too clearly, so he revealed X’s actual identity to save the game. It wasn’t enough. With Judy and Albright in hiding, X wrote one more letter, giving the access codes for the new Athena file. Then we waited for the Soviets to activate one of the sleepers. They didn’t. What happened next was Albnght kidnapped you, swiped all the Athena information he could readily lay hands on, then went to Camacho’s house to kill him. Camacho had been expecting Albright to try something, but we didn’t know exactly what it would be. When Luis Camacho came down those stairs and saw you there that afternoon — then he knew. The Soviets weren’t going to invest any more major assets in this operation. His sole hope of getting the sleepers’ names was Harlan Albright, who might know.”
Jake said, “I wondered why the Athena file was suddenly re- named, all the access codes changed.”
“Henry shouldn’t have done that. Camacho shouldn’t have warned him. But Camacho was worried he didn’t have all the possible holes covered and he knew Athena’s real value. Still, it would have worked if Henry hadn’t interfered.” Caplinger sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.
“We had to let the Russians work at it. If they succeeded too easily, they would have smelled the setup. No, our mistake was giving them the real Minotaur. Perhaps they found his identity too troublesome once they knew.”
Caplinger shrugged. “After Judy failed, we wanted Albright badly. Our thinking then was that perhaps we could get the names from him, willingly or with hypnosis and drugs. We thought the odds about three to one that he knew the names then. If the GRU was even contemplating using a sleeper, the controller had to be briefed in advance, before the possibility became the necessity. Yet Albright evaded the clowns sent to pick him up. The agents thought they were going to arrest a mail-fraud suspect.” Caplinger spread his hands, a gesture of frustration. “So we waited, hoping against hope a sleeping mole would awaken. It didn’t happen.”
“So you failed,” Toad said.
“Oh no, Mr. Tarkington. X succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Not exactly in the way we expected, of course, but the benefits are real and tangible. This operation was one of the most successful covert intelligence operations ever undertaken by any nation. Ever.”
“Please explain, sir.”
“I see the disbelief written all over your face. Captain.”
“My impression is that you people gave away the ranch, sir. Just how many top secret programs did you compromise?”
“We showed them the crown jewels, Captain. We had to. They would never have taken the bait otherwise. The three buried moles are very valuable.”
“Pooh.” Tarkington shook his head. “I’m not buying it. Those three agents may have turned, exactly like Camacho. If the Soviets ever try to use them, those guys may run straight to the FBI. The Russians may not even know where they are now.”
“You are a very young man. Lieutenant.” Caplinger was scath- ing. “You have a lot to learn. The deep plants are valuable to the Soviets as chips in the Cold War poker games, at home and abroad. They are valuable in exactly the same way that thermonuclear weapons are valuable, ICBMs, boomer submarines — I could go on. Those three buried agents are hole cards, Lieutenant. They may even be dead. Yet we can never afford to ignore them. Do you begin to understand?”
“Yessir.” Toad looked miserable. “But—“
“There are layers and layers and layers.”
“But listen,” Toad objected reasonably- “We didn’t even know these men existed until four years ago. What if they don’t?”
“Aha! The light becomes a glow!”
Caplinger leaped from his chair, galvanized. “Perhaps they don’t exist! Perhaps the defection of a mid-level KGB officer was a ploy, and the list was bait to make us think they had three agents. They write the list, they leave it where a man of dubious professional accomplishments, a man of dubious loyalty and dubious value, will see it. Very convenient, you must admit! And in the fullness of time he is given an opportunity to defect, which he, no fool, takes as the best of a poor range of options.”
Caplinger’s voice rose to a shout. “And he gets here and tells us his little tale. We give it credence. We must! We have no other choice.”
“I’m slightly baffled. Mr. Secretary,” Jake said dryly. “Just how did X succeed, if that word can even be used in these kinds of — what the hell are they? — games?”
Royce Caplinger began to walk back and forth, lost in thought. “The Soviet Union today is a nation in transition. Their system is against the wall. The Soviet people want good wages and housing and food to eat. The generals want to maintain their privileged positions. The politicians want to stay in power. (That’s human enough. Ours will sell their soul for another term in office.) To do all of this the Soviets need money, vast quantities of it, money that does not exist.
“So the government is scrambling for money. What the Mino- taur did was prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the amount they have been spending for defense was nowhere near enough. The Soviets have spent as much money in real terms as we have for defense over the years, but it’s a much larger percentage of their Gross National Product. Only a dictatorship can maintain that level of defense spending.” He stopped his pacing and spread his arms. ” put the spotlight on the Soviet system’s fail- ings. The Soviet economy, if it can be called that, is an abject debacle: food must be purchased from abroad, there is nothing in the stores to buy, the prosperity of the other industrial nations has eluded them- And now the military needs many more billions to replace hardware it has spent billions to obtain which is now obso- lete, years and years before the Soviets planned to replace it.”
He examined the faces of his listeners. “Don’t you read newspa- pers? Where have you been? Gorbachev has been talking per- estroika and glasnost for years. Why? The threat of Star Wars tech- nology was a major impetus. There was no way they could match it! Under no conceivable circumstances could enough rubles be printed or squeezed from the people to fund such a program. The generals lost power. The politicians gained it. Through diplomacy the threat of Star Wars could be blunted, perhaps even eliminated. Soviet foreign policy changed course dramatically; arms reduction treaties were agreed to and signed, mutual verification was at last swallowed with good grace. Then came X’s revelations,”
“I see,” Jake said, rubbing his chin and glancing at Toad.
“Yes, Captain. We are having a major technological revolution in America just now. The research of the space programs has borne fruit. Ever smaller, ever more powerful computers, lasers, missiles, fiber optics, new manufacturing techniques that allow us to build structures and engines with capabilities undreamed of ten years ago: last year’s cutting-edge designs are obsolete before we can get them into production! It’s like something out of science fiction. This must have struck you these past six months?”
“Yes.”
Caplinger nodded as he seated himself behind the desk. He just couldn’t stay still for any length of time, Jake thought. “It struck me five years ago when I became SECDEF. I listened to the brief- ings in awe. This black magic was real It’s not just Star Wars; it’s everything. Jet engines with over three times the thrust per pound of Soviet engines are real, ready for deployment. Stealth obsoletes their radar systems. America is preparing to deploy a new genera- tion of weaponry that will make obsolete everything the Russian generals have bled the Soviet Union to get for the last forty years. They have reached the end of their string. If this is table stakes, they have bet their last ruble, and we have raised.”
“X,” Jake said slowly, “gave them the awful truth.”
“Chapter and verse. Imagine the horror in Moscow as the true dimensions of their dilemma sank in. The rumors and hints they had heard were all true. The United States was even farther ahead technologically than the worst pessimists predicted. It was a night- mare.”
“They could have ordered a first strike,” Tarkington said. “Started World War III before their military situation became hopeless.”
“Yes. But they didn’t They are, after all, sane.”
“Jee-susl” Tarkington came out of his chair like a coiled spring. He planted himself in front of Caplinger’s desk. “What if they had?”
‘Then none of us would be alive now, would we, Lieutenant? Please sit down.”
“Who commissioned you to play God with the universe, Caplin- ger? Where does it say in the Constitution that you have the right to bet the existence of every living thing on this planet, for what- ever reason?”
Caplinger rose from his chair and leaned across the desk, until his face was only a foot from Toad’s. “What
