The Last Spymaster (8 page)

“And Tice?”

“He gets the usual hate letters and marriage proposals. He throws them away. The media still ask for interviews, but he always turns them down. He’s never made any ‘general’ phone calls or gotten any ‘general’ mail to speak of. And the only person he ever put on his visitor list was his attorney. But the case is basically inactive, so the lawyer hasn’t been to see him in months.”

“Did anyone request a visit or a phone call with Tice recently?”

As the lieutenant led her past flowers planted in rigid rows, he shook his head. “Tice’s isolation isn’t unusual. Some cons’ only outside contacts are junk mail and catalogs. Sometimes it’s because everyone’s turned against them. Other times it’s because they just want to be left alone.”

At the mess hall, Lieutenant Oxley reached to open the door for her.
She noted a long scar on his wrist—old and faded but marked by ugly welts.

“That must’ve hurt.” She nodded at it.

He glanced at it, surprised, as if he had forgotten about it. “That’s from a pipe cut. They can be nasty.” He gave a wry smile. “Take my advice. Never be a plumber.”

The mess hall was hard-edged, with linoleum flooring, tall colorless walls, and security windows. There was a lingering stink of grease that even the heavy odor of industrial disinfectant did not hide.

FBI Special Agent Gary Mayhew met her at the door. He had a thin look to his eyes, and square-tipped fingers that kept brushing his sports jacket as if looking for a pack of cigarettes. He glanced at the six security officers sprawled in chairs on the far side of the big room then told her in a low voice, “I’ll cut to the chase. The only thing we’re sure about is the cameras in the section where the two escapees were housed went haywire for eleven minutes at 3:31 this morning—that’s when we figure they broke out. The cameras started working again soon enough afterward that the guards thought it was just a malfunction, but our IT people say it was programmed into the system from the building’s main computer. Whoever did it used the control code of a female employee who left for Florida on vacation a couple of days ago.”

“So Theosopholis, Tice, or someone else stole or bought it before she left, or maybe she did the programming herself, then took off.”

Mayhew nodded grimly. “A lot of possibilities. We’ve informed your people how to find her.” He led her to a table where floor plans were laid out. “This is where Theosopholis and Tice were housed. All the gates are electronic. To go anywhere—from section to section, floor to floor—you have to get past gates. The codes are changed in random patterns chosen by the computer, and some gates have more than one code. During the eleven minutes without video, Theosopholis and Tice would’ve had to get past a minimum of four guards and five gates, depending on which route they took.” He traced two—one to the building’s front entrance, the other to the rear.

“Were any of the security officers out of sight of the others?” she asked.

“In that eleven-minute period without cameras—all were. This would be a hell of a lot easier to figure out if Tice and Theosopholis had just used dynamite.”

“Whoever masterminded it knew what he was doing.”

“Sure looks like it.” He handed her a copy of patrol schedules and a list of people who had entered and left throughout the night.

As she put them into her purse, she marched past rows of barren dining tables to the guards, who sat in identical plastic chairs. Two had crossed their arms, heads nodding. At the sound of her steps, they looked up. All watched her cautiously.

“Thanks for staying,” she told them. As Lieutenant Oxley leaned against a wall, and Special Agent Mayhew sat on the end of a table, she pulled up a chair and smiled. “You’re the ones who work there, so you may know more about Tice and Theosopholis than they know about themselves. My job is to find them, not to blame anyone for anything. Educate me. What are they like? Are they close?”

They glanced at one another. From the wall, the FBI man said, “Theosopholis apparently made friends here, but we couldn’t find a one who’d admit to hearing about any escape plans.”

She gazed at the security officers again. “Is that right? Was he a friendly guy?”

A man to her right inclined his head. “He was a talker, and he liked TV. There was a group of them that watched every night, nine to eleven, talking the whole time. It was like a religion.”

“He mentioned getting out a lot,” said a second. “He’d been plea-bargained down to manslaughter, so he had a chance to get parole next year. It was stupid to bust out now, but no con’s a brain trust, or he wouldn’t be here. He can forget parole for another ten years at least.”

“I never thought he and Tice were friends,” said a third man.

“Yeah, ‘friends’ is pushing it,” the second guard said. “Still, Theosopholis was one of the few inmates who made an effort with Tice.”

“They didn’t have to be friends,” the first man said logically. “They’re both felons doing heavy time, and they ended up here. Plus their cells are next to each other. For a breakout, that’s plenty of reason to partner.”

The six nodded in unison.

“What about Tice?” she asked. “Who were his friends?”

The guard on her far left snorted. “Hell, Tice was never going to have friends in any joint. The other inmates hate traitors. They can be rapists or serial killers—doesn’t matter. To a man, cons consider themselves loyal Americans. They hassle anyone who so much as passes the time of day with Tice or Ames or Walker.” Rick Ames and John A. Walker were also doing natural life at Allenwood. Walker was the notorious former U.S. Navy communications officer who recruited his family to spy for the Soviets.

Another of the men explained, “The reason Theosopholis got away with it was because he was well liked—and he was a bruiser. Muscles like San Quentin.”

“What did all of you think of Tice?”

Lieutenant Oxley peeled away from the wall. For a moment, exhaustion filled his face. Then his eyes shot fire. “Finks like him should be shot, like the Soviets did to the people he ratted out. Just my personal opinion.”

The security officers looked at one another and nodded agreement.

“Can’t believe you’re still standing, Oxley,” one of the guards observed.

“I was on duty last night, too,” he told her, “but just a couple of minutes in their building—a long time before the escape.”

At the end of the table, the FBI special agent unsnapped his cell phone from his belt and walked off, listening into it intently.

She asked the men, “What did Tice do to pass the time?”

The guard on her right answered. “He clerked in the law library seven and a half hours a day, five days a week—one of our best jobs for prisoners. He worked out in the gym and in the yard almost every day. And he jogged.”

She looked at Lieutenant Oxley. “I’ll want to talk to the other prisoners and staff and see Tice’s and Theosopholis’s cells.”

“Of course,” he said.

“I’ve got news.” The FBI man was striding back, his expression purposeful as he rehooked his cell phone to his belt. As everyone focused on him, he announced, “We’ve got Theosopholis!”

“No shit!” one of the security officers said.

“Thank the Lord,” said another. “How’d you do it?”

“Not the way we wanted,” the FBI man cautioned. “Some hikers found an abandoned car on a fire road in Virginia and called the state police. Turns out it was a Geo Prizm stolen from the Wal-Mart lot in Lewisburg sometime early this morning. The police found Theosopholis inside the trunk, dead.”

“Murdered?” Elaine asked instantly.

He gave a brisk nod. “Stabbed to death with a shank made out of a wood ruler. Enough letters were on the back that they could just make out ‘USP Allenwood.’ ”

“The library,” she said. “Jay Tice.”

Along the North River, North Carolina

On the muddy bank, Jay Tice towered over Westwood. His hands hung open at his sides, his wet legs stood akimbo, and his expression was neutral as he stared down through the ghostly light at the old spy standing in hip boots in the swamp’s choppy water.

Westwood glared up, his M-16 pointing steadily.

Tice made no move. “So that’s the way it is. You serious about shooting me?”

“You’re goddamned right I am!”

Tice nodded. He peered out, quickly analyzing shapes and colors. “I see your intruder. He’s lying on a log. He’s either unconscious or dead.”

Giving Westwood no time to respond, Tice jumped down, splashing a dirty wave up onto Westwood’s shirt and face. As Westwood swore and backed away, shaking water off the M-16, Tice pushed into the swamp. The water was like refrigerated flannel, thick with debris, even more difficult to slog through. Everything stank of decay.

“Damn you, Jay.” Westwood fell in beside him. “Go back. Turn yourself in. They’ve got to be looking for you.”

“I imagine they are.”

“You
bastard.
All those years we worked together . . . All those times I trusted you to cover my ass . . . All the people who counted on you . . . How could you have done it? You betrayed all of us! Langley.
America!
”

“I always protected you.”

“I never knew you. I swear to God, I never suspected.
Never!
I suppose I’m damn lucky to be alive.”

“We’re all lucky to be alive. Have you had any other visitors besides this one?”

Westwood scowled. “And if I have?”

“Your trespasser was not only armed, he recognized me. That’s when he really wanted to terminate me. A few hours ago another one tried, too.”

Westwood stared. “What happened to him?”

“I’m alive,” Tice said grimly.

The trespasser lay on his back on top of an uprooted tree, eyes closed, arms and legs limp. Now that Tice was close, he saw how young he was, probably not much more than twenty-five. His square face was ashen, the skin blue beneath his black stubble. Black silt covered his clothes. His gun was nowhere in sight.

“Do you recognize him?” Tice asked.

“Never saw him before. What about you?”

“I don’t know him.” He checked. “He’s dead.”

“Too bad. But what could he expect—coming in here the way he did, trying to wipe us.” With the M-16 in one hand, Westwood used the other to fish through the man’s pockets. He brought out a wallet, a tube of Chap-Stick, an unopened package of M&M’s, and a cell phone. Everything was sodden.

Tice took the cell. Water flowed from it. He touched the power button. It was as dead as its owner.

Westwood opened the wallet. “Some cash, but that’s all.” He pocketed it.

“How did you know he was here?”

“Surveillance cameras,” Westwood told him. “After he’d been loitering a couple of hours, I walked out to chat. Of course, I took my M-16 and my flag marker—”

“The one stuck in the grass.”

He nodded. “I don’t need it, but he could’ve been some tourist whose curiosity had overtaken his common sense. When he faded into the Dismal, I went after him. He pulled a gun, and that changed everything. We did a nasty bit of dancing after that.”

“What do you want to do with him?” Tice asked. “Might as well leave him. The bobcats or bear will take care of him.”

Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex
Allenwood, Pennsylvania

The FBI and CIA jointly agreed to keep Frank Theosopholis’s murder quiet for the time being, so Elaine continued her probe into both Tice and Theosopholis as if Theosopholis were still alive. She questioned some fifty inmates and prison personnel alone and in groups. The picture she developed of Theosopholis was of a hobbyist. Besides his nightly TV date, he entered sweepstakes and planned get-rich-quick schemes that went nowhere.

His bunkmate told her, “Hell, I slept through the whole thing. I didn’t know he was gone until the guard kicked my ass outta bed. I hope Theo makes it!”

They had a standard nine-by-six-foot cell. The steel double bunk was anchored to the floor. Bolted to a wall was a thirty-by-eighteen-inch steel desk with an attached backless stool. There was a metal sink, an open metal toilet, and a small slit high in the wall from which they could see the sky if they stretched their necks. It was designed for functionality and minimum human needs, but it was clean and modern.

Looking for clues to where Theosopholis had planned to go, she read correspondence with his family and copies of letters to his lawyer begging for help to force a new trial. He also kept a stationery box of neatly packed notes about which games and sweepstakes he had entered. He would have been likely to get in touch with his family, if only to ask for money—if he had lived long enough.

Tice’s profile was not only of a loner but of a model prisoner. He obeyed rules slavishly, and he made no effort to rehabilitate himself with other inmates.

“Hell, the asshole wouldn’t even look you in the eye,” one inmate told her.

She heard the same comment from both prisoners and staff. Tice’s cell was larger but still cramped. Instead of a bunk, he had a wide cot. The covers were tossed back to reveal a dummy fashioned out of prison clothes and an arm-shaped piece of wood covered with skin-colored fabric. Besides the
usual toilet and sink, he had a TV, a bookcase loaded with books, and a reading chair with a lamp and footstool.