The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  “Sure. I’ll risk it.”

  As they moved out of earshot of anyone, Hamashad glanced at Brett and murmured in suddenly fluent English, “Act normally and do nothing to betray surprise. We have very little time, and you must trust me. I know that you are an American. I can arrange communication with the Western authorities.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “For now, that does not matter.”

  Brett obeyed and continued staring at the ground ahead as they walked. It had been so sudden and unexpected that for a few seconds his mind refused to function. The most obvious possibility was that it could be a trap to extract information from him. But on the other hand, Brett possessed vital information on what had transpired between himself and Oberwald, which it was crucial to send back into the right hands. Some risk would be unavoidable. He thought furiously for a few seconds, then said, “First I need proof. How can I be sure that you are in communication with the West?”

  “You tell me. What would convince you?”

  “I’d have to think about it.”

  “Well, don’t take too long… Enough now, we are getting close.” They were approaching the workshops, where some other Palestinians were talking in a group outside the door. Hamashad grinned and raised his voice. “Is inside. Picture all in lines and pieces. You fix good, yes?”

  They led him inside to where the VCR and monitor were already up on one of the benches. Brett plugged it in, ran a few checks, and took off the cover. As he had suspected, it just needed a thorough cleaning job; but he stretched it out and spent some time poking and prodding around inside to make it look good, and to give himself time to think. The problem was deciding who the right people would be to risk trying to communicate to. “The West” was too vague a term to be safe, for there was the risk that Oberwald might not be alone in working for the other side. Who was there, then, he asked himself—some group or organization—that he would feel completely confident in dealing with?

  For his services, Brett was allowed to stay and watch the movie, which turned out to be a stock Russian World War II saga that had the American and German high commands in league as the bad guys, and the Russians, who were the real objects of the conspiracy, struggling valiantly to defeat the Nazi world threat single-handedly despite the treachery and double-dealings of both of them. Afterward, Hamashad conducted him back across the compound to his quarters.

  “Yes, there is one thing that would convince me,” Brett said. “I want to talk to somebody high up in the U.S. Constitutional party. Nobody else, understand? I’ll only deal with the Constitutionals.”

  “And what would prove to you that we were indeed talking to them?” Hamashad asked.

  “That’s something I’ll leave you to figure out.” Brett answered.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Pinewood Hills Lakeshore Conference Resort was situated a little over an hour’s drive inland from Washington, D.C., amid forested terrain in the mountains of West Virginia, a few miles south of the Potomac River valley. It was managed and operated by a combination of interests that made its actual ownership obscure, and unlike the typical business conference center, it didn’t go to any great lengths to advertise its existence or keep its bookings schedule healthily filled. Also, it was never available when an organization inquired about renting its facilities exclusively. Whatever the season of year or the duration requested, a part of the place, at least, had inevitably been reserved by somebody else already. Thus, every group that did use the resort found strange faces there and other groups involved in other functions that they didn’t know about. That seemed natural enough, and nobody thought more of it. In fact, Pinewood Hills was jointly owned by a group of supporters of the Constitutional party, who made it available around the year for meetings, briefings, training sessions, and the like. It also functioned as a permanent base for activities of the kind which the party preferred to conduct discreetly, away from public scrutiny—such as its security and intelligence-gathering operations. Not that there was anything illegal involved; but the kind of people who worked in such fields were accustomed to keeping a low profile as a matter of professional prudence, and unnecessary visibility of any kind made them reflexively nervous.

  It was Friday afternoon, November 24. Mel sat at one of several paper-strewn tables positioned in a horseshoe before a screen, for the moment blank, in an annex room set apart from the main cluster of buildings. He still wasn’t sure why he had been rushed down here. Stephanie had agreed to the request that Newell had made in San Francisco, and since it didn’t involve Mel personally, he had flown back to Boston to tell Robert Winthram and Bill Evron the story, intending then to get on with his job. But a couple of days later he had received an urgent call from Warren Landis, asking him to get down as quickly as possible and rejoin them in Washington.

  The room had lots of polished woodwork, a stone fireplace, and windows the entire length of one wall, looking out at boats moored around a jetty, and beyond, the lake with tree-covered slopes rising from the far side. A sign outside the door read, nebulously, J AND B ASSOCIATES, PRIVATE. George Slade was sitting next to Mel, closest to the door. Facing them from the opposite side of the horseshoe was Warren Landis, head of the party’s intelligence operations, with his large brow and prematurely balding head, heavy spectacles, open vest, and loosened tie; on one side of him, heavily built, dark-haired, with droopy lids, Ronald Bassen, the security chief; and on the other, a swarthy-skinned girl who was operating a computer terminal connected to the data base at Party HQ in Washington. Stephanie sat at the head, facing the screen, her face strained from the concentration she had been sustaining since the session began early that morning, with just a short break at noon for coffee and sandwiches.

  “Okay, let’s review the basics one more time, from the top,” Bassen said. “What’s your name?”

  “Eva Carne,” Stephanie replied.

  “Your date of birth?”

  “October twenty-six, nineteen seventy-three.”

  “Social security number?”

  “Five six one, five eight, one four five three.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Four thirty-seven Pacific Heights condominiums. On Ocean Park Boulevard, Santa Monica.”

  “What kind of location is that?”

  “On the cliffs, overlooking Santa Monica Beach.”

  “How long have you lived there?”

  “A little under a year. I moved there in February.”

  “On what date?”

  “I don’t remember without checking.”

  Bassen nodded. “That’s fine. Most people wouldn’t.” He looked at a map that was lying folded among the papers in front of him. “How would I get there from, say… the Ventura Freeway?”

  Stephanie hesitated and licked her lips. “Take the San Diego Freeway over Mulholland Pass and through Westwood. Then the Santa Monica Freeway east, toward the beach. Exit at Fourth Street, make a right, and carry on to Wilshire. At Wilshire, make a left and go four blocks to the boulevard.”

  “Good. What would I see in front of me as I was driving along Wilshire?”

  “Er…” Stephanie brought a hand up to her brow. “Sorry.”

  “I d see the Pacific Pallisades hills.” Bassen turned his head. “Do we have a picture, please?”

  The operator tapped at the computer terminal, and the screen came to life to show an excerpt from a movie record that two of Bassen’s operatives from the party’s Los Angeles office had taken while driving around the area the previous day. Stephanie studied the view, noting street names and salient landmarks. Finally she nodded. “Okay.” The screen blanked out again.

  “Don’t worry,” Bassen said. “From now on, you’re going to be Eva. We’ll move you into her apartment when it’s time for her to reappear, and by January you’ll be able to drive it blindfolded. Now…” He looked down at his papers and resumed. “What’s your job?”

  “Full-time public-relations officer with the Constitut
ional party, specializing in foreign affairs.”

  “Where are you based?”

  “The West Coast regional office: Suite 1256, Wallman Tower.”

  “Where’s that located?”

  “Downtown Los Angeles, on the east side of the Pasadena Freeway.”

  “Your boss there?”

  “John Wadlow, the regional coordinator.”

  Bassen nodded, satisfied. “Okay. What well do is let you work there for a spell and take Eva’s shifts until you know all the people there by sight, what offices they’re in, what time they take their coffee… Warren?” He turned his head as Landis raised a hand.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Landis said. “Suppose we prime her with all the information on the LA office—mugshots, floor plan, and so on and so on… I wonder if we could pass her off as Eva.” He turned toward Stephanie. “See the point? It would make a good test… to see if you can fool the people there, who actually worked with Eva.”

  George Slade thought for a moment and then nodded. “I like it. If the act isn’t good enough, it would be a damn sight better to find out that way than the first time she tries it for real.” At the end table between them, Stephanie swallowed visibly.

  Bassen looked at her curiously. “Think you could handle it?”

  She nodded. “I’ll give it a try. As George says, if I can’t, I’d rather find out now.”

  “How long would it take you to put together a package of material?” Bassen asked Landis.

  Landis bunched his lips. “Let’s see, pictures of the people and the interior layout, review of procedures… We’d need somebody there to be in on it—to fill us in on the things Eva had in progress and that kind of stuff.”

  “Well, let’s make that John Wadlow,” Bassen said. “He runs the office. It wouldn’t be a good idea to screw him around by keeping him in the dark, anyhow.”

  Landis nodded. “Fine. In that case we could have a package, complete with visuals, by… oh, say, lunchtime Tuesday.”

  Bassen shuffled the papers he had been referring to into a pile and closed them in a folder. “It’s coming together. Time for a break, guys. How about a walk outside to get some lake air and stretch our legs, eh?” He stood up. Slade rose and went to the door. Mel pushed his chair back and stretched, while Landis completed some notes. Stephanie moved toward the door behind Slade. “Oh, Stephanie,” Bassen called after her. She turned automatically to look back. Bassen shook his head. “You don’t respond to that name any more. You’re Eva. Twenty-four hours a day, you have to think like Eva.”

  Stephanie nodded with a sigh of self-rebuke. “I’ll get it right,” she promised.

  • • •

  In her unofficial role, which had involved penetrating the Opposition, Eva had worked for Warren Landis. She had been thorough in her reporting back, and he was able to furnish a reasonably accurate account of her dealings with them.

  The screen showed a still picture of some people emerging from the entrance of a building. A big man in a three-piece suit appeared to be the center of the group, but the circle superposed on the picture singled out the head and shoulders of another man, off to one side, dapperly dressed in a bottle-green blazer, wide necktie, and flared pants. The camera had caught him with his head tossed back in a laugh and arm half raised exuberantly as he said something to the woman next to him. It suggested somebody who was flying high and on his way up in life. Mel was aware that such fleetingly captured images could be misleading—PR firms and the media employed people to spend days scanning through hundreds of hours of footage for just the right shot of somebody they wished to promote or destroy—but the impression remained, nevertheless.

  The view changed to a blow-up of the the circled face. The man was perhaps in his late thirties, with a high forehead, fair hair spreading flamboyantly at the back to his shoulders, and spectacles with round, metal-rimmed lenses that gave his eyes a singularly intense look—vaguely reminiscent of the staple comic-book mad scientist of his younger days, Mel thought. He had a wisp of a mustache, which hadn’t been discernible in the wider-field shot.

  “Louis Seybelman, California-based political activist, and campaign organizer,” Landis announced from his seat opposite Mel. The meeting had reconvened, and Landis had taken over from Bassen. This part was for Mel’s benefit. Stephanie had been through it all before Mel’s sudden summons to Washington. Landis went on, “You might already know him from the political scene, although he tends to stay more of a background figure. He is well connected and was a big factor in our not doing better than we did on the West Coast in the elections. His style is to pull strings from behind the throne. He was instrumental in the engineering of such pieces of legislation as the Occupational Security Act and the Inflation Control Act, which a lot of people still believe help their economic security… Well they might for some people, I guess, but only by stopping a lot of other people from making a living. He poses as a champion of the people against rapacious capitalism: protect the environment, conserve the resources, save the exploited natives, and all that kind of stuff. Styled a left-liberal, but in reality it’s fascism in a different suit: seizing the economy through state control, and promoting public fears as the justification.”

  “Save the commercials, Warren,” Bassen murmured beside him. “The election’s over now. We won.”

  Landis grinned. “Seybelman started out as a sociology and political science major at Cornell. Nobody’s sure what got him into the ‘America stinks’ department. His family was prosperous and secure, father a dentist, mother in marketing, no big problems that we know of. Maybe it was the rich-kid-in-a-world-where-people-still-starve-guilt-trip syndrome. He showed early talent as an organizer, and in his campus days we see him instrumental in various student protest movements…” A series of pictures followed as Landis spoke: Seybelman posing with a group of students; Seybelman and a girlfriend standing in front of a car; Seybelman speaking at a rostrum. “Too late for Vietnam, but antinuclear power, anti-agricultural chemicals, anti-South Africa, and that whole bag of beans.

  “But all that was running out of steam by the end of the eighties, and he moved on to antibomb and the peace movement, becoming involved in the opposition to revitalizing the space program, because of the military implications with regard to space-based defenses. Seybelman moved west in 1995 with his new wife, physician-turned-activist Gertrude Weinkompf—evidently with access to plenty of funding to make life comfortable for them—and he’s been a rising star ever since.” The final shots showed the Seybelmans’ half-million-dollar home in the San Fernando valley, and the Seybelmans in evening dress and ballroom gown, sharing a joke with the state governor.

  Mel turned his eyes away from the screen when Landis stopped speaking. “Do I assume that Seybelman’s organization was what Eva had infiltrated?”

  “Yes,” Landis replied. “She had one last meeting with Seybelman, which we don’t have the details of. It seems he was going to fix her up to meet someone else, but we don’t know who.”

  “Let’s make sure I’ve got this straight,” Mel said. “Eva was still employed officially at the Constitutional LA office, and Seybelman knew it, but he thought that she had turned and was really working for him.”

  “Yes.”

  Mel frowned. “How did she convince him? I mean, what was her motivation supposed to be?”

  Stephanie answered. “I used to believe the Constitutional ideology. You could say I was almost a fanatic about it at one time. I gave it total commitment for years. And what did I get? I’m still practically an office clerk. It isn’t what I expected. In contrast, this new circle that I’m getting to know offers money, glamour, exciting people—the kinds of things that life is all about. I’m through with being a dedicated servant of the cause.”

  “In other words, ego and frustrated ambition,” Landis said.

  “It happens,” Bassen threw in.

  Mel nodded and looked back at Stephanie. “Okay. So how did you become part of that circle
? What got you in there in the first place?”

  Stephanie didn’t answer but looked toward Landis in an unconscious appeal for him to take it. Landis said, “The political group that Seybelman belongs to in California has a guy called Arnold Hoffenach, who runs security, hires the bodyguards, and takes care of things like that. He’s pretty well cut out for the job, and good at it, too: former SEAL, then stunt man, two years of agency work, martial arts expert—but smart, and with enough polish to look right in a tuxedo.”

  The operator found the reference, and a picture appeared on the screen of a broad-shouldered, yet lean and athletically built man, dressed in a conventional suit and carrying a briefcase, crossing what looked like a hotel lobby. He had light hair, cut short in a casual, shaggy style that enhanced his rugged good looks—the kind of material that made movie stars.

  “Seen here carrying the money,” Landis commented. “But Hoffenach is also the dominant breed: a man’s man, who scores well with the ladies. And one of Arnold’s notable conquests this year, which put a real feather in his cap as far as the guys upstairs who decide his pay raises are concerned, was a certain lady he fished right out of the middle of the enemy camp… who just happened to be staying in the same hotel and playing in the same casino, lonely, bored, and available, when he took a short vacation in Vegas with a couple of his pals last February.” Although his tone was still bordering on flippant, the look in Landis’s eyes hardened behind his spectacles as he held Mel’s gaze. At last they were down to business.

  Mel nodded his head slowly. Now it all made sense. Eva would have done it. She wouldn’t have hesitated to insinuate herself in that way, if that was what it took… But Stephanie? That was a different matter. Now he understood the confusion he’d seen in the look she’d flashed Landis a few seconds earlier, and why their plan had run into trouble. That was why they had rushed him down from Boston.

  Bassen had been watching Mel’s face and read him correctly. “That’s right,” he said. “She can’t go back in to pick up that script. No fault of hers, but with the best will in the world, she couldn’t handle it. So we need to invent some new happenings of the last two weeks to keep Hoffenach away from her. And that, Mel, is where you can help us out.”