The Minotaur

24

The corporate offices and manu- facturing faculties of AeroTech sat in a manicured industrial subdi- vision of a Detroit suburb in a low, sprawling, windowless building among a dozen similar buildings carefully arranged amid the lawns and pruned trees. A gardener was laboring in a flower bed as the FBI car swung into the parking lot.

Agent Lloyd Dreyfus decided that the goddess of the post-indus- trial revolution had come, conquered, and already departed this corner of Michigan. Smokestacks now belonged only to the inter- city poor and wretched Third World peasants. Not a single one of the antique structures blighted the skyline in any direction.

After a display of credentials to the wide-eyed receptionist, the agents were ushered in to see the president of the company, who had trouble understanding just why the FBI were here at the Aero- Tech facilities. No, Dreyfus did not have a search warrant. He had not thought one necessary since AeroTech was a defense contrac- tor with annual billings in the millions and the agents were here to investigate, not to search. But he could, of course, get such a war- rant if the official thought it necessary. Did he? No. Company employees examined security clearance documents with care and led the government men to an empty conference room.

The investigation took time. At 9 P.M. the FBI team had estab- lished that the data contained on the E-PROM chip from the TRX prototype that crashed in Nevada did not correspond to the data that AeroTech had used to manufacture its chips. Yes, a call had been received last week from a TRX engineer in Tonopah, and yes, he had updated the data base via computer modem. The company had manufactured new E-PROM chips based on the revised data. The new chips had been taken to the mail room for overnight shipment. Yes, the records in the mailroom showed three chips sent by a bonded commercial overnight courier. ’

So at 9 P.M. Dreyfus sat in the conference room and scratched his head. He had been making notes all evening on a yellow pad, and now he went over them again, placing a tick mark by each item after he considered it carefiilly. One of the agents had gone out for burgers, and now Dreyfus munched a cold cheeseburger and sipped a Coke in which all the ice had melted.

He decided he had two problems, and he decided to tackle the one that he thought would be the simpler first. He asked to see the company president, who was shown into the conference room and motioned into a chair beside Dreyfus.

“Sorry we’re taking so long,” Dreyfus said as he wadded up the cheeseburger wrapper and tossed it at a waste can.

“Quite all right,” the president said cheerfully enough. His name was Homer T. Wiggins. The company prospectus, which Dreyfus had thumbed through earlier in the evening at a slow moment, said he was the largest shareholder of AeroTech and one of its four founders.

“It appears we have a little problem that necessitates a search. Now, when we got here this afternoon I told you we were here to investigate, not search. Now we want to search. We can do so with your permission, or we can go get a warrant. It’s your choice.” Dreyfus got out his pipe and tobacco and began the charging rit- ual.

“Why do you want to search?” Wiggins asked.

Dreyfus shrugged. “I can’t tell you. I should tell you, though, that I believe I have enough information to persuade a judge to find probable cause and issue a search warrant.”

“On what grounds? Just what is it you’re investigating?”

Dreyfus took his time lighting his pipe. He puffed experimen- tally to ensure it was lit and drawing properly. Finally satisfied, he tucked his lighter into a pocket and took a deep drag on the pipe. “I can’t tell you.”

Homer T. Wiggins had the look of a very sick man. “Just what is it you want to search for?”

“Oh! Didn’t I tell you? E-PROM chips.”

Bewilderment replaced the pain on Wiggins’ face. “Go right ahead. Search to your heart’s content.”

After escorting the president out of the conference room and posting an agent to guard the paper spread out on the table, Drey- fus led the other two down the hall and around the corner to the mail room. “Okay,” he said. “I want computer chips. Start look- ing.”

It took an hour. One agent found three chips in a package with- out an address within fifteen minutes, but it was an hour before Dreyfus decided those were the only chips in the room. Back he went to see the president with the chips in hand. The president’s eyes expanded dramatically.

“Okay. Now I want one of your engineers to put these on your testing machine and let me know what these chips are.”

With a glance at the clock, Wiggins picked up his phone. A half hour later a rumpled, unhappy engineer with long hair and the faint odor of bourbon about him appeared in the door. “Sorry, Tom, but these men want some tests run this evening. Apparently it can’t wait until tomorrow.” He held out the bag with the chips in it.

“Go with him, Frank, and explain what we want,” Dreyfus told one of the agents, then resumed his exploration of an industry magazine that resided on a side table.

The agent appeared in the door at five minutes before midnight and motioned to Dreyfus, who joined him in the hall. “Okay, Dreyfus. Those were the chips that they manufactured last week with the new data from TRX. The engineer is printing out the data now, but it’s exactly the same.”

“Good. The guy in the mail room just sent the wrong chips to Tonopah.”

“But when the chips reached Tonopah, wouldn’t TRX test them before installation?”

“No doubt they should have, but I suspect someone will admit that there was a mistake, human error, and somehow or other the chips that did get installed didn’t get checked.” After all, Dreyfus knew, mistakes made the world the happy place it is today. What should have happened and what did happen were usually vastly different things.

“Then where the hell did the bad chips come from?”

“From here. Right here.” The question was, how did AeroTech get the erroneous data that was burned into the bad chips? That data was the stuff Admiral Henry said was in the Pentagon com- puter, stuff that Harold Strong had been the last man to revise. A phone call from Camacho earlier in the afternoon had given Drey- fus that fact. And the bad data had been cooked onto chips at AeroTech.

“Well, Frank, it looks like it’s going to be a long night. I want you to go back to the local office and wake up someone in the U.S. Attorney’s office. Have him get cracking. I want a search-and- seizure warrant for all AeroTech’s travel, long-distance-telephone and expense-account records and all the data-base files. Until we have the warrant, we’ll lock this place up and post a guard. Some- one around here has a nasty little secret. If we can find the smoking gun, we’ll know who and when and can save ourselves the trouble of listening to a lot of lies.”

“You’ll need to come down to the office and write the affidavit.”

“Yeah.” He was going to have to call Camacho at home. No doubt Luis Camacho could think of a plausible story for the judge.

The phone call came at 2 A.M. and woke Camacho from a sound sleep. He listened to Dreyfus’ recitation of the events of the evening as he tried to move noiselessly around the bedroom and put on his robe and slippers. When Dreyfus had completed his summary, Ca- macho told him to call back in five minutes. He was down in the kitchen sipping a glass of milk when the phone rang again.

“Dreyfus again, boss. What do I put on the affidavit?”

“The truth. Suspected illegal sale of classified defense informa- tion. Don’t name any names.”

“I don’t have any names to name yet.”

“Don’t give me that, you pilgrim!”

“Oh, you don’t want me to use Smoke Judy’s name? Oh! Okay, John Doe strikes again. Anything else?”

“Bye.”

“Night, Luis.”

The lights were off over at Albright’s house. Camacho checked from the backyard as he walked out to the swing. It was a hot, still, muggy night. He didn’t stay on the swing long. The gnats and mosquitoes were still hunting for rich, red blood. Cursing, Cama- cho swatted furiously until he regained the safety of his kitchen and got the sliding glass door closed behind him.

Wide awake now, he nipped on the radio and twiddled the dial.

They were still playing a ball game out on the Coast. Baltimore versus Oakland. Eleventh inning, three runs apiece-

Jose Canseco was coming to the plate. The A’s announcer was all atwitter. Camacho searched through the cupboard for some- thing to eat. Didn’t she have some crackers in here? Cookies? Or did the teenage food monster eat every crumb?

He heard a rapping and turned. The sliding glass door was opening.

“Hi, Harlan. Come on in.”

“Saw your light. Couldn’t sleep. The air conditioning crapped out today and that place is too stuffy to sleep in.”

“It’d be better if there was a breeze.”

“What a climate!”

Canseco took the first pitch. Strike one. “Want some milk?”

“Yeah. That’d be good. Got any cookies?”

“I’m looking.” Up there, behind the flour. Half a package of Fig Newtons. He carried them over to the counter where Albright sat and took one from the package and bit into it. “Little stale, but edible.”

The radio audience sighed. Foul tip up toward the press box. Strike two. Harlan Albright helped himself to a cookie while Ca- macho poured him a glass of milk.

Another foul tip. The sound of the bat on the ball was plainly audible.

Both men nibbled a cookie and sipped milk as they listened. The announcer was hyping the moment for all it was worth. Men on first and second, one out. Two strikes on Jose Canseco.

Another foul tip.

“Guy ought to quit fouling the ball,” Albright said. “Sometimes you want them to either hit it or strike out, it doesn’t matter, as long as the game goes on.”

“Yeah,” Camacho mumbled with his mouth full. He swallowed. “But the guy keeps swinging to stay alive.”

The Baltimore pitcher swung around and threw to second. Too late.

“Now the pitcher’s doing it.” Albright helped himself to another Fig Newton.

Camacho finished his milk and set the glass in the sink.

“Here’s the pitch.” the radio blared. The crack of the bat started the crowd roaring. “Through the hole. looks like it’s going to the wall. Man rounding third is trotting home. And that’s it, folks. The A’s win it in the eleventh inning on an RBI double by Jose Can- seco.” Camacho nipped the radio off.

“A good player,” Albright told him.

“Good kid,” Luis agreed.

“Gonna be a superstar.”

“If he lasts.”

“Yeah. They all gotta last. Everyone has high expectations, then for some reason, sometimes the kid sorta fizzles. Know what I mean?”

Camacho nodded and put Albright’s glass in the sink.

“We had high hopes for you—“

“Why don’t you go home and swelter at your house, Harlan. It’s two-thirty in the morning and I have to work tomorrow.”

“I don’t. Got the air conditioner guys coming in the morning. I’ll call in sick. Tomorrow night my place is going to be like Mos- cow in winter.”

“Terrific.”

Albright heaved himself off the stool and reached for the sliding glass door. As his hand closed on it, he paused and looked at Camacho. “Anything new?”

“Yeah. One or two little things, since you mentioned it. The Soviet ambassador got a letter several weeks ago. For some reason there was a stain on it, a jelly stain. We analyzed it. Looks like a French brand of blueberry. Imported. We have a dozen agents on it.”

“Amazing.” Albright shook his head like a great bear. He brightened. “That might lead to something, eh?”

“It might. You never know.”

“Amazing. All those letters, over three and a half years! The Minotaur has never made a mistake, not even one tiny slip. And now he sends a letter with a jelly stain on it? It’s too good to be real.”

“You take your breaks where you find them. If it is a break. We’ll find out if I can keep enough people working on it. Another development just cropped up.”

“Like what? Peanut butter on the envelope?”

“Nothing to do with X.”

“What?” Albright was no longer amused.

“Crash of the navy’s ATA prototype. Augered in yesterday out in Nevada.” He glanced at the wall clock. “Day before yesterday, actually. Seems somebody has been peddling erroneous informa- tion to a defense contractor. AeroTech. So the smelly stuff has hit the fan, so to speak.”

“Keep your people on X.” His tone was flat.

“What am I supposed to do now? Salute?”

Albright slid the door open. “I’m not kidding, Luis. We need some progress.” He stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind him. Then he disappeared into the darkness.

A minute or so later, Luis Camacho locked the door and pulled the drapes.

After Jake Grafton and the rest of the staff left for Washington, the atmosphere at the base at Tonopah took on the ethereal silence of a graveyard, or so it seemed to Toad Tarkington. He divided his time between the hangar, where a TRX crew was mocking up the rem- nants of the airplane he and Rita had abandoned, and the hospital, where Rita remained in a coma.

Toad drove the two miles back and forth between the two loca- tions in an air force sedan that one of the commanders had as- sumed he would return to the motor pool. He would, eventually, but he was in no hurry. After all, the commander had signed for the car and hadn’t really ordered him to return it.

The lounge in the VOQ was empty. The other guests apparently were too busy to hang around the pool table and bet dimes and swap lies while the TV hummed in the background, as the naval aviators had. The camaraderie was an essential part of naval avia- tion. Those who flew the planes gave and demanded this friendship of each other.

That first evening alone Toad tossed the cue ball down the table and watched it carom off the rails. He looked at the empty seats and the blank TV screen and the racks of cue sticks, and trudged off to his room to call Rita’s parents yet again. He was talking to them twice a day now.

He was also calling his own folks out in Santa Barbara once a day, keeping them updated on Rita and talking just to hear their voices. Likely as not his parents were slightly baffled and secretly pleased by this attention from the son who usually phoned once a month and never wrote because he had said everything in the phone call.

It’s funny, he mused, that now, now. with Rita in such bad shape, the sound of his mother’s voice was so comforting. After the second day alone, it finally occurred to him that the problem was that he had almost nothing to do. He was standing in the hangar watching, listening, but he had no people to supervise or reports to write or memos due, so he merely observed with his mind in neutral. At the hospital he sat beside Rita, who was moved to a private room, and did a monologue for her or stared at the wall. And thought. He pondered and thought and mused some more.

That evening on the way to the hospital he stopped by the ex- change and bought a spiral notebook. In Rita’s room he began to write. “Dear Rita,” he began, then sucked on the pen and looked out the window. He dated the page. “Dear, dear Rita: Someday you will wake, and when you do, I will give you this letter.”

He wrote, sometimes for several hours at a sitting. He started out writing about Toad Tarkington: growing up in southern Cali- fornia with the beach and surf just down the road, baseball and football in the endless summer, the hard-bodied bimbettes chased and wooed and sometimes conquered. He described how he felt about his first true love, and his second and third and fourth. He devoted page after page to college and grades and all-night parties.

Finally he decided he had squeezed the sponge pretty dry on his youth, so he turned to the navy. Without his even realizing it, his style changed. Instead of the light, witty, listen-to-this style he had adopted for tales of his youth, he wrote seriously now, with no attempt at humor. Facts, impressions, opinions, ambitions, they came pouring from his pen.

In four days the TRX crew finished their work and mysteriously vanished. Several days later a group of officers and civilians from Washington arrived unannounced. They poked and prodded the dismembered, blackened carcass and photographed everything, then climbed back into the waiting planes parked on the baking ramp in front of base ops. Toad was left with his solitude and his writing.

So the days passed, one by one, as Rita slept.

In Washington, Jake Grafton was also writing, though he went about it in a vastly different manner than Tarkington. He dictated general ideas into a recording machine and gave the tapes to his subordinates, who expanded the ideas into smooth, detailed drafts which Jake then worked on with a pencil. Flight test data and observations were marshaled, correlated and compiled. Graphs were drawn and projections made about performance, maintenance manhours, mean time between failures and, of course, costs. Money dripped from every page. Every officer in the group had an input, and conclusions and recommendations were argued and re- argued around Jake’s desk, with him listening and jotting notes and occasionally indicating he had heard enough on one subject or another. All of it went into a mushrooming document with the words “top secret” smeared all over.

Vice Admiral Tyler Henry spent some unhappy hours with Luis Camacho. It had been quickly established that the data contained on the E-PROM chip from the crashed prototype was identical to the erroneous data contained in the Pentagon computer file that had last been changed by the deceased Captain Harold Strong. TRX’s latest, correct batch of E-PROM data was also in the com- puter, but under another file number.

Three days and a dozen phone calls after be had sent Lloyd Dreyfas to Detroit, Camacho went himself. On Thursday at noon he rode the Metro out to National Airport and was sitting in the president of AeroTech’s office in Detroit at 3:50.

Homer T. Wiggins had gotten himself a lawyer, a manicured, fiftyish aristocrat in a Brooks Brothers suit and dark maroon tie. His stylish tan and his gray temples and sideburns made him look like something sent over from central casting. “Martin Prescott Nash,” he pronounced with a tiny nod at Camacho, then pointedly ignored the proffered hand. Camacho retracted his spurned ap- pendage and used a handkerchief to wipe it carefully as he sized up Wiggins, who was apparently trying his best to look like a pillar of outraged rectitude.

“My client is one of the most respected leading citizens of this state,” Nash began in a tone that might come naturally to a femi- nist activist lecturing a group of convicted rapists. He had it just right — the slight voice quaver, the distinct pronunciation of each word, the subtle trace of outrage. “He is active in over a dozen civic organizations, gives over half a million dollars a year to char- ity and provides employment to six hundred people, every one of whom pays the taxes that provide salaries for you gentlemen.” He had just the slightest little bit of difficulty pronouncing the word “gentlemen.”

Nash continued, listing the contributions Homer T. Wiggins had made to the arts, the people of the great state of Michigan and the human race. Camacho settled into his chair and let him go, occa- sionally glancing at his watch.

Dreyfus waited until he had Camacho’s eye, then winked broadly. Wiggins saw the gesture and winced.

Finally, as Nash paused for breath, Camacho asked, “Are you a criminal lawyer?”

“Well, no,” admitted the pleader. “I specialize in corporate law. My firm has advised Homer for ten years now. We handled his last stock offering, over ten million shares on the American Exchange, and the subordinated debenture—“

“He needs a criminal lawyer.”

Deflated, Nash looked to his left, right at the pasty, perspiring face of leading citizen Homer T. Wiggins, who was staring at Ca- macho and licking his lips.

“Read him his rights. Dreyfus.”

Both agents knew this had been done on one prior occasion, yesterday, and Wiggins had declined to answer questions unless his lawyer was present. Dreyfus removed the Miranda card from his credentials folder and read it yet again, slowly, with feeling. The warning usually had a profound effect on men who had never in their lives thought of themselves as criminals. All the color drained from Wiggins’ face and he began to breathe in short, rapid breaths. It was as if he could hear the pillars crumbling and see the plaster falling from the ceiling of that magnificent edifice of position, re- sponsibility and respect that had housed him so well all these years.

As Dreyfus put the card away, Wiggins squeaked, “You going to arrest me?”

“That depends.”

“On what?” said Martin Prescott Nash, who was looking a little pale himself.

“On whether or not I get some truthful answers to the questions I came here to ask.”

“Are you offering immunity?”

“No. I have no such authority. I am here to question Mr. Wig- gins as a principal about bribery of a government employee and illegally obtaining classified defense information. Both charges are felonies. If you want to talk to us, Mr. Wiggins, we’ll listen. We may or may not arrest you today. I haven’t decided. Anything you say will be included in our reports and will be conveyed to the Justice Department. The attorneys there may or may not use it as evidence against you. They may take it into account when they are trying to decide if prosecution is warranted, or they may not. They may consider your cooperation when they make a sentencing rec- ommendation after your conviction — if there is one — or again, they may not. I have nothing to offer. You have the right to remain silent, but you’ve heard your rights and your attorney is here with you. Or you can decide to cooperate with the government that you and your six hundred employees support with your tax dollars by telling us the truth. It’s up to you.”

Nash wanted to talk to his client in private. The agents went out into the hall and walked toward the cafeteria.

“Have you really got it?” Camacho asked Dreyfus.

“Chapter and verse. He turned in expense-account reports for every trip to Washington, including credit-card receipts for dinners with the name Thomas H. Judy on the back as a business guest in his own handwriting. Apparently he didn’t want any more trouble with those IRS troglodytes about his expense account.”

“Can you tie him personally to the data?”

“Yep. An engineer here got the computer printout about seven months ago — Wiggins himself handed it to him. Told him to make up some experimental chips to see if they could validate the method and their computer stuff, and to develop a cost projection. All of which he did. Other people swear to that. I’ve got a sworn statement in writing from this engineer burning Wiggins and a cassette recording of him telling it to me originally. And the NSA computer records show Judy as one of the officers who had routine access to the E-PROM data. We’ve got Homer T. cold as a frozen steak.”

“Is this the right time?” Camacho muttered, thinking aloud.

“Well, shit!” Dreyfus hissed. “I don’t know! I just dig this stuff up. You—“

Camacho silenced him with a glance. Dreyfus lit his pipe and walked along with smoke billowing.

“So why the big screw-up with the chips?” Camacho asked when they reached the cafeteria, which housed three microwaves and a wall full of vending machines.

“Oh, AeroTech got in four or five different data dumps from TRX and even one from the Pentagon, all in the last three months. The first three chips just sat there on the engineer’s desk. No one is sure how or when they went to the mail room. No one knows how they got mixed up with an outgoing shipment. The mail-room guy is from Haiti, with a heavy accent. He denies everything. Rumor has it he used to be a medical doctor in his former life.” Dreyfus shrugged. “Looks like human error, that plus the usual careless- ness and a tiny pinch of rotten luck. Voila! Anything that can go wrong, will. Isn’t that the fourth or fifth law of thermodynamics or Murphy or the Georgia state legislature?”

“Something like that.” Camacho removed a plastic cup full of decaffeinated coffee from the vending machine and sat on a plastic chair at a plastic table beneath a fluorescent light with a faulty igniter — the light hummed and flickered.

“I think the doctor in the mail room is an illegal.”

“You asked to see his green card?”

“Nope.”

“Going to?”

“Not unless you tell me to.”

“Let’s go see if Wiggins wants to talk.”

Dreyfus stoked his pipe again on the stroll down the hall. Wig- gins’ secretary glared at them. Dreyfus gave her a sympathetic grin, which she ignored.

They sat silently and flipped through the magazines on the stand. It was five more minutes before the buzzer sounded and they were waved into the inner sanctum.

“My client,” said the counselor, “wishes to cooperate. With the understanding, of course, that he can cease answering questions at any time.”

Wiggins had met Smoke Judy on five different occasions. Judy knew that AeroTech needed contracts and offered to help in return for a small cash payment and some stock. On two occasions he talked about a job after he retired. Wiggins had been noncommittal about the job, but had agreed to the money and the stock. Five thousand dollars cash and a bearer certificate for a thousand shares of AeroTech — currently worth $12.75 each — had bought the com- pany an advance peek at the flight control data for the TRX proto- type. The navy was just floating a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the fly-by-wire system. AeroTech bid for the chip business and won the contract.

All this Wiggins admitted, but he stoutly denied any wrongdo- ing. “This company, it needs the business. And we underbid every other contractor for those chips. We saved the government a lot of money. We didn’t do anything that other defense contractors don’t routinely do. It’s a cutthroat business.”

The FBI agents seemed unimpressed.

“Listen, if I hadn’t agreed to Judy’s offer, he would have peddled that information to my competitors. Then where would I have been? No contract. I have a duty to this company.” Color returned to Homer Wigging’ cheeks.

“Of course,” Dreyfus said, “you could have called us when Judy first approached you.”

“I’ve spent fifteen years building this business. I did it with my bare hands, with no money, with a ton of sweat, taking risks that would scare the wits out of a Vegas gambler. I built it!” Camacho found himself staring at Wiggins’ gold wedding ring and gold class ring. Was that Yale?

“Now the navy wants me to make E-PROMs cheaper than any- one else. So I do. And this is the gratitude, this is the reward! l am treated like a criminal!” He sprayed saliva across the desk, and for the first time Camacho saw the drive and determination that had built a successful corporation.

“I am treated like a criminal for doing what everyone else does and for making E-PROM chips cheaper than anyone else can.”

Camacho looked at his watch: 5:30. Maybe he was still in the office. “Do you want to go to jail tonight?”

Wiggins gaped. The blood drained from his face, and for a mo- ment Camacho thought he had stopped breathing.

“No,” he whispered.

“Now see here—” the lawyer began, but Camacho cut him off with a jab of his hand.

“Have you talked to Judy this week?”

“No. No!”

“I want you to call him for me. I’ll tell you what to say- I’ll listen on an extension. You will say precisely what I tell you and nothing else. Will you do it?”

“What choice do I have?” Wiggins was recovering. This man’s recuperative powers were excellent. He could handle it.

“You don’t go to jail this evening. I make my report to the Justice Department and they take it from there. If they indict you, that’s their business. My report will show that you cooperated.”

“I’ll make the call.”

“Homer,” said Nash, “maybe—“

“I’ll make the call. And you go on home, Prescott. Thanks for being here this afternoon. I’ll call you.”

“Are you sure you—?”

Wiggins was examining his hands. Martin Prescott Nash rose from his chair and went out the door. It swung shut behind him.

“Smoke, this is Homer Wiggins.”

“I told you never to call me—“

“Something’s come up. The FBI are here, in Detroit. They’re checking out the chips. I’m just letting you know.”

Smoke Judy was silent for several seconds. “Have they talked to you?”

“Yes.”

“What—?” His voice fell. “Do they know?”

“About you? I don’t know. I think — they might. Definitely.”

“Did you—?”

“I’ve got to go now. Smoke. I just wanted you to know.” Wig- gins held the instrument away from his ear, and at a nod from Camacho, Dreyfus simultaneously depressed the buttons on both telephones, severing the connection.

When they were alone in the car on the way back to the airport, Camacho said, “I got a little job for you tomorrow, Dreyfus. We’re going to need all our people, and you’ll probably have to borrow a bunch.”

Dreyfus fished out his pipe and tobacco and merely glanced at his boss.

“I want to keep track of a man. We’ll need discreet surveillance teams, couple of choppers and the electronics boys.”

“Anyone I know.”

“Nope. It’s my next-door neighbor, guy named Harlan Al- bright.”

“You know, in my fifteen years in the FBI I have never felt more like a mushroom than I have working for you. You’ve kept me in the dark and shoveled shit at me for eighteen months now. If you got croaked tomorrow, I couldn’t even tell the old man what the hell you were working on. I don’t know.”

Camacho, behind the wheel, kept his eyes on the road. “The electronics guys already put listening devices in his house, three days ago when his air conditioning went out. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Dreyfus got his pipe going strongly and rolled down his window. The car’s air conditioning was going full blast. “Think he’s screw- ing your wife?”

“Read the security regulations lately, Dreyfus?”

“Listen, boss. And listen good. You want good solid work from me but you don’t want me to know anything. Now I am just about one day away from submitting my resignation. I don’t need this shit and I’m not gonna keep taking it! Not for you, not for the old man, not for the Director, not for any of you spook dingdongs. And you can put that in my final evaluation!”

Camacho braked the car to a stop at a light. He just sat there behind the wheel, watching the light, waiting for it to change. When it did, he glanced left and hesitated. An old junker car was going to run the red. As it hurled by, Dreyms leaned out his win- dow with his middle finger jabbed prominently aloft. Camacho took his foot off the brake and fed gas. “Okay,” Luis Camacho said. “You want to know what’s going on. I’ll tell you.” And he did.