Drop the Burger

The Falcon is snared mid-bite

The man known as Anthony Lester sat in his beat-up Oldsmobile at a fast-food restaurant in Port Angeles, Wash., eating a cheeseburger and perusing a flight manual. He had been taking flying lessons and hoped to have his pilot's license within a matter of days. It was not to be. Two undercover federal agents had recognized him in the restaurant and discreetly called for a back-up car with two more agents, who arrived and confirmed his identity by the mole on his left cheek. Lester, dressed in shorts and sweatshirt after a 14-mile run, looked up to find three agents crouching with their pistols leveled at him. When he got out of the car, one of the lawmen barked an order: "Drop that hamburger!" Lester smirked, but his levity quickly vanished: "Who are you guys?"

The agents were part of the team that had spent the previous 19 months tracking Christopher John Boyce, 28, alias Anthony E. Lester. Convicted of selling CIA spy satellite secrets to the Soviet Union, Boyce was serving a 40-year sentence when he escaped from federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., on Jan. 21, 1980. According to the U.S. Marshals Service, which had primary responsibility for finding him, over 100 sightings of Boyce were reported during his flight. Federal agents interviewed 800 people in connection with the case and traveled to Africa, Central America and Europe to follow up leads.

But the authorities did not pick up Boyce's scent until a sighting in Washington State in late July. They soon focused on the remote Olympic Peninsula. One reason: it is a habitat of falcons, Boyce's passion since childhood and the source of his nickname in a bestselling book about his spy exploits. FBI agents also suspected that Boyce was involved in a series of bank robberies in the Pacific Northwest. A suspicious title switch on a boat license turned up the name Anthony E. Lester, of Beaver, a small town 50 miles west of Port Angeles. The photograph on Lester's driver's license resembled Boyce--and the man snapped on bank film during at least one holdup. The investigators descended on Beaver and learned that Lester had bought a 30-ft. boat for $6,500. But they moved on when they heard he might be living in Port Angeles (pop. 17,500). There they discovered that a Tony Lester was buying vitamins (a Boyce fetish) and marine paint in local stores. A team of 27 undercover agents blanketed the area and waited for Boyce to show his face. When he finally did, they found a rifle, two wigs and false sideburns in his car trunk, signs of life on the run and possibly bank robbing. Says Robert Christman, chief deputy U.S. marshal in Seattle: "He became cocky. He made a lot of mistakes."

A former altar boy and the son of an ex-FBI agent, Boyce grew up in Palos Verdes, Calif., a well-heeled suburb of Los Angeles. He became disillusioned with America after Viet Nam and Watergate. While working as a communications clerk with top security clearance for TRW Inc. in nearby Redondo Beach, he and a friend decided to peddle classified information to the Soviet Union through its embassy in Mexico City. The pair sold $76,000 worth of secrets before they were caught in early 1977.

Federal authorities are still unsure if Boyce received foreign help while on the lam. They think he may have spent part of the time abroad, before blending into the rural life of Washington as a quiet, well-mannered young man. "I have some ambivalent feelings about [him]," admits Christman. "The guy is likable. The only problem is that he is a manipulator; he uses people." Adds Kay Sullivan, whose husband worked with Boyce in a short-lived commercial fishing venture in La Push, on the Pacific coast: "He was not anti-American. He cared about his country."

Snared at last, the Falcon paces his cell in Everett, Wash., under 24-hour guard, refusing to eat. His lawyer says he will try to starve himself to death, and marshals are prepared to force-feed him if necessary. Says Christman: "He didn't believe he was going to be captured. His self-image, his ego told him he wasn't going to be. Now he is faced with the reality of the cell. That's a big adjustment for someone with a makeup like this one."

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