The Minotaur (28 page)

It was a nice camera, a Canon. The little window said that it was
on its ninth exposure. How many times had he turned that light on
and off. He tried to count them. Six. No, five. So the film counter
should be on four.

He opened the camera and removed the film, then pulled the
celluloid completely from its cartridge and held it up to the win-
dow. Rewinding the film back onto the cartridge was a chore, but
he managed, and after wiping the cartridge carefully, he reinstalled
it in the camera. He used a dry dishcloth on the camera and
wrapped it carefully. Working by feel with the overhead stair light
off, he returned the device to its hole and screwed the screen back
on. He nipped the light switch three times and was rewarded each
time with that faint noise.

There were three bedrooms upstairs, exactly the same floor plan
here as in his house next door, but only two of them were fur-
nished. The largest was obviously lived in, but the middle-sized
room was ready for a guest. Luis Camacho tried to remember if
Harlan Albright had ever had an overnight guest that he knew
about. No.

He checked the carpet. Albright might have some kind of pres-
sure device under there, or perhaps heat-sensitive paper. Nope.
Another camera? Apparently not.

There was a little trapdoor in the hall ceiling that led to the
unfinished attic. An upholstered chair sat just inside the guest bed-
room. He put his nose almost to the seat and scrutinized it care-
fully. Yes, a few smudges of dirt were visible.

Luis Camacho pulled the chair under the trapdoor, took his
shoes off and stood on it. He eased the door up. It was dark up
there. A few flakes of dust drifted down. He stood on tiptoe and
used the flash. He felt between the joists.

Several items. One was a soft leather bagtike thing, a zippered
pistol rug. The other was a large, heavy metal toolbox that just fit
through the trapdoor. He almost dropped the toolbox getting it
down.

The pistol rug contained a Ruger .22 autopistol with black
plastic grips and a partially full box of Remington ammunition.
Bluing was worn off the pistol in places. The front sight and its
sleeve were amputated, and threads were machined into the out-
side of the barrel to take the silencer, which was also in the rug.
This was strictly a close-range weapon: with no front sight, it
would be useless at any distance.

He sniffed the barrel of the pistol. Cleaned since last use. He
pushed the catch and the magazine dropped out of the grip into his
hand. It was full. He shoved it back in until it clicked. No doubt
the cleaning rod and patches and gun oil were up there in the joists
somewhere. He replaced the items in the rug and zipped it closed.

The toolbox wasn’t locked. Neatly packed in and padded to
prevent damage were fuses, a roll of wire and a two-channel Futaba
radio transmitter for radio-controlled models. Lots of servos, ten of
them. A little bag containing crystals to change the frequency of
the transmitter. Four miniature radio receivers, also made by
Futaba. A bunch of nickel-cadmium batteries and a charging unit.
Four six-cell batteries wrapped with black plastic. There was even
a manual alarm clock.

But the piece de resistance, the item that impressed Luis Cama-
cho, was a radio receiver with a frequency-adjustment knob, vol-
ume knob, earpiece and spike meter. This device would allow the
careful craftsman to check for possible radio interference in the
area in which he intended to do his bit to improve the human
species, before he armed his own device. Better safe than sorry.

All in all, it was an impressive kit. Everything recommended by
Gentleman’s Quarterly for the well-heeled professional bomber was
in there, including a case containing a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers
and wrenches.

Camacho repacked the items carefully, trying to put everything
back exactly as he found it. After much straining he got the tool-
box back through the trapdoor into the attic.

He checked carefully in the joists as far as he could reach and
see, then replaced the pistol rug. He was meticulous in restoring
everything to its proper place, wiping a few flecks of dust from the
chair arms and retrieving a larger piece from the carpet. When he
had given everything a last look, he went down to the kitchen and
seated himself at the table.

Where was the plastique? It had to be here someplace. Using his
flashlight, he descended again to the basement and examined the
paint cans. He hefted them, shook them gently. They contained
something, but it probably wasn’t paint. Oh well.

He locked the kitchen door behind him and crossed through the
back gate to his own yard.

Standing in his own kitchen with a pot of coffee dripping
through the filter, he thought about Albright’s treasure as he ma-
neuvered a cup under the black coffee basket to fill it. With the
Pyrex pot back in place, he sipped on the hot liquid as he dialed the
phone.

After talking to three people, he was connected with the man he
wanted, an explosives expert. “Well, the material’s ability to resist
the effects of heat and cold and humidity depends on just what
kind of stuff it is. Semtex is a brand real popular right now, made
in Czechoslovakia. Heat won’t do it any good, but if the heat is not
too severe or prolonged, it shouldn’t take much of its punch
away.”

“How about storage in an uninsulated attic?”

“Here, in this climate?”

“Yes.”

“Not recommended. Best would be a place slightly below room
temperature, a place where the temp stays pretty constant.”

“Thanks.”

“I keep mine in the wine cellar.”

“Sure.”

Camacho finished the cup of coffee, dumped the rest of the pot
down the sink and turned off the coffee maker. He wiped the area
with a dishrag and threw the wet grounds into the garbage. He
didn’t want his wife noticing he had been there.

It was three o’clock when he locked the front door and drove
away.

At about the same instant that Luis Camacho was starting his car
to return to his office. Toad Tarkington was parking at the Reno
hospital. When he arrived in the room, Rita was sitting in a chair
talking with Mrs. Douglas, her roommate. After the introductions
Toad pulled up the other chair, a molded plastic job made for a
floaller bottom than his.

“When are they going to let you go?” he asked as he tried to
arrange himself comfortably.

“Probably tomorrow. The doctor will be around in an hour or
so.”

“Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

“Not really.’” She smiled at Mrs. Douglas. “We had a series of
little naps, didn’t we?”

“We did.” Mrs. Douglas had a delicate voice. “I don’t sleep
much anymore anyway.” She bit on her lower lip.

“Perhaps we should go for a little walk,” Rita suggested. She
roee and made sure her robe belt was firmly tied- “We’ll be back in
a little bit, Mrs. Douglas,”

“Okay, dear.”

Out in the hall Toad said, “I see you fixed your hair.”

“Wasn’t it a fright? A hospital volunteer helped me this morn-
ing. She said it would help how I felt, and she was right.” She
walked slowly in her slippers, her hands in her pockets. “Poor Mrs.
Douglas. Here I’ve been so concerned about my little half-acre and
her two daughters came in this morning and told her she has to go
to a nursing home. She’s very upset. Oh, Toad, it was terrible, for
all of them. They’re afraid she’ll fall again with no one there, and
the daughters work, with families of their own.”

Toad made a sympathetic noise. He had never given the prob-
lems of elderly people much thought. He really didn’t want to do
so now either.

Rita paused for a drink from a water fountain, then turned back
toward her room. “I just wanted you to know the situation. Now
we’ll go back and cheer her up.”

Toad put his hand on her arm. “Whoa, lady. Let’s run that one
by again. Just how are we going to do that?”

“You cheered me up last night You make me feel good just
teing around you. You can do the same with her.”

Toad looked up and down the hall for help, someone or some-
thing to rescue him. No such luck. He looked again at Rita, who
was absorbing every twitch of his facial muscles. “Women my own
age I don’t understand. Now it’s true I’ve picked up a smattering
of experience here and there with the gentle sex, but eighty-year-
old ladies with busted hips are completely out of—“

“You can do it,” Rita said with simple, matter-of-fact faith, and
grasping his hand, she led him back along the hallway.

In the room she nudged him toward the chair near Mrs. Doug-
las. He started to give Rita a glare, but when he realized Mrs.
Douglas was watching him, he changed it to a smile. It came out as
a silly, nervous smile.

Women! If they didn’t screw there’d be a bounty on ‘em.

“Rita says you’re facing some very significant changes in your
life.”

The elderly woman nodded. She was still chewing on her lip. At
that moment Toad forgot Rita and saw before him his own mother
as she would be in a few years. “Pretty damned tough,” he said,
meaning it.

“My life now is my garden, the roses and bulbs and the annuals
that I plant every spring. I do my housework and spend my time
watching the cycle of life in my garden. I wasn’t ready to give that
up.”

“I see.”

“I have most of my things planted now. The bulbs have been up
for a month or so. They were so pretty this spring.”

“I don’t suppose any of us are ever ready to give up something
we love.”

“I suppose not. But I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to. My
husband—he died fifteen years ago with a heart attack while he
was playing golf. He so loved golf. I was hoping that someday in
my garden I …” She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again Toad asked about her garden. It
was not large, he was told. Very small, in fact. But it was enough.
That was one of life’s most important lessons, learning what was
enough and what was too much. Understanding what was suffi-
cient “But,” Mrs. Douglas sighed, “what is sufficient changes as
you get older. It’s one thing for a child, another for an adult,
another thing still when you reach my age. I think as you age life
gets simpler, more basic.”

215

“I’m curious,” said Toad Tarkington, feeling more than a little
embarrassed. He shot a hot glance at Rita. “Do you pray much?”

“Na. It’s too much like begging. The professional prayers al-
ways want things they will never get, things they just can’t have.
Like peace on earth and conversion of the sinners and cures for all
die sick. And to prove they really want all these things that can
never be, they grovel and beg.”

“At least they’re sincere,” Rita said.

“Beggars always are,” Mra. Douglas shot back. “That’s their
one virtue.”

Toad grinned. Mrs. Douglas appeared to be a fellow cynic,
which he found quite agreeable. Perhaps the age difference doesn’t
matter that much after all. A few minutes later he asked one more
question. “What will heaven be like, do you think?”

“A garden. With roses and flowers of all kinds. My heaven will
be that anyway. What yours will be, I don’t know.” Mrs. Douglas
waggled a finger at him without lifting her hand from the bed.
“You are two very nice young people, to spend time with an old
woman to cheer her up. When are you going to marry?”

Toad laughed and stood. “You tell her, Mrs. Douglas. She abso-
lutely refuses to become an honest woman.” He said his goodbyes
and Rita followed him into the hall.

“Thanks. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She had her arms folded
across her chest

“Hang tough, Rita. If they let you take a hike tonight or tomor-
row, give me a call at the BOQ. Captain Grafton or I will come get
you and bring you some clothes.”

She nodded. “You come if you can.”

“Sure.” He paused. “What do you want from life, Rita? What
will be sufficient?”

She shook her head. He winked and walked away.

16

An an era when the average Amer-
ican male stood almost six feet tall, Secretary of Defense Royce
Caplinger towered just five feet six inches in his custom-made
shoes with two-inch heels. Perhaps understandably, his hero and
role model was Douglas MacArthur, of whom he had written a
biography ten years before. The critics had savaged it and the post-
Vietnam public had ignored it. Caplinger, said one wag, would
have won MacArthur sainthood had the book been even half true.

How deeply this experience hurt Caplinger only his family might
have known. The world was allowed to see only the merciless effi-
ciency and detached intellect that had made him a millionaire by
the time he was thirty and president and CEO of one of the twenty
largest industrial companies in the nation when he was forty-two.
Now worth in excess of a hundred million dollars, he was a man
who believed in himself with a maniacal faith; in the world of
titanic egos in which he moved he saw himself as a giant and, to his
credit, others saw him the same way.

Rude and abrasive, Caplinger never forgot or forgave. He had
never been accused of possessing a sense of humor. He won many
more battles than he lost because he was right, often terrifically
right, as his many enemies freely acknowledged. He often won
when he was wrong too, because he could play major-league hard-
ball with the best of them. Years ago his subordinates had labeled
him “the cannibal,” whispering that he liked the taste of raw flesh,

Caplinger had the brain of Caesar and the soul of a lizard, all
housed in the body of a chimpanzee, or so one of his more daring
victims had groused to Time magazine. This quote crossed Jake
Grafton’s mind just now as he watched the secretary’s gaze dart
back and forth across the faces of the men at the luncheon table as
they were served pear halves in china dishes bearing the seal of the
Navy Department by a steward in a white jacket.

Jake was back in Washington for a week while the China Lake
crowd fixed their A-6, Rita Moravia recovered, and Samuel Dodg-
ers tinkered with the Athena device. This was Jake’s first meal in
the Secretary of the Navy’s dining/conference room, so today he
was playing tourist and taking it all in.

The room was spacious and paneled with dark wood, perhaps
mahogany. Deep blue drapes dressed up the windows. A half
dozen oil paintings of sailing ships and battles, with little spotlights
to show them to advantage, were arranged strategically between
the windows and doors. Gleaming brass bric-a-brac provided the
accents. Sort of early New York Yacht Club, Jake decided, a nine-
teenth-century vision of a great place for railroad pirates and coal
barons to socialize over whiskey with nautical small talk about
spankers and jibs and their latest weekend sail to Newport. He
would describe the room for Callie this evening. He sipped his
sugarless iced tea and turned his attention to the conversation.

In keeping with his temperament, Caplinger was doing the talk-
ing: “. - . the Congress has ceased to exist as a viable legislative
body since Watergate. They can’t even manage to give senior lead-
ers or the judiciary a pay raise without making a hash of it. With-
out strong, capable leaders. Congress is a collection of mediocrities
drifting . . .”

Jake used his knife to slice the fruit in his dish, two whole halves,
to make it go further. Already he suspected this wasn’t going to be
much of a meal.

At the opposite end of the table from the Secretary of Defense
sat today’s host. Secretary of the Navy George Ludlow. He was
nibbling at pieces of pear he nicked off with his fork and listening
to Caplinger. No doubt he was used to these monologues; he had
married Caplinger’s second daughter, a modestly pretty young
woman with a smile that looked vacuous in news photos. Jake
Grafton had never met her and probably never would.

“. . . five hundred thirty-five ants on a soapbox drifting down
the Potomac, each of them thinking he’s steering.” Caplinger
chuckled and everyone else smiled politely. Jake had heard that old
saw before.

Across the long table from Jake sat Tyler Henry, Under Secre-
tary of Defense for Acquisition Russell Queen, and the Chief of
Naval Operations, Admiral Jerome Nathan Lanham.

Lanham was a submariner, a nuke, with all the baggage that
term implies: team player, risk minimizer, technocrat par excel-
lence in the service of the nuclear genie. His patron saint was
Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, whose portrait
hung in Lanham’s office. Like Rickover, Jerome Nathan Lanham
was reputed to have little use for nonengineers. Just now he sat
regarding Jake Grafton, A.B. in history, with raised eyebrows.

Jake nodded politely and speared another tiny hunk of pear. The
dish was half full of juice. He wondered if he should go after it with
a spoon and surveyed the table to see if anyone else was. Nope.
Well, hell. He used the spoon anyway, trying to be discreet, as
Caplinger ruminated upon the current political situation in Japan
and the steward began serving a tiny garden salad. “. . . wanted
to hang Hirohito after the war, but MacArthur said no, which was
genius. The Japanese would never have forgiven us.”

“If we conquered Iran today, what would you do with
Khomeini?” Helmet Fritsche, seated to Jake’s right, asked the
question of Caplinger, who grinned broadly.

“Such a tiny hypothetical—he should have been a lawyer,” Lud-
low muttered sotto voce as the others laughed.

“Make Khomeini a martyr? No. I’d ensure he didn’t get any
older, but the autopsy—and there would be one—would read ‘old
age.’”

After the salad came small bowls of navy bean soup accompa-
nied by some tasteless crackers. Even Caplinger thought they were
insipid. “George, these crackers taste worse than some of my old
predictions.”

When the soup was gone, the steward filled coffee cups and
whisked away the dishes, then retired. Jake watched incredulously.
Apparently they had just had the entire meal. At least Ludlow
wasn’t blowing the whole navy budget this year on grub.

“Well, Grafton,” Caplinger said, “will Athena work?”

“Yessir. It’s the biggest technical advance in naval aviation since
I’ve been in the navy.”

“If it works”—the Secretary of Defense eyed Jake across the run
of his coffee cup—“it’ll be the biggest leap forward for the military
since the invention of radar. The air force is going to want this
technology yesterday. It’ll save their strategic bomber program.”
Jake understood. The air force would be able to use much cheaper
bombers than the B-2, which they would never get any significant
number of at a half billion dollars each.

“I want it right now,” Admiral Lanham said. “These devices
will make surface ships invisible to radar satellites and cruise mis-
siles. The entire Soviet naval air arm will be obsolete. I want a
crash program that puts Athena in the fleet right now, and damn
the cost.”

Caplinger shifted his gaze to Helmut Fritsche, on Jake’s right.
“Will it work? Can it be made to work?”

“Anything’s possible given enough time and money.”

“How much?” demanded Under SECDEF Russell Queen. In
civilian life he had been president of a large accounting firm. White
skin, banker’s hands, bald, Queen had long ago lost the battle of
the bulge. He was a humorless man with thick glasses. Jake de-
cided it would require prodigious faith to believe Russell Queen
had once been young or ever loved a woman. “How much do you
think will be enough?”

Fritsche’s shoulders rose a quarter inch and fell. “Depends on
how you go about it—how you structure the contract, how many
units you buy annually, how big a risk” you’re willing to take on
unproven technology. We didn’t test a full-up system. All we did
was prove the concept, and we have some more work to do on that
next week. We’re a long way from an operational system that will
protect just one tactical airplane.”

“How long?”

Helmut Fritsche took out a cigar and rolled it thoughtfully be-
tween his hands. He didn’t reach for a match. “Two or three years
—if you can make all the paper pushers keep hands off. Four or
five if it’s business as usual.” Every head at the table bobbed its
owner’s concurrence.

“Humph,” snorted Caplinger, who sucked in a bushel of air and
sent it down as far as it would go, then exhaled slowly. “I can try
to put—maybe slip it under the stealth stuff—but - . .” His enthu-
siasm wouldn’t fill a thimble. Even the Secretary of Defense
couldn’t control the legions of bureaucrats with rice bowls to pro-
tect. They were too well armed with statutes and regulations and
pet congressmen. “Russell, you’ll have to make this work, find
some dollars in one of your little hidey-holes, keep it too small for
anyone to get curious about. And no fucking memos.”

Queen nodded slowly, his smooth round face revealing his dis-
comfort. He looked, Jake thought, like a man staring into a dark
abyss that he has been told to lower himself into.

“I don’t think that’s the way to do it.” Ludlow said. “Admiral
Lanham wants it now and the air force will too. We’re going to
have to fund Athena as one of our highest-priority items. We’re
going to have to throw money at it and hope the technology
works.”

“Do you agree, Admiral?”

“Yes, sir. I’d rather have Athena than a whole lot of projects I
can name, including the A-12.”

“We need them both,” Caplinger said. “So we’ll keep Athena in
with the ATA and request funding for them both.”

“What about Congress?” Ludlow murmured. When no one re-
plied, he expanded the question. “How will Athena be seen by the
liberals dying to chop the defense budget? Will they think it gives
us such a large qualitative technical advantage over the Soviets
that they can chop our capital budget? Shrink the navy?” To main-
tain a navy, worn-out, obsolete ships must be constantly replaced
with new ones. New ships are expensive and require years to con-
struct. A decision not to build as many as necessary to maintain
current force levels was a decision to shrink the navy. Insufficient
ships to fulfill continuing worldwide commitments forced planners
to delay ship overhauls and keep sailors at sea for grotesquely long
periods, which wore out ships prematurely and devastated enlisted
retention rates. It was a cruel downward spiral. This was the post-
Vietnam nightmare from which the navy was just recovering.

“No democracy will ever buy enough ships,” Jake Grafton said.
“Not over the long haul”

“You’re saying we can’t maintain a six-hundred-ship navy,”
Lanham said, frowning.

“We don’t have six hundred ships now, sir, and we’re not likely
to ever get them,” Jake shot back, suddenly sure he didn’t want
Lanham to think he could be cowed.

“Lessen the primary threat and we won’t need as many ships.
That’s the argument,” said Ludlow.

“Politicians never understand commitments,” Royce Caplinger
said dryly, “perhaps because they make so many of them. The
federal deficit is totally out of control due to mandated increases in
social program expenditures. They borrowed money and never
asked if they could afford the interest. They approved treaties and
never weighed the cost in defense expenditures.”

The CNO made a gesture of frustration. “We have more practi-
cal concerns. The air force is facing institutional death. They gave
up the close air support mission to the army a generation ago. The
strategic bomber mission is on the ropes. All they have left are
ICBMs—which the army could run—and tactical air and airlift.
Their bases are fixed, vulnerable to ICBMs and political upheavals.
The world is passing them by. They’re panicking. And they have a
lot of friends. If they don’t get Athena and get it now . . .”

“It’ll get ugly,” Ludlow agreed.

“I am the Secretary of Defense,” Caplinger said, his voice hard.
“I will take care of the air force. You people take care of the navy.”

The heavy silence that followed was broken by Tyler Henry.
“No one has mentioned X.” All eyes turned to the vice
admiral. An uncomfortable look crossed his face, as if he had just
farted in church.