Deep Cover Read online

  “No comment, but it’s beside the point. Suppose we leak the information. Suppose the public takes off with it. Now, I’m a member of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. I’m supposed to know about things. When the disclosure hits the press, it’s going to be assumed I know all about the Phaeton program. At that point I’ve got no choice but to speak out, because if I keep my mouth shut my silence has to imply acquiescence with the Pentagon party line. No. I’d have to speak out anyway—and I may as well do it right in front. At least that way if it catches on I can run with the ball and not get left back with the pack.”

  “You’re a gold-plated idiot. If you feel the urge to make a stand, wait till November and make your stand on the next new Pentagon toy. Let this one go through.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’ve got to.”

  “Les,” the Senator said slowly, “I am the only one who tells me what I’ve got to do.”

  The Senator’s eyes swiveled toward Jaime Spode. “What about it, Top? Where do you stand?”

  “Let’s see.” Spode ticked off fingers. “I hate funerals, I hate Pentagon mental retards, I just work here, none of the above.”

  “It’s no time to be flip,” said Les Suffield.

  “The hell,” Spode replied. “The air was getting blue.” He uncrossed his legs and smiled vaguely in Suffield’s direction.

  The Senator said, “All right, Top. Now answer the question.”

  “I’d rather keep my politics to myself.”

  “Crap,” the Senator said amiably.

  “Look, you don’t want my grass roots opinion. If you’re asking for moral support you want me to agree with you, and if you want to see if I can pick holes in your arguments then you want me to fight. Either way, it stinks.”

  “When I want a directed verdict I’ll ask for one,” the Senator snapped. “All I want from you is a straight answer. Quit jumping to confusions about my motives.”

  Spode sighed in his chest. “All right, put it this way. Private opinion. I always thought it was a psychotic kind of game to play where you pass out nuclear toys to all the players and then tell them not to use them. I never met a kid yet who’d obey that kind of rules for long. And we are talking about kids and games, aren’t we. End of speech, end of private opinion.”

  “If I’m reading that correctly between the lines, you’re agreeing with me. Does that mean you’re with me regardless of consequences?”

  “I’m with you right up to the lynching, but who cares about me? I don’t swing any weight up on the Hill.”

  “Maybe he wants the Indian vote,” Suffield said dryly. “Any warheads up on the Window Rock Reservation, Jaime?”

  The Senator said, “I don’t want anybody doing a job for me if he doesn’t believe in it.” The gold-flecked eyes switched back to Les Suffield. “You get the point of this, Les?”

  “I do.” Suffield scowled at a point somewhere near the base of the desk and Spode could see the quick mind at work behind the broad face. Spode had never known him to confuse political expediency with the reality of his own beliefs. Suffield ate, breathed and sweated politics; it was his life, to the exclusion of all other interests. His dedication was to the intricate moves of the back-room game, the interplay of forces behind the scenes, the exercise of hidden leverage. He was at his vital best in the crises of a hair-close campaign when it was coming down to the final wire. He was like the compulsive big-time gambler to whom the stakes meant nothing intrinsically—they were only chips in the game; but the game itself counted—and how well you played it.

  Finally Suffield spoke. “I’m not deserting the ship. You’ll have to throw me overboard if you don’t want me on deck.”

  “Even though you’re convinced I’m wrong?”

  “Where my friends are concerned, I value personal loyalty higher than political planks.”

  Spode wondered if Suffield actually believed that. More likely it was the obvious challenge that stimulated him.

  “Make sure,” the Senator said. “Take your time. I can’t afford to have you do half-assed work when things get tight.”

  Suffield spread his hands wide. “What do you want me to say? Did I ever tread water on you?”

  The Senator pinned him with a long silent scrutiny and Suffield met it with eyes slightly stirred to anger.

  The Senator said, “I’m calling a press conference at five this afternoon. I’m going to lower the boom. All the way. Does that make you change your mind?”

  “No.”

  “Does it make you even want to hesitate?”

  “It makes me want to puke. But I’m not going to sell you out. And I won’t walk out of here and leave you with nothing but yes-men.”

  Spode grunted. Suffield flung him a glance and said, “No offense intended. But somebody’s going to have to be the loyal opposition around here, play devil’s advocate every step of the way to keep you both from making asinine mistakes. I won’t come quietly, but I’ll come.”

  “Good enough,” the Senator said. “Then I’m putting you right to work. Tomorrow’s Saturday—book me on the morning flight to Tucson. Let the press know I’m going; I’ll want reporters at the airport.”

  “What’s the trip for?”

  “Fact-finding. I’ve got work to do, so get the word out I won’t be available. No testimonial luncheons or dinners for the social-climber crowd in the foothills. I intend to caucus with the military brass and the industrialists to find out how they’re going to react. Learn if there are lines of attack I might use to get if not cooperation at least a minimum of vocalized resistance.”

  “I can tell you how they’ll react right now.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “By what?”

  The Senator smiled. “That’s what I’m flying out there to find out, isn’t it.”

  Jaime Spode said, “You might get one break. Bill Ryan took over the Air Force Base a few months ago. He’s a bird colonel now.”

  “I know.”

  Suffield asked, “Who’s that?”

  “Ryan used to fly Top and me around Japan and Korea.”

  “Back in the spook days,” Spode said with a round glance at Suffield.

  Suffield shook his head. “Don’t go counting on a twenty-year-old friendship to put any Air Force colonels in your camp. All he’ll do is tell you how foolproof their fail-safe systems are and how we need all the hardware we can get to fight off the monster of the International Communist Conspiracy.”

  “They’re not all of them Patton-leather neanderthals, Les.”

  “Just don’t count on anything, that’s all.”

  The Senator reached for his interoffice intercom. “Gloria?” A crease furrowed his forehead and he released the button. “Damn. Slipped my mind completely. Les, do you mind calling the airport yourself and taking care of the other chores?”

  “I don’t mind. But you’d better get yourself a new girl pretty quick or take a secretary pill. I don’t mind staying aboard the sinking ship but I’ll be damned if I’ll take a demotion from first officer to cabin boy.”

  “I know—I know. There’s been too much to do around here to spend the days interviewing applicants.”

  “Ronnie Tebbel,” Suffield said. “She’s worked for you long enough to know the ropes and she’s the brightest bird this side of Margaret Mead.”

  “And a mite better-looking,” Jaime Spode remarked.

  “I’ve thought about it,” the Senator said. “My only question is, who’ll run the Tucson office if Ronnie comes back here with us?”

  “The way things are going you won’t have a Tucson office long enough to worry about it.” Suffield stood up, went through to the outer office and reached for the phone.

  The Senator said, “Shut the door a minute, Top. Let’s talk.”

  Spode pushed the door shut and came back to his chair. “What do we get to talk about?”

  “Webb Breckenyear’s office. You spent a couple of hours over there today. You’ve g
ot good eyesight. How good are the security arrangements?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Am I?”

  “Look, you hired me to snoop. All right. But there’s snooping and snooping.”

  “As Les has been pointing out, I’m going into a tough son-of-a-bitch fight. It happens that I’m doing it, to use the hoariest phrase I can think of, for the good of my country and it also happens that if I win it may propel me right onto the presidential launching pad. But if I lose, I lose the whole bag of marbles. So I’m laying everything on the line. And I need to use every means I can to reduce the odds against me.”

  “I can see that. But the risk, if you get caught—”

  “If you get caught.”

  “Put it any way you like. If I get caught it’s you they’ll roast, not me. Breckenyear knows who I work for.”

  “Then don’t get caught. I won’t have any chance at all unless I know more than the opposition knows. I’ve got to stay ahead of them—and the more ignorant they are of how much I know, the better chance I’ve got to trip them up in public. I need exact appropriations figures on the Phaeton program from Breckenyear. That’s your job.”

  “Couldn’t we get that from the request for appropriations the Pentagon sent up? At least that’s on the record.”

  “Budget requests don’t mean a thing. They always request five million dollars’ worth of paperclips because the committee has to cut something out of the request to show how hard they’re guarding the American taxpayers’ interests. I need the hard figures—the appropriations Breckenyear and Guest actually intend to ram through Congress.”

  “Just the Phaeton stuff?”

  “That’s number-one priority. But get anything else you can. The more waste we can find, the more weight our case has. And if I challenge them on more than one item it’ll give us room to negotiate later—something we can give up on, to make it look as if we’re compromising.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what you just accused them of doing?”

  The Senator smiled. “Think of that.”

  Spode grunted. Then he sighed. Finally he shook his head. “All right. First off, I’ll need to find out whether he keeps it locked up in the office or takes it home nights to work on.”

  “You know the drill a lot better than I do.”

  “You used to handle it all right.”

  “A long time ago, Top.”

  Spode stood up. “You’ll be in Arizona all week. What do I do with the stuff if I get it before you come back?”

  “You damn well better have it before that. Hop a plane and bring it out to me.”

  “Right.” He turned toward the door, stopped, and swung one foot up on the arm of the empty chair to buckle his galoshes. “You weren’t expecting the originals, I hope.”

  “You’ve got a camera. Use it. We hardly want him tipping to the fact we’ve burgled his files.”

  “Not even you could be that dumb,” Spode said. He grinned and went out and nodded to Suffield who was still on the phone.

  Chapter Two

  Alan Forrester drove home past the reservoir and along the Potomac in a gloom of lightly falling snowflakes. The desultory thump of the windshield wipers exacerbated his mood.

  He drove up the curving slope of Arizona Terrace and ran the car into the garage, wondering whether he would have to dig the driveway out in the morning.

  Mrs. Thomas had left the place immaculate. The bed had been turned down, his slippers set out and two wooden hangers left pointedly on the bed for his overcoat and suit. He hung up his things and went down the half-flight of stairs to the kitchen. Mrs. Thomas had left a note taped to the refrigerator door: Phone me or send a wire before you come back from the Wild West so I can stock the frigidair with milk & eggs. S. T.

  He filled a small glass with ice cubes and Chivas Regal and carried it into the living room. He could hear the muted crack of icicles from rafters and trees. Only one lamp burned and the forty-foot room was lonely with gloom. He went around turning on lights and saw himself reflected in the wide glass patio doors, his slippered feet hidden in the deep jungle of the shaggy orange rug that Angie had bought over his protests. All the chairs and paintings were loud, vital, bold with primary colors; the room was full of her and Forrester felt savage with loss. It all came back in a piece—the apologetic telephone voice of the intern on emergency service, the bewildered rush across Washington to the hospital full of black faces and the burly cop, awkward and ill-at-ease: This fellow come through the red light, Senator. No, he don’t seem to’ve been drunk. Drivin’ a real old Chrysler, one of them big tanks with tailfins, of course we ’ll know more when we get the wreckage sorted out but right now it looks like as if he was hittin’ maybe forty, forty-five and those brakes just plain give out on him. Hit your wife’s car not exactly head-on, sir—sort of catty-corner on the front bumper, she was comin’ through there on the green light. Dumped Mrs. Forrester’s car right over on the roof and skidded it right up against that building on the corner. The man driving the Chrysler, he’s back here too, they got him under oxygen but there ain‘t a chance he’ll pull through either. I wish there was something I could do for you, Senator—I have to report these things every other day to somebody and there’s never been a one where I didn’t wish there was some kind of wand I could wave to bring the people back. Ain’t nothing I could say to you right now that would help make any sense out of this, sir.—I guess I won’t even try.

  It had been almost a year ago but he still remembered the cop’s voice; he had clung to it as the only reality of that ghastly day, the voice of the man in uniform who in those fractured moments seemed the only authority, the only possible wisdom. Later the reason had come to him slowly: the event had made him once again the fourteen-year-old boy whose father in Army colonel’s uniform had taken him aside in the hospital corridor and told him his mother was dead. The two women in his life, gone under circumstances eerily similar. And at Angie’s funeral on a sun-bright Tucson day that had mocked the solemnity of the ritual he had watched the casket descend into the grave and wept because he had no son to whom he could try to explain it. Her voice had echoed in him, accusation beyond reply: We can’t just keep putting off till it’s convenient, darling. You’re forty years old, I’m thirty-four, we’ve been married almost six years. To hell with all these rationalized procrastinations—to hell with the damned population explosion. I want to get pregnant. When the old Chrysler had smashed brakeless through the red light she had been four months pregnant.

  Her face had been full of joy those few months and he had humored her desire to redecorate the house flamboyantly; infected with her mood he had laughed at the growing discomfort of the colleagues and wives who came every other Wednesday to the traditional cocktails chez Forrester. Angie had been the compleat Washington hostess; she had delighted in the social hysteria of the capital, the Embassy Row receptions and Georgetown dinner parties at which lobbyists wheeled, wives gossiped, and much of the country’s political business was done.

  There had been no gatherings in the house since the accident. The room remained empty of everything but Angie’s bright colors. Washington society had honored the Senator’s grief by granting him a mourning moratorium on invitations. But gradually, because he had to and not because he enjoyed it, he had begun to resurface, to accept the cards and calls. The newspaper chat columns had waited a decent interval and then had begun to describe him as “Washington’s most devastatingly eligible bachelor.” Hostesses had begun to pair him off with this Desirable Single Girl or that. He remained quite immune because he could by closing his eyes create a vision of Angie that was almost tactile. The way she pinched her lower lip with her teeth and arched her eyebrows into triangles when she was earnest; the casual elegance of her walk; the way she tossed her head, the way her chestnut hair shone in sunlight. She had often been contentious, stubborn; she was more exciting than cuddly, more challenging than comfortable; but it was the brightest light that lingered longest i
n the retina.

  The old bell-shaped Seth Thomas that Angie had bought at a Maryland country auction rang the hour and Forrester switched on the television and stood in front of the screen, sipping his drink, debating whether to look at ABC or CBS or the NBC version, and then recalled fielding four or five questions from the CBS reporter which made it a good bet that that network’s coverage would be heaviest.

  The color screen warmed up; the announcer was revealing the crash in Spain of a Concorde with eighty-nine people on board and there was half a minute of film shot from a copter and relayed by satellite.

  Television terrified him, he was appalled by the thought that tens of millions of people could be prodded by simultaneous stimuli into laughter and tension and applause and, irrevocably, opinion. But he had invited television coverage of the press conference because if the cameras didn’t cover an event it hadn’t happened; without television’s stamp of recognition it did not exist, and what did not exist could be disregarded.

  A correspondent stood against a background of palm trees and campus buildings and did forty seconds on the skull-smashing arrests of fourteen black students who had attempted to close down the administration building. Four commercials extolled forgettable products and Forrester’s eyes strayed toward the glass doors and the surly wintry evening beyond. An avuncular newsman recited a report of guerrilla strikes and government counterstrikes in the hills behind Djakarta. The anchorman uttered unemployment and inflation figures and summarized in brief sentences the daily serial catastrophes of a world in unchanging flux, talking through a capped-tooth smile of destruction and disaster. A slow day for news. That was good, he thought dispassionately, a big story would have crowded him off the air.

  He saw his face on the screen, squinting against the portable kliegs like a Hollywood horseman; his own appearance always startled him because he never felt subjectively as tall and rangy-rugged as the lean image on the screen. The voice sounded lower than his own, a silver rolling resonance that only just escaped being guttural.