The Minotaur (43 page)

It started on the next jerk of the lanyard. Albright played with
the needle valve until the engine ran smoothly.

When Luis finished the front and back yards and put the ma-
chine back in the garage, Albright had a beer waiting- Ten o’clock.
“What the heck. it’s Saturday.”

They sat on Albright’s front steps, in the shade of the big maple.

“What’s new in the glamorous, dazzling world of counterespio-
nage?”

“Our people visiting the gourmet food stores had a nibble. A
store over in Reston. Not much of anything, but it was all we got.
One of the clerks got to talking about how many famous people
buy their stuff at that store. She had a name, but she couldn’t
remember if he had ever bought any jam. She said he or his secre-
tary come in there once a month or so.”

“Who?”

“It isn’t evidence. The clerk was a dingbat. The agent said she
looked like she had terminal anorexia. Didn’t took like she weighed
ninety pounds. Obviously been eating her own stuff.”

“Who?”

“Royce Caplinger.”

Albright’s eyebrows rose once, then fell back into place. ”She
sure?”

“I told you, she was bragging. She also said she had three sena-
tors, five congressmen, two ex-congressmen, a dozen flag officers
from all services, and three high-class hookers that buy stuff from
her on a regular basis.”

“Hookers, huh? What’s the name of the store?”

‘The Gourmet Market.”

“You going to follow up?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ve got a SWAT team sitting on the place twenty-
four hours a day. A cockroach couldn’t get in or out without us
knowing it. If Caplinger ever shows up again and buys French
blueberry jam, we’ll bust him on the spot.” He drained the beer can
and stood. “Still, it’s a lead. Someplace to look.”

“How’s the ATA crash investigation going?”

“So-so. The usual. Dazzle. Glamour.”

“Why are you in that investigation anyway?”

“The admiral in charge is scared to death of X. And
he knows I’m the best; he won’t talk to anybody else. No shit” He
tossed the empty can at Albright “I gotta go. Taking Sally to the
mall- Thanks for the beer.”

When he held the door open for Sally, Camacho automatically
glanced across the car at the little bulb he had inset in the driver’s
door. It was dark.

He got into the car and started the engine and backed out onto
the street.

“I want to run by the Richards house and pick up Gerald.” The
boy had spent the night with a friend.

“Why? He can walk home this afternoon and he has a key to the
house.”

“I’m taking you two to the airport. I want you to go visit your
mother for a week or two.”

“But I’m not packed! The PTA has a benefit on Thurs—“

“I want you both out of town for a while. Don’t argue. I mean
it.”

“What about our clothes?” his wife protested. “We can’t—“

“Oh yes you can! Buy some more clothes. You have your check-
book.”

“Luis, what is this all about?”

He pulled over to the side of the street and put the car in neutral.
He turned in the seat to face his wife. “I’m working a case. The
people we’re after know where I live. I’d just feel a whole lot better
if you and Gerald weren’t home until I wrap this up. Now there’s
no danger, but why take a chance?”

“You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Mother—how will I explain dropping in on her and Dad like
this?”

“Tell them we had a fight and you want some time alone.”

“Mom won’t believe that! She knows you too well to—“

“You think of something. Tell them we’re redoing the downstairs
and you’ve developed an allergy to paint. I don’t care. Just don’t
tell the truth. Your mother’ll spill it to every one other friends, and
it’s a very small world.” He put the car in gear and rolled.

Sally chewed on her lip and twisted the strap of her purse. “I
don’t like this, Luis.”

“I don’t either, but this is the way it has to be.”

Smoke Judy was sipping beer in a booth at his favorite bar when he
saw Harlan Albright come in and ask for change for the parking
meter. Judy waited several minutes, paid his tab and left.

Albright was behind the wheel of his car. Judy opened the pas-
senger door and sat down. “Hi.”

“Want to take a little ride?”

“Sure. Why not?” Smoke took his sunglasses from the neck of
his shirt, where they hung suspended by an earpiece, cleaned them
on a shirttail, then put them on. He tossed his gym bag onto the
backseat

After several blocks, Albright glanced at Judy and asked,
“How’s things at the office? Hear you guys had a crash.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Oh, people talk.”

Judy shrugged.

“Got anything on today?”

“Not really.”

“Want to go over on the Eastern Shore and get some dinner? I
know a great little place that serves the best crab in Maryland.”

“They’ll serve us like this?” Both men were in jeans. Albright
was wearing a pullover shirt that sported a Redskins logo.

“I think so.”

“Why not?”

Albright drove to the beltway and got on it headed east. Traffic
was heavy, as usual. He took the exit toward Annapolis and en-
gaged the cruise control. Judy turned on the radio and found a ball
game. The Orioles, only the second inning.

Judy noticed that Albright kept checking the rearview mirrors,
but he quit after a while and drove with his left elbow out the
window. “Can’t stand air conditioning,” he muttered, and Judy
nodded.

Luis Camacho sat in his backyard with a beer in his hand. He had
carried out the portable TV that Sally normally watched in the
kitchen, and rigged up the extension cord. He had the Orioles
game on.

When he returned from the airport, Albright’s car was missing.
He had called the office and got Dreyfus. “Where is he?”

“On the beltway heading east. Picked up a guy at a bar in Alex-
andria, but we don’t know who. Couldn’t get close enough.”

“Okay. Any idea where they’re going?”

“He made no phone calls before he left the house. Didnt say
anything. About thirty minutes after you left for the airport, he got
in his car and drove off. He went over to Reston and stopped by
the Gourmet Market.”

“Heard from Susan yet?” Susan was the wife of an FBI agent
She and her husband owned the market, and Camacho had en-
listed their help. Susan was the skinniest woman Camacho had
ever met, but to the best of his knowledge she was not suffering
from anorexia.

“Yeah. Said he came in and bought some things, stood and chat-
ted, said he was new in the neighborhood. Spent about fifteen min-
utes in the store. She says he never asked about Caplinger or any-
one else, and she didn’t volunteer. She wants to know if you think
he’ll be back.”

“Tell her probably not. I think Albright just wanted some tangi-
ble verification of my little tale.”

“Okay. I’ll call you back when he gets to wherever he’s going
and let you know.”

“Dreyfus, I meant what I said yesterday. Under no circum-
stances, none. do I want him to burn the tail. Lose him if you have
to, but don’t give him a chance to figure out we’re watching.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

Now Camacho sat in his backyard with the TV going. He nursed
the beer and paid no attention to the game.

Everything that could be done had been done. Nothing had been
rushed. The situation had been allowed to ripen naturally, and now
all was in readiness. Including Dreyfus, he had sixty-five agents on
this case. They were in the main telephone exchange in case Al-
bright used a pay phone, Albright’s house was wired and continu-
ously monitored, a fleet of unmarked cars was at this very minute
preceding and following Albright as he drove the highways, two
vans full of cameras and parabolic listening devices trailed the car-
avan, two helicopters were airborne, Dreyfus had a stack of signed
John Doe warrants in the desk. What else? Oh yes, all the top lab
technicians were on call.

He sipped his beer and tried to think of something else that
should be done, some contingency that he had not foreseen. He
could think of nothing. Well, that wasn’t really true. This whole
operation could fizzle, any operation could, but it wouldn’t be be-
cause he hadn’t prepared as well as possible. His worst handicap
was the requirement to stay loose on Albright, to remain com-
pletely hidden. Well, that was the only way it could be, so no use
worrying.

But he was worried. When he could sit still no longer, he got the
lawn rake from the garage and set to work on the grass clippings as
the ball-park announcer chanted the summer myth yet again and
the afternoon heat continued to build.

Smoke Judy was impressed. The building wasn’t much, but the
prices on the menu were reasonable and the seafood heaped on the
plates of the early diners looked scrumptious and smelled the same.
Didn’t they call this decor “rustic”? Unfinished boards on the inte-
rior walls, with fishing nets and crab pots hanging from the ceiling.
Subdued lighting. ‘The food’s great,” Aibright assured him. “Dev-
iled crab is the house specialty.”

They had ordered their dinner and were sipping the foam off
frosty glasses of beer when Albright said, “Got a little proposition
for you, if you’re interested.”

Judy wiped off his foam mustache with a finger. “Depends.”

“Did you ever hear the term ‘kilderkin’?”

Smoke set the beer mug down and straightened in his chair. He
looked around at the other guests with interest. Two or three
looked like they could be the right age and level of fitness. His eyes
swung back to Albright. “Let’s go to the John.”

He rose and led the way.

It was a one-seater with a urinal and a sink. Not the cleanest rest
room he was ever in, but better than most. And it was empty. Judy
turned and set his feet, the right slightly behind the left. He got his
weight up on the balls of his feet and bent his knees slightly.

“Hands on the door, feet back and spread. The position, man.”

Albright stood with his hands on his hips a moment, then did as
he was told.

“I’m not wearing a wire.”

“Uh-huh.” He felt Albright all over, including his crotch. He
inspected his belt and his shoes and his pen. He examined his
sunglasses. He looked at the patch on his jeans. Then he removed
Albright’s wallet and moved back against the sink. “You can turn
around now.”

Albright watched him go through it. He looked at the driver’s
license carefully, the library card, the automobile registration and
insurance cards, the receipts from the food store and the laundry,
the credit cards. He counted the cash. It was in hundreds, twenty
of them. “Gonna play poker tonight?”

“I like to pay in cash.”

“Why the credit cards then?”

“You never know.”

Judy passed the wallet back. “You want to talk to me, then you
walk out there and cancel our dinner orders and pay the tab. Leave
a tip. We’ll go to a place I pick. You drive, but I don’t want you to
say one word in the car. Not a word. Got it?”

“Okay.”

In the car Judy pointed in the direction he wanted Albright to
go. Meanwhile he watched the other cars. They weren’t being fol-
lowed. He had Albright make a series of random turns, then take
the road leading east. Fifteen miles later they came to a big road-
house at a crossroads. Judy gestured and Albright drove into the
tot and killed the engine.

They went to a booth in the back and Judy seated himself so that
he could watch the door.

“You were saying?”

“Kilderkin.”

“What about it?”

“Kilderkin is the access word for a file in the computer at the
Pentagon. It’s a file held in the office where you work. The Athena
file. I can supply you with the code words to get to it. I want you to
copy the Athena file onto a floppy disk and give it to me,”

“All of it? All the documents?”

“Yes. It might take more than one disk.”

“Might. What do I get out of it?”

“A hundred grand.”

Commander Smoke Judy stared at him a while, then looked
around the room thoughtfully. In a moment the waiter came over.
They asked for beers and menus.

“What do you know about that file?” Judy asked.

“I’m not going to tell you. Let’s just say I want it.”

“Why?”

“All you need to know is I want it a hundred thousand dollars’
worth.”

“You don’t want it bad enough.”

“How badly do I have to want it?”

“If you ever decide you want it for a quarter million reasons,
you come talk to me. Half up front and half on delivery. Cash.
Used twenties.”

“No. That’s not— No!”

Judy picked up his menu. “I think I’ll have the bacon cheese-
burger. What about you?”

“Maybe a plain hamburger.”

Judy nodded and waited patiently for the waiter.

When they had finished their greaseburgers and were drinking a
cup of coffee, Albright said, “If I pay you fifty tonight, fifty on
Monday, when could you have the disks?”

“When will you have the rest of the money?”

“A week from Monday.”

“Then that’s when you get the disks.”

At seven o’clock Luis Camacho called his in-laws. Sally answered.

“Hey. You made it.”

“Oh, Luis. It’s going to be a nice visit. The folks are a little
baffled, but they’re delighted to have us.”

“Great. It’ll go okay.”

“What did you do this afternoon? What did you have for din-
ner?”

They discussed the condition of the larder for three or four min-
utes, then Camacho wished her good night.

An hour and a half later the phone rang. “He’s headed home,”
Dreyfus reported.

“Who was with him?”

“Don’t know. We got an infrared photo as they crossed the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The photographer isn’t very optimistic.
They came on into the metro area and stopped at a storage place in
Bladensburg for a bit. Then the subject dropped the passenger at a
Metro station and he was gone by the time we could get a man into
the station. Subject is heading your way now. He’ll be there in
about five minutes.”

“Get someone over to Smoke Judy’s place. See if they can spot
him coming home. And get a list of the license numbers of the cars
parked around that bar where the subject picked up his passenger.
Run them through the computer.”

“Okay, boss. Anything else?”

“When will the photo be ready?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“And I put a stakeout on the storage lot. Thought we might get
a warrant tomorrow and search it.”

“The subject will be making some phone calls tonight or tomor-
row. Be ready.”

“You really think he’s going to move?”

“He’s got to. He’s got to go for checkmate or concede.”

“Keep your gun handy.”

On Sunday morning Luis Camacho was painting the yard furniture
when Harlan Albright hailed him across the back fence. He came
through the gate and settled himself on one of the chairs waiting
for its spring coat.

“I have another brush in the garage if you want to help.”

Albright grinned and sipped his coffee. “Who said Tom Sawyer
is dead? Sorry. I gotta go run some errands this morning.” He
looked at the house. “Where’s Sally?”

“Went to visit her mother.” Camacho was working on a table leg
and didn’t look up.

“Oh.”

“Women,” Luis muttered.

“Yeah. Gonna stay a week or two?”

“Dunno.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And the boy?”

“He went too. It’s been years since he spent time with his grand-
parents. He didn’t want to go, of course.”

Albright watched Camacho work on the table. The paint ran
down the brush onto his fingers, which he wiped on the grass.
“May rain this afternoon, you know,” Albright said.

“Just my luck.”

“What would you say to packing it in and going home?”

Camacho put the paintbrush in the can and stood up. He looked
carefully at Albright, trying to read his expression.

“You mean Russia?”

“Yeah. You been here what? Twenty-eight or -nine years?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Yeah. Are you ready to go home?”

“I can’t even speak the language anymore. When I hear it I have
to concentrate real hard to get the drift, and then I can’t think of
the proper response. I been dreaming in English for over twenty-
five years. Want some more coffee?”

“Okay.”

Luis took his cup and went inside. He returned in a moment
with Albright’s coffee and a cup for himself. They both sampled
the brew, then sat in silence. Birds were squawking vigorously in
the tree behind them. Camacho took a deep breath and exhaled
slowly. How could he leave? He liked this place and these people.

Albright broke the silence. “You really think Caplinger is the
Minotaur?”

Luis considered. “He could be,” he said at last. “It fits. He has
the necessary access, he was on the official guest list of that party
three years ago when the first letter was stuck in the ambassador’s
coat. He’s an egomaniac, likes the power trip. It’s possible.”

“But why?”

Camacho shrugged. “List all the possibilities and look at them.
Pick the one you like.”

“I’ve done that. And you know what? I got the sneaking suspi-
cion that the real reason wasn’t on my list.”

“Why does a happily married man start buying tricks on a street
corner? Why does a man in his fifties steal a few hundred from the
petty-cash drawer?”

“That was the shortest reason on the list. Nut case. But I don’t
think so.”

“Happens all the time.” Camacho drained his cup, set it out of
the way and got back to the painting.

“Royce Alien Caplinger,” Albright said, pronouncing the name
slowly. “Sixty-three years old. Estimated net worth, $132 million.
Son of a druggist. Grew up in St. Paul. Married twice. Second wife
died of a heart attack six years ago. Hasn’t remarried, though he’s
screwing his secretary who’s worked for him for fifteen years. He’s
been doing that about once a month for ten years. She’s forty-two,
never married, modestly attractive, had a hysterectomy eight years
ago. Caplinger collects American Indian art, pays too much, some-
times gets good stuff, sometimes bad. Buys what he likes and to
hell with the experts. Has a copy of every book ever written about
MacArthur and the best MacArthur memorabilia collection in ex-
istence. Time said he has every piece of old junk Mrs. MacArthur
ever threw out. What else? Oh yeah. He has two grown children,
two dogs, and drives a fifteen-year-old Jaguar. Owns an estate in
Virginia near Middleburg. Gives his entire government salary to
charity.”

“Was involved in a panty raid when he was in college and was
suspended for a semester,” Camacho said without taking his eyes
from his work.

“That too. The rattling bones from his youth.” Albright tossed
the dregs of his coffee into the grass and laid the cup on his lap.
“So, Dr. Freud, has Caplinger gone over the edge? Is he copulating
with Mother Russia?”

Albright rose and, dangling the cup from a finger, ambled
through the gate. Thirty minutes later Camacho heard his car start
out front and drive away.

Albright drove to a Wat-Mart store near Laurel. After browsing for
ten minutes, he used the pay phone in the entryway. No one an-
swered at the number he tried. He waited exactly one minute and
tried again. The third time someone picked up the phone.

Albright talked for almost a minute. The other party never
spoke. Then Albright hung up and went back into the store, where
he wandered the aisles and handled merchandise for another half
hour.

When he left the store he drove aimlessly for an hour. At
Burtonsville he stopped for gas and bought a can of soda pop, a Dr
Pepper. He drank the contents as he drove north on Route 29 and
used a rag in the car to carefully wipe the fingerprints from the
can.

Approaching the outskirts of Columbia, he took the off-ramp for
Route 32, made an illegal left turn at the top and a sweeping right
down onto Route 29 headed south as he scanned the mirrors. No
one followed. No choppers or light planes in sight. At Route 216
he turned right from the through lane at the very last instant, just
as the stoplight turned green.

He was on two-lane blacktop now, a local county road. He
watched the mirror. A car turned from 29 onto this road, but it
had been traveling north. He didn’t recognize it. Local traffic
passed him going the other way.

Pulton was a tiny village—just a few farms, a church and a small
post office with a few nearby shops—1.1 miles west of Route 29.
Albright angled left onto Lime Kiln Road. This asphalt ribbon was
more narrow and twisty as it followed the natural descent of a
creek. He was in an area of beautiful homes set in huge meadows
well back from the road. Trees lined the fences and horses grazed
on the lush grass. The car that had followed him from Route 29
turned left at Reservoir Road and went up a little bill into a
sprawling subdivision.

A half mile past Reservoir Road Albright slowed the car. There
it was, right beside the road—a stone-drinking fountain fed by a
pipe from a spring. He eased to a stop and slammed the gear shift
lever into park. From the floor of the backseat he selected a 7-Up
can, grasping it with a rag. He slid across the seat, opened the
passenger door and set the can at the base of the fountain so it was
visible from the road. Back into the car, door shut, and rolling
again. Twenty seconds.

He glanced left, up a long sloping meadow at a huge house set
on top of the hill in a grove of trees. No one in sight.

Three hundred yards farther on he came to a T intersection-
This was Brown Bridge Road, another strip of two-lane asphalt
with a double yellow line down the center and no benns. He sat at
the intersection and looked both ways. No traffic. Nothing in the
rearview mirror.

He turned right. The road wound up a wooded draw and came
out into rolling, open country. A mile from Lime Kirn Road he
came to another stop sign at a T intersection. This was Route 216
again. To the right, east, was Fulton; 1-1 miles to the west was
Highland Junction. He knew, because he had spent many a Sunday
driving these suburban county roads, learning their twists and
turns, looking for likely drop sites. Directly across the road was a
Methodist church. Three or four cars in the lot, no people in sight.

He turned right, toward Fulton. He went through the village and
out to Route 29, which he crossed and continued on through
SkaggsviUe, across 1-95, and into Laurel, where he turned around
in the parking lot of a convenience store and began retracing his
route as he watched for vehicles he had seen before and scanned
the sky for airplanes.

Exactly thirty minutes later, at 2:47 P.M., he again passed Reser-
voir Road on Lime Kiln. Someone was changing a flat tire on a van
fifty yards up the hill on Reservoir. He hadn’t seen that van before.
Maybe. It could be the FBI. Or it could be anybody. He continued
past and slowed for the stone fountain.

The 7-Up can was still there. No vehicles in sight. No people on
the hills that he could see. No choppers or planes overhead. He
kept rolling past the fountain and dropped down to the Brown
Bridge Road intersection.

He stopped at the stop sign and looked both ways. No traffic. He
looked back over his shoulder, thinking about the van with the flat
tire, weighing it.

He turned left. The road ran along a creek that was dropping
toward the Patuxent River. The little valley was heavily wooded.
Houses sat amid the trees off to his left, but the steep bank on his
right was a forest.

Two-tenths of a mile from the intersection a gravel road
branched off to the right. “Schooley Mill Road,” the sign read. He
took it.

The road was narrow, no more than ten feet wide. It ran just
along the north side of the creek, parallel to the asphalt road,
which was twenty-five feet or so above him at the top of a steep
embankment on his left. This was a secluded lovers lane, for a few
hundred yards invisible from the paved road above. Apparently,
when the teenagers weren’t screwing here, the locals used this lane
as a trash depository. Green garbage bags, beer and soda-pop cans
lay abandoned alongside the gravel.

There was one paved driveway leading north from this road, and
it had a mailbox on a wooden post. He passed the box and stopped
at the first large tree. He bolted out the passenger door, set the Dr
Pepper can at the base of the tree and jumped back in the car.

A tenth of a mile later Schooley Mill Road rejoined Brown
Bridge Road. Two-tenths of a mile after he was back on the asphalt
he crossed Brown Bridge, a modern low concrete highway bridge
across the Patuxent River, which was several hundred yards wide
here. Now this highway became Ednor Road. He continued the
two miles to New Hampshire Avenue, Maryland Route 650, and
turned left. He had to be back at the drop in twenty-five minutes.
He checked his watch.