The Minotaur (13 page)

At the intersection a car slammed on its brakes to the screeching of
tires, barely missing him. He bounced off a parked car but he
didn’t slow.

He almost broke the key getting it into the door lock. The engine
ground mercilessly and refused to start.

He smacked his head against the steering wheel in rage and
frustration. He tried the ignition again as he scanned the sidewalks,
searching for the agents that must be coming.

The engine caught. Franklin slammed the shift lever into drive
and mashed on the accelerator.

Bang! Into the car ahead. Holy . . . ! Reverse. Then forward,
out of the parking space.

Cranking the wheel over at the comer, he slewed around with
tires squalling and stomped on the gas.

Toad Tarkington stared glumly at the remains of a beer in the glass
in front of him. Across the table Rita Moravia was chattering away
with the peckerhead attack pilot who had spent the last three days
initiating her into the mysteries of the A-6. Beside Toad sat the
bombardier who had been coaching him, ol’ Henry Jenks. Both
these mental giants were hanging on every word from Moravia’s
gorgeous lips. There she sat, smiling and joking and behaving like a
real live normal woman-type female, as she never did around him,
damn her! And these two attack weenies were eating it with a
spoon!

The pilot. Toad decided, had a rather high opinion of himself
He looked and acted like a lifelong miser who has just decided to
spend a quarter on a piece of pussy that he knows will be worth
two dollars. His smile widened every time Moravia glanced into his
little pig eyes. If he wasn’t careful his face would crack.

This BN, Jenks, wasn’t any better. He obviously hadn’t had a
good piece of ass since his junior year of high school- Jenks was
telling a funny to the pilot as he watched Rita’s reaction out of the
comer of his eyes. “Do you know a fighter puke’s definition of
foreplay?” After the obligatory negative from his listeners, Jenks
continued. “Six hours of begging.” Rita joined in the ha-ha-has.

Watching these two cheap masturbators in action was a thirsty
business. The waitress caught Toad’s hi sign and came over. “Four
double tequilas, neat.” Toad said, and looked around to see if there
were any other orders. The attack weenies were still drooling down
Moravia’s cleavage as she told an anecdote about something or
other. ‘That’s it,” he told the waitress, who regarded him incredu-
lously.

“Four?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She shrugged and turned away.

The club was still crowded with the remnants of the Friday-
night Happy Hour gang. The married guys had left some time back
and a bunch of reservists were drifting in. Altogether forty or fifty
people, ten or twelve of them women, three of whom were still in
uniform. Canned rock music blared from loudspeakers that Toad
didn’t see. Only one couple was dancing.

When the waitress brought the drinks she sat them in the center
of the table. Jenks looked at the drinks with raised eyebrows. “I’ll
have another beer,” he said. “Perrier with a twist,” Moravia
chirped. “Diet Coke,” intoned the lecher beside her.

Toad drank one of the tequilas in two gulps. The liquor burned
all the way down- Ah baby!

Another song started on the loudspeakers, a fast number. Toad
tossed off a second drink, then climbed up on he chair. He
straightened and filled his lungs with air- “Hey, fat girl,” he roared.

Every eye in the place turned his way. Toad picked the nearest
female and leaped toward her with a shout; “Let’s dance!” Behind
him his chair flew over with a crash.

And oh, that woman could dance.

7

The bedroom lights were on in
the second story of the town house when Terry Franklin parked
the car. He turned off the ignition and headlights and sat behind
the wheel, trying to think.

He had driven around for an hour and a half after his panicked
departure from the drop, craning to spot the agents he felt sure
were tailing him. At one point he had pulled over and looked at the
damage to the front of his car. The left front headlight was
smashed and the bumper bent from smacking into that car when
he tried to get out of that parking space too quickly.

A dozen times he thought he spotted a tail, but the trailing
vehicle usually went its own way at the next corner or the one
after. A blue Ford with Pennsylvania plates followed along for half
a mile until he could stand it no longer and ran a red light. His
panicky wanderings back and forth through the avenues and traffic
circles of downtown Washington seemed like something from a
drug-induced nightmare, a horrible descent into a paranoid hell of
traffic and stoplights and police cars that refused to chase him.

Franklin sat now behind the wheel smelling his own foul body
odor. His clothes were sodden with sweat.

Lucy and the kids were home. He tried to come up with a lie for
Lucy as he scanned the street for mysterious watchers and people
sitting in cars.

How long could he live like this? Should he take the money he
had and run? Where could he run with the FBI and CIA looking
for him? He didn’t have enough money to evade them forever.
Should he go to Russia? The very thought nauseated him. Freezing
in some gray workers paradise for the rest of his days was about as
far from the good life as a man could get this side of the grave.

He wasn’t feeling well and went to the dispensary, that was what
he would tell Lucy. God knows he must look like he was in the
terminal stages of AIDS. No good. No prescription. A beer. Yeah,
he went out for a beer. He got out of the car wishing he had really
stopped for one. After another look at the broken headlight and
grille, he plodded toward the front door.

She came out of the kitchen when she heard the door open.
“Where have you been?” She stood rigid, her face pale.

Uh-oh. He kept his voice calm. “Hey, babe- I went out for a
beer. Did you all get anything at the mall?”

“I know where you’ve been. Cindy across the street has told me
all about your little expeditions when I’m out for the evening. I
know all about you, you son of a bitch.”

He stared, thunderstruck. This isn’t happening. No, not to me.
For the love of— “How?”

“Who is she? I want to know. Who is she?”

“Who is who?”

“Who is the goddamn bitch you’re tomcatting around with, you
son of a fucking bitch. Who is she?”

At last he understood. As the relief washed over him he was
suddenly too weak to stand. He sank into a chair. “Lucy, there’s
no other wo—“

“Don’t give me that shit! I knowl Cindy told me!” She was a
quivering, shouting pillar of hysterical righteousness. “You’re
cheating on me.” Tears were flowing now. “Oh God. I tried so
hard . . .”

“Lucy, calm down. Please, for the love of— The kids will hear.
Honest to God. there’s no other woman.” He got to his feet and
approached her. “Babe, I love you. There’s nobody—“

“Don’t you touch me, liar. I’m getting a divorce.” She spun and
made for the stairs. “I’m locking the bedroom door. If you try to
get in, I’ll call the police. Liar. Cheat Bastard.”

He lost it. It had been that kind of evening, “You crazy cunt,” he
roared. “You don’t know shit. I went down to the corner for a
goddamn beer and when I get home you’re fucking loony crazy. I
haven’t cheated on youl I haven’t fucked another woman since that
night I knocked you up at the drive-in. You don’t have any god-
damn evidence at all, you crazy lunatic.”

He heard the bedroom door slam and the kids sobbing. He threw
himself onto the living-room couch. Some days—it’s absolutely
crazy how some days just go bug-fuck nuts. You almost get ar-
rested, smash up the front of the car, your wife demands a divorce
because you’re cheating on her when you’re not. What else? What
else can fucking happen before midnight?

The drop was empty. He stretched out on the couch and con-
templated that fact. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. He could
hear Lucy putting the kids to bed upstairs. Finally the noises
stopped.

He would have to call them. In Miami they had given him an
emergency telephone number that he had memorized and a verifi-
cation code. He would call. He looked around for the evening
paper. On top of the TV. He flipped to the sports section. The code
was simple; the location and opponent in the next scheduled game
of the Bullets, Orioles or Redskins, whichever was in season. They
had been insistent; he was never to call except in an emergency and
then only from a pay phone. Well, this was sure as hell an emer-
gency. But he wasn’t going back out onto those streets tonight, no
way. Even if he could work up the courage, Lucy would use a
butcher knife on his crotch when he got back.

He went into the kitchen and dialed the phone. On the third ring
a man’s voice answered with a recitation of the telephone number.
The voice was tired, the English perfect. “Six-six-five, oh-one-oh-
five.”

“This is Poor Richard.” He had picked his code name himself.
Easier for him to remember, they said. “It wasn’t there. It wasn’t
at the dr—“

“Verify please.” The voice was hard, exasperated.

“The Bullets play the Celtics tomorrow night at Capital Cen-
tre.”

“I’ll call you back. Where are you?”

“Seven-two-nine, seven-four-oh-one.”

“You’re at home?” The voice was incredulous, outraged.

“Yeah, I—” He stopped when he realized he was talking to a
dead instrument.

Shit. He would have to call again. He had to find out what the
hell was going on. A pay phone. Lucy was going to come sweet-
Jesus holy-hell screaming unglued. What a night! He picked up his
jacket and eased the front door shut behind him.

From her seat on the top of the stairs, Lucy heard the door close.
She had started to come down earlier but stopped when she heard
him enter the kitchen and pick up the phone. She had heard his
side of the conversation and she sat now trying to figure it out.
“Poor Richard” he had called himself. It wasn’t there. The Bullets
play the Celtics? A code of some sort?

What is he into? she asked herself, her horror growing. He had
looked so stunned when she said she knew. That look was the
verification she needed that he was cheating on her. But how did
that fit with a code and nonsense sentences? Was he placing bets
with a bookie? No, he wasn’t spending money she didn’t know
about. Something to do with his job at the Pentagon? Could he be
spying, like those Walkers several years ago? No, that wasn’t possi-
ble. Or was it? He would do it if he could get away with it, she
decided. In their eleven years of marriage she had found him a man
who always put himself first.

What else could it be? My God, what other possibilities were
there?

The sun was still embedded in the gray scud over the ocean on
Saturday morning when Jake and Callie walked through the gap in
the low dune on their way to the beach. Callie trailed along behind
him on the narrow path, her hands tucked into the pockets of her
windbreaker.

He strolled as he always did, his eyes moving restlessly across
the sky and the sea and the naked sand and coming to rest often on
her. Whenever she was with him she drew his eyes. It had been
that way since they first met, one of the little unconscious things he
did that told her without words what she meant to him. This
morning walking beside him she was acutely aware of his glances.

“How did your little interview with the soul stripper go yester-
day?”

“He says I have to come to grips with your decision to ram that
transport in the Med last fall.”

Jake stopped and turned to face her. He looked bewildered.
“What the hell are you worrying about that for?”

“For a week I was a widow.”

He turned away and looked out to sea. It was a moment before
he spoke. “You may be again someday.” He faced her. “Women
live longer than men these days. I don’t have a crystal ball, Callie.
Jesus, we can’t stop living because we’re mortal.” He gestured an-
grily. “I may get hit by a meteor ten seconds from now. I may get
run over by some drunk when I step off the curb at—“

He stopped because she was walking away from him, along the
beach, her arms wrapped around her cheat.

He hurried after her. “Hey—“

“For a whole week you were dead. You had killed yourself chas-
ing those damned Arabs and I was left here all alone!” He put his
hand on her arm and she jerked away, whirling to face him. “You
knew how much I loved you and . . . and . . . when they called
and said you were alive, the memorial service was scheduled for
the next morning. I was going to bury you. You were dead!” He
enveloped her in his arms and she pressed her face against his
shoulder.

After a while she stopped trembling and he murmured, “Still
love me?”

“Yes.”

“A little bit or a whole lot?”

“I haven’t decided.”

With his arm around her shoulder, he started them walking
north again. In a moment he paused and kissed her, then they
resumed their journey with their arms locked together.

Something white. Whatever it was that blocked Toad’s gaze, it was
white. He closed his eyes and the pain and nausea washed over
him, enveloping him. Ye gods . . . Something hard and cold
against his cheek—he opened his eyes again—and white. Lotta
light … He moved. Shit! He was lying in a fucking bathtub.

He raised himself slowly. His head felt like it was coming off. He
was still dressed in his khaki uniform, but it was wrinkled and had
vomit on it. He still had his shoes on. Oh God, he felt worse than
he had ever felt in his entire twenty-eight years, felt like he had
been dead for a week or two. He sat up slowly. His head was being
hammered on by an angry King Kong. After a moment he grasped
the shower handles and faucet and hauled himself erect. He
swayed as the blood pounded in his temples with every beat of his
heart. Then he tried to step out of the tub. He tripped and
sprawled heavily on the floor, striking his head against the bottom
of the sink cabinet He lay there, too sick and dazed to move.

Amid the pain he heard the door open. “Good morning.” A
woman’s voice.

Toad flopped over and squinted against the ceiling light. Rita
Moravia!

What had he done to deserve this? It’s true, life is all misery and
pain.

“I’d appreciate it if you would transport yourself to your Own
room, Tarkington. Now. I don’t want anybody to get the wrong
idea about you and me.”

He tried to speak. His mouth was dry and tasted of sour vomit.
He cleared his throat and licked his lips. “How’d I get here?”

“Pour men carried you in here last night. We thought someone
should keep an eye on you during the night. I volunteered.”

“Aren’t you a sweetie.”

“I want you out of here, Tarkington.”

He hoisted himself up and staggered past her. He was going to
have to find another bathroom pretty damn quick. He went
through the little sitting room and got the door open and was
hustling down the hall when he heard her voice behind him.
“We’re flying at two this afternoon. Meet you in the lobby at ten
till twelve.”

Jake sat on the crest of the low dune and watched the glider mov-
ing north, away from him above the dune. He had its nose pointed
obliquely forty-five degrees out to sea, but the velocity of the in-
coming wind was such that the plane stayed more or less over the
dune. He was holding her low, only eight or ten feet up, to take
advantage of the upward vector of the breeze as it crossed the low
sand hill.

“Better turn her back this way,” advised the eleven-year-old
aviation expert from up the street.

Jake banked the plane. “Keep the nose up,” David urged, his
voice rising. Jake fed in back stick. Too late. The right wingtip
kissed the sand and she cartwheeled. David was up and running
instantly.

The boy was examining the wreckage when Jake reached him.
The rubber bands that held the wings to the fuselage had popped
off, which undoubtedly minimized the damage. “A hole in the
wing Monokote and a busted spar in the right horizontal stabi-
lizer,” the youngster advised cheerfully. “Not bad. Yippy-skippy!
You gotta remember to feed in a little back stick on the turns,”

“Yeah. Let’s take it over to my house and fix it”

“What kind of planes do you fly in the navy?” David asked as
they walked down the beach with the pieces of the glider in their
arms.

“A-6s mostly. Last year I flew the F-14 some.”

“Wow, those fighters! Did you see Top GunT

“Uh-huh.”

“My dad bought that movie for me. I must have watched it a
couple dozen times. When I grow up I’m gonna fly fighters.” He
paused, apparently considering the implications of this bold state-
ment. “What’s it really like?” he asked, not quite so confident-
Jake was still trying to explain when they rounded the comer
and he saw the strange car in the driveway. When he saw the blue
Department of Defense bumper sticker with the three stars on it,
he knew. Vice Admiral Henry. He led the boy inside.

The admiral was wearing jeans and a heavy jacket today. He and
another man in a coat sat at the dining room table with Callie
drinking coffee, David marched over to her and held the wing so
she could see it. “He let the nose fall in a turn and crashed. We can
fix it, though.”

“Good morning, Admiral.”

“Jake, I’d like you to meet Luis Camacho.”

“Hi.” Jake leaned across the table-and shook hands. Camacho
was in his early fifties with no tan, a man who spent his life in-
doors. Even though he wore a jacket his spare tire was evident, but
his handshake was firm and quick. He didn’t smile. Jake got the
impression that he was not a man who smiled often.

“Nice place you have here,” Camacho said.

“We like it,” Callie said. “Would you all like a quiet place to
talk?”

The admiral stood. “I thought we could take a walk along the
beach. Be a shame to drive all the way over here from Washington
and not walk on the beach.”

The three men left David working on the glider at the kitchen
table. He was telling Callie about servos and receivers when they
went out the door.

“Nice day,” Admiral Henry muttered as they walked toward the
beach trail at the end of the street.

“They’re all nice here,” Jake said. “Raw and rainy at times, but
nice.”

“Luis is from the FBI.”

“Got credentials?” Camacho produced them from a pocket and
passed them to Jake, who looked the ID card and badge over
carefully and returned them without comment

Henry stopped at the end of the little path that led through the
waist-high dune and looked right and left, up and down the beach.
He turned right, south, and walked with his hands in his pockets
toward die area with the fewest people. He didn’t even glance
toward the ocean. Out on the horizon a large containership was
making its way north, perhaps to round Cape Henlopen and go up
the Delaware.

“Yesterday you wanted to know what really happened in West
Virginia after Harold Strong was killed.”

“Yessir.”

“I told you the truth, but I left a few things out. Camacho here
was with me that morning. We met with Trooper Keadle and the
local prosecutor, guy named Don Cookman. They weren’t happy
campers. They knew murder when they saw it and cooperation
smacked of cover-up. So Luis got on the phone to Washington and
the director of the FBI drove up along with the forensic team. We
got cooperation with a capital C from then on.”

“Go on,” Jake prompted when the admiral fell silent.

The admiral turned to face him. “You’re asking too damn much,
Jake.”

“I’m not asking for anything other than what I need to know to
do my job.”

“Like shit”

“Would you let yourself be led along by the nose if you were me?
Jesus Christ, Admiral, my predecessor was murdered! I got a wife
over there”—he pointed back toward his house—“who would like
to have me alive for—“

“What do you want to know?”

“Why was Strong killed? What did you tell those people in West
Virginia? Why the silence on a murder? Who and what are you
investigating?” He looked at Camacho. “Who the hell are you?”‘

Camacho spoke first “I’m special agent in charge of the Wash-
ington-area FBI group that handles counterespionage. That’s why
the locals in West Virginia cooperated. That’s why Trooper Keadle
called me when you left his office Thursday. That’s why he called
me when Commander Judy showed up that afternoon to search
Harold Strong’s cabin.” He turned and started down the beach,
still talking. Admiral Henry and Jake Grafton trailed along. “Why
was Strong killed? If we knew that we would be almost there. It
wasn’t personal or domestic. No way. It was a hit, a contract. He
got taken out by someone who knew precisely what they were
doing, a cool customer. So the hypothesis that seems most likely is
that he knew something he shouldn’t. That leads us to his job—the
ATA program.”

“That sea story about a Minotaur—that was true?”

”Yeah, that’s the code name. But we don’t know if it’s one guy
or several,” the agent said, with a glance at Tyler Henry, who
picked that moment to look out to sea.

“I thought,” Jake said, “that these spy things usually get broken
when you get somebody to talk.”

“That’s the history. It’d be nice if we knew who to put the
screws to to clean up this little mess. But we don’t. So right now
we’re busy doing it the hard way.” He led the two naval officers
along the beach as he talked and answered questions. When Jake
remembered to glance out to sea, the containership was no longer
in sight

“Let’s transfer Smoke Judy,” Jake suggested to the admiral.

Henry just stared at him.

“Dunedin said if I got goosey. I could get rid of him.”

“I’d rather you left him in place,” Camacho said. “I’ve already
made that request to Admiral Henry and now I’ll make it to you.”

“Going to be real tough to pretend I don’t know anything.”

“You don’t know anything,” Henry growled. He jerked his
thumb at Camacho. “If he talked to you for a week, you still
wouldn’t know anything. I sure as hell don’t.”

An hour later, as they came single file through the dune trail,
Henry said, “Now you know as much as I do, which is precious
little. On Monday you tell that chief in officer personnel to tear up
your retirement papers.”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t ever pull that stunt on me again, Grafton.”

“Or …”

“Don’t you abandon ship and leave me and Dunedin up to our
necks alone in this sack of shit.”

After the two men had departed in the admiral’s car, Jake went
back into the house. CaUie was sitting on the couch reading a book.
“David got your plane fixed, but his mother called and he went
home for lunch. He said he would come back later and help you fly
it”

Jake nodded and poured a cup of coffee.

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Huh?”

“Jake . . .” Her voice had that time-to-come-clean, no-fflore-
nonsense tone. That tone in her voice always got his attention,
perhaps because his mother had used it so effectively some years
ago.

“Admiral Henry’s my boss’s boss. Camacho’s a civilian. They
drove over here to talk about a problem at the office. A classified
problem. That’s all I can say. You want coffee?”