The Mirror Maze Page 9

  “Could it be the government’s own policies that created the unemployment in the first place?” she said. “Labor is commodity that’s bought and sold like any other. If you see a warehouse full of unsold goods, it’s because they’ve been priced off the market. The way to shift them is obvious. ” She looked hard at Mel for a moment, then nodded to concede his point. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wouldn’t have to be done overnight… And look at it this way. If someone takes my money at gunpoint, we don’t hesitate to condemn it as wrong. Where’s the difference if somebody else takes it and hands it to him?”

  “Yes, but maybe he needs it more,” Mel said.

  Eva stared at him in a unspoken invitation to consider the remark. “He needs it more?” she repeated. “But who’s supposed to decide that? Should a stranger have the right to grant someone else a better claim to what I’ve earned than I have? If you accept that principle, why not apply it to other areas, too? So can the state take my kidney and give it to someone else if a committee decides that for him to live rather than me would be more in the public good? Or once the socialists have achieved equality of income based on need, why not equality of sex? That means the everyone’s wife, or girlfriend, or husband, or boyfriend will be taken away for a couple of months of the year and made available to those who have a need.” Mel was smiling and shaking his head helplessly. “Amusing, yes, but it shows it’s the principle that’s wrong,” Eva said. “I’m not against caring, but charity by force and with other people’s money isn’t charity at all. It just generates resentments on both sides.”

  “That’s a subject for ethics and education,” Mel said.

  “Then that’s where it should be tackled. Ethics is only meaningful when it relates to a voluntary, individual act.”

  “That could take a while.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But what is there worthwhile that was done in a hurry? We’ve tried the quick fixes, and we’ve seen where they end up.”

  Mel looked at her curiously across the counter as a thought struck him. “But doesn’t that make you people just as bad as all the others with blueprints for a better world?”

  Eva shook her head. “Not really, because we don’t want to impose anything. We just want to let people live how they want. Once people are free to be better people, the better world will take care of itself.”

  “Who’d figure it all out, though?” Mel asked. “You wouldn’t want computer people trying to do it. I was just talking to Brett about that over lunch.”

  “Oh God, no,” Eva agreed. “Can you imagine being a statistical unit in an algorithm? What are the individual rights of a statistical unit? Do you know?”

  “That was my point to Brett,” Mel said. “So, who’d play the biggest part in terms of actually making it happen?”

  Eva looked intrigued. “I’ve never thought about that before. I’m not sure if there is anyone in particular…” She chewed on her pen again and went off into a long silence while she considered the question. It was nice to feel that he was listened to, Mel thought as he waited. Finally she said, “Yes, maybe there is.”

  “Tell me,” he invited.

  “Lawyers,” Eva replied.

  CHAPTER 11

  Robert Winthram had always struck Mel as the personification of the firm itself, with its polished woodwork and brass fittings, leather-upholstered furniture, and general atmosphere of genteel dignity that belonged to another time.

  Originally from England, Winthram was one of the two senior partners of Evron and Winthram, which dated back over a hundred years. Exactly how he came to be part owner of a law firm in Boston was obscure. He had been there for as long as anyone else in the office could remember, apparently having acquired the interests of an uncle in the course of a complicated sequence of family deaths and divorces that had taken place back in the seventies. At that time already a successful solicitor in London, he had left one law business and gone through school all over again in the U.S. to learn American practice in order to manage his own.

  William Evron, the other senior partner, was a black from New York, originally, to use his own words, “from the wrong side of every track.” How he and Winthram had come together as business partners was anybody’s guess. Evron claimed that he owed his success, first in education and later in law, entirely to his father’s insistence on self-reliance and a scrupulous avoidance of aid programs, which, he maintained, stifled initiative. Nowadays he applied himself mainly to taking on the cases of other casualties of the system, whose lives had been devastated in the name of helping them.

  The firm’s style of staid reserve and old-fashioned dependability was an expression of the composite personality of its two partners. It was not the kind of law firm that would attract young, ambitious high-fliers from Harvard and Yale in search of prestigious accounts and seven-figure fees. Instead, its clients tended to be the ultimate victims of all the injustices—the little people trying to make a living and be left alone, caught between the oppressive officialdom of Big Government on the one hand, and the protected privileges of Big Business and Big Labor on the other. Unimpressed by the glamorous and the fashionable, and dedicating itself to what was right according to principles that predated group rights and majority tyranny, the firm, like the two men, would probably never figure prominently in the front-page news, nor especially wish to; but it took pride in having earned what it received, and in its list of appreciative—if not always entirely satisfied—clients.

  Mel sometimes wondered if it had been an unconscious searching for such values that had led him there from Chapel Hill. Certainly it hadn’t been any lust for riches and fame. But trust and respect are valuable things to hold as well as to command, and he had stayed. And it was that same trust and the certainty that confidence would be respected which finally caused him to bring Stephanie to the offices behind Tremont Street, a short distance from Boston Common, on the afternoon after her arrival from Denver.

  • • •

  “My God, what a dreadful ordeal for you!” Winthram exclaimed when Stephanie had finished. “And then traveling to Boston… You must be on the verge of nervous collapse. Have you been able to sleep at all with this nightmare?”

  Stephanie nodded in the visitors chair, on the far side of an expanse of mahogany desk. She was still tired, but more in command of herself than the evening before. “I did last night. By the time I got to Mel’s I was so exhausted that nothing could have kept me awake.”

  “I’d imagine you’d have slept through World War III,” Evron said from where he had been listening with his back to the window, which looked down from the front of the building over the street. He was a large, broad-shouldered man with thick, curly hair, a pencil-line mustache, and a quick smile. He had been in court that morning and was dressed strikingly in a black three-piece suit with a fine pinstripe, crisp white shirt showing an inch of cuffs, and a silver tie—an outfit which he laughingly said made him look like a penguin. Mel looked on from a deep, wingback armchair below shelves of box files and statute books.

  Winthram regarded Stephanie in silence for a while. His expression was a mixture of concern and restraint—a worried father trying to keep from fussing and making things worse. Urbane, impeccable in speech and manners, and tending toward portliness in his sixties, Winthram was surely one of the last true English gentlemen. He had a pinkish complexion, an immense brow, and a smooth head bounded by a crescent of hair that varied from silver above the ears to dark gray with scattered flecks of black above the collar. His cheeks and chin were somewhat saggy, giving his face an expressive quality that was enhanced by a mobile mouth which emphasized his precise articulation when he spoke. His dress, too, was always faultless, and on this particular day he was wearing a buttonhole carnation—no doubt a silk imitation at this time of year, but providing a warming touch of color and relief nonetheless from the bleakness outside.

  Winthram had a partiality for flowers. On one occasion, Mel remembered, in the middle of a meetin
g with some lawyers from another firm to present a deposition, he had remarked casually that there was something very strange about a race that would decorate its home and its person with the sexual organs of other species and consider them things of beauty, yet find displays of its own obscene. But this tendency of Winthram’s to directness also had the effect of demolishing the inhibitions of others, which made him approachable. Mel wondered if it was something that Winthram had cultivated deliberately, rather than merely the endearing eccentricity that it had first appeared to be.

  “How certain can we be that this unfortunate young man’s… that Brett’s accident was, in fact, no accident?” Winthram asked after he had gone over the salient points in his mind.

  “It just doesn’t add up,” Stephanie replied. She was resigned to having to go through it all again. “He’d worked at the tracking station at Pillar Point for several months while we were in California. He knew that road—he drove it twice a day when we were living in Daly City. And… well, Brett knew how to drive.”

  “He didn’t have a drinking problem?” Evron threw in. “No.”

  “Um.” The same thought had evidently crossed Winthram’s mind.

  “And it happened two days after he got called back there,” Stephanie completed. “What else can I say? It was all just too much of a coincidence.”

  “And then there was Eva, which there’s no question was murder,” Mel pointed out. “Nobody could believe that it wasn’t connected.”

  Winthram nodded absently and shifted his gaze back to Stephanie. “You’ve no idea who this call was from, I suppose?” he said.

  “No. Brett wouldn’t say.”

  “Hmm.” Winthram sucked in his lower lip thoughtfully and continued staring at her, at the same time drumming his fingertips lightly on the edge of the desk. “And what makes us suspect that he was involved with the Soviets?” he asked finally.

  Mel answered, enumerating the points on his fingers as he spoke. “One, at university he developed a phobia about ultra-right extremists being in charge of the country, and concluded that the biggest threat to stability would be us getting too far ahead in the arms race. Two, acting in a way that appears to be out of character, he went into the defense industry and wound up working on a battle-management software team at Livermore. Three, at the same time he was behaving strangely and secretively, meeting with people he wouldn’t talk about, and from what we’ve just found out, he was connected somehow with the WPI, a known Soviet propaganda front.”

  “I’ve also heard of instances where it’s been used as a cover for direct espionage, too,” Evron said.

  Mel nodded. “Which strengthens the case. And finally, from what we can gather, when he eventually tried to get out, he was pestered in Denver, then called back to California on some pretext, and two days later he was dead.” Mel spread his open hands. “As far as I can see, it’s open and shut.”

  Evron leaned back against one side of the window and folded his arms. “Except that whoever killed Eva still thinks it was Stephanie. So does the rest of the world. That means she can’t just go back there and pick up her life again. They’ll find out, and they won’t miss next time.” In her chair, Stephanie nodded in silence and exhaled shakily.

  Winthram listened, all the time watching Mel with unblinking china blue eyes. He came back in from a totally unexpected direction. “Did you sleep with Eva at one time?”

  “What?…” This was Winthram’s technique with his clients—not to intimidate or lay them bare, but to break down barriers. He couldn’t represent anyone effectively while secrecy persisted. “Yes,” Mel replied when he had recovered from his surprise—even after a year of knowing Winthram. There was no need for any exchange of looks with Stephanie, who already knew.

  “She is the one you mention sometimes, isn’t she?” Winthram said. “The one you had all the difficulties over—the reason you moved away from Florida.”

  “Yes,” Mel said.

  So now all the cards were on the table. Everyone knew where everyone else fitted in, and they could all get on with business. Winthram got up from his chair and moved across the office to stand near Evron by the window. The weather outside was a replay of yesterday’s, with the night’s snow having stopped and the sun trying to break through at a few bright patches in the cloud canopy overhead.

  “Well, I can see no alternative but to take the whole thing to the authorities,” Winthram said over his shoulder as he stared out. “I appreciate your predicament, my dear, but they do have the means and experience to keep you out of sight. You’ll have to trust them to take care of you.” Evron nodded his agreement, and in the wingback chair, Mel looked at Stephanie in a way that said he had come to the same conclusion. That seemed to be it. There really wasn’t an alternative.

  Stephanie didn’t appear to be particularly gratified by their unanimity, however. She bit her lip for a second as if trying to judge if this was the right moment to bring up something she had been holding back, and then said, quietly, but with a firmness that was suddenly new in her voice, “No. I can’t do that.”

  Mel looked up. Evron frowned. “How come?” he asked, while Winthram turned from the window and merely raised his chin a fraction, allowing the gesture to ask the question for him.

  “There’s something else,” Stephanie told them. “You’ve heard of Hermann Oberwald?”

  “You mean the scientist?” Winthram said. Dr. Hermann Oberwald was a nationally known figure—a leading adviser to the government on energy, defense, and related matters.

  “Yes,” Stephanie confirmed.

  “What about him?” Evron asked.

  “He came down to Pensacola as a guest speaker at a Chamber of Commerce dinner…” Stephanie glanced at Mel. “It was in the year after you moved to Carolina.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mel acknowledged. “So?”

  “Brett met him. Oberwald visited the university the next day and had lunch with the Socratics—the political group that Brett was involved with. Brett came home feeling very flattered and excited, which was unusual for him—he wasn’t usually the kind of person to be bowled over by celebrities. Oberwald must have made quite an impression on him. In fact, it was after that meeting that Brett began to change and started talking about going to work in the defense sector.”

  “You mean he stayed in contact with Oberwald afterward?” Winthram said.

  “I’m not certain… it wouldn’t have had to be directly. But the company that Brett eventually went to in California—Spirac, in Santa Clara—was practically a DOD subsidiary run by Oberwald. And I know for a fact that Oberwald was instrumental in getting Brett transferred from there to Livermore later, where the really secret stuff goes on.” Stephanie looked uncertainly from one to the other of the faces watching her. “See what that means? I think that Oberwald is part of it. I think that he recruited Brett.”

  Winthram’s brow knotted incredulously. “But that would mean he was in collusion with the Soviets, too,” he protested. “A man of his stature and reputation? Surely it’s not possible.”

  “I don’t know what’s possible or what isn’t,” Stephanie said. “But one thing I do know is that it means I don’t trust any authority.” She shook her head emphatically. “Who knows who else might be involved? It would only take one person in a network like that to find out that I’m still around…”

  “She’s got a point,” Evron said, looking at Winthram. “If your neck was on the line, would you risk it?”

  Winthram sighed, turned away, and stared out of the window again.

  There was a pause. “So, what do we do?” Stephanie asked at last. Nobody answered at once. The silence dragged on. Finally, Winthram wheeled back to face them again.

  “Well, although I understand and agree with your concern, we can’t approach anyone, even in confidence, with mere allegations and speculations of the kind you have outlined,” he said to Stephanie. “There simply isn’t anything even remotely approaching a case. All that would achieve, as y
ou have already pointed out, is that alarm bells would be triggered, and if what you say is true, somewhere in the system the wrong people would be alerted. We don’t want that.” He turned his head toward Evron. “Wouldn’t you agree, William?”

  Evron nodded. “What we need right now is more facts.”

  “Something far more substantive in the way of hard facts,” Winthram repeated.

  “What are you asking me to do?” Stephanie asked.

  “You? Nothing, my dear,” Winthram said. “You are officially dead. My advice for your own safety is to remain that way.” He looked across at Mel. “Since Stephanie must remain invisible, that only leaves you, Melvin. I think we’ve established your commitment to the case, aside from the question of immediate personal friendship. What do you say? It’s going to have to be up to you. How do you feel about becoming a detective for a while?”

  Mel ran a hand bemusedly across his brow. Twenty-four hours previously he had been simply a junior associate at a small law firm, minding his own business and doing a job… And now? Religious fanatics planning the end of the world; a Soviet espionage operation involving strategic defense secrets and a national adviser; two murders already… What in God’s name was he getting into? All he’d ever anticipated from life was probably getting married one day, starting a family, and all the things that came with a steady job and a house in the suburbs.

  But what kind of a choice was there?

  “Of course,” he replied. “Naturally I’ll help in any way I can.” Stephanie nodded a quick smile of thanks.

  “Splendid,” Winthram said, rubbing his hands together and nodding approval. “Take my word, it’ll do your career a world of good, my boy. Very well, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t begin work right away.”

  CHAPTER 12

  In July 1977, General Hacka Hofi, head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, called upon Prime Minister Menachem Begin. With him he brought a file containing detailed information, obtained by deep-cover agents infiltrated by Mossad into the PLO, of an operational plan drawn up on the orders of Libya’s Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi to use Palestinian hit men to assassinate President Sadat of Egypt. Although the Israelis had no reason to be especially concerned what happened to Sadat—he had sent his armies to war against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973—Hofi proposed doing what Israel had usually done before under similar circumstances, which was to pass the information to the American CIA. They, if they so chose, would then pass it to Egypt as a piece of American intelligence. Begin, however, disagreed, and decided instead to demonstrate that Israel was willing to let bygones be bygones by delivering the file to Sadat directly, with compliments of the Israeli government. Accordingly, within twenty-four hours Hofi was on his way to Rabat, in Morocco, for a secret appointment with the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate, Kamal Ali. The information turned out to be accurate, and the conspiracy was foiled. This affair played no small part in the events that led up to the remarkable scene enacted over a year later, in September 1978, when Begin and Sadat embraced before TV cameras to celebrate before an incredulous world the successful conclusion of the Camp David summit.