The Minotaur (45 page)

He gave the secretary the hi sign and marched straight for
Grafton’s office- The door was closed, so he knocked, then opened
it and stuck his head in. ” ‘Lo, Captain.” Two men he didn’t know
were sitting in the guest chairs,

“Be with you in a few minutes, Toad. Good to see you back.”

Tarkington went to his desk and impatiently pawed the stuff in
his in basket. Routine read-and-initial crap. He threw his hat on
his desk and sat staring at Grafton’s closed door.

The secretary came over to his desk- “How’s Rita?”

“She’s up at Bethesda. I think she’s gonna be okay.”

“It was big news around here that you two were married.” She
grinned and leaned forward conspiratorially. “None of us had any
idea! It’s so romantic.”

“Yeah,” said Toad Tarkington.

“We’re all just delighted that she’s doing so well. We’ve had her
in our thoughts and prayers every day.”

“Thank you,” Toad said, finally pulling his eyes from Grafton’s
door and giving the woman a smile. “Know anything about that
accident? Why it happened?”

“It’s all very hush-hush,” she confided, her voice low. She
glanced around. “I just haven’t seen anything on it, but it was so
temblor.”

After he assured her he would convey her good wishes to Rita,
she went back to her desk. She was sitting there sorting the mail
when Smoke Judy came in. Toad went over to him. “Commander,
good to see you.”

“Hey, Tarkington. How’s your wife?”

“Gonna be okay, I think. Commander. Say”—Toad drew the
senior officer away from the secretary’s desk—“what can you tell
me about the accident investigation? What went wrong?”

“Toad, all that is classified special access, and I don’t know if
you have access. All I’ve seen is the confidential section of the
report- You’ll have to talk to Captain Grafton.”

“Sorta off the record, it was the E-PROMs, wasn’t it? I figure
EMI dicked them up.” EMI was Electromagnetic Interference.

Judy grinned. “Ask Grafton. Give my best to your wife. And
congratulations!”

“Thanks.”

Grafton’s door opened and Toad stood. He watched the two
men in civilian clothes who came out. Their eyes swept the office as
they exited, casually, taking in everything at a glance. Toad forgot
about them as soon as they were out of sight. He was walking
toward the door when Jake Grafton stuck his head out and mo-
tioned to him-

“How’s Rita?”

“Settled in at Bethesda, sir. The reason I wanted to see you”—

Toad carefully closed the door—“is that I want to know why that
plane went out of control. What have you guys found out?”

Jake Grafton stood with his back to Toad, facing the window. In
a moment he rubbed his nose, then tugged at an earlobe.

“What have you found out, sir?” Toad asked again.

“Huh? Oh. Sorry. The E-PROMs were defective.”

“EMI. I’ll bet.”

“No. The chips were defective. Won’t happen, can’t happen, not
a chance in a zillion, but it did.” Grafton shoved both hands into
his pockets and turned around slowly. He stared at a comer of his
desk. “Defective when installed.”

Something was amiss. “When did you learn this?” Toad said.

“Uh, we knew something was wrong with the chips when we
saw the telemetry, but … ah …” He gestured vaguely at the
door. “Those guys who were just here . . .”

“Who were they?”

“Uh . . .” Suddenly the wrinkles disappeared from Jake
Grafton’s brow and he looked straight at Toad’s face, as if seeing
him for the first time. “Can’t tell you that,” he said curtly. “Classi-
fied.”

“CAG, I’ve got a wife who may be crippled for life. I need to
know.”

“You want to know. There’s a hell of a difference. Glad you’re
back.”

Toad tried to approach the subject from another angle, only to
be rebuffed and shown the door.

Jake Grafton went back to the window and stared without see-
ing. Agents Camacho and Dreyfus had been informative, to a
point. No doubt it was a rare experience for them, answering the
questions instead of asking them. And all those looks and pauses,
searching for wordsl A performance! That’s what it had been—a
performance. Produced and acted because Vice Admiral Henry
demanded it. Well, as little satisfaction as they gave, they were still
virgins.

So what did he know? The E-PROMs were defective. The data
on the chips was that of preliminary engineering work done several
years ago. Somehow . . . No. Someone in this office or at TRX
had given that data to the manufacturer. The agents had skated
around that conclusion, but they didn’t challenge it. They couldn’t.
“Who?” was the question they had refused to answer. He had run
through names to see if he could get a reaction, but no. They had
just stared at him.

“Does this have anything to do with Captain Strong’s death?”
He had asked them that and they had discussed the possibilities, in
the end saying nothing of substance. They should have been politi-
cians, not federal agents.

The only fact he now had that he hadn’t had before was that the
data on the chips matched preliminary engineering work. For that
they had come at Henry’s insistence?

“Why in hell,” Jake muttered, “does everything have to be so
damned complicated?”

At 2 P.M. Smoke Judy decided to do it. The desk beside him was
empty. Les Richards was at a meeting and would be for another
hour, at least. Most of the people in the office were busy on Cap-
tain Grafton’s report or were in a meeting somewhere.

He inserted a formatted disk in the a-drive of his terminal and
started tapping. The code word for the file he wanted was “kilder-
kin.” He didn’t legally have access to this file. The code word that
Albright had supplied was a word he had never heard before. Be-
fore he typed it, he wiped his hands on his trousers and adjusted
the brightness level of the screen.

He had been debating this all week. He had a hundred grand of
Albright’s money plus the bucks he already had. He could walk
out of here this evening, jump a plane at Dulles tomorrow and by 7
A.M. Monday be so far from Washington these clowns would never
find him. Not in fifty years, even if he lived to be ninety-three.

He would be stiffing Albright, of course, but the man was a spy
and wasn’t going to squeal very loudly. And what the hey, in the
big wide world of espionage, a hundred thousand bucks must be
small change.

Or he could copy this file and give it to Albright on Monday
night. Roll the dice, pass Go and collect another hundred and fifty.
Then he would have a total of almost three hundred thousand
green American dollars, in cash. Now, for that kind of money you
could live pretty damn good in one of those little beach villages out
on the edge of nowhere. Get yourself a firm, warm something to
take to bed at night. Live modestly but well, loose and relaxed, as
light as it’s possible to get and keep breathing.

If he copied this file he would not be able to ever come back. If
he walked without it, the heat would dissipate sooner or later over
that E-PROM chip flap and he could slip back into the country.

Do you pay a hundred and fifty grand to keep your options
open? Without the money he would eventually go broke and have
to come back.

He typed the word. “Kilderkin.” There was the list. Three dozen
documents. He looked at the list carefully. Something caught his
eye. He studied the column of numbers that listed how many bytes
each file was composed of. Boy, these were short files.

Then he understood.

He opened one of the files. The title page came up. He hit the
page advance key. The second page was blank. Nothing!

The title page was the whole document! He tried a second docu-
ment. Just a title page.

The Athena file was empty!

Smoke Judy stared at the screen, trying to think. Possibility
Three leaped into his mind. It hadn’t even occurred to him until
this moment. No wonder you never went up the ladder. Smoke.
You just don’t think like those snake charmers, those greasy dream
merchants who slice off a couple million before they’re thirty and
spend the rest of their lives pretending they are somebody. Okay,
my slow, dim-witted son, this is your chance to butcher the fat
hog. Albright isn’t going to have a computer in that singles bar to
check the disk. Give him an empty disk, take his fucking money,
and run.

But no. The joke will be on him. Hell get exactly what he paid
for. It’s Albright’s tough luck the file is empty, not yours,

Judy punched the keys. The disk whirled and whirred.

The file was quickly copied. No wonder, short as it was. Judy put
the disk in a side pocket of his gym bag, exited the program and
turned off the terminal. He spent another ten minutes cleaning up
his desk, locking the drawers, watching the other people in the
office.

At the door he used the grease pencil to annotate the personnel
board hanging on the wall. Back at 4:30. “I’m going to work out,”
he called to the secretary, snagged his cover from the hat rack and
logged out with the security guards. That easy. Sayonara, mothers.

The elevator took a while to arrive. It always did. The navy had
a dirt-cheap lease on this space, so the building owner refused to
update the elevators. The thought made Smoke Judy smile. This
was the very last time he would ever have to put up with all the
petty irritations that came with the uniform. He was through.
When he took this uniform off tonight, that would be the very last
time.

Thank you. Commander Judy. Thank you for your twenty-one
years of faithful service to the navy and the nation. Thank you for
eight cruises, three of them to the Indian Ocean. Thank you for
your devotion, which ruined your marriage and cost you your kids.
Thank you for accepting a mediocre salary and a family move
every two years and the prospect of a pissy little pension. Thank
you for groveling before the tyrannical god of the fitness report,
your fate dependent upon his every whim. Commander Smoke
Judy, you are a great American.

The signal above the elevators dinged. Judy glanced at it The up
light illuminated on the elevator at the far left.

The door of that elevator opened. Vice Admiral Tyler Henry
stepped out. Automatically the commander straightened.

“Good afternoon. Ad—“

The look on Henry’s face stopped him.

“You!” the admiral roared. He turned to the civilian who had
accompanied him on the elevator as he pointed a rigid finger at
Judy. “That’s him! That’s the fucking traitori”

Judy turned and banged open the door to the stairs. With his last
glimpse over his shoulder he saw the civilian reaching under his
Jacket for something on his belt.

He went down the staircase like a rabbit descending a hole,
taking them three at a time.

“Stop! NIS!” The shout came from above, a hollow sound, rever-
berating in the stairwell.

Your luck’s running true to form. Smoke.

He groped into the gym bag as he ran. The pistol was under the
gym clothes.

Seventh floor. Sixth. Noises from above. They were after him.
Fourth.

He kept going down.

Second floor. As he rounded the landing Vice Admiral Henry
came through the fireproof door on the first floor. He rode the
damn elevator!

Smoke shot at the man behind Henry through the door opening
and threw his weight against the door, slamming it shut. In this
enclosed space the report deafened him. The admiral grabbed for
him, so he chopped at his head with the gun barrel.

Tyler Henry went to his knees. Smoke reversed the gun in his
hand and hit him in the head with the butt, using all his strength.
The admiral collapsed.

With ears ringing, he wiped his forehead, trying to think. If he
could get into the parking garages under the building quickly
enough, he might have a chance. He could hear running feet above-
Galvanized. he leaped over the admiral’s body and charged down-
ward.

Level G1. Smoke went out the door and looked wildly around as
he ran for the nearest row of cars. No one in sight. He had beaten
them down here, but he had mere seconds.

He ran along looking for keys dangling in the ignition, frustra-
tion and panic welling in him.

Hang tough, Smoke. You’ve been in tight spots before and
you’ve always gotten yourself out in one piece.

He loped down the row, searching desperately.

Ah, there ahead, some guy was unlocking his door. A civilian.
Smoke went for him on a dead run.

The man heard Judy coming at the last moment and looked
back over his shoulder, just in time to see the gun barrel chopping
down.

Smoke picked up the keys from the concrete and tossed his gym
bag through the open driver’s door. He pulled the man out of the
way and got behind the wheel. As he started the car he could see
men pouring out of the elevator and stairwell. They were search-
ing, spreading out, hunting for him.

The engine caught. Smoke backed out carefully, snicked the
transmission into drive and headed for the exit. Someone was com-
ing this way, shouting.

A shot!

He stepped on the gas.

He went around the last pillar with tires squalling and shot up
the exit ramp.

The street at the top of the ramp was one-way, from right to left.
Smoke looked right. One car coming. He swerved that way and
jammed the accelerator down. The driver of that sedan swerved to
avoid him, then decided to try to ram. Too latel

Down the street a half block to the intersection, then left
through a hole in traffic, almost grazing an oncoming truck, which
skidded to avoid him with its horn roaring.

Right again, then left. He ran a red light and swung right onto
the bus-only ramp, which led up onto the freeway. Merged with
traffic and scanning the rearview mirror, only then did Smoke Judy
begin to try to sort out what had happened.

“He’s dead.” The ambulance attendant covered the body of Vice
Admiral Tyler Henry with a sheet. “You people give us some
room.”