Flap looked harassed. "Give me some good news," he pleaded.
Jake dumped the bag. When he finished, Flap frowned. "So you don't have any hard evidence that the loss of the Super Aegis satellite and the theft of America are connected."
"They must be," Jake insisted and went over to the map hanging on the commandant's wall. "What are the odds that two major events would happen two months apart? And the connection has been staring us in the face all the time. That satellite is somewhere in this ocean" — he tapped the chart—"America is carrying a minisubmer-sible on her back and she has an underwater salvage expert aboard. The salvage expert is not critical, but the minisubmersible is."
"We're hunting for the satellite," the marine pointed out. "Hunting hard, I might add. We've got thirty ships out there right now towing magnetometers and using every gadget in the book."
"It's a stupendously big ocean," Jake replied. "We may never find the thing. I think the salvage guy on America has a huge advantage— I think he knows where it is. Or where it should be. Peter Kerr could have told him. Indeed, Peter Kerr could have put it there."
"One guy in a minisubmersible. He doesn't have the diving gear or enough stuff to salvage the satellite, let alone the upper stage of that rocket."
"I think the sub will rendezvous with a ship — somewhere — get more people and gear, then recover the satellite. If they can find it. That's going to take some doing, but with Revelation… I think it's possible."
"Then why is the salvage guy already aboard?"
"Sir, I don't know."
"How deep can the submersible go?"
"On its own, down to a few hundred feet. Attached to the sub, it can go as deep as the sub takes it. The limitation is not the crush depth but the capacity of the ballast system."
"Two hundred feet," Flap said thoughtfully, examining the chart. "That's still a lot of real estate."
"Offshore waters for all of Europe, Africa, and the Atlantic islands," Jake agreed. "And even some of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge."
"And the attacks on Washington and New York?"
"Diversions. Profitable ones." He pointed toward the list from Jouany's computer. "This didn't just happen. Someone planned very carefully, and the plan is working. The American economy is staggering like a dying horse and Europe is doing quite well, thank you. Nations around the world are selling dollars and buying euros. European investors in American stocks are taking their money home. European companies will pick up a lot of international business when American companies have difficulty meeting their delivery dates, for whatever reason. The business that American companies lose will go to European enterprises that can meet the demand."
"So who is the man inside?" Flap Le Beau asked.
"I've got a candidate," Jake Grafton told him.
"Okay."
"The problem is that the timetables don't fit."
Zelda Hudson found the message on one of her regular visits to a hacker's bulletin board. "Butterfly," the caption said. It was encrypted, of course, a meaningless gobbledygook of letters. She downloaded it, got off-line, checked the message for viruses — there were none.
She reached for Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary on the bottom shelf of the nearby credenza and looked up the word butter. Then she checked the posting date, added those numbers together, multiplied by another number, and began counting words that began with the following letter, c, ignoring words with fewer than six letters. When she found the word she wanted, she typed it into an encryption matrix and pressed Enter. The computer then used that word to construct a complete matrix, which was used to transform the downloaded message into another long sequence of apparently random letters.
Fly. She counted again, carefully, in the compilation for words beginning with g, found the word, typed it into another matrix. The computer ran the message through the second matrix, and voila!
I am writing to express my concern with the course of current events. When you offered me the information about the Black-beard team, requesting that I reveal it to DeGarmo, thereby killing the operation, I knew then that I was fulfilling some purpose that would benefit you. After consultation with my superiors in Moscow, the decision was made to do as you requested, for several reasons. The current political situation in Moscow would be destabilized by the successful theft of a Russian submarine or by a thwarted attempt. And our relationship has been quite successful — we hope it continues to our mutual profit into the future.
The possibility that you had other plans for the Blackbeard team did not occur to us. I think I see your hand in subsequent events. So does Admiral Grafton, who I suspect is closer to the truth than he realizes. Certainly closer than you thought possible.
My government does not want the SuperAegis satellite to end up in foreign hands. I think your most likely customer is EuroSpace. It must not happen. Russia and the United States have similar interests in this matter. Frankly, do not rely on your relationship with us to protect you in a matter of such gravity.
Zelda Hudson read the message through again, then deleted it and the matrices that had decoded it. Then she purged the trash file and reformatted the disk segment she had used.
Peter Kerr, the fool! His disappearance must have incited Grafton's suspicions.
Like many of Washington's power elite, Avery Edmond DeGarmo lived in the Watergate apartment complex near the Kennedy Center. And like many of his fellow residents, he had decamped during the power crisis. When Jake, Toad, and Tommy Carmellini arrived the following morning, the building was deserted. There were two guards at the desk in the lobby but not a resident in sight. Not even a doorman. Jake and his friends sat in the front seat of the van looking things over.
"You'd think for all that money the tenants would get a doorman," Toad said.
"Where'd DeGarmo go, anyway?" Carmellini asked Toad, who carried around a surprising store of useless, unimportant facts.
"Bunking with the marines at Quantico, I heard. The grunts deliver him and a bunch of others to Washington every morning by helicopter."
"Simplifies commuting, I suppose."
"They may never move back to town."
"You think you can get into this place?" Jake asked dubiously. He was in the passenger seat of the carpet company van, Carmellini was behind the wheel, and Toad sat between them.
"Just watch the master at work," Carmellini said. From the hip pocket of his coveralls he removed a pack of chewing tobacco, broke the seal, and helped himself to a man-sized plug, which made his unshaved cheek bulge nicely. Then he got out of the van and headed for the main entrance.
Carmellini was wearing a one-piece coverall with the carpet company's name and logo across the back. So were Toad and Jake, who remained in the vehicle. Last night Carmellini called a fellow he knew, and the man rented him the van and uniforms for the day for the magnificent sum of one hundred dollars.
"Are you sure? That doesn't sound like a lot of money."
"You aren't going to get caught, are you? Nothing will come back on mer
"You'll hear not a peep from anyone. Guaranteed."
"A hundred is enough, and I'm glad to get it. With the power mess and all, our business has dried up to nothing."
Outside the Watergate, Tommy Carmellini spit on the sidewalk, adjusted his chew, and went in. He went up to the security desk, where the guards had supplemented the light coming through the glass door with a small kerosene lantern. There were two of them, in uniform, a man and a woman.
"Got a carpet delivery for… for…" Carmellini removed an invoice from his hip pocket and scrutinized it. "DeGarmo. Apartment 821."
The male guard consulted a list on a clipboard. "He's not in today."
"By God, I hope not. Gonna have to pull up the bedroom and living room carpet and lay new. Not many customers want to watch us do it." He glanced at the closed-circuit camera mounted above the guards' desk and at the dark monitor behind them.
"You got a key to his apartment?"
"Why, hell n
o, I ain't got no key. He said you people'd let me in."
"You're not on the tradesman list." The guard gestured toward the clipboard.
"Umm, you got a place I could spit?"
With a look of disgust, the guard nodded toward a trash can at the end of his desk. Carmellini relieved himself and returned.
"Much obliged."
"Talk about a filthy habit!" That was the woman.
"Yeah. So how'm I gonna get this carpet in there?"
"I can't let you in unless you're on the tradesman list," the male guard said.
"Just curious, but without phones, how is he gonna tell you to put me on that list? Not being smart or nothin', I hear that this guy is some big weenie in government. He supposed to just tell the president to sit tight while he makes a personal trip down here to talk to you about the carpet in his pad?" After delivering himself of this speech, Carmellini took two steps to the trash can to spit again.
He worked his chew into position while he waved the invoice. "Here's his signature on this. Men who buy forty-five hundred dollars' worth of carpeting don't usually like to lay it themselves. But if you don't let me in, he's gonna. We'll offload it right here in the lobby and you can let him have it the next time he wanders by."
"Tell you what," said the male guard, who did take a cursory look at DeGarmo's forged signature. "We'll let you in downstairs. Miss McCarthy will take you up to the apartment and wait while you do your thing."
"Much obliged," said Tommy Carmellini, and gave them both a big tobacco grin. Out on the sidewalk he spit a stream of brown juice over his shoulder, then climbed into the driver's seat of the van.
"We're in," he said to Jake and Toad. "Just let me do the talking."
As they rolled around the building, Carmellini said, "We lucked out. Got a female who thinks tobacco chewing is a filthy habit. After she unlocks the place, I'll fart and spit a bit and she'll find something else to do somewhere else."
And that was the way it worked out. The men put on cotton gloves, then unloaded a roll of carpet from the back of the van and hoisted it onto their shoulders. Miss McCarthy led them to the freight elevator.
The apartment was stifling. "Must be eighty degrees in here," Carmellini complained.
The guard lady took it personally. "We crank and crank on that air-conditioner in the basement and the cool air just never gets up this far. We need some real muscle men to do the cranking."
"I'll bet," Carmellini replied, then spit into a Styrofoam coffee cup that he had brought up from the van.
The men were moving furniture in DeGarmo's bedroom when Miss McCarthy told Carmellini, "Be sure and stop by the desk on your way out."
"This is gonna take awhile. Gotta do it right, I always say. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. That's why people buy their carpet from us."
They waited for a count of ten after she closed the door behind her, then Jake said, "Very well done."
Carmellini spit his chew into his hand and nodded. He dashed for a bathroom to wash out his mouth.
They began searching, carefully, meticulously, not trashing the place but searching it as thoroughly as possible.
"What do you hope to find, Admiral?" Toad had asked that morning on their way over in the carpet van.
"Anything at all that shouldn't be there. Occasionally people leading secret lives keep little tidbits or artifacts of that secret life tucked away. Or so I've heard."
"I certainly do," Carmellini said, nodding a vigorous assent. "You oughta see my collection."
"We're looking for something," Jake continued, "anything that we can use to unravel Avery DeGarmo's secret life."
"How do you know he has a secret life?" 1 don t.
"Probably got a wife and kids in L.A. that he hasn't told a soul about," Toad told Carmellini and winked.
They found that DeGarmo, a lifelong bachelor, had a collection of paper matches bearing the logos of restaurants in which he had eaten. Hotels he had visited. Businesses. Golf courses. All kinds of matches. Drawers full, boxes full.
He kept a loaded nine-millimeter pistol in the drawer beside his bed, he used toothpaste with baking powder, soft toothbrushes, and disposable razors. He had a prescription for an anticholesterol medication, ten pills still in the bottle. He threw socks away one at a time, so he had a nice collection of singles. He wore Jockey shorts and tailored wool suits.
Jake Grafton settled into DeGarmo's chair behind his desk in the den. There were two computers, both with telephone wires leading to them. After the stink about the CIA deputy director who kept classified info on his home computer, one assumed DeGarmo wouldn't be so foolish. But really, when you stopped to think about it, computers were involved in this whole mess. One wouldn't know what was on them until he checked. Jake unplugged the monitors and keyboards, pulled all the wires from the main computers, and picked them up, one atop the other.
He went looking for Tarkington and Carmellini. They were snacking on crackers in the kitchen.
"Nothing, Admiral. Absolutely nothing."
"Did you open the refrigerator?"
"No," Carmellini said brightly. "We thought you should have the honor."
Jake tugged at his gloves and took one last look around. "We'll do the fridge next time. Let's take the two computers and our carpet and make a clean getaway."
Zelda Hudson watched her monitor. The computer graphic ordered by Vice-Admiral Navarre was being put together now by the National Geodesic Survey's main Earth-mapping computer. Areas of the Atlantic with one hundred feet or less of water, then another map depicting 150 feet or less.
Zelda was in a foul mood. Someone, somewhere had figured out the connection between America and the missing SuperAegis satellite.
Of course it was there all the time, in plain sight, but no one saw it. Until now. She looked at the authorization. Captain Killbuck, office of ACNO (submarines).
Carmellini. He was turning into a regular pain in the posterior. The FBI had run a fingerprint identification request through the Clarksburg fingerprint database. The name that popped up was Susan Boyer, deceased.
That request could have originated only with Carmellini, who was carrying around the dead woman's eye- and fingerprints. The request was authorized by Special Agent Krautkramer, the agent in charge investigating America's hijacking. Killbuck, Krautkramer — the tracks led to Rear Admiral Grafton.
When Jake arrived at his apartment in Rosslyn that evening, Callie had two steaks and two potatoes ready for the barbecue, which was getting quite a workout since the electric range was useless.
"Do you think America will fire any more missiles?" Callie asked as they brought each other up to date on their days.
"No, I don't," Jake replied. "We've got every P-3 we own on the East Coast in the air, loaded with sonobuoys and torpedoes. If anyone shoots a missile we can have a P-3 on site in less than a half hour. We've cleared friendly submarines from the area, so from the moment the first sonobuoy hits the water, they'll be pinging actively. With one P-3 Kolnikov might have a chance. Even two. But not four. When they get America located, they'll put torpedoes in the water."
Callie was not her usual self. "I can't get those men aboard La Jolla off my mind. Sometimes life just isn't fair."
"Kolnikov's luck will run out," Jake said forcefully, wanting it to be true. "So far he's anticipated every move. He knows what is possible and how long it takes to make things happen. Now that we're ready, I doubt if he'll chance it. Of course, he could prove me a poor prophet and have one on the way to Boston or Atlanta this very minute. If so, the odds are that he and his crew aren't going to be with us much longer. Which would be fine by me."
"So how are they going to escape?" Callie asked. "They must have some plan. They aren't going to cruise around the world forever like Captain Nemo aboard the Nautilus."
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Jake said. "If you were Kolnikov, how would you do it?"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Myron Matheny's tele
phone rang at two in the morning, waking him from a sound sleep. Several seconds passed before he recognized the voice.
"That matter we discussed last week — it's going to have to be handled immediately."
Matheny waited several seconds before answering, trying to clear his thoughts. "You know I don't work that way," he said.
"No choice. I never thought it would come to this, but the world is pressing in."
"Wish I could help you."
"This morning. If I go, you go."
The Man broke the connection, leaving Matheny listening to a buzzing telephone.
He replaced the instrument on the receiver. Oh, boy! He sure as hell didn't need this.
"Who was it?" the woman asked.
"Him." It wasn't really. The voice was a woman's, but Matheny didn't want his wife to know that.
"At this hour?"
"Go back to sleep."
Fumbling in the darkness, he put on a robe and went to the kitchen of the old farmhouse to make himself a pot of coffee.
Way deep down, Myron Matheny had always known that this day would come, that the life he had built for himself might come to a smashing halt. It would, he always thought, be his fault, the client's fault, or some freak twist in the cosmos, some fluke of fate. Random chance or someone's screwup, those were the forces that made the wheels of the universe go around.
When he graduated from high school he had joined the marines, where he had become a specialist on area-network surveillance systems. The CIA recruited him after his four-year hitch was over. The CIA sounded more interesting than Motorola, so he signed on.
About ten years ago in South America, he had been betrayed by a man seeking an entry into the profitable drug business. He escaped before the druggies could kill him, then found the man who sold him out and made him permanently disappear.
You weren't supposed to do that kind of thing in the CIA. There were laws against it, regulations and all that. Still, every now and then, when lives or important national interests were on the line, a quiet disappearance could solve a lot of problems.
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