The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  Mel held his eye steadily. “Joan Flassner says it was you.”

  “You’re crazy! I never…” Quintz’s voice trailed off. He frowned across at one of the panorama views of Kansas City for a few seconds. “Wait a minute… Yes, that’s right. I passed the suggestion oh to her, but I was only the go-between.” He nodded as the light dawned. “Ah, okay, now I see where you’re coming from. No, I’m not the guy you want to talk to. There was one of the professors there that I used to help out with odd things, and run errands for and stuff. That was where the Oberwald idea came from.”

  “But didn’t you introduce Oberwald and Brett?”

  “Only as a committee function. As I said, I’d just met both of them.”

  Mel sat back, stunned. It hadn’t been Quintz at all. They’d been following a false trail. The Oberwald-Quintz connection had never existed. And the new information they were hearing made more sense, too, as Mel thought it through: A university professor with the right leanings would be ideally placed to keep an early watch out for potentially useful talents. Which left only one question…

  But before Mel could ask it, Quintz, who had been looking at him oddly, said, “I remember you, now. You’re the guy who used to go with that girl who lived up over the restaurant on Palafox right?”

  “That’s right, The Viennese,” Mel said. “Her name was Eva…’. But getting back to this professor, who was he?”

  “It was a she, not a he. That was what made me think of your girlfriend, Eva. She and Eva had a big fight once. Apparently she had a husband—the professor did—who was kind of popular with the students, and she always had this idea that he was fooling around. Well, one time she accused Eva of letting him inside her pants, and there was this almighty scene—I guess Eva wasn’t the kind you say things like that to and get away with. I’m probably the only person who knew about it. I don’t think it ever went further, even to the husband… but I know Eva never went near their place again. Before that, Eva used to visit them all the time. A lot of the students did.”

  Mel was listening, dazed. He already knew now who the informant had been. He had known her himself all along, all those years. “Who was it?” he asked mechanically.

  “She was an American-history professor who lived out on the Island. Her husband taught at UWF too—politics and economics. They were both into the Constitutional movement in a big way, back in the early days. That’s why there were always a lot of students there. Brodstein, her name was. Martha Brodstein.”

  And the Brodsteins had been involved, unofficially, in the mission that had taken Dave Fenner to Israel. If Martha was a conduit to an organization that had Soviet connections, it meant that he could already be completely compromised.

  • • •

  “I think I’m beginning to understand why Mustapha will only trust the Constitutional party itself,” Robert Winthram said when Mel and Evron told him of their fears upon their return to Boston. “There’s only one thing to do, Melvin. You have to take the whole thing directly to Henry Newell. Who else is there to go to?”

  CHAPTER 50

  With all his journeyings up and down, and back and forth across the U.S.A., Mel was beginning to feel like a shuttlecock by the time he arrived at Washington National Airport after making arrangements to see Bassen and Landis. It didn’t especially feel like what he had imagined clandestine work of a nationally sensitive nature would be. The man waiting to meet him among the horde of people holding signs and placards at the arrivals as they came off the jetway from the Boston shuttle was at least six feet six, exaggerated even more by his lean, hollow look and protruding upper teeth, and wearing an ill-fitting raincoat with the collar turned, and a black fedora, all of which made him blend into the surroundings about as inconspicuously as a pork pie in a synagogue. He talked about football, next week’s weather prospects, Beltway congestion, and other topics that were of no interest to Mel whatever, all the way into the city.

  Despite the pressures that came with recently having won the presidential election, Newell wanted to be present to hear what Mel had to say. He had been in the Capitol all morning, and Mel was taken to the Senate Offices Buildings across Constitution Avenue, where a private room had been found for them to talk. George Slade and Larry Molineaux were absent this time, George having gone to Egypt with McCormick’s party to handle security arrangements, and Larry remaining at his normal desk in the West Coast office.

  Since the whole purpose was to warn Dave Fenner somehow of what Mel had discovered about Martha Brodstein, Mel had no choice but to reveal Dave’s working arrangement with first Eva, and then Stephanie, which so far had not been mentioned to the Constitutional people. Because of the uncertainties attending the Washington environment, Dave’s intention had been for Stephanie to broach this with McCormick directly, after they got to Israel. On the plane down, Mel had prepared himself for some recriminations over this. Bassen sounded the most displeased. In defense, Mel said, “Ever since I got mixed up in this, everybody has been cautioning me against saying anything that doesn’t have to be said. We couldn’t see that Dave’s involvement affected the job that Stephanie agreed to do for you in any way. We pressed him on it. He was adamant. He was the professional. We went along with doing it his way.”

  “I can see Mr. Shears’s point,” Newell said. “In any case it’s all water under the bridge now. Let’s save our time and energy for the future.”

  “Is that everything, now?” Landis asked Mel. “Is there anything else at all, however inconsequential it may seem, that we still haven’t heard about?”

  Mel shook his head. “No, now you know everything I do. That’s it.”

  There was a silence while their thoughts returned to the immediate problem. At length Landis said to Mel, “Stephanie must have some way of contacting Fenner over there.”

  “She’ll be given a Tel Aviv phone number sometime before she leaves Cairo.”

  “You don’t know exactly which department, or whatever, Fenner works for?” Bassen checked.

  Mel could only shake his head. “Sorry.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Can we trust our satellite link to Theo through the embassy there?” Newell asked. “Is it secure enough to risk sending a message for her to pass on?”

  Bassen looked dubious. “With the things we’ve been finding out, I wouldn’t guarantee it,” he said.

  “We might have to send someone out there,” Landis said.

  Bassen bunched his mouth as he wrestled for a moment with whatever was going through his mind. Finally he said, “I hear what you’re saying, but is it our problem? Fenner doesn’t work for us… we don’t know who the hell he works for. We didn’t send him there. He’s a professional. He knows the breaks.”

  “Yes, but we did send Stephanie, Ron,” Newell pointed out. “If she’s mixed up in whatever Fenner’s doing, then whatever affects him could involve her, too. Even if we didn’t know about it at the time, we can’t wash our hands of the responsibility.”

  “Hmm.” Bassen didn’t seem happy, but he wasn’t going to make an argument of it. “Who can we send?” he asked. “All my people are having to be in two places at once as it is. And we don’t have many with the right background information on this, anyway.”

  “With the inauguration due shortly, it’s difficult,” Newell agreed. “What about Larry out in LA? Could we spare him if we got him across here?”

  “Why don’t I go?” Mel heard a voice saying, then realized it was his. Three heads jerked around to look at him in surprise.

  It had been automatic, from somewhere deep down inside him, driven by reasons he didn’t understand. There were too many confused emotions boiling around and intermingled for him to have had a hope of explaining them; and besides, they were not germane, nor even rational.

  He floundered for a few seconds while the others continued staring at him, then tossed up his open hands. “You’ve just agreed that you don’t have anybody else who knows the whole story. And even if you fo
und someone that you could clue up in time, what would happen if Stephanie failed to make contact, and he had to go on to Israel to try finding Dave directly? He wouldn’t even recognize Dave if they passed each other in a hotel lobby. You don’t have a picture of him.” He stopped and looked from one to another, inviting them to disagree if they knew something that he didn’t. Evidently they did not. Mel went on. “Whereas I’ve known both of them personally for years. I possess the one thing that nobody else you could send could have: a knowledge of the whole situation, and of the people involved. That has to count for something.” He sighed and threw in his only other card. “And besides, it might not really be your problem, but it is my problem. They’re both from a very special group of old friends, two of whom are dead already. How do you think I’d feel if something happened and I hadn’t tried? Put yourselves in that position.”

  Bassen was the first to speak. “I hear what you’re saying Mel, but it’s not just any job. It’s one that needs experience and skill of a kind you don’t have. It takes years to train one of our people…”

  “But on the other hand,” Landis came in, “let’s not forget that we owe a lot of what we know to Mel’s initiative already. I’d go so far as to say that he’s demonstrated a certain natural aptitude.”

  “He might be the best choice, in spite of what you say, Ron,” Newell mused. Mel blinked as he listened. Him, a natural? The thought had never crossed his mind.

  Bassen could see that Newell was taking to the idea. “Maybe,” he conceded guardedly.

  Newell stared at Mel for a few seconds. “If we’re going to decide to do this, let’s decide right now…” He paused, still distant in thought. “But if you are going to confront our enemies, at least you should know something about who they are and what you are proposing taking on.”

  “Do you mean out there, where McCormick is?” Mel asked.

  “Oh no, much more than that. The entire Constitutional movement and what it really means. You should know, anyway, since some of the information which you and Stephanie uncovered has helped us bring together the pieces of a pattern that has been emerging for some time. If you do go over there for us, you should have some idea of what this is all about.” Mel nodded, although he didn’t quite follow. Newell glanced at Landis. “How much time do we have, Warren?”

  Landis looked at his watch. “We’re due to meet Collins across the road in thirty minutes.”

  Newell shifted his gaze back to Mel. “I take it you know about the people Stephanie met in California, and the further connections that Eva uncovered?”

  “Yes,” Mel said. “Stephanie spent Christmas with me in Boston.”

  “Some impressive and influential people, would you say, Mr. Shears?”

  “They seemed to be. Stephanie thought so. I don’t know that I’d describe her as being impressed by everyone she saw, though.”

  The briefest of smiles flashed across Newell’s face. “Yes, compared to the average man with his few thousand in the bank—if that isn’t more than offset by debts and credit. In terms of owning wealth—not consumer products, which cost money to purchase, to maintain, and to replace, but real wealth, in the form of income-producing assets—the average American is little different from the Soviet peasant. Hie comparison is not without significance, as I’ll come to later… But compared to the ones who really matter, the people that you know about are just second league—small fish… You look surprised, Mr. Shears.”

  Mel scratched an ear. “It’s just… well, a little strange to hear somebody like Groveland Maddock being described that way.”

  “Maddock? Very well, let’s take him. He has a paper fortune built on oil holdings. But that isn’t something that translates readily into dollars. It’s an industry which is vulnerable to price fluctuations, the revoking of politically arranged tax privileges, and in some parts of the world, confiscation. And remember that to a large degree the numbers you hear derive from estimated reserves below ground, which may turn out to be wildly in error. When his father died a few years ago, the press played back an estimate for his estate that Fortune magazine came up with of… what was it, Warren?”

  “Five hundred million,” Landis said. “But the probate of his will showed somewhere around eighty million. And there was no record of any gifts large enough to have ever put him in the bracket that Fortune claimed.”

  “Eighty million doesn’t sound too unhealthy, all the same,” Mel couldn’t help muttering.

  Newell waved a hand to and fro in the air. “Not bad, granted, but still chicken feed. Maddock is of that part of the society that we might term ‘neoconservative.’ Their ambition is to join the true top rank—the Property Party, which is the only one that has really run this country for the past century, despite its superficial split—but the big fear is that they mightn’t make it, and so they feel insecure. These are the ones who lead the howls against communism and try to cling to the old order, because with every measure of socializing legislation that is introduced, they feel their grip slipping and their chances being eroded away. This is the Tar Right’ that the public sees. And on the other hand, men like Duncan Forstner, whom Stephanie also met, are the counterpart on what is perceived as the ‘liberal’ Left: frustrated and resentful intellectuals and professionals, necessary technicians because of their specialized skills and knowledge, and yet underpaid menials on the economic plantation. Craving influence and recognition but debarred by lack of wealth from positions of power, the only recourse they have is to seek direct control by mass propaganda and manipulating the democratic process.” Newell raised a hand briefly. “And there you have the classical confrontation: good versus evil; black hats and white hats; godly and ungodly. The conflict has provided a spectacle that has distracted and enthralled the world.”

  Mel put a hand to his brow. “What exactly are you saying? That it’s all a charade, that it isn’t serious?”

  “Heavens, no!” Newell exclaimed. “They’re sincere all right. Look at some of the things that have happened in places like Spain, Germany, Russia, China in the last hundred years. They murder each other wholesale, in millions. You can’t get more serious than that.”

  “But in this case the amendment threatens both of them,” Mel said.

  “Yes, and they can come to a temporary truce, induced by a shared survival instinct,” Newell said. “But the real control emanates from a more rarefied region, above the level at which those vulgar factions operate, where existence is serene and unthreatened—a world far beyond the hired hands and henchmen who were supposed to impress Eva. She wouldn’t even have gotten close to the people I’m talking about, never mind into their homes and their social circles. Neither would I, for that matter.”

  Landis smiled wryly at the doubtful look on Mel’s face. “Seriously,” he interjected. “Some of the eastern metropolitan private clubs are so exclusive that neither the pope nor most U.S. Presidents could qualify for membership.”

  “I’m speaking, of course, about where the concentrations of true wealth and power in this country lie,” Newell said. “A quarter of the wealth of the nation is held by just a half of one percent of its citizens. And if you narrow that down to corporate stock, a hundredth of one percent. Old, entrenched, hereditary wealth—in contrast to the comparative newcomers that we talked about a minute ago, who rank as lightweights—can stand unaffected by what appear to be sweeping social reforms, and isn’t worried by them. The costs are simply passed on through prices and taxes to the public, whom the act is staged to appease. In effect, they preserve their position by buying off the revolutionary potential that traditionally exists at the bottom of the societal pyramid with the middle section’s money. Not being threatened themselves, they have no interest in opposing the ostensible redistribution process, which in fact works to their advantage by emasculating the potential rival class that might rise to challenge them. Hence the cries against ‘East Coast Establishment socialism,’ which come not from the top, but from the next layer down t
hat would like to be there.”

  If this was the Opposition, Mel realized as he listened, they were up against a lot more than he’d imagined. Something of a dazed look must have shown on his face, for Newell sat back and picked up his coffee, giving Mel a moment to absorb what he had said.

  “Have you heard of Jordan Vandelmayne, for example?” Warren Landis asked.

  “Isn’t he a banker?” The name had been mentioned in connection with a case Mel was involved in six months before.

  “Most people wouldn’t have known that much,” Bassen commented.

  Newell picked up the remains of a chicken sandwich and waved for Landis to continue. “Groton and Yale, currently one of the principals of the Vandelmayne family, whose collective assets were put by the last Fortune survey at between one-point-two and two billion dollars.” Mel raised his eyebrows, but Landis went on. “However, that report omitted to list at least five hundred lesser Vandelmaynes and extensions to the clan acquired through marriage. Although they may not count for much individually, together, through a network of holding companies and trusts, they constitute a unified, coherent family enterprise that weighs in, I’d say conservatively, at five billion.”

  “Impressed now?” Newell threw in through a mouthful of sandwich.

  “But that’s only actual worth,” Landis added. “If it’s in the form of sufficient stock to give you voting control over a corporation that’s capitalized for much more, then your operative clout in terms of the assets you can direct is correspondingly larger. And so, of course, is the political voice you command. In the case of the Vandelmayne fortune, the big slice comes from international investment banking and the perquisites which that brings. You see, whenever a budding entrepreneur or somebody with a bright idea comes to financiers for backing, the first thing they want is a piece of the action—which is how bankers come to sit on the boards of so many lucrative enterprises. That was how the Vandelmaynes obtained their primary holdings, which are in energy, urban development, and chemicals in this country, and steel, plastics, and industrial construction overseas. In addition, there has been a lot of mutual reinforcing of ties into practically anything you can name through marriage.”