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.
19
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.
Then it was Henry Szymanski’s turn. The deficient security at Quantico had not been explained to the Director’s satisfaction.
And the failure of scores of FBI Lab technicians to find evidence that would lead to the identification and apprehension of the bombers was the subject of withering interrogation by the Director.
The FBI Lab, in spite of its favorable reputation with the general public, had sometimes been criticized—most notably, again, by Bill Sullivan—for being long on paper work and short on science. The lab’s purchase of a million-dollar high-resolution electron microscope had drawn the scornful observation that the lab’s scientists did not know how to use the supervoltage microscope after it was installed. The criticism, coming during the 1970s when the Bureau itself was the object of intensive media scrutiny, was not entirely fair; the truth was that the scientific community in general was slow to learn how to make effective use of these remarkable instruments. By 1984, however, as Szymanski’s report made clear, the FBI Lab was employing the electron microscope routinely for viewing single atoms, making information available on their organic and inorganic material structure to identify materials and their sources. The tests completed during the past five days, involving microscopic examination of minute fragments and scrapings from the scene of the bombing, had identified the specific Army plastic explosive used and the estimated quantity required to produce the resulting material stresses. It had been learned that the plastic substance had been implanted in the sill and frame of the doorway to the aircraft, concealed as rubberized sealant. The explosion had then been triggered by an acoustic activator rather than a mechanical, chemical or incendiary time-delay fuse.
“Acoustical!” Landers interjected.
“Callahan set it off himself,” Szymanski explained. “My people tell me the activator could have been set to respond to Callahan’s voice alone, to specific predictable words he might use or to a specific decibel level.” He paused a moment before adding, “That means, of course, that the bomb could have been planted at any time over a period of days prior to the actual explosion.”
The discovery proved that the criminals had access to and knowledge of sophisticated bomb activators, but it offered no further clue to the identity of those whom Szymanski termed “the perpetrators.”
When John L. Landers turned his attention to Russell Halbig, his mood was no more jovial. He questioned Halbig sharply about the identification of a young man murdered on Roosevelt Island Monday night as the thief who had stolen an FBI vehicle carrying classified documents, including the missing Brea file. “Has he been positively identified?”
“Yes, Director. His fingerprints are the same as those found in the stolen vehicle.”
“And Macimer discovered the body.”
There was a prolonged, heavy silence.
“What about this Antonelli?” Landers finally asked. “The private investigator who arranged by phone to meet Macimer on the island.”
“There is a PI named Antonelli in New York,” Halbig said, “but h
e was on a case in upstate New York yesterday. He never heard of Macimer, and he wasn’t in Washington. Those statements, of course, are being verified.”
“So someone else telephoned Macimer,” the Director said.
“A call from Antonelli—or someone using that name—was logged at the Washington Field Office. It has also been confirmed that Macimer received another call while at Hogate’s Restaurant. That call came at about seven o’clock. Macimer didn’t leave Hogate’s until around eighty-thirty, after eating dinner there.”
The Director studied Halbig curiously. Halbig had displayed no emotion over the revelation that his wife had had dinner with Paul Macimer at Hogate’s. Perhaps there was no reason for him to be disturbed. It was a chance meeting, Halbig had said. He had been working at FBI Headquarters until eight o’clock himself. He had hoped to meet his wife for dinner earlier but had phoned her in the afternoon to say that he would be unable to break away. Erika Halbig had then gone to Hogate’s on her own. Halbig had not known she was going there and had driven home alone, arriving shortly before his wife returned home in a taxi.
A cold fish, the Director was reminded.
“When can we expect the coroner’s report on the cause and time of Raymond Shoup’s death?” Landers asked.
Szymanski volunteered the answer. “The FBI Lab has already examined the preliminary police reports. They indicate death by drowning, but there are indications of violence. Shoup’s left wrist was broken. Time of death has tentatively been placed at between seven and ten o’clock last evening. We’ll know more definitely when the full autopsy report is completed.”
James Caughey said, “He could’ve broken his wrist when he fell.”
“That is a possibility,” Halbig admitted.
None of the four men in the conference room thought it was. Study of the footprints along the muddy path through the woods on the island confirmed the presence on the island of someone other than Macimer and Raymond Shoup. Castings had been made of those footprints. Additional tests would be made of the material under Shoup’s fingernails, and of his clothing, in the search for identifiable hair, skin, fibers and other substances. In spite of this, Macimer’s involvement had raised disturbing questions. No one seemed prepared to suggest that the Special-Agentin-Charge of the Washington Field Office might have been responsible for Raymond Shoup’s death, acting alone or with someone else, but the possibility hovered behind the other questions being asked. Macimer had recovered the boxes of stolen documents from the vehicle Raymond Shoup had stolen. The Brea file was missing, presumably taken by Shoup. Now Macimer had found Shoup dead, and the file was still missing.
The Brea File Page 23