Trevayne (21 page)

The two officers stared at each other briefly. The understanding was complete—Bonner was at that moment accepted into the highest echelons of Defense.

“Understood, General,” said Bonner quietly.

The erect, white-haired Cooper turned back to the long table and opened a thick, plastic-bound notebook with huge metal rings. “Come here, Major. This is the book. And I mean
the
book, soldier.”

Bonner read the typed words on the front page: “
GENESSEE INDUSTRIES
.”

Bonner entered the glass doors of the Potomac Towers and walked on the thick blue carpet toward the elevators. If he’d timed everything right, if his telephone calls had resulted in the correct information, he’d arrive at Trevayne’s office at least a half-hour before Trevayne himself returned. That was the plan; over in the Senate Office Building, where Trevayne was in conference, others were also watching the clock.

He was such a familiar sight in Trevayne’s suite of rooms that he was greeted now with complete informality. Bonner knew he was accepted by the small civilian staff because he seemed to be an anomaly. The professional soldier who possessed few of the unattractive military trappings; whose outlook, even his conversation, seemed easygoing, with a continuous undercurrent of humor. When civilians found a man in uniform—especially the sort of overdressed uniform required daily at the Pentagon—who seemed to contradict the accepted manifestations of his profession, they warmed quickly. It was standard procedure.

It would be no problem at all for him to wait in Trevayne’s inner office. He would take off his tunic, and stand in the doorway, and joke with Trevayne’s secretary. Then he might wander into one of the other rooms—his tie undone, his collar unbuttoned—and pass a few minutes with several of the staff. Men like Mike Ryan or John Larch. Perhaps the bright young attorney, Sam Vicarson. He’d tell them a couple of stories—stories which ridiculed a pompous, well-advertised general or two. Finally, he’d say he was going to stop bothering them and read the morning paper in Trevayne’s office. They’d protest in good humor, of course, but he’d smile and suggest a few drinks after work, perhaps.

It would all take six or seven minutes.

He would then return to Trevayne’s office, passing the secretary once again—this time complimenting her on her dress or her hair or whatever—and walk to the armchair by the window.

But he would not read the paper nor sit in the chair.

Instead he would go to the file cabinet on the right wall and open it. He would select the drawer that held the G’s.

Genessee Industries, Palo Alto, California.

He would extract the folder, close the drawer, and return to the chair. He would have a safe maximum of fifteen minutes to make notes before replacing the information.

The entire operation would take less than twenty-five minutes, and there would be only one moment of risk. If Trevayne’s secretary or a staff member walked in while the cabinet was open. In that event he would have to say he found it open and pass his actions off casually as “curiosity.”

But of course the cabinet would never have been open; it was always locked. Always.

Major Paul Bonner would unlock it with a key given him by Brigadier General Lester Cooper.

It was all a question of priorities; and Bonner felt sick to his stomach.

Trevayne rushed up the steps of the Capitol Building, conscious of the fact that he had been followed. He knew it, because he had made two out-of-the-way stops from his office to the center of town: at a bookstore on Rhode Island Avenue, where the traffic was slight, and a spur-of-the-moment detour to Georgetown, Ambassador Hill’s residence. The Ambassador wasn’t home.

On Rhode Island Avenue he’d noticed a gray Pontiac sedan maneuver into a parking space half a block behind him—heard the Pontiac’s rear tires scraping the curb.

Twenty minutes later, as he had walked to the front door of Hill’s Georgetown house, he had heard the bells of a knife-sharpening truck, a small van driving slowly down the cobblestone street soliciting business from the uniformed maids. He had smiled, thinking the sight an anachronism, a throwback to his teen-age Boston memories.

Then he saw it again; there was the gray Pontiac. It was behind the slow-moving van, its driver obviously annoyed; the street was narrow, and the small truck was not accommodating. The Pontiac was unable to pass.

As Trevayne reached the top of the Capitol’s steps he made a mental note to check with Webster at the White House. Perhaps Webster had assigned separate guards for him, although such precautions were unnecessary. Not that he was brave; he was simply too well known a figure now, and he rarely traveled alone. This afternoon was an exception.

He turned on the last step and looked down at the street. The gray Pontiac wasn’t in sight, but there were dozens of automobiles—some parked, with drivers inside, some moving slowly past. Any one of them might have been radioed from Georgetown.

He entered the building and went immediately to the information desk. It was almost four o’clock, and he was expected at the office of National District Statistics before the end of the day. He wasn’t sure what the N.D.S. information would prove, if, indeed, he could extract any information to begin with, but it was another alley, another possible connection between seemingly unrelated facts.

National District Statistics was a computerized laboratory that more logically should have been housed at Treasury. That it wasn’t was merely another inconsistency in this town of contradictions, thought Trevayne. National District Statistics kept up-to-the-month records of regional employment directly affected by government projects. It duplicated the work of a dozen other offices but was somewhat different in the sense that its information was general; “projects” included everything from partial payment of state highways to federal participation in school construction. From aircraft factories to the renovation of
park areas. In other words, it was a catch-all for explaining the allocation of tax money, and as such was used incessantly, prodigiously, by politicians justifying their existences. The figures could, of course, be broken down into categories, if one preferred, but that was rarely the case. The totals were always more impressive than their collective parts.

As he neared the N.D.S. door, Trevayne reconsidered the logic of its location; it was, after all, quite proper that N.D.S. be close to the offices of those who needed it most.

In essence, why he was there.

Trevayne put the papers down on the table. It was a few minutes after five, and he’d been reading in the small cubicle for nearly an hour. He rubbed his eyes and saw that one of the minor custodians was looking through the glass-paneled door; it was past closing, and the clerk was anxious to shut the office and leave. Trevayne would give him a ten-dollar bill for the delay.

It was a ludicrous exchange. Information involving—at a rough estimate—two hundred and thirty million for the gratuity of ten dollars.

But there it was—two increases of 148 million and 82 million respectively. Each increase predominantly the result of defense contracts—coded as “DF” in the schedules; both “unexpected,” if Trevayne’s newspaper reading was accurate. Sudden windfalls for each constituency.

Yet both had been predicted with incredible accuracy by the two candidates running for reelection in their respective states.

California and Maryland.

Senators Armbruster and Weeks. The short, compact pipe-smoking Armbruster. And Alton Weeks, the polished aristocrat from Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Armbruster had faced a tough challenger for his incumbency. Northern California’s unemployment was dangerously, if temporarily, high, and the polls indicated that his opponent’s attacks on Armbruster’s failure to garner government contracts were having an effect on the voters. Armbruster, in the last days of the campaign, suddenly injected a subtle note that probably turned the election in
his favor. He insinuated that he was in the process of obtaining defense money in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty million. A figure which even the state economists admitted was sufficient to prime the pumps of the state’s northern recovery.

Weeks: also an incumbent, but faced not so much by competition as by a campaign deficit. Money was tight in the Maryland coffers, and the prestigious Weeks family reluctant to underwrite the entirety. According to the Baltimore
Sun
, Alton Weeks met privately with a number of Maryland’s leading business figures and told them Washington’s purse strings were loosening. They could be assured of a minimum of eighty million directed into Maryland’s industrial economy.… Weeks’s campaign resources were suddenly substantial.

Yet the election of both senators had taken place six months prior to each allocation. And although it was possible that both men had been huddling with defense appropriations, it wasn’t logical that they could have been so precise as to the amounts. Not unless arrangements were made; arrangements more concerned with politics than with national security.

And both senators dealt with the same Defense contractor.

Genessee Industries.

Armbruster funded developments in Genessee’s new high-altitude Norad interceptors, a questionable project from the outset.

Weeks had managed to finance an equally suspect undertaking with a Maryland subsidiary of Genessee’s. A coastal radar network improvement “justified” by two isolated aircraft penetrating the coastal screen several years ago.

Trevayne gathered the papers together and stood up. He signaled the clerk through the glass panel and reached into his pocket.

Out on the street he considered going to a pay phone and calling William Hill. He had to see Hill about another “project,” one that dealt with naval intelligence and might surface in a matter of days, perhaps hours, because of
Trevayne. It was why he’d driven out to Georgetown earlier; it was not the sort of conversation one had on the telephone.

The Navy Department had been authorized to equip four atomic submarines with the most sophisticated electronic intelligence instruments available, the equipment to be installed within twelve months of authorization. The due date had long since passed; two of the electronics firms contracted had declared bankruptcy; the four submarines were still in dry dock, essentially inoperable.

During his staff’s preliminary work an angry lieutenant commander, one of the four submarine skippers, had openly criticized the operation. Word of the naval officer’s complaints to an official audience had reached an aggressive Washington newsman named Roderick Bruce, who threatened to break the story in print. The Central Intelligence. Agency and the Navy Department were in panic, genuine panic. Making public the undersea electronic installations was dangerous in itself; acknowledging the foulups compounded that danger, and admitting the current inoperability of the ships was an open invitation for Russian and Chinese saber-rattling.

It was a sensitive situation, and Trevayne’s subcommittee was being blamed for creating risks far greater than any good it might achieve.

Trevayne knew that sooner or later the specter of “dangerous intrusion” would be raised. He had prepared himself for it, made clear his fundamental opposition to burying incompetence—or worse—under the label of “classified, top secret.”

For such labels were too easily come by; even if sincerely arrived at, they were only judgments, singular positions.

There were other judgments, opposing positions. And he would not back off unless those opinions were analyzed as well. Once he did, once he retreated, his subcommittee would be emasculated. He could not allow that precedent.

And there was a side issue—unprovable, only rumor, but in line with everything they were learning.

Genessee Industries once again.

The back-room legal talk was that Genessee was preparing
to submit bids to take over the electronics installation of the submarines. The gossip was that Genessee had brought about the bankruptcies; had created sufficient subcontracting problems for the remaining two, that their agreements with the Navy Department were as good as void.

Trevayne walked into a drugstore, to the telephone booth, and dialed Hill’s number.

The Ambassador, of course, would see him immediately.

“To begin with, the CIA’s assumption that the Russians and the Chinese are oblivious to the situation is ridiculous. Those submarines have been beached in New London for months; simple observation tells them their conditions.”

“Then I’m right to press it?”

“I’d say so,” answered Hill behind the mahogany table which served as his desk. “I’d also suggest that you give the Agency and the Navy the courtesy of talking to this newsman, this Bruce fellow; see if you can’t get him to ease up a bit. Their fears are real to them, if only for their own skins.”

“I’ve no objection to that. I just don’t want to be put in the position of taking my staff off a project.”

“I don’t think you should.… I don’t think you will.”

“Thank you.”

William Hill leaned back in his chair. His advice dispensed with, he wanted to chat. “Tell me, Trevayne. It’s been two months. What do you think?”

“It’s crazy. I know that’s a frivolous word, but at this point it’s the most descriptive. The economics of the biggest corporation in the world are run by lunatics.… Or, perhaps, that’s the image that’s meant to be projected.”

“I assume you refer to the aspect of … ‘you’ll-have-to-check-with-someone-else.’ ”

“Exactly. Nobody makes a decision—”

“Responsibility’s to be avoided at all costs,” interrupted Hill with a benign smile. “Not much different from the outside. Each to his own level of incompetence.”

“I’ll accept that in the private sector. It’s a form of survival-waste, if there’s such a term. But it’s controllable, when control is wanted. But that’s private, not public
money.… Down here that theory shouldn’t prove out. This is civil service. Given a period of time—say, enough so as to be in a decision-making position—a man’s security is automatic. The games aren’t necessary. Or they shouldn’t be.”