A Young Lawyer's story

by John Ellsworth

  Hell, he thought, lifting his eyes and looking further south toward the Superior Court of D.C., everyone who was anyone was selling. Half the Congress, a Supreme Court Justice, four spooks out of the NSA, hundreds of faceless nobodies in the EOB--everyone was on the take in exchange for secrets. Whether selling to the Chinese or the Russkies or the fucking Bangladeshi, U.S. Secrets were being distributed to overseas computers hourly.

  But what made Broyles unique--what made his briefcase worth a million dollars--was the war games. The games the U.S. endlessly invented and played against the CIA database so that various scenarios could be studied and embellished according to how sick the U.S. meant to make the enemy with obscene germ warfare, or how extinct the U.S. meant to make the enemy's food supply with plagues of genetically modified insects, or how brightly the people of Beijing or Moscow could be made to glow by a nuclear airburst at ten thousand feet versus twenty thousand feet.

  These were the matters being fed by Broyles to Hoa and his predecessors. The data was priceless to the countries at the receiving end of the American war plans. Maybe not priceless, Broyles corrected himself; in fact, there was a price. One million dollars a bag. Sometimes a bag held one plan; sometimes a hundred. He never knew, he never asked, he never cared. Only the deposit advices he received from his off-shore accounts mattered to him. It was all there was for an old man who was said to be sick and dying and needed money to leave his wife and children. That was the official story on Broyles. It’s what the Chinese would know about him.

  He pulled back from his window and sat at his desk. It was time to call his handlers.

  Broyles needed new secrets.

  7

  The Georgetown Reservoir was part of the water supply and treatment infrastructure for the District of Columbia. It was located in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C., approximately two miles downstream from the Maryland--D.C. boundary. Broyles and Hoa would meet at the sluice gate just beyond the Army Corp of Engineers castle.

  Broyles headed there on his Piaggio three-wheeler, a huge motor scooter that proved its worth when Broyles evaded any FBI tails by filtering through standstill traffic on the freeways he took. While the four-wheelers and eighteen-wheelers were jammed up, Broyles whizzed between them, close enough to the vehicles on either side to reach out and touch them as he sailed past.

  At 8:56 he wheeled into the small parking lot at the sluice gate, parked without the need for a kickstand, leapt off, and jogged over to the meet. The DoD briefcase banged against his thigh as he went.

  He put his back against the chain link fence protecting the sluice and waited.

  Then it was 9:06 and Broyles knew something was wrong. Hoa was late and the Chinese were never late. Not in the half-dozen times they had already met and exchanged. So Broyles casually let himself down onto the grass where he sat cross-legged, the briefcase on the ground in front of him. He closed his eyes and slowly counted. Halfway to one hundred, automobile headlights bounced into the parking lot from beyond and his heart jumped. Was it him? He craned his head around and watched. But the automobile continued rolling, making a complete circle and then leaving the lot and the connecting road just as abruptly as it had arrived.

  Broyles was at eighty-seven when he stood.

  At one hundred, it was all over. He was jogging again toward the Piaggio, where he threw open the seat lid and fitted the briefcase down into the roomy well below. Slamming the lid shut, he climbed on the bike, keyed it up, and roared out of the lot.

  He headed for the Palisades, one of the lesser-known neighborhoods in Washington, consisting of a mixture of detached houses, townhouses and apartments. The homes along the bluff on Potomac Avenue offered a broad view of the Potomac River and the Virginia riverfront as he rode by, continuing his journey back to his Georgetown condo.

  The following afternoon, Friday, while Broyles was inside Conference Room III meeting with several assistants, Thaddeus received a call from Hoa. Again, no identification, no name, just an electronic voice instructing Thaddeus to deliver this message to his boss: All the same, tonight.

  Thaddeus buzzed Reception and told them to take calls. He then crept away to McGrant's office. He was escorted right inside, where he found McGrant sipping a diet drink and dictating into a microphone. She looked up.

  "Thaddeus," she said. "You must have news."

  "I got a call. Broyles is meeting someone tonight. I have no idea who."

  "Follow him."

  "Me? Why would I do that? Why not the FBI?"

  "Because no one else can know. We aren't sure who we can trust at this point. Just do as I say, Thaddeus, and for God's sake stop questioning me every time I tell you to do something."

  "I don't like it. I have no training for this."

  "You have no training to follow someone? Actually, it works out perfectly. Broyles lost the man you replaced last month. He did it on a goddamn motor scooter. You've got a motor scooter. You're perfectly suited for this job."

  "Wait. You hired me because I ride a Vespa? That was the criteria?"

  "Don't be silly. Of course not."

  Thaddeus hurried back to his office. Broyles was still in conference. Thaddeus informed Reception he was again taking calls. Had he missed any? The answer was no, he had not. He breathed a sigh of relief and busied himself with his computer while his mind raced ahead.

  At six o'clock, Thaddeus drove home and had a beer with Bud Evans. Bud was his roommate of seven years. They had no secrets. Until now. Thaddeus needed to talk to someone, but Bud wasn't the one—not after Thaddeus had begun to understand how much trouble he was in. No, he needed a professional. Who could he turn to for advice about all this? It left him saddened. These were the times a young man needed a father. He had been deprived of that and had made enough wrong turns in his life to deeply regret it. So he smiled superficially at Bud, shared a laugh, and mentally prepared for what lay ahead.

  At 8:50 p.m., Broyles was followed by Thaddeus as he roared up MacArthur Boulevard. Thaddeus was riding two cars behind on his cream Vespa scooter. Then there was a freeway maneuver intended to lose any tailing vehicles where Broyles threw caution to the wind and suddenly cut back across the median and proceeded back to the next connecting street then again turned onto MacArthur Boulevard. Thaddeus followed. Broyles went through a late yellow light, roared up five blocks, and veered off through the Palisades.

  At last they came to Mixler Road and Broyles headed toward the sluice gate. At the turnoff leading up to the castle's parking lot, Thaddeus suddenly pulled over. He could proceed no further without being noticed by Broyles. But, parking at the crest of the final hill, he managed to walk south a hundred feet to where he could perfectly view the parking lot. He could just make out Broyles' motor scooter in the orange lights of the parking lot. The ride had been abandoned while Thaddeus walked from roadway to hilltop. He had lost sight of his quarry.

  Thaddeus watched as a black limo arrived and a small man jumped out and jogged for the sluice gate. There he noticed a second man--Broyles?--who had been sitting in the grass. They exchanged a briefcase then returned to their vehicles. This time, Thaddeus hung back and fell in behind the black limousine. It wound around through the downtown of Washington with Thaddeus lagging far behind, when it suddenly sped up and headed for Virginia. They crossed the border and Thaddeus managed to follow the limo until it came to a long, curving driveway where it turned in and two men climbed out. Briefly, as the passenger paused under the porch light and sorted through his keychain, Thaddeus got a good look at Hoa’s face. He committed it to memory. Now he had a face to connect to the caller who came on the line and said, “All the same.”

  Then he returned home.

  He was congratulating himself as he opened a bottle of beer and slipped off his shoes in front of the TV. Bud was nowhere around. That was when it occurred to him: he should have snapped a picture of the exchange with a long-range lens. How excellent would that have been? He realized at that moment that he had sta
rted to think like a spy. Not only that, but he liked it.

  He watched Wolf Blitzer on CNN talking about some election antics of one of the presidential candidates. As the TV rambled on and on, Thaddeus pulled his MacBook onto his lap and flipped it open. It made the WIFI connection and he waited for the browser to display his home page.

  Then he clicked a link and logged into the office's network. The system would, of course, log his credentials and all details about this incursion, so he manipulated two text files to make it look as if he was logging-in on business. Then he brought up Broyles' calendar. He looked at that month's entries for the ninth day of June. Then the previous month's entries for the ninth day, going further and further back in time until the same entries on the ninth of those months were found no more.

  All the same, each one said.

  All the same.

  Just after eleven, his phone chimed. The name was blocked but he had a good idea who was calling.

  "Thaddeus Murfee.”

  "Did you keep up with him?"

  McGrant. He should have known she'd be all over him.

  "I kept up."

  "What did you see?"

  "I didn't see much. He just went out to the reservoir."

  "What did he do there?"

  Thaddeus hesitated. She had told him to follow Broyles. But why wasn't the FBI there instead of him? That just didn't add up: he wasn't a trained agent; he had no idea how to spy on someone. He decided to wait before telling her. He needed more time, time to find someone he could confide in.

  "He waited," Thaddeus said. "He waited around and then he left."

  "Did you follow him after he left?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "You didn't tell me to. You told me to follow him out there."

  "Jesus, Thaddeus."

  "What?"

  She exhaled a long, drawn-out sigh. He could imagine her face, the look she got when frustrated.

  "That's it for now. We'll talk soon."

  She hung up and left him smiling.

  She would learn that he was no one's fool.

  8

  Bud Evans was a thick-legged soccer star from Odessa, Texas who roomed with Thaddeus and shared the same bathroom. Both men were in the small space Saturday night at six o'clock, making last-minute toilette refinements before going their separate ways on their separate dates.

  Thaddeus' perplexed look caught Bud's attention.

  "C'mon," said Bud, "you never look this extreme. Is it the girl you're meeting tonight or the new job? Give it up, Murf."

  "Both," said Thaddeus as he held his round eyeglasses under warm water. "I've got to have dinner with my boss and try to charm the fam. That's all I can tell you; the rest of it is classified and if I breathe a word of it to you, I'll have to kill you."

  "You and your scout troop," muttered Evans, pulling a wooden brush over the top of his head where the hair was long and then down the sides where the hair was clipped next to the scalp.

  "Uh-huh," said Thaddeus. "I wish I could tell you. Well, this much I can tell, Buddy. My boss is probably going to be fired in the near future. I can't say why."

  "Should you give a shit? I mean, he didn't even interview you, am I right?"

  "That's right. I was hired through the Chief of Staff’s office."

  "So he's your boss in name only, correct?"

  "I guess so. I mean I'm working in the office that has his name on it, though."

  "You mean his name as the U.S. Attorney. I think it's more the generic U.S. Attorney's office than it is Broyles’ office. His name's there only because the president appointed him."

  "That's true. Okay, so let's say he gets shit-canned. That leaves me working for the administrative branch inside the office. But what's got me buffaloed,” he said, turning to face his friend rather than his image in the mirror, "is that my boss is doing some shady stuff. There, I said it.” Thaddeus looked nervously around. "I can't say what, so don't ask. But some very important people are keeping an eye on him. There, now I've said too much."

  "No you haven't. We've been roomies for seven years now and I've never blabbed any of your bullshit to anyone else."

  "Nor I yours. So we're even. Just make sure you keep your perfect record on this one. I'm going to jail if anyone finds out I even told you, Bud."

  "Well, you didn't tell me. You intimated. Huge difference."

  "God, law school fit you like a glove. Anyone who can split hairs that easily definitely belongs in the courtroom."

  Evans faked a low bow. "Well, thank you, Thaddeus. Coming from the great hairsplitter himself, that pleases me to rank up there alongside you. So get down to it. What's he doing? Turning bad guys loose? Accepting bribes for not prosecuting? Letting bad guys out of prison? Come on, come on, come on, give it up."

  Evans stopped and fixed his eyes on Thaddeus in the mirror.

  "Last night, I saw my boss give a guy a briefcase," Thaddeus said.

  Evans stopped brushing his hair. His hands fell to his sides. "What? That's it? A lawyer gave someone a briefcase? My God, how often does that happen?"

  "All right, wiseass. It happened out at the reservoir, down by the sluice gate. In the dark."

  Evans again stopped brushing. "Whoa! Selling secrets to the Russians? Is that where we are? But what secrets does a U.S. Attorney have? He's not in the secrets business. I think we're safe tonight," Evans laughed.

  "Maybe turning over confidential documents about a prosecution?" guessed Thaddeus.

  "Or maybe giving his CPA his canceled checks. Hell, I don't know. So what do you do about it?"

  "I'm supposed to tell my handler."

  "Who?"

  "Melissa McGrant. She's who I'm actually reporting to."

  "Hey, you know what?"

  "What?"

  "A sick thought just occurred to me. What if this bathroom is bugged? Or the living room? Or our phones? Shit, Murfee, get away from me, dog! You're radioactive!"

  "Not gonna happen. I'm nothing to them," said Thaddeus. "I'm a nobody."

  "Just the same, don't tell me anymore. I don't want to end up in front of some grand jury trying to explain what I was doing discussing your boss with you."

  With that, Bud Evans left the bathroom.

  Thaddeus came upright and began drying his eyeglasses.

  "What the hell?" he said to his reflection. "What the hell?"

  Two hours later, he was discussing attorney jobs with his boss's daughter, Nikki Broyles, over dessert at his boss's house.

  "I never thought I'd be working as a prosecutor," he was telling Nikki, keeping his voice low enough that his boss--who was seated at the head of the table--wouldn't hear. After all, it wasn't entirely true that he was working as a prosecutor, but he hoped the charming Nikki didn't know. He hoped she imagined him as kind of a swashbuckling young lawyer going after the mafia or a sleeper cell. Answering her father's telephone would certainly spoil that image, but he wasn't about to tell her and was hopeful her father hadn't filled her in.

  "I think it's pretty amazing," Nikki said. “If I go to law school, I'm looking for something in the government sector. Maybe EPA. I like clean water, especially after what's been going on in Flint."

  "Flint? Lots of elected officials to investigate out there. I'd convene a grand jury."

  "Would you?" she smiled and pulled a strand of dark brown hair off her face and tucked it behind an ear. When she did, he noticed a large diamond ring on her left ring finger. His heart sank, as the view confirmed what he had thought earlier he had glimpsed there. Damn, he thought, engaged? Why are the brainy ones already taken when I finally get to meet them? Not to mention gorgeous.

  "Would I investigate them? I'm sure someone already is. It's criminal and they should be punished."

  She began, "My dad says--"

  "Nikki!" her father interrupted. He was pointing a thick finger at her. "Can we leave Dad out of this?"

  Thaddeus looked down at his plate, a disinterested someone who
hadn't been listening. But he had, and her father knew it.

  Nikki turned red and dropped her eyes to her plate. It was an uneasy moment.

  "Hey," Thaddeus said, coming to her rescue, "how would you like to hit the zoo with me tomorrow? I've been looking for someone to take it in with me."

  The National Zoo, he knew, charged no admission fee. It was free to one and all, and Thaddeus had used it before as a wooing location, given his financial state: always redlined on dire.

  "I'd love to do that with you," she said. "Normally I study on Sundays but I can certainly afford a few hours off to see the pandas."

  "You'll fall in love with the baby, Bei-Bei. Hey, you know they've got Panda-Cams where you can watch them live on your computer, right?"

  She smiled brightly. "My, Murf, get out much?"

  He had to laugh. "Can I tell you the truth?"

  "Please do."

  "The truth is, until I get paid on Friday I'm all but broke. A trip to a free zoo is the best I can offer anyone right now."

  "You and me both. My dad gives me only so much money per semester and it has to last. I've already blown it on a new laptop and new stuff for my studio apartment. I'm just as broke as you, Murf."

  "Well," he said slowly, "you could always sell that giant diamond on your hand."

  She raised her hand to look at her diamond ring.

  "That's all I have left of Charlie Macintyre. He was killed in Afghanistan. We were engaged."

  "Jeez, I'm sorry," Thaddeus said. "I feel awful for saying that. Please forgive me."

  "No, no, no, that's not necessary. I just haven't taken it off. I don't know if I ever will. We were very much in love. We were high school best friends and got engaged our sophomore year in college. Junior year he went to Afghanistan—Special Forces. I went to school. I never saw him again."