The Minotaur (30 page)

“Not any of them.”

“Well, do you have some that you don’t hate as much as oth-
ers?”

“Corn. Corn is okay. But not the creamed kind.” She squirmed.
“And I like lima beans.”

“No kidding? So do I. Maybe we can have some tomorrow
night. How about it, Callie?”

His wife was standing by the little desk that served as a paper
catchall. looking once again at the diet book. She turned to Jake
and nodded. She had tears in her eyes. He winked at her.

“Amy, better get your school books. And, Callie, don’t we have
some sugarless dessert around here for little girls who eat their
dinner?”

17

A woman from the garage called
at 10 A.M. and said his car was ready: $119.26. Camacho told her
he would stop by after work. She hung up before he could even ask
what the problem had been.

Dreyfus gave him a ride and dropped him in front of the show-
room.

The new cars gleamed shamelessly and flashed their chrome
with wanton abandon as he walked by. Light, easy-listening music
sounded everywhere. Two salesmen asked if he needed help.

He paid for the repairs at a window where a harried young
woman juggled two phones as she pounded numbers into a com-
puter. He surrendered his driver’s license for her scrutiny before
she asked. Without even glancing to see if his puss matched the
photo, she copied the number onto the check and slid it back at
him.

His six-year-old car sat amid twenty or so others of its vintage
on a gravel lot out back. Dingy and coated with road grime, it
hadn’t seen wax since . . . not since he gave his son twenty dol-
lars that Saturday two years ago and the kid let the wax dry like
paint all over the car before he tried to wipe it off.

Camacho unlocked the door, rolled down the windows and
tossed the yellow card dangling from the rearview-mirror bracket
onto the floor. The car started readily enough and ran sweetly. He
examined the invoice. Diagnostic test. Defective spark plug. Defec-
tive lead cable? Ouch—they got him there! Labor. How is it a
garage can charge $55 per hour for a mechanic’s time?

About two miles from the garage was a shopping center with a
large parking lot, most of which was empty except for light poles
and a couple of cars that looked as if they had sat in those spots all
winter. One even had two flat tires.

He parked near it and got his jack from the trunk. The rear end
went up first. He had an old army blanket in the trunk and spread
it under the car so he wouldn’t get too filthy.

With coat and tie on the back seat, flashlight in hand, Luis
Camacho slid gingerly under the car. He knew exactly what he was
looking for, but it might be hard to spot.

Five minutes later he stood beside the car and scratched his
head. If Albright had put a bomb in this thing, where was it?

After a thorough scrutiny of the engine compartment and the
trunk cavity, he attacked the door panels and rockers with a Phil-
lips-head screwdriver. How many possible places were there? The
backseats? Could he get them loose and look under them? The
odds of a bomb being there were small, of course, but there was a
chance. Just how big a chance, Camacho didn’t know. Peter Alek-
sandrovich Chistyakov was not a man to take unnecessary risks.
That double-agent discussion yesterday had frightened Camacho,
coming as it did from a man who owned an assassin’s pistol and
had enough gadgets in his attic to blow up half the cops in Wash-
ington.

To assess just how likely it was that good ol’ Harlan Albright
had decided to eliminate a possible threat, one would need to know
just what it was that was being threatened. How many other agents
was he running? What kind of information were they getting?

Of course, Albright could slip a bomb under the car any night
while Camacho snored in his own bed. Risky, but feasible. But
perhaps he had planted a bomb with a radio-actuated device as
insurance, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it, but with it already in
place should the need arise. A careful man might do something like
that, right?

Apparently Albright was a careful man. The bomb was in the
driver’s door, behind the panel, below the window glass when it
was rolled completely down. It had been carefully taped in place so
it wouldn’t rattle.

At a glance it appeared to contain a couple pounds of plastique.
One fuse stuck out of the oblong mass. A wire ran from the fuse to
a servo and from the servo to a six-volt battery. A little receiver
was wired to the servo and four AA batteries were hooked up to
power it. A tiny wire attached to the receiver was routed all along
the inside of the door. It was a simple, radio-actuated bomb. Sim-
ple and effective,

Luis Camacho pulled the fuse from the bomb and used a pen-
knife to cut the wire. The plastique and the rest of it he left in
place.

Sweating in spite of the fifty-five-degree weather and fifteen-mile-
per-hour wind, he replaced the jack in the trunk. The door panel
he put in the backseat

Had he figured it right? Was this merely insurance? Or bad Al-
bright-Chistyakov already decided to push the button?

Standing there beside the car, he looked around slowly, check-
ing. A lot of good that will do you, Luis. Cursing under his breath,
be got behind the wheel and started the car.

There was a little hardware store in the shopping center, right
between a gourmet food store and a factory fabric outlet. Inside
Camacho bought a small flashlight, a coil of insulated wire, and
some black electrician’s tape.

Out in the parking lot he used the knife and screwdriver to
disassemble the flashlight. The bulb he mounted with tape on a
bole he carved in the door panel. Fifteen minutes later he had the
last screw back in place and the crank for the window reinstalled.

Therel Now if Albright pushes the button, instead of a big bang,
this flashlight bulb will illuminate and burn continuously until that
six-volt ni-cad battery in the door is completely discharged. As-
suming be sees the illuminated bulb—and the unsoldered wire con-
nections don’t vibrate loose—our saintly hero Luis Camacho, FBI
ace spy catcher, will then have time to bend over and kiss his ass
goodbye before the bullets from the silenced Ruger .22 send him to
a kinder, more gentle world.

What more could any man ask?

He sat behind the wheel staring at the storefronts. After a mo-
ment he got out of the car and walked back across the parking lot
to the gourmet store, the Bon Vivant The place smelled of herb
and flower leaf sachets. The clerk, a woman in her forties with
ironed hair, was too engrossed in a book to even nod at him.
He wandered through the aisles, looking at cans and jars of stuff
imported from all over the world. Nothing from Iowa here. If it’s
green or purple and packed in a jar from Europe or the Orient,
with an outrageous price, you know it’s got to be good.

He selected a jar of blue French jam, “Bilberry” the label said,
paid $4.32 plus tax to the refugee from Berkeley, and walked back
across the empty, gray parking lot to his car.

The flight surgeon at the China Lake dispensary pronounced Rita
fit to fly on Friday afternoon. Jake Grafton spent Saturday in the
hangar with Samuel Dodgers and Helmut Fritsche going over the
computer program and modifications to Athena that were needed.

As he worked Jake became even more impressed with Dodgers’
technological achievement and even more disenchanted with
Dodgers the human being. Like every fanatic, Dodgers thought in
absolutes which left no room for tolerance or dissent. On technical
matters his mind was open, inquiring, incisive, leaping to new in-
sights regardless of where the leap took him or the hoary prece-
dents shattered by the jump. On everything else, however, every
aspect of the human condition, Dodgers was bigoted, voluble, and
usually wrong. It was as if his maker had increased his scientific
talents at the expense of all the others, thus creating a mean little
genius who viewed the world as a collection of wicked conspiracies
hatched by evil, godless agents of the devil. His opinion of most of
his less gifted fellow men was equally bleak. And he did believe in
the devil. He waxed long and loud on Satan and his works when-
ever he had a half minute that was not devoted to the task at hand-
How Fritsche tolerated these diatribes Jake couldn’t fathom. He
found himself increasingly irritated, and retreated to the head or
the outside of the building when he had had all he could stomach.

“How can you listen to that asshole without choking him?” Jake
asked during a brief interlude when nature called Dodgers to the
head.

“Whatszat?” Fritsche asked, raising his eyebrows curiously.
“These endless scatterbrained rantings,” Jake explained pa-
tiently. “In the last hour he’s slandered every racial and ethnic
group on the planet and denounced everyone in government as
thieves and liars and worse. How can you listen to this?”

“Oh. That. I never listen. I’m too busy thinking about Athena. I
shut out all that other stuff.”

“Wish I could.”

“Hmmm,” said Fritsche, obviously not paying much attention to
Jake either.

“If he doesn’t cool it some, I’ll probably strangle him by dinner-
time. Better learn all you can this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh,” said Fritsche, who was bending and reexamining the
cooling unit that kept the computer temperature down. It was
certainly a marvel of miniaturization and engineering. “How this
man made this in a backyard workshop just boggles the mind.
Look here, the craftsmanship of these welds, the way he polished
this forging with acid to minimize heat loss. Look here! See how he
built this to maximize cooling and shorten the wire runs. And he
didn’t even use a computer to design this!”

“Instinct. The troll’s a genius,” Jake Grafton admitted reluc-
tantly.

The other shoe fell on Sunday morning, when Jake received a
telephone call from Washington. George Ludlow was on the other
end of the wire. “Royce Caplinger’s flying out to see you this after-
noon. He’s bringing Senator Hiram Duquesne with him. Each of
them will have an aide along. Get them rooms in the BOQ.”

“Jesus, Mr. Secretary. This project’s got a security lid tight as a
virgin’s twat. We don’t need any godda—any senator—“

“Duquesne had to be told, Captain. He’s the chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee. I’m not asking your opinion.
I’m informing you. Got it?”

“Yessir. I got it. Have you also informed Admiral Dunedin?”

“Yes.” The connection broke. Jake cradled the phone. He soon
learned there were but two empty rooms in the BOQ, so he sent the
two junior members of his party to a motel off base. Those two
were Toad and Rita, neither of whom looked very distressed when
they tossed their bags into the back of a navy station wagon and
drove away.

He wore his only clean white uniform and was standing in the
sun in front of the terminal when the T-39 taxied up and Royce
Caplinger stepped out. The CO of the base was standing beside
Jake. Both officers saluted smartly. They also snapped a salute to
Senator Duquesne, who was dressed in slacks and pullover shirt
and looked like he had had a couple snorts on the trip. As Du-
quesne blinked mightily at the bright light, a woman descended the
little stair from the plane.

Jake recognized her even as Caplinger said her name. “Ms.
DeCrescentis. She’s a guest of Senator Duquesne.”

“Consolidated Technologies. She’s a vice president, isn’t she?”

“Yep,” said Duquesne. “Good to see you again. Captain,” he
said in a tone that implied just the opposite.

“Hitchhiking today, Ms. DeCrescentis?”

“She’s here to take the tour with us,” Caplinger said.

“Could I talk to you privately for a moment,” Jake said, not a
question, and walked away from the group.

Twenty paces or so away Jake turned around. Caplinger was
right behind. Jake let him have it: “Ludlow said you were coming
for a briefing with a senator, even though this project is classified to
the hilt. But I’m not about to let a vice president of a defense
contractor that is going to be bidding on the ATA have a look at
Athena or be a party to any conversation on the subject. She has
no bona fide need to know at this stage of the game. She doesn’t
have access. Not only no, but hell no. Sir.”

“My responsibility,” Caplinger said, then clamped his lips into a
thin line.

“No, sir. Ludlow didn’t mention any defense contractors, and
even if he had, I’d have to clear this with Admiral Dunedin. I take
orders from him. He’d probably have to talk to CNO. Her pres-
ence would violate a couple dozen reg—“

“Call him.”

“Now?”

“Yes, goddamnit, right fucking now. We’ll wait in the lounge.”
Caplinger stalked for the blue carpet that led inside, followed by
Jake Grafton. The base CO led the others inside.

Jake used the phone in the operations officer’s office on the sec-
ond deck.

He reached Dunedin at his office in Crystal City on the first try
and outlined the situation. “Fuck!” said the admiral.

“Yessir.”

“I’ll call Ludlow. If that goes sour I’ll call CNO.”

“Okay.” Jake gave him the phone number where he could be
reached.

“You’re really sticking your neck out, Jake.”

“So fire me.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Thirty minutes went by. Jake stared out the window at the little
passenger jet and watched the men with the gas truck refuel it as
heat waves rose off the tarmac. Blue mountains lay on the horizon.
Not a single airplane stirring this Sunday morning. After a while
he examined the photos and mementos the ops boss had arranged
on his walls. He recognized some of the names and faces in the
group pictures.

He was sitting behind the desk with his feet propped on it and
doodling on a scratch pad when the phone rang. “Captain Graf-
ton.”