The Minotaur

10

The plane to Washington was full. By some quirk. Toad was assigned a window seat and Rita was given the middle seat beside him. She asked about an aisle or win- dow seat and was told by the harried agent that there were no more seats. Rita looked up and down the counter at the lines of people waiting to check baggage and get seat assignments, then turned back to the clerk and grinned. “That’ll be fine, thank you.”

Moravia had her hair pulled back and rolled tightly. Her white boater hat sat squarely, primly on the top of her head. She had used some makeup this morning. Toad noticed, and a glob of it showed on her right cheek where she had failed to feather it in. It was the only imperfection he could see. Her navy-blue blouse and skirt showed off a healthy figure in a modest yet sexy way. Toad took a deep breath and trailed along as they left the ticket counter. He had to stride to get up beside her. “Let’s get something to read,” he suggested. “We have time.” She was agreeable. At the newsstand Toad looked longingly at the Playboy and Penthouse magazines with their covers hidden un- der a piece of black plastic to keep from titillating schoolboys or heating up old ladies. Maybe he should buy one and read it on the plane. That would get Moravia all twitchy. He glanced over to where she stood looking at newsmagazines and slicks for upscale women. No. He devoted his attention to the rack of paperbacks and finally selected one by Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five was Toad’s favorite book. Vonnegut knew life was insanity, just as Toad did, deep down, in the place where he lived. Today he chose one called Galapagos.

When the boarding announcement came, the seats near the gate emptied as everyone surged toward the stewardess guarding the entrance to the jetway- Toad took his time and held back. Two people sandwiched themselves between him and Moravia as they ambled toward the door; a guy in a business suit with shoulder- length hair and a woman in her fifties with bad knees- Yet some- how when Toad turned in his boarding pass he ended up right behind Moravia going down the jetway. There was another line waiting to get through the airplane’s door. He queued behind her. The people behind him pressed forward. His nose was almost in her hair. She was wearing a delicate, heavenly scent. He inhaled it clear to his toenails.

They inched down the crowded aisle toward their seats. The air was stifling; too may people. Toad felt the walls closing in on him. There was a woman already in the aisle seat in their row, and when Toad finished stuffing his attache case and bat into the overhead bin, he found Moravia was already in her seat. The woman on the aisle ignored him. Toad muttered his excuses and edged in front of their knees. Rita looked up from the operation of removing her hat and for the first time since he had known her gave him a warm smile. ‘”Sorry,”

“No problem,” Toad said as he settled in beside her, acutely aware of her physical presence. Too aware. He adjusted the air nozzle in the overhead and turned hers on too. “Is this okay?”

“Thank you. That helps a lot.” She smiled again, beautiful white teeth framed by lips that… Toad looked at his novel a while, couldn’t get interested, then scanned the airline magazine from the seat pocket Her skirt had inched up, revealing her knees. He obliquely examined her hands. Nails painted and trimmed, fingers long and slim. God! He caught her glancing at him and they both grinned nervously and looked away. He turned the overhead air vent full on and glued his face to the window,

They were somewhere over Montana and Toad was deep into Vonnegut’s vision of humans evolving into seals in the millennia to come when Rita spoke again. “Toad,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” She was looking straight into his eyes.

“Why can’t you and I be friends?”

He was thunderstruck. “Uh… aren’t we?”

“You know what I mean.”

Toad Taridngton glanced around desperately. No one was ap- parently paying any attention. Those eyes were looking straight at him. Just what does she mean? There are friends and there are friends. He had been floating along footloose and free and — whapl — suddenly here he was, smack in the middle of one of those deli- cious ambiguities that women work so hard to snare men in. For the first time he noticed that her right eye was brown and her left was hazel, a brownish green. Why not just tell her the truth? One good reason, of course, is that truth rarely works with women. Ah … the hell with it! Pay the money and see all the cards.

He leaned into the aura of her- “Because I like you too much to ever just be your friend, Rita Moravia. You are a beautiful woman and—” He reached up and smoothed the makeup in the caked buildup near her right ear. Then he lightly kissed her cheek. “That’s why.”

Those eyes were inches from his. “I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I like you too damn much.”

Her hands closed around his. “Do you really mean that?”

He mumbled something inane.

Her lips glided into his. Her tongue was warm and slippery and the breath from her nostrils hot upon his cheek. Her hair brushed softly against his forehead. When she broke away he was breathing heavily. She had a trace of moisture on her upper lip. Out of the comer of his eye Toad saw the woman in the aisle seat scowling at them. “Rita…”

She glanced over her left shoulder, then back at Toad. She straightened in her seat while holding tightly to his hand with her right. She gave the woman beside her a frozen smile. She gripped his hand fiercely.

“Will you excuse us?” she said, and stood, still holding his hand as she moved past the knees that guarded the aisle, dragging Toad along in her wake.

She marched aft, past the kitchen and the stews loading the lunch cart, and got behind a girl in jeans waiting for the rest rooms. She turned and flashed Toad a nervous smile, then stood nonchalantly, still gripping his hand with hers. He squeezed and got a quick grin over her shoulder.

They made room for a woman who came out of one lavatory and then stood between the little doors shoulder to shoulder. A boy of eleven or twelve joined them. He examined their uniforms like they were dummies in a store window. Rita studiously ignored the in- spection, but Toad gave him a friendly wink. Meanwhile the stews maneuvered the luncheon cart into the aisle.

When the other lavatory door opened and the occupant was clear, Rita stepped in and pulled Toad along. “Better get your mom to help you too,” Toad told the wide-eyed boy. As he got the door closed Rita slammed the lock over and wrapped herself around him.

When they finally broke for air, she whispered, “I really thought you didn’t like me.”

“Fool.”

“I wanted you to like me so much, but you were so distant, as if you didn’t care at all.” Her arms were locked behind his back, crushing them together. With his hands against the side of her head, he eased her head back. Her lipstick was smeared. He kissed her again, slowly and deeply.

Matilda Jackson peered through the peephole in the door. A man. “Luis Camacho, Mrs. Jackson. We met yesterday. Don’t you re- member?”

Oh yes. One of the FBI agents. She unfastened the chain lock and shot the dead bolt. When she opened the door, he said in a low voice, barely audible, “Special Agent Camacho, Mrs. Jackson. May I come in?”

“Please.” She looked across the street at the crack house. No one in sight, though Lord knows, the lookout was probably watch- ing out the window. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of him. She shut the door quickly.

Now he produced his credentials. “I have a few follow-up ques- tions and—“

“Let’s talk in the kitchen.” She led the way. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“That would be nice.”

The kitchen was warmer than the living room, and well lit. This was her favorite room in the house. Charlie had enjoyed sitting here watching her cook, the smell of baking things heavy in the air.

Camacho sat at the table and waited until she had poured coffee for both of them and sat down across from him. “Perhaps we can go over the whole thing again, if you don’t mind?”

“Oh, not at all.” She explained again about the crack house, about Mandy and Mrs. Blue and the dudes who delivered the crack and picked up the money. He led her into the events of last Friday night, the photos and the man who left the cigarette pack in the iron post two doors up the street.

“So you never saw anyone reach into that post?”

“No. I didn’t. God, I didn’t even think about that. If I had thought that somebody was going to come along any second and look for that thing I probably wouldn’t have gone out there and gotten it. No. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I just wasn’t thinking.”

“We’re pleased that you did. It’s concerned citizens like you that enable law enforcement to function- When the time comes, and it’s months — even years — away, would you be willing to testify?”

“Well…” Those dopers, if they knew who she was…

“We’ll need your testimony to get the photos introduced as evi- dence.”

“I’ll…” She swallowed hard. She would be risking her life.

“I’ll think about— Can’t you do it without me? You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“We’ll try, Mrs. Jackson. We won’t ask unless we really need you.” He sipped his coffee. “How long has the crack house been there?”

“Three, maybe four months. I called the police—“

“Have you been watching the place since it opened?”

“Yes, On and off. You know how it is. I just look over there occasionally. Try and keep an eye on what’s going on.”

“Have you seen the black men there before?”

“Oh yes.” She thought about it. “At least a dozen times, I guess, I think they come almost every day to collect the money and such, but a lot of times I miss them. They don’t come at the same time every day. And sometimes I think they skip a day.”

“Have they seen you watching?”

“I don’t think so. My God, I hope not.” She sat back and smoothed her hair. “I’ve tried to stay out of sight… I’ve seen them so often…”

“How about the man who put the cigarette pack in the hollow fence post? Have you seen him before?”

She thought about it. “I–I don’t think so. But really, I just can’t remember.”

“Have you ever seen anyone retrieve anything from the post?”

“Well, I–I just can’t remember. Maybe I saw somebody and didn’t pay much attention. Is it important?”

“At this point I don’t know.”

“Would he be white?”

“Probably.”

She thought about it. There were so many people, up and down the street, all day long, week in, week out. Yet not that many were white. “I’ll have to try and remember.”

“Okay.” He scooted his chair back and stood- “I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me. Is there anything else you think we should know?”

“Oh, I guess not. But when are you all going to get that crack house closed down?”

“We’ll talk to the District police. I hope it’s soon.”

She accompanied him to the door and carefully locked it behind him. If only they would shut those people down. Get them out of the neighborhood.

“I got lipstick all over you,” Rita Moravia said, and used a wet paper towel to wipe Toad’s face. This lavatory was certainly not designed for two adults. He perched on the commode with the top down and she sat on his lap, humming softly as she worked on his face and he swabbed hers.

He carefully wiped away all the mascara and makeup. “You shouldn’t use this stuff,” he said. “You’don’t need it.”

”Why did you get drunk last Friday?”

“I wanted you and couldn’t have you.” He lifted his shoulders and lowered them. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She laid her forehead against his and ran her fingers through his hair-

Someone pounded on the door.

“Maybe we should get back to our seats,” he suggested.

“I suppose,” she murmured, but she didn’t move.

More knocking. “Hey, in there!”

Toad helped her to her feet and straightened her uniform. He ran his hands across her buttocks and hips as he stood. She kissed him again to the accompaniment of the pounding on the door.

She stepped out first, her head up, still holding his hand. Three stews stood in the kitchen area staring at them. Rita Moravia smiled. “We’re newlyweds,” she announced simply, and stepped past.

The women applauded wildly and the passengers joined in.

They parked the cars in the lot outside of Rita’s apartment com- plex and Toad carried her bags in. He had followed her home from Dulles. They kissed in the elevator and they kissed in front of the door. A giggling, happy Rita used her key.

When the door swung open a young woman on the couch in front of the television shrieked. She had her hair in curlers and was wearing only bra and panties. Toad got an eyeful of skin as she scurried for the bedroom.

“Don’t mind Harriet,” Rita said. “I do the same for her on alternate Saturdays when she brings her boyfriend by.”

Toad grinned and nodded. He stood in the center of the living room and glanced about while Rita lugged her bags toward the bedroom. “Need any help?”

“No, I’ll manage. Make yourself comfortable.” In a moment she called from the bedroom, “There’s probably Coke in the fridge.”

Toad sagged comfortably into the couch the roommate had re- cently vacated. Aha, a remote control for the TV. He nipped around the dial until he found a basketball game and settled his feet upon the settee. Knowing women as he did, he knew he had a while to wait.

“Who’s the hunk?” Harriet demanded of Rita in the bedroom.

“A friend.”

“What about Ogden? He’s called twice this week wanting to know when you’d be home. I told him you’d call him this eve- ning.” Ogden was an attorney at a large Washington law firm whom Rita had been dating.

Rita opened her suitcase on the bed and began to empty it. She separated her dirty clothes from the clean ones, working quickly.

“I’ll call Ogden tomorrow.”

Harriet eased the bedroom door open and peeked at Toad sprawled on the couch. “He’s a live one, all right.” she said after she had eased the door shut again. “Navy?”

“Yep.”

Harriet sat cross-legged on her bed. “Are you sure about this, Rita? Ogden’s a pretty great guy. He’s athletic, rich parents, good future, madly in—“

“He wasn’t the one. I’m sure.”

Harriet pounced. “And this guy? Is he the one?”

“Maybe.” Rita removed the pins that held her hair against the back of her head and shook it out. “He might be. He almost got away.” She grinned and attacked her hair with a brush. “Reeled him in on the plane this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?”

“And I’m going over to his apartment to spend the night.”

Harriet flopped back on her bed and pointed her legs at the ceiling, toes extended. “Well, no one can say you’re just jumping right into bed with him. My God, you’ve stifled your hormones and female appetites for an entire afternoon… it’s positively Victorian. This will set the sexual revolution back a hundred years if it gets out.” She lowered her legs and propped her head on one arm. “Why not let it cool off a quarter of a degree, Rita? A week…”

Rita Moravia shook her head.

“You’ve got it bad, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Luis,” his wife called from the top of the stairs- “Harlan is here.”

“Send him down.”

Mrs. Camacho smiled at her next-door neighbor and said, “He’s in the basement watching a basketball game. As usual.”

“I thought he might be,” Harlan said, smiled and descended the staircase.

“Hey, Harlan. Great game. Boston College and West Virginia. BCs ahead by a bucket.”

“Do you men want a beer?” Mrs. Camacho calling down from the kitchen.

“Thanks anyway, honey.” They heard her close the door at the top of the stairs.

Harlan Albright sank into a chair near Camacho. He extracted a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one. “Catching any spies?”

“Got Matilda Jackson’s photos back from the lab yesterday af- ternoon. She’s got one of Vasily Pochinkov, the assistant agricul- tural whosis at the embassy. So we’ve burned him. I’m trying to get surveillance approved. And sure enough, Mrs. Jackson had Frank- lin’s drop message. The computer guys should decide it’s the Pen- tagon by tomorrow.”

“Better tell me all of it” Albright stared at the television as Camacho went through the initial interview with Mrs. Jackson and her attorney, the lab report, the interview with Mrs. Jackson today at her house. When Camacho was finished, Albright lit another cigarette. “Is there a crack house across the street?”

“Apparently. One of my men was going to check the D.C. police mug books. We’ll have names and rap sheets by tomorrow, proba- bly.”

“But there’s no way to tie this in with the crack gang?”

“You know there isn’t.”

“Did Mrs. Jackson ever see Franklin?”

Luis Camacho rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. She may have and doesn’t remember. She said she’d think about it.”

“What do you think?”

“How many times has he been to that drop?”

“Five.”

He considered. “I think she’s probably seen him,” he said at last “Whether she could pick him out of a lineup or mug book, I don’t know.”

“Where will you be if your boss asks you why you haven’t tried that, once the Pentagon angle is nailed down?”

The Minotaur

“I’ll look like an incompetent. I’ll have to bring her in to go over the photo books to cover myself.”

“When?”

“Maybe next week. Maybe the week after. They’ll want to evalu- ate. At first they’re going to be interested in Pochinkov. For a day or two. Then they’ll get interested in Mrs. Jackson again.”

“Pochinkov is a dead end.”

“They’ll come to that conclusion. Bigelow, my boss, has no background in counterespionage, but he’s a smart man. Hell drool over Pochinkov for a day or two, toy with the idea of trapping and turning him, then eventually decide that we can’t spare the man- power to watch him day and night forever. Of course, the National Security Council could decide to try to catch him servicing a drop just so we can kick him out of the country, but you probably have a better feel for that than I.”

A wry grin twisted Albright’s lips. The implication was that Albright knew whether or not the Soviets were going to pick up an American diplomat in Moscow anytime soon, knowledge that Ca- macho well knew Albright would never have. So even here, in the safety and comfort of his awn den, Camacho was stroking the ego of his control. He did it unconsciously, without even flunking. No wonder Luis Camacho had done so well in the FBI.

“How come you guys had a drop in that neighborhood any- way?”

“It was on the approved list.” Albright shrugged. The paper pushers in Moscow had no appreciation of the dynamics of an American neighborhood, how fast it could evolve or erode. The approval of drop sites was one method Soviet intelligence bureau- crats used to justify their salaries, but Albright wasn’t going to explain that to Camacho. He had learned early in his career that a wise man never complains about things he can’t change, especially to an agent he needed to keep loyal and motivated.

Still, Luis Camacho wasn’t like other agents. Albright had been running him now for over ten years, but it was only in the last few years, when the source the Americans called had surfaced and within months Camacho had had the serendipitous good fortune to be assigned to head the Washington, D.C., FBI counterespionage department, that Camacho had become a Soviet treasure.

Tonight as he stared at the ballet of black men on the television screen, Albright reflected again on that chain of events. After a high-profile black-tie affair in the ballroom of a Washington hotel, the Soviet ambassador had discovered a picture postcard in his coat pocket as his limousine returned him to the embassy. On the front of the card was a photo of the Pentagon at night On the back were two words and a series of numbers and letters — a computer file name — all written in block letters. Below that were ten words;

not a message, just words. Nothing else. No fingerprints except the ambassador’s.

It had been enough. Using Terry Franklin, the Soviets had ob- tained engineering and performance data on the new U.S. Air Force stealth fighter, the F-117A, from the Pentagon computer system. The information appeared genuine. So who was the source? Unmasking the source would undoubtedly reveal why the information was passed and enable the Soviet intelligence commu- nity to properly evaluate its authenticity. But the official guest list for the black-tie reception ran to over three hundred names and was almost a Who’s Who of official Washington. The names of spouses and girlfriends in attendance were not on the list. nor were the names of at least a dozen officials who had been seen there. The fists of hotel and caterer personnel were also inaccurate and incom- plete.

The upper echelons of the Soviet intelligence community were stymied. The first rule of intelhgenee gathering — know your source — had been violated. Yet the information appeared genuine and revealed just how far ahead of the Soviets the Americans were with stealth technology.

Three months after the ambassador had received the postcard, an unsigned letter in a plain white envelope arrived at the Soviet embassy addressed to the ambassador. The letter, in neat block letters, was a commentary on the rights of minorities in the Soviet Union. In accordance with standard procedure for unsolicited mail, the letter was sent to Moscow. There the code was broken. The writer had constructed a matrix using the first random word on the original postcard as the key word. The message was three random words, the first two of which proved to be computer access words. The third word wasn’t a word at all, but a series of numbers and letters. From the bowels of the Pentagon, Terry Franklin pro- duced a fascinating document concerning the development of a land-based anti-satellite laser about which Soviet intelligence had known absolutely nothing.

Further letters followed, each encoded on the basis of a key word which appeared on the original postcard, the ambassador’s. The information was golden: more stealth. Trident missile updates, SDI research breakthroughs, laser optics for artillery, satellite naviga- tion systems … the list was breathtaking. The Soviets were see- ing hard data on America’s most precious defense secrets. And they didn’t know who was giving it to them. Or why.

So Harlan Albright was told to use Mother Russia’s most pre- cious agent to find out. And here he sat, Luis Camacho, FBI spe- cial agent in charge, Washington, D.C., office of counterespionage.

Camacbo hadn’t found a sniff.

Damn, it was frustrating. And now the Terry Franklin tool to exploit the unknown source was unraveling.

“Do you believe in the entropy principle?” Camacho asked. There was a commercial on the television.

Albright shifted his gaze and tried to dear his thoughts. “En- tropy?”

“Disorder always increases in a closed system.”

“I suppose.”

“Will Franklin hold up?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it And he knows too much.” He felt a chut as he contemplated the wrath of his superiors if Franklin should ever list his thefts for the Americans.

“Can you get him to the Soviet Union?”

Albright shrugged and stood. “I’d better go home and get some sleep.”

“Yeah.”

“Drop over tomorrow evening.”

“Sure.”

Rita Moravia’s worst moment came when she preceded Toad into his apartment. “I’ve only been here a month or so,” Toad said behind her. Open cardboard boxes brimming with books and tow- els and bric-a-brac sat everywhere. She stepped into the kitchen. The sink was full of dishes. Something hideous was growing in a saucepan on the stove. The refrigerator contained half a case of beer and a six-pack of Coke — nothing else. At least it was clean. But how in the world had this man managed to get all these dishes dirty? Aha, the freezer was chock-full of frozen vegetables and TV dinners. Even some meat.

She dumped the contents of the saucepan into the sink and ran the pan full of water, then let the water from the faucet flush the putrid mixture past the trap.

Toad was fidgety. “I’m not much of a housekeeper,” he mum- bled. “Been trying to get unpacked and all but I’ve been so busy.”

Rita went into the bedroom and snapped on the lights. The bed was a rumpled mess. She ripped away the spread and blanket and tossed them on the floor, then began stripping the sheets. “Get out clean sheets.”

“Uh… y’see, that’s the only set I have. Why waste money on extra sheets when you can only use one set at a…” He ran out of words when she glanced at him as she removed the pillows from their cases. “Why don’t I take the sheets and pillowcases down to the basement and run them through the washer.” He grabbed them from the floor where Rita had thrown them and charged for the door. It closed behind him with a bang. Rita Moravia smiled and shook her head.

She tackled the bedroom first. Dirty clothes were piled in one comer of the closet. She used a T-shirt for a dustrag. No cleanser in the bathroom. He had never cleaned the commode. She was swabbing it when she heard the apartment door open. In seconds he appeared.

“Hey, Rita, you don’t—“

“Is there a convenience store nearby that’s still open?”

146 Stephen Coonfs

“I suppose…”

“I want cleanser, dishwashing liquid, something to clean these floors with … a mop and some sponges. And an air freshener.”

“Tomorrow I—“

“Now, Tarkington.”

He turned and left without a word.

In twenty minutes he was back with a bag full of supplies. -She handed him the laundry from the closet. “You go wash these and then clean up the living room and kitchen.”

When she got the sheets back on the bed she locked the bedroom door. Toad was making noises in the kitchen. She washed her face, brushed her teeth and hung up her clothes from the overnight bag. She put on a frilly negligee Harriet had given her for Christmas when it looked as if her anemic romance with Ogden might finally blossom.

Poor Ogden. His town house always looked as if the maid just left five minutes before you arrived. Appearances were so impor- tant to him. He would be devastated if he could see her in this slum. Ob well. Toad had something that Ogden would never have. She thought about it as she brushed out her hair again. Tarkington had guts as well as brains, and he knew what was important and what wasn’t. He believed in himself and his abilities with a pro- found, unshakable faith, so he wasn’t threatened by what she was, what she accomplished. Any way you looked at it. Toad Tarking- ton was a man.

And a man was precisely what Rita Moravia wanted in her life.

She turned off all the lights except the one on the nightstand, then opened the bedroom door.

Toad was up to his elbows in soapsuds in the sink. He had used too much dishwashing liquid. Too much water too. Water and suds were slopped over half the counter. Damn. He shouldn’t have brought Rita here with the apartment in such a mess. He had been meaning to unpack and clean it up, but the chore always seemed one that could wait. He had been seeing that secretary over in Alexandria but they always went to her place. It just hadn’t oc- curred to him how Rita might react until it was too late — like when he was fishing for the key to open the door.

Doggone, Toad, you find a really nice girl for a change and you screw it up right at the start. More water slopped over the edge of the sink. He felt it soaking the front of his pants. Oh poop.

He heard a laugh and turned. Rita was standing in the kitchen door laughing with her hand over her mouth. He grinned at her and worked blindly on the dishes. He couldn’t take his eyes off her

“You used too much water,” she said.

“Uh-huh.” With her hair down around her shoulders she looked like a completely different woman — softer, more feminine. And that frilly little nothing she was wearing!

“Do you have any dish towels?”

“Of course I have—“

“Where?”

“Where?” He forced his eyes to look at the likely places while he considered. “Oh yeah, in that box over there behind the table.”

She swabbed the counter while he hurriedly finished the dishes md stacked them in the drainer. He pulled the plug in the sink and she wiped his hands and arms.

“I’m sorry this place is such a mess. I—“

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He never did get to finish that apology.

“What’s your first name?”

“Robert.”

“Why do they call you Toad?”

“Because I’m horny all the time.”

“Umm,” Rita Moravia said. “Oh yes, I see. Lucky me.”

We got something,” Dreyfus said with a grin as he leaned in Luis Camacho’s office door-

“Well, don’t keep me waiting.”

After entering and closing the door, Dreyfus approached the desk and handed Camacbo a photocopy of the message from the cigarette pack that Mrs. Jackson had supplied. “Interest Golden. TS 849329.002EB.”

“What I did,” Dreyfus said, “was to have the computer wizards in the basement assume this message came from one of those letters that have been going to the Soviet embassy.” Camacho nodded. All mail addressed to the Soviet embassy was routinely examined and interesting items photocopied. So the FBI had copies of messages from sixty-three letters that looked suspicious.

“And sho nuff, it did. This little dilly right here.” From a file he pulled another photocopy. The message was a vitriolic screed on Soviet support of the Afghan puppet regime.

“What’s the code word?”

“Luteinizing.”

“What the heck kind of word is that?”

“Some medical word.”

“Will that break any of the other messages?”

“These four.” Dreyfus laid four more photocopies on the desk before his boss. On the bottom of each was penciled the code word and the message, and the initials of the computer technician.

“How about that?” Camacho said. “Very nicely done, Dreyfus.”

Dreyfus sagged into a seat across the desk. He was tall and angular and liked his pipe, which he extracted from a sweater pocket and charged. “We’re still short a whole bunch of code words.”

Camacho eyed his colleague as he drew deeply on the pipe and exhaled clouds of smoke. “So now we know how the code is con- structed?” he prompted.

“Yeah. It’s a matrix.”

“And?”

“And if we could tie up the mainframe for a couple weeks, we could construct a matrix for each and every word in the dictionary and compare them with every message. Given enough time on the computer, we can crack them all.”

“And then we’ll know what was stolen.” Camacbo turned to the window. There was little to see. It was a windy, cold day out there. “Two weeks? Jesus, that’s a hell of a lot of computing time. You should be able to find the Grand Unified Theory with two weeks on a Cray computer.”

“Well, from looking at this word he used—’luteinizing’—it’s ob- vious that some of the words are probably verb participles, past tense, etc. It’s possible — probable, since this guy’s pretty damn cute — that some of the code words are the names of persons or places. The number of possible English codewords is in the mil- lions, and the computer must construct a matrix for each and every one of them and test each matrix against all the suspected mes- sages. So what is that — a couple million repetitions of the program times sixty? Assuming he used real words or names. But if he made up random combinations of letters, say a dozen letters…”Drey- fus shrugged.

On a scratch pad Camacho wrote, “26″.” “Point made,” he muttered.

“Oh, I know, I know. Even after we have all the messages cracked, we won’t have him. But we’ll have his scent. Once we know which files he’s been in, we can trot over to the Pentagon and glom on to the access sheets for those files. Our boy has seen them all.”

“Maybe. But not very likely. Probably he got the access codes during an unauthorized peek in the main security files. But the document key words and numbers—” He sighed. “I would bet my last penny he hasn’t seen all the files he’s given away. I’ll bet there isn’t a man alive who’s had authorized access to all those files.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Agreed. But we’ll never get the Cray mainframe for two weeks. The fingerprint guys would cry a river. So let’s get started with what we have. Get the access sheets for these five files we know about and let’s see who’s on them. And for Christ’s sake, keep your head down. Don’t let anyone know what you’re after. We don’t want to spook our man.”

“Okay,” Dreyfus agreed. “While we’re at it, why don’t we just pick up Terry Franklin and sweat the little bastard?”

“Not yet.”

Dreyfus’ pipe was dead. He sucked audibly, then got out his lighter. When he was exhaling smoke again, he said, “I think we’re making a mistake not keeping Franklin under surveillance.”

“What if the little shit bolts? What then? Is Franklin the only mole Ivan has over there? Is he?”

Dreyfus threw up his hands and gathered up his papers.

“Get somebody to tackle this decoding project with the main- frame when it’s not in use. The front office will never give us two weeks, but let’s see what we can do with a couple hours here and there.”

“Sure, Luis.”

“Again, nice work, Dreyfus.”

Camacho stared at the door after Dreyfus left. He had slipped and made a mistake; he had lied to Dreyfus. The only way to keep two separate lives completely, safely separate was to never tell a lie. Never. You often had to leave out part of the truth, but that wasn’t a lie. A lie was a booby trap, a land mine that could explode at any time with fatal results. And this lie had been a big one. He sat now staring at the objects on his desk with unseeing eyes as he ex- amined the dimensions of the lie and its possible implications. Stu- pid! A stupid, idiotic lie.

He rubbed his forehead again and found he couldn’t sit still. He paced, back and forth and back and forth, until finally he was standing in front of the Pentagon organization chart. If there were forty files or sixty-three or any number, there would be a small group of people who would have access to all of them, if you constructed just one more hypothesis — that all the files concerned classified projects in research or development. Tyler Henry the ad- miral suspected they did. Albright the spy already knew and had told him so. Camacho the spy catcher must verify or refute that hypothesis soon, or Dreyfus and Henry and Albright and a lot of the others are going to think him incompetent, or worse. He stood staring at one box on the complex chart. Inside the box was printed: “Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition.”

He sat at his desk and unlocked the lower right drawer and removed a file. Inside were photocopies of all sixty-three letters. They were in chronological order. All had been written on plain white copy machine paper in #2 lead pencil, which had been a wise precaution on the part of the person or persons who wrote them. Ink could be analyzed chemically and the sellers of pens could be interviewed, but a #2 lead pencil was a #2 lead pencil. And copy machine paper — the stuff was everywhere, in every office of the nation.

On an average day the Soviet embassy received several dozen casual cards and letters mailed from all over the United States. Most of the messages were short and to the point. Many were crude. “Eat shit, Ivan,” seemed to be popular. The Chernobyl di- saster and the Armenian earthquake had elicited thousands of pieces of mail, much to the chagrin of the postal inspectors and FBI agents assigned to screen it.

Over the last three years these letters in this file had been culled for further scrutiny. All the messages were printed in small block letters, all were long enough to contain an internal code and all of them had been written in English by someone with a fairly decent education. Some were signed and some weren’t. Interestingly, about 80 percent of these letters had been mailed in the Washing- ton metropolitan area. Not a one had been mailed from over a hundred miles away. All had been enclosed in cheap, plain white envelopes available in hundreds of bookstores, convenience stores, supermarkets, etc., all over town.

Camacho looked closely. It was easy to see that the same person had written them all; the penmanship was so careful and neat, the style of the writer so consistent from letter to letter- And every now and then, maybe once in every other letter, the syntax was tortuous, not quite right. It was as if the writer purposefully chose a difficult sentence construction. The conclusion that these letters, or at least some of them, contained an internal code was ines- capable.

The mechanics of the matrix demanded a reasonably long letter if one were going to encrypt a long message, say three dozen char- acters. If it took an average of three words to signal one character, then the message must run to at least nine dozen words, too many for a postcard.

The sheer number of letters was daunting. Some of them were probably dross. knew these letters would arouse suspicion, so he wrote lots of them. And it was impossible to tell which contained a code and which didn’t. He was hiding in plain sight.

Maybe that was the key. Maybe wasn’t just some career civil servant, some clerk. Maybe he was a man in plain sight, out in the open, known to one and all. But why? Why was he committing treason? That’s what the Soviets wanted to know.

Camacho picked up the phone and punched numbers. “Dreyfus, pull the files on all the political people in the Defense Department and put them in the conference room.”

“All of them? Again?”

“All.”

“Yessir,” Dreyfus said without enthusiasm.

Even a blind hog finds an acorn occasionally, Camacho told himself as he cradled the phone. And if there’s an acorn in those files, this time I’m going to find it.

The youngest child, a four-year-old boy, threw a fit as Lucy Frank- lin drove toward Dulles. The nine-year old, Karen, had been devil- ing him all morning, and apparently he decided he had had enough. He wailed at the top of his lungs and punched at his sister. One of his swings connected with her nose. Blood spouted and she screamed too. Lucy pulled off the freeway and put the car in neu- tral.

“Shut up!” she roared. “Both you kids, stop it!” Satisfied with the outcome of the battle, the boy sat back and stared at the blood dripping on ha sister’s dress as she sobbed uncontrollably.

“Look at you two. Fighting again. Now Karen’s hurt. Aren’t you sorry, Kevin?”

He didn’t look a bit sorry, which made Karen cry harder. Lucy got her into the front seat and held a tissue on her nose until the bleeding stopped. She cuddled the child. Karen had vomited twice during the night, so this morning Lucy had kept her home from school.

The traffic roared by. “Say you’re sorry, Kevin.”

“I’m sorry.” His hand came over the seat and touched Karen’s hair. The sobbing gradually eased. Holding a tissue against Karen’s nose with her left hand, Lucy leaned over the seat and cuddled the boy. This week had been tough on them. Terry was so distant, saying little, shouting at the children as they ran through the house and made their usual noise.

He was a volcano about to erupt. His tension and fear were tangible, visible, frightening to the children, terrifying to Lucy. Even as she sat here on the freeway, the unreasoning panic that Terry caused washed over her again. What had he done? What would he do? Would he hurt the children? Would he hurt her?

“Mommy, don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying, sweetheart. I just have something in my eye.”

“I’m okay now,” Karen said, casting an evil glance across the seat back at her brother.

“No more fighting. You two love each other. No more fighting. It makes me sad to see you two trying to irritate each other.”

Now Kevin’s hand touched her hair. “Let’s go get Grandma.”

“Yes. Let’s do.” She started the engine and slipped out into traffic.

At lunch Toad and Rita shared a table-just the two of them. From a table fifty feet away Jake Grafton watched the body language and gestures as he listened to George Wilson and Dalton Harris talk baseball. So Toad Tarkington had fallen in love again! That guy went over that precipice with awe-inspiring regularity. The impact at the bottom was also spectacular.

You really had to tip your hat to the guy. He arrives, takes in the female situation at a glance, then immediately makes a fool of himself over the best-looking woman in sight. Jake allowed himself a grin. The ol’ Horny Toad.

Back in the office after lunch, Jake called Tarkington over to his desk- “I’ve been looking over this memo about the A-6 system. How did it go when you turned off the radar and Doppler?”

“Well, sir, without the Doppler to dampen the velocities, the inertial tends to drift somewhat. But without the radar all you have is the IR and it’s tough. When it isn’t raining or snowing you can run attacks okay once you’ve found the target. The nav system just isn’t right enough to let you find the targets without the radar. The IR doesn’t have enough field of view. With a global positioning system to stabilize the inertial you might have a chance, but not now.”

“It looks to me like you’ve got a handle on the major problems. This evening how about jumping a plane and flying up to Calverton, New York? With Commander Richards. The guys at Grumman are expecting you two. I want you to look over the A-6G system and play with it and let me know what you think. Come back Monday. Tuesday you and I are going to take a little trip out West.”

The lieutenant’s face reflected his dismay.

“That’s not going to put you out or interfere with anything, is it?” Jake tried to appear solicitous.

“Geez, CAG, The whole weekend—“

“You didn’t have anything going, did you? I mean, you haven’t been around here long enough to—“

“Oh no, sir. I just thought I’d do my laundry and all. Maybe take in a movie. Write a letter to my mom.”

Jake couldn’t hold back a smile. “Running out of clean under- wear, huh?”

Toad nodded, trying to maintain a straight face.

“Buy some more- See you Monday, Toad.”

“Yessir. Monday.”

At four o’clock Jake received a call from Commander Rob Knight. “Could you come over to my office?”

“Well, I was getting ready to go home.”

“On your way?”

“Sure.”

Jake locked the files, turned off the lights and snagged his hat on the way out. Smoke Judy was still there. “Lock up, will you, Smoke?”

“Sure, Captain. Have a good weekend.”

“You too.”

Jake walked to the Pentagon. He was getting very familiar with this route. The parking lot was emptying as he crossed it and he had to do some dodging.

On the fourth-level corridor the pile of used furniture was still gathering dust. Jake turned right on the D-Ring and walked down three doors. He knocked.

Rear Admiral Costello opened the door. “Ah, Captain, please come in.”

The room was packed. People were sitting on desks. Everyone had a beer can in his hand. Vice Admiral Henry was there, Costel- lo’s three aides — all captains fresh from carrier commands and waiting for the flag list or new orders — together with the four office regulars and two admirals Jake didn’t know. He accepted a beer and found himself talking to Henry. “Glad you could join us, Cap- tain.”

“Delighted, sir.”

It was Happy Hour. These men who had spent their lives in the camaraderie of ready rooms needed two hours at the end of the week to review the week’s frustrations and reduce them to manage- able proportions. Soon the subject turned from shop to mutual friends, ships, ports, and planes they had flown.

Just before six Jake excused himself. He and Callie were going to the beach this evening. Tyler Henry grabbed his hat and started with Jake for the door. As Jake opened it, Henry paused and took a long, smiling look at the bulletin board. He was looking at a photo. It was a black-and-white eight-by-ten of singer Ann-Mar- gret holding a microphone in her hand and singing her heart out, wearing a sleeveless shorty blouse and no pants at all.

“I was there,” Henry said. “Kitty Hawk, ‘67 or ‘68. That woman…” He pointed at the picture. “She’s all lady. She’s my favorite entertainer.”

The photo was autographed and signed. “To the guys of OP- 506.” Yes, thought Jake Grafton, remembering those days. No doubt that was a great moment for her, performing before five thousand screaming sailors, but it was an even greater moment for them, a moment they would remember and cherish every day of their lives, each and every man jack of them. Of course, bombing North Vietnam twelve hours a day, some of them didn’t have very many days left- The loss rate then was almost a plane a day. No doubt Ann-Margret had known that.

“Mine too,” said Jake Grafton, and together with the admiral walked into the corridor where he said goodbye. The admiral went back toward his office as Jake set off alone for the subway.

At six o’clock, as Jake Grafton was boarding the subway at the Pentagon station, Luis Camacho closed the last of the files piled up on his desk. It was hopeless: 218 files, 218 political appointees in the Department of Defense, including the service secretaries and unders and assistants. He had selected just eighteen files: the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, his political aides, and the assistants and under secretaries in SECDEF’s office. And SECDEF. All these men had held their positions for at least three years. But it was still hopeless.

If one of these men was, no hint of it came from the FBI background investigations that had been completed for the Senate confirmation process. The common thread was that they were pillars of the establishment, the kind of men generations of mothers prayed their daughters would marry. All eighteen were white, well educated, leaders in their local communities, respected by all those similarly situated. Several had previously held elected or appointed office. Most were family men or divorced family men. Thirteen of them had graduated from an Ivy League school. Tennis was the most popular sport and golf a close second. Several were yachtsmen. Every single one of them could be labeled independently wealthy, most from old family money, a few from small fortunes they had made themselves.

It was sickening. Wealth, privilege, power, spelled out in these files in black and white. Oh, they had a few little peccadillos. One man had flunked out of three colleges before he had completed his education in a fourth. Three drunken-driving convictions. One ille- gitimate child. One man had been known to frequent prostitutes in his younger days, and one had been accused of being a closet ho- mosexual by a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex during a messy divorce. Luis Camacho, career cop, thought it pretty tame stuff.

For several seconds he sat and stared at the piles of folders spread over the table. No cop, he told himself, ever looked seri- ously at a more unlikely group of suspects. There wasn’t even one man with a family or background that might be vulnerable to in- tense scrutiny. Not here. These men had had every advantage that birth, wealth, and social position could confer. Sadly he shook his head.

If the key to X’s behavior was in his past, it was going to remain buried unless a small army of agents with a lot of time were told to dig deep. The agents Camacho could get. What frustrated Camacho was his suspicion that he was running out of time. What infuriated him was his conviction that no matter how deep they dug, the investigators could come up dry. And without something… some artifact… something tangible, how could he sell a man to Albright as X? Albright would want a man he could understand, with a motivation that could be reduced to writing and passed from the Aquarium to the Kremlin and would explain. The committee should have thought this prob- lem through two years ago.

He went back to his office and found a photo of Terry Franklin in the file. Actually there were four of them. The one he selected was a full-figure shot taken with a hidden camera. Franklin was looking just to the right of the camera, perhaps waiting for a car to pass the parked van the photographer had used. This picture he placed in an inside pocket of his sports coat. He glanced at his watch. If he went to the Pentagon, he could probably still catch Vice Admiral Henry, who rarely left before 7 P.M.

Terry Franklin stopped at a neighborhood bar after he got off the bus from work. On the Friday evening of the longest week of his life, he deserved a few drinks. Waiting for the ax to fall was squeez- ing the juice right out of him. He had been a bumbling fool all week, botching one job after another, having to ask the chief for help with several problems that were so minor he had been embar- rassed. The chief was solicitous, asking if he was having problems at home.

The problem was he couldn’t think about anything else. He could no longer concentrate on his job, his wife, the kids, anything. He had to get his mind off it and he just couldn’t! Sitting here at the bar, he glanced warily at the other customers, then bit his lip. A panic-stricken scream was just beneath the surface. He was los- ing it. It was like one of those nightmares he had as a kid — he was fleeing from a hideous monster and his legs went slower and slower and the monster was reaching out, within inches of catching him— and he woke up screaming with pee soaking his pajamas.

He was going to have to get all this crap stuffed into one sock, going to have to wire himself together so he could get from one end of the day to the other. He had all of tonight, all day Saturday, all day Sunday — three nights and two whole days — before he had to face his demons on Monday.

He ordered another CC on the rocks. Sure, he could do it. No one knew. No one was going to arrest him. No one was going to toss him into prison with a bunch of homo thieves and killers. After all, this is America, land of the gullible, home of the foolish.

He would deliver and collect on another dozen floppies or so. Then he would empty his safe-deposit box and be on his way to a new life. Perhaps Rio. He would lie on the beach all day and fuck beach bunnies at night.

He sipped on his drink and thought about how it would be. The life he had always wanted was right there within his grasp, so close, within inches. But he was going to have to be realistic about the monsters, going to have to keep trotting. No urine-soaked paja- mas. No screaming fits. Amen.

He paid the tab and left two quarters on the bar. Outside he forced himself to pause and examine the headlines on the newspa- per m the vending stand. Same old crap. The world was still turn- ing, things were burning down, trains were still crashing…

He walked the two blocks home with his head up, breathing the spring air. It seemed just yesterday that it was so cold and misera- ble. Spring is here. And I’ve got a fortune in the bank and no one knows but me.

His neighbor was washing his car in the driveway. “Hey, Terry, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good. And you?”

“Just fine. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s the spy business?”

Terry Franklin froze.

The asshole tossed his sponge into a bucket and wiped his hands on his jeans. He grinned as he reached for his cigarettes. “Lucy has been telling Melanie that you’re a spy. I laughed myself sick.

“So …”

Terry didn’t hear any more. He lurched for the front door. “Lucy!” He slammed the door behind him and charged for the kitchen. “Lucy,” he bellowed, “you stupid—“

Lucy was sitting with her mother drinking coffee at the counter.

Both women stared, openmouthed.

“What — what does Jared mean — about Melanie? What did you tell Melanie?” He thought he was doing pretty well under the circumstances, staying calm and keeping the legs going. But it came out as a roar.

“Now listen here, Terry—” Lucy’s mom began.

“Lucy, I need to talk to you.” He grabbed her arm and half lifted her from the stool. “Now, Lucy.”

“Let go of her, Terry!”

“Mom Southworth, please! I need to talk to—“

“No!” The old lady had a voice like a drill instructor.

“Lucy, what did you tell that moron Melanie?”

“I told her that—“

“Get your hands off her, Terry. I know all about you. You stu- pid. greedy—” The older woman was fat, with two chins. Just now Terry Franklin thought her the ugliest woman he had ever laid eyes on.

“Shut up, you nosy old bitch! What the hell are you doing here anyway? Lucy, I want to talk to you.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her from the stool toward the downstairs half-bath. He pulled her inside and slammed the door. “What in the name of God have you been saying to Melanie?”

Lucy was scared witless. “Noth—“

“Did you tell her I was a spy?”

Terry didn’t need an answer; it was written all over her face. The mother-in-law was pounding on the door and shouting. Something about calling the police.

“You — you—” he whimpered as his legs turned to wood and the monster’s fetid breath engulfed him.

Lucy opened the door and slid out as he sagged down onto the floor and covered his face with his hands. His whole life was shat- tered, smashed to bits by that silly, simple twati

It was 8:30 P.M. when Luis Camacho parked in front of Mrs. Jack- son’s house and locked his car. It was a delightful spring evening, still a nip in the air, but almost no wind. The foliage was budding. Summer was coming and the earth was ready.

As he walked down the street Camacho glanced at the crack house. Someone was peering though a curtain on the second floor; he saw it move. No one on the sidewalk. Mrs. Jackson’s gate was ajar, but not a light showed through the curtains.

He mounted the stoop and rapped on the door. As he waited he glanced around. Street still empty- Such a beautiful evening. He knocked some more. Perhaps she had gone to the store, or to a neighbor’s?

Suddenly he knew. He tried the knob. It turned. He pushed the door open several inches and called into the darkness, “Mrs. Jack- son? Mrs. Jackson, are you here?” He gingerly pushed the door open wider and reached under his jacket for the butt of the.357 magnum on his right hip.

All the lights were off. Camacho closed the door behind him and stood in the darkness listening with the revolver in his hand.

Nothing. Not a sound. Not a squeak, not a creak, nothing.

He waited, flexing his fingers on the butt of the gun. All he could hear was the thud of his own heart.

Slowly, carefully, he groped for the light switch on the wall.

She was lying near the kitchen door with her right leg twisted under her, staring fixedly at the ceiling. In the center of her fore- head was a small red circle. No blood. She had died instantly.

With the revolver ready he went from room to room, turning’on lights and glancing into closets. Everything was neat, clean, tidy. Satisfied that the killer was gone, he came back to the living room and stood looking at Mrs. Jackson. He stooped and touched her cheek. She had been dead for hours. Around the bullet hole in her forehead was a black substance. A powder bum.

The phone was in the kitchen. Her purse sat beside it, the catch still latched. Camacho wrapped his handkerchief loosely around the telephone receiver before he picked it up. He dialed with a pen from his shirt pocket. As he waited for the duty officer to answer, he idly noticed that the fire under the coffeepot had been turned off. A professional hit. With any luck the body would not have been discovered for days and the time of death would have been problematic.

“This is Special Agent Camacho.” He gave them the address- “I’ve discovered a corpse. Better send the forensic team and the D.C. police liaison officer. And call Dreyfus at home and ask him to come over.”

Back in the living room he tried to avoid looking at Mrs. Jack- son. Something shiny in a candy dish on the sideboard caught his eye. He stepped carefully over the body and bent to look. A spent.22 caliber Long Rifle cartridge. The killer hadn’t bothered to re- trieve the spent casing! And why should he? Twenty-two caliber rimfire ammunition was sold everywhere and was virtually un- traceable. But how had this shell got here?

He went back to the corpse and stood near it. Then he stooped down and felt her head carefully. Another bullet hole in the back of her head. Okay, where is the second shell?

The FBI agent got down on his hands and knees and looked under everything. He found it in a corner, half hidden by the edge of the carpet, bearing the Remington “R.” Camacho didn’t touch it.

So Mrs. Jackson had opened the door and admitted her killer. Locks not forced or scratched up. She had started back toward the kitchen, the killer behind, and he had shot her in the back of the head. She had died on her feet and collapsed where she stood. He had walked over to her and fired a second shot into her brain with the pistol held inches from her face. That shell casing was ejected by the pistol into the candy dish. The killer had then proceeded on through the house, checking for other people, turning off lights, turning off the stove, making sure nothing would cause a fire or call attention to the house. Then he had left and closed the door carefully behind him. He hadn’t bothered to lock it. Even that was smart. No doubt the assassin had worn gloves, so he left no fingerprints. If the local punks tried the knob and came in to see what they could steal, they would probably not be so sophisticated, and they would automatically become the prime sus- pects in Mrs. Jackson’s murder. All very slick.

The bastard!

Camacho was standing by the front window looking at the crack house when the lab van pulled up, followed immediately by a sedan with city plates and two sedans with U.S. government tags. Two hours later the forensic team and the other people departed with the body. Dreyfus and a lieutenant from the D.C. force remained with Luis Camacho.

“When are you going to raid that crack house, shut it down?” Camacho asked the question of the plainclothes lieutenant as he jerked his head at the building across the street.

“Who says it’s a crack house?”

“What’re you afraid of? Think the mayor might be in there?”

“Listen, asshole! If you’ve got any evidence that dwelling is be- ing used for illegal purposes, I’d like to see it. We’ll do some affida- vits, find a judge and get a warrant. Then we’ll raid the place. Now are you all hot air or do you have some evidencel”

“We have a statement from a woman now dead. We sent a copy over to you guys three days ago.”

“I saw that statement, then routed it to the narcs. All it said was that there was suspicious activity over there. A little old woman thought something nasty was going on in her neighborhood. Big fucking deal! No judge in this country would have called that prob- able cause and issued a warrant, even if that statement had been sworn, which it wasn’t. Now where’s the goddamn evidence?”

“Whatever happened to ‘usually reliable sources’?”

The lieutenant didn’t reply.

“All you guys must belong to the ACLU.” Camacho stood look- ing at the house, the peeling paint, the mortar missing from the brick joints, the trash in front of the place, the light leaking around drawn blinds. Just then a large old Cadillac hardtop came around the comer and drifted slowly to a stop at the curb. Four young black men got out. One went up the steps toward the door of the house, which opened before he reached it and closed behind him.

“Just follow me,” Camacho said. “I’ll get you some evidence.” Even before he finished speaking he was out the door and going down the stairs to the sidewalk two at a time.

He went across the street toward the Cad at a brisk walk. The three men were staring.

“Hi.” He reached into his jacket pocket with his left hand and pulled out his credentials. “FBI—“

One of the men was moving, going sideways and reaching under his shirt. Camacho rammed his left shoulder into the nearest man and fell on top of him as he drew his revolver. He heard a shot, then two more in quick succession. The man who had gone for his gun fell backward against the car, then slid to the sidewalk as Camacho jammed his revolver against the teeth of the struggling man under him.

“Don’tl” The man opened his mouth and Caroacho jammed the gun in up to the trigger guard. “Freeze, shithead!”

On the other side of the car someone was pleading, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.”

“You even hiccup, I’m gonna blow your brains out.” Camacho felt the man for a weapon as he stared into his wide eyes. There was an automatic in his waistband. The agent extracted it and turned the man so he could look over his shoulder at the house.

Dreyfus was checking the man on the sidewalk and the police lieutenant was cuffing the third one.

Camacho pulled the barrel of the revolver clear of his man’s lips. “Is there a back way outta there?”

The lips contorted. Camacho cocked the revolver and placed the barrel right between his eyes. “Answer me, or so help me God — . ”

“Yeah. The alley.”

Camacho pulled the man from the sidewalk and shoved him behind the Cad. “Quick, on your belly, hands behind your back. Assume the position, fucker, right now.” As the man obeyed, Ca- macho tossed his cuffs to the lieutenant, then began to run for the corner.

He rounded the comer at a run just as a car was coming out of the alley in the middle of the block, its engine howling. He dived onto his face. An automatic weapon roared as the rear of the car slewed and smoke poured from the tires. Scrambling behind a parked car, Camacho managed to fire one shot at the fleeing car, although he knew that the hollow-point +P.38 slug had no chance of penetrating the body of the car. Someone leaning out a rear passenger window hosed another burst in his general direction as the car ran the stop sign at the next comer. The bullets slapped the concrete and parked cars. Luis Camacho huddled behind a car and listened to the engine noise fade away.

When he walked back to the Cadillac, Dreyfus was watching the cuffed men lying in the street and lighting his pipe while the police lieutenant used his car radio. Camacho looked at the man who had been shot. He was dead, with two holes in his chest about four inches apart. A cocked nine-millimeter Beretta automatic lay on the street near him.

“Was it you that got this guy?” Camacho asked Dreyfus.

“Yeah. After he took a shot at you.”

“No shit.”

“You are a goddamn hopeless romantic, Luis.”

The lieutenant came over at a trot. His face was livid. “You fucking idiot! Are you tired of living? You almost got one of us killed! We’re the good guys, or haven’t you keyhole peepers heard?”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t think it through.”

“The FBI, the fearless band of idiots.” The lieutenant said the words softly, a benediction, a sublime pronouncement of irrefut- able truth- He looked up and down the street, breathing deeply. The red tinge in his cheeks subsided slowly. Finally he said, “Okay, Rambo. How do you want this to read?”

“Hell, just tell it straight. This car came along and parked in front of a crime scene. I approached them and identified myself and one of them pulled a weapon.” He shrugged.

The police officer nudged one of the prone men with his foot. “A real smart bunch of punks. Drive right up and park across the street from two cars with government plates. You shitheads de- serve to be in jail. Just in case you haven’t figured it out, you’re under arrest.”

The wail of an approaching siren caromed from the fronts of the dilapidated houses.

“See you around. Lieutenant,” Camacho said.

“Leaving? Some congressman fucking his secretary tonight?”

“You city guys can handle this. Mrs. Jackson’s my problem.”

“The old lady can cool off without you, Rambo. I’m gonna go get a search warrant for this house, and you’re gonna have to sign an affidavit. A couple of them. You and your sidekick here, J. Edgar Earp, are gonna be working with me for the next eighteen hours. Now get your cute little ass over here and start searching this car. Let’s see what these hot shooters were driving around.” The lieutenant was right. It did take eighteen hours.

Terry Franklin never knew how long he stayed in the bathroom. The flowers on the wallpaper formed a curious pattern. Each had a petal that joined to an offset flower, all of them; it was very curious how they did that. He thought about how the flowers joined and about nothing at all for a long, long time.

When he came out of the bathroom the house was dark and silent. He flipped on the kitchen light and drank milk from the carton in the refrigerator. He was very tired. He climbed the stairs and lay down on the bed.

The sun was shining in the windows when he awoke. He was still dressed. He used the toilet, then went downstairs and found some- thing to eat in the refrigerator. Cold pizza. He ate it cold. It was left over from a week or more ago when he had taken the whole family to Pizza Hut. He thought about that for a while, trying to recall just when it had been, remembering the crowd and the kids with the cheese strings dangling from their mouths and hands. The memory was fresh, as if it had happened just a short while ago, yet it was all wrong. The memory was from the wrong perspective, like when you remember a scene from your childhood. You remember it as you saw it as a child, with everything large and the adults tall and the other children just your size. That’s the way he remem- bered Pizza Hut.

He sat the empty plate in the sink and ran some water into it, then went into the living room and lay down on the couch. He was tired again. He slept most of the day.