspaper and examined the vegetable situa-
tion. The child apparently hadn’t touched a pea or a carrot She
was staring fixedly at her plate with a sullen, defiant look.

“How was school today?” Jake asked.

No answer.

“I asked you a question, Amy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me about your teachers.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Their names, what subjects they teach, what they look like,
whether you like them. That kind of stuff.”

“Wellll,” Amy said, her gaze flicking across Jake’s face, “some
of them are nice and some aren’t” And away she went on a five-
minute exposition that covered the school day from opening to
closing bell. Jake tossed in an occasional question when she paused
for air.

When she had exhausted the teacher subject, Jake asked, “What
subjects do you think you’re going to like best?”

Away she went again, debating the merits of math versus En-
glish, social studies versus science. This-time when she ran down,
Jake asked if she had any homework.

“Some math problems.”

“Need any help with them?”

“The division ones,” she said tentatively.

“Eat some of those peas and carrots and we’ll clear the table and
work on the problems.”

“How many do I have to eat?”

‘Two spoonfuls of each.”

She made a face and did as she was bid. As he carried the dishes
to the sink, Jake asked, “Just what vegetables do you like?”