The Brea File (2 page)

The blow slashed a cut high on his forehead. Blood poured into his left eye, half blinding him. The oar rose and struck again and he caught it and yanked, pulling Vernon Lippert into the water with him.

Not unconscious! Not drowned! Lippert had tricked him!

Through a red haze he wrestled Lippert under the water. The lean man still gripped the blood-streaked oar with both hands, refusing to let go. That was a mistake. He was caught between the boat and the dock, and Brea used the oar to pin him beneath the surface, wedged between boat and dock. Brea held Lippert there, his face only a few inches underwater, his eyes open and accusing.

This time, standing in the water near the edge of the lake, the cold seeping through clothes and flesh and striking to his bones, Brea held his accuser for several minutes, not moving, the muscles of his back and shoulders straining long after there was no need.

He pulled the body into the boat, threw the tarpaulin over it. In spite of Lippert’s brief struggle, there was no mark on his body to raise questions. Brea’s own cut was at the edge of his hairline; it could easily be disguised while it healed.

His gaze swept the lake. Though the sky was paler than it had been only a few moments ago, not enough light had come to the far shore for anything on land to be seen clearly. And this eastern side, with the thick woods and the mountain behind it, was darker still. No boats were visible, no early lights. The nearest neighboring cabin, a quarter mile away, was empty at this time of year. So were most of the houses and cabins on the eastern shore. All was quiet.

He carried Lippert’s wet mackintosh into the cabin and draped it over a chair in front of the fire. Then he began a methodical, painstaking search of the cabin. He neglected no possible hiding place but left no sign that anything had been disturbed. In the small, simply furnished cabin there were few places of concealment from an experienced eye. Within fifteen minutes he knew that what he was searching for was not here.

A blind rage seized him. He had to fight the terrible urge to smash and tear everything he could lay his hands on. His whole body shook with the fever of his fury.

When the spasm passed he continued to search, no less carefully but now without real hope. He sifted the ashes in the pail on one side of the hearth and found some blackened, pulverized ashes beneath layers of whiter wood ash. There his search ended. The black residue meant only one thing. Lippert had burned the documents he brought with him to his retreat.

For a moment something went out of the black-clad figure. Then he straightened up. Lippert would not have destroyed the evidence of what he had learned. The Brea file still existed, hidden in a place Lippert had considered safe. The papers he burned would only have been copies.

* * * *

When he rowed out onto the lake in the first light of day, wearing Vernon Lippert’s mackintosh, his face scrubbed clean, he felt a grudging admiration for the dead man in the boat with him. His rage was buried deep, no longer visible even in his eyes. His thoughts already ranged ahead, sorting through the possible places of concealment Lippert would have chosen, planning his next moves.

If anyone saw the solitary figure rowing slowly toward a far corner of the lake, he would have been a familiar sight, even to the plaid mackintosh he wore.

In a private cove he forced the mackintosh over Lippert’s stiffening arms. Then he slipped into the water, ducked under the boat and flipped it over.

As the boat drifted slowly away, the dead man’s body broke the surface once and sank out of sight. Brea struck out for the nearest shore. He carried with him a single oar taken from the rowboat. To the casual eye it had been cleansed of blood by the cold water as he rowed, but Brea knew better. The oar could not be left behind.

Spilled blood was not so easily washed away.

A light, misting rain muddied the windshield of the blue Ford Fairmont sedan. It had rained almost every day during May, turning Washington, D.C., into the world’s largest steam bath.

Special Agent Harrison Stearns, attached to the Resident Agent’s office at Dulles International, had left the airport shortly before eight o’clock in a Bureau car. In its trunk were four sealed boxes of documents shipped in that day from California for delivery to FBI Headquarters in downtown Washington. Stearns was off duty at eight, but a shipment of classified documents was not to be left at the airport until someone found time to deliver them. Stearns was nominated. “It counts as overtime, Harry,” the Senior Resident Agent told him with a grin. “And there’s bound to be extra Brownie points for overtime on Friday night in the rain.”

Just before leaving the office he had called home to tell his wife Patty that he would be late. His voice was worried when he asked about the baby.

“She’ll be fine. Dr. Kosco said it was just a little throat inflammation. Could you stop and pick up a prescription on your way home? I can call it in right now—Kosco said it’s a mild antibiotic.”

“Okay, I’ll pick it up.” Patty gave him the name of the pharmacy where they usually had prescriptions filled. It was in a discount store. These days, especially with a young baby to feed and clothe and keep healthy, you had to watch every penny. “They close at nine,” Patty reminded him.

Stearns drove carefully even though he was on a wide, divided highway. Driving into downtown Washington on getaway night in the rain
deserved
Brownie points. It occurred to him as he neared the Beltline that a short detour would allow him to stop at the Fedco store on his way in. Then, if he were held up in downtown traffic and didn’t get back to the suburbs in time, he would have the prescription anyway.

He parked in the big Fedco lot off to one side of the building. Rain or no rain, the spaces out front were jammed. Everyone was watching pennies.

The rain was light but steady, a soaking drizzle, pools forming in shallow pockets of the black macadam. He pulled his jacket up over his head as he ran toward the store entrance, weaving among the rows of parked cars. Like O.J. going through Dulles, he thought.

The image was still in his head when his foot hit something slick on the glistening pavement and he went sprawling.

Stearns skidded against the base of a light standard. He lay momentarily stunned by the hard fall. He pulled himself shakily to his knees. One hand had lost some skin and, worse, he had torn a hole in the elbow of one of his two good suits.

The young agent swore softly. Climbing to his feet, he waved off a couple with an umbrella and another helpful shopper, thanking them. Then he limped on into the store, wondering sourly about the economy of ruining a good suit while trying to save two dollars on a prescription.

When Stearns emerged from the store and headed around the corner toward the back part of the parking area, it was still raining. He walked. What the hell, a little rain couldn’t do any more damage to
this
suit. He was struck by the fact that this portion of the parking lot was not as brilliantly illuminated as at the front of the store.

At first he thought that he had mistaken the aisle where he had parked. But as he looked around he saw the light post where he had taken a tumble.

With his eyes he tracked back across the lot. In the half hour he had been inside, many of the cars had left. It was now quarter to nine, almost closing time.

He spotted a sign on a post at the far end of the next aisle: M2. Yes, that was it. He remembered seeing the sign when he turned past it. He had parked in that aisle.

For a long minute Harrison Stearns stood in shock, staring through the soft curtain of rain. His heart seemed to have landed down around the pit of his stomach. Impulsively he jammed his hand into his right pants pocket. The search became frantic through his other pockets, his jacket.

He stopped suddenly. The car keys weren’t there. He must have lost them when he fell.

And the FBI car was gone.

* * * *

The young driver of the blue Ford sedan headed southwest on 66 and swung west onto Highway 50. Ironically, his route took him within two miles of Dulles International Airport. Traffic thinned out as he drove on through Middleburg. He kept watching the rearview mirror, his thin body tensed against the sight of flashing red lights.

He watched his speed. No point in getting stopped for speeding now. The theft of the car would have been reported, the license plate numbers fed into the old computers. He would have to find a place where he could switch plates.

He grinned exultantly. The guy outside Fedco had practically handed him the car keys. Scooping them up, he had offered the victim a helping hand as he tried to rise. The good Samaritan, that was him.

At the small town of Paris, near Ashby Gap on the Appalachian Trail, he stopped for gas at a self-serve station. While the gas was pumping on automatic, he walked around the car and opened the trunk with the key. The interior of the car was clean but the trunk might hold something interesting.

There were four compact cardboard boxes, each about the size of a file drawer, tightly sealed with plastic tape. With a pocketknife he ripped open one of the boxes. He pawed through the contents—tightly packed file folders stacked upright—and pulled a file out at random. As the cover fell open his gaze riveted on a letterhead: Federal Bureau of Investigation. And in one corner a bold black stamped word:
CLASSIFIED.

He jammed the folder back into the box, his heart thudding. He slammed the trunk lid shut and looked around. There was no one close enough to see into the trunk. Christ, what had he done? Stolen an FBI car?

He stopped the pump hastily. He was going to have to dump this car. He wasn’t going to give them any more of
his
gasoline.

He doubled back from the station, remembering that he had passed the intersection of Highway 17. He had to get off the main road fast.

At an empty roadside stop he pulled off once more, curiosity tugging at him. He made sure no cars were approaching before he opened the trunk again. This time he withdrew a fistful of the file folders. They were of varying thickness, but each contained report sheets and forms, each one numbered. He scanned some of the pages carelessly. “–
the perpetrator then proceeded to his vehicle and was observed
…” Cop jargon. Routine stuff—Dullsville.

He started to return the sheaf of folders to the opened carton when something caught his eye: the corner of another folder lying flat on the bottom of the box, hidden beneath the upright files. He reached down and pulled it out, wondering what one file was doing out of place. It was only chance that he had seen it at all.

He pushed the other files back into the carton and examined the one which had been on the bottom. More of the same—memos, interviews…

A gust of wind whipped the file folder open. Papers spilled out. He scrambled after them, cursing. The only thing that kept them all from blowing away was the rain. Quickly saturated, the papers stuck to wet gravel, mud, a patch of macadam. He gathered them up, peering around anxiously. He didn’t want to leave anything behind.

He bunched the wet papers together and jammed them into the pockets of his nylon jacket. After a moment’s hesitation he thrust the empty folder back into the carton, burying it among the other files.

He got back in the car, shivering from the dampness and from excitement. He started down the long, twisting grade on Highway 17, heading southeast.

He drove without headlights, flicking them on once when a car approached, then turning them off again. Invisible in the darkness, he felt alone on the road. But no longer safe.

* * * *

Ben Thomason, driving an eighteen-wheeler bound for Richmond, swung the big rig ponderously off Highway 50. He could take 17 all the way through to Fredericksburg and intersect with 95 going straight south. That way he would bypass the Washington area and its heavy traffic.

Starting down the long grade a few minutes past ten in the evening, he seemed to have everything under control. The pavement shimmered black in his headlights like a pool of oil, but the light rain had almost stopped. His speed was calculated precisely so that his momentum would carry him well up the next rise before he would have to downshift. Near the bottom of the grade he saw the black carcass of a retread that had peeled off the tire of some luckless trucker ahead of him. For a moment, speared in his headlights, it looked like a body. He did not feel the bump when he ran over it.

He didn’t see the Ford sedan that was running without lights until he had it right between the horns.

Ben Thomason was a good driver, and he did the only thing he could. He put the big rig into a deliberate skid.

At first the trailer swung out slowly. It gained speed and jackknifed inward toward the cab. The whole rig drifted on the slick road surface. Thomason swung the steering wheel against the skid and it seemed for a moment as if the truck might avert disaster. But the rear trailer wheels had skirted too close to the shoulder, soft from days of intermittent rain. When the tires plowed into the wet ground the loaded trailer tipped over in ponderous slow motion.

The man in the Ford was lucky. The right front wheel of the big truck nudged the car, flipping it off the road. The driver fought the wheel as the car slewed across the wet shoulder. It crashed through a rusty barbed-wire fence guarding an empty meadow, careened down the side of an embankment and slammed to a stop, nose down, front wheels buried to the hubcaps in the sandy bottom of a shallow ditch.

Miraculously, the truck’s cab was still almost upright. Inside the cab, still gripping the wheel as if he were holding the tractor up by sheer strength, Ben Thomason swore steadily. His adrenaline was flowing and there was an oily sheen of sweat on his brow. That had been close—too damned close.

He flipped his CB switch and put in a breaker call to the nearest listening state police. The call was answered within ten seconds. Smokey was less than five miles away.