“I’m not sure I understand,” I said, reaching for my drink.
“I’m not sure I do, either. I ask myself if I’m imagining things.”
“Abby, you’re being cryptic. Please explain.”
Taking a deep breath as she got out a cigarette, she replied, “I’ve been interested in the deaths of these couples for a long time. I’ve been doing some investigating, and the reactions I’ve gotten from the beginning are odd. It’s gone beyond the usual reluctance I often run into with the police. I bring up the subject and people practically hang up on me. Then this past June, the FBI came to see me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I stopped basting and looked hard at her.
“You remember that triple homicide in Williamsburg? The mother, father, and son shot to death during a robbery?”
“Yes.”
“I was working on a feature about it, and had to drive to Williamsburg. As you know, when you get off Sixty four, if you turn right you head toward Colonial Williamsburg, William and Mary. But if you turn left off the exit ramp, in maybe two hundred yards you dead end at the entrance of Camp Peary. I wasn’t thinking. I took the wrong, turn.”
“I’ve done that once or twice myself,” I admitted.
She went on, “I drove up to the guard booth and explained I’d taken a wrong turn. Talk about a creepy place. God. All these big warning signs saying things like’ Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity,’ and ‘Entering This Facility Signifies Your Consent to the Search of Your Person and Personal Property.’ I was half expecting a SWAT team of Neanderthals in camouflage to bolt out of the bushes and haul me away.”
“The base police are not a friendly lot,” I said, somewhat amused.
“Well, I wasted no time getting the hell out of there,” Abby said, “and, in truth, forgot all about it until four days later when two FBI agents appeared in the lobby of the Post looking for me. They wanted to know what I’d been doing in Williamsburg, why I’d driven to Camp Peary. Obviously, my plate number had been recorded on film and traced back to the newspaper. It was weird.”
“Why would the FBI be interested?”
I asked. “Camp Peary is CIA.”
“The CIA has no enforcement powers in the United States. Maybe that’s why. Maybe the jerks were really CIA agents posing as FBI. Who can say what the hell is going on when you’re dealing with those spooks? Besides, the CIA has never admitted that Camp Peary is its main training facility, and the agents never mentioned the CIA when they interrogated me. But I knew what they were getting at, and they knew I knew.”
“What else did they ask?”
“Basically, they wanted to know if I was writing something about Camp Peary, maybe trying to sneak in. I told them if I had intended to sneak in, I would have been a little more covert about it than driving straight to the guard booth, and though I wasn’t currently working on anything about, and I quote, ‘the CIA,’ maybe now I ought to consider it.”
“I’m sure that went over well,” I said dryly.
“The guys didn’t bat an eye. You know the way they are.”
“The CIA is paranoid, Abby, especially about Camp Peary. State police and emergency medical helicopters aren’t allowed to fly over it. Nobody violates that airspace or gets beyond the guard booth without being cleared by Jesus Christ.”
“Yet you’ve made that same wrong turn before, as have hundreds of tourists,” she reminded me. “The FBI’s never come looking for you, have they?”
“No. But I don’t work for the Post. ” I removed the steaks from the grill and she followed me into the kitchen. As I served the salads and poured wine, she continued to talk.
“Ever since the agents came to see me, peculiar things have been happening.”
“Such as?”
“I think my phones are being tapped.”
“Based on what?”
“It started with my phone at home. I’d be talking to someone and hear something. This has also happened at work, especially of late. A call will be transferred, and I have this strong sense that someone else is listening in. It’s hard to explain.”