ivory tower did you crawl down from? You think we should just strum our banjos and sing folk songs and pray that nuclear war never happens? Sit down and shut the fuck upl”
Tarkington obeyed. The cords in his neck were plainly visible.
“What is he. Captain?” Caplinger jerked a thumb at Toad. “Your conscience that you drag around?”
“He’s a man who cares,” Jake Grafton said slowly. “He sin- cerely cares.”
“We all do,” Caplinger replied, cooling down and taking his seat again. He rubbed his hand across his balding dome several times. “We all care, Tarkington. You think I enjoy this?”
“Yep. That’s precisely what I think.”
Caplinger rubbed his face. “Maybe you’re right” He toyed with a pen on his desk. “Yeah-I guess ‘enjoy’ isn’t the right word. But I do get satisfaction from it. Yes, I do.” He looked at Tarkington. “This is my contribution. Is that so terrible?”
“That retired woman that Albright killed — I’ll bet she enjoyed her little walk-on role in your drama. Didn’t she have any rights?”
Caplinger looked away.
Toad pressed. “You just chopped her like she was nothing. Is that what we are to you? Pawns? Rita — you have the right to stuff my wife through the meat grinder for the greater good? You ass- holel”
After a while Caplinger said, “We took big risks, but the reward was worth it.” He set his jaw. “It was worth it,” he insisted.
Neither officer replied.
Caplinger examined both their faces- “Come, gentlemen. Let’s have another cup of coffee.” Toad didn’t get out of his chair. He had the corncob pipe in his hands as the other two men left the room.
In the kitchen Jake said, “Somebody’s liable to shoot Gorba- chev, you know. He’s threatening to break a lot of rice bowls. Revolutions from the top rarely work.”
“Even if Gorbachev dies, the Soviet Union will never be the same. If the old guard tries to clamp down, sooner or later there’ll be another Russian Revolution, from the bottom next time. There’s going to be another revolution in China, sooner or later. The com- munists can’t go backwards, though they can sure try.”
“Why were they so concerned about X’s identity?”
” ‘They’ is a very broad term. The GRU wanted evidence that X’s revelations were false, to discredit them. When Ca- macho gave them the name of the Secretary of Defense, they were left with an empty bag. The men in the Politburo realized that it was entirely possible the United States government was providing the information as a matter of policy. That possibility had to be weighed.
“The implications are difficult,” he added, searching for words. “Perhaps the best way to say it is this: Some of the Soviet decision makers saw America, maybe for the first time, as we see ourselves — strong and confident, with excellent reasons for being confident. Frightened men start wars, and we aren’t frightened.”
Back in the den, Jake asked, “So we still don’t know the identity of the three deep moles, the sleepers?”
“Let’s say we’re resigned to the fact that, if the agents exist, they will probably not be revealed. But we achieved so much! The changes in the Soviet Union the last three years have been pro- found.”
”You play your fucking games,” Toad murmured, “and the little guys get left holding the bag. Like Camacho.”
“Ah, I hear the voice of the eternal private complaining because the generals are willing to sacrifice him to achieve a military objec- tive.”
“Sorry, I didn’t read about your little war in the papers. And I didn’t volunteer to fight it.”
“America was Luis Camacho’s adopted home. He loved this country and he loved its people. He knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way. Like you and your wife when you fly, he knew the risks. You think his job was easy? Having Albright right next door? Camacho had a wife and kid. You think he had no nerves?”
Toad sat silently with his arms folded across his chest, staring out the window. Jake and Caplinger talked a while longer. It was almost 4 P.M- when Caplinger said, “By the way, Captain, you did an excellent job presenting the TRX plane and Athena to Con- gress. I’m looking forward to getting a ride in an A-12 someday.”
“That makes two of us.”
Toad picked up the corncob pipe from the pipe stand again and examined it idly. “Why did Camacho admit his past?”
Caplinger smiled. “Who knows the human heart? His explana- tion, which I read very carefully after Albright approached him a year or so ago, was that America is a country that cares about people. You see, he was a cop. A cop in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. But in spite of Hoover’s paranoid insanities, Luis saw that the vast majority of the agents there were trying their best to enforce the laws in an even, fair manner, with due regard to the rights of their fellow citizens. Camacho came from a country where the police have no such mission. The police there are not honest, honorable men.” He shrugged. “Luis Camacho instinctively understood Hoo- ver. He had grown up in a nation ruled by such men. But Camacho came to see himself as a public servant. He became an American.”
“Thanks for your time today, Mr. Secretary.”
“Ill walk you to your car.”
He led them through the kitchen to the door that led to the parking area. As he walked, he asked Jake, “How’d you learn I was X?”
“I didn’t. I guessed. Your seeing us today was the proof.”
“You guessed?”
“Yes, sir. My wife suggested that perhaps X was a role played by an actor, an intuitive insight which seemed to me to explain a great deal. Then I remembered that comment you made one evening at dinner in China Lake this past summer, something to the effect that the perception of reality is more important than the facts. Camacho had said that the people who had to know about this operation did know. By implication that comment in- cluded you. So I decided you were probably X.”
“I thought your notes meant blackmail, until I saw you this afternoon.”
“I thought you might.”
Jake stepped to the car ten feet away and opened the door.
“All our scheming,” Caplinger mused. “So transparent. No wonder Camacho thought Albright saw through it. Albright was no fool.”
Royce Caplinger stopped at the end of the walk to look at the clouds building above the mountains to the west He started as something hard dug into his back.
In his ear Toad said, “You miscalculated once too often, Caplin- ger.”
Catching the tone but not the words, Jake Grafton turned with a puzzled look on his face.
The lieutenant had his arm on Caplmger’s shoulder. He jerked the older man sideways until he was between him and Grafton. “Don’t move. Captain! I swear I’ll shoot him if I have to.”
“What—?”
‘That’s right, Caplinger,” Toad hissed in the secretary’s ear. “I’ll pull this trigger and blow your spine clean in half. This time it isn’t Matilda Jackson or Rita Moravia or Luis Camacho. It’s you! You thought you had everything figured, didn’t you? Minotaur! You were wrong! The decision has been made. It’s time for you to die.”
The secretary tried to turn. “Now listen—“
“Tarkington!” Jake Grafton roared.
Toad twisted the man’s arm, squeezing as hard as he could. ‘The decision has been made! They decided. It’s over for you.”
“Please listen—” Caplinger began as Jake strode toward the two men, his face a mask of livid fury.
“Tarkington!”
“So long, asshole!” Toad stepped to one side, raised his arm and pointed right into Caplinger’s face- “Bang,” he said, and let the corncob pipe fall from his hand.
Caplinger stood staring at it.
“Tarkington,” Jake said softly, his voice as ominous as a gather- ing storm.
Toad walked away down the drive. He stumbled once, caught himself and kept walking. He didn’t look back.
Caplinger lowered himself into the gravel. He put his head on his knees. After a bit he whispered, “I really … I really thought…”
“His wife…”
