The Minotaur (19 page)

Matilda Jackson peered through the peephole in the door. A man.
“Luis Camacho, Mrs. Jackson. We met yesterday. Don’t you re-
member?”

Oh yes. One of the FBI agents. She unfastened the chain lock
and shot the dead bolt. When she opened the door, he said in a low
voice, barely audible, “Special Agent Camacho, Mrs. Jackson.
May I come in?”

“Please.” She looked across the street at the crack house. No
one in sight, though Lord knows, the lookout was probably watch-
ing out the window. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of him. She
shut the door quickly.

Now he produced his credentials. “I have a few follow-up ques-
tions and—“

“Let’s talk in the kitchen.” She led the way. “Would you like a
cup of coffee?”

“That would be nice.”

The kitchen was warmer than the living room, and well lit. This
was her favorite room in the house. Charlie had enjoyed sitting
here watching her cook, the smell of baking things heavy in the air.

Camacho sat at the table and waited until she had poured coffee
for both of them and sat down across from him. “Perhaps we can
go over the whole thing again, if you don’t mind?”

“Oh, not at all.” She explained again about the crack house,
about Mandy and Mrs. Blue and the dudes who delivered the
crack and picked up the money. He led her into the events of last
Friday night, the photos and the man who left the cigarette pack in
the iron post two doors up the street.

“So you never saw anyone reach into that post?”

“No. I didn’t. God, I didn’t even think about that. If I had
thought that somebody was going to come along any second and
look for that thing I probably wouldn’t have gone out there and
gotten it. No. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I just wasn’t
thinking.”

“We’re pleased that you did. It’s concerned citizens like you that
enable law enforcement to function- When the time comes, and it’s
months—even years—away, would you be willing to testify?”

“Well . . .” Those dopers, if they knew who she was . . .

“We’ll need your testimony to get the photos introduced as evi-
dence.”

“I’ll . . .” She swallowed hard. She would be risking her life.

“I’ll think about— Can’t you do it without me? You don’t know
what you’re asking.”

“We’ll try, Mrs. Jackson. We won’t ask unless we really need
you.” He sipped his coffee. “How long has the crack house been
there?”

“Three, maybe four months. I called the police—“

“Have you been watching the place since it opened?”

“Yes, On and off. You know how it is. I just look over there
occasionally. Try and keep an eye on what’s going on.”

“Have you seen the black men there before?”

“Oh yes.” She thought about it. “At least a dozen times, I guess,
I think they come almost every day to collect the money and such,
but a lot of times I miss them. They don’t come at the same time
every day. And sometimes I think they skip a day.”

“Have they seen you watching?”

“I don’t think so. My God, I hope not.” She sat back and
smoothed her hair. “I’ve tried to stay out of sight . . . I’ve seen
them so often . . .”

“How about the man who put the cigarette pack in the hollow
fence post? Have you seen him before?”

She thought about it. “I—I don’t think so. But really, I just can’t
remember.”

“Have you ever seen anyone retrieve anything from the post?”

“Well, I—I just can’t remember. Maybe I saw somebody and
didn’t pay much attention. Is it important?”

“At this point I don’t know.”

“Would he be white?”

“Probably.”

She thought about it. There were so many people, up and down
the street, all day long, week in, week out. Yet not that many were
white. “I’ll have to try and remember.”

“Okay.” He scooted his chair back and stood- “I appreciate your
taking the time to talk to me. Is there anything else you think we
should know?”

“Oh, I guess not. But when are you all going to get that crack
house closed down?”

“We’ll talk to the District police. I hope it’s soon.”

She accompanied him to the door and carefully locked it behind
him. If only they would shut those people down. Get them out of
the neighborhood.

“I got lipstick all over you,” Rita Moravia said, and used a wet
paper towel to wipe Toad’s face. This lavatory was certainly not
designed for two adults. He perched on the commode with the top
down and she sat on his lap, humming softly as she worked on his
face and he swabbed hers.

He carefully wiped away all the mascara and makeup. “You
shouldn’t use this stuff,” he said. “You’don’t need it.”

”Why did you get drunk last Friday?”

“I wanted you and couldn’t have you.” He lifted his shoulders
and lowered them. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She laid her forehead against his and ran her fingers through his
hair-

Someone pounded on the door.

“Maybe we should get back to our seats,” he suggested.

“I suppose,” she murmured, but she didn’t move.

More knocking. “Hey, in there!”

Toad helped her to her feet and straightened her uniform. He
ran his hands across her buttocks and hips as he stood. She kissed
him again to the accompaniment of the pounding on the door.

She stepped out first, her head up, still holding his hand. Three
stews stood in the kitchen area staring at them. Rita Moravia
smiled. “We’re newlyweds,” she announced simply, and stepped
past.

The women applauded wildly and the passengers joined in.

They parked the cars in the lot outside of Rita’s apartment com-
plex and Toad carried her bags in. He had followed her home from
Dulles. They kissed in the elevator and they kissed in front of the
door. A giggling, happy Rita used her key.

When the door swung open a young woman on the couch in
front of the television shrieked. She had her hair in curlers and was
wearing only bra and panties. Toad got an eyeful of skin as she
scurried for the bedroom.

“Don’t mind Harriet,” Rita said. “I do the same for her on
alternate Saturdays when she brings her boyfriend by.”

Toad grinned and nodded. He stood in the center of the living
room and glanced about while Rita lugged her bags toward the
bedroom. “Need any help?”

“No, I’ll manage. Make yourself comfortable.” In a moment she
called from the bedroom, “There’s probably Coke in the fridge.”

Toad sagged comfortably into the couch the roommate had re-
cently vacated. Aha, a remote control for the TV. He nipped
around the dial until he found a basketball game and settled his
feet upon the settee. Knowing women as he did, he knew he had a
while to wait.

“Who’s the hunk?” Harriet demanded of Rita in the bedroom.

“A friend.”

“What about Ogden? He’s called twice this week wanting to
know when you’d be home. I told him you’d call him this eve-
ning.” Ogden was an attorney at a large Washington law firm
whom Rita had been dating.

Rita opened her suitcase on the bed and began to empty it. She
separated her dirty clothes from the clean ones, working quickly.

“I’ll call Ogden tomorrow.”

Harriet eased the bedroom door open and peeked at Toad
sprawled on the couch. “He’s a live one, all right.” she said after
she had eased the door shut again. “Navy?”

“Yep.”

Harriet sat cross-legged on her bed. “Are you sure about this,
Rita? Ogden’s a pretty great guy. He’s athletic, rich parents, good
future, madly in—“

“He wasn’t the one. I’m sure.”

Harriet pounced. “And this guy? Is he the one?”

“Maybe.” Rita removed the pins that held her hair against the
back of her head and shook it out. “He might be. He almost got
away.” She grinned and attacked her hair with a brush. “Reeled
him in on the plane this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?”

“And I’m going over to his apartment to spend the night.”

Harriet flopped back on her bed and pointed her legs at the
ceiling, toes extended. “Well, no one can say you’re just jumping
right into bed with him. My God, you’ve stifled your hormones
and female appetites for an entire afternoon . . . it’s positively
Victorian. This will set the sexual revolution back a hundred years
if it gets out.” She lowered her legs and propped her head on one
arm. “Why not let it cool off a quarter of a degree, Rita? A
week . . .”

Rita Moravia shook her head.

“You’ve got it bad, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Luis,” his wife called from the top of the stairs- “Harlan is here.”

“Send him down.”

Mrs. Camacho smiled at her next-door neighbor and said, “He’s
in the basement watching a basketball game. As usual.”

“I thought he might be,” Harlan said, smiled and descended the
staircase.

“Hey, Harlan. Great game. Boston College and West Virginia.
BCs ahead by a bucket.”

“Do you men want a beer?” Mrs. Camacho calling down from
the kitchen.

“Thanks anyway, honey.” They heard her close the door at the
top of the stairs.

Harlan Albright sank into a chair near Camacho. He extracted a
pack of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one. “Catching any
spies?”

“Got Matilda Jackson’s photos back from the lab yesterday af-
ternoon. She’s got one of Vasily Pochinkov, the assistant agricul-
tural whosis at the embassy. So we’ve burned him. I’m trying to get
surveillance approved. And sure enough, Mrs. Jackson had Frank-
lin’s drop message. The computer guys should decide it’s the Pen-
tagon by tomorrow.”

“Better tell me all of it” Albright stared at the television as
Camacho went through the initial interview with Mrs. Jackson and
her attorney, the lab report, the interview with Mrs. Jackson today
at her house. When Camacho was finished, Albright lit another
cigarette. “Is there a crack house across the street?”

“Apparently. One of my men was going to check the D.C. police
mug books. We’ll have names and rap sheets by tomorrow, proba-
bly.”

“But there’s no way to tie this in with the crack gang?”

“You know there isn’t.”

“Did Mrs. Jackson ever see Franklin?”

Luis Camacho rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. She
may have and doesn’t remember. She said she’d think about it.”

“What do you think?”

“How many times has he been to that drop?”

“Five.”

He considered. “I think she’s probably seen him,” he said at last
“Whether she could pick him out of a lineup or mug book, I don’t
know.”

“Where will you be if your boss asks you why you haven’t tried
that, once the Pentagon angle is nailed down?”

“I’ll look like an incompetent. I’ll have to bring her in to go over
the photo books to cover myself.”

“When?”

“Maybe next week. Maybe the week after. They’ll want to evalu-
ate. At first they’re going to be interested in Pochinkov. For a day
or two. Then they’ll get interested in Mrs. Jackson again.”

“Pochinkov is a dead end.”

“They’ll come to that conclusion. Bigelow, my boss, has no
background in counterespionage, but he’s a smart man. Hell drool
over Pochinkov for a day or two, toy with the idea of trapping and
turning him, then eventually decide that we can’t spare the man-
power to watch him day and night forever. Of course, the National
Security Council could decide to try to catch him servicing a drop
just so we can kick him out of the country, but you probably have a
better feel for that than I.”

A wry grin twisted Albright’s lips. The implication was that
Albright knew whether or not the Soviets were going to pick up an
American diplomat in Moscow anytime soon, knowledge that Ca-
macho well knew Albright would never have. So even here, in the
safety and comfort of his awn den, Camacho was stroking the ego
of his control. He did it unconsciously, without even flunking. No
wonder Luis Camacho had done so well in the FBI.

“How come you guys had a drop in that neighborhood any-
way?”

“It was on the approved list.” Albright shrugged. The paper
pushers in Moscow had no appreciation of the dynamics of an
American neighborhood, how fast it could evolve or erode. The
approval of drop sites was one method Soviet intelligence bureau-
crats used to justify their salaries, but Albright wasn’t going to
explain that to Camacho. He had learned early in his career that a
wise man never complains about things he can’t change, especially
to an agent he needed to keep loyal and motivated.

Still, Luis Camacho wasn’t like other agents. Albright had been
running him now for over ten years, but it was only in the last few
years, when the source the Americans called had
surfaced and within months Camacho had had the serendipitous
good fortune to be assigned to head the Washington, D.C., FBI
counterespionage department, that Camacho had become a Soviet
treasure.

Tonight as he stared at the ballet of black men on the television
screen, Albright reflected again on that chain of events. After a
high-profile black-tie affair in the ballroom of a Washington hotel,
the Soviet ambassador had discovered a picture postcard in his
coat pocket as his limousine returned him to the embassy. On the
front of the card was a photo of the Pentagon at night On the back
were two words and a series of numbers and letters—a computer
file name—all written in block letters. Below that were ten words;

not a message, just words. Nothing else. No fingerprints except the
ambassador’s.

It had been enough. Using Terry Franklin, the Soviets had ob-
tained engineering and performance data on the new U.S. Air
Force stealth fighter, the F-117A, from the Pentagon computer
system. The information appeared genuine. So who was the
source? Unmasking the source would undoubtedly reveal why the
information was passed and enable the Soviet intelligence commu-
nity to properly evaluate its authenticity. But the official guest list
for the black-tie reception ran to over three hundred names and
was almost a Who’s Who of official Washington. The names of
spouses and girlfriends in attendance were not on the list. nor were
the names of at least a dozen officials who had been seen there. The
fists of hotel and caterer personnel were also inaccurate and incom-
plete.

The upper echelons of the Soviet intelligence community were
stymied. The first rule of intelhgenee gathering—know your source
—had been violated. Yet the information appeared genuine and
revealed just how far ahead of the Soviets the Americans were with
stealth technology.

Three months after the ambassador had received the postcard,
an unsigned letter in a plain white envelope arrived at the Soviet
embassy addressed to the ambassador. The letter, in neat block
letters, was a commentary on the rights of minorities in the Soviet
Union. In accordance with standard procedure for unsolicited
mail, the letter was sent to Moscow. There the code was broken.
The writer had constructed a matrix using the first random word
on the original postcard as the key word. The message was three
random words, the first two of which proved to be computer access
words. The third word wasn’t a word at all, but a series of numbers
and letters. From the bowels of the Pentagon, Terry Franklin pro-
duced a fascinating document concerning the development of a
land-based anti-satellite laser about which Soviet intelligence had
known absolutely nothing.

Further letters followed, each encoded on the basis of a key word
which appeared on the original postcard, the ambassador’s. The
information was golden: more stealth. Trident missile updates, SDI
research breakthroughs, laser optics for artillery, satellite naviga-
tion systems … the list was breathtaking. The Soviets were see-
ing hard data on America’s most precious defense secrets. And
they didn’t know who was giving it to them. Or why.

So Harlan Albright was told to use Mother Russia’s most pre-
cious agent to find out. And here he sat, Luis Camacho, FBI spe-
cial agent in charge, Washington, D.C., office of counterespionage.

Camacbo hadn’t found a sniff.

Damn, it was frustrating. And now the Terry Franklin tool to
exploit the unknown source was unraveling.

“Do you believe in the entropy principle?” Camacho asked.
There was a commercial on the television.

Albright shifted his gaze and tried to dear his thoughts. “En-
tropy?”

“Disorder always increases in a closed system.”

“I suppose.”

“Will Franklin hold up?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it And he knows too much.” He felt a
chut as he contemplated the wrath of his superiors if Franklin
should ever list his thefts for the Americans.

“Can you get him to the Soviet Union?”

Albright shrugged and stood. “I’d better go home and get some
sleep.”

“Yeah.”

“Drop over tomorrow evening.”

“Sure.”

Rita Moravia’s worst moment came when she preceded Toad into
his apartment. “I’ve only been here a month or so,” Toad said
behind her. Open cardboard boxes brimming with books and tow-
els and bric-a-brac sat everywhere. She stepped into the kitchen.
The sink was full of dishes. Something hideous was growing in a
saucepan on the stove. The refrigerator contained half a case of
beer and a six-pack of Coke—nothing else. At least it was clean.
But how in the world had this man managed to get all these dishes
dirty? Aha, the freezer was chock-full of frozen vegetables and TV
dinners. Even some meat.

She dumped the contents of the saucepan into the sink and ran
the pan full of water, then let the water from the faucet flush the
putrid mixture past the trap.

Toad was fidgety. “I’m not much of a housekeeper,” he mum-
bled. “Been trying to get unpacked and all but I’ve been so busy.”

Rita went into the bedroom and snapped on the lights. The bed
was a rumpled mess. She ripped away the spread and blanket and
tossed them on the floor, then began stripping the sheets. “Get out
clean sheets.”

“Uh . . . y’see, that’s the only set I have. Why waste money on
extra sheets when you can only use one set at a . . .” He ran out
of words when she glanced at him as she removed the pillows from
their cases. “Why don’t I take the sheets and pillowcases down to
the basement and run them through the washer.” He grabbed them
from the floor where Rita had thrown them and charged for the
door. It closed behind him with a bang. Rita Moravia smiled and
shook her head.

She tackled the bedroom first. Dirty clothes were piled in one
comer of the closet. She used a T-shirt for a dustrag. No cleanser
in the bathroom. He had never cleaned the commode. She was
swabbing it when she heard the apartment door open. In seconds
he appeared.

“Hey, Rita, you don’t—“

“Is there a convenience store nearby that’s still open?”

146 Stephen Coonfs

“I suppose . . .”

“I want cleanser, dishwashing liquid, something to clean these
floors with … a mop and some sponges. And an air freshener.”

“Tomorrow I—“

“Now, Tarkington.”

He turned and left without a word.

In twenty minutes he was back with a bag full of supplies. -She
handed him the laundry from the closet. “You go wash these and
then clean up the living room and kitchen.”

When she got the sheets back on the bed she locked the bedroom
door. Toad was making noises in the kitchen. She washed her face,
brushed her teeth and hung up her clothes from the overnight bag.
She put on a frilly negligee Harriet had given her for Christmas
when it looked as if her anemic romance with Ogden might finally
blossom.

Poor Ogden. His town house always looked as if the maid just
left five minutes before you arrived. Appearances were so impor-
tant to him. He would be devastated if he could see her in this
slum. Ob well. Toad had something that Ogden would never have.
She thought about it as she brushed out her hair again. Tarkington
had guts as well as brains, and he knew what was important and
what wasn’t. He believed in himself and his abilities with a pro-
found, unshakable faith, so he wasn’t threatened by what she was,
what she accomplished. Any way you looked at it. Toad Tarking-
ton was a man.

And a man was precisely what Rita Moravia wanted in her life.

She turned off all the lights except the one on the nightstand,
then opened the bedroom door.

Toad was up to his elbows in soapsuds in the sink. He had used
too much dishwashing liquid. Too much water too. Water and suds
were slopped over half the counter. Damn. He shouldn’t have
brought Rita here with the apartment in such a mess. He had been
meaning to unpack and clean it up, but the chore always seemed
one that could wait. He had been seeing that secretary over in
Alexandria but they always went to her place. It just hadn’t oc-
curred to him how Rita might react until it was too late—like
when he was fishing for the key to open the door.

Doggone, Toad, you find a really nice girl for a change and you
screw it up right at the start. More water slopped over the edge of
the sink. He felt it soaking the front of his pants. Oh poop.

He heard a laugh and turned. Rita was standing in the kitchen
door laughing with her hand over her mouth. He grinned at her
and worked blindly on the dishes. He couldn’t take his eyes off her

“You used too much water,” she said.

“Uh-huh.” With her hair down around her shoulders she looked
like a completely different woman—softer, more feminine. And
that frilly little nothing she was wearing!

“Do you have any dish towels?”

“Of course I have—“

“Where?”

“Where?” He forced his eyes to look at the likely places while he
considered. “Oh yeah, in that box over there behind the table.”

She swabbed the counter while he hurriedly finished the dishes
md stacked them in the drainer. He pulled the plug in the sink and
she wiped his hands and arms.

“I’m sorry this place is such a mess. I—“

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He never did
get to finish that apology.

“What’s your first name?”

“Robert.”

“Why do they call you Toad?”

“Because I’m horny all the time.”

“Umm,” Rita Moravia said. “Oh yes, I see. Lucky me.”

We got something,” Dreyfus said
with a grin as he leaned in Luis Camacho’s office door-

“Well, don’t keep me waiting.”

After entering and closing the door, Dreyfus approached the
desk and handed Camacbo a photocopy of the message from the
cigarette pack that Mrs. Jackson had supplied. “Interest Golden.
TS 849329.002EB.”

“What I did,” Dreyfus said, “was to have the computer wizards
in the basement assume this message came from one of those letters
that have been going to the Soviet embassy.” Camacho nodded. All
mail addressed to the Soviet embassy was routinely examined and
interesting items photocopied. So the FBI had copies of messages
from sixty-three letters that looked suspicious.

“And sho nuff, it did. This little dilly right here.” From a file he
pulled another photocopy. The message was a vitriolic screed on
Soviet support of the Afghan puppet regime.

“What’s the code word?”

“Luteinizing.”

“What the heck kind of word is that?”

“Some medical word.”

“Will that break any of the other messages?”

“These four.” Dreyfus laid four more photocopies on the desk
before his boss. On the bottom of each was penciled the code word
and the message, and the initials of the computer technician.

“How about that?” Camacho said. “Very nicely done, Dreyfus.”

Dreyfus sagged into a seat across the desk. He was tall and
angular and liked his pipe, which he extracted from a sweater
pocket and charged. “We’re still short a whole bunch of code
words.”

Camacho eyed his colleague as he drew deeply on the pipe and
exhaled clouds of smoke. “So now we know how the code is con-
structed?” he prompted.

“Yeah. It’s a matrix.”

“And?”

“And if we could tie up the mainframe for a couple weeks, we
could construct a matrix for each and every word in the dictionary
and compare them with every message. Given enough time on the
computer, we can crack them all.”

“And then we’ll know what was stolen.” Camacbo turned to the
window. There was little to see. It was a windy, cold day out there.
“Two weeks? Jesus, that’s a hell of a lot of computing time. You
should be able to find the Grand Unified Theory with two weeks
on a Cray computer.”

“Well, from looking at this word he used—’luteinizing’—it’s ob-
vious that some of the words are probably verb participles, past
tense, etc. It’s possible—probable, since this guy’s pretty damn
cute—that some of the code words are the names of persons or
places. The number of possible English codewords is in the mil-
lions, and the computer must construct a matrix for each and every
one of them and test each matrix against all the suspected mes-
sages. So what is that—a couple million repetitions of the program
times sixty? Assuming he used real words or names. But if he made
up random combinations of letters, say a dozen letters . . .”Drey-
fus shrugged.