There was a long silence, Kalatis and Faeber half-turned in the front seat, Kalatis looking away now, out the windshield. He was big, and he often reminded Burtell of a minotaur. It was an apt image: Kalatis, his feet planted firmly in front of the doorway to darkness, guarding a subterranean maze of lies.
“What about Seldon, then?” Kalatis asked. He was holding his cigar, looking at its glowing tip. “What do we do now?”
“You forget about it,” Burtell said. “It’s gone, done.”
Kalatis turned his head slowly toward Burtell. “Oh, I don’t think so, my friend. I just said a moment ago that I didn’t want to lose my situation here.”
“You’ll lose that and everything else if you try to force this,” Burtell warned. “We can’t screw around with Graver too much, Panos. We won’t get by with it very long.”
“What do you mean?” Kalatis asked softly, smiling. “We’ve been screwing him for two years.”
“No, we’ve been lying to him for two years,” Burtell clarified. “There’s a difference. Tisler’s death, that’s screwing with him. Any idiot can tell lies, but you’ve got to be at the other end of the IQ scale if you want to deal successfully with Marcus Graver’s suspicions.”
“So it’s over?” Faeber was incredulous.
“Seldon is, yes,” Burtell said. “We put everything on hold for right now. Let everyone relax over there. Wait until Ray gets back from his vacation and then see if we can’t restructure, pull this back together.”
Kalatis had turned back to looking out the windshield. From where they sat they could see the tops of the downtown skyscrapers rising out of the darkness, just beginning to glitter in the twilight.
“Okay,” Kalatis said suddenly with a huge sigh. He tossed his cigar out onto the asphalt of the parking lot “We’ll get with Besom when he gets back. When is that?”
“Tomorrow,” Burtell said.
“Okay,” Kalatis continued. “We’ll get with him, get his opinion. Let’s give this some thought Work up the options. If we want to go on with the operation, how do we do it? Are the gains worth the risks? What do we do if Graver does come up with something?” He looked at Burtell and then at Faeber. “You know what we need.” Again to the back seat “I’ll be in touch.”
That was all there was to it.
Kalatis turned around to face the steering wheel and hit the buttons on his armrest that controlled the windows. As the windows were going up Burtell picked up his suit coat, feeling as though he ought to say something else, but not knowing just exactly what or just exactly why. Nothing more was said, so Burtell opened his door and got out He closed the door just as the windows locked into place, and Kalatis started the car and flipped on the air conditioner.
Burtell hesitated a beat beside the dark windows of the Mercedes and then turned and walked across the small lot to his car, unlocked it, and threw in his coat He looked back at the Mercedes which didn’t move, just sat there with its motor running, its air conditioner humming along with the cicadas in the dark heat. He got into his own car and started the engine, feeling a little queasy as he adjusted the air conditioner vents to blow directly on him. The goddamned Greek was just too spooky. He was so goddamned byzantine he made intrigue look like a game of checkers.
Burtell put the car in gear and turned toward the narrow lane that led up past the condominium. The lights were coming on here and there in the condominium, and he wondered if the two women lived there or somewhere farther back in the neighborhoods. He drove past the Greek’s car, which sat motionless and dark, seeming to have an intelligence about it, a mute and incomprehensible cunning like one of those crusty bayou cockroaches that lived in the layered armor of the palm trees. Jesus Christ.
“What do you think?” Kalatis asked as they watched the taillights of Burtell’s car climb the lane and disappear.
Faeber was cautious. “He seemed sure of himself, that he had it under control.”
“I think he was squirming,” Kalatis said. “Maybe he hasn’t got the guts to go through with this.”
“Go through with it?”
“If we don’t call it off. If we go through with it.”
Faeber suddenly felt as if he had missed part of the conversation, that he hadn’t picked up on something crucial. Confused now, his mind scrambled to sort it out But he chose to say nothing else. He simply sat there wondering what in the hell was operating behind the black eyes of Panos Kalatis.
Chapter 17
Driving home, Graver went over and over the disturbing evidence Paula had laid out during the past two hours. There was no mistaking she had uncovered a breach in security that could have disastrous consequences. It was an intelligence director’s worst fear, and the bad news was compounded by the fact that an old, good friend seemed to be involved, if not at the very heart of it.
In truth, this was something Graver still had not accepted, though he had given Paula every indication that he had. It simply was unbelievable. He was going to have to think himself into it. Like a mathematician, he possessed the problem and the theorem, but he had yet to construct a formula of proof. And he would have to see that formula played out, step by step, before he would be able to bring himself to see Dean Burtell as a traitor.
The sticking point was motivation. Graver knew Burtell like a brother, and the motives seen most often in circumstances of betrayal simply did not figure into the equation. Greed? Dean liked to live well, but his affinity for upper-middle-class comforts hardly added up to avarice. Sexual obsession? Graver knew enough about human nature to know that that sort of thing could be held in secret for decades, even lifetimes, but often, if not always, there were indications, hints, of this proclivity in other aspects of the personality. But not in Dean Burtell. Revenge for imagined or actual wrongs? Burtell had never uttered a word along these lines. That, too, commonly exhibited itself sooner or later in someone who felt it strongly enough to seek it. Conflicting ideology or philosophy? Not a factor.
But supposing Burtell had changed, and one of these elements had become an obsession for him, obsession enough for him to betray everything and everyone for it. Would not Graver have noticed the change? Even if Burtell had managed effectively to disguise the motive, would Graver not have noticed something, even some other alteration in his behavior? How could he possibly have missed it? Had Burtell, like Tisler, suddenly acted contrary to character without anyone seeing even minor indications of something amiss-in either of them?
Graver had to admit that Paula’s line of deduction was artful and well constructed, but it did not seem to track with the human factor, an understanding of which also required a kind of sixth sense. Surely there was something here that didn’t add up. Surely, in this instance, appearances-the appearance of Burtell’s involvement- were deceiving. But then that was the problem, wasn’t it? Appearances had been deceiving. And now Graver, while accepting the axiom in the first instance, wanted to force it onto the second. It was the everlasting danger of counterintelligence, mirrors arranged to create the appearance of an infinity of the same image. Graver was on unstable ground, and it scared him.
He stopped at a seafood restaurant on Shepherd and the hostess took him to a small table for two by a window. Graver had not eaten at so many tables for two in his entire life as he had in the last six months. It was a constant and ironic reminder that dining, like sex, was an activity that, ideally, was expected to be done in pairs.
After ordering a dinner of fried shrimp and a bottle of Pacifico beer, he took out his pocket notebook and jotted down a few points that Paula had made that he wanted to rethink. Taking notes was an old habit that was hard to break, and he collected his thoughts much better in the company of old habits.
When his food arrived, he put away his notebook and ordered a second Pacifico. As he ate, he let his attention wander to the other diners, imagining the relationships of the people at each table. It was a favorite diversion, but one that he forced on himself now in a deliberate effort to take his mind off Burtell. It was not an entirely successful endeavor. When he finished eating, he did not order coffee, but quickly motioned to his waiter for the bill, paid it, and left.
As he was walking out to his car, he felt the pager on his belt vibrate. He looked down at the number, and then turned around and went back into the restaurant. There was only one pay telephone in the anteroom outside
