The Minotaur (44 page)

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

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

“You sure?”

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

“Think he’s spotted the plane?”

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

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

“Roger.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

There!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26

Toad Tarkington awoke at four-
thirty Monday and went to the bathroom. He got back into bed,
but he wasn’t sleepy. Still dark outside. Wide awake and irritated
because he couldn’t sleep, he went to the window and peered out
Some clouds with stars visible between them. Not too many stars.
though. Funny, but early in the morning, just before dawn, the
stars seem to fade, almost as if the weaker ones grow tired of
shining and are sent home early.

He prowled the little room, restless. He pulled on jeans and a
sweatshirt and was sitting in the easy chair when the light began to
spread on the eastern horizon.

The telephone rang,

“Tarkington.”

“Lieutenant, this is the shift supervisor at the hospital. Your wife
is awake and she asked for you.”

“I’ll be right over. You tell her!” He dropped the instrument
onto the book and grabbed for his shoes.

The sedan refused to start. He jabbed at the accelerator and held
the key over. The engine ground and ground and didn’t fire. Too
late he realized he had probably flooded it.

Heck. It was only three-quarters of a mile or so over there- He
slammed the door behind him and began to trot. Awake! Asking
for him! He picked up the pace.

The sun was about ready to come over the earth’s rim. The
clouds above were blue, turning pink. Above them was blue sky.

The last three blocks he sprinted, down the street and across the
windswept dirt that would someday be a lawn and across the
empty parking lot with its tumbleweeds and right through the
front door.

The nurse at the desk was grinning as he charged by. He studded
around the corner and lunged down the hall for the ICU.

A doctor was there beside her bed, talking to her as a nurse took
her pulse. The doctor stepped back as Toad skidded to a halt inside
the door and walked forward, into Rita’s line of sight.

She tried to grin.

“Hey, babe.” He bent over and kissed her.

“Yeah, Mrs. Moravia, she’s out of the coma. And she recognizes
me! She’s asleep right now, real tired, but she’s out of the comat”

“Oh, thank God!”

“I really think she’s gonna be okay, Mrs. Moravia. It’s like a
miracle. She doesn’t remember anything about the flight or the
ejection, but she remembers me and being in Nevada and the other
flights, and she kept asking how long she’s been in the hospital.
The doctor and the nurses are excited! I’m excited!” That was an
understatement of major proportions- He was so worked up he felt
like he could fly by merely flapping his arms.

After promising to call again after his next visit with Rita, Toad
called his parents. He called his sister to give her the news. He
called Harriet, Rita’s best friend- Due to the time difference on the
East Coast, Harriet was at work. And he called Jake Grafton.

Captain Grafton was also at the office and he could hear the
activity in the background, but Toad could almost see Grafton
leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on his middle desk
drawer as if he had all the time in the world. The captain kept him
on the phone almost twenty minutes, making him tell of Rita’s
every word and gesture, listening as long as Toad wanted to talk.
Finally Toad realized the captain must have something else to do,
and said a reluctant goodbye.

“You tell her I said to get well quick.”

“I will, sir.”

“And tell her Amy asks about her every day. Amy and Callie
have been pulling real hard for her.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Keep the faith, shipmate,” Jake Grafton said, and was gone.
“Yeah,” said Toad Tarkington, hanging up the receiver and wip-
ing his eyes. The tears wouldn’t stop. So he laughed and cried at
the very same time.

Monday evening after work Commander Smoke Judy went home,
changed clothes, then drove to a bar in Georgetown. He had trou-
ble finding the place, then he had to park six blocks away and hike
back. The streets were packed with the trendy and the chic. Poo-
dles anointed lampposts and fire hydrants as their ladies gazed
away with a studied casualness.

Judy had to stand by the door until a stool opened at the bar. He
perched there and studied the beer list The bartender paused
across the polished mahogany bar and said, “On draft we have
Guinness, Watney’s, Steinlager—“

“Gimme a Bud. In a bottle.”

He saw Harlan Albright come in about fifteen minutes later and
grab an empty stool on the far end. Albright was carrying a gym
bag.

Nice touch that, Judy decided. Half the people in the place, men
and women, had a gym bag with them or were wearing exercise
clothes. Not sweaty tank tops and grungy shorts, mind you, but
stuff that looked like it came from Saks and routinely visited a dry-
cleaning plant.

When the man beside Judy left to visit a woman who had just
slipped into a booth, Albright came over and sat on the vacant
stool.

“Ever been here before?”

“Nope. Gonna come back, though. This is a real meat market
And on a Monday evening too!”

“Next Monday. A week from today, same time, right here.”
Albright signaled the bartender, laid a five on the wood and left.
Smoke nursed his second beer. The mirror behind the bar gave
him an excellent view of the Lycra thighs and hungry eyes of the
female patrons, most of whom seemed to be drinking white wine or
Perrier with a twist.

Smoke Judy, fighter pilot, took a last swallow and counted his
change. He left a dollar tip. With a final glance around, he hoisted
the gym bag and walked out, right past some sweet little piece in
spandex on her way in.

Tuesday evening Rita grinned as Toad entered her room. She had
been moved from the ICU and was in a semiprivate room, but the
other bed was empty. The respirator and heart monitor had not
accompanied her.

Toad closed the door behind him and kissed her. “How you
feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

“I’ve been talking to the doctor. They’re going to medevac you
to Bethesda on Thursday if you keep improving. Being as how I’m
next of kin, I get to ride along.”

“Good,” she said, and continued to grin with her eyes on him.

“So,” he said, returning her smile. “So.”

“I’ve read a little bit.” Her grin broadened.

“I thought you couldn’t focus very well yet.”

“I can’t. Read a little here, a little there. The Adventures of
Tarkington. You’re a pretty good writer.”

“You’re a poor critic.”

“I’m glad I married you.”

“I’m damn glad you did.”

The air force medevac plane, a C-141, landed at Andrews AFB.
Rita traveled the rest of the way to Bethesda in an ambulance.
That evening, when she awoke from her nap. Toad was waiting
with her parents, whom he had driven straight to the hospital from
National Airport.

Mrs. Moravia was teary but determined to maintain a stiff upper
lip. Five minutes after she arrived she launched into a speech that
she had apparently been rehearsing for weeks:

“It’s time, Rita. It’s time. You’ve got a fine husband and it’s time
you stopped this flying business. Why, Sarah Bames—you remem-
ber Sarah, the cheerleader who went to Bryn Mawr? Such a sweet
girl! I can’t think of her new married name . . . Sarah just had
her second baby, a perfectly darling little boy. Her husband’s a
med student who’s going into pediatrics. And Nancy Stroh, who
married that new dentist from Newport—you knew about that, a
perfectly gorgeous wedding in May—her mother told me just
last week that Nancy’s practically pregnant. And Kimberly
Hyer . . .”

Mr. Moravia slipped out into the hallway and Toad followed-

“She looks very tired.”

“She’s had a long day,” Toad said.

“Is she going to recover completely?”

“No way to tell. The physical therapy will start in a few weeks
and we’ll know more then. Right now she’s pretty desperate to get
out of that lower-body cast. The itching and all is driving her nuts.
That’s a good sign, I think.”

Ten minutes later, as they finished coffees from a vending ma-
chine, Toad suggested, “Maybe we’d better go get your wife and
say good night to Rita. She wears down pretty quickly and she’ll
need some sleep.”

“We can visit some more in the morning,” the older man agreed.

Walking back toward the room, Toad said, “Rita turned out a
little different than her mom.”

“Different generations.” Mr. Moravia shrugged. He was a phi-
losopher.

“They want different things,” Toad said, probing gently.

“Every generation does.”

“Rita’ll keep flying if the doctors let her.”

“I believe you. Madeline’s just blowing off steam. Rita knows
that. Where are we going to eat tonight?”

The next morning, a Friday, Toad accompanied the Moravias to
the hospital, then had Mr. Moravia drop him at a Metro station.
They were going to the National Gallery. Toad went to the office.

Even the subways were stifling in the August heat. Toad’s white
uniform shirt threatened to melt before he reached the air-condi-
tioned sanctuary of the lobby in Crystal City.

The elevator took forever to respond to the call button. He
waited impatiently. For seven weeks now he had been speculating
on the cause of the accident, and Jake Grafton and Helmut
Fritsche and Smoke Judy had all refused to enlighten him on the
telephone. They had been noncommittal. “We’re investigating.”
That was the party line. Toad jabbed the up button again. He
wanted some answers.