Blood of the Albatross Page 3

  “Yes. Nearly eight years. That’s good, Walter. That’s very good.” Brandenburg slid the folder to one side, leaving the table in front of him clear. “How’s the drinking now, Walter?”

  “Don’t you have that in one of your files somewhere?”

  “I might. Why don’t you tell me?” He smiled patronizingly. “Your words.” He reached down and pulled a bottle of Popov out of his briefcase. He stood, and when he came out of the bathroom he had two glasses in hand, each filled with ice. “Care to join me?”

  A pretty clumsy test, Kepella thought to himself. “No thanks,” he said.

  Brandenburg poured himself a drink like a scientist might mix chemicals. He was no drinker, Kepella thought. He poured vodka on the rocks: Kepella’s drink. Brandenburg pushed the drink toward Kepella.

  Kepella looked at it. “No, thank you.”

  “Don’t you want some, Roy?”

  Brandenburg had switched to calling him Roy. So this was the friendly part? Business was either over, or just starting. Brandenburg was well informed. Kepella said, “The agent was CIA. Why are we involved?”

  “So was the woman.”

  “Was? I thought you said she hasn’t made contact.” The statement rattled Brandenburg somewhat, Kepella thought.

  “Is, was, you know what I mean. It’s either us or the Secret Service on U.S. soil, you know that, Roy.”

  “I thought the Secret Service generally handles Special Investigations.”

  “Who said anything about Special Investigations?”

  “Why else would you fly me all the way out here? And you even made me call in sick rather than tell the Bureau where I was going. You need a spy. You want me to watch for any shit going down. Right? I’ve got news for you, Brandenburg. I do that anyway.”

  Brandenburg finished the drink and immediately poured himself another. Kepella felt the saliva running in his mouth. The urge never stops.

  “This has nothing to do with SI. There are only four people involved in this operation, the director, myself, my secretary, and you.”

  “What operation? Which the director?”

  “Washington. Your man Galpin in Seattle knows nothing about this. As for the operation… we’re coming to that. You were going to tell me about your drinking.”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  “You said you’re off the stuff.”

  “I am.”

  Brandenburg took a deep breath. “Roy, these folders, reports, personnel statistics don’t do shit for telling me about you, the person. Christ, I know about your marriage, your ex, your son, even your bank accounts. I know you dried out and that you seem to be okay now. I need stability, Roy. I don’t have a lot of time. Not much at all. And I need to know who the hell you are.”

  “So you offer me a glass of booze and expect me to spill my life story?” He knew if he had been drinking, the warmth would already have reached the top of his spine. “I’m not like that, Brandenburg. Read your files more carefully. They should tell you somewhere that I don’t like being led around the bush. I like to get straight to the point. I like to get work done. I’m good. I came to Washington on your orders—orders I wasn’t thrilled about. Here I am. If you know anything from that pile of… crap… then you know I’m not particularly happy in Seattle. I’ve been there close to ten years, hoping to earn my passport to Washington. I like this town. This is where I was recruited. Where I spent some of the best years of my life. I’ve been leaning on Mark Galpin to drop a few hints out here. He said he would. I got your call and figured maybe my time had come. Come to find out, I get drilled by a man twenty years my junior, who just happens to be my superior, who calls me Walter for the first forty minutes and then pours himself a drink and switches to Roy.

  “By the way,” Kepella continued, “how do I get reimbursed for this?” He reached into a breast pocket and withdrew his airline ticket. He had big hands with thick fingers and flat nails. He still wore his wedding ring.

  Deftly, Brandenburg removed his billfold and counted out seven hundred and fifty dollars. He handed Kepella the cash.

  “Cash?”

  “I told you,” Brandenburg said, returning the wallet, “this isn’t even listed as an operation. Just the four of us. Can’t very well route expenditures through accounting, now can I? The whole damn department would know. Probably a senator or two, as well. We’re having hell keeping information locked up lately. Too many people willing to sing to the press. The director has sent out a white-paper memo.”

  “I read it.”

  “Then you know.”

  “Yes. We’re more fortunate. A small, tight group, that’s Seattle. It has its advantages, I suppose.”

  “That brings me to my point, Roy. We know you want Washington. You’ve passed your twenty, so we assume you’re sticking with us. The director likes to see men stay past twenty. I suppose that may have had something to do with you being selected for this run.” He went back to the folders. “I’m in a position to offer you a trade of sorts, Roy. You do this job for us, and we’ll see you here in Washington.”

  Kepella placed the crisp bills in his wallet and stared at Brandenburg. “What run?”

  “I told you that we—the CIA actually—have reason to believe the next target may be Seattle. Maybe you.”

  Kepella didn’t say anything, though he wondered how anyone could possibly have determined this. But then, the CIA was another world entirely.

  Brandenburg said, “We’d like to sting them.”

  “A video sting?”

  “No. More involved than that. It’s an old technique, I’m told, dating back to the war.” When he wiggled his nose, Brandenburg looked like a ferret. “I’ve consulted with a man named Stone. Ever heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “He’s retired now. He used to run counter-intelligence agents.”

  “Doubles?”

  “Actually, agents who sought out doubles.”

  “You’re talking about the SIA?”

  “Then you have heard about it?”

  “Only recently. A man named Lyell runs it, doesn’t he?”

  “Stone used to run things over there,” Brandenburg said, avoiding a proper answer. “At any rate, Stone was very helpful. He knows a great deal about this sort of thing. Years of experience. We discussed the possibility of stinging the other side. Really letting them have it. It’s an involved operation. Not at all our normal sort. Details will be forthcoming once I’ve made my decision. The director likes the plan. We’d like to have a go at it We’re seriously considering you for the run, Roy. But, as I said before, I would like to know you a bit better, and I’m afraid I haven’t the time. You see, we need somebody we can trust. Absolutely trust.”

  “You studied overseas, didn’t you.”

  “Yes, England, why?”

  “Cambridge?”

  “Oxford, actually.” He blushed. “Rhodes scholar.”

  “You speak like a Brit. I knew a fellow who spoke the way you do. It’s not very common.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never quite given it up entirely. Three years was all, but it’s stayed with me. My wife is a ‘Brit,’ as you say. I suppose that doesn’t help matters any.”

  “Children?”

  “No. None,” Brandenburg said, disappointment written all over his tanned face. He sipped the vodka.

  Kepella said, “So what does this entail?”

  “It entails nothing less than breaking this network. We want another shot at Wilhelm. That’s what we have in mind. It’s a good, solid plan, Roy. Most unusual. But… well, the point is… you haven’t really ever been an operative. That’s partly why we chose you, and partly why we are uncertain about you.”

  “An operative?”

  “Yes. How does that strike you?”

  “It would have to be clarified.” He patted his stomach. “I have a bit of a gut. Not the most fit person in the department. Too many years behind a desk is what it is. My training was years ago. Oh, I can still pass tar
get range, that sort of thing. But hand-to-hand? Not for a minute. It would depend on what you have in mind.”

  “It wouldn’t require any extra training. Nothing of that sort. I’m going to level with you, Roy. My concern is whether you can take the pressure or not. It’s a difficult assignment; would be for anybody. With your life-style, your drinking record, your suspension, you both qualify and worry us. It’s a delicate line I have to tread. Unfortunately, it’s all been put onto my shoulders. I have to make the decision. There’s no one else we have in mind, you understand. It’s you, or no one. It has to be you.” He finished his drink.

  “And?” Kepella asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What is your decision?”

  “You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t already know, Roy.” He tapped a file folder. “That’s just not like you.”

  4

  A color picture of the president hung on the wall behind Mark Galpin’s desk. The president was smiling; Galpin was not. His office reeked of the acrid smell of perspiration. The view from the seventh floor of the New Federal Building looked out across Puget Sound. One could usually see Mount Rainier, but not today. Too hazy. Galpin wore a navy blue blazer, white ever-press shirt, and a rust-brown necktie. His sun-bleached blond hair helped him look younger than his fifty years. His large, dark oak desk seemed more an intended barrier than a work place. Free of even a single sheet of paper, it held a green blotter pad bordered in dark leather, a name plate, and a black-plastic telephone called a Merlin. Next to the phone was a paperweight that doubled as an ashtray—a brass housing for an anti-aircraft shell from a World War II destroyer—MARK GALPIN peppered neatly into its side. Galpin struggled to compose himself, a teacher at wit’s end. His jugular veins pulsed on either side of his flushed neck, pumping along in time with his rapid heart rate. His mandible muscles flexed in unison as if he was chewing.

  Sit, his hand instructed silently.

  Kepella chose a chair facing away from the large window, not wanting the distraction of a beautiful summer day, and sat down, breathing heavily.

  “What gives, Roy?”

  “It won’t happen aga—”

  “Why? Why start drinking again, Roy?” Galpin stared out the window, avoiding his friend’s eyes. “You take a sick day. The next day you don’t show for work. That night—last night—you run three red lights, you smash into a car, you end up piled into the side of a delivery truck.” He hesitated. “You smell like booze, so they haul you downtown. Close so far?”

  Kepella studied the telephone.

  Galpin continued, “Then you have the nerve, the gall, to bring the Bureau into it. What were you thinking? What could you have possibly been thinking?”

  “I wasn’t. That’s just the point.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.” He looked back at Kepella, who had crossed his hands in his lap. “You’ve put me in a bind, Roy.” He paused and added, “One heck of a bind.”

  “Mark, it’s just that things have been awful lately.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Roy,” he snapped, waving his arms. “I told you: no sale. I can’t get into this. You made a mistake. You should have never brought the Bureau into it, you know better than that.”

  “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. Everyone knows. Page four, for Christ’s sake.”

  Kepella remained silent. He wondered what Galpin saw when he looked out the window. The boats probably. Galpin loved to sail. Some of the agents and stenography pool even called him “Skipper.” Tempted to turn around and look for himself, Kepella concentrated on the photo of the president. The president smiled like an actor.

  “What follows next, Mark?”

  “Next?” he asked, unable to look Kepella in the eye. “Darn good question, Roy. What is next? What am I supposed to do with you? You’re a good agent, Roy. But you’re pissing up a rope, my friend, and it’s coming right back at you. What choice do you leave me? I hate the thought of breaking someone else in at your desk. You’ve run a darn good show, Roy. You’re one hell of an archivist, and a good friend. Shit.” Galpin knotted his hands and lowered his voice. “It’s the sauce, my friend. You had a problem, Roy. You never let it interfere with your job. Before any of us even knew about it you had it under control. But it’s different now, isn’t it? It makes it even harder that we’re friends. The committee won’t let a former alcoholic who’s drinking again run our archives. You know that. That’s how they’re going to see this, Roy: too risky. Let’s be honest.”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “I thought I did, Roy. I thought I did.” His face showed the pain of betrayal. “We put a lot of faith in you… after the recovery.”

  “The drunk farm.”

  “I thought you were off it.”

  “I was, Mark. I really was.”

  “As a friend, Roy. As a friend I’m here when you need me.”

  “Is that it?”

  “It won’t be long now. A day at best. There’s nothing more to be said.”

  “Yes there is.”

  “What’s that?”

  Kepella stood and offered his hand. “Sorry, Mark.”

  In order to be opened, Kepella’s office door required him to slip his magnetic-coded ID card into a plastic slot to the right of the door. A buzzer sounded and Kepella turned the doorknob. The room had no windows. All but one wall held columns of government-gray, five-drawer steel filing cabinets, stacked side by side. Kepella’s small desk was also government-gray and occupied the remaining wall. A picture had once hung on the wall, as was obvious by a rectangular ghost several shades lighter than the wall paint. Kepella had titled the space “Alaska in a Blizzard.” He studied the office now as a stranger might, noting the blandness, the harsh fluorescent light, the gray, gray, gray. The filing cabinets were grouped according to security rating:

  (C) CONFIDENTIAL

  (S) SECRET

  (TS) TOP SECRET

  (SCI) SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTAL INFORMATION

  (WNINTEL) WARNING NOTICE: SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE SOURCES AND METHODS INVOLVED

  (NFD) NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION

  (RD) RESTRICTED DATA

  Each cabinet had its own numeric pad, its own special master combination code. Each drawer of the filing cabinets was labeled with an alpha-numeric sequence. Three of the cabinets required the agent’s magnetic coded card to be inserted before the combination could be entered. The files. Year after year: the files. A custom copier and shredder occupied the far corner, behind Kepella’s small desk. A blue enamel box sat alongside the shredder—the only color in the office—a high-voltage incinerator the size of a trash compactor, used to further negate security risk by reducing the shreddings to ash.

  Kepella kept an IBM PC on his desk, independent of all the other Bureau computers. He used it for filing purposes: a database management system. He switched it on. The hard copy files in the cabinets were libraried into the PC by a number of different subject headings, allowing for multiple-tag searches. Only Kepella, Galpin, and some deputy-something-or-other in Washington knew the password: ZOWEHOTE. He entered the password and then worked his way through a variety of menus. A few minutes later Kepella began scribbling down a series of file codes. He didn’t bother to exit the search mode because the computer automatically cleared if no key entry was made within fifteen seconds. His heart pounded. This was the beginning.

  He photocopied the files in a matter of minutes, returned them to the proper cabinets, and locked them away. He carefully folded each photocopy so that it would fit inside his shoes. He stepped into his shoes and re-tied them, the knot of the bow terribly symbolic for him. That done, he sat back in his chair and tried to relax. What he really wanted was a drink.

  5

  Jay Becker walked with determination down the cement pier toward The Lady Fine. It wasn’t that he felt determined. Quite the contrary—if anything he felt apprehension: today he would meet her, not just toss out a casual hello as sh
e passed by. No, today he would spend time with her. For nearly two weeks he had eyed her: the woman who appeared both shy and lonely; the woman who spoke softly; the woman who seemed afraid of something. He could sense this fear in her, and he knew his interest was due as much to curiosity as hormones. Still, he was sweating, his heart beating quickly. He dragged his hands across his cut-off blue jeans, attempting to dry them off. Curiosity was a driving force in Jay Becker’s life: the need to observe, a passion for the unknown. The two-hundred-plus songs he had written were full of his observations, from industrial smokestacks to whaling ships.

  He had once written a song about a moth. He and the band had watched the moth during an electrical storm when the lights had been switched off in favor of candles. Soon the featured attraction was not the spikes of lightning but, instead, the moth. Time and again the moth flew through the flame of one of the candles, and with each pass burned a little more of its wings. But it wouldn’t quit. Finally, in one last heaving effort, it flew up off the table, flapping its singed wings hysterically, and plummeted into a pool of hot wax just below the wick. Jay had named the moth Marvin, and had written the lyrics as an allegory. That had been nine years ago, and Jay still felt like that moth at times. Despite the repeated setbacks, he continued to play music for a living, refusing to give up his dream. Marvin. Marvin knew, of course, but Jay Becker was still learning.

  The mystery in her compelled him. She held a secret of some sort, something stowed way down inside her, hidden away. Find the key and she’ll open up.

  He knew his track record with her kind of beauty. For him there was a fine line between pretty and attractive; once this line was crossed, Jay turned into a bumbling idiot with a postage-stamp I.Q. He was much too aware of his own shortcomings to get a big head about himself. He was human. “Very human,” was how he put it to close friends. And he figured that in a world where people tried to be anything but human, he stuck out like Sissy Hankshaw’s famous thumb. He spent his energies on observation and expression, not acting, and beautiful women were notoriously professional actresses. He was no match for them. Oh, he could act on stage without any problem. He could have a fever and still pull off an energetic night of music. But once offstage Jay Becker was a different person altogether; he knew that, though many women had never fully understood this about him. He finger-combed his hair and continued down Pier L.