Lutz was still finding it difficult to conceal his resentment of hotshots like Maxwell, but he knew his day was coming. He was on a fast track to NASA and a seat in the space shuttle.
He had all the right tickets — aero engineering degree from Cal Tech, a masters in astrophysics, summa cum laude, from Stanford. Number one class ranking in flight test school. Lutz was undeniably brilliant, and even NASA, populated though it was by Neanderthal hotshots, would be have to select him as an astronaut.
One day, a couple of years after Lutz graduated from flight test school, he received the notice from the NASA selection board. The notice contained the list of selectees for the next space shuttle training class. Lutz knew most of them — test pilots from the Navy, Air Force, Marines, a few flight test engineering officers, and three civilians with advanced backgrounds in aviation medicine or physics.
Near the top of the list was a name that caused his jaw muscles to clench uncontrollably: Lieutenant Commander Samuel T. Maxwell, USN. The glory hound was going to be an astronaut.
Lutz scanned the entire list. His name was not on it.
In the same envelope was a polite letter from the director of candidate screening, a woman named Fitch. She thanked Lutz for his interest in NASA and wished him success in his future endeavors.
Something snapped inside Lutz. He had never been a socializer, always preferring predictable bytes and digits and algorithms over the company of colleagues, but now he became a recluse. He stopped seeing his few acquaintances. He holed up for days at a time with his computer.
His wife, an attractive, brown-haired woman named Joanne, packed up and left, and that was fine with Lutz. To hell with her. Most of his former friends drifted away, and that was fine too. To hell with all of them. He didn’t need a wife and he didn’t need friends and he didn’t need those overblown senior officers who kept calling him to say he ought to just kick back and lighten up or his military career might be affected.
It was too late, and he didn’t care. When he was passed over for promotion to the rank of commander, Lutz resigned his commission. He took a position as a civilian research engineer on the secret Calypso Blue project at Groom Lake.
Groom Lake — and the fleshpots of Las Vegas — suited him just fine. Unlike the Navy, private industry didn’t require Lutz to socialize with his colleagues. He could be a recluse. He could gamble in the casinos. He could pick up hookers.
He could be a spy.
Soon after he reached that conclusion, two years after he arrived at Groom Lake, he met the person who would make it possible. Someone named Tom.
CHAPTER 10 — MAI–LING
“Spy?” Tom took a drink of champagne and said, “That’s passé, Ray. Find some other job description. One that’s not so comic bookish.”
“How about traitor?” said Lutz.
“A meaningless concept,” said Tom. “At least to people like you and me. Traitor to what? That kind of Cold War sentimentality is reserved for all the simple-minded flag-wavers in the world.”
Lutz tossed down his Scotch. It occurred to him that he knew very little about Tom, but he was always amazed at the agent’s flippant attitude about the subject that could get them both snuffed out in a heartbeat. Tom had some kind of inner steel that Lutz could only imagine himself possessing.
Whenever they had this kind of dialogue in the casino, he did as Tom had taught him. He positioned himself next to one of the audio speakers so he could blend his voice into the din of the music. When he spoke, he shielded his lips with a glass, blocking any hidden surveillance cameras.
It was all part of being a spy. Or whatever job description Tom wanted to use.
“How about purveyor of information?” said Tom. “That’s a good one. Professional purveyor of vital information.”
Lutz shrugged. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn what they called him. Just so the money showed up in the account.
Sitting here in the bar, working on his third Scotch and still feeling the adrenaline rush of a successful transaction, he thought again how easy it had been to enter this business.
It started two months after he’d arrived at Groom Lake. That was when he realized that he had access to the most valuable military commodity in the world — the Black Star.
All he needed was a customer.
He wrote a page-long letter to the Consul General of the Peoples Republic of China in San Francisco. In the letter he explained the kind of work he performed at the research facility, and then he specified exactly how they should contact him.
Ten days later he was in the main casino of Caesar’s Palace, sitting at the third slot machine from the end, sixth row, exactly where he had said in the letter. It was six minutes before nine o’clock. His pulse was racing.
The arrangement had looked foolproof on paper. Now Lutz was beset by doubts. What if the letter had been intercepted? What if the FBI showed up? What if—
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Lutz.” The voice belonged to the person next to him, playing the adjacent slot machine.
Lutz’s heart rate accelerated another twenty beats. “I… I play this machine every Friday,” he said, following the script in his letter.
“Fridays are better than Mondays.”
The words were correct. Meaningless but correct, right out of the letter he had written. Lutz kept his eyes on his machine but now he was curious about the player next to him. “Who are you?”
“You can call me Tom.”
He nodded. “My name is Raymond.”
“Excellent,” said Tom. “This is going extremely well. You see? We’re already on a first name basis.”
They continued talking, and some of the trepidation slipped away from Lutz. In his worst fears he had imagined that the Chinese, for whatever reason, might have turned him in. A team of FBI agents might have been waiting for him. Instead, there was Tom.
Still playing the slot machine, Tom explained how Lutz was to make the data drops. The timing and locations would change, conforming to no predictable pattern. Tom was his handler and would be his only contact.
They haggled briefly over Lutz’s compensation, then settled on a payment schedule. The total would amount to a hundred times more than Lutz had ever seen in his personal bank account.
Lutz began to feel giddy. He was beginning a whole new life. No longer was he wasting his finest skills on an undeserving client like the United States government. He was in control now. Master of his own destiny. He would extract justice for the disservice done him by his own country.
During the next months, Lutz learned that he had a taste for espionage. His engineer’s brain came up with unique ways to transmit the ultra-secret data of the Black Star project. He devised a method of micro-encryption, fitting the secrets of Calypso Blue into the interior of a gaming chip.
The physical act of transferring the chip never failed to fill him with terror. But despite his gnawing fear, he discovered that he craved the heart-pounding, dry-mouthed danger of the game. There was something addictive about it.
And something else. After each drop, Lutz found to his astonishment that he was as sexually excited as a bull in rutting season. He was invariably drawn like a magnet to the casino bar where he knew he would find the special blonde in the leather skirt.
“Gentlemen,” said Admiral Hightree as he stepped into the compartment, “our guests from Taiwan.”
The three Chinese had arrived aboard the Reagan’s C-2 COD — carrier on-board delivery — aircraft. Hightree had been there to meet them when they stepped onto the deck. He took them directly to the flag conference space.