The Brea File (26 page)

Macimer stiffened. “You could hear me?”

“Loud and clear. You’ve got an Infinity Transmitter in place. It’s tone-activated, which means the listener can activate the transmitter by calling in from outside, using a specific tone to turn on the tap. What that does is prevent the phone from ringing at the time, and it turns the phone itself into a combination microphone and transmitter. Your eavesdropper just dials in and he might as well be in the room.”

“How did you turn it on?”

“My handy-dandy little wiretap finder can produce all the possible tones. I just ran up the scale until your IT was triggered.”

Three minutes later Gordon Ruhle was back at the house. He took the telephone apart carefully, inspecting everything. Macimer had done the same without finding anything that did not appear to be a normal component of the instrument, but Ruhle finally held out the circular mouthpiece in the palm of his hand. “That’s the culprit.”

“It looks like an ordinary mouthpiece to me.”

“It’s supposed to.” He glanced questioningly at Macimer. “You want to leave it where it was, or replace it?”

“Why would I leave it there?”

“If we remove it, whoever planted the device will know you found it.”

Macimer took the bug and rolled it thoughtfully between his fingers. At last he said, “I want him to know.”

Before Gordon could answer voices came from the adjoining family room. Gordon made a face, but there was tolerant acceptance in his eyes as they heard Mary Ruhle call out, “Gordon? Are you two still in there? Can’t the FBI wait till Sunday’s over?”

“Well, it’s your baby,” Gordon murmured. “I wish I could help some more, but…”

“You’ve helped a lot. Thanks, Gordon.”

“You want this just between us, right?” Gordon’s question was shrewd and to the point.

“For now,” said Macimer. “What about the other phones? You didn’t test them with your box.”

“That’s easy,” Gordon Ruhle said. “Get new ones.”

* * * *

The Ruhles left late, Mary obviously reluctant to have the evening end. She was flying back to the coast Monday night, and this was the last chance for these old friends to indulge in nostalgic reminiscence and family news and recycled gossip. When the two visitors finally left, the house seemed unnaturally quiet and empty. Kevin had long been asleep, Linda closeted in her own room. Chip, as usual, had gone out again after returning from the movie.

Macimer was heading for his den when Jan stopped him. “Let’s talk a little, Paul.”

She made some instant coffee and they sat in the family room, walled in by darkness and rain. “I always liked Gordon,” Jan said after a moment. “I don’t think I could take very much of him now.”

“Because he hasn’t changed like the rest of us?”

“I knew you’d defend him.”

“I’m not defending him, honey. I didn’t know he needed defending.” He knew, of course, what had set Jan off. Gordon’s remark about “bleeding-heart judges” had started it. “They’re out to clip our wings and let the Commies take over,” Gordon had said.

“Oh, really, Gordon,” Jan had said impatiently. “Maybe you people need to have your wings clipped. Especially if you still believe there are Communists hiding under every bed.”

Ruhle had stared at her in disbelief. “You think there aren’t any Reds in our government? Or even on the Atomic Energy Commission? Hell, Jan, just last year Ivan was kicked out of Norway, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, France and West Germany for spying. You think he’s not
here?
That we don’t have our own Ivans right inside the government and our defense industries, calling themselves good old Joe or Brian or Jack Armstrong? What kind of Alice-in-Wonderland thinking is that?” Ruhle’s glare had switched suddenly from Jan to Paul. “What are you grinning at?”

“I was afraid you might have gone liberal on me.”

Fat chance, Macimer thought.

Jan peered at him over the edge of her coffee mug. It was an ancient mug, now chipped and stained, he had got in a gas station years ago as a giveaway premium. Talk about songs of yesterday…

“What were you two up to?” Jan asked quietly. “You had a special reason for wanting Gordon over—and the house to yourselves.”

“It was our last chance to see both of them. With Mary going back so soon—”

“Stop stalling, Paul. If something is going on that affects us, I want to know what it is.”

Sooner or later she had to be told about the bugs. Even if Macimer hadn’t wanted to tell her, Aileen Hebert was certain to say something to Jan. And Jan had been an FBI wife long enough to know what that overheard conversation might mean.

Jan rose abruptly, interpreting his silence as a refusal to talk. Without another word she carried her battered mug up to the kitchen, left it on the counter and went up the stairs. Macimer winced as the bedroom door slammed.

He sat unmoving in the troubled silence. From somewhere nearby a dog barked in protest at being left outside in the rain. Another bark answered him. He remembered something Jan had once said about people who left their dogs out in the rain. If they wanted something to decorate the yard, why not plant a tree?

It was the coincidence of Carey McWilliams and Timothy Callahan both being killed by bombs, and their link to the PRC affair three years ago, that bothered him.

And the way the threads kept leading back to John L. Landers…

Macimer shook off the troubling speculations. Don’t borrow trouble, he reminded himself.

He routinely checked the door locks, left a light on for Chip and started up the stairs. The phone rang.

Wondering who could be calling at this hour on a Sunday—it was improbable that Collins or Garvey would be phoning him tonight—Macimer went back down the stairs and detoured to his den. At least he knew his private phone was now clean.

“Macimer?” The voice was clipped, arrogant, unfamiliar.

“Yes, who is this?”

“You son of a bitch,” the answer came like a warning rattle. “If you think you can get away with what your goons did last night, you don’t know Oliver Packard!”

Macimer came alert like an animal sensing danger, his weariness dropping away. Not only was Oliver Packard a name to be reckoned with in Washington; he was also Joseph Gerella’s boss. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Packard. Maybe you should calm down—”

“You put one of my people in the hospital! I’m going to crucify you for that!”

“You’ll have to be a little clearer, Mr. Packard. Who are you talking about?”

“You know damned well,” Packard snapped. “Joe Gerella was attacked last night outside his apartment. He’s in intensive care in Georgetown. He has a broken jaw, fractured ribs and God knows what manner of internal injuries. It was an expert working over, Macimer. Very professional.”

“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to suggest,” Macimer replied evenly. “I’m sorry about Gerella, but what makes you so certain he wasn’t simply mugged? It happens every day.”

“Not this time. I’ll tell you what makes me so certain, Macimer. Joe won’t be doing any talking for a long time—someone made sure of that. But before he passed out in the ambulance after he was picked up he managed to write something down. The paramedics had to pry the sheet of notepaper from his fist. It had only one word on it.” The columnist paused significantly. “Your name, Macimer. Just your name.”

Macimer held the phone away from his ear as if the instrument itself were to blame for the shock generated by Packard’s disclosure. What had Gerella been trying to say? Had he simply had Macimer’s name on a piece of paper in his pocket? If not, why, in the last seconds before slipping into unconsciousness, write down Macimer’s name?

“You still there, Macimer?”

“I’m listening, Mr. Packard. But I have no idea why Gerella would have been holding such a note. I did talk to him recently—he thought I might have a story for him. I told him he was wrong.”

“I don’t believe you,” Packard said tersely. “And if I can prove you had anything to do with what happened to Gerella, believe me, I’ll make you and the FBI think Nikita Khrushchev was Santa Claus. I’ll bury you, Macimer!”

“You have the shovel for it!” Macimer lashed back angrily, suddenly fed up with Oliver Packard’s arrogant assumptions. “You seem to make a career out of shoveling dirt. I can’t stop you printing whatever you want, but this time you’d better be damned sure you can back up your dirt with facts!”

There was a moment of silence. When Packard spoke again his tone was unexpectedly mild. “I think that’s the first time you’ve sounded like a man who’s innocent.”

“I don’t really care what you think. It’s late, Packard. I’m sorry about Gerella, but if that’s all you wanted to talk about—”

“Take it easy, Macimer. Maybe you
are
innocent, but that still doesn’t explain why Gerella was holding that note with your name on it. Gerella may be able to tell us by tomorrow. Do you want to make any guesses about what he’ll say?”

“No, I don’t make guesses about what might or might not be in someone else’s mind.”

Packard let that go. He said, “I think we should get together for a talk.”

“I don’t see why-”

“I think you will, Macimer. You see, there’s another reason I don’t believe this was a routine mugging. I happen to know from our records—I insist on my people keeping detailed records of things like mail received—that Gerella had received a couple of communications by mail from an anonymous informant, material that had something to do with the FBI. Whatever that information involved, Gerella either had it on his person or in his apartment, not in his desk at the office. And after he was attacked, Macimer, his keys were taken and his apartment was ransacked. Those communications are gone, Macimer. They were stolen!”

* * * *

When Packard hung up, Macimer heard a small sound and turned quickly. Jan stood in the doorway of the den, staring at him. “You raised your voice,” she said. “What was that all about?”

Macimer was tired of keeping things from her, even if his job sometimes made that silence mandatory. He gave her a brief account of the telephone conversation, leaving out only the final revelation about Gerella’s apartment being searched.

Jan leaned against the doorframe, studying him closely. “Why would that man—Gerella—write down your name at such a time? He must have been desperate.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oliver Packard seems to think you do. He’s a powerful man, Paul.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

Her silent scrutiny evaluated his answers. She knew when he was holding something back, he thought. But when Bureau business was involved, even when she disagreed with him or with the FBI’s activities, as she had made clear during the 1970s when a history of black-bag jobs and dirty tricks had been revealed, she had never tried to interfere. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” she asked finally.

“You were right about my having a particular reason for having Gordon over today.”

“I knew that.”

He told her about Aileen Hebert’s strange experience and his discovery of listening devices in the hall and their bedroom telephone.

Gordon Ruhle, he said, had also found a device called an Infinity Transmitter in the phone in Paul’s den.

“What’s an Infinity Transmitter?”

“It’s a device that can be activated from outside the house just by dialing our number.”

“And there was one of those things
in our bedroom?
”

“Not the same kind, but… there was one in our phone and one hidden inside the wall.”

“Someone listening in could hear… anything?”

Paul Macimer nodded.

“That’s obscene!”

“Whoever it is isn’t interested in our sex life, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Then what? Who put those things there?”

“I can make a good guess.”

“Those three robbers!” For the first time she linked the intruders to the presence of the bugs.

“They had the time and opportunity. Kevin and Linda had no way of knowing what they were up to.”

“Why? For God’s sake, why?”

“I can’t say for sure until I know who wanted them there. Our Latino friends didn’t do it on their own.”

“You know more than you’re telling me. Paul, what’s going on? Why are you worried about being followed? Why am I being spied on? Why was that reporter beaten up?”

“I can’t tell you. Jan, it isn’t that I don’t want to tell you, or even that I can’t because it’s FBI business. I just don’t have all the answers.” He paused, weighing what he would say carefully. When he made the decision in his own mind he felt an immediate relief. “I want you to leave here for a while, Jan. You and the kids. Take that trip to Arizona we planned—your parents will be happy to have you.”

“You want us… out of harm’s way?”

The old Navy term summed it up as well as any. Paul Macimer reached out and pulled Jan to him, feeling the tension in her body before she relaxed against him. “Not that there’s any real risk,” he murmured, “but I’ll just feel… easier.”

After his Saturday-night attack Joseph Gerella had been rushed to D.C. General Hospital by ambulance. On Sunday he was transferred to the Georgetown University Hospital’s Shock Trauma Unit, where he was still under heavy sedation. Hanging up the phone after calling the hospital Monday morning, Macimer wondered if patients were ever sedated in any other way.

The police in the District had treated both the attack and the burglary of Gerella’s apartment as routine incidents until they heard from Oliver Packard. Now they were waiting to talk to Gerella himself when he was able. Macimer assigned two agents to check out the police reports and to go through the apartment. Other agents were to fan out over the neighborhood to see if anyone had witnessed either the mugging or the break-in. Macimer expected little of these efforts, but they had to be tried.

He was more hopeful about the search for Xavier, even though the lists of potential Xaviers from the FBI’s internal security files had proved disappointing. Agents William Rodriguez and Jo Singleton were now concentrating on the search for a Cuban youth of the proper age, background and blood phenotype to match Xavier’s profile. They had flown to Atlanta to examine National Health Service records of the Cuban boat people who had fled the island for America in 1980, as well as the FBI’s own files. “We’re pulling a name list and a blood type list,” Rodriguez reported to Macimer by phone from the Atlanta Field Office. “Then we’ll see what matches up. If it’s a long list, which we don’t expect, we could use some help—those kids are scattered all over the country by now.”