The Minotaur

25

On Saturday the sun rose into a clean, bright sky, a pleasant change from the haze that had been stalled over the Potomac River basin for a week. The morning weatherman credited a cold front that had swept through during the night and blessed the metropolitan Washington area with some much-needed showers.

Commander Smoke Judy absorbed the weather information while he scraped at his chin. He had acquired the habit of listening to the morning forecasts during his twenty years in naval aviation, and it was hard to break. Yet he wasn’t paying much attention. His mind was on other things.

After finishing at the sink and dressing, he poured himself a glass of orange juice and opened the sliding glass door to his apart- ment balcony. The view was excellent, considering he was only six floors up. From out here he could see the gleam of the Potomac and, on the horizon, the jutting spire of the Washington Monu- ment. As usual, the jets were droning into and out of National Airport. Even with that cold front last night today would be hot Already the sun had a bite to it

He sat on the little folding chair in the sun and thought once again about Harold Strong and the flight control data and Homer T. Wiggins of AeroTech. Nothing in life ever works out just the way you think it will, he told himself bitterly. They should put that over the door of every public building in Washington.

Strong had gotten suspicious. Judy had spent one too many eve- nings in the office, asked one too many questions about that TRX fly-by-wire system. So Strong had doctored the data, rendering it worthless unless one knew exactly how and where it had been changed.

When Smoke found out, it was too late. He had already given the data to AeroTech, to Homer T. Wiggins. Oh, even defective it was good for what Homer wanted it for, to check the AeroTech manufacturing capability and cost out the manufacturing process. Heck, he could have written Homer a purely fictitious report that would have allowed AeroTech to accomplish the same thing. So it wasn’t like he had stiffed Homer. And both he and Homer knew that the preliminary data would be changed, probably many times, during the course of development. There was no possibility that the erroneous stuff would end up in an airplane that someone was going to try to fly.

And still, it happened! It happened. All the checks that were supposed to be done, the fail-safe, zero-defects program, all of it went down the crapper in an unbelievable series of coincidences. Now TRX was going to fire a couple of clowns who each thought the other guy had done the checks. So neither did them.

He tossed off the last gulp of orange juice and wiped his mouth with his fingers. He sat the empty glass on the concrete beside his chair and sat looking at the city.

Nothing he had ever attempted in his whole life had worked out right. What was it the hippies called it? Karma?

Funny, killing Harold Strong had been easier than he thought it would be. Probably too easy- No doubt someway, somehow, he had fucked that up too.

Looking back, it had been a bad decision. Strong probably had nothing but a few baseless suspicions that he couldn’t prove-

Ah well, what was done was done. You signed for the plane and flew it as best you could and if today was your day to die, you died. That was life.

He had wanted something besides a pension, and now he had his savings — about $56,000—and the cash from five little deals— $30,000—and some stock he probably couldn’t sell. Plus his pen- sion, a lousy 55 percent of his base pay if he lasted twenty-two years. Yet if he cut and ran, his pension would evaporate tike a gob of spit on a hot steel deck. If he didn’t run, well … he would have to give his savings and the cash to a lawyer to try to stay out of prison.

FBI agents were probably watching him this very minute. Sitting somewhere in one of these apartments or in a vehicle down in the lot, watching him. If Wiggins had been telling the truth… But there was really no reason for him to he. What did Wiggins have to gain by lying?

Judy had gone to work yesterday, though he had been sorely tempted to call in sick. That little conversation Thursday evening with Wiggins, just before he walked out of the office, that had shaken him. He had locked up his papers, bid everyone a pleasant good evening and walked out sweating.

That evening he had convinced himself there really wasn’t any hurry. It might be six months or a year before they got around to arresting him, if they ever did, and he could get out on bail. And where could he run? What with?

He pushed himself up, out of the chair, and went inside. He drew the curtains. Rummaging through the bottom drawer of his dresser, he found the.38 he always wore in his flight gear. He flipped out the cylinder. Empty. Did he have any cartridges? He sat on the bed and tried to remember. There should be six in the left, radio pocket of his survival vest, which was piled in a corner of the closet. He had put them there when he emptied the pistol after his last flight in that F-14 at Tonopah.

He found the brass cartridges and dropped them into the cylin- der holes.

The pistol was old, with the bluing completely gone in places. Nowadays they issued the kids nine-millimeters, but he had always liked the old -38. Amazingly enough, this was the one they issued him twenty years ago when he checked into his first fleet squadron.

The money was in a gym bag on the other side of the closet floor. He spread it on the bed and examined the miserable pile. Fifteen bundles of a hundred twenties each. Three weeks’ take for a twelve year-old crack salesman. For this he had wagered his pension and risked years in prison?

He went into the kitchen and poured himself the last of the bourbon, added some ice and water and went back out onto the balcony.

“Here’s to you. Smoke Judy, you stupid, unlucky bastard.”

He sipped the liquor and watched the shadows shorten as the sun rose higher into the sky. Already it was hot. It was going to be a scorcher.

Twenty miles north of where Smoke Judy sat, Luis Camacho was trying to get his lawn mower started. He diddled with the choke and jerked the starter rope repeatedly. The plug fired a few times, then gave up. He decided he had flooded it. He could take out the plug and pull it through a few times, but no.

He sat in the shade on the concrete of his driveway, with his back against the wall, and waited for the recalcitrant device to purify itself. He was trying to work up the energy to stand and again assault the machine when Harlan Albright came out of his house, saw him, and crossed the grass toward him.

“Hey,” Albright said.

“Hey yourself. Know anything about lawn mowers?”

“Cars are my bag. I pay a kid to cut mine.”

“Why didn’t you hire my kid?”

“You must be kidding! He doesn’t even cut your grass.”

“He needs a better offer than I can make.” Camacho stood, flexed his arms a few times experimentally, then grasped the rope- Choke off”. He yanked. The engine spluttered.

Albright bent and adjusted the needle valve. “Now try it.”

It started on the next jerk of the lanyard. Albright played with the needle valve until the engine ran smoothly.

When Luis finished the front and back yards and put the ma- chine back in the garage, Albright had a beer waiting- Ten o’clock. “What the heck. it’s Saturday.”

They sat on Albright’s front steps, in the shade of the big maple.

“What’s new in the glamorous, dazzling world of counterespio- nage?”

“Our people visiting the gourmet food stores had a nibble. A store over in Reston. Not much of anything, but it was all we got. One of the clerks got to talking about how many famous people buy their stuff at that store. She had a name, but she couldn’t remember if he had ever bought any jam. She said he or his secre- tary come in there once a month or so.”

“Who?”

“It isn’t evidence. The clerk was a dingbat. The agent said she looked like she had terminal anorexia. Didn’t took like she weighed ninety pounds. Obviously been eating her own stuff.”

“Who?”

“Royce Caplinger.”

Albright’s eyebrows rose once, then fell back into place. ”She sure?”

“I told you, she was bragging. She also said she had three sena- tors, five congressmen, two ex-congressmen, a dozen flag officers from all services, and three high-class hookers that buy stuff from her on a regular basis.”

“Hookers, huh? What’s the name of the store?”

‘The Gourmet Market.”

“You going to follow up?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ve got a SWAT team sitting on the place twenty- four hours a day. A cockroach couldn’t get in or out without us knowing it. If Caplinger ever shows up again and buys French blueberry jam, we’ll bust him on the spot.” He drained the beer can and stood. “Still, it’s a lead. Someplace to look.”

“How’s the ATA crash investigation going?”

“So-so. The usual. Dazzle. Glamour.”

“Why are you in that investigation anyway?”

“The admiral in charge is scared to death of X. And he knows I’m the best; he won’t talk to anybody else. No shit” He tossed the empty can at Albright “I gotta go. Taking Sally to the mall- Thanks for the beer.”

When he held the door open for Sally, Camacho automatically glanced across the car at the little bulb he had inset in the driver’s door. It was dark.

He got into the car and started the engine and backed out onto the street.

“I want to run by the Richards house and pick up Gerald.” The boy had spent the night with a friend.

“Why? He can walk home this afternoon and he has a key to the house.”

“I’m taking you two to the airport. I want you to go visit your mother for a week or two.”

“But I’m not packed! The PTA has a benefit on Thurs—“

“I want you both out of town for a while. Don’t argue. I mean it.”

“What about our clothes?” his wife protested. “We can’t—“

“Oh yes you can! Buy some more clothes. You have your check- book.”

“Luis, what is this all about?”

He pulled over to the side of the street and put the car in neutral. He turned in the seat to face his wife. “I’m working a case. The people we’re after know where I live. I’d just feel a whole lot better if you and Gerald weren’t home until I wrap this up. Now there’s no danger, but why take a chance?”

“You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Mother — how will I explain dropping in on her and Dad like this?”

“Tell them we had a fight and you want some time alone.”

“Mom won’t believe that! She knows you too well to—“

“You think of something. Tell them we’re redoing the downstairs and you’ve developed an allergy to paint. I don’t care. Just don’t tell the truth. Your mother’ll spill it to every one other friends, and it’s a very small world.” He put the car in gear and rolled.

Sally chewed on her lip and twisted the strap of her purse. “I don’t like this, Luis.”

“I don’t either, but this is the way it has to be.”

Smoke Judy was sipping beer in a booth at his favorite bar when he saw Harlan Albright come in and ask for change for the parking meter. Judy waited several minutes, paid his tab and left.

Albright was behind the wheel of his car. Judy opened the pas- senger door and sat down. “Hi.”

“Want to take a little ride?”

“Sure. Why not?” Smoke took his sunglasses from the neck of his shirt, where they hung suspended by an earpiece, cleaned them on a shirttail, then put them on. He tossed his gym bag onto the backseat

After several blocks, Albright glanced at Judy and asked, “How’s things at the office? Hear you guys had a crash.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Oh, people talk.”

Judy shrugged.

“Got anything on today?”

“Not really.”

“Want to go over on the Eastern Shore and get some dinner? I know a great little place that serves the best crab in Maryland.”

“They’ll serve us like this?” Both men were in jeans. Albright was wearing a pullover shirt that sported a Redskins logo.

“I think so.”

“Why not?”

Albright drove to the beltway and got on it headed east. Traffic was heavy, as usual. He took the exit toward Annapolis and en- gaged the cruise control. Judy turned on the radio and found a ball game. The Orioles, only the second inning.

Judy noticed that Albright kept checking the rearview mirrors, but he quit after a while and drove with his left elbow out the window. “Can’t stand air conditioning,” he muttered, and Judy nodded.

Luis Camacho sat in his backyard with a beer in his hand. He had carried out the portable TV that Sally normally watched in the kitchen, and rigged up the extension cord. He had the Orioles game on.

When he returned from the airport, Albright’s car was missing. He had called the office and got Dreyfus. “Where is he?”

“On the beltway heading east. Picked up a guy at a bar in Alex- andria, but we don’t know who. Couldn’t get close enough.”

“Okay. Any idea where they’re going?”

“He made no phone calls before he left the house. Didnt say anything. About thirty minutes after you left for the airport, he got in his car and drove off. He went over to Reston and stopped by the Gourmet Market.”

“Heard from Susan yet?” Susan was the wife of an FBI agent She and her husband owned the market, and Camacho had en- listed their help. Susan was the skinniest woman Camacho had ever met, but to the best of his knowledge she was not suffering from anorexia.

“Yeah. Said he came in and bought some things, stood and chat- ted, said he was new in the neighborhood. Spent about fifteen min- utes in the store. She says he never asked about Caplinger or any- one else, and she didn’t volunteer. She wants to know if you think he’ll be back.”

“Tell her probably not. I think Albright just wanted some tangi- ble verification of my little tale.”

“Okay. I’ll call you back when he gets to wherever he’s going and let you know.”

“Dreyfus, I meant what I said yesterday. Under no circum- stances, none. do I want him to burn the tail. Lose him if you have to, but don’t give him a chance to figure out we’re watching.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

Now Camacho sat in his backyard with the TV going. He nursed the beer and paid no attention to the game.

Everything that could be done had been done. Nothing had been rushed. The situation had been allowed to ripen naturally, and now all was in readiness. Including Dreyfus, he had sixty-five agents on this case. They were in the main telephone exchange in case Al- bright used a pay phone, Albright’s house was wired and continu- ously monitored, a fleet of unmarked cars was at this very minute preceding and following Albright as he drove the highways, two vans full of cameras and parabolic listening devices trailed the car- avan, two helicopters were airborne, Dreyfus had a stack of signed John Doe warrants in the desk. What else? Oh yes, all the top lab technicians were on call.

He sipped his beer and tried to think of something else that should be done, some contingency that he had not foreseen. He could think of nothing. Well, that wasn’t really true. This whole operation could fizzle, any operation could, but it wouldn’t be be- cause he hadn’t prepared as well as possible. His worst handicap was the requirement to stay loose on Albright, to remain com- pletely hidden. Well, that was the only way it could be, so no use worrying.

But he was worried. When he could sit still no longer, he got the lawn rake from the garage and set to work on the grass clippings as the ball-park announcer chanted the summer myth yet again and the afternoon heat continued to build.

Smoke Judy was impressed. The building wasn’t much, but the prices on the menu were reasonable and the seafood heaped on the plates of the early diners looked scrumptious and smelled the same. Didn’t they call this decor “rustic”? Unfinished boards on the inte- rior walls, with fishing nets and crab pots hanging from the ceiling. Subdued lighting. ‘The food’s great,” Aibright assured him. “Dev- iled crab is the house specialty.”

They had ordered their dinner and were sipping the foam off frosty glasses of beer when Albright said, “Got a little proposition for you, if you’re interested.”

Judy wiped off his foam mustache with a finger. “Depends.”

“Did you ever hear the term ‘kilderkin’?”

Smoke set the beer mug down and straightened in his chair. He looked around at the other guests with interest. Two or three looked like they could be the right age and level of fitness. His eyes swung back to Albright. “Let’s go to the John.”

He rose and led the way.

It was a one-seater with a urinal and a sink. Not the cleanest rest room he was ever in, but better than most. And it was empty. Judy turned and set his feet, the right slightly behind the left. He got his weight up on the balls of his feet and bent his knees slightly.

“Hands on the door, feet back and spread. The position, man.”

Albright stood with his hands on his hips a moment, then did as he was told.

“I’m not wearing a wire.”

“Uh-huh.” He felt Albright all over, including his crotch. He inspected his belt and his shoes and his pen. He examined his sunglasses. He looked at the patch on his jeans. Then he removed Albright’s wallet and moved back against the sink. “You can turn around now.”

Albright watched him go through it. He looked at the driver’s license carefully, the library card, the automobile registration and insurance cards, the receipts from the food store and the laundry, the credit cards. He counted the cash. It was in hundreds, twenty of them. “Gonna play poker tonight?”

The Minotaur

“I like to pay in cash.”

“Why the credit cards then?”

“You never know.”

Judy passed the wallet back. “You want to talk to me, then you walk out there and cancel our dinner orders and pay the tab. Leave a tip. We’ll go to a place I pick. You drive, but I don’t want you to say one word in the car. Not a word. Got it?”

“Okay.”

In the car Judy pointed in the direction he wanted Albright to go. Meanwhile he watched the other cars. They weren’t being fol- lowed. He had Albright make a series of random turns, then take the road leading east. Fifteen miles later they came to a big road- house at a crossroads. Judy gestured and Albright drove into the tot and killed the engine.

They went to a booth in the back and Judy seated himself so that he could watch the door.

“You were saying?”

“Kilderkin.”

“What about it?”

“Kilderkin is the access word for a file in the computer at the Pentagon. It’s a file held in the office where you work. The Athena file. I can supply you with the code words to get to it. I want you to copy the Athena file onto a floppy disk and give it to me,”

“All of it? All the documents?”

“Yes. It might take more than one disk.”

“Might. What do I get out of it?”

“A hundred grand.”

Commander Smoke Judy stared at him a while, then looked around the room thoughtfully. In a moment the waiter came over. They asked for beers and menus.

“What do you know about that file?” Judy asked.

“I’m not going to tell you. Let’s just say I want it.”

“Why?”

“All you need to know is I want it a hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”

“You don’t want it bad enough.”

“How badly do I have to want it?”

“If you ever decide you want it for a quarter million reasons, you come talk to me. Half up front and half on delivery. Cash. Used twenties.”

“No. That’s not— No!”

Judy picked up his menu. “I think I’ll have the bacon cheese- burger. What about you?”

“Maybe a plain hamburger.”

Judy nodded and waited patiently for the waiter.

When they had finished their greaseburgers and were drinking a cup of coffee, Albright said, “If I pay you fifty tonight, fifty on Monday, when could you have the disks?”

“When will you have the rest of the money?”

“A week from Monday.”

“Then that’s when you get the disks.”

At seven o’clock Luis Camacho called his in-laws. Sally answered.

“Hey. You made it.”

“Oh, Luis. It’s going to be a nice visit. The folks are a little baffled, but they’re delighted to have us.”

“Great. It’ll go okay.”

“What did you do this afternoon? What did you have for din- ner?”

They discussed the condition of the larder for three or four min- utes, then Camacho wished her good night.

An hour and a half later the phone rang. “He’s headed home,” Dreyfus reported.

“Who was with him?”

“Don’t know. We got an infrared photo as they crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The photographer isn’t very optimistic. They came on into the metro area and stopped at a storage place in Bladensburg for a bit. Then the subject dropped the passenger at a Metro station and he was gone by the time we could get a man into the station. Subject is heading your way now. He’ll be there in about five minutes.”

“Get someone over to Smoke Judy’s place. See if they can spot him coming home. And get a list of the license numbers of the cars parked around that bar where the subject picked up his passenger. Run them through the computer.”

“Okay, boss. Anything else?”

“When will the photo be ready?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“And I put a stakeout on the storage lot. Thought we might get a warrant tomorrow and search it.”

“The subject will be making some phone calls tonight or tomor- row. Be ready.”

“You really think he’s going to move?”

“He’s got to. He’s got to go for checkmate or concede.”

“Keep your gun handy.”

On Sunday morning Luis Camacho was painting the yard furniture when Harlan Albright hailed him across the back fence. He came through the gate and settled himself on one of the chairs waiting for its spring coat.

“I have another brush in the garage if you want to help.”

Albright grinned and sipped his coffee. “Who said Tom Sawyer is dead? Sorry. I gotta go run some errands this morning.” He looked at the house. “Where’s Sally?”

“Went to visit her mother.” Camacho was working on a table leg and didn’t look up.

“Oh.”

“Women,” Luis muttered.

“Yeah. Gonna stay a week or two?”

“Dunno.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And the boy?”

“He went too. It’s been years since he spent time with his grand- parents. He didn’t want to go, of course.”

Albright watched Camacho work on the table. The paint ran down the brush onto his fingers, which he wiped on the grass. “May rain this afternoon, you know,” Albright said.

“Just my luck.”

“What would you say to packing it in and going home?”

Camacho put the paintbrush in the can and stood up. He looked carefully at Albright, trying to read his expression.

“You mean Russia?”

“Yeah. You been here what? Twenty-eight or — nine years?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Yeah. Are you ready to go home?”

“I can’t even speak the language anymore. When I hear it I have to concentrate real hard to get the drift, and then I can’t think of the proper response. I been dreaming in English for over twenty- five years. Want some more coffee?”

“Okay.”

Luis took his cup and went inside. He returned in a moment with Albright’s coffee and a cup for himself. They both sampled the brew, then sat in silence. Birds were squawking vigorously in the tree behind them. Camacho took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. How could he leave? He liked this place and these people.

Albright broke the silence. “You really think Caplinger is the Minotaur?”

Luis considered. “He could be,” he said at last. “It fits. He has the necessary access, he was on the official guest list of that party three years ago when the first letter was stuck in the ambassador’s coat. He’s an egomaniac, likes the power trip. It’s possible.”

“But why?”

Camacho shrugged. “List all the possibilities and look at them. Pick the one you like.”

“I’ve done that. And you know what? I got the sneaking suspi- cion that the real reason wasn’t on my list.”

“Why does a happily married man start buying tricks on a street corner? Why does a man in his fifties steal a few hundred from the petty-cash drawer?”

“That was the shortest reason on the list. Nut case. But I don’t think so.”

“Happens all the time.” Camacho drained his cup, set it out of the way and got back to the painting.

“Royce Alien Caplinger,” Albright said, pronouncing the name slowly. “Sixty-three years old. Estimated net worth, $132 million. Son of a druggist. Grew up in St. Paul. Married twice. Second wife died of a heart attack six years ago. Hasn’t remarried, though he’s screwing his secretary who’s worked for him for fifteen years. He’s been doing that about once a month for ten years. She’s forty-two, never married, modestly attractive, had a hysterectomy eight years ago. Caplinger collects American Indian art, pays too much, some- times gets good stuff, sometimes bad. Buys what he likes and to hell with the experts. Has a copy of every book ever written about MacArthur and the best MacArthur memorabilia collection in ex- istence. Time said he has every piece of old junk Mrs. MacArthur ever threw out. What else? Oh yeah. He has two grown children, two dogs, and drives a fifteen-year-old Jaguar. Owns an estate in Virginia near Middleburg. Gives his entire government salary to charity.”

“Was involved in a panty raid when he was in college and was suspended for a semester,” Camacho said without taking his eyes from his work.

“That too. The rattling bones from his youth.” Albright tossed the dregs of his coffee into the grass and laid the cup on his lap. “So, Dr. Freud, has Caplinger gone over the edge? Is he copulating with Mother Russia?”

Albright rose and, dangling the cup from a finger, ambled through the gate. Thirty minutes later Camacho heard his car start out front and drive away.

Albright drove to a Wat-Mart store near Laurel. After browsing for ten minutes, he used the pay phone in the entryway. No one an- swered at the number he tried. He waited exactly one minute and tried again. The third time someone picked up the phone.

Albright talked for almost a minute. The other party never spoke. Then Albright hung up and went back into the store, where he wandered the aisles and handled merchandise for another half hour.

When he left the store he drove aimlessly for an hour. At Burtonsville he stopped for gas and bought a can of soda pop, a Dr Pepper. He drank the contents as he drove north on Route 29 and used a rag in the car to carefully wipe the fingerprints from the can.

Approaching the outskirts of Columbia, he took the off-ramp for Route 32, made an illegal left turn at the top and a sweeping right down onto Route 29 headed south as he scanned the mirrors. No one followed. No choppers or light planes in sight. At Route 216 he turned right from the through lane at the very last instant, just as the stoplight turned green.

He was on two-lane blacktop now, a local county road. He watched the mirror. A car turned from 29 onto this road, but it had been traveling north. He didn’t recognize it. Local traffic passed him going the other way.

Pulton was a tiny village — just a few farms, a church and a small post office with a few nearby shops—1.1 miles west of Route 29. Albright angled left onto Lime Kiln Road. This asphalt ribbon was more narrow and twisty as it followed the natural descent of a creek. He was in an area of beautiful homes set in huge meadows well back from the road. Trees lined the fences and horses grazed on the lush grass. The car that had followed him from Route 29 turned left at Reservoir Road and went up a little bill into a sprawling subdivision.

A half mile past Reservoir Road Albright slowed the car. There it was, right beside the road — a stone-drinking fountain fed by a pipe from a spring. He eased to a stop and slammed the gear shift lever into park. From the floor of the backseat he selected a 7-Up can, grasping it with a rag. He slid across the seat, opened the passenger door and set the can at the base of the fountain so it was visible from the road. Back into the car, door shut, and rolling again. Twenty seconds.

He glanced left, up a long sloping meadow at a huge house set on top of the hill in a grove of trees. No one in sight.

Three hundred yards farther on he came to a T intersection- This was Brown Bridge Road, another strip of two-lane asphalt with a double yellow line down the center and no benns. He sat at the intersection and looked both ways. No traffic. Nothing in the rearview mirror.

He turned right. The road wound up a wooded draw and came out into rolling, open country. A mile from Lime Kirn Road he came to another stop sign at a T intersection. This was Route 216 again. To the right, east, was Fulton; 1–1 miles to the west was Highland Junction. He knew, because he had spent many a Sunday driving these suburban county roads, learning their twists and turns, looking for likely drop sites. Directly across the road was a Methodist church. Three or four cars in the lot, no people in sight.

He turned right, toward Fulton. He went through the village and out to Route 29, which he crossed and continued on through SkaggsviUe, across 1-95, and into Laurel, where he turned around in the parking lot of a convenience store and began retracing his route as he watched for vehicles he had seen before and scanned the sky for airplanes.

Exactly thirty minutes later, at 2:47 P.M., he again passed Reser- voir Road on Lime Kiln. Someone was changing a flat tire on a van fifty yards up the hill on Reservoir. He hadn’t seen that van before. Maybe. It could be the FBI. Or it could be anybody. He continued past and slowed for the stone fountain.

The 7-Up can was still there. No vehicles in sight. No people on the hills that he could see. No choppers or planes overhead. He kept rolling past the fountain and dropped down to the Brown Bridge Road intersection.

He stopped at the stop sign and looked both ways. No traffic. He looked back over his shoulder, thinking about the van with the flat tire, weighing it.

He turned left. The road ran along a creek that was dropping toward the Patuxent River. The little valley was heavily wooded. Houses sat amid the trees off to his left, but the steep bank on his right was a forest.

Two-tenths of a mile from the intersection a gravel road branched off to the right. “Schooley Mill Road,” the sign read. He took it.

The road was narrow, no more than ten feet wide. It ran just along the north side of the creek, parallel to the asphalt road, which was twenty-five feet or so above him at the top of a steep embankment on his left. This was a secluded lovers lane, for a few hundred yards invisible from the paved road above. Apparently, when the teenagers weren’t screwing here, the locals used this lane as a trash depository. Green garbage bags, beer and soda-pop cans lay abandoned alongside the gravel.

There was one paved driveway leading north from this road, and it had a mailbox on a wooden post. He passed the box and stopped at the first large tree. He bolted out the passenger door, set the Dr Pepper can at the base of the tree and jumped back in the car.

A tenth of a mile later Schooley Mill Road rejoined Brown Bridge Road. Two-tenths of a mile after he was back on the asphalt he crossed Brown Bridge, a modern low concrete highway bridge across the Patuxent River, which was several hundred yards wide here. Now this highway became Ednor Road. He continued the two miles to New Hampshire Avenue, Maryland Route 650, and turned left. He had to be back at the drop in twenty-five minutes. He checked his watch.

Eight thousand feet overhead in a Cessna 172, Agent Clarence Brown laid his binoculars in his lap and rubbed his eyes as he keyed the mike. “Subject went down that Schooley Mill fuck road and was hidden by the trees for about two minutes. He might have stopped in there. You better check it.”

Sitting in the van with the wheel off on Reservoir Road, Lloyd Dreyfus turned to the man beside him. “That can down at the spring wasn’t the drop. The subject was just testing the water.”

“You sure?”

“Hell no.” But Dreyfus felt it in his gut. He looked at his map. The drops were close together, too close really. Albright should have been more careful. He’s getting careless.

“Think he’s spotted the plane?”

“No,” Dreyfus said. “Brown’s too high. He flew right over us a couple minutes ago. You can’t hear him at that altitude and you can’t see him unless you know where to look.”

Dreyfus keyed the radio mike. “Stay on him, Clarence. I want to know when he’s coming back.”

“Roger.”

To the man beside him Dreyfus said, “Have the guys get the wheel back on. Get ready to roll fast.” Then he switched frequen- cies and began moving his agents.

Ten minutes later when Vastly Pochinkov passed the Methodist church on Route 216 and turned onto Brown Bridge Road, he was photographed from a station wagon parked in the church parking lot amid four other cars. He never noticed. His eye was captured by the svelte figure of a woman in shorts walking toward the church door.

He glanced at his wife in the passenger seat as she hunted for a glove on the floor. She had dropped it and was feeling blindly. She was too fat to bend over and look for it.

Why is it. he wondered, not for the first time. that all Russian women have figures like potato sacks while American women keep their figures well past middle age? You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but this potato bag was only thirty-four years old and had had the figure of a ballerina when he married her just twelve years ago- It took a lot of vodka these days to prime himself for an expedition between those padded pillars she called thighs.

“Get ready, Nadya, Get the gloves on.”

The road began to twist and descend as it dropped toward Brown Bridge. Pochiakov slowed to twenty-five miles per hour, watched the odometer and looked for Schooley Mill Road.

There!

He saw the Dr Pepper can when he was fifty yards away. He glanced around as he braked to a stop. The glen was empty. Nadya stepped out, a green garbage bag in hand, and placed it fifteen feet west of the tree. While she was doing that, Pochinkov walked over to the Dr Pepper can, glanced around once and placed a second one beside it.

They got back in the car, closed the door and rolled.

The Buick was climbing the hill on the south side of the river when the van shot out of Lime Kite Road and roared the thousand feet to the entrance to Schooley Mill. The driver braked to a halt and two men wearing’gloves jumped out. One opened the green trash bag while the other took flash photos.

Inside the van Lloyd Dreyfus was listening to Agent Brown in the Cessna. “Subject is about a half mile south of Ednor Road, northbound on New Hampshire. I’d say you have no more than six or seven minutes … He just passed the drop car, which was southbound.”

The two men piled back into the van within a minute. The agent at the wheel fed gas when he heard the rear door slam. When he reached the asphalt of Brown Bridge, he made a hard left and beaded east, back up the road, toward Lime Kite.

The lane was empty when Harlan Albright entered four minutes later. He didn’t even get out of the car. After a glance at the soda cans, he merely braked to a stop beside the trash bag and picked it up. He set it on the floor in front of the empty passenger seat as he pulled the door shut with his left hand and took his foot off the brake.

Glancing in he could see trash: a wadded-up bread wrapper, a couple empty vegetable cans, three squashed soda-pop cans and an old meat wrapper. They had, he knew, been carefully washed so they would not attract dogs. Under the trash was the money, $200,000 in used twenties, one hundred bundles of a hundred twenties each.

It was 5 P.M. when he pulled into his driveway in Silver Spring. The Sunday Post was still lying by the mailbox. He took it into the house with him, turned on the television, and settled back with the newspaper,