The Minotaur jg-3 Page 45

  “This is major-league hardball, Grafton. And he’s got that crackpot Samuel Dodgers scheduled to testify before you get on the stand, after SECDEF and Dunedin finish.”

  “He’s playing Russian roulette. Dodgers is a genius with the personality of a warthog.”

  “His strategy, apparently, is to get the A-12 defeated. The story I hear from a couple aides is that Athena is such a revolutionary new technology, it needs to be produced and evaluated before the navy buys any stealth airplanes — i.e., neither prototype will be pur- chased. Then Consolidated can participate in another competition for a more conventional design that makes full use of Athena’s capabilities. The argument is that a more conventional airplane that uses Athena exclusively for stealth protection will save the government several billions.”

  “Is he going to try this out on Caplinger?”

  “Nope. He’s going to let Caplinger and Dunedin testify, then wring the juice out of Dodgers and dump it all in your lap in the hope you’ll blow it.”

  “Has he got the votes?”

  “Not yet. There are enough fence sitters so that the issue is very much up in the air. We had the A-12 sold to the Senate and the House committees until Athena came along, but with the headlines lately — and the budget deficit — any way they can save money looks better and better.”

  Jake knew the headlines Knight was referring to. The Soviets under Mikhail Gorbachev had renounced world domination, and the aftershocks were being felt in capitals around the world. Gorbachev was well on his way to becoming the most popular and overexposed human on the planet, eclipsing rock stars, athletes, and, in some places, even God. The Cold War was over, according to some commentators and politicians with their own agendas. True or not, the perception of great change taking place in the “evil empire” had profound consequences for the foreign and domestic policy of every Western democracy, and none more so than the United States.

  The two officers spent the morning going over the cost projec- tions of the A-12, which were based on an optimum purchase schedule. Any proposal that kept the A-6 in service for more years than already planned would also have to include the escalating costs of maintaining and repairing this aging airframe. These costs were also calculated. Finally, any new proposal for another design would incur huge upfront costs, as the A-12 program had, and to kill the A-12 now would mean all the money spent to date would be wasted.

  After lunch Knight, an officer from the Office of Legislative Affairs, and Jake’s staff gathered in the conference room and pre- tended to be a congressional panel. They spent the afternoon grill- ing him. By five o’clock he was drained and hoarse.

  CaUie was reading Amy a bedtime story when the telephone rang. The giri leaped for the phone, then held it out to Jake. “Captain Grafton.”

  “This is Luis Camacho. Do you have a Robert E. Tarkington working for you?”

  “What’s he done now?” Tarkington had been on the mock panel this afternoon and had done a terrible job. His heart had obviously not been in it

  “Well, he’s not at home, for one thing. His car is sitting outside an apartment building in Momingside and we think he’s in it. It’s the building that Commander Judy lives in. He’s right smack-dab in the middle of our surveillance.”

  “So run him off.”

  “Well, that might produce sticky complications. I understand he has reason to bear Judy a grudge concerning his wife’s injuries a couple months ago. He might be armed. If so, he might be arrested on a concealed weapons charge, which I suppose wouldn’t do his navy career much good.”

  “It wouldn’t. What if I ran him off?”

  “Would you? Here’s the address.” Camacho gave it, said good- bye, then hung up.

  Callie looked at Jake with raised eyebrows. “Would you ladies like to go for a ride before bedtime? Maybe get some frozen yo- gurt?”

  After five minutes of furious activity, the females were ready. Jake drove through the heart of monumental Washington and ended up on the Suitland Parkway. Callie gave him directions with the aid of a map. They got lost once but eventually found the right street.

  Although it was after 9 P.M., it had been totally dark less than half an hour. Heat still rose from the streets and children still ran through yards. Here and there stickball games were being con- ducted under streetlights. “This is the best time of the day,” Jake told CalBe as they sat at a stoplight listening to pop music pouring from the open windows of a car full of teenagers.

  Six blocks later Callie said, “That’s the building, I think, up there on the left.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled for Toad,” Jake advised Amy. “He’s sitting in one of these cars.”

  “Why?” Amy asked.

  “You’ll have to ask him. Now look.”

  His car was parked a half block beyond the apartment building. Only the top of his head was visible as Jake drove by with Amy squealing and pointing. Jake turned around again and this time double-parked just past his car. With the engine running and the transmission in park, he got out and walked back.

  Toad’s window was down. He stared blankly up at Jake’s face.

  “We’re going out for a frozen yogurt. Wanta come?”

  “How’d you—“

  “Lock your car and climb in with us.”

  “Jesus, CAG, I—“

  Jake opened the driver’s door and held it. “Come on. That’s an order.”

  Toad rolled up the windows and locked the car. “You can ride in back.” Toad obediently slipped in beside Amy. She greeted him like a long-lost friend. “How’s Rita?” she demanded.

  “Doing okay,” Toad said. “And how are you, Mrs. Grafton?”

  “Just fine. Toad. What kind of frozen yogurt do you like?”

  “Any kind,” Tarkington said, still bewildered.

  “Why were you parked out here?” Amy asked, hanging her arms around Toad’s neck. “You don’t live here, do you?”

  “Waiting on a man. He hasn’t shown up.”

  “Oh.” Amy thought about it. “When can we see Rita?”

  “Anytime you want.”

  “Well, it’s only nine o’clock,” Jake said to Callie. “No school tomorrow for you aristocrats. What say we drive over to Bethesda and see if Rita’s still awake? That okay with you. Toad?”

  “Sure, Captain, sure.”

  They stopped at a mall near the beltway entrance and bought cones of frozen yogurt. Everyone got one. As Amy skipped back toward the car and the adults followed, Toad asked Jake. “How’d you know where I was?”

  “FBI called me. They don’t want you there.”

  The younger man bristled. “It’s a public street. And I didn’t see them lurking around waiting on anybody.”

  “Oh, they’re there. They saw you, got your license number, ran the plate and called me. They really didn’t want to arrest you on a felony weapons charge.”

  Toad’s shoulders sagged.

  “You must get on with your life,” Callie said gently, “yours and Rita’s, for you are part of her.”

  “Let’s go see her.” Jake suggested, and led the way toward the car.

  Tarkington rode silently as Amy chattered between licks on her cone. He put his tongue in motion in the hospital reception room after the woman at the desk said, “It’s after visiting hours, Lieuten- ant.”

  “I know, but I’m her husband. These are my folks, just in from the Coast. We’ll be quiet and not stay long.” Toad winked at her and gave her his most sincere lying smile.

  “I don’t suppose a short visit after hours will do any real harm. For such close relatives.”

  “Toad,” Amy asked in the elevator, “why did you tell that lady a lie?”

  “I didn’t really lie,” Toad explained. “See, I winked at her and she knew you weren’t my relatives, that I was just giving her a good reason to bend the rules a tiny bit. If I tell you a story about fairies and frogs and passionate princesses, you know it isn’t true and so it isn’t a lie, is it? It’s a story.�
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  “Well…” Amy said as she scrunched up her brows and tried to follow Toad’s logic.

  “I knew you’d understand, sis,” Toad said as the elevator door opened. He led them off and along the corridor toward Rita’s room.

  Rita was asleep when they tiptoed into the room. “Maybe we should let her sleep,” Callie suggested.

  Toad bent over and whispered her name. Her eyes fluttered. Then he kissed her cheek. “You’ve got company, dearest”

  “Oh, Calllie! Amy! Captain Grafton. What a pleasant surprise. How nice of you to come by.”

  ‘Toad brought us,” Amy said. “He lied to the lady downstairs- Said we were his family.” She winked hugely while Callie rolled her eyes.

  Thirty minutes later Jake insisted they had to go. He led his family down the corridor while Toad said a private goodbye to Rita. Amy was tiring and talking too loud, so Callie tried to hush her, which made her whine. Jake picked her up and carried her.

  In the car Callie chided Toad. “You sitting in that car in Morn- ingside while your in-laws are at your house. You should be ashamed.”

  “Well…”

  “When Rita gets out of the hospital, you must bring her over to the beach some weekend.”

  “Sure. You bet, Mrs. Grafton. I will.”

  Back in Momingside, Jake double-parked across the street and walked with Toad over to his car. Jake waited until Tarkington had the car unlocked, then said, “You have a beautiful wife, a good job, and all of life before you. Don’t fuck it up by sitting here waiting to kill a man.”

  “You saw what he did to Rita.”

  “Yeah. And if you get lucky and get a bullet into him, the stuff that will happen to you afterwards will hurt her a lot worse than the airplane crash did. You’ll be the one who twisted the knife. Don’t do that to her.”

  “Yessir.” Toad shook Jake’s hand, then climbed into the car and cranked the window down.

  “Thanks, CAG…”

  “It’s a good life, kid. Don’t throw it away,”

  “… for the frozen yogurt.” Tarkington started his car and snapped on the headlights.

  “Night, Toad.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  As soon as Jake got his car rolling, Amy stretched out in the backseat. In a few minutes he checked that she was asleep, then said to Callie, “Admiral Henry had a notebook.” He told her what he had learned from Camacho, that CaUie’s psychologist was tell- ing Henry what she said in her therapy sessions.

  “Oh, Jake.” She bit her lip. “I’ve half a mind to write a letter to the Medical Board.”

  “He was just trying to help Henry.”

  “Damn him.” He looked at her. She was rigid, with both fists clenched.

  He began to talk. He told her about X, about Smoke Judy and Luis Camacho and the Russian spy. Crossing the Anacostia River, going north on South Capitol Street, creeping through the cooling evening along Independence Avenue by the Air and Space Museum, he told her everything he knew.

  She listened carefully. They were parked facing the Lincoln Me- morial on Twenty-third Street and watching the crowd still going to and from the Wall when she said, “Camacho told the spy about Judy?”

  “That Judy was corrupt? Yes. So he says.”

  “He wanted something to happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was trying to make something happen.”

  “Something has happened. Judy tried to steal the Athena file and killed Henry getting away.”

  “That wasn’t it,” she said, speaking with conviction. “Henry had ordered the file changed, the documents moved. You knew— everyone with access knew. Camacho must have warned Henry.”

  “But if Camacho knows a Soviet spy and talks to him, why doesn’t he arrest him?”

  ”Something is supposed to happen. Something involving the spy and X. And it hasn’t happened yet”

  On Friday morning at 7 A.M. Jake met Rob Knight in a bagel joint on Independence Avenue, two blocks east of the Capitol As they huddled at a tiny table in a corner munching bagels smeared with cream cheese and sipping coffee. Knight filled Jake in on the testi- mony of Royce Caplinger and Vice Admiral Dunedin before the Joint subcommittee of the Senate and House Armed Services Com- mittees the previous day. Neither had been asked about Vice Ad- miral Henry’s death or Smoke Judy, perhaps because the Director of the FBI had spent thirty minutes with the committee before Caplinger went on.

  “Dodgers will go first this morning. Duquesne will be done with him in an hour or so. He’s going to question him very lightly on just the technical aspects of Athena, then praise him to the skies as the intellectual heir of Edison, Bell, and Einstein. That’s his plan, anyway.” Knight grinned impishly.

  “You really enjoy this, don’t you?”

  “It’s the ultimate theater. The stakes are money, the mother’s milk of politics, great heaping mountains of it. And the actors are politicians, without a doubt the lowest form of animate life. Char- latans, mountebanks, liars, hypocrites — they’d cut off your nuts for another term in office, or even a favorable article in a hometown newspaper. If you rendered the whole lot of ‘em, you couldn’t skim enough scruples to fill a thimble.”

  “They’re not all like that,” Jake protested.

  Knight made a gesture of frustration. “I suppose not.”

  “When do they want me there?”

  “Well, you’re going to watch Dodger’s performance. You go af- ter him. Normally these things are closed-door, but I got some members to sign two passes.” He displayed them, then handed one to Jake.

  They wandered outside, then across to the Library of Congress. On the second floor of the giant anteroom they found a wooden bench in a corner and reviewed the documents Jake would refer to if necessary during bis testimony.

  After thirty minutes, Jake announced he was ready and stowed the documents in the briefcase he had chained to his wrist.

  “Nervous?”

  “Yeah. My stomach feels like…”

  “Well, that’s normal. I’ve seen vice admirals preparing for these soirees sweat like they were going to the gallows.”

  “Too bad about Admiral Henry.”

  “Yeah. Think they’ll ever catch Judy?”

  “Oh, he’ll turn up, sooner or later.”

  “What are you going to say if they ask you about him?”

  “The truth. Just watch.”

  “Don’t get rattled. If you can’t remember something, just say so. And don’t feel bad about fumbling for a document I’ll be right there with you, and I’ll help you find it.”

  They chatted for another five minutes about this and that, about their careers, about mutual friends, about ships they had been on. Finally Knight announced that it was time.

  They crossed the street and walked past the limos and congress- men’s cars parked in the Capitol’s back lot. They went up the marble steps and into the rotunda.

  The place was packed with tourists standing in knots of thirty or more, cameras clicking, guides roaring their patter over the hub- bub, the noise echoing in the huge open space above. The two naval officers in service-dress blue uniforms threaded their way through and turned right, passing between the statues into the main corridor.

  They went up one flight of stairs and stopped finally beside a door manned by armed security guards, where they showed their passes. The guards consulted a list and said they could go in.

  “You ready?” Knight asked again.

  “Let’s go to the head first.”

  “Good idea.” Knight asked a guard for directions to the nearest men’s.

  Standing shoulder to shoulder at the urinals. Knight said, ‘Think of all the great men who have relieved themselves here— senators, congressmen, generals, tycoons, kings. Makes you hum- ble, doesn’t it?”

  The hearing room was a disappointment to Jake. He had ex- pected some spacious room richly decorated in a courtroom motif, but what they got was another drab, windowtess hearing room
that needed paint and more lights. He and Knight took a seat against the back wall and watched the elected persons make their way in. They conferred with one another and found chairs on the dais that dominated the room. Duquesne came in, nodded at Jake and placed his briefcase at the speaker’s stand in the center of the dais. Then he went from political person to political person shaking hands, murmuring softly.

  “It never stops, does it?” Knight whispered.

  “They’ll be shaking hands and kissing babies at their own funer- als,” Jake agreed.

  Dodgers didn’t even glance around when he was led in by two men that Jake assumed were senatorial aides. They placed him at the little witness table and sat down on either side of him.

  With a glance at the clock, Duquesne took his seat. “By mutual agreement, this is a meeting of the Senate and House Armed Ser- vices Committees’ joint subcommittee on stealth projects. Dr. Dodgers, I understand you are here by subpoena. Please pass it to the clerk, and state your full name.”

  “Samuel Brooklyn Dodgers.”

  “Is that his real name?” one of the congresswomen asked Du- quesne, who repeated the question to Dodgers.

  “Yes. I had it legally changed some years back.”

  “Do you wish to make a statement to the subcommittee?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Duquesne looked surprised. “Is it written? Do you have copies with you?”

  “No, sir. I just have a few preliminary remarks.”

  “Go ahead then. You have five minutes.”

  “As you know, I am the inventor of a radar suppression device that the U.S. Navy has licensed and is putting into production under the code name Athena. I have been working closely with the navy on my invention, and I must say, they are very enthusiastic, as I am. My invention renders radar obsolete, makes it useless, which will revolutionize warfare as we know it. I feel my invention is the greatest instrument for God’s peace ever invented. It will give the United States an insurmountable military advantage that will allow us to lead the world to God’s new kingdom here on earth. We can once and for all demand that the heathen nations—“

  Senator Duquesne interrupted as his colleagues began whisper- ing among themselves. “Please limit your remarks to the subject at hand. Dr. Dodgers.”