Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  Lime turned the music up even louder. Chip shut the door again, with Jaroslav inside with us and himself outside.

  “I’m a rock-and-roll kind of guy,” I said, “but you’re overdoing it.”

  “Am I? This little country had a hundred twenty thousand people working for the secret police. Now what the hell do you think those people did with their time? They wired every fucking hotel that was clean enough for a foreigner to stay in. Every single room. Now I don’t know if someone is listening, but I guarantee the capability is in place.”

  “You know,” I said, pointing at Jaroslav, “he’s good. You I never trusted. Chip Sheen I wouldn’t send to the grocery for beer. But him I trusted.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jaroslav said. “Now I am gone.”

  “Stay put,” Lime barked.

  “Maybe we could go out in the park and talk,” I said. There are two parks in Marienbad. The one at the center has been turned into a construction site. No one is quite sure why. “Surely they can’t have wired every flower, every tree.”

  “Surely they can. And this is Kapek’s home base. He lives in a fortress up in the hills there. He likes the baths, he believes in them. Herbal remedies and anthroposophic medicine—it ministers to the soul as well as the body. He has one arm and he thinks he’ll live forever. Karel is a standard enough name for a Czech male. But in the West it sounds like Carol, the girl’s name. He couldn’t stand that. These guys—they live by fear, you understand. So he made sure that the opposition, in the West—us, our Germans, the Brits—knew him as Vlad, from Vlad the Impaler, a particularly nasty Transylvanian who was the model for Dracula. So I’m figuring, Vaclav Havel or no Vaclav Havel, the end of communism or the beginning of Mormonism—whatever the fuck is going on—Vlad still has Marienbad sewed up tight, with little ears everywhere. And little eyes. You don’t want to be seen with me.”

  “Tell me what a source code is,” I said.

  “You know what,” he said, sounding relaxed and reasonable, “I want to enlist you, I want to truly get you on our side. Because this is a cause to believe in. I don’t care if you’re a gung-ho racist marine or a hippie dippie, do-gooding, save-the-whales, and vote-green wimp. Let me tell you what we are up against. The Corporate Society. Do you understand how the Japs beat American industry?”

  “Because they build better stuff at a better price,” I said. “Because the men who run General Motors are arrogant assholes who thought that little Orientals could never compete and they could keep selling second-rate goods. Drive a Chevy, then drive a Toyota. It was embarrassing ten years ago and it’s still embarrassing. And they never noticed. You don’t have to enlist me. You just have to cut a deal.”

  “You’re half right,” he said. “America is a consumer society. The consumer is right. If the consumer wants to pay for emission controls, we give to it him. If he wants to buy a car from Sweden and send his money overseas, we let him. Japan is the corporate society. The same Sony you buy in the States for four hundred dollars costs eight hundred in Japan. That gives Sony the cushion to undercut anybody in America. If a factory pollutes in the States, the media jumps all over them. It sells more papers, gets more viewers, whatever, and they charge more for the advertising. A company pollutes in Japan, it doesn’t make the six o’clock news. Not if they’re a big company signed up with Dentsu Advertising that tells the broadcasters what not to say. They pay their people less, and they work them more.

  “Japanese banks are real strong. You know why? Because it costs you, the consumer, three to five dollars every time you use a check. Nissan can get a bank loan at three, four percent. General Motors pays the prime rate. Nine to twelve percent. But when you go back to New York I’ll bet ten dollars you shop around until you get free checking. You don’t want to pay even ten cents a check to subsidize loans to help GM fight Nissan. They have lifetime employment. They’re very proud of that. But the flip side of it is that if you quit, you are virtually unemployable. It’s a very sophisticated version of owing your soul to the company store. Do you want to live in a society like that?”

  “No,” I said. “But they do. And that’s their business.”

  “Wrong. Because if we don’t compete, they buy California. They buy what’s left of Chrysler and General Electric and Con Edison and then Americans have to go to work for them. Their way. By the way, they don’t even want to let you work unless you’re white, antiunion, and preferably of German ethnic stock. Or in order to compete we decide we better be a producer society instead of a consumer society. To hell with freedom of the press if it makes our corporations less competitive. To hell with consumer pressure if our products don’t compete with those of Japan. To hell with the environment if it drags Ford down in its fight with Honda.

  “And part of the reason that they are ahead,” Lime said, “is that they steal. They stole the microchip by not granting a patent to Texas Instruments for ten years. After they managed to dominate the market through dumping, reverse engineering, and a variety of predatory practices, only then did they recognize TI’s patent. What other industry have they targeted? Computers, for one. Hitachi got busted for buying IBM secrets. They knew they were stealing and they were happy to do it. Read the transcripts.

  “Now they are buying stolen secrets from a Czechoslovakian spy master. We entered into an arrangement with the Japanese to coproduce an airplane. A fighter plane, based on the F-16, designed and produced by General Dynamics. Good plane. Best in the world at the price. They conned us a little bit. They said they would produce their own. The U.S. is unquestionably number one in the world in aviation and aerospace. No question. No excuse for the Japs to build their own. So we lean on them to buy one of ours. They push codevelopment. Building a new airplane based on the F-16.

  “Like I said, we’re a consumer society. You gotta make your buck and spend your buck today. So we went for it. Then, thank God, somebody woke up and said, ‘Wait a minute.’ The Japs have earmarked aviation and aerospace as one of their next targets. Just like they did with automobiles and microchips. Just like they did, before that, with cameras and consumer electronics. They don’t give a shit about codevelopment of this plane, except for one thing—to learn how to build them themselves. To learn enough to take on General Dynamics and Boeing. Do you understand that aviation is twenty percent of our export of manufactured goods? Twenty billion dollars a year?

  “But we still needed the business. So we modified the deal. The deal was that there are certain things that the Japanese would not have access to. A modern combat jet is a wondrous thing. In point of fact, it just about shouldn’t fly. In point of fact, a pilot can’t fly it. It needs a computer. It needs a computer that takes in all the incoming information and processes all the possibilities—trim this, adjust that—while it’s reading the radar, while it’s setting the armaments, while it’s running evasion. The secret core of aviation technology is understanding the whole. Both in manufacture and in operations. The heart of the computer software, the program that runs the programs, is called the source code.

  “The source code was the number-one thing on the restricted list in this codevelopment deal. Somebody stole it. We don’t know who. Once we get a look we might be able to track it back. We now know, through you, that it was stolen by the Czech Intelligence Service. All the Communist spy networks have always been one hundred percent subservient to the KGB. The KGB liked to use them because to somebody who wouldn’t betray America to the Russkies, it sounds a lot more innocuous if you sell military secrets to the nice Czechoslovakians or to Poland. It’s hard to be afraid of Poland. Also, even the KGB has budget limitations, and this stretches their budget.

  “Now, Vlad, who is a very smart man, sees the handwriting on the wall. And he says he maybe needs a new client, because the Soviet Union—they’re not cutting it anymore. Vlad is getting to be an old man and Czechoslovakia is changing. Vlad has a problem. Not a problem. Vlad and I have something in common. We like young women. Beautiful young women. Now how, u
nder this new regime, is Vlad going to keep a piece of ass like Nadia. She is something else, isn’t she? He keeps her by being rich. How does he get rich? He becomes a capitalist. Instead of giving the source code to Russia in return for power, he decides to sell the source code, the operating language of America’s top military aircraft, to Musashi Aerospace, which used to be Musashi Aviation, which made the bombers that bombed Hawaii back in Double-U Double-U Two.

  “That, my friend, is a source code.”

  VLAD THE IMPALER

  VLAD’S ESTATE WAS ON top of a hill.

  I drove up to it and slowly by. It was protected by a wall topped with glass and barbed wire. There were photoelectric devices on the single approach road. He also had video surveillance, armed guards out front, the Bulgarians—I assumed—inside, and a group of professional canines on the grounds.

  “This is very confusing,” I said when I got back.

  “How’s that?” Lime said.

  “Well, on TV they said communism was dead. Vaclav Havel, a very nice guy, is now in charge of this whole country.”

  “Right,” Lime said.

  “Then how come this guy—this Communist secret policeman, this evil genius of the old regime—is still sitting in that big house on the hill, with Czech army, in uniform, guarding his estate, video and dogs and the whole bit. Is he still in or is he out?”

  “Yes,” Lime said.

  “Cute. But this is no time for cute.”

  “He’s not still in. But he’s certainly not out.”

  “Because what I mean by in,” I said, “is a guy who can pop me and nobody will ever even ask where my body went.”

  “He certainly will be out,” Lime said, “if things continue in the direction they’re going now. Completely out.”

  “By the end of the day?” I said.

  “Very funny,” Chip Sheen said. “He tries to be funny.”

  “As I’ve gotten older I’ve grown soft. I admit it,” I said to Lime. “Once I would have distracted the dogs with urine from a bitch in heat, designed a catapult—from common articles available even in a Czechoslovakian supermarket—that would heave me over the wall, evaded the guards by wearing my Ninja outfit, and sickened the Bulgarians by throwing them tainted meat.”

  “He’s being sarcastic,” Chip Sheen said. “He does that. I don’t think we need him.”

  “Then, armed with a Mauser or Glock or neoprene laser targeting projectile device, I would have confronted Vlad, taken the disc, forced his confession, and, disguised as Shirley Temple Black, made my escape in a specially modified Shelby-Skoda that looked like a common everyday Czech auto but had a 454 Chrysler Hemi under the hood, mag wheels, and MacPhearson struts.” I looked at Chip Sheen and said to Lime, “Don’t you have agents to do this shit?”

  “If he doesn’t have the guts to go for it, I certainly do,” Chip said.

  “If there is anyone in a position to know all our Apes, Eye-ohs, Uses, and You-asses, it’s Vlad,” Lime said to me.

  “Your what?” I said.

  “Sorry. That’s spook-speak. AIP’s is Agents in Place.”

  “Like Jaroslav,” I said.

  “No, he’s a ‘You-ass,’ ” Lime said.

  “He’s a who’s ass?”

  “HUASS,” he said. “Human Asset. And a HUSCE is a Human Source. IO’s are Intelligence Officers.”

  “There is no sanity clause, I knew that,” I said. “What’s the difference?”

  “Intelligence Officers are USNATS, United States Nationals.”

  “Like Chip Sheen?”

  “You better believe it, buddy,” Chip Sheen said. He sounded like Radar O’Reilly doing a John Wayne imitation. Looked like it too.

  “Right. Works out of the embassy or in some other shallow cover. Now an AIP is deep cover …”

  “Like a mole?”

  “A mole is deep cover but in the enemy’s IntServ. Or theirs in ours. A HUSCE is a person we get information from. HUASS is one of their nationals over whom we have some control. Like Jaroslav.”

  “What control do you have over Jaroslav?” I said. I looked at him.

  “Patriotism,” Lime said. I watched Jaroslav while Lime spoke. “Hates the Russkies. They put his father in prison—more like a concentration camp. When he came out—well—maybe it would have been better if they’d just kept him. Hates the Germans—they killed his grandmother and grandfather.”

  “For the job on me?”

  “For the job on you, I paid him. He also likes hard currency.”

  “Do you have any good ideas?” I said.

  “What do you mean by good?” Lime asked.

  “I mean something that’ll send me home safe and sound to Marie Laure and my baby. I miss my baby.”

  “Do you have a picture?” Lime asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “You know, it’s a funny thing.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “When you’re single, you laugh at guys walking around with kids’ pictures in their wallet. I used to. Until I had ’em. You want to see?”

  “Sure,” I said. He showed me a photo of two kids—a girl four, a boy about two—both better looking than I would have credited to his DNA. “Very nice. How old are they?”

  “The girl’s twenty-two,” he said, “the boy’s twenty. He’s at the University of Iowa. On the football team. Big kid. Strong. A real ox.”

  “Where’s the girl?” I asked.

  “In drug rehab,” he said, “a private clinic in California.”

  “You’ve been carrying that picture a long time,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s the best age. After that they watch TV and start talking back.”

  “If we have to shoot our way in, then we have to shoot our way in,” Chip Sheen said.

  “I guess I’m gonna try to talk my way in,” I said.

  “That’s what I guessed,” Lime said.

  “How much is this source code worth?” I asked. “Cash value.”

  “That’s an accounting question. It depends on how you measure value. Actual development cost less depreciation? The cost to imitate it? How many years it’ll save Musashi Aerospace? What it would be valued at in a merger?”

  “What do you figure Musashi is paying for it? That’s the bottom line.”

  “A million bucks,” Lime said. “Maybe it saves them ten million, maybe fifty million. It’s hard to say. But buying it off the street, like they’re doing, I would guess a million. Dollars, that is.” Perhaps DM1,000,000 was a bargain for Hayakawa. And perhaps I would never see any such amount. It’s so much easier to talk about millions than to produce them.

  “Why should we use a guy who’s motivated strictly by greed?” Chip Sheen said. “Not by patriotism. That’s today’s security problem. Our enemies can go into America and just buy people and buy information.”

  “You used to think Tanaka had it before he died,” I said. “What made you think that?”

  “He told Hayakawa he was ready to deal. Told him to come to St. Anton. We intercepted a phone call.” Chip Sheen looked perturbed that Lime had let me know that. “They were careless. Hayakawa is new to this. His predecessor was the one initiated the deal.”

  “What happened to his predecessor?”

  “He had an accident,” Chip said, implying it wasn’t.

  “Driving too fast,” Lime said, and made it sound more accidental. “Tried to pass—in one of those hot new Musashi Élégants, by the way—lost it on a curve in the mountains near St. Moritz.”

  “Tanaka—he was in this business for a long time?”

  “Mostly right on the edge, the gray areas. His head-hunting outfit, that’s legit. But it also helped him target dissatisfied executives and scientists. A lot of low-to medium-grade industrial espionage. He understood the stuff, which put him ahead of a lot of people. He had an eye for classified material that got published. A lot of it is. He would read something in the technological literature, then retype it so it looked lik
e it came straight out of the word processor, slap a Top Secret stamp on it, even a limited-circulation number on it, turn around, and sell it sub rosa like he stole it. Man about town in Vienna. Made money. But this—this put him in a whole other league. Now he’s messing with national defense.”

  “Was,” I said.

  “Yes, was,” Chip said. “That’s why it’s important that the deal go down and we catch Hayakawa dirty. If it’s morning in Czechoslovakia, what time is it in America? This case has got to go on the map. So some people in D.C.—they wake up and realize that the Japanese are a real threat. That while we were nose to nose with the Soviets, defending the Free World, a couple of our friends were using our inattention to creep up on us. The faster that we learn that they are not our friends, the quicker we can do something about it.”

  “You know what occurs to me,” I said. “It occurs to me that without an enemy you guys are out of jobs.”

  “I’m in this business because I believe in it,” Chip said.

  Lime just smiled.

  “What if they make up the deficit out of the Intelligence budget?” I asked. “What happens to you? Forced retirement. Or you just languish in grade, no growth, no spaces to promote you to. It’s not as if you guys get anything right. Did the CIA say the Berlin Wall was going to fall in eighty-nine? That Havel was the next president of Czecho? That Ceausescu would be shot in time for Christmas? That the Soviet Union would lose in Afghanistan and that when they lost the rebels still wouldn’t win? Everyone knows you missed Iran completely. Did you call the Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square? Did the CIA predict that the U.S. was going to be the biggest debtor nation in the world and that Japan would be the biggest creditor nation and that the Reagan administration could make that happen in just four short years?”

  “You’re trying to get my goat,” Lime said, smiling. “I understand, it’s nerves. It’s that tension that comes when it’s time to play ball.”