The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  Stephanie looked up, startled for an instant. She was in her mid-twenties, with lean, sensitively formed features that accentuated her cheekbones and the straightness of her nose, a wide mouth with a soft outline, rounded eyes, and pale, unblemished skin. It was an attractive face, though somewhat drawn. “Oh, I didn’t realize there was anyone here.” She paused awkwardly, and then to break the silence gestured quickly at the screen in front of her. “I was just finishing the calibration corrections on the neutron flux analyzers.”

  Gilman came inside and perched himself on the edge of a desk by the door. “How are they looking?”

  “Pretty good. I think there’s a detector that’s going to have to be replaced, though.”

  “Hum. Anything that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  Stephanie conceded the point with a tired smile. “I guess not.” She glanced at the clock above the supervisory panel. “I should be getting along, anyway. I have to meet someone later.”

  “That’s right. Get yourself out and about. Don’t retreat into a shell and get trapped there. I know it’s easy for me to say, but life has to go on. You have to go on.”

  There was concern in Gilman’s voice as he spoke. Stephanie’s boyfriend, whom she had lived with and seemed very close to, had been killed in an accident three weeks previously. She had taken the shock badly and gone into a state of depression that was only now showing its first sign of easing. Gilman had urged her to take time off and rest, but she had insisted that she would rather be at work and among people she knew.

  “We should have it cleared by the weekend, anyhow,” Stephanie said as she began flipping switches to shut down the system. “It should be okay for the start-up next week.”

  “You don’t have to worry too much about that,” Gilman said. “EPLA has delayed the license again.”

  “Oh no… What for, now?”

  “Some legal point. Even I don’t pretend to understand it.”

  Stephanie shook her head protestingly. “It’s criminal, after everything that’s gone into this project… And none of them really understands it, even. I’ve seen some of their reports.”

  “Maybe we’d have thought better of it if we’d known ten years ago what we were up against. Anyhow, they’re my worries, and you’ve got yours.” Gilman stood up. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to the elevators.”

  They came out of the room and started in the direction that Gilman had come from. “What’s the latest on the election?” Stephanie asked.

  “It sounds as if the new kid on the block is running away with it.”

  “Really? The last I heard was at lunchtime. It sounds too good to be true. People are saying it’s the only hope for GPD and the program. Is that true, do you think?”

  “Oh, don’t be too influenced by everything you hear.” Gilman held the door open as they came to the corridor that led back to the elevators. “Maybe our problems aren’t as bad as some people say. But at any rate, let’s wait first and see if Henry Newell gets in.”

  “It will have to make a difference if the twenty-eighth amendment gets passed.”

  They came to the elevators. Gilman punched the call button. “Let’s hope so. I’ve got a feeling that a lot of things are going to be changing before very much longer, so I wouldn’t worry too much about sending your resume around just yet if I were you.” The doors slid open. “Anyhow, I’ll leave you here. There are a couple more things I want to look at down here.”

  “Good night, Mr. Gilman. And thanks for the help. I appreciate it.”

  “ ’Night, Stephanie. And you take it easy, now, d’you hear?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Sage Street was in the older part of Denver, an area consisting of ornate but tired-looking two-story homes warding off time with barricades of overgrown shrubbery and rose-tangled fences. For the past two hours, the Lynx had sat watching from an inconspicuous gray, unmarked Dodge van with changed license plates, which she had rented from a small auto repair shop after arriving from New York. She had not parked near the house where she had left the flowers late that afternoon, but on the far side of an intersection, where a slight bend in the street gave an unobstructed view of the driveway from a distance. From her observations of the house during the three previous evenings, it was already more than an hour past the time that Stephanie Carne normally got home from work. Not that it made much difference. The Lynx had intended to wait until well after dusk, anyway.

  From the radio, interleaved with passages of a piano recital on the channel that the Lynx had selected, the excited voice of an announcer brought updates on the election news that had been stunning the country all day. “And with the result from Minnesota now in, it just about ties up the Midwest for the Constitutionals. We’ve got them with… it looks like somewhere around thirty-seven percent of the vote up there, with the other two biggies trailing in at Democrats, thirty-two percent, Republicans, twenty-seven. What a day this has been! What a way to start out on a whole new thousand years! It’s beginning to really look as if we’ll see the unprecedented spectacle of both presidential candidates from the traditional parties conceding before the night is out. Boy, Henry Newell must be a happy man right now! In fact, I’ve just received a flash that we’ll be going over to Washington in a few minutes to hear some of his thoughts at this time…”

  The evening darkened, and the street became a patchwork of isolated lights and shadows. People passed occasionally, talking, walking dogs, or just strolling. Every now and again a car arrived or went. The intervening crossroad, intersecting Sage between the house and the place where the Lynx had parked, was busier, forming a psychological barrier that would screen the van from the attention of the house and its neighbors.

  Then, a car appeared, positioning to make a left turn onto the far section of Sage, and stopped to give way to an oncoming pickup. In the light of the intersection lamp, the Lynx identified it as Stephanie Carne’s midnight blue 1994 Toyota. She switched off the radio and watched as the Toyota completed the turn into the narrow street cluttered with vehicles and drove into the front yard of the house, half of which had been turned into parking space. The other slot was empty, indicating that the couple who lived in the lower of the two apartments into which the house had been converted were out—which eliminated that possible source of complications.

  The Lynx watched as Stephanie Carne got out and walked around to open the trunk of her car and take out a bag. Her hair was gathered in a band, falling in a ponytail to the center of her back that day, and she was wearing an orange coat. She ascended the steps to the front porch, where she paused to find her key. As she did so, she noticed the cellophane-wrapped package of roses, carnations, and chrysanthemums against the wall by the door. She stooped and picked up the bouquet, turning it to read the attached card in the light from the corner streetlamp. She hesitated for a moment, and then disappeared inside, taking the flowers with her.

  The Lynx waited another fifteen minutes. Then, choosing a moment when the street was empty of passersby or moving vehicles, she eased the Dodge out of its parking slot, crossed the intersection, and drew up in front of the house. She checked one last time the contents of the pockets of the brown warehouse coat that she was wearing, slipped on a pair of pink silk gloves, and climbed out. There was nobody on any of the porches in the vicinity, and no curious faces watched from windows. The Lynx went up the stairs to the front door and pressed the bell marked “S. Carne.” A few seconds passed. Then a woman’s voice squawked from the intercom grille. “Hello?”

  “Hello. Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m from the Flower Basket florist’s, in town. There’s been a mix-up. I left some flowers here earlier, but it’s the wrong place. Have you seen them?”

  “Oh, so that’s what they were. I was wondering. They’re addressed to a Susan Crane. I’ve never heard of her.”

  “The names were similar. Somebody back at the store made a mistake. Can I pick them up?”

  “Sure. I’ll let you in. It’s the
upstairs apartment.”

  “Sorry to be a nuisance like this.”

  “No problem.”

  A buzz sounded from the door. The Lynx pushed to disengage the lock, and stepped inside. The hallway was dimly lit by a night-light, with the door to the downstairs apartment on one side, a bicycle propped by a hall stand on the other, and in front of her, across a square of tiled floor covered by coarse fiber matting, a carpeted stairway with a polished Wooden banister, leading up to a landing. After pausing to listen outside the door to the downstairs apartment, the Lynx moved on up the stairs.

  At the landing, she felt inside the pocket of her coat and released the safety on the gas pistol. As she turned to continue up the second flight, a light at the top of the stairs came on, and the upper apartment door opened to reveal Stephanie Carne, waiting with the flowers in her arms. She had taken off her coat and was wearing a blue sweater with black slacks. From close up, the Lynx recognized the face that she had memorized from the photographs: lean, sharp-boned features, straight nose and wide mouth, pale complexion warmed with powder and a hint of rouge, makeup a touch heavier around the eyes—as attractive as her image had suggested. But regret formed no part of the Lynx’s feelings now. It was time for business. Sentimentality remained firmly locked in a separate compartment of her mind.

  “You work late,” Stephanie remarked.

  “Not usually this late.” The Lynx came to the doorway. “But tonight we’ve got an irate customer. It’s worth the hassle to keep the peace.”

  “You were lucky. I was about to take them out and put them in water.” Stephanie extended her arms to hold out the bouquet. “It would have been a shame to waste—”

  The movement had uncovered her midriff. The Lynx jabbed low and swiftly with the fingers of her straightened hand, below the flowers and into the V below Stephanie’s breastbone, hard enough to paralyze the breathing momentarily but not enough to bruise. Stephanie gasped, and as a reflexive reaction made her draw in deeply, the Lynx raised the pistol with her other hand and discharged a puff of a nerve-toxin aerosol into her face. Stephanie recoiled, choking, and the flowers fell to the floor. Her eyes became glassy, and she tottered back against the wall, but retaining enough awareness to put up her arms in an effort to resist as the Lynx closed after her. But her strength was failing quickly. The Lynx clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling any sound before it could form, and held her firmly while she raised the pistol again and released a second whiff of gas just below her nostrils, keeping her own face well back—slowly this time, just the minimum to induce unconsciousness and leave no detectable residue by the time the body’s metabolism ceased functioning. The Lynx held her until her struggles became feeble and died away. When the body went limp, she let it slide down to the floor. Then she closed the door, put the pistol back in her pocket, and reconnoitered the apartment.

  In the kitchen she found a cabinet containing drinking glasses, and took one through into the bedroom. There, she ruffled up the covers on the bed and stacked up the pillows before going back into the hallway to carry in Stephanie’s unconscious body. She laid it along the bed, sat down on the edge, and from another pocket produced a hip bottle of bourbon and opened it. Using one hand to support Stephanie’s head, she raised the bottle to her mouth with the other and coaxed the liquid between her lips. Stephanie gagged at the first sip, but swallowed automatically as the Lynx persisted. The Lynx continued until she had infused the equivalent of four or five shots. Then she took the bottle into the bathroom and flushed half the remainder of its contents down the toilet, then brought the bottle back into the bedroom and half filled the glass which she had found in the kitchen. She imprinted the bottle from Stephanie’s fingers and stood it on the night table, then repeated the procedure with the glass, splashed some of the bourbon on the bed, and lodged the glass in Stephanie’s hand.

  Stephanie’s breathing was more regular now. The Lynx allowed a further fifteen minutes for the alcohol to circulate and break down the last traces of the toxin. Then she took a .38 caliber single-action revolver from inside her coat—unmarked, unlicensed; it could have been obtained by anyone, anywhere—pressed it into Stephanie’s other hand, lifted the hand to bring the muzzle against her temple, and squeezed the unresisting finger against the trigger until the gun fired. She left some ammunition in the night-table drawer and, as a finishing touch, turned on the bedside radio. After one last check around the apartment, she picked up the flowers in the hallway and let herself quietly out.

  A small item in the evening edition of the following day’s Denver Post reported that twenty-four-year-old Stephanie Carne, a physicist at the nearby General Plasma Dynamics corporation, had been found dead in her home, killed by a gunshot wound to the head. The coroner would later return a verdict of suicide following severe depression.

  CHAPTER 3

  Walking briskly in the chill air of approaching winter, two men and a youth followed a bridle path between grassy meadows bordering a stream, and a copse of elm and larch. Above the trees, a cluster of roofs hemmed in by carved gables and sprouting irregular groves of redbrick chimneys marked the center of the grounds of the Vandelmayne estate, in Montgomery County, Maryland.

  Jordan Vandelmayne, prominently listed in Who’s Who and The American Social Register, chairman of the board of stockholders of the Vandelmayne-Myer international merchant banking group, with directorships in several dozen of the major financial institutions which it controlled, was in the middle. “So, what was Ponchillez’s reaction to the deadeyes?” he asked. “Will he meet our price if we include them as part of the deal?”

  He addressed his words to the older of his two companions, an official with the State Department, who had recently returned from political talks in Mexico. The “deadeye” was an air-to-ground, laser-guided cluster bomb that had proved effective elsewhere in the kind of operations that the Mexican government was waging against the communist-inspired “Frente de Liberia” insurgency movement. The collapse of the OPEC cartel in the eighties had brought a temporary decline in oil prices, but the short-term benefits had been more than offset by the consequent removal of incentives to develop remaining U.S. domestic supplies and more advanced technologies. With access to the Middle East’s reserves now restricted again, all the old problems had returned with a vengeance.

  Mexico’s potential put a new slant on things, however. If adequate supplies could be guaranteed at the right price from that direction, then a significant proportion of Alaska’s production could be diverted to Japan at the going market rate, which would relieve the U.S.’s situation considerably. But Mexico was being courted by other suitors, too, and Mexicans had a traditional fear of becoming too dominated from the north.

  “It’s tough,” the man from State replied. “He’s still holding out, but he won’t come out in the open and say officially what they want. However, I did get a chance to talk to a couple of his people off the record.”

  “And?… Is it as we expected?”

  “Yes—more leeway on the Peruvian channel.”

  In other words, there would be little to gain from being paid American dollars for oil if the dollars went straight back to the U.S. again to buy weapons. But if the U.S. authorities could be persuaded to reduce their zealousness in interdicting the flow of Peruvian cocaine and other narcotics across the Mexican border, the increase in percentages changing hands as a consequence would mean, in effect, that the weapons would be subsidized out of the pockets of American users. That would change the economics, and hence the appeal, of the whole proposition appreciably.

  Vandelmayne shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t like it, Milt. Too sensitive. Too much risk of it backfiring publicly. It would be risking Watergate and the Contras all over again.”

  “What alternative are you proposing?”

  Vandelmayne paused just long enough to convey the appropriate shade of delicacy. “Perhaps if the value of security’ were increased somewhat in Ponchillez’s eyes,
we might find his attitude a little more accommodating, don’t you think?…”

  “You mean if the Frente situation were to become more threatening to him, for example?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I take it we’re talking about an enhancement in their capabilities equipmentwise.”

  “A modest one. The CIA already have some caches down there of AK47s with Cuban markings.”

  “Hmm… Don’t you think it would be better to wait and see how the election result will affect things?”

  Vandelmayne shook his head. “In the long run, it won’t make any difference. Take my word for it.”

  The young man on Vandelmayne’s other side, Edgar, his twenty-year-old son, looked across uncertainly. Before entering professional life, he would marry the daughter of a New York commodity-broking family, currently attending Vassar, with arrangements for finishing school in Europe already finalized. “Have I understood correctly?” he said. “It sounds as if you’re talking about supplying arms to the communists. How could that help anything?”

  Jordan explained, “In a situation like this, you destabilize things a little—enough to make the government feel insecure, but not enough to really threaten the country. That makes them feel more dependent on us for aid, which strengthens our bargaining position. One of the things you have to realize, Edgar, is—” The communicator in Vandelmayne’s pocket began beeping suddenly. “Excuse me.” He stopped to take the unit out, and held it near his face. “Yes?”

  The respectful voice of Partridge, Vandelmayne’s private secretary, answered, calling from inside the house. “The message that you wished to be informed of has come in, Mr. Vandelmayne. It reads, ‘Esmeralda.’ ” The code word had been received from Denver. It meant that a potential threat to the security of a highly sensitive operation had been removed.