The Minotaur

by Stephen Coonts

  “Nice place you have here,” Jake Grafton said.

  “Rustic as hell. I like it. Makes me feel like Thomas Jefferson.”

  “He’s real dead,” Toad said.

  “Yeah. Sometimes I feel that way too, out here without the traffic and airplane noise and five million people all scurrying…” They were in the study now, a corner room with high windows and ceilings. The walls were covered with books. Newspapers scattered on the carpet, some kind of a red-and-blue Oriental thing.

  Caplinger waved his hand toward chairs and sank into a large stuffed chair with visibly cracked leather.

  He stared at them. Toad avoided his gaze and looked at the books and the bric-a-brac tucked between them. By Toad’s chair was a pipe stand. In it was a corncob pipe, blackened from many fires.

  “I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be you, Captain,” Caplinger said. “Didn’t recognize your voice on the phone this morning.”

  Jake Grafton rubbed his face with his hands and crossed his legs.

  “We were just driving through the neighborhood, Royce,” Toad said, “and thought we’d drop by and ask why you turned traitor and gave all those secrets to the Russians. Why did you?”

  Jake caught Toad’s eye. He moved his head ever-so-slightly from side to side.

  Jake addressed Caplinger. “Mr. Secretary, we have a problem. We know you’re the Minotaur and we have some ideas, probably erroneous, about the events of the last few months. Four or five people have died violently. Mr. Tarkington’s wife, Rita Moravia, is a navy test pilot who was seriously injured, almost killed, because various law enforcement agencies failed to properly investigate and make arrests on information they had had for some time. To make a long story short, we came here to ask if you would like to discuss this matter with us before we go to the authorities and the press. Do you?”

  “Are you going to the press?”

  “That depends.”

  “You notice I didn’t ask about the authorities. That doesn’t worry me, but for reasons—well!”

  Caplinger slapped his knees and stood suddenly. Toad started. “Relax, son. I only eat lieutenants at the office. Come on, let’s make some coffee.” He led the way into the kitchen.

  He filled a pot with water. The pot went on the stove, after he lit the gas jet with a match. He put a paper filter in a drip pot and ladled three spoonfuls of coffee in. “You two are entitled to an explanation. Not legally, but morally. I’m sorry about your wife, Lieutenant. So was Luis Camacho. We had too much at stake to move prematurely.” He shrugged. “Life is complicated.”

  Caplinger pulled a stool from under the counter and perched on it.

  “Three years ago, no, four, a KGB colonel defected to the United States. It wasn’t in the papers, so I won’t tell you his name. He thought he was brimming with useful information that we would be delighted to have in return for a ton of money and a new life in the West. The money he got and the new identity he got. But the information wasn’t worth much. He did, however, have one piece of information that he didn’t think much of but we found most interesting.”

  Caplinger checked the water on the stove.

  “It seems that one day about three years before he defected he paid a visit to the Aquarium, the Moscow headquarters of the GRU, which is Soviet military intelligence. His errand doesn’t really matter. During his two or three hours there he was taken into the office of a general who was not expecting company. On the desk was a sheet of paper with four names. The colonel read the names upside down before the general covered the paper with a handy file.”

  The water began to rumble. Caplinger checked the pot as he continued. “Under hypnosis the defector could remember three of the four names. We recognized one of them. V. Y. Tsybov.”

  The coffeepot began to whistle. As he reached for it Caplinger said, “Vladimir Yakovich Tsybov was the real name of Luis Camacho.”

  He poured the hot water into the drip cone and watched the black fluid run out the bottom. “Luis Camacho was a Soviet mole, a deep illegal sent to this country when he was twenty years old. He was half Russian and half Armenian, and with his olive skin and facial characteristics, he seemed a natural to play the role of a Mexican-American. He knew just a smattering of Spanish, but what the hey. His forefathers, so said his bio, had been in this country since Texas became a state.

  “Tsybov, now Camacho, attended a university in Texas and graduated with honors. He obtained a law degree at night while he worked days. The FBI recruited him.

  “It’s funny”—Caplinger shook his head—“that J. Edgar Hoover’s lily-white FBI needed a smart Mexican-American. But at the time Hoover was casting suspicious eyes on the farm-labor movement in California, which was just being organized, and needed some Chicanos to use as undercover agents. So Luis Camacho was investigated and approved and recruited.”

  Caplinger laughed. “Hoover, the paranoid anti-communist, recruited a deep Soviet plant! Oh, they tried to check Camacho’s past, and the reports to Washington certainly looked thorough. But the agents in the field—all good, white Anglo Protestants with dark suits and short haircuts—couldn’t get much cooperation from the Chicano population of Dallas and San Antonio. So rather than admit failure to the Great One, they sort of filled in the gaps and sent the usual reports to Washington. And the FBI got themselves a new agent.

  “How do you like your coffee?”

  Royce Caplinger got milk from the refrigerator and let Toad add some to his coffee. They carried their cups back to the study.

  “Where was I?”

  “Camacho was a deep plant.”

  “Yes. Anyway, being smart and competent, he rose as far as the racial politics of the FBI would allow, which really wasn’t very far. Still, amazingly enough, Luis Camacho liked America. But that is another story.” Caplinger set his coffee beside him. “Maybe I should fill it in, though. Luis was a very special human being. Luis—”

  “There were three other names on the list,” Toad said irritably. His whole manner told what he thought of Caplinger’s tale.

  “Ah yes,” Caplinger said, looking at the lieutenant thoughtfully. “Three more names, two of which the defector could remember, one which he could not. The problem was we didn’t know who any of the other three were. Tsybov was Camacho, whom the Soviets thought was still a plant under deep cover, a sleeper, available for use if the need arose. They didn’t know that Camacho had revealed himself to us voluntarily almost ten years before.”

  Caplinger looked from face to face. “You see the problem. The Soviets had three more agents in America planted deep. And we didn’t know who they were!

  “Naturally the intelligence coordinating committee took this matter up. What could be done?”

  “So you became the Minotaur.” Jake Grafton made it a statement, not a question.

  “We needed bait, good bait. We wanted those three deep agents. Or two or one. Whatever we could get. Someone had to become the Minotaur, so the President chose me.”

  “The President?” Toad said, incredulously.

  “Of course. Who better to choose what military secrets the Soviets would find interesting? Who better to reveal the aces?” Caplinger sipped his coffee.

  “So you…” Jake began. “You wrote the letters and mailed them?”

  “Yes. The National Security Agency gave me the computer codes I needed and helped with the encryptions. But I had to sit down and write each letter. The human touch, you see. Each letter would reveal something of the man who wrote it, so they all had to be written by one man.

  “Much to our dismay, the instrument the Soviets chose to exploit the gifts of the Minotaur was a traitor-for-hire who had already approached their embassy a year or so before. Terry Franklin. What Terry Franklin didn’t know was that the National Security Agency has special programs that reveal when each selected classified document is accessed. He wrote a trapdoor program that got him by the first security layer, but there was another that he didn’t know about. So we were i
mmediately on to him. And immediately faced with a dilemma.”

  “If you arrested him too soon, the Soviets might just ignore the Minotaur.”

  “Precisely, Captain. For this to work, the information had to be very good stuff, the best. And we had to give them enough so that they would become addicted to it. Then, and only then, would they feel the potential profit was enough to risk deep plants that had been in place for twenty to thirty years.” The secretary looked from face to face. “Don’t you see? These sleepers were assets! They belonged to someone in the GRU who had built his career on the fact that he had these assets, which would someday, at the right moment, be of incalculable value. Our task was to convince him or his superiors that now was that moment.”

  “So you let Franklin do his thing.”

  “Precisely. And we gave them excellent information. We let them see the best stuff that we had. We got them addicted, and curious. So one day Franklin’s control approached Camacho, Tsybov.” He lifted a finger skyward for dramatic effect. “That was a very important event. The Soviets had gone to one of the names on the list. Now we knew we were on the right track. We were heartened.”

  Caplinger rose quickly from his chair and began to pace. He explained that Harlan Albright, the control, was a GRU colonel. He made contact with Camacho, moved into the house beside him, insisted on biweekly briefings. “What the Soviets wanted, of course, was the identity of the Minotaur. So the game began for Luis Camacho. We didn’t authorize him to reveal the Minotaur’s identity. But he knew. He had to know. He knew from the first. He was the man who was actually going to uncover the sleepers.”

  He was silent for a moment, thinking it over yet again. “Once Camacho was in the game, he became the key player. It was inevitable. He had to appear to be a double agent and yet he had to force the Soviets to act. To act as we wanted them to. He was playing a dangerous role. And to appreciate how good he was at it, you would have to have known Luis Camacho very, very well. I didn’t, but I got the flavor of the man. In his own way, in his own field, he was a master.”

  Caplinger stopped at the window and looked out at the meadows and distant blue mountains, which were a thin line on the western horizon. “Inevitably, and I do not use that word lightly, people were going to get hurt. Smoke Judy was an information peddler. He killed Harold Strong—your predecessor, Captain—when Strong found out about his activities. Camacho learned his identity, but we thought he might be of use later, so the committee ordered him left alone. Certainly no one could foresee that an indirect result of that decision would be the loss of the TRX prototype and your wife’s injuries, Lieutenant, but…there were reasons that looked good at the time why it was handled the way it was.” He finished lamely and turned to face Tarkington. “I am sorry.”

  Tarkington was examining his running shoes. He retied one of the laces.

  “Anyway, there were several other deaths. A woman was killed who witnessed a drop set up by the Soviets to give Terry Franklin information, a Mrs. Matilda Jackson. Harlan Albright killed her, after we ordered Camacho to reveal her identity to Albright as proof of his bona fides, his commitment. Camacho refused at first, but we convinced him. This was the way it had to be. Better to sacrifice one to save the many.” The secretary went back to his chair and sat heavily. He shook his head slowly. “Too often,” he said softly, “we must assume some of God’s burden. It is not light.”

  “Too bad,” said Toad Tarkington, now staring at the secretary, “that after you gave an innocent civilian the chop, this whole thing fizzled.”

  “Did it?” Caplinger’s voice assumed an edge, a hard flinty edge. “Did it now?”

  When Toad didn’t respond, Caplinger went on, his voice back to normal. “So after three years and some damn tragic risks, the stage was set. After a few carefully chosen facts were fed to Albright, he killed Terry Franklin. That was a masterpiece of cunning, well set up by Camacho. Of course Luis didn’t like it, not he, but he played his part to perfection. Albright personally eliminated the Soviets’ only access to the Pentagon computer. He had to find another. Because now the Minotaur offered the richest gift of all: Athena.”

  “Smoke Judy,” said Jake Grafton, unable to keep silent.

  “Yes. Smoke Judy, a bitter little man who had killed once and found how easy it is. Of course, that was the crisis. When Judy failed, as fail he surely would with Luis Camacho watching him, Albright would have no other choice. He would have to go to another deep plant on the list! And he would make this inevitable choice of his own free will, unpressured by anyone. That was our thinking, at least. Didn’t work out that way. Camacho thought Albright was onto him and made a decision on his own to warn Vice Admiral Henry about the risk to Athena.” He gestured to the heavens. “It was all downhill from there. Henry took it upon himself to apprehend Judy. You know how that turned out. The jig was up. Camacho had no choice. He sent men to arrest Albright.”

  “You were willing to give away Athena?” Jake’s horror was in his voice.

  “We on the committee were willing to take the risk Albright would get it, which isn’t precisely the same thing, Captain. By now the Minotaur’s credentials were impeccable. We thought that surely, for this exquisite technical jewel, the Soviets would brush the dirt off one or two deep agents.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “No. Perhaps Albright was suspicious. Probably was. Camacho knew that Albright saw the whole operation too clearly, so he revealed the Minotaur’s actual identity to save the game. It wasn’t enough. With Judy and Albright in hiding, the Minotaur wrote one more letter, giving the access codes for the new Athena file. Then we waited for the Soviets to activate one of the sleepers. They didn’t. What happened next was Albright kidnapped you, swiped all the Athena information he could readily lay hands on, then went to Camacho’s house to kill him. Camacho had been expecting Albright to try something, but we didn’t know exactly what it would be. When Luis Camacho came down those stairs and saw you there that afternoon—then he knew. The Soviets weren’t going to invest any more major assets in this operation. His sole hope of getting the sleepers’ names was Harlan Albright, who might know.”

  Jake said, “I wondered why the Athena file was suddenly renamed, all the access codes changed.”

  “Henry shouldn’t have done that. Camacho shouldn’t have warned him. But Camacho was worried he didn’t have all the possible holes covered and he knew Athena’s real value. Still, it would have worked if Henry hadn’t interfered.” Caplinger sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “We had to let the Russians work at it. If they succeeded too easily, they would have smelled the setup. No, our mistake was giving them the real Minotaur. Perhaps they found his identity too troublesome once they knew.”

  Caplinger shrugged. “After Judy failed, we wanted Albright badly. Our thinking then was that perhaps we could get the names from him, willingly or with hypnosis and drugs. We thought the odds about three to one that he knew the names then. If the GRU was even contemplating using a sleeper, the controller had to be briefed in advance, before the possibility became the necessity. Yet Albright evaded the clowns sent to pick him up. The agents thought they were going to arrest a mail-fraud suspect.” Caplinger spread his hands, a gesture of frustration. “So we waited, hoping against hope a sleeping mole would awaken. It didn’t happen.”

  “So you failed,” Toad said.

  “Oh no, Mr. Tarkington. The Minotaur succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Not exactly in the way we expected, of course, but the benefits are real and tangible. This operation was one of the most successful covert intelligence operations ever undertaken by any nation. Ever.”

  “Please explain, sir.”

  “I see the disbelief written all over your face, Captain.”

  “My impression is that you people gave away the ranch, sir. Just how many top secret programs did you compromise?”

  “We showed them the crown jewels, Captain. We had to. They would never have taken the
bait otherwise. The three buried moles are very valuable.”

  “Pooh.” Tarkington shook his head. “I’m not buying it. Those three agents may have turned, exactly like Camacho. If the Soviets ever try to use them, those guys may run straight to the FBI. The Russians may not even know where they are now.”

  “You are a very young man, Lieutenant.” Caplinger was scathing. “You have a lot to learn. The deep plants are valuable to the Soviets as chips in the Cold War poker games, at home and abroad. They are valuable in exactly the same way that thermonuclear weapons are valuable, ICBMs, boomer submarines—I could go on. Those three buried agents are hole cards, Lieutenant. They may even be dead. Yet we can never afford to ignore them. Do you begin to understand?”

  “Yessir.” Toad looked miserable. “But—”

  “There are layers and layers and layers.”

  “But listen,” Toad objected reasonably. “We didn’t even know these men existed until four years ago. What if they don’t?”

  “Aha! The light becomes a glow!”

  Caplinger leaped from his chair, galvanized. “Perhaps they don’t exist! Perhaps the defection of a mid-level KGB officer was a ploy, and the list was bait to make us think they had three agents. They write the list, they leave it where a man of dubious professional accomplishments, a man of dubious loyalty and dubious value, will see it Very convenient, you must admit! And in the fullness of time he is given an opportunity to defect, which he, no fool, takes as the best of a poor range of options.”

  Caplinger’s voice rose to a shout. “And he gets here and tells us his little tale. We give it credence. We must! We have no other choice.”

  “I’m slightly baffled, Mr. Secretary,” Jake said dryly. “Just how did the Minotaur succeed, if that word can even be used in these kinds of—what the hell are they?—games?”