“Put the real Cassandra under lock and key and wait.”
Limoges shook his head impatiently. “We can’t do that.”
“We have no choice,” Brewer said.
“That’s right,” Limoges replied. “We have no choice. We are in one hell of a bind now.” He resumed stamping toward the entrance.
“Are you telling me that you’re not going to protect the real unit while the top thief in the business is coming to steal it?”
“Let’s get inside,” Limoges said. “I have some bad news for you.”
Mobius Laboratories looked like a toy maker’s design center. Computer-operated model tractors were traveling over simulated fields of wheat, working out computer-set patterns for reaping and sowing—ever-reducing squares, ever-reducing circles, and up and down.
Computer-operated model trains traversed complex track patterns, speeding up, slowing, sidetracking, while interactive computers that guided each train negotiated with each other at high speed.
Up and down floor lanes robots prowled, performing a series of complex operations over and over.
Brewer and Limoges were led to a large office, where Coles sat before a computer, watching columns of green numbers parade up the screen.
“Here,” Coles said to them. “Sit down.” He reached under his desk and pulled out a gray metal case the size of a small valise. He placed it on the desk.
“That’s Cassandra?” Brewer asked.
“That’s Cassandra,” Coles replied. “Everything’s inside this one case, ready to travel. All a thief has to do is grab the handle and run. You want to know how it’s booby-trapped?”
“Yes,” Brewer said.
“It’s identical to the real Cassandra in every respect except one. It has one extra command buried deep in its brain. It will do all the tests the Russians run it through. It will perform all the operations as they construct their Star Wars system. Then, when they have the entire network ready to become operational, they will give it the ultimate command, and instead of making their system operational, it will self-destruct. Their screens will go blank and the system will die on the spot. And they will have lost countless man-hours and money. Worse, they will be light-years behind us.” He looked at Brewer. “Revenge,” he said. “How sweet it is.”
“Where will you keep it?” Brewer asked.
Coles turned and pointed at a vault. “It will be stored in there.”
“And where is the real Cassandra?” Brewer asked.
Coles looked at Limoges. “We have to tell him,” he said.
Limoges shrugged and avoided looking at Brewer.
“We are testing the real Cassandra,” Coles said to Brewer. “We couldn’t wait any longer.”
Brewer looked at Limoges, then at Coles. “You’re testing Cassandra—the real one—while we’ve lost contact with Gogol?”
“Precisely,” Limoges said. “You’ve really got us up a creek, Brewer.”
“You’ve got yourself up a creek,” Brewer said. “You’ve made an incredible gaffe.”
“Steady, boy,” Limoges said.
Coles asked Brewer, “Now how do you invite your Russian playmate to come and steal this fake?”
“He’s not going to come himself,” Brewer answered.
“You expect him to send someone else?”
“He always does,” Brewer answered. “Tell me. Why are you testing Cassandra now?”
“Mr. Limoges here feels that delay is no longer possible.”
“Bravo,” Brewer said softly to Limoges.
“That’s enough, Brewer,” Limoges replied.
“How will you know if Gogol has taken the bait?” Coles asked.
“Credit checks,” Brewer said. “We’ll know when a credit investigation company does a character check on me. That’s always Gogol’s opening move. He’ll be looking for some way to blackmail me. And probably you two.” He looked again at Limoges. “I still can’t believe you authorized the testing of the real unit. I have to say it’s wrongheaded to test that unit now.”
“Meantime, what do we do about Gogol?” Coles asked. “We wait,” Brewer said. “It’s Gogol’s move. God help us if he makes the wrong one.” He looked pointedly at Limoges. Limoges got up and left.
After he had gone, Brewer asked Coles, “How far along in the testing are you?”
Coles pointed at the computer screen. “It’s running now,” he said. “We’ve simulated an SDI network using other computers all over the country. It’s big; it’s complicated; it took a hell of a lot of planning to set it up. So it’s going to go on for quite awhile.” He tapped a finger on the screen. “It would be bad news if your Gogol tied into this. Very bad news.”
“Well, then, why are you testing now?”
“Limoges. There’s something up in the White House. Suddenly everything’s urgent.”
“How much does Limoges know about the test?” Brewer asked.
“Everything.”
Under a faded winter sun, the snow on the ground turned a dirtier gray and developed a frozen crust. The nights remained well below freezing. Every day that passed without a move from Gogol was ominous. Every day Limoges grew more anxious.
Brewer did not realize how short Limoges’s patience had become.
One night Brewer heard a slow footstep on the stair. A slow heavy fist rapped on the door. Brewer went and opened it.
Limoges stood in the doorway in his long blue winter coat, leaning on his cane. Behind his heavy glasses his eyes looked very tired.
“Come in,” Brewer said.
Limoges shook his head. “I just want you to know that my patience is just about at an end,” he said. He gazed around the apartment with his magnified eyes. “I can’t conduct any business in my limousine. Every time I see that Nevans, I want to kill him. And I can’t keep the charade up much longer.” He looked in at the apartment once more, then looked directly at Brewer.
“Then,” Brewer said, “stop the test until we find Gogol.”
Limoges shook his head. “I’m here to tell you that you have just three more days and it’s all over. Clear?”
With a slow, solemn nod—awkward, with his cane—Limoges turned and went heavily down the steps to the front door.
Brewer sat on a stool in a saloon and watched a rerun of a heavyweight-title boxing match from Atlantic City. He went to the movies twice. He played solitaire and did a crossword puzzle and took long, meandering walks through the snow-filled streets of Washington and Georgetown, hearing the wind sough in the branches. He spent afternoons shooting solitary racks of pool.
Each night at three A.M. Brewer watched the gunman pull the trigger and tumble Gogol’s car down the mountainside. He watched the car roll over, leap off the road and tumble end over end down down down, shedding doors, spraying glass, losing wheels, and finally bursting into flames.
At three A.M., always at three A.M., Brewer saw the screen in Coles’s office pumping frame after frame of test numbers as Gogol worked his way closer to it.
At three A.M. bloodied Defeat, with bent sword and smashed shield, was clearly visible at the foot of his bed.
At three A.M. Brewer cursed the genes that had made him. The truth was, he hadn’t wanted to finish his government career with a murder. And that was just what he might have to do to Gogol.
Brewer’s luck ran out.
It was three days to the hour when Limoges summoned him to the Jefferson Memorial. They met in the same spot behind it, in the same gray dusk, and walked the same bitter cold path, hearing the forlorn clanking of the chain tolling on the flagstaff while the crows circled silently over their roosts.
Limoges had come this time prepared for the weather. He wore a felt snap-brim hat and a heavy wool scarf and fur-lined gloves. He walked with a heavier cane.
“You could have done this by phone,” Brewer said to Limoges.
“I think you’ll agree that Gogol should have stepped into your trap by now,” Limoges said.
“Of course I do
n’t agree with that,” Brewer said.
“If he didn’t go for your particular brand of cheese,” Limoges said, “he has surely made a move elsewhere. For all we know, he may have tapped into the Cassandra test by now. He may have done a dozen things. Those seven extra days we’ve given Gogol may cost us frightfully in the end. And this chauffeur of mine, he may not have been working for Gogol at all. He could be working for someone else. Even the South Africans. Or he may be free-lancing. Now I have to decide how to handle that.
“You haven’t waited long enough,” Brewer said.
“I haven’t? Brewer, you’re like a Greek bearing gifts—they all exploded at the party.”
He paused and tried to work his lighter with gloved fingers. “I must admit, if it hadn’t been for you, I would not know about Gogol at all, might not have known about the tape deck in my car.” He stood looking at the chain clanging on the flagstaff. “I often wondered why Hell is pictured as a place of fire. To me real Hell is eternal winter. Robert Frost got that right.”
He threw down his cigar, turned and walked away.
The meeting was over.
Brewer walked slowly back to his car. He had tried to be mentally prepared for this, but he wasn’t. Perhaps it was the weather. It might have all been easier to accept on a pleasant summer twilight. Easier than the dead of winter—a time when the cold darkness made the weather-weary draw their chairs a little closer to each other, to talk in voices a little louder, poke up the fire a little higher, while Loneliness scratched at the windowpane.
It was all over for him. He was out of a job. Out of a career. Out of a paycheck.
And Limoges would order Gogol killed. If he could find him.
Brewer watched Limoges’s limousine slowly move away, followed by the escort car. Then both cars stopped. Another car was coming up the park drive. It was halted by Brewer’s car, blocking the way, and Sauer got out.
He walked slowly up to Brewer. “Well, it happened,” he said. “An outfit in Chicago, Eliott Credit Bureau, is asking all kinds of questions about you.”
Chapter 43
Late in the afternoon, in his motel room, Gogol received the first thick brown envelope from a messenger. He opened it and found two other envelopes inside.
The first, stamped CONFIDENTIAL in thick red letters, was from the Eliott Credit Bureau in Chicago. It was a financial and character report on Brewer.
Gogol snorted when he read Brewer’s net worth. Less than thirty thousand. He had few assets—government bonds, primarily—and fewer debts. He rented his apartment, leased most of the furniture, and owned a second-hand automobile. The only other asset was several acres of undeveloped land in Pennsylvania overlooking the Delaware Water Gap.
The report noted that Brewer had been married twice. Once in law school. When he dropped out to enter military intelligence, he and his wife had separated. There was no record of a divorce. Brewer was married a second time, in London, to the proprietress of a profitable pub in Chelsea. It had lasted less than a year. That divorce was still pending.
Under hobbies and pastimes the report listed poker, billiards, and fishing.
Eliott had not obtained much information on Brewer’s career in the intelligence field. And it had nothing on his activities as an arms dealer in Europe and the Near East. Gogol wasn’t surprised; he hadn’t expected to find anything usable in the credit report.
He turned next to the second envelope. Gogol always looked for three characteristics in people—fear, greed, and vengefulness. What he sought was the festering heart. And this second envelope promised to reveal it in abundance. It was Moscow’s dossier on Brewer. Thick and thorough, it documented Brewer’s life in detail. Gogol skimmed the vital statistics—birth, family, education, early career.
He glanced briefly at Moscow’s summary of Brewer’s government record—military counterintelligence, then arms control, then out of government as an arms dealer, then back in government as an expert on arms smuggling and high-tech smuggling.
Gogol looked with attention at Brewer’s history as an arms dealer working first for Mann, a famous arms seller in Zurich, then another in London. Brewer had had numerous encounters with Russian agents and operations and had won most of them. No wonder the committee called him a bone in the throat.
It was Moscow’s account of Brewer’s imprisonment that most interested Gogol. This might be the way into Brewer’s heart. Brewer had been framed. He’d been framed by a high-ranking government executive using the authority of his public office to commit the crime. Brewer had spent many months in a penitentiary before being pardoned. He emerged bitterly angry.
To compound his anger, the government had inexplicably moved with great slowness in restoring his rights, emoluments, and perquisites, and even then had to be prodded by the determined and unremitting legal moves of Brewer’s attorney. Nor was that the end. Limoges had personally intervened to hold up Brewer’s next career appointment. The Moscow report surmised that Brewer was working under duress on the Cassandra assignment.
In his habitual quest for the festering heart, Gogol had never encountered a more likely candidate than Brewer. But there was, in Brewer, some key ingredient missing. Gogol reviewed his list: greed, fear, vengefulness.
Greed? How do you bribe a man who doesn’t seem interested in money or wealth? Possessions appeared to be an impediment. He had no discernible interests except “poker, billiards, fishing.” No lust for an art collection. No hunger for a yacht. No secret dreams for a hunting lodge in the Sierras, a fishing cottage in Ireland. Gogol drew a line through greed. Brewer was not likely to respond to an offer of even a king’s ransom.
A greed for power? Brewer shunned power.
Fear. How do you blackmail a man who has nothing to hide, nothing to fear? The report from Moscow contained no secret drinking problem, no hidden sexual gambols, no peculations, no disloyalties or betrayals.
Vengefulness? So far, in spite of ample justification, Brewer did not behave like a man dreaming of vengeance. He handled the Cassandra affair with professionalism and determination. Gogol mentally drew a line through vengefulness.
There was only one thing that seemed to enthrall Brewer. His whole history proclaimed it—the game. The intelligence game. The chase. He’d walked away from a career in law, declined several lucrative opportunities in private industry, and seemingly wrecked two marriages because of his passion for the intelligence game. Gogol guessed that gamesmanship and not promotion was the reason Brewer had accepted Limoges’s assignment. So there was the only key to Brewer’s heart. Not vengeance or greed or fear. Charlie Brewer was a compulsive gambler and adventurer. He lived for the chase. And he was most excited when the stakes were his own life.
Gogol saw that he and Brewer could not be more opposite. True, both of them lived for the challenge. For the moment of crisis and maximum suspense. But Gogol knew that he himself was a sybarite who loved food and wine and swollen luxury and vast sums and great power. But he did not take chances. Did not risk himself at any time. He worked from behind the scenes.
Conversely, Brewer, who wanted nothing, cared little for food or pomp or circumstance. He was one step away from a fanatic monk in a bare cell. But he loved to take chances. He’d risked himself many times. Anyone who understood percentages would look at Brewer’s love of being on the wrong end of long odds and call him a fool.
In this game, a luxury-loving extrovert was confronting an ascetic loner.
Gogol could not understand Brewer. He could not understand a man who was indifferent to the world’s largesse. He could not understand any man who didn’t put his hand in the goodie jar. Men like that were difficult to suborn, to control, to use.
Gogol knew he was going to particularly enjoy winning this contest. He hated the Brewers of the world heartily.
One thing was quite clear. Both he and Brewer were involved in the Cassandra affair for the same primary reason. Ego. They each wanted to beat the other.
Gogol turned to the
Coles report. It had all the bench marks and way stations of a biography of a great scientist. A graduate of MIT summa cum laude, his brilliant college career was preceded by a long list of science awards as a child and teenager. Upon graduation he was eagerly sought after by many different corporations. Almost immediately he was involved in military contracts, and soon there appeared after his name in the Who’s Who directories, a long and growing list of credits and breakthroughs. He was a regular contributor to the scientific journals. His specialty became artificial intelligence. In his mid-thirties, at the behest of the military, he started Mobius, his own research think tank. Turned it into a cornucopia of inventions for military application. The list on Gogol’s report ran for three pages, and even that wasn’t a complete list of all his major developments. Gogol knew. He had stolen much of it.
For a hobby Coles pursued an activity that often had the Pentagon holding its breath. He was passionate about flying. He’d made his first ultra-light in his garage from a lawn-mower engine. Now, at fifty, he eagerly barnstormed in biplanes at air shows all across the country.
The first sign of trouble in his career occurred when he appeared before the Senate investigating committee on illegal acquisitions of U.S. technology to demand that the thefts be stopped. At that hearing he read a long list of names of scientists who were now refusing to work on military assignments. He became a vocal critic of the Pentagon and condemned the Soviet Union as a bandit nation.
His brilliant articles on artificial intelligence which had been appearing in science journals stopped at this point. He felt the Russians were benefiting too much. He wanted his colleagues to stop publishing. Coles had silenced himself.
Why had he resumed working for the military? Because Star Wars would never work without that central nervous system—the software that would oversee the whole operation. And only the most brilliant mind could develop such a unit. It was right on the frontier of research into artificial intelligence, requiring a number of new scientific contributions. Gogol would have liked to have been at the meeting when the Pentagon sought to persuade Coles to work on the project. They must have sent their best salesman to convince him. Developed by a mind like Coles’s, Cassandra must be brilliant. Brilliant. Gogol was eager to examine it.
Triple Trap Page 27
