The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  Although Mel had been half-prepared, he could only stare in astonishment. Landis nodded. “A hundred years ago, this country had risen to a position of having no serious rivals in the world. Today, of course, it does, which would suit the bondholders of our four-trillion-dollar debt very well. Could that be a coincidence, do you think? Before you say anything, let’s just review a few facts.

  “The Revolution in Russia was certainly a turning point in world history. The majority belief today is that it was a successful movement of the downtrodden people under the leadership of the communists against the tyranny of the czars. That’s not what happened. The Bolshevik takeover took place in November 1917. The Czar had abdicated in March, seven months earlier. A provisional government was established by Prince Lvov, who wanted a system modeled on ours, but his regime didn’t get the backing, and he gave way to a democratic socialist called Kerensky. It was Kerensky who declared an amnesty for all the Red revolutionaries that had been exiled after the uprising in 1905 that didn’t come off. A quarter of a million of them poured back into Russia. Lenin was nowhere around when the czar fell. He was a has-been in Switzerland, where he’d been for eighteen years. Trotsky was in New York, running a newspaper. The Bolsheviks simply weren’t a viable political force. They didn’t come back at the call of the masses to assume power from the bottom up; they were sent in to impose it from the top down—Lenin arrived with six million dollars of German gold. Now, the Germans had a reason to try and topple the Russian government—it might have gotten Russia out of the war. But who sent Trotsky from America—and got him released when the Canadians grabbed him en route? And the whole thing gets real interesting when you find that the German banker who engineered Lenin’s transfer was the brother of one of the central figures who’d done the pushing to set up the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

  “Are you saying that we created the Soviet Union?” Mel asked incredulously.

  “We not only set it up. We poured money in to save it in the early twenties when Lenin’s New Economic Policy had ruined it. But it got too big and looked as if it might run out of control, and Hitler had to be manufactured out of a nobody to check it. Since then we’ve resumed the old power-balancing act and bailed it out several times with huge technology transfers and other material assistance from the West, which have included building oil and synthetic rubber plants for them, the world’s biggest truck factory, several aircraft aluminum plants, and even supplying the precision grinding machines to make ball bearings essential for their strategic missiles, which their industry couldn’t produce! And then Americans get screwed for seventy-five billion to pay for a defense industry to counter it. You see, it conserves parity. Postwar American prosperity could have gone so far out of sight as to make it a no-contest. Now do some of our insane economic decisions over recent years start to make more sense? In short, USSR has got ‘Made in U.S.A.’ stamped all over it. And it’s owned and run by its own luxuried elite of upper management in just the same kind of way. No wonder. They’re both divisions of the same company.”

  Mel could see now where the connections were pointing. “Are you saying that this is where the links from Oberwald lead to?” he asked.

  Landis started to say something in reply, but the door opened at that moment, and Jerry stuck his head in. “Okay, Mel, let’s get started again. We’ve only got until noon.”

  Mel finished his coffee, got up, and followed the other two back out in something of a daze. Somehow the stopping power of a handgun didn’t feel quite as reassuring as it had half an hour earlier.

  Maybe he would have done better to keep his questions to himself until after this was all over, he reflected as they checked out the gun in the equipment room again. It was possible to know too much. He remembered something he’d heard Brett say once: “Confidence is what you feel when you don’t really understand the situation.”

  CHAPTER 52

  In the course of a century, Tel Aviv, situated in the southeast corner of the Mediterranean on the ancient biblical coast road between Egypt and Damascus, had grown from a village suburb of Jaffa founded on sand dunes, to become Israel’s center of commerce and fashionable living. From the beach-fronted hotels and shopping precincts on Hayarkon, with the ranks of office towers arrayed around the El Al building along Ben Yehuda Street behind, and the Oriental flavor of the Carmel vegetable and flower market just to the south, the metropolis spilled eastward in a bustling confusion of restaurants for every taste, cafés, sidewalk kiosks, supermarkets and street stalls, thronged daily by tourists from all nations and a native population of over two million Arabs, Jews, Druze, Bedouin and other groups, as well as immigrants from everywhere. The administrative buildings and industrial areas were nearer the eastern limits, around the Hashalom Road, leading to the David Ben-Gurion International Airport, nine miles away. A few hundred yards off the main thoroughfare, between the sports fields of a high school and a repair plant for agricultural machinery, was the headquarters of the Fifth Parachute Brigade, currently attached to Central Regional Command of the Israeli Defense Forces. On the morning of January 12, Dave Fenner met there with three men in a small room at the rear of the two-story administration building.

  The map on the wall at one end of the table was of an arid, mountainous region in northeast Syria. The enlarged photographs alongside had come from Israeli intelligence satellites put up by ESA launch vehicles, and showed a fenced camp of several rows of barrack blocks and other buildings, and an airstrip concealed in a valley a short distance away. Yigal Uban, the deputy head of Mossad, who had driven down from Jerusalem to join the others, summed up, “It’s not one of the standard PALP units. As far as we can ascertain it’s part of the general PALP structure, but under an independent command.” Uban was a small, worried-looking man in a striped suit, with a broad brow, rounded, snub-nosed features, and balding head. “Beyond that its origin and precise function are obscure. Even Pierrot has been unable to uncover more than that.” “Pierrot” was the field code for the agent that Mossad had working inside.

  General Shimon Lurgar of the airborne forces looked down at the notes he had been scribbling. He was a former tank commander, and as is allegedly the case with dog owners, seemed to have acquired some of the attributes of his charges. He was a solid, craggy-faced man with a shadowy chin that looked as tough as armor plate, and a mat of wiry black hair clinging to a squat turret of a head. With him, wearing an open-neck khaki shirt with pips on the epaulets and combat fatigue pants, was Colonel Shlomo Hariv, who commanded a unit that specialized in covert special operations. With his long, slack face, rubbery mouth, and thick-rimmed spectacles, he looked as if he would have been more at home behind a desk or a grocery-store counter somewhere, but Fenner had worked with him before and had no reservations.

  “And we don’t know who Mustapha is,” Lurgar said half to himself as he scanned over the notes he had been scribbling and organized his thoughts.

  “He claims to be an American with technical knowledge pertaining to the strategic space-defense field,” Uban answered. “The ‘American’ part of it is consistent with his insistence on dealing only through the Constitutionals. He won’t reveal more until he’s sure he has a channel to them.”

  Lurgar looked up, thought for a second, and nodded. “Ah, I see. I take it, then, that you’re going to use the American delegation somehow, when it gets here.” McCormick and his party had arrived in Cairo two days previously and would be departing for Israel two days hence.

  “Exactly,” Uban said. “Mustapha was asked to give Pierrot a code phrase which McCormick will include in the public speech that he will be giving before he goes back—Mustapha does have facilities to see the speech live.”

  “Not a bad life by the sound of it, being a prisoner these days,” Lurgar commented, rubbing his chin.

  Uban went on. “The information will be given to McCormick through one of his staff, whom we call Gypsy.” That was Stephanie, alias Eva.

  “How did you approach her?”
Hariv asked. “They’re not even in the country yet?”

  Uban inclined his head in Fenner’s direction. “Benjamin took care of that before she left the United States. We have an agent in Egypt, known as Dervish, who will give her the code phrase today.”

  “I have a question about that,” Fenner said, sitting forward. “Why go through a complicated procedure to give it to them there? They’ll be in Jerusalem in two days. Why couldn’t it be done then?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” Hariv said.

  Uban steepled his fingers in front of him and contemplated them for a moment. “That is a delicate matter to do with internal politics,” he said. “This insistence of Mustapha’s on dealing only with your Constitutional people is very odd. It suggests that perhaps Mustapha knows something about unreliability at the top, possibly among highly trusted people, that we don’t.”

  Fenner nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that.”

  “Therefore we have decided to honor his request to the full, by revealing his existence in the first instance only to McCormick.”

  “You mean you haven’t taken it to our own people officially?” Lurgar said, meaning the Israeli General Staff, and the Ministry of Defense via which it reported to the Prime Minister and the Knesset.

  “Quite,” Uban said. “In view of the unusual circumstances, we decided to leave it to McCormick to broach it to the upper echelons, as and how he sees fit, when he arrives in Jerusalem.” Lurgar sat back, nodding that he understood. Uban looked at Fenner and Hariv, and explained, “As a precaution to protect ourselves, we want to keep our dealings with McCormick out of this country. Then, if McCormick does choose to bring it to the attention of our cabinet officials, he can present it purely as a piece of American-originated intelligence, with nothing to be seen here that could connect it with us. That way there will be nothing to give anyone the idea that we might have withheld information from our superiors.” Fenner acknowledged with a half-raised hand and nodded. It all made sense now.

  General Lurgar was beginning to see now why Uban had asked him here, and what Mossad wanted from him. He looked up at the ceiling. “How important might the Americans consider this Mustapha to be, do you think, when they find out about him?” he asked, massaging his chin absently.

  Uban pretended to mull over the question, as if he were considering it for the first time. “Oh, I don’t know… Very important, maybe.”

  “Important enough to want to get him out, do you think?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  Lurgar looked down at the table gravely. “I haven’t seen any orders asking us to look into anything like that… but then nobody could have issued any, could they, if they don’t know yet that Mustapha exists?” He gave Uban a sidelong look. Uban’s face twitched into a quick, nervous smile. “Yet if such an order were to come down, it would in all likelihood be one of those panic, do-it-yesterday affairs, wouldn’t it?”

  Uban dropped the charade and his face became serious suddenly. “Would you look into it for us?” he asked.

  Lurgar looked at Colonel Hariv. “What do you think, Shlomo? Could we give some time to it?”

  “Oh, I think we could manage that. It sounds like a fairly small-scale operation, just to get one man out. ” He turned to Uban. “How much help could we get from the inside man of yours?”

  “Pierrot. He will cooperate totally.”

  “What about the risk of blowing his cover?”

  “His job there is almost over,” Uban said. “He has been trying to get details of an aircraft hijack that we now know will take place eight days from now, on January twenty. We don’t know where or when. But if Pierrot hasn’t been able to find out by then, it won’t matter. So, it would be nice to make some further use of him before we bring him out. He’s overdue for a rest, anyway.”

  “He could come out with Mustapha, then?” Hariv said.

  “Yes.”

  “Which would make January twenty the earliest date for an operation.” Hariv turned to General Lurgar. “Yes, I think we could have something ready by then.”

  “And if nothing comes down from on high, we’ll just burn the papers, forget it, and write it off as a planning exercise,” Lurgar said.

  “There is one more thing,” Uban said. He indicated Fenner with a nod. “If it proves impossible to get Mustapha physically out for any reason, the next priority must be to communicate back the information in his possession. That might require some on-the-spot reassurance that it would in fact be going to where Mustapha has been told it would. To that end, we would want Benjamin to go too. It would provide an American complement to the mission, which might be desirable in the circumstances.”

  Hariv shrugged, looked at Lurgar, and nodded. “I see no problem with that. He came with us on another job once before.”

  “No objection,” Lurgar confirmed.

  “The operation will be referred to as ‘Haymaker’ in future communications,” Uban said. “The code for the camp itself is ‘Domino,’ and Mustapha will be referred to as the ‘merchandise.’ I don’t think there’s anything else for now?” He looked around. Nobody had anything. That seemed to be it for the time being. He gathered his papers together, looking pleased.

  Hariv pushed himself back from the table. “Well, it’s good to see you back,” he said to Fenner. “Have you been keeping fit?”

  “The holidays didn’t help much,” Fenner admitted.

  Hariv grinned behind his spectacles. “Oh, that’s no problem. We have ways of curing things like that.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Mehemet Kabuzak, currently the Egyptian foreign minister and favorite to become the next head of state, hummed to himself as he stood, knotting his tie by the open window of his suite at Cairo’s Omar Khayyam Hotel. He was staying there for the duration of the talks with the soon-to-be U.S. vice president, having traveled down from his residence sixty miles upstream along the Nile from the city. There was still a refreshing touch of night chill in the air from the desert to the west, and he could see the Giza Pyramids above the tops of a long avenue of tall, old eucalyptus trees. The plush modern hotels were all very fine with their clifflike façades of concrete and glass, but he preferred the Omar Khayyam’s atmosphere of unashamed Byzantine opulence. The edifice had actually been built as a palace by Khedive Ismail for the French Empress Eugénie when she visited Egypt in 1869 for the opening of the Suez Canal, and stood not far from the old Giza royal palace, whose grounds were now the Cairo zoo.

  Kabuzak moved back to the mirror by the wardrobe to check that the knot was straight, and paused to look his reflection up and down. Not bad for a man past the middle of his forties, he thought, patting his tummy. He was solidly built and of medium height, with a mustache that he kept neatly trimmed, a full face, though not to the point of pudginess, which a flattering number of women seemed to find handsome, and a rich head of hair turning gray at the temples. He liked to think that his eyes still held a youthful sparkle. When life ceases to be amusing, Kabuzak often said, is when getting old begins—at all ages.

  The door from the adjoining suite opened and his private secretary, Talaat Ali, came in. “Ah, good. You’re almost ready,” Ali said. “The car is on its way around.” Kabuzak had already eaten an informal breakfast with some of his staff while reviewing the agenda for the day. Ali took Kabuzak’s jacket from the hanger on which it had been returned by the hotel’s valet service and held it up.

  “We’ll see what today brings, then, Tal,” Kabuzak said, slipping his arms into the sleeves. “Do you know, I must say that these Constitutional people impress me with their honesty. I don’t smell the pull of Big Money behind them. I’m beginning to think that for once we might really all be on the same side.”

  “I hope that doesn’t mean you’re going soft,” Ali said.

  Kabuzak smoothed his jacket and buttoned it. “Of course not. But you can always terrify Americans with the word ‘socialist’ because like ‘God’ and ‘freedom’ it has as many
meanings as there are people on earth to argue about it.” He went over to the desk and began sorting through his papers. “The last time we were in Indonesia, I met a Chinese who claimed he was a socialist, which surprised everyone because he was one of the wealthiest businessmen in Singapore. It turned out that what he meant was being left alone by the government.” He selected some documents and put them into his briefcase. “Oh, and have a word with that new assistant who was wearing the shirt with the glittery pattern in it yesterday, would you Tal? It looks too flashy.”

  “Probably exhibiting to the world his rise to the ranks of power and wealth,” Ali said. “I will have a word with him.”

  “Well, tell him that if he wishes to look rich, dressing in a way that looks expensive is the wrong thing to do. You see, people dress to project what they’d like to be. Poor men buy expensive clothes—on credit—to look as if they had money. But rich men wear quiet, sensible clothes—to look as if they had brains.”

  Kabuzak considered himself a true socialist in the spirit of the National Charter of the United Arab Republic, which aimed at achieving social justice and a sound democracy—but grounded in solid Islamic tradition and rejecting the atheistic Soviet model. It also called for the overthrow of imperialism, toward which end it had achieved a huge step with the expulsion of the British in 1952, and for an end to monopoly and exploitive capitalism. And that sounded very close to the new American line that he was hearing. Perhaps times did change, after all.