The Minotaur

16

An an era when the average Amer- ican male stood almost six feet tall, Secretary of Defense Royce Caplinger towered just five feet six inches in his custom-made shoes with two-inch heels. Perhaps understandably, his hero and role model was Douglas MacArthur, of whom he had written a biography ten years before. The critics had savaged it and the post- Vietnam public had ignored it. Caplinger, said one wag, would have won MacArthur sainthood had the book been even half true.

How deeply this experience hurt Caplinger only his family might have known. The world was allowed to see only the merciless effi- ciency and detached intellect that had made him a millionaire by the time he was thirty and president and CEO of one of the twenty largest industrial companies in the nation when he was forty-two. Now worth in excess of a hundred million dollars, he was a man who believed in himself with a maniacal faith; in the world of titanic egos in which he moved he saw himself as a giant and, to his credit, others saw him the same way.

Rude and abrasive, Caplinger never forgot or forgave. He had never been accused of possessing a sense of humor. He won many more battles than he lost because he was right, often terrifically right, as his many enemies freely acknowledged. He often won when he was wrong too, because he could play major-league hard- ball with the best of them. Years ago his subordinates had labeled him “the cannibal,” whispering that he liked the taste of raw flesh,

Caplinger had the brain of Caesar and the soul of a lizard, all housed in the body of a chimpanzee, or so one of his more daring victims had groused to Time magazine. This quote crossed Jake Grafton’s mind just now as he watched the secretary’s gaze dart back and forth across the faces of the men at the luncheon table as they were served pear halves in china dishes bearing the seal of the Navy Department by a steward in a white jacket.

Jake was back in Washington for a week while the China Lake crowd fixed their A-6, Rita Moravia recovered, and Samuel Dodg- ers tinkered with the Athena device. This was Jake’s first meal in the Secretary of the Navy’s dining/conference room, so today he was playing tourist and taking it all in.

The room was spacious and paneled with dark wood, perhaps mahogany. Deep blue drapes dressed up the windows. A half dozen oil paintings of sailing ships and battles, with little spotlights to show them to advantage, were arranged strategically between the windows and doors. Gleaming brass bric-a-brac provided the accents. Sort of early New York Yacht Club, Jake decided, a nine- teenth-century vision of a great place for railroad pirates and coal barons to socialize over whiskey with nautical small talk about spankers and jibs and their latest weekend sail to Newport. He would describe the room for Callie this evening. He sipped his sugarless iced tea and turned his attention to the conversation.

In keeping with his temperament, Caplinger was doing the talk- ing: “. -. the Congress has ceased to exist as a viable legislative body since Watergate. They can’t even manage to give senior lead- ers or the judiciary a pay raise without making a hash of it. With- out strong, capable leaders. Congress is a collection of mediocrities drifting…”

Jake used his knife to slice the fruit in his dish, two whole halves, to make it go further. Already he suspected this wasn’t going to be much of a meal.

At the opposite end of the table from the Secretary of Defense sat today’s host. Secretary of the Navy George Ludlow. He was nibbling at pieces of pear he nicked off with his fork and listening to Caplinger. No doubt he was used to these monologues; he had married Caplinger’s second daughter, a modestly pretty young woman with a smile that looked vacuous in news photos. Jake Grafton had never met her and probably never would.

“… five hundred thirty-five ants on a soapbox drifting down the Potomac, each of them thinking he’s steering.” Caplinger chuckled and everyone else smiled politely. Jake had heard that old saw before.

Across the long table from Jake sat Tyler Henry, Under Secre- tary of Defense for Acquisition Russell Queen, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jerome Nathan Lanham.

Lanham was a submariner, a nuke, with all the baggage that term implies: team player, risk minimizer, technocrat par excel- lence in the service of the nuclear genie. His patron saint was Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, whose portrait hung in Lanham’s office. Like Rickover, Jerome Nathan Lanham was reputed to have little use for nonengineers. Just now he sat regarding Jake Grafton, A.B. in history, with raised eyebrows.

Jake nodded politely and speared another tiny hunk of pear. The dish was half full of juice. He wondered if he should go after it with a spoon and surveyed the table to see if anyone else was. Nope. Well, hell. He used the spoon anyway, trying to be discreet, as Caplinger ruminated upon the current political situation in Japan and the steward began serving a tiny garden salad. “… wanted to hang Hirohito after the war, but MacArthur said no, which was genius. The Japanese would never have forgiven us.”

“If we conquered Iran today, what would you do with Khomeini?” Helmet Fritsche, seated to Jake’s right, asked the question of Caplinger, who grinned broadly.

“Such a tiny hypothetical — he should have been a lawyer,” Lud- low muttered sotto voce as the others laughed.

“Make Khomeini a martyr? No. I’d ensure he didn’t get any older, but the autopsy — and there would be one — would read ‘old age.’”

After the salad came small bowls of navy bean soup accompa- nied by some tasteless crackers. Even Caplinger thought they were insipid. “George, these crackers taste worse than some of my old predictions.”

When the soup was gone, the steward filled coffee cups and whisked away the dishes, then retired. Jake watched incredulously. Apparently they had just had the entire meal. At least Ludlow wasn’t blowing the whole navy budget this year on grub.

“Well, Grafton,” Caplinger said, “will Athena work?”

“Yessir. It’s the biggest technical advance in naval aviation since I’ve been in the navy.”

“If it works”—the Secretary of Defense eyed Jake across the run of his coffee cup—“it’ll be the biggest leap forward for the military since the invention of radar. The air force is going to want this technology yesterday. It’ll save their strategic bomber program.” Jake understood. The air force would be able to use much cheaper bombers than the B-2, which they would never get any significant number of at a half billion dollars each.

“I want it right now,” Admiral Lanham said. “These devices will make surface ships invisible to radar satellites and cruise mis- siles. The entire Soviet naval air arm will be obsolete. I want a crash program that puts Athena in the fleet right now, and damn the cost.”

Caplinger shifted his gaze to Helmut Fritsche, on Jake’s right. “Will it work? Can it be made to work?”

“Anything’s possible given enough time and money.”

“How much?” demanded Under SECDEF Russell Queen. In civilian life he had been president of a large accounting firm. White skin, banker’s hands, bald, Queen had long ago lost the battle of the bulge. He was a humorless man with thick glasses. Jake de- cided it would require prodigious faith to believe Russell Queen had once been young or ever loved a woman. “How much do you think will be enough?”

Fritsche’s shoulders rose a quarter inch and fell. “Depends on how you go about it — how you structure the contract, how many units you buy annually, how big a risk” you’re willing to take on unproven technology. We didn’t test a full-up system. All we did was prove the concept, and we have some more work to do on that next week. We’re a long way from an operational system that will protect just one tactical airplane.”

“How long?”

Helmut Fritsche took out a cigar and rolled it thoughtfully be- tween his hands. He didn’t reach for a match. “Two or three years — if you can make all the paper pushers keep hands off. Four or five if it’s business as usual.” Every head at the table bobbed its owner’s concurrence.

“Humph,” snorted Caplinger, who sucked in a bushel of air and sent it down as far as it would go, then exhaled slowly. “I can try to put — maybe slip it under the stealth stuff — but — . ” His enthu- siasm wouldn’t fill a thimble. Even the Secretary of Defense couldn’t control the legions of bureaucrats with rice bowls to pro- tect. They were too well armed with statutes and regulations and pet congressmen. “Russell, you’ll have to make this work, find some dollars in one of your little hidey-holes, keep it too small for anyone to get curious about. And no fucking memos.”

Queen nodded slowly, his smooth round face revealing his dis- comfort. He looked, Jake thought, like a man staring into a dark abyss that he has been told to lower himself into.

“I don’t think that’s the way to do it.” Ludlow said. “Admiral Lanham wants it now and the air force will too. We’re going to have to fund Athena as one of our highest-priority items. We’re going to have to throw money at it and hope the technology works.”

“Do you agree, Admiral?”

“Yes, sir. I’d rather have Athena than a whole lot of projects I can name, including the A-12.”

“We need them both,” Caplinger said. “So we’ll keep Athena in with the ATA and request funding for them both.”

“What about Congress?” Ludlow murmured. When no one re- plied, he expanded the question. “How will Athena be seen by the liberals dying to chop the defense budget? Will they think it gives us such a large qualitative technical advantage over the Soviets that they can chop our capital budget? Shrink the navy?” To main- tain a navy, worn-out, obsolete ships must be constantly replaced with new ones. New ships are expensive and require years to con- struct. A decision not to build as many as necessary to maintain current force levels was a decision to shrink the navy. Insufficient ships to fulfill continuing worldwide commitments forced planners to delay ship overhauls and keep sailors at sea for grotesquely long periods, which wore out ships prematurely and devastated enlisted retention rates. It was a cruel downward spiral. This was the post- Vietnam nightmare from which the navy was just recovering.

“No democracy will ever buy enough ships,” Jake Grafton said. “Not over the long haul”

“You’re saying we can’t maintain a six-hundred-ship navy,” Lanham said, frowning.

“We don’t have six hundred ships now, sir, and we’re not likely to ever get them,” Jake shot back, suddenly sure he didn’t want Lanham to think he could be cowed.

“Lessen the primary threat and we won’t need as many ships. That’s the argument,” said Ludlow.

“Politicians never understand commitments,” Royce Caplinger said dryly, “perhaps because they make so many of them. The federal deficit is totally out of control due to mandated increases in social program expenditures. They borrowed money and never asked if they could afford the interest. They approved treaties and never weighed the cost in defense expenditures.”

The CNO made a gesture of frustration. “We have more practi- cal concerns. The air force is facing institutional death. They gave up the close air support mission to the army a generation ago. The strategic bomber mission is on the ropes. All they have left are ICBMs — which the army could run — and tactical air and airlift. Their bases are fixed, vulnerable to ICBMs and political upheavals. The world is passing them by. They’re panicking. And they have a lot of friends. If they don’t get Athena and get it now…”

“It’ll get ugly,” Ludlow agreed.

“I am the Secretary of Defense,” Caplinger said, his voice hard. “I will take care of the air force. You people take care of the navy.”

The heavy silence that followed was broken by Tyler Henry. “No one has mentioned X.” All eyes turned to the vice admiral. An uncomfortable look crossed his face, as if he had just farted in church.

“What about him?” Caplinger asked.

“He hasn’t gotten Athena yet, but the minute we start bringing defense contractors into the loop, he will.”

Caplinger leaned forward. “Where will we be if he gives Athena to the Russians?”

Henry had recovered his composure. “We’ll have lost our advan- tage,” he said with a trace of irritation in his voice. “They outgun us two to one. We need the technological edge to stay in the game.”

Caplinger got to his feet and reached for the jacket draped over the back of his chair. “Thanks for lunch, George. Russell, you talk to these people and get this Athena business on track. I want it in production as soon as possible. We’ll include it with the ATA in the budget. Black all the way.” He paused and surveyed the faces at the table. “The navy can develop this. Keep it under wraps. Secu- rity as tight as a miser’s money belt. Develop it for planes and ships. But the air force must be brought into this as soon as we have to start talking to Congress. This may kill the B-2, but it’ll save the B-1″

“But what about the billions we’re pouring into stealth planes now?” Russell Queen the bean counter asked his boss.

“Heck, Russell, this Athena gizmo may not work. Probably won’t. Sorry, Tyler, but after all! A religious crackpot in a back- yard workshop? It’s too good to be true. Sounds like something Tom Clancy dreamed up after he had a bad pizza.”

An hour later as Tyler Henry and Jake Grafton walked along the E-Ring back toward the admiral’s office, Jake remarked, “At lunch. Admiral, you said we need a technological edge to stay in the game. What if the game has changed?”

“You mean Gorbachev reforming the Kremlin, converting the commies? Bull fucking shit.”

“The Soviets packed up and pulled out of Afghanistan. They helped get the Cubans out of Angola. They’re relaxing their hold on Eastern Europe. They’re even talking to the Chinese. Some- thing’s going on.”

“So the sons of Uncle Joe Stalin have given up their goal of world domination? The fucking thugs who murdered twenty mil- lion of their own people? My aching ass. That’s all big-lie propa- ganda that liberal half-wits want to believe. Twenty million men, women and children! They make Adolf Hitler look like a weenie waver. We’d better have the edge when the shit splatters, because we’ll never get a second chance.”

‘”So you’re maintaining an open mind on the question.”

“You’ve been hanging around with that loose-screw Tarkington too long, Grafton. You’re beginning to sound like him.” Dunedin must have mentioned Tarkington to Henry, Jake surmised. He was sure Henry had never met the lieutenant.

“But what if Royce Caplinger and the politicos in Congress think the game has changed?”

“Caplinger isn’t a fool.” Two paces later Henry added, “Think- ing politician is an oxymoron.”

After Jake parted from the admiral he walked to the cafeteria, where he bought a packet of Nabs and washed them down with a half-pint of milk. Humans are unique animals, he reflected. What other species has man’s ability to see the world as he wants it to be, rather than as it actually is? He couldn’t think of any. The worst of it is that this human trait deprives you of the ability to recognize reality when you see it. On this gloomy note his thoughts turned to Callie.

“What d’ya think’s wrong with it?” Camacho asked nervously as he and Harlan Albright stood listening to Luis’ car. It had a rag- ged, sick sound, most likely because Camacho had taken out one of the spark plugs and pounded the hide arm against the core until there was no gap at all, then reinstalled it.

“Sounds to me like you got a cylinder missing, but I’m no me- chanic,” Albright said, and made notations on the service form. “We’ll have a guy look at it this afternoon and give you a call. I can’t give you an estimate or tell you how long it’ll take to fix until we find out what’s wrong.”

“What neighborhood of finance are we talking here? Checking, savings, or second mortgage?”

Albright grinned and slid the form across the counter for Cama- cho to sign. “We’ll call you.”

“Well, poo. How about running me back downtown?”

The service manager glanced at the wall clock, “I get off for lunch in about thirty minutes. You wait and I’ll take you. Go browse in the showroom or get some coffee.”

Albright was driving a new car with dealer plates. Camacho settled into the passenger seat and fastened the seat belt as Albright pulled out into traffic. “Thought I oughta drop by and fill you in. Sally and I have to go to a church dinner tonight. The only thing wrong with my car is a bad spark plug. Don’t let your mechanical wizards screw me.”

“So what’s happening?”

”We’ve got a letter from Terry Franklin’s mother-in-law. She says he’s a spy and wants us to bust him.”

Albright glanced at the FBI agent- “You must get letters like that all the tune.”

“We do. And we check them out. Which is precisely what we’re going to do with this one. Sometime toward the end of next week we’ll have to interview Franklin. Thought you ought to know.”

“I appreciate that. And the search for X?”

“We need a letter from his mother-in-law.”

“Maybe you already got it. Maybe Franklin is X.”

“Yeah. And I’m Donald Trump. I just live like this because I think money is vulgar. Jesus, you know damn well that little shit doesn’t have the balls or the brains.”

“I’ve been thinking about it.” He coasted the car up to a stoplight and waited until it turned green. “It’s possible he could be hacking the codes from the computer, mailing them to the em- bassy, then waiting for us to pay him to copy the files. Maybe he’s slicker than anyone suspected. Maybe being a schlep is his idea of secondary cover.”

“Seriously, I thought of that some time back. But I can’t find a shred of evidence. And this stuff you’re getting — I thought you said it was good.”

“Excellent.”

“So X knows quality. It’s not Franklin or any other computer clerk. It’s somebody so high they know what you need.”

Albright acknowledged this logic. In the world of espionage, need determines value. He spotted a Burger King and turned in. With the engine off, he leaned back in bis seat and adjusted his testicles to a more comfortable position. “You’re stringing me along, Luis,”

Camacho already had his door open, but he pulled it closed. “Say that again.”

“I think you’re a lot closer to than you’re telling me. You may even know who he is. That leads me to some interest- ing speculations.”

Camacho had been expecting this, but now that it was here he still didn’t know how to play it “So I’m a double agent. Is that it?”

Harlan Albright raised an eyebrow, then looked away.

“Start the fucking car. Take me to the office. I don’t have time to sit around and shoot the shit with you over a greaseburger.”

Albright turned the key- The engine caught. Two blocks later he said, “You going to deny it?”

“Why bother? You have never given me a list of the stuff you got from X. Now today you give me this crap about Frank- lin being X and I’m supposed to go charging off like Inspector Clouseau. Why don’t you go back to Moscow and tell Gorby you screwed the pooch? Mail me a postcard when you get to Siberia. I hear it’s lovely in the snow.”

“I don’t know the file names. Even if I did, I don’t have the authority to give them to you.”

“Go tell it to somebody who gives a shit. I don’t.”

“What about Smoke Judy?”

“What about him?”

“What’s he up to?”

“He’s trying to peddle inside knowledge of defense contracts. So far without much success, as far as I can tell. Apparently he doesn’t think money is vulgar.”

“Are the fraud people onto him? IG or NIS?” IG was the In- spector General. NIS meant Naval Investigative Service.

“If somebody’s opened a file on him, I don’t know about it.”

“Don’t turn him over to them-”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m asking you not to.”

“Well, kiss my ass. You’re taking a big chance, asking a double agent for a favor. Stop up here at the corner.” They were going west on Constitution Avenue. “This is close enough. I need some air.”

Albright pulled over to the curb and braked to a stop. “Don’t turn him over.”

“Up yours.”

“I was just trying to motivate you. You know I don’t doubt your loyalty.”

“If I was a double agent we would have pulled in Terry Franklin a long time ago and squeezed him for the name of every file that you don’t want me to know. He’d sing like a canary.”

“I know,” Albright replied as Camacho opened the car door and stepped out.

“You don’t know shit. You don’t know how many anonymous fraud waste and abuse hot lines there are over at the Pentagon. The damn numbers are posted everywhere. Don’t like your boss? Nail him to the cross on your coffee break. Busybodies and prissy fat ladies are burning up the wires. Somebody could drop a dime on Judy any minute. Then I’ll be your falll guy, the double agent”

“Find X.”

“That mechanic screws me, I’ll break your nose.” Luis Camacho shut the door firmly and walked away.

As he trudged through the tourists and secretaries on lunch break he tried to decide if he had handled it well or poorly. The lies were plausible, he concluded, but he was suspect. Peter Aleksan- drovich was nobody’s fool. And “schlep”—what an interesting word for a commie to use. Underestimating this man could be fatal.

The new Amy Carol Grafton frowned at the peas on her plate. She glowered at the carrots. She carved herself a tiny chunk of meat loaf and put it in her mouth, where she held it without chewing as sne stared at the offending vegetables.

“What’s the matter, Amy?” Callie asked.

Amy Carol sat erect in her chair and tossed her black pageboy hair. “I don’t like vegetables.”

‘They’re good for you. You need to eat some of them.” Amy’s brand-new mom was the soul of reason. Jake Grafton took another sip of coffee and the last bite of his meat loaf.

“I don’t like green food.”

“Then eat your carrots, dear.” Callie smiled distractedly. If the child didn’t eat her peas, what would be her vitamin count for vegetables today? Callie had spent the past week researching diets for diabetics. Right now she was swamped with strange facts.

“I don’t like orange stuff either.”

“Amy,” said the new father with a glint in his eye, “I don’t care what you like or don’t like. Your mom put this stuff on the table, so you’re going to eat it. Now start.”

“She isn’t my mom. And you’re not my dad. My parents are dead. You’re Callie and Jake. And I don’t like you, Jake, not one little bit.”

“Fine. But you’re going to sit there until you finish those vegeta- bles and I say you can get up.”

“Why?” Her lower lip began to quiver and her brows knitted. Callie thought Amy looked so cute and helpless when she clouded up. Jake thought Callie had a lot to learn.

“Because I said so.” Jake picked up the newspaper, opened it ostentatiously and hid behind it

Callie got up and went to the sink, rinsing dishes. Jake reached around the paper every so often for a sip of coffee. Their second meal with their new daughter. Another disaster.

The youngster was trying to establish who’s in charge, Jake told his wife. He thought Callie was making the same mistake Neville Chamberlain did. He used precisely those words to the new mother last night, after the first, opening-day debacle at the dinner table, when the youngster was finally in bed, and had been told in no uncertain terms that he was a lout.

“Lout or not, I am wearing the trousers,” he said with his right trigger finger pointed straight up, “and we are going to establish very early that I have the last say on junior-senior relations around here. Somebody has to be in charge and it’s not going to be an eleven-year-old.”

“Just because you wear trousers, huh?”

“No. Because when I was growing up my father was the head of his family, and I intend to be the head of mine. It’s a tried and true system with ancient tradition to commend it. We’re going to stick with it.”‘

“You can’t issue orders around here. Captain Grafton. Amy and I don’t wear uniforms.” She raised a finger, mimicking his gesture.

This evening was also off to a rocky start.

Jake put down his newspaper and examined the vegetable situa- tion. The child apparently hadn’t touched a pea or a carrot She was staring fixedly at her plate with a sullen, defiant look.

“How was school today?” Jake asked.

No answer.

“I asked you a question, Amy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me about your teachers.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Their names, what subjects they teach, what they look like, whether you like them. That kind of stuff.”

“Wellll,” Amy said, her gaze flicking across Jake’s face, “some of them are nice and some aren’t” And away she went on a five- minute exposition that covered the school day from opening to closing bell. Jake tossed in an occasional question when she paused for air.

When she had exhausted the teacher subject, Jake asked, “What subjects do you think you’re going to like best?”

Away she went again, debating the merits of math versus En- glish, social studies versus science. This-time when she ran down, Jake asked if she had any homework.

“Some math problems.”

“Need any help with them?”

“The division ones,” she said tentatively.

“Eat some of those peas and carrots and we’ll clear the table and work on the problems.”

“How many do I have to eat?”

‘Two spoonfuls of each.”

She made a face and did as she was bid. As he carried the dishes to the sink, Jake asked, “Just what vegetables do you like?”

“Not any of them.”

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

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

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

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

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