The Brea File (7 page)

And for a Bureau man as ambitious as Halbig was, a second divorce was unthinkable. The first had been damning enough…

Halbig shook off the distraction, his thoughts instantly returning to the memo he had sent to Landers, flagged urgent.

This
was
hard ball. It would be interesting to see how Landers reacted.

John L. Landers was a veteran field man of the Bureau, former SAC in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. His appointment as Acting Director of the FBI by the President had been popular with agents in the field, less popular with some of the entrenched hierarchy at Headquarters—men who, like Halbig, had been bypassed when Landers was jumped over them.

So far Landers had moved slowly. Many felt that he had accepted the President’s appointment reluctantly, that he would have preferred to serve out his time with the Bureau as an SAC. He had not disturbed the organizational structure at the top, which included the three Executive Assistant Directors overseeing the Bureau’s eleven divisions. His predecessor, William Webster, had left the post of Associate Director, number two man in the Bureau, vacant. Webster preferred tighter control of day-to-day operations himself. “The director of the FBI should direct,” he had once said. Halbig, Szymanski and James Caughey, the third Executive Assistant Director, in charge of the sensitive Intelligence and Investigation Divisions, were all carry-overs from the previous administration. But Landers had given hints that he planned to fill the Associate Director’s slot with a man of his own choice.

Halbig wanted to be that man.

At the least.

But Landers obviously would not make any moves until he himself was confirmed by the Senate in forthcoming hearings.
If
he was confirmed.

Halbig held the thought—cautiously, tentatively. Landers was a blunt, outspoken man. He had already ruffled a few senatorial feathers. Among those with reservations about him was the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Charles Sederholm, a man for whom Russell Halbig had been able to do a few favors in the past.

Sederholm had faced a tough, close contest in his last re-election campaign in California. Halbig had been able to provide him with some little-known information about his Democratic opponent. Nothing criminal but enough to raise doubts in the minds of voters. Sederholm had won big—so big that his easy victory had thrust him into the forefront of his party’s candidates for this year’s presidential nomination, thrown wide open by the President’s decision not to seek a second term. If he repeated his earlier triumph in California’s primary tomorrow…

Sederholm was a professional politician. Such men did not forget a favor.

Halbig glanced at his watch. Another minute. Landers liked people to be on time for a meeting. He didn’t like them early any more than he tolerated lateness.

Landers was certain to bring up Halbig’s memo about the Brea file. The missing file could have far-reaching implications for Landers personally… and for Halbig.

Point one: Landers had been in charge of the task force assigned to hunt down the People’s Revolutionary Committee when the terrorists ran amok that summer in California. And in spite of some criticism of the violent end of that hunt, Landers had unquestionably benefited from it. It had thrust him into the national spotlight. Almost certainly it had influenced the President, a hardliner when it came to crime, in his decision to appoint Landers as Acting Director. But a belated revelation of improprieties by the FBI—acting under Landers’ direction with or without his direct knowledge—would damage him. And if he had participated in a cover-up, he would be finished.

Point two: Senator Sederholm would relish inside knowledge of the Brea affair, a juicy plum to pull out during the hearings coming up in two weeks. The consideration by the Senate committee of John L. Landers’ confirmation would begin with Sederholm fresh from his almost certain California victory, looking ahead to the Republican convention a month away, smelling blood as well as roses.

Point three: There was no way the file would hurt Russ Halbig, no matter what an investigation turned up. If Landers were seriously compromised, there was little doubt that Senator Sederholm would act to block his appointment. The way would be clear for someone else to become Director. On the other hand, if Landers managed to emerge unscathed, he would surely react favorably to Halbig’s action in bringing the Brea file to his attention. Landers might even benefit from exposing the affair, and the result could hardly fail to enhance Halbig’s position. Landers was looking for someone he could rely on as his number two, someone with administrative know-how, an Associate Director he could trust…

Halbig backed up, going quickly over his scenario, searching for signs of danger to himself. He found none. No matter which way the investigation went, he stood to gain.

With a chance—a real chance—to find himself on a fast horse along the rail, with all the other favorites dropping back, one by one.

He liked the image, made a mental note of it as he rose and left his office, walking along the quiet corridor toward the Director’s conference room.

He didn’t have to take the elevator. Halbig had already made it to the seventh floor. The Director’s suite of offices was only a short walk along the corridor.

John L. Landers was a solidly built man who had always had to fight his weight to meet rigid FBI standards. Everything about him was square—including his thinking, the syndicated columnist Oliver Packard had written—from his square-jawed, heavy features to his deep, broad chest. The overall impression was of someone immovable as a big rock, and it had been suggested that this quality was the reason the President had selected him to be the Director of the FBI.

He was also said to be humorless, tough, blunt-spoken, intolerant of mistakes. Yet the agents who had served under him in three different major field offices where he had been Special-Agent-in-Charge were, almost to a man, his most vocal admirers.

Like his predecessor, William Webster, Landers didn’t think much of doing things by committee. Webster had downgraded the top echelon’s twice-weekly executive conferences, which he had found unproductive, instead giving more authority to his three Executive Assistant Directors. The executive conferences were still held, but less often, chaired usually by one of the Executive Assistant Directors. Landers had adopted Webster’s practice of working principally through his three key assistants. “You get fifteen people in one room, every one of them with an ax to grind, all you get is conversation,” Landers had said. “With three or four people you can get down to cases.”

At this morning’s meeting with his three top aides Landers quickly dispensed with a number of policy matters and cases in progress. So many matters came to his desk that he had insisted on receiving only brief memos and summary teletypes, supplemented by more extensive reports only on cases of special importance. One of the latter, an ongoing investigation by the White Collar Crime Task Force unit attached to the Washington Field Office, was reported on in detail by James Caughey, quoting from a report received from the WFO. The investigation was sensitive because it involved both high-level personnel in the General Services Administration and members of Congress. Of more immediate concern was an airline hijacking currently in progress in Miami, where the Delta Airlines plane was being held on the ground.

“Who’s down there?” Landers asked.

“Callahan. He has the Miami hostage unit and a SWAT team. The hijacker is a loner, about nineteen, a couple of minor arrests. Callahan already has most of the background, but he’s taking it slow, letting the kid calm down.”

Landers nodded in satisfaction. Callahan was the best. He had been Landers’ number two man during the PRC Task Force operations, the designated chief negotiator. If only Callahan had been there in San Timoteo the day the shooting started, Landers had often thought, if he had had a chance to talk to those amateur revolutionaries, it might all have ended differently….

“Good,” Landers said. “The longer it goes, the better our chances. I want reports every half hour until it’s over.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the rest of the morning’s business had been discussed, Landers paused, picking up a memo from a stack on the long table in the small conference room. “This one I don’t like,” he said. It was the memo from Halbig concerning the missing Brea file. “According to this, Halbig, you’re raising the possibility that someone stole a sensitive file—and that someone could have been an FBI man.”

“It’s only one possibility,” Halbig said carefully.

“A lousy one,” Landers growled. “Go ahead, run through it. I want the others to hear the details.”

Halbig was ready for the demand. Landers liked brief, organized reports. Halbig recalled the theft of an FBI vehicle ten days before. It appeared at the time that the thief had not specifically been after FBI documents—there was a good chance that he didn’t know he was stealing an FBI car. Nevertheless, he had opened one box of documents that were in the trunk of the car. That box as well as the others had been gone over minutely. All of the files had come from the San Timoteo RA’s office, which had been shut down in April, two months after the death of the Resident Agent, Vernon Lippert.

“All of the files appear to be intact,” Halbig said, “except one. That folder is empty. It’s identified as the Brea file. Its contents are unknown.”

“What about our dupes?” Caughey asked.

“There are no duplicates. That was one of the first things that caught my attention. A copy of every piece of paper generated in any investigation is supposed to come to Headquarters, of course. Whatever his motive, Lippert did not send copies to the Sacramento Field Office, so we received none.” Halbig paused. “Lippert was carrying out the investigation without approval.”

“There are no records at all?” Landers asked.

“We have some.” Halbig had been saving this information for the meeting. “Lippert did request some lab work. Henry was very helpful in running those reports down.” Halbig nodded toward Szymanski. “One of Lippert’s lab reports concerned the presence of gunpowder residue on an old, rusty residential window screen. The report was positive. Another report covered voiceprint analysis of two separate tape recordings. The first recording was identified as a conversation between an agent from the San Francisco Field Office and an informant named Walter Schumaker, dated June 10, 1980. The second tape was of an anonymous telephone call to the Sacramento office on August 27, 1981… the day before the PRC massacre in San Timoteo. Voiceprint analysis confirmed that Schumaker made both calls. In the second one he used the code name Brea for an FBI agent to whom he wanted to report.”

“Who was Brea?” the Director broke in sharply.

“We have no record of any agent using such a code name.”

“What about the agent who was running Schumaker earlier?”

“There were two of them. Special Agents Charles Reese and Victor Pryor. Reese is still in San Francisco, Pryor has left the Bureau. Both have been contacted. Neither man knows anything about the second phone call or the Brea code name.”

“You’ll check that.”

“Of course.”

There was a momentary silence. Caughey said, “It sounds like a private code between an agent and his informant.”

“That’s my assumption, too,” Halbig said.

“I want to hear those tapes,” Landers said. “Anything else? Your memo mentions a handwriting comparison.”

“I was coming to that. Lippert asked the Handwriting Analysis Unit for a comparison of two handwriting samples. The first was of Walter Schumaker’s known origin, a letter to the two agents who were using him in 1979 and 1980 in Berkeley. The second sample was on the rental deposit for the house where the PRC were hiding out in San Timoteo. They were identical.”

There was a stunned silence this time. It lasted a full ten seconds. The three Executive Assistant Directors grouped around the long mahogany table exchanged glances. Landers scowled at them. “What do we have?” he asked finally. “Szymanski?”

“It appears that Lippert was investigating something about the PRC disaster. And those reports indicate that an FBI informant was inside the group. That wasn’t known before.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Landers said tersely. He had been in command of the task force that had spent a whole summer of frustration trying to catch the elusive band of terrorists. The possibility that an FBI informant—and the agent to whom he was reporting—had known all along where the People’s Revolutionary Committee were hiding brought a dark flush of anger to his stolid features. “I’d damned well like to know why.”

He glanced at Caughey. “You see it the same way, Caughey?”

“Yes, Director.” Caughey was visibly disturbed by what he had heard. “What it means is, the agent who called himself Brea had inside knowledge he kept to himself. But it brings up another question: What happened to Schumaker?”

The four men exchanged glances. They were all remembering the massive explosion that brought an end to the PRC.

Landers’ expression was grim. Russ Halbig found that his pulse had quickened. Now Landers had no choice, he thought. The Director’s next words confirmed his judgment.

“I want that missing file found. I want Schumaker found—if he’s alive. I want Brea identified.” Landers’ brown eyes speared Halbig. “You’re assuming the man who stole the FBI vehicle also took the file?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?” Sharply.

“The nature of the file and… the nature of the theft. It couldn’t have been premeditated. Agent Stearns’s decision to stop at that particular store at that hour that night was pure happenstance—that he would have stopped at all could not have been anticipated. My assumption is that this was a random auto theft, spur-of-the-moment, amateurish. That’s also the opinion of the two agents in the Stolen Vehicle Unit at the Washington Field Office who are investigating. I have copies of their initial reports if you’d like to see them. The thief’s prints are all over the car but there’s nothing on record in Ident. Either he has no criminal record, which corroborates the amateur theory, or any record he has was as a juvenile and his records are frozen.”