The Brea File

by Louis Charbonneau

  Except that there was a connection, however tenuous. Timothy Callahan and Carey McWilliams had been John L. Landers’ number two and number one men in the FBI Task Force assembled in the summer of 1981 to hunt down the People’s Revolutionary Committee.

  And now, of the three men who had directed that hunt and had had total knowledge of its operations from top to bottom, only one survived.

  * * * *

  And he was the Director of the FBI.

  The call to Chuey Gutiérrez came shortly before midnight at the motel in Silver Spring where he was staying with Xavier and Rosalba. When he recognized the deep voice on the other end of the line he motioned quickly to the girl to turn down the sound on the television set. Rosalba continued to watch the movie—an old musical—without sound.

  “You did well,” the man said without preamble. “I’ve just listened to the first of the tapes. Everything is working perfectly.”

  “Bueno.”

  “You may be able to be of service to me again in this matter. It isn’t over.”

  “To you and to our country,” Gutiérrez said. Xavier, who was listening, smirked, and Chuey glared at him until the young man’s smile faded.

  “I’ll be in touch. I may also want you to retrieve any future tapes.”

  “I will be waiting, Maestro.”

  Chuey half expected the other man to hang up but there was a pause, the line remaining open. Chuey waited patiently, guessing that the FBI man had something else on his mind.

  His name was Raúl Jesús Gutiérrez y González, but he was called Chuey, the nickname for Jesús. He had grown up in and around Miami. His father, a policeman in Cuba during the Batista regime, had fled to the United States when Castro came down from his mountain. Ramón Gutiérrez had died on the beach at the Bay of Pigs, the year his son Jesús turned thirteen years of age, ceased to be a child, and became a patriot.

  Chuey Gutiérrez had never blamed his adopted country or the men who had encouraged and ultimately abandoned the quixotic invasion of Cuba. He had heard and seen many of these men with his father—tough, hard-bitten, cold-eyed men who shared a soldier’s uncompromising code, even though many of them dressed in expensive suits instead of uniforms. The boy admired them. They were men like his father. Battles were won and lost, often for reasons beyond comprehension, but one did not cease to believe.

  Even as a teen-ager Chuey had run errands for a man vaguely identified with “the Company.” Through him he had come to the attention of a man with another government agency, the FBI, a man he would always think of as his benefactor, the man he called “Maestro.” Through him Chuey Gutiérrez had been able to strike back at the enemies of his father, pro-Castro agents and sympathizers, and also at other enemies of his adopted country.

  When the FBI man had summoned him to Washington on a matter of “grave importance to the Bureau and to the United States,” Chuey had neither hesitated nor questioned his role. Acting on the FBI man’s instructions, he had recruited Xavier and Rosalba and brought them with him to Washington. For nearly three weeks, except for one night’s action, they had been holed up in the motel in Silver Spring. Chuey welcomed the hint that their mission was not yet over. The two young ones were becoming restive, more difficult to control.

  The FBI man broke the silence. “The boy is a hothead. Is he to be relied on?”

  “I will see to it,” Chuey answered, glancing across the room at Xavier, who was watching him.

  “What about the girl?”

  Chuey smiled. “She is also reliable. The body is hot but the head is cool, you understand? She is… muy dura.” He had almost said más dura, tougher than the boy.

  “I may have use for both of them. Keep them out of sight and out of trouble. Do you understand?”

  “I understand perfectly, Maestro.”

  “Bueno.”

  The connection was broken. For a moment Chuey sat on the edge of the bed, staring across the room at the silent television screen, holding the receiver in his hand. He thought of the FBI man’s opening words—“You did well”—and he felt a surge of pride.

  13

  Rock Creek Park winds along the spine of the northwest section of Washington, D.C., extending beyond the District past Chevy Chase and Bethesda all the way to the outer reaches of the city. Along the way there are dense wooded areas, picnic groves, a golf course, nature center and zoo, bike paths and jogging trails. It was along one of these, early Friday morning, that a gaggle of reporters and photographers, their attitudes mirroring amusement or incredulity or mock horror, trotted in the lumbering wake of Senator Charles Sederholm.

  Washington is a city of joggers, and there is nothing unusual about runners clad in shorts or designer jogging suits trotting through the parks or even along the main boulevards in the morning mists. But Sederholm was not cut from the mold of a Senator Proxmire, long a familiar figure jogging along Connecticut Avenue toward his office, trim and vigorous, looking as briskly efficient as he did on the Senate floor. Sederholm, wearing a dark blue sweat suit with white piping and a matching pair of Adidas, reminded one reporter of Laird Cregar, an actor of large girth and dominating presence who was prominent in the 1940s. The senator was about the same size as the late movie actor, well over six feet tall and weighing at least two hundred and fifty pounds. Older than Cregar in his prime, Sederholm wore a flowing mane of silver hair, but he had the robust actor’s air of extravagant appetites and joyous self-indulgence that belied his sixty years.

  Within a quarter mile, wheezing and huffing, his face already a deep red, Sederholm slowed to a walk, wavered from the path and plopped onto a bench, which sagged alarmingly under his weight. Almost immediately the reporters caught up and swarmed around him. “When did you take up jogging, Senator?” one of them called out. “Is this because of the convention?”

  “Do you know how many pepple in this country run?” Sederholm countered. “Half the population! This is the age of self-flagellation in public, gentlemen. Running and dieting, giving up smoking and drinking, treating our bodies like temples.”

  “That’s quite a temple, Senator!”

  Sederholm joined in the laughter. “Ironic, isn’t it?” Sederholm asked rhetorically. “Considering our abandonment of all restraints over the past two decades, now that we have made ourselves free to do anything we want, it has become fashionable to deny ourselves everything.”

  “Won’t this jogging ruin your image, Senator?”

  “I’m doing it for you, gentlemen,” Sederholm said with a magnanimous wave in the direction of several portable television cameras. “A man of my girth, a United States senator, jogging through the park in Washington at the risk of being mugged or having a heart attack, that’s as good as a squirrel on skis.”

  Cutting through the laughter, a local TV political reporter said, “Does this mean you’re definitely running for President, Senator?”

  Laughing uproariously (Laird Cregar in Blood and Sand, the reporter from the New York Times thought), Sederholm said, “It’s a little early to be looking at the finish line. I will say this, gentlemen”—he paused to let the TV cameras zoom in for an important statement—“no one has this convention locked up. Which means… yes, I’m still in the running.”

  A babble of questions spilled over the senator’s last words, the reporters drowning each other out. Sederholm waved off the questions. He turned resolutely toward the jogging path that snaked through a stand of birch trees. From the back of the jostling circle of reporters someone shouted loud enough to be heard, “What about this bombing at Quantico, Senator? Do you have a statement on that?”

  Charles Sederholm swung about with surprising nimbleness. The opportunity was too good to miss. “I do, indeed. The FBI is one of our finest institutions. It has known some difficult times, as the country itself has, but it has emerged from the fire with an unsullied reputation as the finest law enforcement organization in the world. I consider yesterday’s bombing a blow struck not only against the FBI but ag
ainst the very heart and fabric of this government and its institutions. It was also an act of the most outrageous and cowardly terrorism. I knew Special Agent Callahan personally as a fine public servant and a man of generous mind and spirit. His murder is a loss to all of us.”

  “Have you talked to Director Landers since it happened?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Will this have any effect on Landers’ confirmation as Director?”

  Sederholm pushed back his thick, flowing hair from his forehead, the gesture revealing a large patch of sweat under his arm. “I see no reason it should have any effect. The committee, as you know, has not completed its own evaluation, but John Landers can hardly be blamed for this vicious act. It’s a symptom of what has become increasingly a lawless society.”

  “Isn’t the FBI partly to blame for that?”

  Sederholm ignored the thrust, choosing instead to answer another reporter, who asked, “Have there been any new developments in the bombing investigation? Any message from the bombers?”

  “I understand there have been a number of communications received by the FBI, all of which are being analyzed and will be investigated. But none appears to be genuinely related to the bombing.”

  “What about the Florida hijacking?”

  “No connection that the Bureau is aware of.” Sederholm turned again along the path through the woods, which was narrow enough to force the reporters into a column behind him.

  “Just one more question, Senator,” a stocky reporter said close to him. He had somehow pushed ahead of the others to join Sederholm on the pathway. “What do you know of the FBI’s Brea file?”

  Sederholm halted abruptly. His eyes, peering out from under deceptively sleepy lids like small hoods, recognized the stocky young man as one of Oliver Packard’s reporters. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “If it involves the FBI, I suggest you ask your questions there.”

  He turned and lumbered off through the woods, not looking back.

  Within the hour, from the private baths in the basement below the Senate chambers, Charles Sederholm placed a call to Russell Halbig at FBI Headquarters. “You’ve got a leak, Russ,” Sederholm told him. He mentioned Oliver Packard’s reporter and the question about the Brea file. “You told me you had a tight lid on that.”

  “We do, Senator,” Halbig said.

  “I don’t want any surprises sprung on me,” Sederholm said, and there was nothing of the familiar jovial bombast in his tone. “I don’t want egg on my face. The confirmation hearings on the Director come up a week from Monday. Just remember, I’m the star of that little show. I’m supposed to get all the best lines.”

  “You will, Senator,” Halbig said quickly. “I think I’ll have something for you before then. And if anything does break, you’ll know it first.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Sederholm chuckled. “Before the Director, Russ?”

  * * * *

  More recruits for the special squad working on the Brea case had arrived during the night. After briefing the squad, Macimer called Harrison Stearns to his office to review the reports that had come in late Thursday and by overnight teletype from California and Chicago. The written reports from Garvey and Collins confirmed in more detail what Macimer had learned by phone from Garvey. An agent from the Chicago office had sent in a 302 of his interview with former agent Victor Pryor, who had been found at a security conference in the Windy City. Pryor knew nothing of Walter Schumaker’s activities during the past three years. He had provided names of former acquaintances of Schumaker; these would be followed up by agents in the Oakland RA’s office, the largest resident agency in the country.

  Another thick sheaf of reports detailed the activities of agents Wagner and Rayburn in trying to locate the youth who had stolen the FBI vehicle—and, Macimer believed, the Brea file. Macimer decided to assign some of the squad’s new arrivals to the search for the missing auto thief. Wagner and Rayburn would continue to concentrate on the Fedco department store and its environs.

  Other teams would direct more attention to the area of the youth’s escape after ditching the stolen car.

  Macimer turned to the preliminary lab report received that morning from FBI Headquarters. It described the findings yielded by analysis of the stains on the sheets Macimer had sent over to the FBI Lab. In addition to tests of the semen stains, the sheets had also been examined by the Latent Fingerprint Analysis Unit, using laser equipment in an attempt to bring out fingerprints that were otherwise undetectable. Predictably, the fingerprint examination had been unproductive; Xavier did wear his gloves in bed. The lab’s analysis of the stains, however, was another story, and Macimer studied the report with quickening hope.

  Macimer called in agents Rodriguez and Singleton, the two Spanish-speaking agents he had recruited from the New York office. He handed them the lab report and waited in silence while both agents scanned it. Singleton, he remembered, had majored in biology at the University of Cincinnati before deciding that she would rather employ her flair for languages and a relish for challenges in an unexpected direction: an FBI career. She was among the large numbers of female agents recruited during Director William Webster’s tenure.

  “Well, where does that report get us?” Macimer asked finally.

  Rodriguez shrugged. “Maybe you should ask my partner,” he suggested.

  Singleton regarded him coolly before she said, “El chauvinist thinks I’m going to turn pale using the word ‘semen.’ The truth is, he’s not sure what the report proves.”

  “Hey—!” Rodriguez protested.

  “What it comes down to is this,” Singleton went on. “There are over three hundred genetic markers on human red blood cells. A few of these are present as soluble substances in body fluids, such as semen. That means you can perform tests on semen stains, even old ones, that enable you to identify the blood type of the person responsible.” She glanced down at the FBI Lab report, which she was still holding. “The lab used two different enzyme tests, both the commonly used acid phosphatase test and the LAP color reaction test, to verify that the stains found on the sheets were human semen. Then they used the agglutinin inhibition test to determine the blood type of the individual.” She paused as she glanced again at the report. “That’s where we got lucky. Our subject has a rare blood type, A1B.”

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF IDENTIFICATION LABORATORY REPORT

  File No. 431

  SUBJECT: Identification of stains on Exhibit A.

  DATE: June 7, 1984

  Tests were conducted on sheets (Exhibit A) of polycotton material. Ultraviolet light was used to locate stained areas. Greenish coloration indicated probability of semen. Microscopic examination for detection of spermatozoa was positive but not conclusive because no spermatozoa were found intact. The follow tests were then performed:

  (A) Walker acid phosphatase test. Male ejaculate produces a high acid phosphatase activity as compared with other body fluids such as saliva, urine, etc. Test result was positive.

  (B) The LAP test. This is a qualitative color reaction test based on a histochemical technique for demonstrating the presence of leucine aminopeptidase (LAP), which is more abundant in human semen than in any other body fluid or animal semen. Test result positive.

  (C) Precipitin test was performed to verify that the semen stain was derived from a human source. Test result positive.

  (D) Precipitin test was performed using known reagents and control to determine blood group of the person from whom the seminal stain was derived. Tests were conducted of unstained material (from Exhibit A), known group O blood sample, and the subject stains. This test is based on the fact that group-specific substances in blood are able to neutralize their corresponding agglutinin in a serum. Test results shown in table.

  TABLE 1. RESULTS OF INHIBITION TEST TO DETERMINE BLOOD GROUP

  “How rare?” Macimer asked quickly.

  “About three percent of the population. That applies to both Europo
ids and those of African descent. I imagine the same percentage would hold true for Cubans and other Hispanics, but we can verify that.”

  Rodriguez was staring at his partner with new respect. Macimer repressed a smile and said, “So… we have a young man, probably Cuban, certainly not American-born, about seventeen years of age, with a rare blood type. Any ideas on how we find him?”

  Rodriguez shifted nervously in his chair—anxious, Macimer guessed, to recover some lost face. He pursed his lips so that his bandido mustache drooped even more. “Suppose he was one of the boat people who came over in 1980, the ones Castro wanted to get rid of, a lot of them troublemakers. He’d have been through one of the camps. We have complete records on all those people. That ought to include blood types.” There had been the suspicion at the time that Castro might have planted agents of his own among the refugees. All had been closely scrutinized by the FBI. And there would be medical records, Macimer thought.

  “That’s a long shot,” he said.

  “Maybe not so long.” Jo Singleton shot a glance of approval at her partner. “We haven’t exactly had what you’d call a regular immigration quota from Cuba since the Bay of Pigs, which happened before this Xavier was born. So if he’s Cuban, and he wasn’t born in this country, there’s a good chance the only way he could have got here was with the boat people, given his age. He would have been thirteen, fourteen at the time if he’s seventeen or eighteen now. There shouldn’t be too many in all those records that meet all the criteria of the profile you just gave us.”

  “There were thousands of those boat people—”

  “But only a small number were young children,” Singleton said. “Eliminate all the adults and younger children, and all the females, and you’re probably down to only a few hundred possibilities. And with a blood type that rare, there shouldn’t be more than a handful that fit the profile.”

  “If Xavier was one of the boat people,” said Macimer.