The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  In this light, Forstner’s presence made a lot of sense. Stephanie rubbed her eyes, turned over the sheet she was studying, and called a new reference onto the screen at her elbow. What were the sources? What corroborated them? Could it mean anything else if looked at a different way? Is this the right question? In ways it was more demanding than scientific research, requiring a peculiar twist of mind. The world that science studied could be complex and devious at times; but it never deliberately lied.

  Bassen picked up a phone and called somebody in a library somewhere. A clerk came in and handed Landis a file from another group working next door. Stephanie checked an entry in another report. She sat back to ease her cramped shoulders and looked across at Landis. “This has even got a note of somebody’s shirt and shoe sizes,” she said. “Is it important? I mean, was it really worth somebody’s while finding that out, and somebody else’s to record it in here?”

  Landis looked up and grinned faintly from the far end of the table. “You never know,” he said. “It gets to be a habit never to let any scrap go, no matter how trivial it seems.” He gulped from a cup of lukewarm coffee. “I’ll give you a good example. In the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israelis wiped out the entire Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces in the first couple of hours. The main reason was because they knew just about everything about the other side. They knew the names, abilities, popularity, and habits of the army commanders down to platoon level. Even the menus for the meals served in the sergeants’ messes.”

  Stephanie looked puzzled. “What use was that to anyone?”

  Landis’s grin broadened. “In the following days, the Israelis captured somewhere around three thousand Egyptians. Having that information enabled them to make sure that their enemies were better fed as prisoners than they had been in their own camps. A little bit of subtle propaganda, you see.”

  Bassen finished his phone call, and at that moment the door opened and Theo McCormick came in. He was in his fifties, a burly, forceful man with thinning hair receding above a tanned brow, dark, alert, mirthful eyes, a snub nose, and a powerful, shadowy jaw with strong, even teeth, which was the first thing most people said they noticed about him. His energy and dynamism had become famous on the campaign trail before the election, and it was generally anticipated that he would play a far stronger role in the new administration than was traditional for the vice president. He was holding a copy of the report on Stephanie’s activity in California, which he had been reading upstairs. “You did a good job,” he told her. His voice was husky, with a hollow tone to it.

  “Thank you.”

  “Talk to us first if you ever want to go full-time.” He looked at the other two. “What’s the assessment of it so far?”

  Landis and Bassen glanced at each other. They had been arguing all morning and still hadn’t reached agreement. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, Stephanie had come to realize. Skepticism and dissent were healthy in this business, just as in science. Nothing hid truth more effectively than unchallenged preconceptions.

  “We don’t read it the same,” Bassen said. “Warren thinks they could be straight. I say it smells.”

  “What bothers you about it?” McCormick asked.

  Bassen massaged his saggy cheeks with his fingers and thumb for a second—he still reminded Stephanie of a bullnecked basset hound. “They did it all wrong. There was no need to take her to the house and no need to reveal themselves. Her only contact should have been through Seybelman. If she wasn’t genuine, she’d be a direct line back to us.” He swept an arm to indicate the papers all over the table and the data on the screens. “We’ve been able to put together all lands of things, just because of that. It doesn’t make sense. It can only be a setup.”

  “What for? Any ideas?”

  Bassen shook his head. “Right now, I don’t know.”

  McCormick looked at Landis. “What’s your side, Warren?”

  “I agree that it doesn’t make sense,” Landis replied. “But only if we assume they don’t trust her. Ron’s right: we’re getting some valuable insights to how the net fits together. We started out from two points that seemed to have nothing to do with each other: Oberwald’s recruitment of Brett, and Eva’s infiltration of a left-leaning political alliance in California. Now they’re starting to look like two ends of the same chain. You see my point—this kind of information is too valuable to be a freebie.” Landis showed his palms for a moment. “But if they really do believe she’s genuine, the whole picture changes. In that case, the reason that Challin gave becomes credible: to let her see for herself the kind of money and clout that’ll be behind her if she does get nailed.”

  “It would also play to the big-time-ambitious line that Eva was working,” McCormick said.

  Landis looked less persuaded by that. “Too transparent,” he said. “The time for that would be after the mission, not before.”

  “That, I agree with,” Bassen said.

  “What are your recommendations, then?” McCormick asked them.

  Bassen led once more. “Well, if they are setting us up, the only way we’ll find out how is by playing along. So I say we go.”

  McCormick nodded and looked at Landis. “Warren?”

  “If they’re straight, and this business with the drugs is really what they want her to do, then we should go, anyway,” Landis replied, “because of the opportunity it gives us to make it backfire. We play along dumb until we know all the details, and then blow it to the public. It’ll set them back a decade and give us a solid first four years.”

  Again McCormick nodded. “Fine. So it leads to the same immediate answer, either way.” He looked at Stephanie. “Any second thoughts?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Good. Well, start doing your homework, because it looks as if we can take it as final now. We’ll be leaving for Cairo in three weeks, and there’s the holiday in between.”

  CHAPTER 43

  That evening, Stephanie met Dave Fenner in a small restaurant on Washington’s G Street, not far from the Constitutional headquarters. Eva had made a point of seeing Dave if he was in town when she visited Washington, and for the benefit of anyone who might have been following Stephanie’s movements now—as was very likely the case—they kept up natural appearances by sticking to the pattern. That she was also supposed to have recently rediscovered her other former lover, Mel, merely provided a touch of added realism. The real reason for the meeting was for Dave to brief Stephanie on her role in the mysterious “Mustapha” affair before his departure for Israel the following morning.

  The place was crowded elbow-to-elbow with a typical Washington mixture of lobbyists, lawyers, political figures of every flavor, and open-eared journalists, making it the worst place in the world to talk about anything sensitive. So they talked about the political situation in the aftermath of the election, and the portents for the future—which fitted in perfectly, because just about everyone else there was discussing the same things too.

  They started with a carafe of wine, and Dave raised his glass. “Well, you and your people did it. Six years ago I’d never have believed it. Here’s to the Tortoise.”

  They clinked their glasses and drank. “Something like it was about due to happen, anyway,” Stephanie said. “There’s a time lag of, oh, I’d say around twenty, thirty years between when a new climate of opinion starts to be felt, and when it becomes reality—the time for a new generation to take charge. The people we’ve had since the end of World War Two were mostly products of the socialist ideological school of the thirties. But what’s finally surfaced today is the movement toward individualism that we saw the beginnings of later. That’s how the Constitutionals made it. They were in touch with the new ideal. They were an expression of it. An amendment is just words on paper. It doesn’t mean anything unless it expresses something that’s already there as a latent mood among the people, waiting to manifest itself.”

  Dave was staring at her wonderingly. “Eva, you never
change,” he said. It was a big compliment. Stephanie smiled.

  There was a Christmas Fair on at the Convention Center on New York Avenue and Ninth Street, which they decided to go and see after lunch. To get some air and stretch their legs, they walked down to Pershing Park, along Pennsylvania Avenue between the FBI Building and the Justice Department, and back up Ninth from there. The stroll outside also afforded them the privacy they’d been seeking.

  “We’ve established that Mustapha is being held captive at a remote PALP camp in northeastern Syria.” Dave’s breath billowed white in the cold winter air as he spoke.

  “You mean the Palestinian group?”

  “Right. How we communicate with him doesn’t matter. But it seems he has important information for us concerning the space defense system—we believe it’s to do with secrets that the Soviets have managed to get hold of. So naturally, our defense people want to know about it.”

  Stephanie nodded. “So where do I fit in?”

  “He’ll only talk to the Constitutional party. Don’t ask me why—apparently you’re the only outfit he trusts.” Dave glanced sideways, his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets. “See what a reputation you’ve gotten yourselves already.”

  “And I’ll be going there with McCormick in January,” Stephanie said. “So I take it that somehow you want me to be the contact that he deals through.”

  “Right. Now listen carefully to the exact words I’m going to use. You’ll be contacted when you get to Cairo. Someone will approach you in your PR capacity and ask, ‘Do you happen to have any signed pictures of Hector Newell—maybe a dozen?’ The mistake is deliberate: Hector. Your line is: ‘I think we’ve given the last one away, but I’ll check. How can I contact you?’ The contact will give you a calling card, and written on the back of that card there will be a phrase. After the talks in Cairo, you go on to Jerusalem. The day before the party leaves there to come home, McCormick is scheduled to make a speech when he goes on TV with the Israeli prime minister. The phrase on the back of the card is to be worked into McCormick’s speech. That will be proof to Mustapha that the channel he’s communicating into does in fact go to the Constitutional party. Mustapha will then use that channel to pass his information.”

  Stephanie frowned. “Why Cairo? Wouldn’t it be easier to wait until I get to Jerusalem?”

  Dave shrugged. “I’d have thought so. But that’s how the Israelis want to play it.”

  “Okay. And that’s it? That’s all you want me to do?”

  “No. When you give McCormick the phrase, you’ll also have to tell him the story about Mustapha, his claim to have important defense information, how the Israelis contacted U.S. intelligence, and his insistence on talking only to your people—the whole works.”

  “So nobody in the party knows about this yet?”

  Dave shook his head. “We agreed with the Israelis that we’ll play it exactly the way Mustapha wants… Now are you sure you’ve got the lines?”

  They went through them again a few times until Stephanie had them memorized. “Will I be able to get in touch with you somehow if I need to?” she asked.

  “I’ll be around,” Dave confirmed. “The card you’ll be given will also have a number written on it. If you subtract each digit from nine, the result will be a Tel Aviv phone number. If you need to get in touch with me, call that number and ask for Benjamin. Give your own name as Gypsy. But don’t use it unless you have to. Emergencies only. If I have to contact you for any reason, I’ll use the same codes. Okay?”

  Stephanie was relieved to learn that the task for Dave would intrude so little into her time. With her official PR duties and whatever Clines’s group wanted—she had agreed to do it, of course, although she wouldn’t know the details until she got to Jerusalem—she had worried about getting overloaded.

  In the last week there had been a lot of media focus upon the drug issue again, with critics of the proposed amendment arguing that a mandated free market would necessarily mean the full legalization of all drugs. Some had gone so far as to imply that the Constitutional leaders stood to profit immensely as a consequence. It had been a strange, unreal experience to watch the public being conditioned for precisely the kind of revelation that the conversation in Malibu had given her a forewarning of. Eva used to say that the system’s function was to program people with what to think, instead of enlightening them on how to think.

  “This still doesn’t seem real,” Stephanie said after they had walked in silence for a while. “Three months ago I was just a physicist, doing a job. What have I been dragged into? I mean, murders, Soviet espionage… now Arab terrorists in the Middle East. Things like that don’t happen.”

  Dave grinned. “Well, obviously that’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Have you seen Mel since Pensacola?”

  “No.”

  “I think he’s having the same problem. I don’t think he knows what’s hit him, either.”

  Dave pursed his lips for a second, then glanced at her. “You know why he’s doing it, don’t you?”

  “Well, it’s what he believes in… things like that, I suppose.”

  “No, more than just that.”

  “What?” It was easier to pretend that it hadn’t crossed her mind too.

  “You. He’s in love with you.”

  “Oh, come on, Dave…”

  “Okay, not quite. He’s in love with a woman who doesn’t exist—a composite of you and Eva that he’s created in his mind. Maybe it’s his defense against admitting to himself that she’s really dead. I don’t know. But he never accepted the real Eva back in Florida. And when the illusion was about to break down, he left to keep it intact. And deep down he’s never lost it. That’s why he used to go out and visit her in LA at first… but there was always something more he needed that wasn’t there. What he really wanted was an impossibility: Eva, plus somebody else that projected out of his own fantasizings. But the two were incompatible. The woman they added up to couldn’t exist in the real world… until now.”

  “What do you mean?” A pointless question.

  “You’re the complement of Eva. But because of this situation, you’ve become her too. See what that means? You are the illusion: the composite that could never exist in real life, but does.”

  Stephanie kept her eyes straight ahead. “Why are you bringing this up, Dave?”

  “Because I’m not certain how it might affect him. He’s been under more strain than he shows. He was trying to find out who he was back in Pensacola, and I’m not sure he has the answer yet.” Dave extracted a hand from his pocket and gestured briefly. “I guess what I’m saying is, be aware of it. I like the guy. I always have. But he can be his own worst enemy when it comes to giving himself a hard time. Don’t make it any worse for him, eh?”

  Stephanie’s features softened into a faint smile. “It’s nice to know you feel that way,” she said.

  One of the big attractions at the Christmas Fair was the Toy Bazaar, which took up one whole end of the building. There were model railroad layouts, talking dolls, radio-operated robots, tanks, trucks, and planes—bringing delight to hundreds of wide-eyed tots and teens who wanted everything in sight, and nervous smiles to the faces of their apprehensive parents, mentally computing bank balances. Colored balls rattled through an incredible Rube Goldberg contraption of spiraling channels, mechanical hoists, and trapdoor bridges that stood six feet from the floor; a conjurer was making bowls of fish disappear and turning bunches of flowers into puffs of purple smoke; there were puzzles and games galore, and a computer that could talk back for hours. And a Santa, of course; a tree festooned with lights and decorations that rose past three storeys of stairs; and carols playing from everywhere. Stephanie slipped an arm through Dave’s, let herself laugh, and found herself enjoying it.

  “Look around,” Dave said. “See, most of the world is just ordinary people who simply just want to live their lives, enjoy their children, and be left alone. They don’t want to be controlle
d by anybody. That’s what it’s all about.”

  He bought her a teddy bear, and afterward they stopped for ice cream. Then they took a cab back to the hotel where Stephanie was staying and talked and laughed over several nightcaps before Dave left. It was the first time that Stephanie had let herself go since Brett was killed.

  Her stay in Washington would be brief. To preserve the appearance of normality, she would go on up to Boston to spend Christmas with Mel. Afterward, she would fly “home” to California. She wasn’t looking forward to that part of it—without Mel there this time, it promised to be an ordeal. But it would afford a last-minute opportunity to gather anything more she could about the Opposition’s plans before she left for Egypt. She had been invited back to Bertram Slessor’s house in Malibu for a New Year’s party.

  CHAPTER 44

  It was only when Mel opened the drawer of his desk after returning to his apartment in Boston, and then looked more closely at the papers he had left sorted on top and on the workshelf to one side, that the cold, prickly realization dawned on him that somebody had been there: the place had been searched.

  In one of his out-of-the-blue observations, Winthram had commented once on how, in general, men tended to be comparatively neat in their personal habits when they were single and to get sloppy after they married, but with women it was the other way around. Mel had often been struck since by the instances he noticed of this being borne out, and while he didn’t consider himself fastidious, he granted that it was to a large degree true in his own case also. He had certain ways of arranging things that had become habitual, and he knew as soon as he set eyes on them that his papers had been disturbed. It had all been very subtle, and considerable care had been exercised in trying to put everything back as it had been… but whoever had been responsible hadn’t gotten it quite right.