The Minotaur

30

The sky was crystal-clear, a pleasant change from the late-summer haze. From this infinite sky a bright sun shone down on a day not hot and not yet cold, a perfect late-September Sunday. The trees along the roads where Jake Grafton drove had just begun to lose their green and don their autumn colors. Their leaves shimmered and glistened in the bril- liant sun.

Most of the radio stations were broadcasting music, but it was public-service time on the others. He listened a few moments to two women discussing the nuances of breast-feeding, then twirled the selector knob. The next station had a preacher asking for dona- tions for his radio ministry. Send the money to a P.O. box in Arkansas. He left the dial there. The fulminations filled the car and drifted out the open window. Samuel Dodgers would have hked this guy: hellfire for sinners, damnation for the tempters.

Toad Tarkington was leaning against the side of his car at the Denny’s restaurant when Jake pulled into the lot.

“Been waiting long?”

“Five minutes.” Toad walked around the front of Jake’s car and climbed in. In spite of the sun and seventy-five-degree temperature, he was wearing a windbreaker.

“How’s Rita?”

“Doing okay.”

Jake got the car in motion.

“Where’re we going?”

“I told you on the phone. To see X.”

“Yessir. But where is that?”

“You’ll see.”

Toad lapsed into silence. He sat with his hands in his lap and stared straight ahead at the road. On the radio the preacher ex- pounded on how Bible prophecy had predicted the popularity of rock music.

Passing through Middleburg Toad said, “I think we ought to kill him.”

Jake held out his right hand, palm up. Toad just looked at it.

“Let me have it.”

“What?”

“Your gun. The one you have under that jacket.”

Toad reached under the left side of his jacket and extracted a pistol from his belt, which he laid in the captain’s hand. It was a navy-issue nine-millimeter automatic, well oiled but worn. Jake pushed the button and the clip fell out in his hand. This he pock- eted. Holding the gun with his right hand, he worked the slide with his left. A shiny cartridge flipped out and went over his shoulder into the backseat. The gun he slipped under the driver’s seat.

“Who is he?”

“You’ll see.”

“Why are we going if we aren’t going to kill him?”

“You’ve been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies. And you ask too many questions.”

“So why did you call me?”

“I didn’t want to go alone. I wanted a witness. The witness had to be someone who is basically incorruptible, someone beyond his reach.”

“I’m not beyond anyone’s reach.”

“Oh, I think you are, Tarkington. Not physical reach. I’m talk- ing about moral reach. None of his weapons will get to you.”

“You make me sound retarded- How do you know this guy we’re going to see is?”

“I wrote him three letters. Notes. Then this morning I called him and said I was dropping by to chat.”

“Just friendly as fucking shit.” Toad thought about it Jake waited for him to ask how Jake learned ’s identity, but the lieutenant had other things on his mind. “If it weren’t for this turd, Camacho would have arrested Judy months ago and Rita wouldn’t have got whacked up. Camacho would still be alive.” He reached for the radio and snapped it off. “Goddamnit, Captain, this man is guilty.”

“You don’t know anything, Toad. You don’t know who, you don’t know why. Since Rita did get hurt, since that little mess in Camacho’s basement, I thought you had a right to know. That’s why I called you. So you’re going to find out this afternoon.”

“Do you know?”

“Why, you mean?”

Toad nodded.

Jake thought about it. “I’ve made some guesses. But they’re only that. Guesses are three for a quarter. Facts I don’t have. Camacho, though, he knew.”

“And he’s dead.”

“Yes.” Jake turned the radio back on.

“Are we going to turn him in, call the cops?”

“You ask too many questions.”

In a moment Toad said, “Why do you listen to this crap?” He gestured toward the radio.

“It’s refreshing to hear a man who knows precisely where he stands. Even if I don’t share his perch.”

The leaves of the trees alongside the road had the deep green hues of late summer. Cattle and horses grazing, an occasional fe- male rider on a groomed horse in the manicured meadows, glimpses of huge two- or three-story mansions set back well away from the public road at the end of long drives; this countryside was fat. The contrast between this rich and verdant world of moneyed indolence and the baked, potholed streets of Washington jarred Jake Grafton. He could feel his confidence in his assessment of the situation ebbing away as the car took them farther and farther from the Pentagon and the navy.

Five miles north of Middleburg he began to watch the left side of the road. He found the tree and mailbox he had heard about. The box merely had a number, no name. He turned into the hard- packed gravel drive and drove along it. Huge old trees lined the north side of the road, a row that ended in a small grove around a large brick house almost covered with ivy.

Jake Grafton parked right in front.

“Ring the bell,” he muttered at Toad, who gave several tugs on a pull. The sound of chimes or something was just audible through the door.

Tarkington’s eyes darted around.

The door opened.

“Did you get lost?” Royce Caplinger asked, and stood aside to let the two men enter.

“Little longer drive than I figured, Mr. Secretary.”

Toad gaped.

“Close your mouth, son. People’ll think you’re a politician,” Caplinger muttered and led the way down the hall. They passed through a dining room furnished with massive antique tables and chairs and accented with pewter tankards and plates, and on through a kitchen with brick walls and a huge fireplace with an iron kettle hanging in it. A refrigerator, sink, and conventional stove sat against the far wall, on the other side of a work island.

“Nice place you have here,” Jake Grafton said.

“Rustic as hell. I like it. Makes me feel like Thomas Jefferson,”

“He’s real dead,” Toad said.

“Yeah. Sometimes I feel that way too, out here without the traf- fic and airplane noise and five million people all scurrying…” They were in the study now, a corner room with high windows and ceilings. The walls were covered with books. Newspapers scattered on the carpet, some kind of a red-and-blue Oriental thing.

Caplinger waved his hand toward chairs and sank into a large stuffed chair with visibly cracked leather.

He stared at them. Toad avoided his gaze and looked at the books and the bric-a-brac tucked between them. By Toad’s chair was a pipe stand. In it was a corncob pipe, blackened from many fires.

“I wasn’t sure, but I thought it might be you. Captain,” Caplin- ger said. “Didn’t recognize your voice on the phone this morning.”

Jake Grafton rubbed his face with his hands and crossed his legs.

“We were just driving through the neighborhood, Royce,” Toad said, “and thought we’d drop by and ask why you turned traitor and gave all those secrets to the Russians. Why did you?”

Jake caught Toad’s eye. He moved his head ever-so-slightly from side to side.

Jake addressed Caplinger. “Mr. Secretary, we have a problem. We know you’re X and we have some ideas, probably erroneous, about the events of the last few months. Four or five people have died violently. Mr. Tarkington’s wife, Rita Moravia, is a navy test pilot who was seriously injured, almost killed, because various law enforcement agencies failed to properly investigate and make arrests on information they had had for some time. To make a long story short, we came here to ask if you would like to discuss this matter with us before we go to the authorities and the press. Do you?”

“Are you going to the press?”

“That depends.”

“You notice I didn’t ask about the authorities. That doesn’t worry me, but for reasons — welll”

Caplinger slapped his knees and stood suddenly. Toad started. “Relax, son. I only eat lieutenants at the office. Come on, let’s make some coffee.” He led the way into the kitchen.

He filled a pot with water. The pot went on the stove, after he lit the gas jet with a match. He put a paper filter in a drip pot and ladled three spoonfuls of coffee in. “You two are entitled to an explanation. Not legally, but morally. I’m sorry about your wife, Lieutenant. So was Luis Camacho. We had too much at stake to move prematurely.” He shrugged. “Life is complicated,”

Caplinger pulled a stool from under the counter and perched on it.

“Three years ago, no, four, a KGB colonel defected to the United States. It wasn’t in the papers, so I won’t tell you his name. He thought he was brimming with useful information that we would be delighted to have in return for a ton of money and a new life in the West. The money he got and the new identity he got. But the information wasn’t worth much. He did, however, have one piece of information that he didn’t think much of but we found most interesting.”

Caplinger checked the water on the stove.

“It seems that one day about three years before he defected he paid a visit to the Aquarium, the Moscow headquarters of the GRU, which is Soviet military intelligence. His errand doesn’t re- ally matter. During his two or three hours there he was taken into the office of a general who was not expecting company. On the desk was a sheet of paper with four names. The colonel read the names upside down before the general covered the paper with a handy file.”

The water began to rumble. Caplinger checked the pot as he continued. “Under hypnosis the defector could remember three of the four names. We recognized one of them. V. Y. Tsybov.”

The Minotaur

The coffeepot began to whistle. As he reached for it Caplinger said, “Vladimir Yakovich Tsybov was the real name of Luis Cama- cho.”

He poured the hot water into the drip cone and watched the black fluid run out the bottom. “Luis Camacho was a Soviet mole, a deep illegal sent to this country when he was twenty years old, He was half Russian and half Armenian, and with his olive skin and facial characteristics, he seemed a natural to play the rote of a Mexican-American. He knew just a smattering of Spanish, but what the hey. His forefathers, so said his bio, had been in this country since Texas became a state.

“Tsybov, now Camacho, attended a university in Texas and graduated with honors. He obtained a law degree at night while he worked days. The FBI recruited him.

“It’s funny”—Caplinger shook his head—“that J. Edgar Hoo- ver’s lily-white FBI needed a smart Mexican-American. But at the time Hoover was casting suspicious eyes on the farm-labor move- ment in California, which was just being organized, and needed some Chicanes to use as undercover agents. So Luis Camacbo was investigated and approved and recruited.”

Caplinger laughed. “Hoover, the paranoid anti-communist, re- cruited a deep Soviet plant! Oh, they tried to check Camacho’s past, and the reports to Washington certainly looked thorough. But the agents in the field — all good, white Anglo Protestants with dark suits and short haircuts — couldn’t get much cooperation from the Chicano population of Dallas and San Antonio. So rather than admit failure to the Great One, they sort of filled in the gaps and sent the usual reports to Washington. And the FBI got themselves a new agent.

“How do you like your coffee?”

Royce Caplinger got milk from the refrigerator and let Toad add some to his coffee. They carried their cups back to the study.

“Where was I?”

“Camacho was a deep plant.”

“Yes. Anyway, being smart and competent, he rose as far as the racial politics of the FBI would allow, which really wasn’t very far. Still, amazingly enough, Luis Camacho liked America. But that is another story.” Caplinger set his coffee beside him. “Maybe I should fill it in, though. Luis was a very special human being. Luis—“

“There were three other names on the list,” Toad said irritably. His whole manner told what he thought of Caplinger’s tale.

“Ah yes,” Caplinger said, looking at the lieutenant thoughtfully. “Three more names, two of which the defector could remember, one which he could not. The problem was we didn’t know who any of the other three were. Tsybov was Camacho, whom the Soviets thought was still a plant under deep cover, a sleeper, available for use if the need arose. They didn’t know that Camacho had revealed himself to us voluntarily almost ten years before.”

Caplinger looked from face to face. “You see the problem. The Soviets had three more agents in America planted deep. And we didn’t know who they were!

“Naturally the intelligence coordinating committee took this matter up. What could be done?”

“So you became X.” Jake Grafton made it a state- ment, not a question.

“We needed bait, good bait. We wanted those three deep agents. Or two or one. Whatever we could get. Someone had to become X, so the President chose me.”

“The President?” Toad said, incredulously.

“Of course. Who better to choose what military secrets the Sovi- ets would find interesting? Who better to reveal the aces?” Caplin- ger sipped his coffee.

“So you…” Jake began. “You wrote the letters and mailed them?”

“Yes. The National Security Agency gave me the computer codes I needed and helped with the encryptions. But I had to sit down and write each letter- The human touch, you see. Each letter would reveal something of the man who wrote it, so they all had to be written by one man.

“Much to our dismay, the instrument the Soviets chose to ex- ploit the gifts of was a traitor-for-hire who had al- ready approached their embassy a year or so before. Terry Frank- lin. What Terry Franklin didn’t know was that the National Security Agency has special programs that reveal when each se- lected classified document is accessed. He wrote a trapdoor pro- gram that got him by the first security layer, but there was another that he didn’t know about. So we were immediately on to him. And immediately faced with a dilemma.”

“If you arrested him too soon, the Soviets might just ignore the Minotaur.”

“Precisely, Captain. For this to work, the information had to be very good stuff, the best. And we had to give them enough so that they would become addicted to it. Then, and only then, would they feel the potential profit was enough to risk deep plants that had been in place for twenty to thirty years.” The secretary looked from face to face. “Don’t you see? These sleepers were assets! They belonged to someone in the GRU who had built his career on the fact that he had these assets, which would someday, at the right moment, be of incalculable value. Our task was to convince him or his superiors that now was that moment.”

“So you let franklin do his thing.”

“Precisely. And we gave them excellent information. We let them see the best stuff that we had. We got them addicted, and curious. So one day Franklin’s control approached Camacho, Tsybov.” He lifted a finger skyward for dramatic effect. “That was a very important event. The Soviets had gone to one of the names on the list. Now we knew we were on the right track. We were heart- ened.”

Caplinger rose quickly from his chair and began to pace. He explained that Harlan Albright, the control, was a GRU colonel. He made contact with Camacho, moved into the house beside him, insisted on biweekly briefings. “What the Soviets wanted, of course, was the identity of X. So the game began for Luis Camacho. We didn’t authorize him to reveal X’s identity. But he knew. He had to know. He knew from the first. He was the man who was actually going to uncover the sleepers.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking it over yet again. “Once Camacho was in the game, he became the key player. It was inevi- table. He had to appear to be a double agent and yet he had to force the Soviets to act. To act as we wanted them to. He was playing a dangerous role. And to appreciate how good he was at it, you would have to have known Luis Camacho very, very well. I didn’t, but I got the flavor of the man. In his own way, in his own field, he was a master.”

Caplinger stopped at the window and looked out at the meadows and distant blue mountains, which were a thin line on the western horizon. “Inevitably, and I do not use that word lightly, people were going to get hurt. Smoke Judy was an information peddler. He killed Harold Strong — your predecessor. Captain — when Strong found out about his activities. Camacho learned his iden- tity, but we thought he might be of use later, so the committee ordered him left alone. Certainly no one could foresee that an indirect result of that decision would be the loss of the TRX proto- type and your wife’s injuries, Lieutenant, but… there were rea- sons that looked good at the time why it was handled the way it was.” He finished lamely and turned to face Tarkington. “I am sorry.”

Tarkington was examining his running shoes. He retied one of the laces.

“Anyway, there were several other deaths. A woman was killed who witnessed a drop set up by the Soviets to give Terry Franklin information, a Mrs. Matilda Jackson. Harlan Albright killed her, after we ordered Camacho to reveal her identity to Albright as proof of his bona fides, his commitment. Camacho refused at first, but we convinced him. This was the way it had to be. Better to sacrifice one to save the many.” The secretary went back to his chair and sat heavily. He shook his head slowly- “Too often,” he said softly, “we must assume some of God’s burden. It is not light”

“Too bad,” said Toad Tarkington, now staring at the secretary, “that after you gave an innocent civilian the chop, this whole thing fizzled.”

“Did it?” Caplinger’s voice assumed an edge, a hard flinty edge. “Did it now?”

When Toad didn’t respond, Caplinger went on, his voice back to normal. “So after three years and some damn tragic risks, the stage was set. After a few carefully chosen facts were fed to Albright, he killed Terry Franklin. That was a masterpiece of cunning, well set up by Camacho. Of course Luis didn’t like it, not he, but he played his part to perfection. Albright personally eliminated the Soviets’ only access to the Pentagon computer. He had to find another. Because now X offered the richest gift of all: Athena.”

“Smoke Judy,” said Jake Grafton, unable to keep silent.

“Yes. Smoke Judy, a bitter little man who had killed once and found how easy it is. Of course, that was the crisis. When Judy failed, as fail he surely would with Luis Camacho watching him, Albright would have no other choice. He would have to go to another deep plant on the list! And he would make this inevitable choice of his own free will, unpressured by anyone. That was our thinking, at least. Didn’t work out that way- Camacho thought Albright was onto him and made a decision on his own to warn Vice Admiral Henry about the risk to Athena.” He gestured to the heavens. “It was all downhill from there. Henry took it upon him- self to apprehend Judy. You know how that turned out. The jig was up. Camacho had no choice. He sent men to arrest Albright.”

“You were willing to give away Athena?” Jake’s horror was in his voice-

“We on the committee were willing to take the risk Albright would get it, which isn’t precisely the same thing, Captain. By now X’s credentials were impeccable. We thought that surely, for this exquisite technical jewel, the Soviets would brush the dirt off one or two deep agents.”

“But they didn’t?”

“No. Perhaps Albright was suspicious. Probably was. Camacho knew that Albright saw the whole operation too clearly, so he revealed X’s actual identity to save the game. It wasn’t enough. With Judy and Albright in hiding, X wrote one more letter, giving the access codes for the new Athena file. Then we waited for the Soviets to activate one of the sleepers. They didn’t. What happened next was Albnght kidnapped you, swiped all the Athena information he could readily lay hands on, then went to Camacho’s house to kill him. Camacho had been expecting Albright to try something, but we didn’t know exactly what it would be. When Luis Camacho came down those stairs and saw you there that afternoon — then he knew. The Soviets weren’t going to invest any more major assets in this operation. His sole hope of getting the sleepers’ names was Harlan Albright, who might know.”

Jake said, “I wondered why the Athena file was suddenly re- named, all the access codes changed.”

“Henry shouldn’t have done that. Camacho shouldn’t have warned him. But Camacho was worried he didn’t have all the possible holes covered and he knew Athena’s real value. Still, it would have worked if Henry hadn’t interfered.” Caplinger sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

“We had to let the Russians work at it. If they succeeded too easily, they would have smelled the setup. No, our mistake was giving them the real Minotaur. Perhaps they found his identity too troublesome once they knew.”

Caplinger shrugged. “After Judy failed, we wanted Albright badly. Our thinking then was that perhaps we could get the names from him, willingly or with hypnosis and drugs. We thought the odds about three to one that he knew the names then. If the GRU was even contemplating using a sleeper, the controller had to be briefed in advance, before the possibility became the necessity. Yet Albright evaded the clowns sent to pick him up. The agents thought they were going to arrest a mail-fraud suspect.” Caplinger spread his hands, a gesture of frustration. “So we waited, hoping against hope a sleeping mole would awaken. It didn’t happen.”

“So you failed,” Toad said.

“Oh no, Mr. Tarkington. X succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Not exactly in the way we expected, of course, but the benefits are real and tangible. This operation was one of the most successful covert intelligence operations ever undertaken by any nation. Ever.”

“Please explain, sir.”

“I see the disbelief written all over your face. Captain.”

“My impression is that you people gave away the ranch, sir. Just how many top secret programs did you compromise?”

“We showed them the crown jewels, Captain. We had to. They would never have taken the bait otherwise. The three buried moles are very valuable.”

“Pooh.” Tarkington shook his head. “I’m not buying it. Those three agents may have turned, exactly like Camacho. If the Soviets ever try to use them, those guys may run straight to the FBI. The Russians may not even know where they are now.”

“You are a very young man. Lieutenant.” Caplinger was scath- ing. “You have a lot to learn. The deep plants are valuable to the Soviets as chips in the Cold War poker games, at home and abroad. They are valuable in exactly the same way that thermonuclear weapons are valuable, ICBMs, boomer submarines — I could go on. Those three buried agents are hole cards, Lieutenant. They may even be dead. Yet we can never afford to ignore them. Do you begin to understand?”

“Yessir.” Toad looked miserable. “But—“

“There are layers and layers and layers.”

“But listen,” Toad objected reasonably- “We didn’t even know these men existed until four years ago. What if they don’t?”

“Aha! The light becomes a glow!”

Caplinger leaped from his chair, galvanized. “Perhaps they don’t exist! Perhaps the defection of a mid-level KGB officer was a ploy, and the list was bait to make us think they had three agents. They write the list, they leave it where a man of dubious professional accomplishments, a man of dubious loyalty and dubious value, will see it. Very convenient, you must admit! And in the fullness of time he is given an opportunity to defect, which he, no fool, takes as the best of a poor range of options.”

Caplinger’s voice rose to a shout. “And he gets here and tells us his little tale. We give it credence. We must! We have no other choice.”

“I’m slightly baffled. Mr. Secretary,” Jake said dryly. “Just how did X succeed, if that word can even be used in these kinds of — what the hell are they? — games?”

Royce Caplinger began to walk back and forth, lost in thought. “The Soviet Union today is a nation in transition. Their system is against the wall. The Soviet people want good wages and housing and food to eat. The generals want to maintain their privileged positions. The politicians want to stay in power. (That’s human enough. Ours will sell their soul for another term in office.) To do all of this the Soviets need money, vast quantities of it, money that does not exist.

“So the government is scrambling for money. What the Mino- taur did was prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the amount they have been spending for defense was nowhere near enough. The Soviets have spent as much money in real terms as we have for defense over the years, but it’s a much larger percentage of their Gross National Product. Only a dictatorship can maintain that level of defense spending.” He stopped his pacing and spread his arms. ” put the spotlight on the Soviet system’s fail- ings. The Soviet economy, if it can be called that, is an abject debacle: food must be purchased from abroad, there is nothing in the stores to buy, the prosperity of the other industrial nations has eluded them- And now the military needs many more billions to replace hardware it has spent billions to obtain which is now obso- lete, years and years before the Soviets planned to replace it.”

He examined the faces of his listeners. “Don’t you read newspa- pers? Where have you been? Gorbachev has been talking per- estroika and glasnost for years. Why? The threat of Star Wars tech- nology was a major impetus. There was no way they could match it! Under no conceivable circumstances could enough rubles be printed or squeezed from the people to fund such a program. The generals lost power. The politicians gained it. Through diplomacy the threat of Star Wars could be blunted, perhaps even eliminated. Soviet foreign policy changed course dramatically; arms reduction treaties were agreed to and signed, mutual verification was at last swallowed with good grace. Then came X’s revelations,”

“I see,” Jake said, rubbing his chin and glancing at Toad.

“Yes, Captain. We are having a major technological revolution in America just now. The research of the space programs has borne fruit. Ever smaller, ever more powerful computers, lasers, missiles, fiber optics, new manufacturing techniques that allow us to build structures and engines with capabilities undreamed of ten years ago: last year’s cutting-edge designs are obsolete before we can get them into production! It’s like something out of science fiction. This must have struck you these past six months?”

“Yes.”

Caplinger nodded as he seated himself behind the desk. He just couldn’t stay still for any length of time, Jake thought. “It struck me five years ago when I became SECDEF. I listened to the brief- ings in awe. This black magic was real It’s not just Star Wars; it’s everything. Jet engines with over three times the thrust per pound of Soviet engines are real, ready for deployment. Stealth obsoletes their radar systems. America is preparing to deploy a new genera- tion of weaponry that will make obsolete everything the Russian generals have bled the Soviet Union to get for the last forty years. They have reached the end of their string. If this is table stakes, they have bet their last ruble, and we have raised.”

“X,” Jake said slowly, “gave them the awful truth.”

“Chapter and verse. Imagine the horror in Moscow as the true dimensions of their dilemma sank in. The rumors and hints they had heard were all true. The United States was even farther ahead technologically than the worst pessimists predicted. It was a night- mare.”

“They could have ordered a first strike,” Tarkington said. “Started World War III before their military situation became hopeless.”

“Yes. But they didn’t They are, after all, sane.”

“Jee-susl” Tarkington came out of his chair like a coiled spring. He planted himself in front of Caplinger’s desk. “What if they had?”

‘Then none of us would be alive now, would we, Lieutenant? Please sit down.”

“Who commissioned you to play God with the universe, Caplin- ger? Where does it say in the Constitution that you have the right to bet the existence of every living thing on this planet, for what- ever reason?”

Caplinger rose from his chair and leaned across the desk, until his face was only a foot from Toad’s. “What ivory tower did you crawl down from? You think we should just strum our banjos and sing folk songs and pray that nuclear war never happens? Sit down and shut the fuck upl”

Tarkington obeyed. The cords in his neck were plainly visible.

“What is he. Captain?” Caplinger jerked a thumb at Toad. “Your conscience that you drag around?”

“He’s a man who cares,” Jake Grafton said slowly. “He sin- cerely cares.”

“We all do,” Caplinger replied, cooling down and taking his seat again. He rubbed his hand across his balding dome several times. “We all care, Tarkington. You think I enjoy this?”

“Yep. That’s precisely what I think.”

Caplinger rubbed his face. “Maybe you’re right” He toyed with a pen on his desk. “Yeah-I guess ‘enjoy’ isn’t the right word. But I do get satisfaction from it. Yes, I do.” He looked at Tarkington. “This is my contribution. Is that so terrible?”

“That retired woman that Albright killed — I’ll bet she enjoyed her little walk-on role in your drama. Didn’t she have any rights?”

Caplinger looked away.

Toad pressed. “You just chopped her like she was nothing. Is that what we are to you? Pawns? Rita — you have the right to stuff my wife through the meat grinder for the greater good? You ass- holel”

After a while Caplinger said, “We took big risks, but the reward was worth it.” He set his jaw. “It was worth it,” he insisted.

Neither officer replied.

Caplinger examined both their faces- “Come, gentlemen. Let’s have another cup of coffee.” Toad didn’t get out of his chair. He had the corncob pipe in his hands as the other two men left the room.

In the kitchen Jake said, “Somebody’s liable to shoot Gorba- chev, you know. He’s threatening to break a lot of rice bowls. Revolutions from the top rarely work.”

“Even if Gorbachev dies, the Soviet Union will never be the same. If the old guard tries to clamp down, sooner or later there’ll be another Russian Revolution, from the bottom next time. There’s going to be another revolution in China, sooner or later. The com- munists can’t go backwards, though they can sure try.”

“Why were they so concerned about X’s identity?”

” ‘They’ is a very broad term. The GRU wanted evidence that X’s revelations were false, to discredit them. When Ca- macho gave them the name of the Secretary of Defense, they were left with an empty bag. The men in the Politburo realized that it was entirely possible the United States government was providing the information as a matter of policy. That possibility had to be weighed.

“The implications are difficult,” he added, searching for words. “Perhaps the best way to say it is this: Some of the Soviet decision makers saw America, maybe for the first time, as we see ourselves — strong and confident, with excellent reasons for being confident. Frightened men start wars, and we aren’t frightened.”

Back in the den, Jake asked, “So we still don’t know the identity of the three deep moles, the sleepers?”

“Let’s say we’re resigned to the fact that, if the agents exist, they will probably not be revealed. But we achieved so much! The changes in the Soviet Union the last three years have been pro- found.”

”You play your fucking games,” Toad murmured, “and the little guys get left holding the bag. Like Camacho.”

“Ah, I hear the voice of the eternal private complaining because the generals are willing to sacrifice him to achieve a military objec- tive.”

“Sorry, I didn’t read about your little war in the papers. And I didn’t volunteer to fight it.”

“America was Luis Camacho’s adopted home. He loved this country and he loved its people. He knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way. Like you and your wife when you fly, he knew the risks. You think his job was easy? Having Albright right next door? Camacho had a wife and kid. You think he had no nerves?”

Toad sat silently with his arms folded across his chest, staring out the window. Jake and Caplinger talked a while longer. It was almost 4 P.M- when Caplinger said, “By the way, Captain, you did an excellent job presenting the TRX plane and Athena to Con- gress. I’m looking forward to getting a ride in an A-12 someday.”

“That makes two of us.”

Toad picked up the corncob pipe from the pipe stand again and examined it idly. “Why did Camacho admit his past?”

Caplinger smiled. “Who knows the human heart? His explana- tion, which I read very carefully after Albright approached him a year or so ago, was that America is a country that cares about people. You see, he was a cop. A cop in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. But in spite of Hoover’s paranoid insanities, Luis saw that the vast majority of the agents there were trying their best to enforce the laws in an even, fair manner, with due regard to the rights of their fellow citizens. Camacho came from a country where the police have no such mission. The police there are not honest, honorable men.” He shrugged. “Luis Camacho instinctively understood Hoo- ver. He had grown up in a nation ruled by such men. But Camacho came to see himself as a public servant. He became an American.”

“Thanks for your time today, Mr. Secretary.”

“Ill walk you to your car.”

He led them through the kitchen to the door that led to the parking area. As he walked, he asked Jake, “How’d you learn I was X?”

“I didn’t. I guessed. Your seeing us today was the proof.”

“You guessed?”

“Yes, sir. My wife suggested that perhaps X was a role played by an actor, an intuitive insight which seemed to me to explain a great deal. Then I remembered that comment you made one evening at dinner in China Lake this past summer, something to the effect that the perception of reality is more important than the facts. Camacho had said that the people who had to know about this operation did know. By implication that comment in- cluded you. So I decided you were probably X.”

“I thought your notes meant blackmail, until I saw you this afternoon.”

“I thought you might.”

Jake stepped to the car ten feet away and opened the door.

“All our scheming,” Caplinger mused. “So transparent. No wonder Camacho thought Albright saw through it. Albright was no fool.”

Royce Caplinger stopped at the end of the walk to look at the clouds building above the mountains to the west He started as something hard dug into his back.

In his ear Toad said, “You miscalculated once too often, Caplin- ger.”

Catching the tone but not the words, Jake Grafton turned with a puzzled look on his face.

The lieutenant had his arm on Caplmger’s shoulder. He jerked the older man sideways until he was between him and Grafton. “Don’t move. Captain! I swear I’ll shoot him if I have to.”

“What—?”

‘That’s right, Caplinger,” Toad hissed in the secretary’s ear. “I’ll pull this trigger and blow your spine clean in half. This time it isn’t Matilda Jackson or Rita Moravia or Luis Camacho. It’s you! You thought you had everything figured, didn’t you? Minotaur! You were wrong! The decision has been made. It’s time for you to die.”

The secretary tried to turn. “Now listen—“

“Tarkington!” Jake Grafton roared.

Toad twisted the man’s arm, squeezing as hard as he could. ‘The decision has been made! They decided. It’s over for you.”

“Please listen—” Caplinger began as Jake strode toward the two men, his face a mask of livid fury.

“Tarkington!”

“So long, asshole!” Toad stepped to one side, raised his arm and pointed right into Caplinger’s face- “Bang,” he said, and let the corncob pipe fall from his hand.

Caplinger stood staring at it.

“Tarkington,” Jake said softly, his voice as ominous as a gather- ing storm.

Toad walked away down the drive. He stumbled once, caught himself and kept walking. He didn’t look back.

Caplinger lowered himself into the gravel. He put his head on his knees. After a bit he whispered, “I really … I really thought…”

“His wife…”

“He’s right, you know.”

Jake turned and looked down the long, straight driveway- Tar- kington was still going, marching for the road, his head up and shoulders back. “Yeah.”

“Go. Take him with you. Go.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Yes. Just go.”

Jake started the car, turned it around and went down the drive- way. He slowed to a crawl alongside Toad, who kept walking. “Get in.”

Tarkington ignored him. He was chewing on his lower Up.

“Get in the car, Lieutenant, or I will court-martial you, so help me God!”

Tarkington stopped and looked at Grafton behind the wheel. He hesitated, then opened the passenger door and climbed in.

As Jake started the car rolling again he glanced in the rearview mirror. In front of the huge mansion covered with ivy, Caplinger was still sitting in the gravel with his head down.

Three miles down the road Toad spoke. “Why did you stay in the navy?”

“Some things are worth fighting for.”

Toad sat silently, his eyes on the road, for a long time. Finally he said, ‘Tm sorry.”

“Everyone’s sorry. We’re born sorry, we spend our life apolo- gizing, and we die sorry. Sorry for all the guys with their names on the Wall. Sorry for the silly bastards who sent them there and stayed home and aren’t sorry themselves. Sorry for the 230 grunts killed in Lebanon by a truck bomb. Sorry for the simple sonuva- bitch who wouldn’t let the sentry load his rifle. We’re sorry for them all.

“Forget it,” Jake added.

“I should’ve killed the bastard.”

“Wouldn’t have done any good.”

“I suppose not.”