bitterly. They should put that over the door of every public building in Washington.
Strong had gotten suspicious. Judy had spent one too many eve- nings in the office, asked one too many questions about that TRX fly-by-wire system. So Strong had doctored the data, rendering it worthless unless one knew exactly how and where it had been changed.
When Smoke found out, it was too late. He had already given the data to AeroTech, to Homer T. Wiggins. Oh, even defective it was good for what Homer wanted it for, to check the AeroTech manufacturing capability and cost out the manufacturing process. Heck, he could have written Homer a purely fictitious report that would have allowed AeroTech to accomplish the same thing. So it wasn’t like he had stiffed Homer. And both he and Homer knew that the preliminary data would be changed, probably many times, during the course of development. There was no possibility that the erroneous stuff would end up in an airplane that someone was going to try to fly.
And still, it happened! It happened. All the checks that were supposed to be done, the fail-safe, zero-defects program, all of it went down the crapper in an unbelievable series of coincidences. Now TRX was going to fire a couple of clowns who each thought the other guy had done the checks. So neither did them.
He tossed off the last gulp of orange juice and wiped his mouth with his fingers. He sat the empty glass on the concrete beside his chair and sat looking at the city.
Nothing he had ever attempted in his whole life had worked out right. What was it the hippies called it? Karma?
Funny, killing Harold Strong had been easier than he thought it would be. Probably too easy- No doubt someway, somehow, he had fucked that up too.
Looking back, it had been a bad decision. Strong probably had nothing but a few baseless suspicions that he couldn’t prove-
Ah well, what was done was done. You signed for the plane and flew it as best you could and if today was your day to die, you died. That was life.
He had wanted something besides a pension, and now he had his savings — about $56,000—and the cash from five little deals— $30,000—and some stock he probably couldn’t sell. Plus his pen- sion, a lousy 55 percent of his base pay if he lasted twenty-two years. Yet if he cut and ran, his pension would evaporate tike a gob of spit on a hot steel deck. If he didn’t run, well … he would have to give his savings and the cash to a lawyer to try to stay out of prison.
FBI agents were probably watching him this very minute. Sitting somewhere in one of these apartments or in a vehicle down in the lot, watching him. If Wiggins had been telling the truth… But there was really no reason for him to he. What did Wiggins have to gain by lying?
Judy had gone to work yesterday, though he had been sorely tempted to call in sick. That little conversation Thursday evening with Wiggins, just before he walked out of the office, that had shaken him. He had locked up his papers, bid everyone a pleasant good evening and walked out sweating.
That evening he had convinced himself there really wasn’t any hurry. It might be six months or a year before they got around to arresting him, if they ever did, and he could get out on bail. And where could he run? What with?
He pushed himself up, out of the chair, and went inside. He drew the curtains. Rummaging through the bottom drawer of his dresser, he found the.38 he always wore in his flight gear. He flipped out the cylinder. Empty. Did he have any cartridges? He sat on the bed and tried to remember. There should be six in the left, radio pocket of his survival vest, which was piled in a corner of the closet. He had put them there when he emptied the pistol after his last flight in that F-14 at Tonopah.
He found the brass cartridges and dropped them into the cylin- der holes.
The pistol was old, with the bluing completely gone in places. Nowadays they issued the kids nine- millimeters, but he had always liked the old -38. Amazingly enough, this was the one they issued him twenty years ago when he checked into his first fleet squadron.
The money was in a gym bag on the other side of the closet floor. He spread it on the bed and examined the miserable pile. Fifteen bundles of a hundred twenties each. Three weeks’ take for a twelve year-old crack salesman. For this he had wagered his pension and risked years in prison?
He went into the kitchen and poured himself the last of the bourbon, added some ice and water and went back out onto the balcony.
“Here’s to you. Smoke Judy, you stupid, unlucky bastard.”
He sipped the liquor and watched the shadows shorten as the sun rose higher into the sky. Already it was hot. It was going to be a scorcher.
Twenty miles north of where Smoke Judy sat, Luis Camacho was trying to get his lawn mower started. He diddled with the choke and jerked the starter rope repeatedly. The plug fired a few times, then gave up. He decided he had flooded it. He could take out the plug and pull it through a few times, but no.
He sat in the shade on the concrete of his driveway, with his back against the wall, and waited for the recalcitrant device to purify itself. He was trying to work up the energy to stand and again assault the machine when Harlan Albright came out of his house, saw him, and crossed the grass toward him.
“Hey,” Albright said.
“Hey yourself. Know anything about lawn mowers?”
“Cars are my bag. I pay a kid to cut mine.”
“Why didn’t you hire my kid?”
“You must be kidding! He doesn’t even cut your grass.”
“He needs a better offer than I can make.” Camacho stood, flexed his arms a few times experimentally, then grasped the rope- Choke off”. He yanked. The engine spluttered.
Albright bent and adjusted the needle valve. “Now try it.”
It started on the next jerk of the lanyard. Albright played with the needle valve until the engine ran smoothly.
When Luis finished the front and back yards and put the ma- chine back in the garage, Albright had a beer waiting- Ten o’clock. “What the heck. it’s Saturday.”
They sat on Albright’s front steps, in the shade of the big maple.
“What’s new in the glamorous, dazzling world of counterespio- nage?”
“Our people visiting the gourmet food stores had a nibble. A store over in Reston. Not much of anything, but it was all we got. One of the clerks got to talking about how many famous people buy their stuff at that store. She had a name, but she couldn’t remember if he had ever bought any jam. She said he or his secre- tary come in there once a month or so.”
“Who?”
“It isn’t evidence. The clerk was a dingbat. The agent said she looked like she had terminal anorexia. Didn’t took like she weighed ninety pounds. Obviously been eating her own stuff.”
“Who?”
“Royce Caplinger.”
Albright’s eyebrows rose once, then fell back into place. ”She sure?”
“I told you, she was bragging. She also said she had three sena- tors, five congressmen, two ex- congressmen, a dozen flag officers from all services, and three high-class hookers that buy stuff from her on a regular basis.”
“Hookers, huh? What’s the name of the store?”
‘The Gourmet Market.”
“You going to follow up?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ve got a SWAT team sitting on the place twenty- four hours a day. A cockroach couldn’t get in or out without us knowing it. If Caplinger ever shows up again and buys French blueberry jam, we’ll bust him on the spot.” He drained the beer can and stood. “Still, it’s a lead. Someplace to look.”
“How’s the ATA crash investigation going?”
“So-so. The usual. Dazzle. Glamour.”
“Why are you in that investigation anyway?”
“The admiral in charge is scared to death of X. And he knows I’m the best; he won’t talk to anybody else. No shit” He tossed the empty can at Albright “I gotta go. Taking Sally to the mall- Thanks for the beer.”
When he held the door open for Sally, Camacho automatically glanced across the car at the little bulb he had
