The Minotaur (48 page)

“Is he going to try this out on Caplinger?”

“Nope. He’s going to let Caplinger and Dunedin testify, then
wring the juice out of Dodgers and dump it all in your lap in the
hope you’ll blow it.”

“Has he got the votes?”

“Not yet. There are enough fence sitters so that the issue is very
much up in the air. We had the A-12 sold to the Senate and the
House committees until Athena came along, but with the headlines
lately—and the budget deficit—any way they can save money
looks better and better.”

Jake knew the headlines Knight was referring to. The Soviets
under Mikhail Gorbachev had renounced world domination, and
the aftershocks were being felt in capitals around the world.
Gorbachev was well on his way to becoming the most popular and
overexposed human on the planet, eclipsing rock stars, athletes,
and, in some places, even God. The Cold War was over, according
to some commentators and politicians with their own agendas.
True or not, the perception of great change taking place in the “evil
empire” had profound consequences for the foreign and domestic
policy of every Western democracy, and none more so than the
United States.

The two officers spent the morning going over the cost projec-
tions of the A-12, which were based on an optimum purchase
schedule. Any proposal that kept the A-6 in service for more years
than already planned would also have to include the escalating
costs of maintaining and repairing this aging airframe. These costs
were also calculated. Finally, any new proposal for another design
would incur huge upfront costs, as the A-12 program had, and to
kill the A-12 now would mean all the money spent to date would
be wasted.

After lunch Knight, an officer from the Office of Legislative
Affairs, and Jake’s staff gathered in the conference room and pre-
tended to be a congressional panel. They spent the afternoon grill-
ing him. By five o’clock he was drained and hoarse.

CaUie was reading Amy a bedtime story when the telephone rang.
The giri leaped for the phone, then held it out to Jake.
“Captain Grafton.”

“This is Luis Camacho. Do you have a Robert E. Tarkington
working for you?”

“What’s he done now?” Tarkington had been on the mock panel
this afternoon and had done a terrible job. His heart had obviously
not been in it

“Well, he’s not at home, for one thing. His car is sitting outside
an apartment building in Momingside and we think he’s in it. It’s
the building that Commander Judy lives in. He’s right smack-dab
in the middle of our surveillance.”

“So run him off.”

“Well, that might produce sticky complications. I understand he
has reason to bear Judy a grudge concerning his wife’s injuries a
couple months ago. He might be armed. If so, he might be arrested
on a concealed weapons charge, which I suppose wouldn’t do his
navy career much good.”

“It wouldn’t. What if I ran him off?”

“Would you? Here’s the address.” Camacho gave it, said good-
bye, then hung up.

Callie looked at Jake with raised eyebrows. “Would you ladies
like to go for a ride before bedtime? Maybe get some frozen yo-
gurt?”

After five minutes of furious activity, the females were ready.
Jake drove through the heart of monumental Washington and
ended up on the Suitland Parkway. Callie gave him directions with
the aid of a map. They got lost once but eventually found the right
street.

Although it was after 9 P.M., it had been totally dark less than
half an hour. Heat still rose from the streets and children still ran
through yards. Here and there stickball games were being con-
ducted under streetlights. “This is the best time of the day,” Jake
told CalBe as they sat at a stoplight listening to pop music pouring
from the open windows of a car full of teenagers.

Six blocks later Callie said, “That’s the building, I think, up
there on the left.”

“Keep your eyes peeled for Toad,” Jake advised Amy. “He’s
sitting in one of these cars.”

“Why?” Amy asked.

“You’ll have to ask him. Now look.”

His car was parked a half block beyond the apartment building.
Only the top of his head was visible as Jake drove by with Amy
squealing and pointing. Jake turned around again and this time
double-parked just past his car. With the engine running and the
transmission in park, he got out and walked back.

Toad’s window was down. He stared blankly up at Jake’s face.

“We’re going out for a frozen yogurt. Wanta come?”

“How’d you—“

“Lock your car and climb in with us.”

“Jesus, CAG, I—“

Jake opened the driver’s door and held it. “Come on. That’s an
order.”

Toad rolled up the windows and locked the car. “You can ride in
back.” Toad obediently slipped in beside Amy. She greeted him
like a long-lost friend. “How’s Rita?” she demanded.

“Doing okay,” Toad said. “And how are you, Mrs. Grafton?”

“Just fine. Toad. What kind of frozen yogurt do you like?”

“Any kind,” Tarkington said, still bewildered.

“Why were you parked out here?” Amy asked, hanging her
arms around Toad’s neck. “You don’t live here, do you?”

“Waiting on a man. He hasn’t shown up.”

“Oh.” Amy thought about it. “When can we see Rita?”

“Anytime you want.”

“Well, it’s only nine o’clock,” Jake said to Callie. “No school
tomorrow for you aristocrats. What say we drive over to Bethesda
and see if Rita’s still awake? That okay with you. Toad?”

“Sure, Captain, sure.”

They stopped at a mall near the beltway entrance and bought
cones of frozen yogurt. Everyone got one. As Amy skipped back
toward the car and the adults followed, Toad asked Jake. “How’d
you know where I was?”

“FBI called me. They don’t want you there.”

The younger man bristled. “It’s a public street. And I didn’t see
them lurking around waiting on anybody.”

“Oh, they’re there. They saw you, got your license number, ran
the plate and called me. They really didn’t want to arrest you on a
felony weapons charge.”

Toad’s shoulders sagged.

“You must get on with your life,” Callie said gently, “yours and
Rita’s, for you are part of her.”

“Let’s go see her.” Jake suggested, and led the way toward the
car.

Tarkington rode silently as Amy chattered between licks on her
cone. He put his tongue in motion in the hospital reception room
after the woman at the desk said, “It’s after visiting hours, Lieuten-
ant.”

“I know, but I’m her husband. These are my folks, just in from
the Coast. We’ll be quiet and not stay long.” Toad winked at her
and gave her his most sincere lying smile.

“I don’t suppose a short visit after hours will do any real harm.
For such close relatives.”

“Toad,” Amy asked in the elevator, “why did you tell that lady
a lie?”

“I didn’t really lie,” Toad explained. “See, I winked at her and
she knew you weren’t my relatives, that I was just giving her a
good reason to bend the rules a tiny bit. If I tell you a story about
fairies and frogs and passionate princesses, you know it isn’t true
and so it isn’t a lie, is it? It’s a story.”

“Well . . .” Amy said as she scrunched up her brows and tried
to follow Toad’s logic.

“I knew you’d understand, sis,” Toad said as the elevator door
opened. He led them off and along the corridor toward Rita’s
room.

Rita was asleep when they tiptoed into the room. “Maybe we
should let her sleep,” Callie suggested.

Toad bent over and whispered her name. Her eyes fluttered.
Then he kissed her cheek. “You’ve got company, dearest”

“Oh, Calllie! Amy! Captain Grafton. What a pleasant surprise.
How nice of you to come by.”

‘Toad brought us,” Amy said. “He lied to the lady downstairs-
Said we were his family.” She winked hugely while Callie rolled
her eyes.

Thirty minutes later Jake insisted they had to go. He led his
family down the corridor while Toad said a private goodbye to
Rita. Amy was tiring and talking too loud, so Callie tried to hush
her, which made her whine. Jake picked her up and carried her.

In the car Callie chided Toad. “You sitting in that car in Morn-
ingside while your in-laws are at your house. You should be
ashamed.”

“Well . . .”

“When Rita gets out of the hospital, you must bring her over to
the beach some weekend.”

“Sure. You bet, Mrs. Grafton. I will.”

Back in Momingside, Jake double-parked across the street and
walked with Toad over to his car. Jake waited until Tarkington
had the car unlocked, then said, “You have a beautiful wife, a good
job, and all of life before you. Don’t fuck it up by sitting here
waiting to kill a man.”

“You saw what he did to Rita.”

“Yeah. And if you get lucky and get a bullet into him, the stuff
that will happen to you afterwards will hurt her a lot worse than
the airplane crash did. You’ll be the one who twisted the knife.
Don’t do that to her.”

“Yessir.” Toad shook Jake’s hand, then climbed into the car and
cranked the window down.

“Thanks, CAG . . .”

“It’s a good life, kid. Don’t throw it away,”

“. . . for the frozen yogurt.” Tarkington started his car and
snapped on the headlights.

“Night, Toad.”

“Good night, sir.”

As soon as Jake got his car rolling, Amy stretched out in the
backseat. In a few minutes he checked that she was asleep, then
said to Callie, “Admiral Henry had a notebook.” He told her what
he had learned from Camacho, that CaUie’s psychologist was tell-
ing Henry what she said in her therapy sessions.

“Oh, Jake.” She bit her lip. “I’ve half a mind to write a letter to
the Medical Board.”

“He was just trying to help Henry.”

“Damn him.” He looked at her. She was rigid, with both fists
clenched.

He began to talk. He told her about X, about Smoke
Judy and Luis Camacho and the Russian spy. Crossing the
Anacostia River, going north on South Capitol Street, creeping
through the cooling evening along Independence Avenue by the
Air and Space Museum, he told her everything he knew.

She listened carefully. They were parked facing the Lincoln Me-
morial on Twenty-third Street and watching the crowd still going
to and from the Wall when she said, “Camacho told the spy about
Judy?”

“That Judy was corrupt? Yes. So he says.”

“He wanted something to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was trying to make something happen.”

“Something has happened. Judy tried to steal the Athena file
and killed Henry getting away.”

“That wasn’t it,” she said, speaking with conviction. “Henry
had ordered the file changed, the documents moved. You knew—
everyone with access knew. Camacho must have warned Henry.”

“But if Camacho knows a Soviet spy and talks to him, why
doesn’t he arrest him?”

”Something is supposed to happen. Something involving the spy
and X. And it hasn’t happened yet”

On Friday morning at 7 A.M. Jake met Rob Knight in a bagel joint
on Independence Avenue, two blocks east of the Capitol As they
huddled at a tiny table in a corner munching bagels smeared with
cream cheese and sipping coffee. Knight filled Jake in on the testi-
mony of Royce Caplinger and Vice Admiral Dunedin before the
Joint subcommittee of the Senate and House Armed Services Com-
mittees the previous day. Neither had been asked about Vice Ad-
miral Henry’s death or Smoke Judy, perhaps because the Director
of the FBI had spent thirty minutes with the committee before
Caplinger went on.

“Dodgers will go first this morning. Duquesne will be done with
him in an hour or so. He’s going to question him very lightly on
just the technical aspects of Athena, then praise him to the skies as
the intellectual heir of Edison, Bell, and Einstein. That’s his plan,
anyway.” Knight grinned impishly.

“You really enjoy this, don’t you?”

“It’s the ultimate theater. The stakes are money, the mother’s
milk of politics, great heaping mountains of it. And the actors are
politicians, without a doubt the lowest form of animate life. Char-
latans, mountebanks, liars, hypocrites—they’d cut off your nuts for
another term in office, or even a favorable article in a hometown
newspaper. If you rendered the whole lot of ‘em, you couldn’t skim
enough scruples to fill a thimble.”

“They’re not all like that,” Jake protested.

Knight made a gesture of frustration. “I suppose not.”

“When do they want me there?”

“Well, you’re going to watch Dodger’s performance. You go af-
ter him. Normally these things are closed-door, but I got some
members to sign two passes.” He displayed them, then handed one
to Jake.

They wandered outside, then across to the Library of Congress.
On the second floor of the giant anteroom they found a wooden
bench in a corner and reviewed the documents Jake would refer to
if necessary during bis testimony.

After thirty minutes, Jake announced he was ready and stowed
the documents in the briefcase he had chained to his wrist.

“Nervous?”

“Yeah. My stomach feels like . . .”

“Well, that’s normal. I’ve seen vice admirals preparing for these
soirees sweat like they were going to the gallows.”

“Too bad about Admiral Henry.”

“Yeah. Think they’ll ever catch Judy?”

“Oh, he’ll turn up, sooner or later.”

“What are you going to say if they ask you about him?”

“The truth. Just watch.”

“Don’t get rattled. If you can’t remember something, just say so.
And don’t feel bad about fumbling for a document I’ll be right
there with you, and I’ll help you find it.”

They chatted for another five minutes about this and that, about
their careers, about mutual friends, about ships they had been on.
Finally Knight announced that it was time.

They crossed the street and walked past the limos and congress-
men’s cars parked in the Capitol’s back lot. They went up the
marble steps and into the rotunda.