“Yes. And I returned the favor, unless you’ve forgotten.”
“And isn’t he the reason you got that special commendation for busting that spy ring?”
“I get the point, Reuben.”
“No, obviously you don’t,” the big man said, rising up to stand next to the tall Secret Service agent. “Because if you say anything to help them find Oliver, you’re a traitor, plain and simple.”
“There’s nothing simple about it, Reuben. I’m still a federal agent. I took an oath to uphold the law.”
“What does Annabelle think about that?” Reuben demanded.
“What the hell business is that of yours?”
“She thought it sucked too, didn’t she?”
“Please,” Caleb pleaded. “I’m sure Oliver would not have wanted this to drive a wedge between us.”
“There’s no wedge, Caleb. There’s just the right way to be a friend and a wrong way,” Reuben pointed out. “And I just want supercop here to be real clear on which side he needs to come down.”
Alex did an eyeball-to-eyeball with Reuben. “Is that some sort of threat?”
“Oliver has been through hell and back because of Simpson and Gray. I’m glad they’re dead. I would’ve put a round in their heads myself.”
“Then you would’ve gone to prison.”
“Right, under your way of thinking I guess Hitler deserved a trial.”
“What the hell is your problem? You’re making it seem like I’m against Oliver.”
“It sounds to me like you are!”
“Alex, maybe you should leave, before things get out of hand,” Caleb said. “Please.”
Alex looked from the red-eyed Reuben to the distressed Caleb and walked out the door.
So much for the Camel Club, he thought. That was over. Done. Dead. And he was reasonably certain he would never see Annabelle again.
So preoccupied was he that Alex never saw the two men watching him from their car. When he drove off they followed. Meanwhile, another pair waited outside Caleb’s apartment. The hunt apparently had already started.
CHAPTER 8
AS THE TRAIN pulled out of the station that was basically a few planks thrown together and poorly lighted at that, Stone looked at the quarterback. Then he eyed the three punks, who were staring at them both with looks of unfinished business they wanted to jump right on.
Stone heaved up his duffel bag and grabbed the young man’s arm. “Let’s go.”
He jerked back. “I ain’t going nowhere with you.”
“Then you can stay here and let them finish what they started,” Stone said, nodding at Beefy and his boys.
“They’ll wanta jump you mor’n me. You kicked their ass.”
“Your ass, on the other hand, they were kicking pretty easy. So which road do you think they’re going to pick?”
For the first time Stone saw some element of reason slide across the young man’s features.
“Okay, now that I seem to have your attention, why don’t you start by telling me where you’re coming from?”
“Home. Just getting away. Make my own life.”
“I know the feeling. But as things stand right now it might make more sense to go back home, get patched up and then start your trip over. You got parents?”
“Got a mom.”
“Where’s home?”
The kid looked angrily over at the gang of three, who hadn’t moved a muscle.
“I don’t want to go back there. I just got away from that damn place.”
Stone ran his gaze over the kid’s jacket. “Looks like you were some athlete.”
“Best ever to come out of that little shithole, and look what good it did me.”
“Not many people make it in professional sports. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it, or that you’re some kind of failure.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, changed my whole life,” the kid said scornfully.
Stone let out a heavy sigh. “Look, son, I’ve got my own problems, so I’m about five seconds from leaving your ass to the hyenas over there unless we get an attitude adjustment real fast.”
“What do you want me to do?” he snapped.
“Tell me your name and where you’re from.”
“Danny. Danny Riker,” he said grudgingly. “Satisfied? And what’s your name?”
Stone didn’t hesitate. “Ben.” That had been his father’s name. “From where, Danny Riker?”
“Divine, Virginia. Little coal-mining town just this side of hell.”
“How far from here?”
“About here to the moon.”
Stone sighed again. “Is your mother still there?”
“That’s right.”
“So you just left her in the little hellhole all by herself?”
“She’s not alone, trust me.”
“You got money to get back home?”
“Maybe.”
“You sure, or did you lose it all in the poker game? They say you were cheating.”
“They just said that because they can’t play cards worth shit.” He glanced over at Beefy and cracked a smile. “Ain’t that right, fat boy?”
“Where were you headed to on the train?” Stone asked.
“Where there ain’t no coal to mine.”
“You worked in the mines?”
Danny looked around. “I’m hungry.”
He walked off toward a greasy spoon visible about a block away. It had a neon sign spelling out “restaurant” in cursive, with only the final “T” still lighted. In his head Stone instantly dubbed it the “One T.”
Stone glanced back at Beefy and his battered goons. Beefy had a knife in his hand. If Stone left Danny alone now he was certain the men would finish him off. He’d killed many men over the years. Perhaps it was worth a bit of a detour from his plans to save one.
They ate at the counter with Stone occasionally looking over his shoulder to stare at Beefy and his boys sitting at a booth gobbling up their burgers and fries and shooting nasty glances at them from over their beer mugs.
When Stone went to pay the check Danny dropped the cash on the bill and rose.
“Thanks for helping me out back there,” he said, without a trace of an attitude.
“You’re welcome.”
“You fight pretty good for a geezer.” Somehow this statement did not come out as an insult.
“I might not be as old as you think. I’ve just had a tough life.”
“Ain’t we all.”
“So where to now?”
“Gotta keep rolling or else you die. Think somebody important said that once.”
Not bad advice to live by, Stone thought. I’m a rolling stone right now.
As they left the One T Beefy confronted them outside the door, his two mates right behind him.
“Where the hell you two think you’re going?”
“You know, I can set your nose back in place if you want,” Stone said amiably.
“You lay another hand on me, you son of a bitch, I’ll cut you bad.” He brandished a knife. Well, it was technically a knife, but it was so small and the guy was handling it so awkwardly that Stone had trouble thinking of it as actually being a weapon.
“Okay. Good luck then.”
He and Danny started to walk past when Beefy slashed at them with the blade.
A second later he dropped to his knees holding his belly. Danny rubbed his fist and looked down at his attacker.
“Not nearly as much fun when it’s just one-on-one, is it, chunko?”
Beefy weakly threw a punch at Danny, catching him lightly on the knee. Danny wound up to nail him again, but then just pushed him away. He grinned at Stone. “Can’t hit a man when he’s down. Ain’t sporting.”
Stone glanced sharply at Beefy’s two friends, who seemed to be deciding whether to attack or run. He said, “I’m done with you guys. So if you don’t take your friend here and get the hell out of my life right now I’m going to beat both of you into a coma.”
He knelt down, picked up the knife, and with a flick of his wrist tossed it ten feet where it embedded neatly in the wooden façade of the One T. Seconds later his two sidekicks were helping Beefy down the street as fast as they could go.
Danny was staring at the knife stuck in the wood, his mouth agape. He pulled it out and tossed it in a trash can. “Where’d you learn to throw like that?”
“Summer camp. So what’s it going to be, Danny? Home to get patched up, or running around on that gimpy leg watching your back for those a-holes?”
“Home. Couple days. No more.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“What about you?”
“Flop here for one night. Wait for the next train south. Tired of the cold.” Just tired.
The men started walking down the street.
“I wasn’t cheating at cards.”
“I believe you.”
“How come?”
“You don’t seem dumb enough to cheat when it’s three against one. How you getting to Divine? The train go there?”
Danny laughed. “Hell, nothing goes to Divine. Bus goes near it. Walk or thumb it from there. Won’t be the first time for me.”
Stone’s gaze caught on a black sedan that pulled slowly down the street. It stopped next to a police car and the driver of the sedan rolled down his window and started talking to the cop. Stone’s eyes dropped to the white government plate on the sedan.
Bureau car? Here? Did the train conductor suspect something and make a call?
Stone turned to face Danny. “Divine a pretty isolated place?”
Danny’s gaze drifted to the twin cars and then back to Stone. He’d clearly noted Stone’s reaction to the police car. “Isolated? Let me put it like this. Divine’s the sort of place you got to really want to get to if you want to find it. Although why anyone would beats me. And once you do find it then the only thing you want to do is get the hell out of there.”
“Sounds good.”
“What?”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m telling you, man, it’s hell.”
“I don’t think so, Danny.”
“What makes you a damn expert?”
Because I’ve actually seen hell. And it wasn’t in Virginia.
CHAPTER 9
JOE KNOX CLIMBED IN his Range Rover and drove slowly home, deep in thought. He’d gone over every scrap of paper in that box and each held a startling revelation. Yet while the sum total of information was considerable, the investigative leads flowing from this intelligence were negligible. The CIA was exemplary in covering its tracks, and the Agency had outdone itself here. However, Knox had been able to piece a few things together.
The reason that Gray’s home had been blown up six months ago seemed tied to an unauthorized CIA operation targeting the Soviets back in the 1980s. Exact details were not available and probably never would be. The connection in between was anything but clear. No names were available. One page in the box had stunned even the veteran Knox. There apparently had been a gun battle at the unfinished Capitol Visitor Center around the same time that Carter Gray’s home had been destroyed. An unknown number of CIA paramilitary personnel had been killed, the real circumstances of their deaths hidden from public view by the Agency’s very efficient disinformation machine. It seemed that Gray, then technically out of government, had been behind this mission. Who had killed the agents and why they were there in the first place remained a mystery.
A shoot-out in the middle of the Capitol? Gray must’ve been insane.
There was an indication in the file that Gray had met with the current CIA director, a man Knox considered a useless political appointee who had started at the Agency but had been brain-drained by his later years in the Congress. Whether Knox could get in to see the man was not a given. As Macklin Hayes had made clear, there was a difference of opinion at the Agency as to how this matter should proceed. Or not proceed.
Gray had also been given a secret audience with the president at Camp David. Knox suspected this piece of information was one of the ones Macklin Hayes had gotten hold of that he wasn’t supposed to know about. Knox realized that the odds of his interrogating the president of the United States about this meeting were about the same as his spontaneously combusting while in the shower.
One of the most interesting pieces of information he’d gleaned from the file had to do with the now defunct Triple Six Division of the CIA, or its “political destabilization” arm as it unofficially had been known to the CIA rank and file. The less polite term of course was “government assassin.” Triple Six was one of the CIA’s most closely guarded secrets. Officially the CIA did not kill, torture or falsely imprison. Or, for that matter lie, cheat or steal. Unfortunately, the media had made some inroads into the Agency’s past, resulting in some embarrassing revelations. Officially, Knox had followed the company line and been upset that the press had ferreted out some of this skullduggery. Personally, he’d never had much use for that side of the Agency. While it was true that the United States was better off with certain people dead, Knox had felt the CIA’s best use of resources was in intelligence gathering, not authorized murder or stringing people up by their toes or making them believe they were drowning to induce them to talk. His experience had been that tortured people would tell you anything to make the pain stop. There were far more effective ways to get to the truth.
Gray had apparently concluded that several retired Triple Six assassins had been murdered. Whether these deaths were tied to the unauthorized mission in the former Soviet Union he had no way of knowing. According to one of Gray’s bodyguards, the former intelligence head had met with a man at Gray’s home on the very night it had been blown up. That man worked in a cemetery in Washington, D.C., and had been questioned by the FBI in connection with Gray’s believed murder. And it was this man—the one Macklin Hayes had alluded to—who had suggested the bomber of Gray’s home might’ve jumped off the cliff into the Chesapeake Bay.
Knox smiled grimly as he thought of the name the man had given the FBI agents.
Oliver Stone.
Was he a lunatic or something else? Since Carter Gray was not known to summon mentally unstable people to his home, Knox opted for the latter. Oliver Stone had been accompanied by a Secret Service agent when he’d visited Gray’s demolished house. That too was interesting. He would have to get acquainted with Agent Alex Ford.
The last bit of interesting information had to do with a recent disinterment at Arlington National Cemetery. The grave of a man named John Carr had been dug up on orders from Gray. The coffin had been taken to CIA headquarters. Knox did not know the results of that action or actually who had ended up being in the coffin. He had seen some of Carr’s confidential military record, and it was an exemplary one. Yet then the man had simply disappeared.
Knox’s instincts told him that a man like Carr, with proven killing skills, would’ve made a productive member of Triple Six. Many of their members had come from the military. And right around the time Carr had vanished from public record was when Triple Six had been at the height of its activity. That had raised more questions than answers.
He reached his house and pulled into the garage. A moment later his daughter, Melanie, opened the door to the kitchen. She’d earlier phoned him to say she was coming over to take him to dinner. After he’d gotten the summons from Macklin Hayes he’d called her back saying he couldn’t make it, so he was surprised to see her.
The aroma of a cooked meal reached him from the kitchen. She gave him a hug and ushered him in, taking off his coat and hanging it up.
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