The Minotaur (52 page)

Jake tossed it.

The pistol landed on the couch. Camacho groped for it while
Yakov struggled for the stairs.

Yakov jerked as the first shot hit him. He tried again to crawl.
Taking his time, Camacho shot him four more times. A red stain
spread across the back of Yakov’s shirt and he lay still.

Camacho dropped the pistol and sagged down onto the couch.

“Albright! Albright, can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“Give—me—the—names.” Camacho dragged himself along the
couch so he could see the Russian’s face-

“I—” Albright’s lips were moving but no sound came out. Then
he ceased to move at all.

Camacho’s head went down to rest on the couch-

“Who is X?” Jake demanded. With a heave he got
the chair over to the couch and shook Camacho. ‘Tell me! Who is
?”

“You don’t want— No! It’s not what you—he’s not . . .”

Camacho went limp. Jake turned his head so he could see his
face. His eyes were open, staring fixedly at nothing.

Jake sagged down beside the bloody couch. He heard the sound
of running feet upstairs.

30

The sky was crystal-clear, a
pleasant change from the late-summer haze. From this infinite sky
a bright sun shone down on a day not hot and not yet cold, a
perfect late-September Sunday. The trees along the roads where
Jake Grafton drove had just begun to lose their green and don their
autumn colors. Their leaves shimmered and glistened in the bril-
liant sun.

Most of the radio stations were broadcasting music, but it was
public-service time on the others. He listened a few moments to
two women discussing the nuances of breast-feeding, then twirled
the selector knob. The next station had a preacher asking for dona-
tions for his radio ministry. Send the money to a P.O. box in
Arkansas. He left the dial there. The fulminations filled the car and
drifted out the open window. Samuel Dodgers would have hked
this guy: hellfire for sinners, damnation for the tempters.

Toad Tarkington was leaning against the side of his car at the
Denny’s restaurant when Jake pulled into the lot.

“Been waiting long?”

“Five minutes.” Toad walked around the front of Jake’s car and
climbed in. In spite of the sun and seventy-five-degree temperature,
he was wearing a windbreaker.

“How’s Rita?”

“Doing okay.”

Jake got the car in motion.

“Where’re we going?”

“I told you on the phone. To see X.”

“Yessir. But where is that?”

“You’ll see.”

Toad lapsed into silence. He sat with his hands in his lap and
stared straight ahead at the road. On the radio the preacher ex-
pounded on how Bible prophecy had predicted the popularity of
rock music.

Passing through Middleburg Toad said, “I think we ought to kill
him.”

Jake held out his right hand, palm up. Toad just looked at it.

“Let me have it.”

“What?”

“Your gun. The one you have under that jacket.”

Toad reached under the left side of his jacket and extracted a
pistol from his belt, which he laid in the captain’s hand. It was
a navy-issue nine-millimeter automatic, well oiled but worn. Jake
pushed the button and the clip fell out in his hand. This he pock-
eted. Holding the gun with his right hand, he worked the slide with
his left. A shiny cartridge flipped out and went over his shoulder
into the backseat. The gun he slipped under the driver’s seat.

“Who is he?”

“You’ll see.”

“Why are we going if we aren’t going to kill him?”

“You’ve been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies. And
you ask too many questions.”

“So why did you call me?”

“I didn’t want to go alone. I wanted a witness. The witness had
to be someone who is basically incorruptible, someone beyond his
reach.”

“I’m not beyond anyone’s reach.”

“Oh, I think you are, Tarkington. Not physical reach. I’m talk-
ing about moral reach. None of his weapons will get to you.”

“You make me sound retarded- How do you know this guy we’re
going to see is ?”

“I wrote him three letters. Notes. Then this morning I called
him and said I was dropping by to chat.”

“Just friendly as fucking shit.” Toad thought about it Jake
waited for him to ask how Jake learned ’s identity,
but the lieutenant had other things on his mind. “If it weren’t for
this turd, Camacho would have arrested Judy months ago and Rita
wouldn’t have got whacked up. Camacho would still be alive.” He
reached for the radio and snapped it off. “Goddamnit, Captain,
this man is guilty.”

“You don’t know anything, Toad. You don’t know who, you
don’t know why. Since Rita did get hurt, since that little mess in
Camacho’s basement, I thought you had a right to know. That’s
why I called you. So you’re going to find out this afternoon.”

“Do you know?”

“Why, you mean?”

Toad nodded.

Jake thought about it. “I’ve made some guesses. But they’re only
that. Guesses are three for a quarter. Facts I don’t have. Camacho,
though, he knew.”

“And he’s dead.”

“Yes.” Jake turned the radio back on.

“Are we going to turn him in, call the cops?”

“You ask too many questions.”

In a moment Toad said, “Why do you listen to this crap?” He
gestured toward the radio.

“It’s refreshing to hear a man who knows precisely where he
stands. Even if I don’t share his perch.”

The leaves of the trees alongside the road had the deep green
hues of late summer. Cattle and horses grazing, an occasional fe-
male rider on a groomed horse in the manicured meadows,
glimpses of huge two- or three-story mansions set back well away
from the public road at the end of long drives; this countryside was
fat. The contrast between this rich and verdant world of moneyed
indolence and the baked, potholed streets of Washington jarred
Jake Grafton. He could feel his confidence in his assessment of the
situation ebbing away as the car took them farther and farther
from the Pentagon and the navy.

Five miles north of Middleburg he began to watch the left side of
the road. He found the tree and mailbox he had heard about. The
box merely had a number, no name. He turned into the hard-
packed gravel drive and drove along it. Huge old trees lined the
north side of the road, a row that ended in a small grove around a
large brick house almost covered with ivy.

Jake Grafton parked right in front.

“Ring the bell,” he muttered at Toad, who gave several tugs on a
pull. The sound of chimes or something was just audible through
the door.

Tarkington’s eyes darted around.

The door opened.

“Did you get lost?” Royce Caplinger asked, and stood aside to
let the two men enter.

“Little longer drive than I figured, Mr. Secretary.”

Toad gaped.

“Close your mouth, son. People’ll think you’re a politician,”
Caplinger muttered and led the way down the hall. They passed
through a dining room furnished with massive antique tables and
chairs and accented with pewter tankards and plates, and on
through a kitchen with brick walls and a huge fireplace with an
iron kettle hanging in it. A refrigerator, sink, and conventional
stove sat against the far wall, on the other side of a work island.

“Nice place you have here,” Jake Grafton said.

“Rustic as hell. I like it. Makes me feel like Thomas Jefferson,”

“He’s real dead,” Toad said.

“Yeah. Sometimes I feel that way too, out here without the traf-
fic and airplane noise and five million people all scurrying . . .”
They were in the study now, a corner room with high windows and
ceilings. The walls were covered with books. Newspapers scattered
on the carpet, some kind of a red-and-blue Oriental thing.

Caplinger waved his hand toward chairs and sank into a large
stuffed chair with visibly cracked leather.

He stared at them. Toad avoided his gaze and looked at the
books and the bric-a-brac tucked between them. By Toad’s chair
was a pipe stand. In it was a corncob pipe, blackened from many
fires.

“I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be you. Captain,” Caplin-
ger said. “Didn’t recognize your voice on the phone this morning.”

Jake Grafton rubbed his face with his hands and crossed his legs.

“We were just driving through the neighborhood, Royce,” Toad
said, “and thought we’d drop by and ask why you turned traitor
and gave all those secrets to the Russians. Why did you?”

Jake caught Toad’s eye. He moved his head ever-so-slightly from
side to side.

Jake addressed Caplinger. “Mr. Secretary, we have a problem.
We know you’re X and we have some ideas, probably
erroneous, about the events of the last few months. Four or five
people have died violently. Mr. Tarkington’s wife, Rita Moravia, is
a navy test pilot who was seriously injured, almost killed, because
various law enforcement agencies failed to properly investigate and
make arrests on information they had had for some time. To make
a long story short, we came here to ask if you would like to discuss
this matter with us before we go to the authorities and the press.
Do you?”

“Are you going to the press?”

“That depends.”

“You notice I didn’t ask about the authorities. That doesn’t
worry me, but for reasons—welll”

Caplinger slapped his knees and stood suddenly. Toad started.
“Relax, son. I only eat lieutenants at the office. Come on, let’s
make some coffee.” He led the way into the kitchen.

He filled a pot with water. The pot went on the stove, after he lit
the gas jet with a match. He put a paper filter in a drip pot and
ladled three spoonfuls of coffee in. “You two are entitled to an
explanation. Not legally, but morally. I’m sorry about your wife,
Lieutenant. So was Luis Camacho. We had too much at stake to
move prematurely.” He shrugged. “Life is complicated,”

Caplinger pulled a stool from under the counter and perched on
it.

“Three years ago, no, four, a KGB colonel defected to the
United States. It wasn’t in the papers, so I won’t tell you his name.
He thought he was brimming with useful information that we
would be delighted to have in return for a ton of money and a new
life in the West. The money he got and the new identity he got. But
the information wasn’t worth much. He did, however, have one
piece of information that he didn’t think much of but we found
most interesting.”

Caplinger checked the water on the stove.

“It seems that one day about three years before he defected he
paid a visit to the Aquarium, the Moscow headquarters of the
GRU, which is Soviet military intelligence. His errand doesn’t re-
ally matter. During his two or three hours there he was taken into
the office of a general who was not expecting company. On the
desk was a sheet of paper with four names. The colonel read the
names upside down before the general covered the paper with a
handy file.”

The water began to rumble. Caplinger checked the pot as he
continued. “Under hypnosis the defector could remember three of
the four names. We recognized one of them. V. Y. Tsybov.”

The coffeepot began to whistle. As he reached for it Caplinger
said, “Vladimir Yakovich Tsybov was the real name of Luis Cama-
cho.”

He poured the hot water into the drip cone and watched the
black fluid run out the bottom. “Luis Camacho was a Soviet mole,
a deep illegal sent to this country when he was twenty years old,
He was half Russian and half Armenian, and with his olive skin
and facial characteristics, he seemed a natural to play the rote of a
Mexican-American. He knew just a smattering of Spanish, but
what the hey. His forefathers, so said his bio, had been in this
country since Texas became a state.

“Tsybov, now Camacho, attended a university in Texas and
graduated with honors. He obtained a law degree at night while he
worked days. The FBI recruited him.

“It’s funny”—Caplinger shook his head—“that J. Edgar Hoo-
ver’s lily-white FBI needed a smart Mexican-American. But at the
time Hoover was casting suspicious eyes on the farm-labor move-
ment in California, which was just being organized, and needed
some Chicanes to use as undercover agents. So Luis Camacbo was
investigated and approved and recruited.”

Caplinger laughed. “Hoover, the paranoid anti-communist, re-
cruited a deep Soviet plant! Oh, they tried to check Camacho’s
past, and the reports to Washington certainly looked thorough. But
the agents in the field—all good, white Anglo Protestants with
dark suits and short haircuts—couldn’t get much cooperation from
the Chicano population of Dallas and San Antonio. So rather than
admit failure to the Great One, they sort of filled in the gaps and
sent the usual reports to Washington. And the FBI got themselves
a new agent.

“How do you like your coffee?”

Royce Caplinger got milk from the refrigerator and let Toad add
some to his coffee. They carried their cups back to the study.

“Where was I?”

“Camacho was a deep plant.”

“Yes. Anyway, being smart and competent, he rose as far as the
racial politics of the FBI would allow, which really wasn’t very far.
Still, amazingly enough, Luis Camacho liked America. But that is
another story.” Caplinger set his coffee beside him. “Maybe I
should fill it in, though. Luis was a very special human being.
Luis—“

“There were three other names on the list,” Toad said irritably.
His whole manner told what he thought of Caplinger’s tale.

“Ah yes,” Caplinger said, looking at the lieutenant thoughtfully.
“Three more names, two of which the defector could remember,
one which he could not. The problem was we didn’t know who any
of the other three were. Tsybov was Camacho, whom the Soviets
thought was still a plant under deep cover, a sleeper, available for
use if the need arose. They didn’t know that Camacho had revealed
himself to us voluntarily almost ten years before.”

Caplinger looked from face to face. “You see the problem. The
Soviets had three more agents in America planted deep. And we
didn’t know who they were!

“Naturally the intelligence coordinating committee took this
matter up. What could be done?”

“So you became X.” Jake Grafton made it a state-
ment, not a question.

“We needed bait, good bait. We wanted those three deep agents.
Or two or one. Whatever we could get. Someone had to become
X, so the President chose me.”

“The President?” Toad said, incredulously.

“Of course. Who better to choose what military secrets the Sovi-
ets would find interesting? Who better to reveal the aces?” Caplin-
ger sipped his coffee.

“So you . . .” Jake began. “You wrote the letters and mailed
them?”

“Yes. The National Security Agency gave me the computer
codes I needed and helped with the encryptions. But I had to sit
down and write each letter- The human touch, you see. Each letter
would reveal something of the man who wrote it, so they all had to
be written by one man.

“Much to our dismay, the instrument the Soviets chose to ex-
ploit the gifts of was a traitor-for-hire who had al-
ready approached their embassy a year or so before. Terry Frank-
lin. What Terry Franklin didn’t know was that the National
Security Agency has special programs that reveal when each se-
lected classified document is accessed. He wrote a trapdoor pro-
gram that got him by the first security layer, but there was another
that he didn’t know about. So we were immediately on to him.
And immediately faced with a dilemma.”

“If you arrested him too soon, the Soviets might just ignore the
Minotaur.”

“Precisely, Captain. For this to work, the information had to be
very good stuff, the best. And we had to give them enough so that
they would become addicted to it. Then, and only then, would they
feel the potential profit was enough to risk deep plants that had
been in place for twenty to thirty years.” The secretary looked
from face to face. “Don’t you see? These sleepers were assets! They
belonged to someone in the GRU who had built his career on the
fact that he had these assets, which would someday, at the right
moment, be of incalculable value. Our task was to convince him or
his superiors that now was that moment.”

“So you let franklin do his thing.”

“Precisely. And we gave them excellent information. We let
them see the best stuff that we had. We got them addicted, and
curious. So one day Franklin’s control approached Camacho,
Tsybov.” He lifted a finger skyward for dramatic effect. “That was
a very important event. The Soviets had gone to one of the names on
the list. Now we knew we were on the right track. We were heart-
ened.”

Caplinger rose quickly from his chair and began to pace. He
explained that Harlan Albright, the control, was a GRU colonel.
He made contact with Camacho, moved into the house beside him,
insisted on biweekly briefings. “What the Soviets wanted, of
course, was the identity of X. So the game began for
Luis Camacho. We didn’t authorize him to reveal X’s
identity. But he knew. He had to know. He knew from the first. He
was the man who was actually going to uncover the sleepers.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking it over yet again. “Once
Camacho was in the game, he became the key player. It was inevi-
table. He had to appear to be a double agent and yet he had to
force the Soviets to act. To act as we wanted them to. He was
playing a dangerous role. And to appreciate how good he was at it,
you would have to have known Luis Camacho very, very well. I
didn’t, but I got the flavor of the man. In his own way, in his own
field, he was a master.”

Caplinger stopped at the window and looked out at the meadows
and distant blue mountains, which were a thin line on the western
horizon. “Inevitably, and I do not use that word lightly, people
were going to get hurt. Smoke Judy was an information peddler.
He killed Harold Strong—your predecessor. Captain—when
Strong found out about his activities. Camacho learned his iden-
tity, but we thought he might be of use later, so the committee
ordered him left alone. Certainly no one could foresee that an
indirect result of that decision would be the loss of the TRX proto-
type and your wife’s injuries, Lieutenant, but . . . there were rea-
sons that looked good at the time why it was handled the way it
was.” He finished lamely and turned to face Tarkington. “I am
sorry.”

Tarkington was examining his running shoes. He retied one of
the laces.

“Anyway, there were several other deaths. A woman was killed
who witnessed a drop set up by the Soviets to give Terry Franklin
information, a Mrs. Matilda Jackson. Harlan Albright killed her,
after we ordered Camacho to reveal her identity to Albright as
proof of his bona fides, his commitment. Camacho refused at first,
but we convinced him. This was the way it had to be. Better to
sacrifice one to save the many.” The secretary went back to his
chair and sat heavily. He shook his head slowly- “Too often,” he
said softly, “we must assume some of God’s burden. It is not
light”

“Too bad,” said Toad Tarkington, now staring at the secretary,
“that after you gave an innocent civilian the chop, this whole thing
fizzled.”

“Did it?” Caplinger’s voice assumed an edge, a hard flinty edge.
“Did it now?”

When Toad didn’t respond, Caplinger went on, his voice back to
normal. “So after three years and some damn tragic risks, the stage
was set. After a few carefully chosen facts were fed to Albright, he
killed Terry Franklin. That was a masterpiece of cunning, well set
up by Camacho. Of course Luis didn’t like it, not he, but he played
his part to perfection. Albright personally eliminated the Soviets’
only access to the Pentagon computer. He had to find another.
Because now X offered the richest gift of all: Athena.”

“Smoke Judy,” said Jake Grafton, unable to keep silent.

“Yes. Smoke Judy, a bitter little man who had killed once and
found how easy it is. Of course, that was the crisis. When Judy
failed, as fail he surely would with Luis Camacho watching him,
Albright would have no other choice. He would have to go to
another deep plant on the list! And he would make this inevitable
choice of his own free will, unpressured by anyone. That was our
thinking, at least. Didn’t work out that way- Camacho thought
Albright was onto him and made a decision on his own to warn
Vice Admiral Henry about the risk to Athena.” He gestured to the
heavens. “It was all downhill from there. Henry took it upon him-
self to apprehend Judy. You know how that turned out. The jig was
up. Camacho had no choice. He sent men to arrest Albright.”

“You were willing to give away Athena?” Jake’s horror was in
his voice-

“We on the committee were willing to take the risk Albright
would get it, which isn’t precisely the same thing, Captain. By now
X’s credentials were impeccable. We thought that
surely, for this exquisite technical jewel, the Soviets would brush
the dirt off one or two deep agents.”

“But they didn’t?”

“No. Perhaps Albright was suspicious. Probably was. Camacho
knew that Albright saw the whole operation too clearly, so he
revealed X’s actual identity to save the game. It wasn’t
enough. With Judy and Albright in hiding, X wrote
one more letter, giving the access codes for the new Athena file.
Then we waited for the Soviets to activate one of the sleepers. They
didn’t. What happened next was Albnght kidnapped you, swiped
all the Athena information he could readily lay hands on, then
went to Camacho’s house to kill him. Camacho had been expecting
Albright to try something, but we didn’t know exactly what it
would be. When Luis Camacho came down those stairs and saw
you there that afternoon—then he knew. The Soviets weren’t going
to invest any more major assets in this operation. His sole hope of
getting the sleepers’ names was Harlan Albright, who might
know.”

Jake said, “I wondered why the Athena file was suddenly re-
named, all the access codes changed.”

“Henry shouldn’t have done that. Camacho shouldn’t have
warned him. But Camacho was worried he didn’t have all the
possible holes covered and he knew Athena’s real value. Still, it
would have worked if Henry hadn’t interfered.” Caplinger
sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

“We had to let the Russians work at it. If they succeeded too
easily, they would have smelled the setup. No, our mistake was
giving them the real Minotaur. Perhaps they found his identity too
troublesome once they knew.”

Caplinger shrugged. “After Judy failed, we wanted Albright
badly. Our thinking then was that perhaps we could get the names
from him, willingly or with hypnosis and drugs. We thought the
odds about three to one that he knew the names then. If the GRU
was even contemplating using a sleeper, the controller had to be
briefed in advance, before the possibility became the necessity. Yet
Albright evaded the clowns sent to pick him up. The agents
thought they were going to arrest a mail-fraud suspect.” Caplinger
spread his hands, a gesture of frustration. “So we waited, hoping
against hope a sleeping mole would awaken. It didn’t happen.”

“So you failed,” Toad said.

“Oh no, Mr. Tarkington. X succeeded beyond our
wildest dreams. Not exactly in the way we expected, of course, but
the benefits are real and tangible. This operation was one of the
most successful covert intelligence operations ever undertaken by
any nation. Ever.”

“Please explain, sir.”

“I see the disbelief written all over your face. Captain.”

“My impression is that you people gave away the ranch, sir. Just
how many top secret programs did you compromise?”

“We showed them the crown jewels, Captain. We had to. They
would never have taken the bait otherwise. The three buried moles
are very valuable.”

“Pooh.” Tarkington shook his head. “I’m not buying it. Those
three agents may have turned, exactly like Camacho. If the Soviets
ever try to use them, those guys may run straight to the FBI. The
Russians may not even know where they are now.”

“You are a very young man. Lieutenant.” Caplinger was scath-
ing. “You have a lot to learn. The deep plants are valuable to the
Soviets as chips in the Cold War poker games, at home and abroad.
They are valuable in exactly the same way that thermonuclear
weapons are valuable, ICBMs, boomer submarines—I could go on.
Those three buried agents are hole cards, Lieutenant. They may
even be dead. Yet we can never afford to ignore them. Do you begin
to understand?”

“Yessir.” Toad looked miserable. “But—“

“There are layers and layers and layers.”

“But listen,” Toad objected reasonably- “We didn’t even know
these men existed until four years ago. What if they don’t?”

“Aha! The light becomes a glow!”

Caplinger leaped from his chair, galvanized. “Perhaps they don’t
exist! Perhaps the defection of a mid-level KGB officer was a ploy,
and the list was bait to make us think they had three agents. They
write the list, they leave it where a man of dubious professional
accomplishments, a man of dubious loyalty and dubious value, will
see it. Very convenient, you must admit! And in the fullness of time
he is given an opportunity to defect, which he, no fool, takes as the
best of a poor range of options.”