Foxcatcher

by William H Hallahan

  Brewer nodded.

  “When did you get out?”

  “Couple of weeks ago.”

  Elander snorted. “Weeks. I’m in for life.” He banged a fist on the arm of the wheelchair.

  Brewer sat down and waited.

  “What the hell,” Elander said. “What’s the part you’re looking for?”

  “Number 2XJT557.”

  “Isn’t that interesting? The notorious 2XJT557. Of all the parts you can name you pick that one. Somehow I knew it. It was like printed on your forehead when you walked through the door: 2XJT557.” He sat back and studied Brewer’s face. “You know, I haven’t asked you what business you’re in. And I’m afraid I know.”

  He turned his wheelchair to face Brewer. “Well, I’m sorry for your trouble, Charlie. And I’m sorry about 2XJT557. You’re not going to find it anywhere.”

  Brewer looked around the room at the piles of directories, the file cabinets, the spare wheelchair in a closet, and through an open door, an unmade bed. Welcome to Myron Elander’s world: a two-bedroom apartment, a three-line telephone service to everywhere on earth, the ghost of a sister, the ghost of a friendship.

  Myron Elander, finder of lost military parts; he had remembered the anniversary date. Brewer hadn’t—on that date, he was getting out of prison. Sometimes now, he had difficulty remembering what she looked like.

  Brewer said, “If I can’t have that part, then I’ll take surplus radar units I can cannibalize.”

  “No, you won’t. There aren’t any.”

  “I see.”

  “And I see too, Charlie. You working for the Iranians?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Never kid a kidder, Charlie. The Iranians are the only people looking for that part.”

  “Great.”

  “It’s a tip-off. You say 2XJT557. And anyone in the business will say Iran. Just like that. You want me to tell you why you won’t find old 2XJT557?”

  “In for a penny—go ahead.”

  “After the Shah got chased out, Washington decided to do a number on Iran’s surveillance equipment. So some smart guy in Defense got a great idea one day. Just change the design of one microchip—put in a different one and stop making the original, and voilà! Iran is stuck with obsolete radar units with no replacement chip. And Iran’s the only country we ever sold that unit to. About six months ago Iran was running around trying to buy up used units. But there aren’t any. And that’s why Charlie Brewer is shit out of luck today.”

  Brewer stood. “It’s that simple.”

  “It’s that simple. Please. You’ll let me give you a word of advice. If you’re working for the Iranians, you’re going to end up in the river. And if they don’t ace you, Washington will. You’re in the middle and you’ll lose. Robbing banks is safer.”

  “Okay.” Brewer had walked to the door when Elander called to him.

  “Hey, Charlie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Once we were good friends.”

  Well. That was the end of that. It was over. Without that part, the other matériel was worthless. Brewer felt a grim pleasure in picturing the expression that would be on Attashah’s face when he told him the news.

  Brewer felt a sense of release. He could be a good boy again. But there was also a feeling of defeat. He didn’t like being beaten, didn’t like being a loser. He didn’t like failure—even failure at treason.

  There was another reason to drop the whole thing. Elander had said that only the Iranians would be shopping for 2XJT557. That meant Washington would already have been alerted. Agents would be on his trail in very short order now.

  The sunlight was a great glow of clarity in clear air over Manhattan—a gorgeous late-autumn day when people stepped along the streets with a certain swing. A bad day to remember his wedding day and the wedding that never took place.

  He walked uptown. He’d have to tell Dice it was all over and pay him off.

  He found himself walking over toward the West Side to the library of the American Microminiature Engineering Society again. He’d had a thought.

  The maker of the chip #2XJT557 was an outfit in California called Straek Inc. In the library Brewer pulled down the Corporate Red Book and found the summary on Straek: the address, the corporate officers, annual sales, regional offices, credit ratings, memberships in various societies, stock issued, quantity, stock exchange abbreviation, then a list of products and trade names. Among items made for the Defense Department, the navy, the air force, and the army were computerized fire-control units, rocket-launching computers, army tank-control units, radar black boxes—a list of more than thirty items.

  Below that was a shorter list issued by its consumer products division. A radar detector for passenger cars to avoid police speed traps, and a personal computer designed for schoolroom training. The latter was listed as discontinued.

  A brief corporate history told him that Straek had started eight years before on a shoestring, with a single military contract for a radar unit. The second unit they made was the classroom computer.

  Brewer sat gazing at the list, making a bet with himself about human behavior. He went into the catalogue library room and got out Straek’s various catalogue’s and product bulletins.

  In the product bulletin folder, he found Straek’s announcement to its military customers of the declassification and discontinuance of #2XJT557 with a highly magnified diagram of its construction. And a list of classified codes that had been lifted.

  He turned to the consumer products literature. First he studied the sales brochure for the passenger-car radar detection unit. Then the maintenance and repair bulletin. He studied the schematic for wiring. Nothing.

  Then he leafed through the sales literature for the personal computer and discovered why it had been discontinued. Almost every personal computer on the market had standardized on MS DOS. Straek’s CPM model was incompatible with any other maker’s MS DOS equipment and software. Patiently he read through the product bulletins, price sheets, maintenance advisories to distributors, modifications in circuitry and design. About two months before the computer was discontinued, a bulletin was issued alerting repair people that the replacement microchip was no longer to be available. There was a diagram.

  Brewer sat back in his chair for a long time, afraid to verify what he had discovered. He turned and looked around the room. Then he carefully knocked a knuckle on the wood of his chair and compared the diagram for the classroom computer chip with the diagram for #2XJT557.

  There was no doubt. Straek knew a good microchip design when it made one: #2XJT557, the restricted military microchip, had led a secret and illegal life as the core of the now discontinued Straek CPM personal computer.

  Straek’s vice-president in charge of marketing was named Rollins and he had the ringing voice of an extrovert.

  “Last computer in that model was made two years ago,” he told Brewer. “We’ve gone to all our original customers and offered them our new MS DOS computers as replacements for the old CPMs. It’s a more powerful unit, more versatile. And it’s compatible with all the major p.c.’s. We gave them a terrific deal because we wanted to hold on to our market segment.”

  “The CPM was a terrific unit,” Brewer said.

  “Tell me about it!” Rollins roared with laughter. “If it had been compatible for modem use, we’d be eating gravy potatoes every night.”

  “What did you do with the trade-in units?”

  “Junked them,” Rollins said. “The crusher got them all.”

  “I got some customers who want theirs repaired and I can’t find parts for them.”

  “Well, that’s a tough one, sir. Offhand, I don’t know of any of them that are still around except for a few like your customer’s. Did you try running classifieds in the computer magazines? Bound to turn up five or six from the hackers, enough to cannibalize anyway.”

  Classified ads in computer magazines. That could take months and the odds against turning up
a quantity of the Straek unit were too great to bother with.

  Another faint spark of hope had burned out.

  About ten minutes later, Brewer’s phone rang. It was Rollins. “I was looking through our records. We just sold a hundred and fifteen of our new computers to the Meadowbrook School District in New Jersey. They traded in a hundred and twenty old CPMs. So far as I know, those units were supposed to be picked up and destroyed last week but I don’t have any confirmation of it yet. Of course it could be in the mail but it’s worth a shot.”

  Two hours later Brewer and Dice were in New Jersey. The secretary to the president of the Board of Education led them down the hallway, talking.

  “They were supposed to take them away last Tuesday and I’m sure they did. We put them in the east-wing gym and there’s to be a game there tomorrow night—a real grudge fight between our girls’ basketball and Morristown’s. Now let’s see.” She was sorting through a ring of keys. “Oh, don’t tell me I don’t have the key. Is this—? Yes. Let’s try it. There.”

  The door to the east-wing gymnasium swung open. There in the fading daylight, the gym floor was bare.

  “I guess we’re too late. But here’s the custodian. Mark! Did you move those old computers?”

  “Yep. Every last one of them.” The custodian pushed a bank of switches and the gym was filled with light. “Up there.”

  One hundred and twenty old Straek classroom computers sat on the benches of the gymnasium, lined up like a cheering section.

  There will be joy in Tehran tonight, Brewer thought.

  11

  Borden stuck his head into McCall’s office. “Someone is trying to buy #2XJT557.”

  McCall rose slowly from his chair. “At last. We’ve got some action. Okay. Lay it on me. Who did that Iranian monster finally hire?”

  “We don’t know. Whoever he is, he called every surplus dealer in the country, looking for that chip. I’ve detailed four grunts to talk to the dealers. Maybe one of them recognized the guy’s voice.”

  “Don’t hang your hat on it,” McCall said.

  “Like you said. Finally got some action.”

  “Okay, Borden,” McCall said, “drop whatever you’re doing and get on this full time. And don’t stop until you find Attashah and the guy he signed up. Get over to Commerce and talk to the Export Control people. Find out if there’s been any movement in any of those parts of the Iranian list. Check for End User’s Certificates, Applications for Exemptions, Export Licenses, anything. And keep in touch with the dealers. Spread some money around. I don’t care how many men it takes. You find that guy, Borden. Find him.”

  Borden had hurried away before McCall had finished.

  “Find him!” he shouted after Borden.

  Then he socked a fist into his palm. Someone was nibbling on the edges of his trap. And whoever it was, he would soon be looking for another part: ANAC/23419.PRN. When that happened, the trap would snap. McCall would have his man.

  ANAC/23419.PRN. An acronym for cheese.

  Brewer pursued the contraband merchandise avidly, and by his side Dice worked without cease or complaint. The acquisition of parts for Iran proceeded.

  Early in November the city had a premature snowfall. Brewer sat at his hotel window, reading part numbers over the phone to a used-computer dealer in Denver. Down on the crowded sidewalks large wet flakes fell on bobbing umbrellas. In the midst of the shuffling throng he saw Dice walking toward the hotel. He was carrying a parts directory triumphantly.

  Dice walked with that odd duckfooted stride of his, coat open, coattails swinging, unaware of or indifferent to the snow, with that silly expression on his face, half clown and half wolf, bearing the heavy volume that he had happily stolen from some library or parts dealer somewhere for Brewer.

  Brewer read off the part numbers mechanically over the phone to the computer dealer as he watched Dice in the snow and thought: If you’ll steal for me, you’ll steal from me.

  It was the interconnecting cables and wire harnesses that took the longest: In most cases Brewer and Dice had to purchase civilian cables and modify them. They bought precision hand-crimping tools intended for breadboard designers and then used them to attach a whole range of circuit connectors—bayonet, sliv, kaplex. Some parts had direct civilian equivalents—a marine radio booster pack (quantity 36) came from a ship’s chandler in Providence by UPS. Others were made equivalent by changing the cable couplings or the mounting frames. No part was larger than a shoe box.

  Dice was brilliant. Gadgetry, as he called it, was his game; he flew to Cleveland to find the right RAX; then to Boston for the precision grommet tool; to Washington for shielded, nonmagnetic XBR leads. He worked out the circuitry patterns for cable modification, located the right terminals and connectors, and found a box of brand new BQS harnesses in a surplus dealer’s warehouse across the river in Hohokus.

  Dice named the whole operation The Great Easter Egg Hunt. And not once did he ask Brewer where the parts were being stored or where they were going to be shipped.

  And as they worked through the list, Brewer kept looking down at the end of his list at the last great problem: ANAC/23419.PRN. He hadn’t mentioned that part number yet for fear Dice would walk out on him.

  McCall waited twenty-four hours. Then he summoned Borden.

  “Nothing,” Borden said. “None of the surplus dealers could tell us a thing about the guy who called them about that 2XJT part. There may have been two voices. But there was no accent of any kind that anyone picked up. Sounded like straight American. And nothing unusual about the voice quality that anyone remembered.”

  “Did anyone make a recording?” McCall asked.

  “Nah.”

  Who could it be? It had to be one of the three—had to be: Rus or Slane or Rock. Who else could it be? No one else really had the smuggling background in electronics parts they did. Slane was tied up with his phony movie. Rus was playing college professor with his London arms seminar. That left Rock. Rock. The only one of the three that was at loose ends. The only one with an American accent. It had to be Rock.

  “Okay,” McCall said. “We need to borrow some men from another agency—in San Francisco. I want them to watch the Prysbyl plant like a hawk. Part number ANAC/23419.PRN. I can recite it in my sleep. Whoever this guy is he has to have that part. And the only place he can get it is from the Prysbyl plant. So I want a red alert around that plant for the next few weeks at least. Okay?”

  Borden nodded.

  McCall left his office later in the afternoon and drove out M Street to the safe house in Georgetown.

  When he entered the empty building, sunlight was streaming in all the front windows. He stood briefly in the vestibule and listened. He still had that strange feeling of the building’s holding its breath in expectation. His feet seemed to boom on the stairs as he mounted them to the third floor.

  The phone recording equipment sat in the middle of the floor in a spotlight of sun. He crouched and pushed the playback button. Then he settled onto the cot and listened to Rock’s telephone life.

  McCall had gotten to know some of the voices and accents of Rock’s callers. The message traffic was familiar: bombs and explosives, yachts in the Bahamas and smirking references to young girls, Rock’s current aversion to Cairo, and more and more telephone talk between Rock and Beeldad in Spain about the binary explosives. Six bombs were needed.

  “It’ll make a bundle, for Christ’s sake,” Rock said to Beeldad. “I guaranteed delivery.”

  Then came the phone call with a new voice.

  “I have good news for you, Rock,” the voice said.

  “What is it?” Rock asked.

  “I have to deliver it. When can we meet?”

  “How about tomorrow, Rumbh?”

  “I’m out of Paris for a few days. How about Thursday? At the Chanticleer?”

  “Okay,” Rock said.

  “And Cairo on the twenty-sixth of November.” Rumbh hung up.

  At 1:00 A.M. the
phone rang in Brewer’s hotel room.

  “You were sleeping?” Attashah asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Gathering parts is hard work, Mr. Brewer. You will meet me in the billiard hall?”

  “Yes.” Brewer got up and hurried uptown to Murray’s. He found Attashah sitting in a referee’s chair watching a game of nine ball. He wore the same outfit as before: black suit, white shirt, and blue polka-dot tie. He was studying the players and their body language with fascination.

  “There is a game in Iran—an old Persian game,” he said to Brewer in lieu of a greeting. “The player who is the best psychologist always wins. And this game rests on the same psychology. This fat man at table three. He is not interested in winning the most points. He makes side bets on various shots. So the fat man is winning on points anyway—why? Because his opponent is distracted—he’s watching the side betting instead of his own game. The fat man walks away with a pocketful of money and the most points, even though his opponent is clearly the better player. And that man with the blue sweater—I can tell if he’s going to win or lose before he does just by the way he stands. I think all your diplomats ought to master this game so that they can learn how to deal with the Iranians.”

  “No one can deal with the Iranians, Attashah,” Brewer said. “Not even the Iranians. You people are crazier than the Arabs.”

  Attashah shrugged. “Perhaps this game of billiards would teach you how to deal with me.”

  Attashah led him to an all-night coffee stand. There was brisk business in the hotel next door. The prostitutes were busy, arriving in cabs from all over the city, leading the johns triumphantly into the lobby and up the elevators. The weather had turned milder and some of the cabbies stood beside their cabs talking to the police patrol. Others sat in the coffee shop reading the sports pages of the Daily News.

  Attashah led them to a booth in the back.

  “It goes well?” he asked Brewer.

  “We’re nearly three quarters through,” Brewer replied.

  “Truly? Three quarters? It does go well. What’s left?”