The Brea File

by Louis Charbonneau

  Still white-faced, Linda seemed to grow calmer as she listened to Gordon Ruhle’s self-serving harangue. Macimer bent down, bringing his lips close to her ear, using the rasp of Ruhle’s voice over the intercom to cover his urgent whisper. “When I tell you, go straight out the door. You’ll see a car over near the trees, a blue Ford.” He handed her the keys. “Don’t stop for anything until you get to the bottom of the hill. Then use the car radio, station 5. It’s an FBI network code number. Keep driving, but keep calling on the radio until you raise someone. Tell them who you are and where—the nearest town is Wheeler, about five miles up the road. Use my name and ask for an urgent message to be given to James Caughey or Russ Halbig at FBI Headquarters. Say that the Director must not give his speech at the Academy!”

  She shook her head. “I… I can’t.”

  “You’ve got to! It’s our only chance, Linda.”

  “I’m sorry about Linda,” Gordon Ruhle said. “If there’d been another way to get you here with that file, I’d have taken it. But there wasn’t. As it is… her being here makes the whole thing look stronger. You knew the game was up and you flipped out, that’s all. And took your daughter with you.”

  “Please!” Macimer whispered to Linda.

  “No!” The girl was as fiercely determined as he was. “I won’t leave you alone!”

  Macimer saw in her eyes something he had not recognized before. Not merely terror but a stubborn loyalty. It almost broke him.

  “It’s over, Paul,” Gordon Ruhle said.

  “That’s right, Gordon—it is over. It has been since I left Washington this morning. I had copies made of the Brea file.”

  “Nice try, Paul,” Ruhle said. “But I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t do that to the Bureau any more than I would. You’d die before you’d turn that file loose.”

  Macimer felt a twinge of pity for his old friend. Ruhle’s justifications for what he had done were self-serving, a denial of guilt to himself as well as to others. But all along he had probably been motivated as much, if not more, by his desire to protect the Bureau he had given his life to. Wondering if he could still tap that well of feeling, Macimer made a last try at getting Ruhle to believe him. “You’re wrong, Gordon. I had one of my agents hand-deliver a copy of the file to the Director after I left. What’s done is done, but the truth can’t just be buried and forgotten. It has to come out.”

  “No—people don’t understand! Sometimes you have to cut corners. Damn it, it’s for their own good!”

  “Killing people isn’t cutting corners, Gordon. It’s murder.”

  “You damned fool!” Gordon Ruhle raged. “Don’t you know what you’ve done!”

  Macimer had led Linda carefully around the booby-trapped rug on the floor. Near the door he faced her, pleading with his eyes. “Count three after I go out the window. Then go through that door as fast as you can. You must radio that message!”

  Without waiting for her protest, he turned toward the single window in the east wall of the cabin. He folded his arms protectively over his face and hurled himself at the window.

  29

  “Border Patrol agents have stopped the two Cuban youngsters at the Arizona border, trying to cross over to Nogales.” Russ Halbig’s voice on the radio from FBI Headquarters was barely audible over the beat of the chopper’s blades, and John Landers had to strain to hear. “They’re being questioned now. I don’t think it will take long to get the identity of the third man, the leader. He probably recruited the two young ones. And when we have him, he’ll point us back to Gordon Ruhle. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “It’s all falling into place,” Landers said.

  The helicopter started a slow, wheeling turn, and the FBI Director saw the blocky towers of the dormitories at the Academy above the treetops to the south, surrounded by brown fields stripped of their greenery.

  “Yes, Director. Except that we don’t know…” The following words were lost in the chopper’s roar as it began to descend. Landers heard only the last word. “… alive.” It seemed born more of hope than conviction.

  * * * *

  The crash of the window breaking out was a small explosion. Macimer sailed through the opening head first. One trailing leg caught a shard of glass in passing. It ripped the trouser fabric cleanly and slashed Macimer’s calf. He didn’t even feel it. He landed in the grass, rolled and came to his feet on the run.

  Crouching low, Macimer ran in a zigzag path toward the woods behind the cabin. Twenty yards to cover. It might as well have been a mile.

  Glance over his shoulder. Blur of color bobbing above the tall grass—Linda’s blue pullover. She was running toward the blue Fairmont at the edge of the clearing. Good girl!

  The brief euphoria broke like a bubble. If he could see Linda, so could Gordon Ruhle. Then, belatedly, his brain grasped what he had seen out of the corner of his eye: another car blocking the narrow road where it tunneled into the woods. Gordon had anticipated his maneuver. Linda could not escape.

  There was a harsh burst of gunfire, an exploding thought—oh God, Linda!—and a glancing blow, as if someone had nudged his shoulder.

  Macimer felt surprise as he was flung off balance and thrown to the ground. He skidded in the long grass. He had a glimpse of red streaking the green spears where he had fallen, slick and bright as new paint. Why did he feel no pain?

  Macimer crawled, worming low in the tall grass, his heart thudding. Experience prepared him for the pain to come. But he was mobile. He could move his left arm in spite of the stain spreading over his left shoulder. And the grenade used to frighten Linda was in his hand. It might give him an edge. He lifted his head cautiously. How close to the woods?

  Macimer froze. Inches from his eyes was a thin, taut strand of copper wire. He lay very still.

  Gordon Ruhle had expected him to break for the trees. Either through the side window or out the small window of the bathroom. Gordon had counted on blind panic, a headlong flight. If Macimer hadn’t fallen when he did—if he had hit that trip wire with his leg on the run…

  But he hadn’t fallen. He had been shot down—before he reached the wire. Deliberately? Or by freak chance?

  Maybe Gordon hadn’t wanted too easy a victory. He wanted it to be a contest.

  Macimer tried to track the path of the wire through the grass. It disappeared, heading for the trees to the left of where he lay, snaking across the open space to his right. Macimer had little doubt there were other wires strategically placed, leading to other packed explosives buried in the ground. Always use a backup, Gordon would say. Never rely completely on the enemy doing the expected thing.

  The enemy…

  Macimer crawled parallel with the wire. Where had the burst of fire come from? The trees? Which direction?

  He should have told Linda to keep running if the car was blocked or disabled. Gordon was outthinking him.

  Macimer identified something that had been tugging at his brain. Gordon Ruhle could not have failed to see Linda, but he had not fired at her. Either because he knew she could not escape in the car and was therefore no immediate threat to him, or because he could not bring himself to squeeze the trigger. Did that much of the man Macimer had admired still live?

  There was pain now, a delayed reaction. A cool sensation where his left leg had been cut, a hard throbbing in his left shoulder. Not as bad as he might have expected. He had caught only one bullet and it had not struck bone.

  Macimer dragged a handkerchief from his hip pocket and stuffed it under his shirt at the shoulder to stanch the bleeding. He ignored the wound in his leg.

  He scanned the line of trees once more.

  A dozen yards away, at the edge of the woods, Gordon Ruhle stared back at him.

  Macimer dropped flat as a hail of fire rattled over his head. He felt the visceral lash of panic as he scrambled through the grass. Ruhle was armed with a Thompson submachine gun. At this short range it could cut a man in half. Macimer wondered if Ruhle had made a conscious c
hoice of a weapon that had been so much identified with the early years of the FBI. That was like him.

  Macimer flipped onto his back, caught the pin of the grenade between his teeth and pulled. He lobbed the grenade toward the spot where Ruhle had been and flattened himself against the ground.

  Silence. And then—low but clear—mocking laughter. The grenade was a dud.

  Ruhle had known it.

  Macimer rolled again, his .38 Special in his hand now, and fired blindly through the grass in Ruhle’s direction. Then he flopped back where he had been, reversing direction. Bullets spat into the ground where he had been moving. They stitched an erratic line across the rain-soft earth.

  Again Macimer changed course, scurrying back over the ground where the stream of bullets had pockmarked the earth, trying to outguess the deadly marksman who had taught him much of what he knew about this kind of a fire fight. Another harsh burst from the machine gun, another singing line of bullets passed over him.

  Almost over. He felt the tug at his buttock and yelled involuntarily, as much in surprise as pain.

  Then he lay still. His right arm was folded under his body as he lay on his belly. His hand gripped the Smith & Wesson.

  He heard the grassy whisper of Gordon Ruhle’s deliberate approach. Macimer remembered watching coyotes at dusk on a golf course in California, gliding out of the hills and moving swiftly across a shadowed green fairway, circling carefully, warily, never moving in a straight line, closing in on some prey. With the same caution Gordon Ruhle circled the spot in the grass where Macimer lay, slowly tightening the noose.

  He came in behind Macimer and stood over him, the Thompson submachine gun aimed at the spot in the center of the prone man’s spine. “Bring your right hand out nice and slow, Paul,” he said softly. “Make sure it’s empty.”

  Macimer released the breath he had been holding. Very slowly he withdrew his right hand. He could feel the revolver hard against his ribs.

  “Almost,” Gordon Ruhle said. “But almost is still a loser.”

  * * * *

  “He stopped for gas before heading north out of Hagerstown,” Anthony Tartaglia said. “Our agent there picked up on the license plate number of the car Macimer took from Stearns. It was on the receipt.”

  Russ Halbig nodded curtly. Tartaglia would receive no praise for his work this day. “Anything else?”

  “He got a phone call at a pay station. We’re trying to run that down with the phone company now. If it was long-distance—”

  “Wait a minute!” Halbig waved him silent. “Don’t we have a safe house in the mountains up that way? Northwest of Hagerstown?”

  “Yes, that’s right. But I don’t know if Ruhle would know about it.”

  “You can bet he does. Find out the name of the nearest town and check with the phone company on long-distance calls from there this morning. There can’t have been very many.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “And tell our man in Hagerstown to get up to that house as fast as he can drive.”

  * * * *

  Macimer twisted his neck to peer over his shoulder at Gordon Ruhle. The familiar face stared down at him impassively. We expect the face of murder to look different, Macimer thought. It rarely does.

  “Were you telling it straight, Paul? About making a copy of that file?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn you, why? Why couldn’t you let it die?”

  “It was all going to come out sooner or later. Better now, this way. If you’ve been bitten by a snake, you don’t wait for the poison to spread. You cut where the bite is.”

  “You’ve turned into a goddamn bleeding heart.”

  “And you turned into a murderer.”

  For a moment longer Gordon Ruhle glared down at Macimer, something baffled in his eyes. Macimer realized that Ruhle simply didn’t understand. Even now he believed that he was right, that he had done what had to be done. Madness was only implausible to the sane.

  “Sorry, Paul.”

  In one searing moment Macimer heard Linda’s scream and saw Gordon’s finger tighten on the trigger of the machine gun. It was an instant in which time stopped, like a reel of film arrested. Macimer’s body contracted in a reflex reaction against a blow that never came.

  Gordon’s lips twisted in an angry snarl. The gun had jammed!

  Macimer dug for his revolver. He twisted away from the barrel of the machine gun as it chopped down at his head. The barrel slammed into the ground. The blow was so hard that the stock shattered in Gordon Ruhle’s hands. Macimer’s fingers closed around the butt of his gun. He rolled onto his back as Gordon threw the broken shoulder stock away and dove on top of him.

  Macimer never got the muzzle of the revolver around in time to fire. Gordon Ruhle caught his arm and the two men struggled wordlessly in the deep grass. But Ruhle was on top, and he stayed there. He was stronger—all those years of lifting weights, Macimer thought—and he was positioned for greater leverage. Slowly Macimer felt his right arm being bent back, his grip on the revolver weakening.

  He did the only thing left to him. He threw the gun as far off into the grass as his limited arm movement allowed.

  There was an instant when the two men were motionless, locked in place, staring into each other’s eyes. Deep within Gordon Ruhle’s dark eyes a familiar light danced, as if any second he would break into mocking laughter. But there was no sound but the two men’s ragged breathing.

  Then Ruhle got an arm free and smashed his fist into Macimer’s face. He jumped to his feet and lunged after the revolver.

  Had Ruhle forgotten the trip wire he had hidden in the deep grass? Macimer would always wonder. At the time there was only the shock of the explosion, the ground heaving and the stunning burst of the bomb. Gordon Ruhle was lifted into the air, an arm and a shoulder and part of his face dissolving like ashes in the wind. Then mud and grass and bits of human debris blinded Paul Macimer.

  And tears.

  * * * *

  Macimer pushed drunkenly to his feet. He felt heavy, clumsy. His feet dragged as he tried to move, and one toe kicked the drum magazine of the Thompson submachine gun on the ground. Bending slowly and painfully, he picked up the weapon by the rear pistol grip. Except for the broken butt stock, the gun appeared to be undamaged. As Macimer stared down at it, his gaze was riveted on the bolt.

  It was forward.

  The gun was uncocked.

  “Damn you, Gordon,” he whispered. “You knew!”

  In a spasm of pain Macimer jerked the barrel of the machine gun upward, aiming at a single small spruce thirty feet away. The rocker pivot was set on full automatic. He retracted the bolt, braced himself against the recoil and squeezed the trigger. He held it down long after the deafening roar of automatic fire had diminished to the impotent rattle of an empty magazine.

  The narrow trunk of the spruce disintegrated at a point waist-high.

  The top half of the tree toppled forward as the long burst of fire cut the trunk in half.

  Macimer stared numbly at the crumpled shape in the grass where Gordon Ruhle had fallen. It didn’t jam, he thought. It didn’t jam.

  He threw the weapon to the ground and stumbled toward the cabin. He was beyond pain, beyond grief, the organism adjusting instinctively to enable itself to survive. He felt nothing until the small hard shape of his daughter’s body hurtled against him, and his arms went around her, holding on.

  * * * *

  “This is WFO 172,” Macimer said into the car microphone, identifying the FBI vehicle’s call number. “WFO 172. Do you read me?”

  He kept repeating the message over and over. He was beginning to despair when there was an abrupt response, loud and clear, “HGN 15, HGN 15, I read you, WFO 172. Where are you?”

  Macimer felt a leap of hope. “This is Special Agent Paul Macimer. I’m five miles east of Wheeler, Maryland. Repeat, five miles east of Wheeler. It’s a state road—”

  “I’m heading up toward Wheeler now. You at the cabin?�
�

  “Yes,” said Macimer, stunned.

  “It’s a safe house,” the agent from Hagerstown said. “Supposed to be empty. Are you all right, Mr. Macimer?”

  “I’m fine, never mind me. Can you patch me through to Washington?”

  “I can get a message through the Hagerstown RA’s office. We’re out of range for Washington.”

  “Send it urgent, priority A.” Macimer took a deep breath, hoping that he was not too late, and began to talk.

  * * * *

  The graduating class of new agents from the spring session of the FBI Academy milled around restlessly in the corridor outside the main auditorium. The doors to the auditorium remained locked, as they had for nearly twenty minutes, and there was much curious speculation in the corridor, one rumor leading to another, wilder one.

  Twenty minutes earlier, a team of grim-faced FBI men and a squad of uniformed Marines had charged through the Academy on the run, emptied the auditorium and locked the doors. Shortly afterward the Director himself had arrived, shouldering his way along the corridor like a ship plowing its way along a narrow channel, scattering waves of new agents on either side. He disappeared behind the same closed doors.

  John L. Landers had come to address the graduates and to shake the hand of each new agent in a time-honored ritual. It was the moment they had all been waiting for. Now it was being delayed, and no one knew why.

  “I heard they were bomb-disposal specialists,” one of the graduates said.

  No one joked about the rumor, as they might have only a few weeks ago. The memory of Timothy Callahan’s death was too fresh.

  Without warning the doors to the auditorium were thrown open. The new agents were directed to their seats, and the big modern auditorium quickly filled. A buzz of excited conversation continued for several minutes, during which time a number of the graduates noted that the podium from which the Director would normally have addressed them was missing from the stage.