The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  As they approached the entrance to the rear lounge, the door opened and Larry appeared. “Ah, you’re still out here,” he said. “We saw you coming from the office. Ron wants to see you there right away.”

  “It sounds like trouble,” Mel said as they followed him in.

  “I’ll let Warren and Ron explain it.”

  They went up some stairs to a group of secluded rooms at the back of the main building. Inside one of them, Landis was sitting at the desk, reading something in a file, while on the far side, Bassen stared moodily out of the window at the trees that Stephanie and Mel had emerged from. He turned as they entered. Landis looked up. George Slade was in an adjoining room through a half-open door, talking on the phone.

  “Wadlow’s being a prick out on the West Coast,” Bassen said without preamble.

  “What’s happened?” Mel asked.

  “He’s being obstructive about putting Stephanie in there as Eva.”

  Stephanie took off her hat and unzipped her ski jacket. “What doesn’t he like about it?”

  Bassen waved a hand vaguely. “It’s an image and turf thing. Basically he’s worried that some of his people might think they should have known about it, and they’ll feel jerked around if we don’t tell them. He wants so many of them in on it that the whole thing would cease making any sense. What he’s trying to do is cover his ass from all angles. But if office politics is coming into it, it’s not going to work, anyway.”

  “Couldn’t Newell just tell him to do it?” Mel asked. “He is the boss, isn’t he?”

  “He could, but it wouldn’t be Henry’s style.”

  “I think the atmosphere is all too wrong to try it now, anyway, even if Wadlow changes his mind,” Landis said from the desk. Bassen nodded.

  Mel looked from one to the other. “You’re not saying we’ll have to send her in cold?”

  Landis looked at Bassen and shook his head. Mel got the feeling that they had discussed this between themselves already. “We can’t Ron. Not without some kind of test in friendly territory. She needs to know she can do it. We all do.”

  Bassen turned back to the window and nodded with a sigh. “I agree, I agree. But where else is there?” They talked for a while, but nobody could come up with an immediate alternative.

  It was an hour later, while they were still debating the issue over a cold-cuts snack brought in from the restaurant, that Mel at last saw the obvious. “There are two people who knew both Stephanie and Eva from our university days,” he said. “In fact it was them and Eva who got me involved with the Constitutionals in the first place.” He looked around at the circle of faces. “We go back to Florida. Let’s try Stephanie out—and me, for that matter—with the Brodsteins. We’ll go visit Paul and Martha Brodstein.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Earlier in the year, a terrorist group claiming to be the militant arm of an Iraqi political sect had kidnapped the eight-year-old grandson of a wealthy Iranian while the boy was on vacation with his family in Italy. The Iranian was, in fact, an agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, who had been installed in the country many years previously under a carefully prepared cover identity. Since then, he had been accepted socially into Iran’s highest political and military circles, which had enabled him to send a flow of valuable information back to the Israelis.

  The kidnappers demanded the release of a number of prisoners being held in Israeli custody, and when the Israelis stood firm, sent the severed end of a finger through the mail as an inducement, along with the grisly warning that the pieces would get larger. Mercifully, however, Mossad in the meantime had pinpointed the hideout near the harbor at Palermo, in Sicily, where the boy was being held. Fearing hesitation and delay on the part of the local authorities, which would have made tragedy inevitable, the Israelis decided to take matters into their own hands and sent in one of their antiterrorist units. The commandos landed silently at night from rubber boats, located and stormed the house, wiping out all six of the captors who were there at the time, and brought the boy out safely.

  But the Israelis were not satisfied. The six kidnappers killed at Palermo had been small fry, and further investigations, along with tip-offs from various unlikely sources that were united only in their disgust at this new turn that old grievances had taken, revealed that the mastermind responsible was one Wadal Zuvi, of indeterminate origins, who had long been suspected of being behind a long list of outrages. Zuvi, however, did his masterminding from a safe haven far removed from the action: his luxury villa at West Palm Beach, a little to the north of Miami. And Zuvi took no chances. The house was heavily protected by alarms and security devices, and filled at all times with armed bodyguards, who also surrounded Zuvi wherever he went.

  The results of the early American primary elections and other indicators of public mood at that time were beginning to point to a Constitutional victory in November, and with the changes in the international scene that this was likely to bring, the Israeli government had been loathe to risk anything that might sour relationships. Any thought of a covert Mossad operation on American soil, the Israeli prime minister therefore decreed sternly to his intelligence committee, was out of the question. Accordingly, a discreet approach was made to the Americans through channels used when official communication was precluded, and shortly afterward in Washington, the word was quietly passed down to an unlisted office in the Pentagon underworld.

  A week later, a water-company truck appeared at the end of the street where Zuvi’s villa was situated. In the course of the next few days, a hole appeared in the ground, some lengths of new pipe were stacked beside it, and Zuvi’s house guards paid it no further attention. But the two men in white coveralls down the hole were less interested in water pipes than in the local telephone feeder cable, which, since it was an exclusive residential area, ran underground. Soon, Zuvi’s telephone started giving intermittent trouble. When one of the bodyguards called the phone company’s number to report the fault, the voice that answered expressed apologies and promised that somebody would be there that afternoon. A man bearing phone-company credentials duly appeared, traced wiring around the house, performed tests, and replaced something in the phone in Zuvi’s private office. He said that everything should be fine now, and went away again. The water company’s work farther along the street finished on the same day, too.

  The next morning, a caller asked to speak to Zuvi. “Who wants him?” the bodyguard who took the call demanded.

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “I wouldn’t dare tell you.”

  “I’ll transfer you to his office.”

  There was a pause. Then, a belligerent voice answered, “Yeah?”

  “Hello. Are you Wadal Zuvi?”

  “Yes I am. What of it? Who are you?”

  Zuvi lived long enough to tell the doctors that he heard a high-pitched whine just before the bomb exploded.

  The agent who had placed the device and transmitted the acoustic signal over the line to detonate it returned to Washington a few days later. Around the office and in its files he was referred to by the nom de guerre of Marco Polo, while his code name in the field was Obsidian. Had he been working covertly in another country, he would also have had a third name—the official cover by which he went openly about in his day-to-day affairs. In fact, when off duty, he went by the easiest name of all to maintain, which came easily and naturally: his own. It was Dave Fenner.

  • • •

  The Colonel—that was the only name that Fenner had ever known him by—stared distastefully down at the file on his desk. He was a lean, hollow-faced man with protruding eyes and a droopy, ragged mustache. Fenner had always pictured him as looking more at home in a uniform of the Civil War period, of either side, instead of a tweed jacket, check shirt, and knitted tie. “Nasty business. It can’t go any lower than snatching children and dragging them into it… Well, at least let’s be thankful that it’s the last time he’ll
try anything like it. Good mission, Polo.”

  Which, from the Colonel, was the ultimate in dizzying heights of praise that one could reasonably expect to hear. “My pleasure,” Fenner said. And meant it.

  The Colonel closed the file, pushed it aside, and reached for another underneath it, which he had been studying. “The communication that our friends in Florida brought back from Lebanon contained something that looks as if it could be in your area, too.” He was referring to the Brodsteins. Having known Dave for years, they occasionally functioned as couriers for him on their trips abroad, particularly in situations where one end or the other wished the connection to remain unofficial. “It’s from Mossad again. I’m beginning to think we should transfer you to them permanently. Let them pick up the paycheck.”

  “What do they want this time?” Fenner asked. “And why the roundabout approach?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But it seems that one of their infiltrators who’s been operating inside PALP has stumbled on something unusual.”

  Which meant that it had something to do with Syria. The People’s Army for the Liberation of Palestine was one of the dozens of splinter groups that the guerrilla movements, such as PFLP and Fatah, of twenty years earlier had spawned in their ceaseless squabbles and internal rivalries. It had its roots in the Saiqa movement, and obtained its backing primarily from the Syrian Baath Party, which meant it was Soviet-driven.

  The Colonel went on. “The main thing he’s been assigned to is getting some inside information on an airplane hijack that they’re thought to be planning.”

  Fenner looked askance. “Hijacks aren’t our line. That’s what the Delta Force guys are supposed to be for at Fort Bragg.”

  “That’s not the side of it that interests us. In addition, their agent has also made contact with a mysterious person that they refer to as Mustapha, who’s being held by PALP. Mustapha claims to have urgent information concerning our—the American—space defense system, that he wants to send back to us.” The Colonel glanced over the top of the document at Fenner for a reaction.

  Fenner shrugged. “Why can’t Mossad’s agent relay it out?”

  “It’s not so simple. Apparently Mustapha doesn’t trust anyone. In fact he doesn’t even trust our own people—most of them, anyhow. According to the message we’ve got, the only organization he’ll deal with is the Constitutional party.” The Colonel looked across the desk. “Weird, but there it is.”

  “Okay…” Fenner was nodding as he saw where he was starting to fit into the picture.

  The Colonel went on. “You have a reliable contact inside the Constitutional party organization, whom you’ve known for years.”

  “Mayfly,” Fenner said, which was the department’s code name for Eva.

  “Yes… Now, in January, the future vice president will be visiting Egypt and Israel for political talks. It has also reached my ear that Mayfly will be going too, as a member of his party. Since you know Mayfly and Mayfly is close to the party leadership, it ought to be possible to use her as a channel to Mustapha, via Mossad. That’s what I want you to organize. How long has it been since you were in touch with her?”

  “Quite a while. The last time I talked to her, she was wrapped up in election stuff.”

  “Well, arrange a meeting with her to make sure she can do it, et cetera. Then, I want you to get over to Jerusalem and do the groundwork with the Mossad people to have a specific plan worked out by the time Mayfly arrives. I’ve already cleared it with the chief there. You know the drill. Any questions?”

  “I’ll get to it right away.”

  “Well, what are you still sitting there for, Polo?”

  “I’m on my way, right now.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Brett’s voice came through the doorway from the kitchen. “That’s right, Marty, you’ve got it. I don’t feel like a bayou barbecue tonight… Because I have other plans… No it won’t, it’ll be a circus. You know as well as I do that it’s always a circus… No we won’t. First, the logistics will get screwed up. Harry and Jeff will fight over Marge. Charlie and Lisa will get Sylvie all upset. It’ll be the usual stuff, and I’ve already seen it…” At the far end of the lounge, Mel sat staring morosely out through the picture window at Pensacola Bay and paying little attention. Two dark-painted navy jets were climbing and turning after taking off from Chevalier Field at the Naval Air Station to the west. Behind him, Brett’s voice continued, “Well, if you have to know, I thought I’d go over to Steph’s… What do you mean, and what? Play records or something and talk, that’s what. People can still have a good time without needing swarms of noisy assholes around them all the time… Sure I’ve changed. It’s called getting older… Yep, ’fraid so, Marty… Some other time, maybe, eh? Sure, and you. So you and the guys have a good time, okay?… Yeah… Yeah… See ya.”

  Brett appeared in the doorway, wearing a thigh-length flannelette beach robe over white shorts. Mel showed no reaction. He had been like this ever since they got up, and for most of yesterday. Brett stood, hands on hips, regarding him for a few seconds, then said, “You look like a suicide commercial. Hey, come on, brighten up. Who knows, the war might happen today. We might all be nuked by supper time.”

  Mel returned a scowl. “That might be an improvement. Life’s too much of a hassle, anyhow. It’s like sex: all things considered, the time would probably be better spent doing something else.”

  Brett came into the room and stood by the large walnut dining table, where the ignition sequencer from his car was lying partially dismantled in a shoe box. “What’s been bugging you for the last couple of days?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Mel looked away over the bay again.

  “It’s gotta be trouble with Eva, right? I’ve got all day if you wanna talk.”

  “Not really… Don’t worry about it. It’s just a down, that’s all.”

  “Marty called. He says the gang are having a barbecue out at the bayou tonight. Why not go along?”

  “I might enjoy it, and I’m not in the mood.”

  “Jesus H., you’ve really got it bad, Mel! Okay, how about coming over to Steph’s with me? Better than moping around on your own. We all know each other. Maybe it’d help to unload.”

  “You go ahead. I’d rather be on my own, anyhow.”

  “Watcha gonna do, stay here?”

  “I dunno.” Mel carried on looking out of the window. “Maybe I’ll go into town and get a drink someplace. See who’s around…”

  Brett waited for a moment, then went back into the kitchen. He finished putting the dishes in the washer that he had been stacking when Marty called, and then moved back to the doorway. Mel was still in the same position and took no notice. Brett watched him for a while and then went through into his own room, closing the door behind him. He sat down on the edge of his bed, picked up the phone extension, and called Stephanie’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Brett,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Look, about me coming over tonight. This is a bit sudden, and I’m sorry, but do you think you could find something different to do?”

  “You mean you can’t make it?”

  “That’s right. Something’s come up.”

  “You’re not coming through very loud, Brett.”

  “I don’t wanna speak up, because Mel’s in the next room and it’s about him. See, he’s been acting kinda weird, and I figure it’s to do with him and Eva. So I thought maybe I’d take him out on the town for a beer or two, you know… talk it out. Try and cheer him up. I think it’d do him good.”

  “Well, it’s disappointing, but I guess it’d be best if he’s really that bad. It should be a good night to get him out of it, too. Finals are over. There’ll be a lot of people out celebrating.”

  “Exactly. That’s what I thought, too. So, you don’t mind, eh?”

  “Of course not. You have fun, and take care of Mel, okay?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t. So I’ll give you a call tomorrow, then?�
��

  “Of course. Let me know how it goes.”

  “Right, and ah… I guess it would be best not to mention it to Eva if you talk to her.”

  “You know I wouldn’t. She takes care of herself.”

  “Okay, and thanks a lot. I appreciate it.”

  “Take care.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  He waited until Marty called again, as he knew Marty would. Marty was one of those born organizers of people, who worried and fussed and always called everyone at least three times. “No, I don’t think Mel wants to come either, Marty,” he said, taking the call in his room. “We’re already going out tonight. It’s already fixed… No, we don’t have one of those we can loan you… Because I’m in the middle of fixing it. Try Donna. I think she’s got one… If they borrowed it, try them… Well, it’s all I can suggest… Okay, Marty. Have a good one… Sure. So long.”

  He hung the phone up and went into the lounge. Mel had moved to the table and was playing solitaire. “Say, what do you know,” he said. “That was Steph. Something’s come up and she’s wiped out tonight. I guess I’m gonna be at loose ends. How would you like some company over that beer you were talking about?”

  Mel looked up. He hesitated for a moment and then said, just a trifle grudgingly, “Sure, why not?”

  “Maybe shoot some pool. Feel lucky today?”

  “When did I ever need luck to whip your ass?”

  “Ah, now we’re hearing it! When somebody comes along who can whip my ass at a pool table, I’ll write and tell you about it, okay?”

  “You won’t need to. I reckon I’ll already be there.”

  “Oh, is that so? Okay, ten bucks says you’re a dead man. First five games.”

  Mel grinned his first real grin all day. “You’ve got it. Ten bucks.”

  • • •

  Trader Jon’s Pub and Oyster Bar was situated just in the respectable fringe, a couple of blocks from the waterfront area around the bottom end of Palafox. It was a popular lunchtime spot for journalists and businesspeople during the week, and a favorite downtown haunt for the younger set in the evenings. On Saturday nights it was always packed and noisy, and by ten o’clock Mel and Brett, a considerable number of Coors and Budweisers the worse for wear, were sitting at a corner booth out of the line of fire from the band’s formidable battery of speakers, which were blaring a medley of thumpy, beat-heavy college hits from the sixties. The dance floor on the far side of the room was crowded, the tables and booths around them filled with groups and couples, and the area along by the bar thick with singles, mainly males reconnoitering the territory.