Fear. Greed. Vengefulness. Which of the three motivated Coles?
Fear? He had an exemplary home life. No mistress, no office affairs. The credit company had included an analysis and summary of his personal checks for two years. It was boringly normal. Coles’s private life was a goldfish bowl. Nowhere to hide. Nothing to hide.
In Mobius, his think tank, there were no business problems. The company was soundly financed and thriving. Coles had gathered a number of gifted scientific minds, who were now working on more projects and assignments than they could handle.
Clearly, blackmail was out.
Greed. He was worth over five million dollars and had little time to spend it. A financial advisor was busy with a series of investments that were earning Coles even more wealth. He collected some pieces of art. If there was anything he was greedy for, it was more time.
Vengefulness? Against Russia perhaps. There was probably only one way to control Coles: kidnap his wife or children. Gogol laid the Coles dossier aside.
The reports on Coles’s executive staff began arriving that afternoon—three of them. And they told as much about Coles as they did about the subjects. In report after report on Mobius Laboratories, one factor stood out. Coles was an extremely able and affable administrator who enjoyed the enthusiastic endorsement and loyalty of his staff. He had gathered around himself an array of brilliant minds that would have made the head of Directorate T salivate. But how had he earned such fierce dedication for such a group of independent, individual, unpredictable, quirky, creative personalities?
The first one, Walters, was a marathoner. His scientific specialty was robotization, but if there were a symposium on robotization scheduled for the same day as a marathon, the symposium lost out. Walters was also an ardent backpacker and camper, and an amateur astronomer of some standing. His wife was a math teacher, and their two children were both attending special schools for gifted students. But it was as a health-food advocate that Walters drew national attention. He appeared on lecture platforms everywhere, roundly condemning the American food industry for the chemical additives in prepared foods. He told young mothers not to buy prepared baby food. In fact he started a newsletter on the subject. He wrote publicity releases. He frequently went to the local newspapers to badger the editors. Walters was an obnoxious public scold.
One other common note in his life: he frequently praised his boss, Coles.
Gogol sensed that he had absolutely nothing to say to this Walters. He laid the report aside.
One of the first scientists that Coles had ever hired was a woman named Baines. She was a mathematician who also held a Ph.D. in Human Biology, and she’d gained an international reputation for her developments in computer software. Her primary interest was the human mind, and in article after article in scientific journals she had systematically explored the mind’s computerlike capabilities. Tolenko on the Directorate T committee had once said that of all the Western scientists, this was the one he most wanted to meet and talk with. He said she had a leaping mind that generated more insights into artificial intelligence in one day than most scientists developed in a lifetime.
But where was the fretted heart that would make her vulnerable to Gogol’s approaches?
Greed? She had a very high income and was worth nearly a million dollars. In the years ahead, her wealth would easily double or triple. She had no debts to speak of. Rule out money.
Personal history. She was unmarried, sharing a home near Silver Spring with another woman scientist. They were room mates in college and had been living together for fifteen years. A possibility: was she a candidate for blackmail?
Gogol read Baines’s list of memberships in professional and political organizations. In addition to membership in the most prestigious science organizations, she was a charter member and president of the Committee of Scientists for Gay Rights. That eliminated that possibility.
Gogol paced. There was nothing here. Nothing in either report that he could use to lever Cassandra free. And he felt the reports on the other dozen scientists in Mobius Laboratories would be just as unpromising. The loyalty that these scientists exhibited toward Coles was like a defensive circle formed by musk ox to protect Coles and his Cassandra.
He picked up the third report.
This one looked more promising—the type of personality Gogol liked to find. A misfit. A social misfit. Gifted—brilliant, even—but neurotically shy and uncommunicative. This man, Jalovac, had been a world-class chess player when he was in college, but had abruptly dropped out of international play after he was falsely accused of violating the rules. Despite the repeated public apologies of the International Chess Federation, Jalovac refused all invitations to enter any future matches. He never played in public again.
Before joining Mobius Jalovac had had several quarrels with colleagues over imagined slights. He felt he was the butt of behind-back office jokes.
He belonged to no scientific or professional groups. He had no friends. He was not married. Lived alone. Had no hobbies or interests other than his vocation. Gogol knew the personality well: brooding, neurotically sensitive, timid and quietly seething with anger at the world that intimidated him.
There was a great deal going on underneath the surface. Possibly Gogol could turn Jalovac into an ideologue, a secret traitor to the society he feared and hated.
Had he time enough, Gogol would have tried to develop Jalovac, but this was a project that would have taken months, and even then, handling quixotic personalities like Jalovac was always dangerous.
Gogol paced some more. He felt an unwonted sense of dread in his stomach. What if he found no one in the Coles organization who could be turned? How would he get Cassandra then?
Another knock on the door, another character report. Like a bettor at the track, Gogol cheered himself on as he tore open the envelope. “Come on, darling, be a winner,” he said.
And it was.
From the first sentence, everything clicked. Even his name was right. Perdu: in French, lost. Bewildered. Here Lady Luck had spread a feast for Gogol: greed, fear, vengefulness enough for an army of spies.
At thirty-one Perdu was one of the world’s leading experts in microchip design and theory. A product of the public schools of New York City, at sixteen he won a math scholarship to Stanford and became a creative explosion. He was a world-class thinker on microchips before he graduated at twenty. It was said that there were only four other scientists who could discuss his advanced theories on the microchip with him.
Perdu had married four years before. And then his troubles began. His wife gave him a son—autistic, with spinal cord damage that would confine him to a wheelchair, chronically ill, for life. His wife was driven by guilt and dismay into a deep depression that required extensive counseling.
The demands of constantly caring for a child hopelessly autistic and handicapped wore her out. When her son was two, Elena Perdu could conceal her secret no longer: she had become a heroin addict. Now both parents went for counseling while she also entered a drug-rehabilitation program. Perdu went deeply into debt.
Elena Perdu had great difficulty overcoming her heroin addiction, for at bottom she lived in despair. She felt she was chained for the rest of her life to a human tragedy who could never be normal, never be self-sufficient. Every day teams of women came to her home and slowly worked the child’s limbs to help develop his nervous system so that he could walk. Patterning every day, day after day, year after year.
Perdu worked hard at helping his wife cope. He was distracted from his career. He took time off to be with her. He took her away on extended vacations and holidays. But always when she returned, the child was there. And the patterning.
Perdu wanted to institutionalize the boy. Elena was overcome with guilt at the thought. She insisted she could handle the child. All she needed was a little more time.
She became pregnant again. At first she was overjoyed. A new child would bring the two of them together, something joyful to s
hare. Then she panicked. What if the baby were another tragedy like the first? Terrified and trapped, she became addicted again to heroin. Perdu struggled greatly to get her back on her feet.
One afternoon he found her unconscious. An overdose. After great effort, the hospital saved her. And Perdu learned that she had had an abortion. Guilt was piled on guilt. She couldn’t face Perdu now. She wanted a separation. He agreed reluctantly. The marriage was almost finished.
The IRS audited his income tax return and disallowed many of his medical tax deductions. Coles himself stepped in to provide lawyers and accountants for Perdu to fight his case, but in the end he lost. The tax bill with interest was staggering. Perdu refused to accept financial aid from Coles. He went to a local bank and borrowed the money. Now he was in a constant fury.
He visited his wife regularly, and at last she agreed to put the marriage back together. She’d been off drugs for six months. The night before they were to rejoin each other, she committed suicide with poison.
Perdu threw himself into his work, often remaining seven days a week in his office. He took to talking to himself and flogged his body to produce. He was exhausted, but he had two major projects going that held great promise. Scientists all over the world were feverishly seeking a new supermicrochip that could operate on the new materials with nearly zero electrical resistance. Scientific history would be made. A Nobel prize was a possibility. And Perdu had been considered the leading contender for the invention.
One night he was stopped for speeding, and assaulted a policeman.
Then one of his two key microchip projects failed. The enormous effort and time had come to nothing. Not uncommon in research work, but Perdu was crushed. Not only was it a failure, but it put him two years behind some of the most brilliant scientific minds in the world. He felt his personal problems had been an insuperable distraction.
He became hostile and uncontrollable. He drank. He railed against the government, against the tax gatherers, against the police, against the medical-care facilities of the nation. He pronounced America a failure. He drank more and more. One night he went berserk in a bar and did thousands of dollars in damage.
The next day the mortgage company foreclosed on his home. And the institution caring for the boy sued for six months of unpaid fees. Perdu faced bankruptcy.
The next day Coles paid the sums due on the mortgage and for the child care, then put Perdu on an indefinite leave of absence with pay. Perdu’s microchip research project was assigned to others. Perdu had lost his opportunity to make science history. And Gogol had found his way into Coles Laboratories.
Perdu would bring Cassandra to him.
Chapter 44
During the evening he rang Perdu’s phone repeatedly but there was no answer. Finally, after eleven that night, Perdu answered.
“Mr. Perdu,” Gogol began. “I’m sorry to call you so late. I’ve been trying all evening. I’m the editor and publisher of a new science journal and I’m most interested in talking to you before I return to Europe.”
He could barely hear Perdu’s answer.
“I want particularly to talk to you about your microchip research.”
Perdu murmured that he was no longer doing microchip research.
“I understand that,” Gogol said. “All the scientists in Europe that I’ve talked to say it was a disgrace to remove you. After all, you are the leading scientist on microchips in the world. Coles has done something foolish and shameful.”
Perdu’s voice was low, listless.
“We need to talk,” Gogol said. “I believe I can help you get back into the race. I have some connections in the science world. There’s a way you can still create the new microchip—perhaps in Europe—and also pay off a few scores in the process. You know what I am referring to? Yes? Good.”
Perdu’s voice became stronger. Yes. Yes. He was interested.
“I need to get my work started again,” Perdu was saying. “I know how to make that new chip. The people Coles put on the project will never find it. Not in a million years. I’ve had some personal problems that I hope will soon be behind me.”
“How angry are you with Coles?”
“Anger is hardly the word!” Perdu said. “He took away from me the opportunity of a lifetime. I might never again get a shot at anything like this new superchip. I’ll never forget this. Never! Someday I’ll find a way to pay him back. And so help me God, I’ll do it!”
“I might be able to show you a way to get some satisfaction on that score too,” Gogol said. “Would you like that?”
“Show me the way,” Perdu said.
“Well, first of all, I have connections with several laboratories in Europe that are not now involved in microchip research. I am authorized to speak to you on their behalf. They would like very much for you to come to work right now. You could write your own ticket. How do you feel about that?”
Perdu’s voice grew enthusiastic. He would like that very much. When could he talk to them?
“I can arrange that shortly,” Gogol said. “First I suggest you make a list of requirements that I can submit to them. They will be delighted to hear that you are definitely interested. You could be back at work in a few days. That would be marvelous. Now about the second part. You are definitely the aggrieved party with Coles. The whole world says so. If you’d like some satisfaction … dueling, unfortunately, is no longer in vogue, so you must find another way. Something that would really make Coles wince. You understand?”
“Like what?” Perdu asked.
“Something precious to him. Since he robbed you of your prize, rob him of his. Or at least one of his. Something important to him. What is he working on these days?”
“Classified stuff. Military software.”
“Take it from him,” Gogol said.
“What do you mean?”
“Take it. Give it to some others to introduce as their own.” “Who? Who would take it?”
“Many people. And Coles would see others get credit for his invention. That’s poetic justice, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Perdu said thoughtfully. “Yes, it is.”
“I tell you, if you could bring that with you to Europe, there’s no limit to what could happen to your career. You would have the science world at your feet. Tell me more about the Coles project. Could you really get it?”
“With pleasure,” Perdu said. “With pleasure.”
Perdu wanted a few hours to write his pro forma for setting his microchip researches in Europe. He also wanted to check into Coles’s project. Gogol agreed to call him at six the next evening.
“Oh, by the way,” Gogol said. “Does it have a name, Coles’s project?”
“Yes. I’m not supposed to mention it. But yes, it has a name. Cassandra.”
Gogol was like a dog on a point. Far into the night he paced inside his motel room. To get Cassandra he had to work Perdu carefully, with the help of the three Sisters—Fear, Greed, Vengefulness.
Gogol knew this was going to be his masterpiece—the intelligence equivalent of inventing the supermicrochip. It would be wonderful if there were a Nobel prize for spying. He was surely about to earn it.
The next afternoon, Gogol violated his own self-imposed rule. He went out of the motel room in broad daylight. He had to walk, to burn off the excitement, to calm down. He needed to be collected and alert when he called Perdu. Six o’clock seemed a long way off.
He strode over frozen roadways, past old farms now crowded with new subdivisions. Winter was still entombing the land, and skies were ladened with more snow. The skiing in the Swiss Alps was superb. Gogol looked forward eagerly to skiing—after getting Cassandra of course. When he got back to his motel, he would do his skiing exercises.
From the machine outside the motel registration office he bought a newspaper and took it back to his room. Then he felt like something had exploded inside his head.
The headline on the front page announced that Perdu had committed suicide.
&nb
sp; Part Eight
Chapter 45
For a second time Gogol sensed that failure was a possibility. He sat in his motel room going over the reports. Six new ones had arrived, all ranking scientists with Coles Laboratories. He went through them with care then reviewed them a second and third time. But each time he reviewed them, he sensed anew that only Perdu had been a possibility.
He started through the reports once again, starting with Coles himself. Where was the tiny crack in the wall he needed for the thin edge of his wedge? He tried to see through the papers, the paragraphs and sentences, and into the very hearts of Coles’s scientists. Which one secretly had a festering heart? Which one could bring him Cassandra? And what was the lure that could bring that about?
Several days had gone by since he’d arrived here, and now, after such great expectations, he was no closer to his prize. What he needed was what he always got when the moment of crisis arrived. He needed a piece of great good luck.
At five P.M. another report arrived. This one from a credit bureau in New York City. “Luck be with me,” Gogol said as he tore open the envelope.
The subject of the report was the American agent who had been in Vienna—Sauer, the man he’d sent the ruble to. Cpaceeba, Sauer, Cpaceeba. He remembered listening to the tape with Revin when Sauer first told Brewer about Cassandra. And Sauer had been with Brewer during the rescue attempt of the Chernies in the subways of New York City. Now, as part of the team guarding Cassandra, he was an ideal choice—an agent with access to the unit.
As he read, Gogol’s hopes began to rise again. Here was everything he needed. Here was a career in decline. A life in grave crisis. Fear, greed, and vengefulness rampant.
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