The Minotaur (46 page)

Jake Grafton walked out into the elevator lobby, dazed. A half
dozen FBI agents were talking on their hand-held radios and lis-
tening to the words coming back. There was still a bloody spot on
the floor where one agent had gone down with a bullet in his
shoulder. Who would have believed . . . Smoke Judy?

Toad Tarkington blocked his path.

“Judy. He’s the guy who sold the E-PROM data, wasn’t he?”

Jake nodded.

Toad turned and walked away.

‘Tarkington! Tarkington!”

Jake caught up with the lieutenant in the plaza. “Where do you
think you’re going?”

Tarkington didn’t look at him. “For a few lousy bucks that bas-
tard damn near killed my wife. She’ll never fully recover. She’ll
carry the scars all her life,”

“The FBI’ll get him. They’re the pros at this.”

“They’d better,” Toad muttered. “If I get to the cocksucker
before they do, they can quit looking.”

Tarkington walked away and Jake stood and watched him go.
What the hell, he needs some time off anyway- He’ll never find
Judy. The FBI will scoop him up in a day or two. And maybe the
time off will do Toad some good.

Back inside he ran into an agent he recognized, Lloyd Dreyfus.
“What the hell happened, Dreyfus?”

“Well, Captain, it seems that the National Security Agency was
monitoring the terminals, and when Judy got into the Athena file,
they called Vice Admiral Henry right after they called us. Henry
beat us here by about a minute.”

Jake started to speak and Dreyfus held up a hand. “I know, I
know. They shouldn’t have done that. And now some poor
schnook will probably lose his job. But Tyler Henry was Tyler
Henry. Very few people ever managed to say no to him and make it
stick.”

“That’s true,” Jake acknowledged. “Who was the civilian up-
stairs with Henry?”

“Guy from the Naval Investigative Service. We got all this from
him.”

“Where’s Luis Camacho?”

“Working.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“I’ll pass that along.”

“No. You tell him he’ll talk with me or I’m going to raise holy
hell. When somebody kills a vice admiral in a navy building, the lid
is gonna get ripped off pretty damned quick. Right now I know a
lot more than my boss, and I don’t know much. When I start
answering his questions he is not going to be a happy camper. He’s
a vice admiral too, by the way. I will answer his questions. He’s
another one of those guys who doesn’t take no for an answer.
George Ludlow, the Secretary of the Navy, he hasn’t even heard
the word since he got out of diapers. And CNO . . .” Jake
snorted.

“Camacho—“

“He won’t be able to wave his badge over on the E-Ring and
stuff this shit back into the goose . . . You tell him!”

As Commander Smoke Judy drove across the George Mason Me-
morial Bridge into Washington, he stripped off his white uniform
shirt with the black shoulder boards and threw it onto the floor of
the backseat. He was still wearing a white T-shirt, but that would
attract less attention than the uniform. His cover was gone, lost
somewhere back in the stairwell.

He needed a change of clothes, he needed to get rid of this car
and he needed a place to hide.

He took the Fourteenth Street exit on the east side of the bridge
and went north, rolling slowly with the traffic between tour buses
and out-of-state cars iaden with tourists. A motel? No—they
would be checking motels and hotels and bus stations and . . .

He crossed Constitution Avenue and continued north into the
business district.

Three blocks north of New York Avenue he was stopped in
traffic inching through a single-lane construction choke point when
he saw a drunk stagger into an alley, a derelict, or in the language
of the social reformers, a “homeless person.”

It took five minutes to go halfway around the block and enter
the alley from the other end. There was just room to get the car by
a delivery truck. The drunk was collapsed beside a metal Dump-
ster, his wine bottle beside him. His head lay on a blanket roll.
Beside him sat a green trash bag. After checking to make sure
there was no one in sight. Smoke stopped the car and stepped out.

The drunk was semiconscious. Smoke examined the trash bag. It
contained an old coat, some filthy shirts.

“Sorry, buddy. This is the end of the line.” Judy throttled him
with both hands. The bum, who looked to be in his sixties, with a
two-week growth of beard, kicked some and struggled ineffectu-
ally. In less than a minute he was gone.

Judy stripped the shirt from the dead man and put it on over his
T-shirt. The trousers were next. Sheltered between the Duropster
and the delivery truck, Smoke took off his white trousers and white
shoes and socks and pulled the derelict’s grime-encrusted trousers
on. Perhaps this garment had once been gray, but now it was just
dark, blotchy. And a little big. All the better. He even took the
dead man’s shoes. They were too small, but he put them on any-
way.

Judy loaded the trash bag and blanket roll in the car. He helped
himself to the wine bottle too, wedging it between the stuff on the
backseat so it wouldn’t fall over and spill.

He rolled out of the alley and, with the help of a courteous
tourist, managed to get back into traffic. He discarded all his white
uniform items in a Dumpster near RFK Memorial Stadium, then
parked the car in the lot at D.C. General Hospital

With his blanket roll over one shoulder and the trash bag—
which now contained his gym bag—dangling across the other, he
shuffled across the parking lot toward the Burke Street Metro stop.
He didn’t get far. His feet were killing him. The shoes were impos-
sibly small. He sat on a curb with a little hedge behind it and put
on his running shoes from his gym bag. The car keys he buried in
the soft dirt. He stuffed the drunk’s shoes under the hedge, sprin-
kled some wine on himself and smeared it on his face and left the
bottle beside the shoes after wiping it of prints. There was an old
cap in the trash bag, which he donned.

He sat there on the curb, considering. A car drove into the lot. A
woman and her two teenage youngsters- She glanced at him, then
ignored him. The teenagers scowled.

This just might work, Judy told himself. He shouldered his load
and set off again for the Metro stop.

Harlan Albright was in the car dealer’s snack area, feeding quar-
ters into the coffee machine, when FBI agents arrived at 4:30 to
arrest him. He extracted the paper cup from the little door in the
front of the machine and sipped it experimentally as he glanced
idly through the picture windows at the service desk- Three men in
business suits, one of them black, short haircuts, their coats hang-
ing open. One of them had a word with Joe Talley, the other
service rep, while the other two scanned the area.

As he looked at them, Albright knew. They weren’t here about a
car. When Talley pointed in this direction, Albright moved.

On the back wall of the snack area was a door marked “Employ-
ees Only.” It was locked. Albright used his key and went through
into the parts storeroom. The door automatically locked behind
him.

He walked between the shelves and passed the man at the
counter with a greeting. Out in the corridor he walked ten feet,
then turned left and went through an unmarked door into the
service bay.

Halfway down the bay, one of the mechanics was lowering a car
on the hoist, “You about finished with that LTD, Jimmy?”

“All done, Mr. Albright. Was gonna take it out of here.”

“I’ll do that. The owner is out at the service desk now. She’s
impatient, as usual.”

“Starter wire was loose,” the mechanic said. “That was the
whole problem. Keys are in it But what about the paperwork?”

“Go ahead and walk it over to the office.”

“Sure.” As Albright started the car, the mechanic raised the
garage door and kicked the lifting blocks out of the way of the
tires.

Albright backed out carefully and drove down the alley toward
the area where customers’ cars were parked.

Yep, another guy in a business suit hustling this way, and an-
other going around the building toward the front entrance. Al-
bright turned left and drove by the agent walking toward the main
showroom. That agent looked at him with surprise. As Albright
paused at the street, he glanced in the rearview mirror. The agent
was talking on a hand-held radio and looking this way.

Albright fed gas and slipped the car into traffic.

They would be right behind him. He jammed the accelerator
down and shot across the next intersection just as the light turned
red.

He went straight for three more blocks, then turned right for a
block, then right again.

He entered the dealership lot from the back and coasted the car
toward the service parking area, watching carefully for agents. His
trip around town had taken five minutes. Yes, they all seemed to be
gone.

He parked the car and walked back inside.

Joe Talley saw him coming. “Hey, Harlan, some guys were here
looking for you.”

” ‘S’at right?”

“Yeah. Didn’t say, but they were cops. Had those little radios
and charged outta here like their tails were on fire. Just a couple
minutes ago. Say, what’ve you done anyway? Robbed a bank?”

“Nah.” Albright quickly sorted through the rack of keys of cars
that were awaiting service. “Forgot to put a quarter in the meter.”
This one, a new Taurus. In for its first oil change.

“Sons of bitches came after me two years ago,” Talley said. “My
ex swore out a warrant.”

“I sent her the fucking check last week,” Albright growled. He
walked back toward the parking area. “They come back, you tell
‘em I went out to feed the meter,” he called. “See you after a
while.”

“Yeah, sure, Harlan.” Talley laughed.

“Do my time card too, will ya, Joe?”

“You’re covered.” Talley went back to annotating a service
form.

Albright never returned to the dealership, of course. Less than
two hours later he abandoned the Taurus in a parking garage in
downtown Washington and walked four blocks to a KGB safe
house.

“Just like that, cool as ice, he went back and traded cars?”

“Yessir.” Dreyfus tried to keep his eyes on Camacho’s face. It
was difficult.

‘Two guys in two hours go through our fingers! What is this,

Keystone Kops?” Camacho sighed heavily. ‘Well, what are we
doing to round up these public enemies?”

“Warrants for them both. Murder One for Judy and Accessory
Before the Fact for Albright. Stakeouts. Briefings for the D.C.,
federal, airport and suburban police—every pistol-packer within
fifty miles of the Washington Monument. Photos on the eleven
o’clock news and in tomorrow’s papers. The cover story is drugs.”

“We really needed Albright, Lloyd.”

“I know, sir.” Dreyfus was stunned. Luis Camacho had never
before called him by his first name in the five years they had known
each other.

Camacho sat rubbing his forehead with the first two fingers of
his left hand.

“Drugs in the Pentagon is going to get a lot of press,” Dreyfus
volunteered. “Already Ted Koppel wants the Director for Night-
line. Some nitwit on the Hill is promising a congressional investiga-
tion. Everybody on the west side of the Potomac is probably going
to have to pee in a bottle on Monday morning.”

If Camacho heard, he gave no sign. After a moment he said
softly, “We’ll never get him unless he comes to us.”

27

A Saturday in August is a terrible
time to be in Washington. The heat and humidity make any trip
outdoors an endurance trek. The summer haze diffuses the sun-
light, but doesn’t soften it. Perspiration oozes from every square
inch of hide and clothes become sodden rags.

By eleven o’clock Saturday morning. Smoke Judy felt as if he
had lived on the street for six months. He had managed only two
hours’ sleep the night before, most of it in fifteen-minute spurts.
The alley he now called home housed three other derelicts, all of
whom were comatose drunk by 9 P.M. They had no trouble at all
sleeping.

At 7 A.M., or (hereabouts—Judy had stowed his watch in his
gym bag—his companions stirred themselves and collected their
traps. He followed them as they staggered the five blocks to a
mission. Two of them vomited along the way. The little neon sign
over the door proclaimed: “Jesus Saves.”

Breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast and black coffee. Judy care-
fully observed the men and four women, maybe five—he wasn’t
sure about one—who ate listlessly or not at all. The alcoholics in
the final stages of their disease drank coffee but didn’t touch the
food. Almost everyone smoked cigarettes. A man across from him
offered him an unfiltered Pall Mall, which Smoke Judy accepted.
He hadn’t smoked a cigarette since he was twenty-four, but when
in Rome . . .

“I see you been to the barber college,” his benefactor said as he
blew out his match.

-Yeah.”

“Go there myself from time to time.”

Judy concentrated on smoking the cigarette until the man beside
him lost interest in conversation. Behind the screen of rising smoke
he studied the people around him. He was apparently the only one
who showed any interest in his companions. Most of them sat with
vacant eyes, or stared at their plates, or the wall, or the smoke
rising from their cigarettes.

By eight o’clock he was back on the street. The humidity was
bad and the heat was building. Already the concrete sidewalks had
become griddles. His companions wandered off in twos and threes,
looking for shady spots to snooze, spots near areas of heavy pedes-
trian traffic that later in the day could be mined by panhandling for
enough money to purchase the daily bottle.

Deciding the street was too dangerous for a man with only a
day’s growth of beard, Judy ambled back toward the alley where
he had spent the night. He concentrated on the derelict’s shuffle,
the head-down, stoop-shouldered, eyes-averted gait that character-
ized so many of the defeated wanderers-

His eye caught a headline in a newspaper rack. The photo—that
was him! He walked along, wondering. Up ahead was a trash bin
with a paper sticking out. He snagged it and took it back to the
alley

Drugs. Cocaine trafficking. The photo of him in uniform was
that service-record shot he had submitted last year. The picture of
Harlan Albright was a candid street shot, almost as if he had been
unaware of the camera. Still, it was a good likeness. With his back
to the Dumpster, sitting on the asphalt, Smoke Judy read the sto-
ries carefully. Vice Admiral Henry was dead, according to the Post,
killed by a drug dealer resisting arrest. Well, was the Post ever
wrong?

When he finished the story he threw the paper in the Dumpster.

Now he lay in the heat, his head on his blanket roll, watching an
old dog search for edible garbage. A slight breeze wafted down the
alley, but it wasn’t much. The place was a sauna. After the dog left,
the only creatures vigorously stirring were the flies.

Jesus, who would have believed things could go so wrong so
fast? The feds must have been monitoring access to that file, and
the instant he opened it, jumped in the car to drive over and arrest
him. From commander in the U.S. Navy to hunted fugitive killer
all in one fifteen-minute period—that had to be a new record for
the fastest fall in the history of the navy.

As he thought about it, Smoke Judy did not agonize over the
split-second decisions he had made or torture himself with what-
ifs. He had spent his adult life in a discipline composed of split-
second decisions, and he had long ago learned to live with them.
You made the best choice you could on the information you had
and never wasted time later regretting the choice. He didn’t now.

Still, as he looked back, he couldn’t really pinpoint any specific
decision that he could say had been the perfect choice to make
when he made it. So here he was, lying in an alley ten blocks
northeast of the White House. Hell must be like this, dirty and hot,
all the sinners baking slowly, desperate for a beer. God, a cold beer
would taste so good!

The money. After that phone call from Homer T- Wiggins, he
had felt it unsafe to leave the money in his apartment when he
wasn’t there, so he had put it in a duffel bag in the trunk of his car.
His passport was in the bag too. The car was undoubtedly in the
police impound lot by this time and the money and passport were
in the evidence safe. He had been tempted yesterday to try to get it,
but that temptation he had easily resisted. Smoke Judy, fighter
pilot, knew all about what happened to guys who went back to a
heavily defended target for one more run.

Man, the bumper sticker is right—shit happens. And it happens
fast. The real crazy thing is it all happened to him. The great sewer
in the sky dumped it all on him, Fuck! He said it aloud; “Fuck.”

“Fuck!” He shouted it, liking the sound of his voice booming the
obscenity at the alley walls. The word seemed to gain weight and
substance as it echoed toward the street. He filled his lungs with air
and roared, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

“Hey, you down there.” He looked up. Some guy was leaning
out a window. “You stop that damn shouting or I’ll call a cop to
run you out of there. You hear?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Goddamn fucking drunk psychos,” the man said as he closed
the window, probably to keep in the cool, conditioned air.

Okay, Judy told himself, going through the whole thing one
more time. He was in the smelly stuff to his eyes. Okay. How was
he going to get the hell out of this mess?

Well, this alley was as good a place as any to spend the weekend.

If he tried to check into a motel or hotel, or tried to buy clothes or
steal a car, he might be recognized. The cops wouldn’t be looking
for him in an alley, at least not for a few days. No doubt they were
watching the airports, train station and bus depot. And looking for
that car he drove away from Crystal City.

So sitting here in this shithole for a few days looked like a pretty
good idea. Of course, selling the E-PROM data to Homer T. Wig-
gins had looked good too, as did killing Harold Strong, copying the
Athena file …

Ah me.

Well, he still had a card. One chance. $150,000. Boy, did he ever
need that money now. Monday evening, Harlan Albright, that
meat market in Georgetown. One way or the other, Albright was
parting with the cash, he told himself grimly. There were still five
live cartridges left in the pistol.

Jake Grafton sent his family to the beach Friday evening. Saturday
he was back at the office-finishing his report on the testing of the
prototypes. He had already circulated a draft to his superiors and
now he was incorporating their comments.

The senior secretary had volunteered to work on Saturday, and
she was making the changes on the computer when the telephone
rang. “Jake, this is Admiral Dunedin. I have a couple FBI agents
here with me. Could you come up to my office?”

“Yessir. Be right there.”

The agents turned out to be Camacho and Dreyfus. They shook
his hand politely. Jake sat in a chair against the wall, facing the
side of the admiral’s desk.

“Captain,” the admiral said to get the ball rolling, “these gentle-
men said you had some concerns that you wished to discuss.”

Jake snorted and rearranged his fanny on the chair. “I suspect
my concerns are minor and worlds away from the FBI’s, but
they’re real enough. I’ve read the morning papers. Apparently the
ATA program is some kind of cover for drug dealers who are
supplying all the addicts in the Pentagon, and one of them went
bug-fuck crazy yesterday and beat an admiral to death.”

“Now, Captain—” Camacho began-

“Let me finish. Presumably this boondoggle operation is run by
some airhead who is unable to recognize the nefarious character of
his subordinates, who have been engaged in subverting the national
defense establishment from within. Moral rot and all that. And
who is the airhead who commands this collection of criminals in
uniform? Why, it’s the navy’s very own Jake Grafton, who next
week is going to be testifying before various committees of Con-
gress about the necessity to fund a new all-weather, carrier-based,
stealth attack plane. No doubt this Captain Bligh will be ques-
tioned closely by concerned congressmen about his inability to see
beyond the end of his nose. So my question is this—just what the
hell do you gentlemen suggest I tell the congressmen?”

The agents looked at each other, then the admiral.

“We need this airplane,” said the admiral. “Any suggestions?”

“This would be a great place for the truth,” Jake observed.

It was Camacho who spoke. “The truth is this is a national
security matter. Any additional comment will jeopardize an ongo-
ing investigation.”

“You expect me to go over to the Hill and say that?” Jake asked
incredulously. “See this uniform? I’m a naval officer, not a spook.
How about the directors of the FBI and CIA go over there and
make a little statement behind closed doors, ahead of time?”
Camacho considered it.

“They can swear on Bibles or cross their hearts, or whatever it is
you spooks do on those rare occasions when you’re really going to
come clean.”

“I suppose we could ask the Director,” Camacho said with a
glance at Dreyfus.

“While you’re mulling that, how about explaining to me and the
admiral just what is going on? I’d like to know enough to avoid
stepping on my crank, and I don’t think that’s asking too much.”

“This matter should be resolved in the next few weeks,” Cama-
cho murmured.

Grafton just stared. The admiral looked equally frosty.

“Judy was selling information to defense contractors. He—“

“We know that,” the admiral said testily. ‘Tell us something we
don’t know.”

“He was recruited by a Soviet agent to copy the Athena file.
Apparently he agreed to do so. He attempted it Friday afternoon,
NSA called us and Henry, Henry beat us here.” He shrugged.

“How did Admiral Henry leam that there might be an attempt
to copy the Athena file?” Dunedin wanted to know.

“I told him,” Camacho said.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I can’t go into that- Obviously, I had authority to tell him.”

“Did Henry know that?”

“Know what?”

“Know that you had authority to tell him.”

“I don’t know what he knew. Or thought or suspected. Per-
haps.”

Dunedin’s eyebrow was up. He looked skeptical.

“What do you want to hear. Admiral? That Henry thought he
was getting unauthorized information from a confidential source?
Okay, that’s what he thought. Henry was Mr. Naval Aviation-
Honest, loyal, brilliant, he had an immense ego. Perhaps that’s
why he was Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air. He had
the habit of sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, of wanting
to know more than the law allowed. For example, we found this
notebook in his desk drawer yesterday afternoon.” Camacho took
a small spiral notebook from an inside coat pocket and tossed it on
the desk.

Dunedin examined it for a moment, turning the pages slowly.
He glanced up at Camacho several times, but each time his eyes
quickly returned to the pages before him. Without comment, he
slowly closed the book and passed it across the table to Captain
Grafton.

“A, B, C . . . who are these people?”

“The letters stand for people that Henry wanted information
about. Some of the information was supplied by psychotherapists,
some by police agencies, some by people in government in sensitive
positions who talked out of school. One of those letters apparently
stands for Callie Grafton. I believe she was seeing a psychologist,
wasn’t she. Captain?”

Jake Grafton began ripping pages from the notebook. A hand-
ful at a time, he deposited them in the classified burn bag by
Dunedin’s desk.

As he watched, Camacho continued. “Henry was very worried
about X. He feared the unknown. So he did what he
could to protect his trust. It’s hard to condemn him.”

‘These little pieces of the cloth that you let us see, they’re tanta-
lizing.” The admiral leaned back in his chair and made a tent of his
fingers.

That comment drew no response from the agents. Dreyfus ex-
amined his fingernails as Camacho watched Grafton complete his
job of destruction.

“Why did this Soviet agent approach Judy?” the admiral asked.
“Why did he single him out?”

“I told him about the commander’s troubles,” Camacho replied.

“You told him?” The admiral’s eyes widened. “Good God! Who
are you working for, anyway?”