The Brea File (29 page)

“Don’t mind me, Paul. Sometimes I get this way. Doesn’t Jan ever complain? About the late nights and the sudden trips? And the silences? Especially those silences! Or is she a good sport about it all, like poor Mary Ruhle?”

“Poor Mary?”

“Poor Mary, poor Jan, poor Erika… we’re all in the same boat, aren’t we?” Erika leaned forward suddenly, spilling a little white wine onto the tablecloth. “Or do you actually talk to Jan sometimes? I wonder…”

“Russ has a very important job, Erika. There probably isn’t a hell of a lot he
can
talk about.”

“Will you tell Jan about tonight, Paul? About having dinner with me?”

Macimer smiled. “I don’t see why not.”

“I do,” Erika said softly, her eyes suddenly sober. “And I think you do, too, Paul…”

* * * *

Theodore Roosevelt Island is in the middle of the Potomac. The river runs north to south at that point. Across the eastern fork of the river are the Foggy Bottom district and the Watergate complex. Along the west bank is a greenbelt interlaced with the parkway system. It is from this bank that a wooden pedestrian bridge spans the river to reach the island.

Raymond Shoup paused at the foot of the bridge and glanced back over his shoulder, his shoulders hunched against the light rain. From nearby came the steady hiss of traffic along the wet pavement of the parkway, but it seemed oddly remote. Otherwise the night was silent, and Raymond felt a stirring of uneasiness.

His right hand touched the papers tucked under his belt, protected from the rain by the lightweight jacket he wore. Five thousand dollars, he reminded himself. And more where that came from. He had stopped at the Greyhound Bus Terminal on New York Avenue at 11th Street before catching the Metro’s blue line to Rosslyn. He had taken only about a third of the documents in the file he kept in a baggage locker there. Then, on impulse, he had mailed the locker key to himself. Not that he didn’t trust Gerella, he told himself with a grin, but you never knew…

A double metal gate barred access to the bridge. The gate was padlocked, but it was low at the center and easily vaulted. Raymond Shoup landed lightly on the wooden planks beyond the gate. He started across the bridge.

In the open it was still reasonably light, but the island ahead of him was dark. Trees grew down to the water’s edge, their branches leaning out over the muddy river. At the end of the bridge was a small clearing. It was empty.

After a moment’s hesitation Raymond stepped off the bridge and was instantly adrift in the featureless gloom of the woods. He was conscious of the silence around him, accentuated by the soft dripping of rainwater from leaf and branch.

The path twisted and began to climb. Raymond Shoup walked gingerly over the uneven footing, a treacherous stew of mud and scattered gravel. His nervousness increased as he plunged deeper into the interior of the island.

Suddenly the silence was shattered by a jumbo jet crashing through the black night almost directly overhead, on its swift climb from the runway at Washington National.

Raymond giggled nervously.

After a few minutes the wall of darkness ahead of him thinned out and began to break up. He saw patches of gray sky, the sharp black silhouette of a branch stabbing the gray. In a moment Raymond Shoup stood at the edge of the clearing. A broad platform, paved and pebbled, glistened in the rain. It extended across the open space in front of him. On each side of this raised platform shone the dark crescents of reflecting pools. From a dais at the far end of the platform Theodore Roosevelt shook his fist in a characteristically aggressive pose. Orderly rows of trees flanked the twin ornamental pools, bringing a note of formality at odds with the natural wilderness covering the rest of the island.

Another jet roared into the sky from Washington National two miles away and climbed over Roosevelt Island, crushing the deep silence. As soon as it was gone the silence closed in again, all light and sound muted and softened by the fine mist of rain.

“Gerella?” In spite of himself Raymond’s voice quavered.

The man had been standing on the dark side of the monument, at Roosevelt’s feet. Raymond Shoup did not see him until he stepped forward. He resembled the statue towering above him, a figure burly and powerful, except that he stood at quiet ease, hands shoved into the side pockets of a black gabardine raincoat. “Right on time, Raymond,” he said. “Did you bring the file?”

Raymond Shoup stepped nervously into the open, staring at the man who advanced across the paved platform to meet him. Raymond had never seen Gerella in person—to him the reporter was only a name culled from a newspaper story about the Senate Committee on Intelligence, the name of a reporter who worked for Oliver Packard—but he was surprised by the impression that the man before him was older than he had expected.

“Let’s see what you have.”

“Let me see some money first!” Raymond replied, summoning up a moment of bravado.

“You’re a careful man, Raymond. So am I—I want to be sure I’m getting what I pay for.” He paused, then asked sharply, “You didn’t by any chance make a copy of the file, did you, Raymond?”

He was quite close to Raymond then, peering at him intently. Apparently satisfied as Raymond shook his head, he reached under his coat to pull out a bulky white envelope. It was thick enough so that it had been sealed with tape to make it secure. Shoup seized it eagerly as he handed over the manila envelope he had brought with him. “You can count that while I’m making sure you delivered the real goods, Raymond.” He had the manila envelope open before Raymond could tear open his own prize.

In the darkness Raymond could see only that his envelope contained a thick sheaf of bills. He hunched over to protect the money from the rain as his cold fingers plucked at it, his heart racing with excitement. Suddenly he felt an iron grip on his biceps, fingers tightening so viciously that Raymond winced in pain. “What is this, Raymond? This isn’t the whole file—what have you brought me?”

Raymond shoved the money envelope into his jacket pocket, as if he feared that it might be snatched back. “The whole file is worth more than five thousand,” he said, trying to sound confident and unafraid when in truth he was neither. “You know it is! That’s a good sampling. The rest will cost you more!”

The burly man stared at him, visibly struggling for control. “Where’s the rest of it, Raymond? Have you got it locked away somewhere? That’s it, isn’t it? You were just smart enough not to keep it in your room—”

“You tried to steal it!” Raymond Shoup cried hotly, anger breaking through his fear. “Now it’s gonna cost you more! And if you don’t want it, Gerella, I’m sure there are others who will!”

“You’re a very foolish boy, Raymond, but if you picked up these papers on your way, you must have had them in a locker someplace. Do you have the key, Raymond?”

“No, I don’t,” Raymond said, delighted with his cleverness.

“You’re lying, Raymond.”

“No—I thought you might try to take it. Why not? You tried to steal the file. But why should I give you the whole thing for peanuts?” Raymond started to back away, made uneasy by the older man’s relentless gaze. He wanted suddenly to be off this island, away from this big, quiet, determined man who looked as if he would roll right over you like a steamroller if you got in his way. “You know where to find me-”

Raymond Shoup was so startled at the man’s sudden move that he slipped on the wet paving as he turned to run. He was caught by the arm. The rest happened with unbelievable swiftness. Raymond’s arm was twisted up and around, then brought downward in a quick, chopping movement. The wrist snapped like a flimsy matchstick, and Shoup screamed.

At that instant another of the big aircraft from Washington National boomed overhead. Its roar punctuated Raymond’s scream, coming at the moment of his convulsive spasm of pain and terror. For an instant the grip was loosened, and Raymond broke free.

The man lunged after him. Ducking away, Raymond Shoup plunged off the platform toward the nearest path. He ran wildly, out of control. He crashed headlong into a tree. With a sob he bounced off the tree and lurched on blindly. Tree branches tore at him. One struck his arm, wrenching another shriek from his lips. He saw the fork of the path directly ahead of him. There, barely discernible, the big man blocked his way.

Raymond Shoup stopped, hugging his broken wrist against his body, sucking in great gulps of air as his panic made it hard to breathe. “You… you’re not Gerella!” he cried.

“That’s right, kid.”

“Oh my God, who… who are you?”

“Just someone who has to have that file, Raymond. You should have played straight with me.”

Raymond looked wildly about him, but the dense woods at night were like solid walls on both sides of the path. Something in him broke. With a scream he threw himself directly at the burly man in his way.

It was the one thing his assailant had not expected. Raymond’s headlong rush threw the man backward and into the brush. Raymond raced down the path, crying and raging, half blinded by his tears but somehow keeping his feet. He could hear the other man behind him, crashing through the undergrowth like a powerful animal smashing his way through a jungle.

Fear gave Raymond Shoup the strength and will to keep going in spite of his pain. When he saw the clearing that opened out at the edge of the river, hope was a new kind of anguish, stabbing deep into his chest.

Steps from the footbridge, on the brink of escape, Raymond Shoup slipped. His right foot missed a patch of gravel and skated over saturated earth. He flipped into the air like a comic figure, a clown stepping on a banana peel.

He landed hard on his back. Before he could recover the breath jolted from his body, his pursuer loomed over him. Raymond Shoup knew that he had lost, just as he had always lost.

He made a last desperate effort to drag himself toward the bridge. He made it only to the swampy ooze at the river’s edge before powerful hands caught him.

The stranger held him as if he were a child. “Did an FBI man get the rest of that file? Damn it, tell me!”

“Yes!” Raymond screamed, seizing on the question as a way out. “Yes, that’s it—I don’t have any more!”

“You shouldn’t have tried to hustle me, Raymond,” the big man said.

Before Raymond Shoup could retract his desperate lie his head was thrust underwater. His nose and mouth and throat filled with muddy water. He thrashed around futilely for a short while, feet and hands kicking and pushing at the water like a child trying to learn to swim. But the strong hands at his neck and spine did not support him, as the father he had never known might have lifted him up and made him safe. These hands held him under, until the convulsive struggling ceased and he was still.

* * * *

Paul Macimer put Erika Halbig into a cab at eight-thirty, a little surprised that she offered no protest.

Low gray clouds and the continuing light drizzle had made the summer evening prematurely dark. He drove along the road that swung west past the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and onto the George Mason Bridge. From there, after crossing the river, he exited onto the Washington Memorial Parkway and drove slowly along the waterfront.

The parking area across the way from Roosevelt Island was empty. As Macimer left his car and walked toward the pedestrian bridge, the drizzly evening which had seemed so quiet and tranquil when viewed through the windows of Hogate’s Restaurant appeared far less peaceful in the gloom over the river and the black island. Macimer wondered if Antonelli was already on the island, waiting, and if so where he had left his car.

The FBI man crossed the bridge quickly. The thick growth of trees and shrubbery seemed impenetrable until his flashlight picked out a footpath. As he entered this tunnel the beam of light was quickly scattered and lost in the dark wilderness on either side.

Following his darting light, he saw fresh scars in the muddy earth, as if someone had slipped and fallen. He felt a momentary uneasiness, aware that he had agreed a bit recklessly to this rendezvous with someone he did not know on a deserted island. He shrugged off the feeling with impatience. He was already committed.

Ahead of him the pathway forked, and a moment later he reached the clearing and saw the figure of Teddy Roosevelt on the far side, looking down on a broad platform flanked by twin reflecting pools.

The body lay face down, floating in the pool to the right of the platform.

Macimer waded into the pool. Even before he reached the floating body Macimer knew the man was dead. And even then he had an intuition about the identity of the dead man, someone thin and, to judge by his clothes and the long hair floating about his head, a young man.

When Macimer pulled the body out of the water and turned him over and saw the youthful, sharp-featured face, he knew that he had found the thief of the Brea file.

That Tuesday morning the executive conference involving the FBI Director and his three top-level assistants was stormy. Five days had passed since the explosion at Quantico in which the popular Timothy Callahan had been killed. The press was clamoring for answers. Two separate committees of Congress—including the Senate Committee on Intelligence that would have to confirm Landers’ appointment as Director—were planning their own investigations. The President had publicly and privately expressed his concern. And in spite of a massive commitment of manpower and expertise, involving hundreds of the FBI’s finest agents, the killer or killers were still at large, their identities a mystery.

As the man in charge of the investigation, James Caughey was first on the carpet. It did no good to remind the Director that the bombing was only one of an enormous load of cases that came under the wing of the Executive Assistant Director in charge of the sensitive Intelligence and Investigative Divisions. One of Caughey’s predecessors, the feisty William Sullivan, had once written that he was responsible at one time for eighty to ninety thousand criminal and security cases. Caughey knew that the figure was only slightly exaggerated. But John L. Landers was fully aware of Caughey’s other responsibilities. It made no difference. The Callahan case was an embarrassment to the Bureau. Landers wanted the bombers found.