The Minotaur

by Stephen Coonts

  The drunk was semiconscious. Smoke examined the trash bag. It contained an old coat, some filthy shirts.

  “Sorry, buddy. This is the end of the line.” Judy throttled him with both hands. The bum, who looked to be in his sixties, with a two-week growth of beard, kicked some and struggled ineffectually. In less than a minute he was gone.

  Judy stripped the shirt from the dead man and put it on over his T-shirt. The trousers were next. Sheltered between the Dumpster and the delivery truck, Smoke took off his white trousers and white shoes and socks and pulled the derelict’s grime-encrusted trousers on. Perhaps this garment had once been gray, but now it was just dark, blotchy. And a little big. All the better. He even took the dead man’s shoes. They were too small, but he put them on anyway.

  Judy loaded the trash bag and blanket roll in the car. He helped himself to the wine bottle too, wedging it between the stuff on the backseat so it wouldn’t fall over and spill.

  He rolled out of the alley and, with the help of a courteous tourist, managed to get back into traffic. He discarded all his white uniform items in a Dumpster near RFK Memorial Stadium, then parked the car in the lot at D.C. General Hospital.

  With his blanket roll over one shoulder and the trash bag—which now contained his gym bag—dangling across the other, he shuffled across the parking lot toward the Burke Street Metro stop. He didn’t get far. His feet were killing him. The shoes were impossibly small. He sat on a curb with a little hedge behind it and put on his running shoes from his gym bag. The car keys he buried in the soft dirt. He stuffed the drunk’s shoes under the hedge, sprinkled some wine on himself and smeared it on his face and left the bottle beside the shoes after wiping it of prints. There was an old cap in the trash bag, which he donned.

  He sat there on the curb, considering. A car drove into the lot. A woman and her two teenage youngsters. She glanced at him, then ignored him. The teenagers scowled.

  This just might work, Judy told himself. He shouldered his load and set off again for the Metro stop.

  Harlan Albright was in the car dealer’s snack area, feeding quarters into the coffee machine, when FBI agents arrived at 4:30 to arrest him. He extracted the paper cup from the little door in the front of the machine and sipped it experimentally as he glanced idly through the picture windows at the service desk. Three men in business suits, one of them black, short haircuts, their coats hanging open. One of them had a word with Joe Talley, the other service rep, while the other two scanned the area.

  As he looked at them, Albright knew. They weren’t here about a car. When Talley pointed in this direction, Albright moved.

  On the back wall of the snack area was a door marked “Employees Only.” It was locked. Albright used his key and went through into the parts storeroom. The door automatically locked behind him.

  He walked between the shelves and passed the man at the counter with a greeting. Out in the corridor he walked ten feet, then turned left and went through an unmarked door into the service bay.

  Halfway down the bay, one of the mechanics was lowering a car on the hoist “You about finished with that LTD, Jimmy?”

  “All done, Mr. Albright. Was gonna take it out of here.”

  “I’ll do that The owner is out at the service desk now. She’s impatient as usual.”

  “Starter wire was loose,” the mechanic said. “That was the whole problem. Keys are in it. But what about the paperwork?”

  “Go ahead and walk it over to the office.”

  “Sure.” As Albright started the car, the mechanic raised the garage door and kicked the lifting blocks out of the way of the tires.

  Albright backed out carefully and drove down the alley toward the area where customers’ cars were parked.

  Yep, another guy in a business suit hustling this way, and another going around the building toward the front entrance. Albright turned left and drove by the agent walking toward the main showroom. That agent looked at him with surprise. As Albright paused at the street, he glanced in the rearview mirror. The agent was talking on a hand-held radio and looking this way.

  Albright fed gas and slipped the car into traffic.

  They would be right behind him. He jammed the accelerator down and shot across the next intersection just as the light turned red.

  He went straight for three more blocks, then turned right for a block, then right again.

  He entered the dealership lot from the back and coasted the car toward the service parking area, watching carefully for agents. His trip around town had taken five minutes. Yes, they all seemed to be gone.

  He parked the car and walked back inside.

  Joe Talley saw him coming. “Hey, Harlan, some guys were here looking for you.”

  “’S’at right?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t say, but they were cops. Had those little radios and charged outta here like their tails were on fire. Just a couple minutes ago. Say, what’ve you done anyway? Robbed a bank?”

  “Nah.” Albright quickly sorted through the rack of keys of cars that were awaiting service. “Forgot to put a quarter in the meter.” This one, a new Taurus. In for its first oil change.

  “Sons of bitches came after me two years ago,” Talley said. “My ex swore out a warrant.”

  “I sent her the fucking check last week,” Albright growled. He walked back toward the parking area. “They come back, you tell ’em I went out to feed the meter,” he called. “See you after a while.”

  “Yeah, sure, Harlan.” Talley laughed.

  “Do my time card too, will ya, Joe?”

  “You’re covered.” Talley went back to annotating a service form.

  Albright never returned to the dealership, of course. Less than two hours later he abandoned the Taurus in a parking garage in downtown Washington and walked four blocks to a KGB safe house.

  “Just like that, cool as ice, he went back and traded cars?” “Yessir.” Dreyfus tried to keep his eyes on Camacho’s face. It was difficult. “Two guys in two hours go through our fingers! What is this,

  Keystone Kops?” Camacho sighed heavily. “Well, what are we doing to round up these public enemies?”

  “Warrants for them both, Murder One for Judy and Accessory Before the Fact for Albright. Stakeouts. Briefings for the D.C., federal, airport and suburban police—every pistol-packer within fifty miles of the Washington Monument. Photos on the eleven o’clock news and in tomorrow’s papers. The cover story is drugs.”

  “We really needed Albright, Lloyd.”

  “I know, sir.” Dreyfus was stunned. Luis Camacho had never before called him by his first name in the five years they had known each other.

  Camacho sat rubbing his forehead with the first two fingers of his left hand.

  “Drugs in the Pentagon is going to get a lot of press,” Dreyfus volunteered. “Already Ted Koppel wants the Director for Nightline. Some nitwit on the Hill is promising a congressional investigation. Everybody on the west side of the Potomac is probably going to have to pee in a bottle on Monday morning.”

  If Camacho heard, he gave no sign. After a moment he said softly, “We’ll never get him unless he comes to us.”

  27

  A Saturday in August is a terrible time to be in Washington. The heat and humidity make any trip outdoors an endurance trek. The summer haze diffuses the sunlight, but doesn’t soften it. Perspiration oozes from every square inch of hide and clothes become sodden rags.

  By eleven o’clock Saturday morning, Smoke Judy felt as if he had lived on the street for six months. He had managed only two hours’ sleep the night before, most of it in fifteen-minute spurts. The alley he now called home housed three other derelicts, all of whom were comatose drunk by 9 P.M. They had no trouble at all sleeping.

  At 7 A.M., or thereabouts—Judy had stowed his watch in his gym bag—his companions stirred themselves and collected their traps. He followed them as they staggered the five blocks to a mission. Two of them vomited along the way. The little neon sign over the door procl
aimed: “Jesus Saves.”

  Breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast and black coffee. Judy carefully observed the men and four women, maybe five—he wasn’t sure about one—who ate listlessly or not at all. The alcoholics in the final stages of their disease drank coffee but didn’t touch the food. Almost everyone smoked cigarettes. A man across from him offered him an unfiltered Pall Mall, which Smoke Judy accepted. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette since he was twenty-four, but when in Rome…

  “I see you been to the barber college,” his benefactor said as he blew out his match.

  “Yeah.”

  “Go there myself from time to time.”

  Judy concentrated on smoking the cigarette until the man beside him lost interest in conversation. Behind the screen of rising smoke he studied the people around him. He was apparently the only one who showed any interest in his companions. Most of them sat with vacant eyes, or stared at their plates, or the wall, or the smoke rising from their cigarettes.

  By eight o’clock he was back on the street. The humidity was bad and the heat was building. Already the concrete sidewalks had become griddles. His companions wandered off in twos and threes, looking for shady spots to snooze, spots near areas of heavy pedestrian traffic that later in the day could be mined by panhandling for enough money to purchase the daily bottle.

  Deciding the street was too dangerous for a man with only a day’s growth of beard, Judy ambled back toward the alley where he had spent the night. He concentrated on the derelict’s shuffle, the head-down, stoop-shouldered, eyes-averted gait that characterized so many of the defeated wanderers.

  His eye caught a headline in a newspaper rack. The photo—that was him! He walked along, wondering. Up ahead was a trash bin with a paper sticking out. He snagged it and took it back to the alley

  Drugs. Cocaine trafficking. The photo of him in uniform was that service-record shot he had submitted last year. The picture of Harlan Albright was a candid street shot, almost as if he had been unaware of the camera. Still, it was a good likeness. With his back to the Dumpster, sitting on the asphalt, Smoke Judy read the stories carefully. Vice Admiral Henry was dead, according to the Post, killed by a drug dealer resisting arrest. Well, was the Post ever wrong?

  When he finished the story he threw the paper in the Dumpster.

  Now he lay in the heat, his head on his blanket roll, watching an old dog search for edible garbage. A slight breeze wafted down the alley, but it wasn’t much. The place was a sauna. After the dog left, the only creatures vigorously stirring were the flies.

  Jesus, who would have believed things could go so wrong so fast? The feds must have been monitoring access to that file, and the instant he opened it, jumped in the car to drive over and arrest him. From commander in the U.S. Navy to hunted fugitive killer all in one fifteen-minute period—that had to be a new record for the fastest fall in the history of the navy.

  As he thought about it, Smoke Judy did not agonize over the split-second decisions he had made or torture himself with what-ifs. He had spent his adult life in a discipline composed of split-second decisions, and he had long ago learned to live with them. You made the best choice you could on the information you had and never wasted time later regretting the choice. He didn’t now.

  Still, as he looked back, he couldn’t really pinpoint any specific decision that he could say had been the perfect choice to make when he made it. So here he was, lying in an alley ten blocks northeast of the White House. Hell must be like this, dirty and hot, all the sinners baking slowly, desperate for a beer. God, a cold beer would taste so good!

  The money. After that phone call from Homer T. Wiggins, he had felt it unsafe to leave the money in his apartment when he wasn’t there, so he had put it in a duffel bag in the trunk of his car. His passport was in the bag too. The car was undoubtedly in the police impound lot by this time and the money and passport were in the evidence safe. He had been tempted yesterday to try to get it, but that temptation he had easily resisted. Smoke Judy, fighter pilot, knew all about what happened to guys who went back to a heavily defended target for one more run.

  Man, the bumper sticker is right—shit happens. And it happens fast. The real crazy thing is it all happened to him. The great sewer in the sky dumped it all on him. Fuck! He said it aloud: “Fuck.”

  “Fuck!” He shouted it, liking the sound of his voice booming the obscenity at the alley walls. The word seemed to gain weight and substance as it echoed toward the street. He filled his lungs with air and roared, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

  “Hey, you down there.” He looked up. Some guy was leaning out a window. “You stop that damn shouting or I’ll call a cop to run you out of there. You hear?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Goddamn fucking drunk psychos,” the man said as he closed the window, probably to keep in the cool, conditioned air.

  Okay, Judy told himself, going through the whole thing one more time. He was in the smelly stuff to his eyes. Okay. How was he going to get the hell out of this mess?

  Well, this alley was as good a place as any to spend the weekend.

  If he tried to check into a motel or hotel, or tried to buy clothes or steal a car, he might be recognized. The cops wouldn’t be looking for him in an alley, at least not for a few days. No doubt they were watching the airports, train station and bus depot. And looking for that car he drove away from Crystal City.

  So sitting here in this shithole for a few days looked like a pretty good idea. Of course, selling the E-PROM data to Homer T. Wiggins had looked good too, as did killing Harold Strong, copying the Athena file…

  Ah me.

  Well, he still had a card. One chance. $150,000. Boy, did he ever need that money now. Monday evening, Harlan Albright, that meat market in Georgetown. One way or the other, Albright was parting with the cash, he told himself grimly. There were still five live cartridges left in the pistol.

  Jake Grafton sent his family to the beach Friday evening. Saturday he was back at the office finishing his report on the testing of the prototypes. He had already circulated a draft to his superiors and now he was incorporating their comments.

  The senior secretary had volunteered to work on Saturday, and she was making the changes on the computer when the telephone rang. “Jake, this is Admiral Dunedin. I have a couple FBI agents here with me. Could you come up to my office?”

  “Yessir. Be right there.”

  The agents turned out to be Camacho and Dreyfus. They shook his hand politely. Jake sat in a chair against the wall, facing the side of the admiral’s desk.

  “Captain,” the admiral said to get the ball rolling, “these gentlemen said you had some concerns that you wished to discuss.”

  Jake snorted and rearranged his fanny on the chair. “I suspect my concerns are minor and worlds away from the FBI’s, but they’re real enough. I’ve read the morning papers. Apparently the ATA program is some kind of cover for drug dealers who are supplying all the addicts in the Pentagon, and one of them went bug-fuck crazy yesterday and beat an admiral to death.”

  “Now, Captain—” Camacho began.

  “Let me finish. Presumably this boondoggle operation is run by some airhead who is unable to recognize the nefarious character of his subordinates, who have been engaged in subverting the national defense establishment from within. Moral rot and all that. And who is the airhead who commands this collection of criminals in uniform? Why, it’s the navy’s very own Jake Grafton, who next week is going to be testifying before various committees of Congress about the necessity to fund a new all-weather, carrier-based, stealth attack plane. No doubt this Captain Bligh will be questioned closely by concerned congressmen about his inability to see beyond the end of his nose. So my question is this—just what the hell do you gentlemen suggest I tell the congressmen?”

  The agents looked at each other, then the admiral.

  “We need this airplane,” said the admiral. “Any suggestions?”

  “This would be a great plac
e for the truth,” Jake observed.

  It was Camacho who spoke. “The truth is this is a national security matter. Any additional comment will jeopardize an ongoing investigation.”

  “You expect me to go over to the Hill and say that?” Jake asked incredulously. “See this uniform? I’m a naval officer, not a spook. How about the directors of the FBI and CIA go over there and make a little statement behind closed doors, ahead of time?”

  Camacho considered it.

  “They can swear on Bibles or cross their hearts, or whatever it is you spooks do on those rare occasions when you’re really going to come clean.”

  “I suppose we could ask the Director,” Camacho said with a glance at Dreyfus.

  “While you’re mulling that, how about explaining to me and the admiral just what is going on? I’d like to know enough to avoid stepping on my crank, and I don’t think that’s asking too much.”

  “This matter should be resolved in the next few weeks,” Camacho murmured.

  Grafton just stared. The admiral looked equally frosty.

  “Judy was selling information to defense contractors. He—”

  “We know that,” the admiral said testily. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  “He was recruited by a Soviet agent to copy the Athena file. Apparently he agreed to do so. He attempted it Friday afternoon, NSA called us and Henry, Henry beat us here.” He shrugged.

  “How did Admiral Henry learn that there might be an attempt to copy the Athena file?” Dunedin wanted to know.

  “I told him,” Camacho said.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t go into that. Obviously, I had authority to tell him.”

  “Did Henry know that?”

  “Know what?”

  “Know that you had authority to tell him.”

  “I don’t know what he knew. Or thought or suspected. Perhaps.”

  Dunedin’s eyebrow was up. He looked skeptical.

  “What do you want to hear, Admiral? That Henry thought he was getting unauthorized information from a confidential source? Okay, that’s what he thought. Henry was Mr. Naval Aviation. Honest, loyal, brilliant, he had an immense ego. Perhaps that’s why he was Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air. He had the habit of sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, of wanting to know more than the law allowed. For example, we found this notebook in his desk drawer yesterday afternoon.” Camacho took a small spiral notebook from an inside coat pocket and tossed it on the desk.