The Falcon and the Fallout

Finally released after spending half of his life in prison, and still he had to wait. So Christopher Boyce hung around the prison parking lot, rubbernecking, taking in the fresh air around Sheridan, Ore., unsure what to make of freedom. A half hour went by before the big Suburban at last came lumbering up the driveway, carrying his father, a former FBI agent, and his mother, once a Catholic nun.

They had wanted to throw a joyous family reunion right there in front of the gates of the federal penitentiary, to gather around with Chris and his eight younger siblings, perhaps their extended families too. But he said no; he just could not handle such raw emotion so soon. Instead, he quietly climbed into the back seat and they drove east out of the Coast Ranges, headed toward the airport in Portland. He was going to catch a plane to San Francisco, to a halfway house, where, after six months, he could make parole. On March 15, 2003, he finally would be free.

Boyce stared out the window of the Suburban. It was mid-September. The trees were still green, the birds aloft. His eyes bounced back and forth, amazed at all the splendor. ''Somehow, I'm not quite sure how, but somehow the whole thing is over,'' he told himself. ''I am absolutely . . . I don't know what to say . . . This huge weight on the top of my head . . . It is finally done.''

But all is not peaceful in the world to which Christopher John Boyce has returned.

Nearly three decades ago, his father had helped him land a job at TRW Inc. in Redondo Beach. There he was given access to the ''Black Vault'' and its trove of communications with CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. He and a childhood friend, Andrew Daulton Lee, the two of them once altar boys together, began selling classified documents that Boyce smuggled home. Their buyer was the Russian Embassy in Mexico City.

What brought such a dangerous gambit? A 22-year-old's mix of liberal ideology and a desire for cash to buy drugs. Their scheme succeeded for little more than a year, until 1977. Boyce and Lee were arrested, tried and convicted of espionage in federal court in Los Angeles and sent away for long prison sentences.