“Lessen the primary threat and we won’t need as many ships. That’s the argument,” said Ludlow.
“Politicians never understand commitments,” Royce Caplinger said dryly, “perhaps because they make so many of them. The federal deficit is totally out of control due to mandated increases in social program expenditures. They borrowed money and never asked if they could afford the interest. They approved treaties and never weighed the cost in defense expenditures.”
The CNO made a gesture of frustration. “We have more practical concerns. The air force is facing institutional death. They gave up the close air support mission to the army a generation ago. The strategic bomber mission is on the ropes. All they have left are ICBMs—which the army could run—and tactical air and airlift. Their bases are fixed, vulnerable to ICBMs and political upheavals. The world is passing them by. They’re panicking. And they have a lot of friends. If they don’t get Athena and get it now…”
“It’ll get ugly,” Ludlow agreed.
“I am the Secretary of Defense,” Caplinger said, his voice hard. “I will take care of the air force. You people take care of the navy.”
The heavy silence that followed was broken by Tyler Henry. “No one has mentioned the Minotaur.” All eyes turned to the vice admiral. An uncomfortable look crossed his face, as if he had just farted in church.
“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 advantage,” 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. Security 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-l.”
“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 backyard 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. Something’s going on.”
“So the sons of Uncle Joe Stalin have given up their goal of world domination? The fucking thugs who murdered twenty million of their own people? My aching ass. That’s all big-lie propaganda 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, “‘Thinking 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 ragged, sick sound, most likely because Camacho had taken out one of the spark plugs and pounded the little 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 mechanic,” 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 Camacho 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 time.”
“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 the Minotaur?”
“We need a letter from his mother-in-law.”
“Maybe you already got it. Maybe Franklin is the Minotaur.”
“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 embassy, 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 the Minotaur 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 his 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 the Minotaur than you’re telling me. You may even know who he is. That leads me to some interesting 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 the Minotaur. Now today you give me this crap about Franklin being the Minotaur 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 Inspector 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 fall guy, the double agent”
“Find the Minotaur.”
“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 Aleksandrovich 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 she 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 vegetables 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 situation. 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 English, 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?”
“Not any of them.”
“Well, do you have some that you don’t hate as much as others?”
“Corn. Corn is okay. But not the creamed kind.” She squirmed. “And I like lima beans.”
“No kidding? So do I. Maybe we can have some tomorrow night. How about it, Callie?”
His wife was standing by the little desk that served as a paper catchall, looking once again at the diet book. She turned to Jake and nodded. She had tears in her eyes. He winked at her.
&nb
sp; “Amy, better get your school books. And, Callie, don’t we have some sugarless dessert around here for little girls who eat their dinner?”
17
A woman from the garage called at 10 A.M. and said his car was ready: $119.26. Camacho told her he would stop by after work. She hung up before he could even ask what the problem had been.
Dreyfus gave him a ride and dropped him in front of the showroom.
The new cars gleamed shamelessly and flashed their chrome with wanton abandon as he walked by. Light, easy-listening music sounded everywhere. Two salesmen asked if he needed help.
He paid for the repairs at a window where a harried young woman juggled two phones as she pounded numbers into a computer. He surrendered his driver’s license for her scrutiny before she asked. Without even glancing to see if his puss matched the photo, she copied the number onto the check and slid it back at him.
His six-year-old car sat amid twenty or so others of its vintage on a gravel lot out back. Dingy and coated with road grime, it hadn’t seen wax since…not since he gave his son twenty dollars that Saturday two years ago and the kid let the wax dry like paint all over the car before he tried to wipe it off.
Camacho unlocked the door, rolled down the windows and tossed the yellow card dangling from the rearview-mirror bracket onto the floor. The car started readily enough and ran sweetly. He examined the invoice. Diagnostic test. Defective spark plug. Defective lead cable? Ouch—they got him there! Labor. How is it a garage can charge $55 per hour for a mechanic’s time?
About two miles from the garage was a shopping center with a large parking lot, most of which was empty except for light poles and a couple of cars that looked as if they had sat in those spots all winter. One even had two flat tires.
He parked near it and got his jack from the trunk. The rear end went up first. He had an old army blanket in the trunk and spread it under the car so he wouldn’t get too filthy.
With coat and tie on the back seat, flashlight in hand, Luis Camacho slid gingerly under the car. He knew exactly what he was looking for, but it might be hard to spot.
Five minutes later he stood beside the car and scratched his head. If Albright had put a bomb in this thing, where was it?
The Minotaur Page 27