The Minotaur

by Stephen Coonts

  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 obtained 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 community 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 lists of hotel and caterer personnel were also inaccurate and incomplete.

  The upper echelons of the Soviet intelligence community were stymied. The first rule of intelligence 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 produced 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 navigation systems…the list was breathtaking. The Soviets were seeing 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 precious agent to find out. And here he sat, Luis Camacho, FBI special agent in charge, Washington, D.C., office of counterespionage. Camacho 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 clear his thoughts. “Entropy?”

  “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 chill 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 towels 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 mumbled. “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 corner 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?”

  “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 important to him. He would be devastated if he could see her in this slum. Oh 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 profound, unshakable faith, so he wasn’t threatened by what she was, what she accomplished. Any way you looked at it, Toad Tarkington 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 occurred 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 di
shes. 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 and 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.”

  11

  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 Camacho 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 constructed?” 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.” Camacho 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 obvious 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 millions, and the computer must construct a matrix for each and every one of them and test each matrix against all the suspected messages. 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…” Dreyfus shrugged.

  On a scratch pad Camacho wrote, “2612.” “Point made,” he muttered.

  “Oh, I know, I know. Even after we have all the messages cracked, we won’t have the Minotaur. But we’ll have his scent. Once we know which files he’s been in, we can trot over to the Pentagon and glom on to the access sheets for those files. Our boy has seen them all.”

  “Maybe. But not very likely. Probably he got the access codes during an unauthorized peek in the main security files. But the document key words and numbers—” He sighed. “I would bet my last penny he hasn’t seen all the files he’s given away. I’ll bet there isn’t a man alive who’s had authorized access to all those files.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “Agreed. But we’ll never get the Cray mainframe for two weeks. The fingerprint guys would cry a river. So let’s get started with what we have. Get the access sheets for these five files we know about and let’s see who’s on them. And for Christ’s sake, keep your head down. Don’t let anyone know what you’re after. We don’t want to spook our man.”

  “Okay,” Dreyfus agreed. “While we’re at it, why don’t we just pick up Terry Franklin and sweat the little bastard?”

  “Not yet.”

  Dreyfus’ pipe was dead. He sucked audibly, then got out his lighter. When he was exhaling smoke again, he said, “I think we’re making a mistake not keeping Franklin under surveillance.”

  “What if the little shit bolts? What then? Is Franklin the only mole Ivan has over there? Is he?”

  Dreyfus threw up his hands and gathered up his papers.

  “Get somebody to tackle this decoding project with the mainframe when it’s not in use. The front office will never give us two weeks, but let’s see what we can do with a couple hours here and there.”

  “Sure, Luis.”

  “Again, nice work, Dreyfus.”

  Camacho stared at the door after Dreyfus left. He had slipped and made a mistake; he had lied to Dreyfus. The only way to keep two separate lives completely, safely separate was to never tell a lie. Never. You often had to leave out part of the truth, but that wasn’t a lie. A lie was a booby trap, a land mine that could explode at any time with fatal results. And this lie had been a big one. He sat now staring at the objects on his desk with unseeing eyes as he examined the dimensions of the lie and its possible implications. Stupid! A stupid, idiotic lie.

  He rubbed his forehead again and found he couldn’t sit still. He paced, back and forth and back and forth, until finally he was standing in front of the Pentagon organization chart. If there were forty files or sixty-three or any number, there would be a small group of people who would have access to all of them, if you constructed just one more hypothesis—that all the files concerned classified projects in research or development. Tyler Henry the admiral suspected they did. Albright the spy already knew and had told him so. Camacho the spy catcher must verify or refute that hypothesis soon, or Dreyfus and Henry and Albright and a lot of the others are going to think him incompetent, or worse.

  He stood staring at one box on the complex chart. Inside the box was printed: “Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition.”

  He sat at his desk and unlocked the lower right drawer and removed a file. Inside were photocopies of all sixty-three letters. They were in chronological order. All had been written on plain white copy machine paper in #2 lead pencil, which had been a wise precaution on the part of the person or persons who wrote them. Ink could be analyzed chemically and the sellers of pens could be interviewed, but a #2 lead pencil was a #2 lead pencil. And copy machine paper—the stuff was everywhere, in every office of the nation.

  On an average day the Soviet embassy received several dozen casual cards and letters mailed from all over the United States. Most of the messages were short and to the point. Many were crude. “Eat shit, Ivan,” seemed to be popular. The Chernobyl disaster and the Armenian earthquake had elicited thousands of pieces of mail, much to the chagrin of the postal inspectors and FBI
agents assigned to screen it.

  Over the last three years these letters in this file had been culled for further scrutiny. All the messages were printed in small block letters, all were long enough to contain an internal code and all of them had been written in English by someone with a fairly decent education. Some were signed and some weren’t. Interestingly, about 80 percent of these letters had been mailed in the Washington metropolitan area. Not a one had been mailed from over a hundred miles away. All had been enclosed in cheap, plain white envelopes available in hundreds of bookstores, convenience stores, supermarkets, etc., all over town.

  Camacho looked closely. It was easy to see that the same person had written them all; the penmanship was so careful and neat, the style of the writer so consistent from letter to letter. And every now and then, maybe once in every other letter, the syntax was tortuous, not quite right. It was as if the writer purposefully chose a difficult sentence construction. The conclusion that these letters, or at least some of them, contained an internal code was inescapable.

  The mechanics of the matrix demanded a reasonably long letter if one were going to encrypt a long message, say three dozen characters. If it took an average of three words to signal one character, then the message must run to at least nine dozen words, too many for a postcard.

  The sheer number of letters was daunting. Some of them were probably dross. The Minotaur knew these letters would arouse suspicion, so he wrote lots of them. And it was impossible to tell which contained a code and which didn’t. He was hiding in plain sight.

  Maybe that was the key. Maybe the Minotaur wasn’t just some career civil servant, some clerk. Maybe he was a man in plain sight, out in the open, known to one and all. But why? Why was he committing treason? That’s what the Soviets wanted to know.

  Camacho picked up the phone and punched numbers. “Dreyfus, pull the files on all the political people in the Defense Department and put them in the conference room.”