by Walter Grant
Max spread the local newspaper on the breakfast bar and sat down, eyes glued to the picture of an air force lieutenant on the front page. He recognized Mitchell Cole as the young man standing beside Tolinger during the television interview after the Challenger’s ill-fated flight. Also, Cole was the officer captured on videotape in the official air force sedan with Tolinger on the way to Gilbird’s house. With a cup of coffee in hand he sat down and read every detail surrounding Cole’s death. The story followed the television broadcast pretty much, but in greater depth. One item of interest—the girlfriend involved in the altercation at the Hitching Post was listed as Linda Larkin. Another interesting bit of information: Cole was the officer in charge of security at the MX buildup and checkout facility at Vandenberg. Of further interest was a statement noting the MX team had completed their final checks and the MX had already been moved to the test silo above Missileman beach. The MX should be ready for launch by the end of the week.
Max still could not understand how so many Soviet agents were working in such sensitive DOD positions, but whether he understood it or not made little difference—he needed to know why all these agents were taking so many chances. He did not believe the efforts would culminate in the blowing up of another ICBM.
Unable to check out any of the new leads until dark, he drove to the airport at Santa Maria and chartered a plane to San Diego. By using his computer to search through the memory banks of the CIA and FBI computers he might get lucky with the names Cole and Larkin. Also, by hacking his way through computer files he might turn up some of Bell’s and Hatcher’s associates. He denied the decision was in any way influenced by his burning desire to see Sherry.
Sherry wasn’t at his apartment and he was relieved in one sense, knowing if she were there and asked the wrong question the lying would begin again. On the other hand, he was disappointed, he wanted to see her, touch her, and hold her.
He spent three hours at his computer without turning up anything on either Cole or Larkin. The drug enforcement agency had Bell and Hatcher linked to a couple dozen people each, but nothing tying them to Gilbird or Tolinger or Vandenberg. Taking a break, he stuck a frozen pizza in the oven and made himself a cappuccino. While waiting for the pizza, he gave in to his emotions and dialed Sherry’s apartment in La Jolla. When the answering machine picked up, he listened to her voice and hung up without leaving a message. He called Chalter’s security desk and was informed she had taken a two-week leave of absence and had not been at work for five days. Her clothes were still in his closet, but most of the food in the refrigerator was stale. She apparently hadn’t been in his apartment in several days. He ate the pizza trying not to think about the implications.
Returning his attention to the computer, he spent an hour and a half before getting past DOD safeguards and into air force personal records. Patience paid off. Mitchell Ray Cole was twenty-seven years old, from San Francisco, graduated from UC Berkeley, and held a top secret security clearance. Linda Marie Larkin was thirty-five years old, a graduate of MIT and like Cole, held a top secret security clearance. Max found it very interesting that Linda Marie had been naturalized in 1974.
Greg Carlton, the pilot whose plane Max had chartered for the day, was watching television in the visitors lounge at Montgomery Field—most pilots of small, privately owned aircraft used either Montgomery in Mira Mesa or Gillespie in El Cajon when flying into San Diego. They were airborne within half an hour, heading northwest. Their flight plan carried them west of Catalina, well out of the heavy commercial traffic around Los Angeles. Carlton continued flying along the Channel Islands until they were over San Miguel, and then turned north towards Point Conception. The Point Conception light was dead ahead and ten miles away when he turned northwest again along the coast. Just past Honda Point Carlton hugged the coast as closely as he could without violating military air space while Max took pictures of the same areas of Vandenberg he had photographed earlier on the way down the coast.
It was well after dark when they landed in Santa Maria and by the time the Photos Finished While You Wait outfit developed his film it was nearly ten o’clock. Thirty minutes later he parked the TransAM across the street from the Hitching Post. Not many cars were parked on the street. For some reason people patronizing bars liked to hide their cars, which probably accounted for bars always having parking areas in the rear.
Half a dozen couples were on the dance floor as a country western band finished their number and announced their first break of the evening. Most of the tables surrounding the dance floor were occupied, but the tables to the rear were mostly empty, as were the stools at the bar. Max chose the stool at the end of the bar farthest from the band. The bartender, in his midforties with ex-military written all over him, asked, “What’re you having, man?”
“Whatever’s on tap?”
The bartender pushed a frosty mug of cold beer across the bar. “That’ll be a buck fifty.”
Max folded two fifty dollar bills, placed them on the bar, and pushed them toward the bartender. “The change is yours if you have time to answer a couple of questions.”
Without hesitating the bartender replied, “For that kind of money I’ll make the time. Ask your questions.”
“Do you know the guy they found dead this morning over on the Vandenberg golf course, Mitchell Cole?”
“Sure, I knew him, he was a regular.”
“Were you here last night when he had the fight with his girlfriend?”
“I was here last night when he got into it with Linda Larkin, but she wasn’t his girlfriend. His girlfriend is sitting at that table over in the corner getting drunk.” He nodded toward the back. Max glanced toward the corner and then took a second look. A guy about twenty-two or twenty-three sat alone staring into an empty rock glass; Max turned back to face the bartender.
“Are you telling me Cole was…” The bartender answered before Max could finish.
“Yep, queer’s a three-dollar bill.”
“You wouldn’t BS me, would you, buddy?”
“Why would I do that, man? Ask anybody. They came in here all the time, everybody knows.” The bartender picked up the two fifties and slipped them into his pocket.
“What’s your name?”
“Thomas Durham. Most folks call me Tommy D.”
“Well, Tommy D., I’ve got two more bills identical to the ones you just put in your pocket if you think you might have a little more time later on.”
“Hey man, like I said before, for a hundred bucks, I’ll make the time.”
Max glanced toward the corner table before asking, “What’s he drinking?”
The bartender grinned and, with his pinkie dangling back and forth answered in a feminine-sounding voice, “Black Russian.”
“Fix me one. Do you get a break later on?”
“Yeah, I’ll take a break about fifteen minutes before the band comes back. I’ll be out in the kitchen.”
Max picked up the Black Russian the bartender placed in front of him and asked, “What’s his name?”
The bartender grinned again and replied, “John Glasman.”
“Did Cole have a nickname?”
“I don’t think so. Everybody called him Mitch.”
“Thanks.” Max walked over, placed the drink in front of Glasman, pulled out the chair nearest the wall, and sat down. He took a swig of his beer, put the mug on the table, and said, “I’m sorry about Mitch. You okay?”
The guy looked up and started to speak, but thought better of it, returning his gaze to the drink Max had placed on the table.
“Hey, look, you don’t know me, but I’ve known the Cole family for a long time. Mitch called me last night at my home in San Francisco, said he was in some kind of trouble and asked me to drive down, said he would meet me here. The bartender told me what happened, said you two were close. I thought I should talk to you.”
“I don’t feel like talking to anybody. Who are you, anyway? How do you know Mitch?”
“Lik
e I said, I’m a friend of the family, that’s as far as it goes.” Max wanted to make sure Glasman knew that Cole, finding himself in trouble, hadn’t turned to a former lover for help. If John was willing to talk, Max didn’t want him inhibited by jealousy.
“Mitch called, said he was in a lot of trouble and wanted out but was afraid of going to prison. He thought I might be able to help.”
“Why would he think you could help?”
Max eased the ID case out of his pocket and placed it on the table beside John’s drink. He now had a different card behind the window and the gold badge was authentic.
“You don’t look like FBI.”
“Yeah, well, so what does the FBI look like?”
Glasman didn’t answer.
“When did Mitch start doing cocaine?”
The kid finally broke. Angered, he snapped, “Mitch didn’t use drugs. They killed him! He was going to tell everything and they killed him.” The kid put his face in his hands and kept mumbling, “They killed him.”
Max had no doubt Cole had been murdered, but could only guess at the reason. Glasman knew very little about Cole’s involvement with Gilbird or Tolinger, but did surmise that Linda Larkin knew he’d lied about his homosexual tendencies to get into the air force and by threatening to tell his commanding officer had blackmailed him into a breach of air force security. Blackmail was never a one-time deal. Over the last couple of years Larkin had won him over to her cause, probably made easier by Cole’s brief association with a radical group of peace activists at Berkeley. These ties had somehow been overlooked or disregarded by the air force when making its investigation for the purpose of issuing a security clearance.
John had been present when the argument with Linda Larkin ensued, after Larkin left, and according to him, Mitchell began downing drinks one after the other and started mumbling about people dying. When John asked what he was talking about, he just kept on mumbling about how thousands of people were about to die and how he had to stop it from happening, but he never mentioned how or when they would die. Glasman worked the graveyard shift at an all-night truck stop in Buellton and had left the Hitching Post at 11:15. He didn’t know when or how Mitchell left the Hitching Post.
Max started to get up from the table, hesitated, and leaned close to Glasman, and conveyed a warning. “If these people think Mitch told you about their plans, and my guess is they will assume he told you everything, they’ll come after you.”
The kid threw down the drink Max had brought to the table and replied, “Who cares?”
“Nevertheless, I think you might be in danger and my advice to you is to get up right now and get as far away from this town as you possibly can.”
Glasman sat quietly and just kept staring at the empty glass in front of him. As the band tuned up for their next set Max got up from the table and walked toward the kitchen.
Everyone in the bar had heard and seen the fight which ended when Larkin slapped Cole and stormed out. Tommy D. was of the opinion that she staged the fight, trying to make it look like a lovers’ quarrel. He had answered questions for the police, but hadn’t volunteered any information. The press either jumped to the wrong conclusion or Linda Larkin had insisted it was, indeed, an altercation between lovers. She was a regular customer, usually in the company of a couple of civilians who worked at the missile build-up and test facility. Often all three drank with Mitchell Cole.
“Was Cole alone when he left last night?”
“As far as I know, but he was really wasted. I think he was probably too drunk to even find his car, much less drive it away. My guess is that someone was waiting for him in the parking lot.”
Max pulled two more fifty-dollar bills from his pocket and passed them to the bartender. He also let him see the FBI identification. “My guess is Cole was murdered to keep him from talking to the authorities. It might be healthier for you if you forgot you ever saw or talked to me.”
“Got you covered, bro. And by the way, I had you pegged for a fed the minute you walked in.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you can’t fool an old pro, can you?” Tommy D. laughed and shook the hand Max extended.
The explosion blew a gaping hole in the wall, sending pots, pans, and broken dishes flying about the kitchen. The band stopped playing abruptly; people in the bar were either yelling and running toward the parking lot or screaming and pushing their way through the front door out onto the street.
Max didn’t look in the parking lot. He knew what the explosion meant. It meant John Glasman, no longer at the corner table, had left to go to his job at the all-night truck stop in Buellton, got in his car, turned the ignition key, and died.
Max parked his Pontiac near the entrance to the Airport Hilton in Santa Maria. Greg Carlton hadn’t been all that excited about getting out of bed in the middle of the night and flying to Sacramento. But when Max agreed to the price he quoted, Carlton became a bit more enthusiastic. At any rate, Greg was waiting and when he saw the TransAM pull into the parking lot, cranked up his van and drove over to where Max parked near the hotel entrance. Two hours later Greg set his twin Cessna down on a cropduster strip near Davis, about twenty miles southwest of Sacramento. Max had insisted they not land at either Natomas or Sacramento Executive.
The time spent waiting for a taxi was longer than the drive into old Sacramento—practically every city in the country had restored an older area as a tourist trap, always designated “Old Town.” All the boutiques and gift shops were closed, but a few bars and a couple of trendy restaurants along the river were still open. The taxi dropped Max in front of the Gold Rush Saloon. He paid the driver and waited until the taxi was out of sight before heading toward the capitol buildings a half dozen blocks to the north.
The directory in front of the capitol directed him to the Immigration and Naturalization Services building. He doubted there was an alarm system, since legitimate visitors to the State Department buildings as well as janitors and service people came and went at all hours. Also, security was present on the capitol grounds twenty-four hours a day. The front door was easy enough. The door to Records was a snap. Hand vaulting the counter separating the waiting area from the work spaces, he found what he was looking for in one of the first cubicles—a computer terminal. He fired up the terminal and thirty minutes later had what he wanted. Linda Larkin was born Natasha Von Hegel, her birthplace was Semipalatinsic, USSR. Whoever had compiled information for her security clearance had left out, either accidentally or purposely, this bit of information. A large number of Soviet citizens fled their homeland each year. A great many of these refugees were granted U.S. citizenship and America was better off for having them, but a handful of spies slipped through as well. It would be interesting to get a look at the signature approving her clearance. He would lay odds the same person approved Cole.
During his walk back down Capitol Avenue toward Old Town he marveled at the vast amounts of data stored in computers and the ease with which information could be retrieved and with the right password altered or even deleted, allowing people to disappear and assume new identities. He thought about how easily he had pilfered the memory banks of DOD, CIA, FBI, DEA, and other computers from the privacy of his own home. George Orwell’s warning flashed across his consciousness.
Dawn was breaking when Carlton stopped his van in the parking lot by the TransAM. Greg had wanted his money up front. Max had agreed, and paid willingly. Now he pulled a couple of hundred dollars more from his pocket and passed the money over to Carlton.
“Thanks. Anytime you need a pilot, I’m your man. Just let me get a little sleep in between flights next time. Okay?”
“I hear you.” They shook hands and Greg drove away. Max had been awake for more than thirty-six hours. He was tired and needed a long rest, a rest he knew he couldn’t afford to take; a couple of hours would have to do.
The trunk of the TransAM contained several neatly arranged bags and suitcases of various sizes. He chose a small shoulder bag, slammed the tru
nk lid shut, and walked across the parking lot toward the Hilton.
IN OVER HIS HEAD
He had a choice between the quietest room in the hotel, according to the desk clerk, and a nonsmoking room on the lower level next to the parking lot. Max wondered why nonsmoking rooms were always in the least desirable wing and on the lowest levels. He chose quiet. The room was, just as the desk clerk guaranteed, quiet and comfortable. He pulled the bedspread to the end of the bed and let it fall on the floor, removed his shoes, flopped on the bed, and was asleep almost immediately.
It was only three hours later that his wrist alarm summoned him from a deep sleep. After his wake-up ritual to assure no one was in the room, he stretched, wiped the sleep from his eyes, stripped off his clothes, stumbled to the bathroom, scraped off his two-day-old beard with the throwaway razor provided by the hotel, and using a plastic bag from one of the trash cans to keep the bandages on his left hand dry, took a long and refreshing shower. Now alert and rested, he donned a fresh set of clothes, stuffed the dirty ones into his shoulder bag, picked up the room key, and headed for the door.
The desk clerk gave Max a puzzled look and inquired, “You’re checking out, sir?”
“That’s right.”
“But you checked in less than four hours ago.”
“That’s right.”
“Is there a problem, sir?” Max figured the young man had the urge to run up and see if the furniture was still in the room.
“Not if you’ll give me a receipt and point me towards a restaurant serving breakfast.” The young man handed Max a copy of the room charges, along with a complimentary newspaper, and directed him to a restaurant just off the lobby. Thirty seconds after being seated by the hostess a waitress poured him a cup of coffee and took his order. He unfolded the newspaper and sipped the hot, steaming coffee. On the front page, along with pictures, were two columns on the car bomb that had killed John Glasman. No one had been arrested; however, authorities were looking for a man seen talking with Glasman just prior to his death. Investigators had little to go on as descriptions of the man were vague. Well, it looked like Tommy D. still wasn’t volunteering information.