The elevator took forever to respond to the call button. He waited impatiently. For seven weeks now he had been speculating on the cause of the accident, and Jake Grafton and Helmut Fritsche and Smoke Judy had all refused to enlighten him on the telephone. They had been noncommittal. “We’re investigating.” That was the party line. Toad jabbed the up button again. He wanted some answers.
He gave the secretary the hi sign and marched straight for Grafton’s office. The door was closed, so he knocked, then opened it and stuck his head in. “’Lo, Captain.” Two men he didn’t know were sitting in the guest chairs.
“Be with you in a few minutes, Toad. Good to see you back.”
Tarkington went to his desk and impatiently pawed the stuff in his in basket. Routine read-and-initial crap. He threw his hat on his desk and sat staring at Grafton’s closed door.
The secretary came over to his desk. “How’s Rita?”
“She’s up at Bethesda. I think she’s gonna be okay.”
“It was big news around here that you two were married.” She grinned and leaned forward conspiratorially. “None of us had any idea! It’s so romantic.”
“Yeah,” said Toad Tarkington.
“We’re all just delighted that she’s doing so well. We’ve had her in our thoughts and prayers every day.”
“Thank you,” Toad said, finally pulling his eyes from Grafton’s door and giving the woman a smile. “Know anything about that accident? Why it happened?”
“It’s all very hush-hush,” she confided, her voice low. She glanced around. “I just haven’t seen anything on it, but it was so terrible!”
After he assured her he would convey her good wishes to Rita, she went back to her desk. She was sitting there sorting the mail when Smoke Judy came in. Toad went over to him. “Commander, good to see you.”
“Hey, Tarkington. How’s your wife?”
“Gonna be okay, I think, Commander. Say”—Toad drew the senior officer away from the secretary’s desk—“what can you tell me about the accident investigation? What went wrong?”
“Toad, all that is classified special access, and I don’t know if you have access. All I’ve seen is the confidential section of the report. You’ll have to talk to Captain Grafton.”
“Sorta off the record, it was the E-PROMs, wasn’t it? I figure EMI dicked them up.” EMI was Electromagnetic Interference.
Judy grinned. “Ask Grafton. Give my best to your wife. And congratulations!”
“Thanks.”
Grafton’s door opened and Toad stood. He watched the two men in civilian clothes who came out. Their eyes swept the office as they exited, casually, taking in everything at a glance. Toad forgot about them as soon as they were out of sight. He was walking toward the door when Jake Grafton stuck his head out and motioned to him.
“How’s Rita?”
“Settled in at Bethesda, sir. The reason I wanted to see you”—
Toad carefully closed the door—“is that I want to know why that plane went out of control. What have you guys found out?”
Jake Grafton stood with his back to Toad, facing the window. In a moment he rubbed his nose, then tugged at an earlobe.
“What have you found out, sir?” Toad asked again.
“Huh? Oh. Sorry. The E-PROMs were defective.”
“EMI, I’ll bet.”
“No. The chips were defective. Won’t happen, can’t happen, not a chance in a zillion, but it did.” Grafton shoved both hands into his pockets and turned around slowly. He stared at a corner of his desk. “Defective when installed.”
Something was amiss. “When did you learn this?” Toad said.
“Uh, we knew something was wrong with the chips when we saw the telemetry, but…ah…” He gestured vaguely at the door. “Those guys who were just here…”
“Who were they?”
“Uh…” Suddenly the wrinkles disappeared from Jake Grafton’s brow and he looked straight at Toad’s face, as if seeing him for the first time. “Can’t tell you that,” he said curtly. “Classified.”
“CAG, I’ve got a wife who may be crippled for life. I need to know.”
“You want to know. There’s a hell of a difference. Glad you’re back.”
Toad tried to approach the subject from another angle, only to be rebuffed and shown the door.
Jake Grafton went back to the window and stared without seeing. Agents Camacho and Dreyfus had been informative, to a point. No doubt it was a rare experience for them, answering the questions instead of asking them. And all those looks and pauses, searching for words! A performance! That’s what it had been—a performance. Produced and acted because Vice Admiral Henry demanded it. Well, as little satisfaction as they gave, they were still virgins.
So what did he know? The E-PROMs were defective. The data on the chips was that of preliminary engineering work done several years ago. Somehow…No. Someone in this office or at TRX had given that data to the manufacturer. The agents had skated around that conclusion, but they didn’t challenge it. They couldn’t. “Who?” was the question they had refused to answer. He had run through names to see if he could get a reaction, but no. They had just stared at him.
“Does this have anything to do with Captain Strong’s death?” He had asked them that and they had discussed the possibilities, in the end saying nothing of substance. They should have been politicians, not federal agents.
The only fact he now had that he hadn’t had before was that the data on the chips matched preliminary engineering work. For that they had come at Henry’s insistence?
“Why in hell,” Jake muttered, “does everything have to be so damned complicated?”
At 2 P.M. Smoke Judy decided to do it. The desk beside him was empty. Les Richards was at a meeting and would be for another hour, at least. Most of the people in the office were busy on Captain Grafton’s report or were in a meeting somewhere.
He inserted a formatted disk in the a-drive of his terminal and started tapping. The code word for the file he wanted was “kilderkin.” He didn’t legally have access to this file. The code word that Albright had supplied was a word he had never heard before. Before he typed it, he wiped his hands on his trousers and adjusted the brightness level of the screen.
He had been debating this all week. He had a hundred grand of Albright’s money plus the bucks he already had. He could walk out of here this evening, jump a plane at Dulles tomorrow and by 7 A.M. Monday be so far from Washington these clowns would never find him. Not in fifty years, even if he lived to be ninety-three.
He would be stiffing Albright, of course, but the man was a spy and wasn’t going to squeal very loudly. And what the hey, in the big wide world of espionage, a hundred thousand bucks must be small change.
Or he could copy this file and give it to Albright on Monday night. Roll the dice, pass Go and collect another hundred and fifty. Then he would have a total of almost three hundred thousand green American dollars, in cash. Now, for that kind of money you could live pretty damn good in one of those little beach villages out on the edge of nowhere. Get yourself a firm, warm something to take to bed at night. Live modestly but well, loose and relaxed, as light as it’s possible to get and keep breathing.
If he copied this file he would not be able to ever come back. If he walked without it, the heat would dissipate sooner or later over that E-PROM chip flap and he could slip back into the country.
Do you pay a hundred and fifty grand to keep your options open? Without the money he would eventually go broke and have to come back.
He typed the word. “Kilderkin.” There was the list. Three dozen documents. He looked at the list carefully. Something caught his eye. He studied the column of numbers that listed how many bytes each file was composed of. Boy, these were short files.
Then he understood.
He opened one of the files. The title page came up. He hit the page advance key. The second page was blank. Nothing!
The title page was the whole document!
He tried a second document. Just a title page.
The Athena file was empty!
Smoke Judy stared at the screen, trying to think. Possibility Three leaped into his mind. It hadn’t even occurred to him until this moment. No wonder you never went up the ladder, Smoke. You just don’t think like those snake charmers, those greasy dream merchants who slice off a couple million before they’re thirty and spend the rest of their lives pretending they are somebody. Okay, my slow, dim-witted son, this is your chance to butcher the fat hog. Albright isn’t going to have a computer in that singles bar to check the disk. Give him an empty disk, take his fucking money, and run.
But no. The joke will be on him. He’ll get exactly what he paid for. It’s Albright’s tough luck the file is empty, not yours.
Judy punched the keys. The disk whirled and whirred.
The file was quickly copied. No wonder, short as it was. Judy put the disk in a side pocket of his gym bag, exited the program and turned off the terminal. He spent another ten minutes cleaning up his desk, locking the drawers, watching the other people in the office.
At the door he used the grease pencil to annotate the personnel board hanging on the wall. Back at 4:30. “I’m going to work out,” he called to the secretary, snagged his cover from the hat rack and logged out with the security guards. That easy. Sayonara, mothers.
The elevator took a while to arrive. It always did. The navy had a dirt-cheap lease on this space, so the building owner refused to update the elevators. The thought made Smoke Judy smile. This was the very last time he would ever have to put up with all the petty irritations that came with the uniform. He was through. When he took this uniform off tonight, that would be the very last time.
Thank you, Commander Judy. Thank you for your twenty-one years of faithful service to the navy and the nation. Thank you for eight cruises, three of them to the Indian Ocean. Thank you for your devotion, which ruined your marriage and cost you your kids. Thank you for accepting a mediocre salary and a family move every two years and the prospect of a pissy little pension. Thank you for groveling before the tyrannical god of the fitness report, your fate dependent upon his every whim. Commander Smoke Judy, you are a great American.
The signal above the elevators dinged. Judy glanced at it. The up light illuminated on the elevator at the far left.
The door of that elevator opened. Vice Admiral Tyler Henry stepped out. Automatically the commander straightened.
“Good afternoon, Ad—”
The look on Henry’s face stopped him.
“You!” the admiral roared. He turned to the civilian who had accompanied him on the elevator as he pointed a rigid finger at Judy. “That’s him! That’s the fucking traitor!”
Judy turned and banged open the door to the stairs. With his last glimpse over his shoulder he saw the civilian reaching under his jacket for something on his belt.
He went down the staircase like a rabbit descending a hole, taking them three at a time.
“Stop! NIS!” The shout came from above, a hollow sound, reverberating in the stairwell.
Your luck’s running true to form, Smoke.
He groped into the gym bag as he ran. The pistol was under the gym clothes.
Seventh floor. Sixth. Noises from above. They were after him. Fourth.
He kept going down.
Second floor. As he rounded the landing Vice Admiral Henry came through the fireproof door on the first floor. He rode the damn elevator!
Smoke shot at the man behind Henry through the door opening and threw his weight against the door, slamming it shut. In this enclosed space the report deafened him. The admiral grabbed for him, so he chopped at his head with the gun barrel.
Tyler Henry went to his knees. Smoke reversed the gun in his hand and hit him in the head with the butt, using all his strength. The admiral collapsed.
With ears ringing, he wiped his forehead, trying to think. If he could get into the parking garages under the building quickly enough, he might have a chance. He could hear running feet above. Galvanized, he leaped over the admiral’s body and charged downward.
Level G1. Smoke went out the door and looked wildly around as he ran for the nearest row of cars. No one in sight. He had beaten them down here, but he had mere seconds.
He ran along looking for keys dangling in the ignition, frustration and panic welling in him.
Hang tough, Smoke. You’ve been in tight spots before and you’ve always gotten yourself out in one piece.
He loped down the row, searching desperately.
Ah, there ahead, some guy was unlocking his door. A civilian. Smoke went for him on a dead run.
The man heard Judy coming at the last moment and looked back over his shoulder, just in time to see the gun barrel chopping down.
Smoke picked up the keys from the concrete and tossed his gym bag through the open driver’s door. He pulled the man out of the way and got behind the wheel. As he started the car he could see men pouring out of the elevator and stairwell. They were searching, spreading out, hunting for him.
The engine caught. Smoke backed out carefully, snicked the transmission into drive and headed for the exit. Someone was coming this way, shouting.
A shot!
He stepped on the gas.
He went around the last pillar with tires squalling and shot up the exit ramp.
The street at the top of the ramp was one-way, from right to left. Smoke looked right. One car coming. He swerved that way and jammed the accelerator down. The driver of that sedan swerved to avoid him, then decided to try to ram. Too late!
Down the street a half block to the intersection, then left through a hole in traffic, almost grazing an oncoming truck, which skidded to avoid him with its horn roaring.
Right again, then left. He ran a red light and swung right onto the bus-only ramp, which led up onto the freeway. Merged with traffic and scanning the rearview mirror, only then did Smoke Judy begin to try to sort out what had happened.
“He’s dead.” The ambulance attendant covered the body of Vice Admiral Tyler Henry with a sheet. “You people give us some room.”
Jake Grafton walked out into the elevator lobby, dazed. A half dozen FBI agents were talking on their hand-held radios and listening to the words coming back. There was still a bloody spot on the floor where one agent had gone down with a bullet in his shoulder. Who would have believed…Smoke Judy?
Toad Tarkington blocked his path.
“Judy. He’s the guy who sold the E-PROM data, wasn’t he?”
Jake nodded.
Toad turned and walked away.
“Tarkington! Tarkington!”
Jake caught up with the lieutenant in the plaza. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Tarkington didn’t look at him. “For a few lousy bucks that bastard damn near killed my wife. She’ll never fully recover. She’ll carry the scars all her life.”
“The FBI’ll get him. They’re the pros at this.”
“They’d better,” Toad muttered. “If I get to the cocksucker before they do, they can quit looking.”
Tarkington walked away and Jake stood and watched him go. What the hell, he needs some time off anyway. He’ll never find Judy. The FBI will scoop him up in a day or two. And maybe the time off will do Toad some good.
Back inside he ran into an agent he recognized, Lloyd Dreyfus. “What the hell happened, Dreyfus?”
“Well, Captain, it seems that the National Security Agency was monitoring the terminals, and when Judy got into the Athena file, they called Vice Admiral Henry right after they called us. Henry beat us here by about a minute.”
Jake started to speak and Dreyfus held up a hand. “I know, I know. They shouldn’t have done that. And now some poor schnook will probably lose his job. But Tyler Henry was Tyler Henry. Very few people ever managed to say no to him and make it stick.”
“That’s true,” Jake acknowledged. “Who was the civilian upstairs with Henry?”
“Guy from th
e Naval Investigative Service. We got all this from him.”
“Where’s Luis Camacho?”
“Working.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“No. You tell him he’ll talk with me or I’m going to raise holy hell. When somebody kills a vice admiral in a navy building, the lid is gonna get ripped off pretty damned quick. Right now I know a lot more than my boss, and I don’t know much. When I start answering his questions he is not going to be a happy camper. He’s a vice admiral too, by the way. I will answer his questions. He’s another one of those guys who doesn’t take no for an answer. George Ludlow, the Secretary of the Navy, he hasn’t even heard the word since he got out of diapers. And CNO…” Jake snorted.
“Camacho—”
“He won’t be able to wave his badge over on the E-Ring and stuff this shit back into the goose…You tell him!”
As Commander Smoke Judy drove across the George Mason Memorial Bridge into Washington, he stripped off his white uniform shirt with the black shoulder boards and threw it onto the floor of the backseat. He was still wearing a white T-shirt, but that would attract less attention than the uniform. His cover was gone, lost somewhere back in the stairwell.
He needed a change of clothes, he needed to get rid of this car and he needed a place to hide.
He took the Fourteenth Street exit on the east side of the bridge and went north, rolling slowly with the traffic between tour buses and out-of-state cars laden with tourists. A motel? No—they would be checking motels and hotels and bus stations and…
He crossed Constitution Avenue and continued north into the business district.
Three blocks north of New York Avenue he was stopped in traffic inching through a single-lane construction choke point when he saw a drunk stagger into an alley, a derelict, or in the language of the social reformers, a “homeless person.”
It took five minutes to go halfway around the block and enter the alley from the other end. There was just room to get the car by a delivery truck. The drunk was collapsed beside a metal Dumpster, his wine bottle beside him. His head lay on a blanket roll. Beside him sat a green trash bag. After checking to make sure there was no one in sight, Smoke stopped the car and stepped out.
The Minotaur Page 42