Camel Club 01 - The Camel Club

by David Baldacci

  Al-Omari folded his arms across his chest and assumed a stony look. “Bastards like you will serve us well in the next life.”

  “A son and a daughter,” Gray continued as though he hadn’t heard the man’s retort. “I realize that the women’s fate may not overly concern you. However, the boy—”

  “My son will gladly die—”

  Gray interrupted in a very firm voice. “I will not kill your son. I have other plans for him. He just turned eighteen months old?”

  A trace of concern crossed al-Omari’s face. “How did you know that?”

  “You will raise him in the Muslim faith?”

  Al-Omari did not answer; he simply stared at the camera.

  Gray continued. “Well, if you do not agree to work with us, I will take your son from his mother, and he will be adopted by a loving couple who will raise him as their own.” Gray paused for the emphasis he would place on his next words. “He will be raised in the Christian faith in America by Americans. Or not. It’s all up to you.”

  So stunned was al-Omari that he rose from the chair and staggered toward the camera, until hands appeared and forced him back into his chair.

  The next words out of his mouth were in Arabic, but were nonetheless clear enough. Moments later, his rage uncontrollable, al-Omari had to be physically restrained as the threats continued to flow. Finally, his mouth was taped shut.

  Gray pushed the man’s file away. “Over the last few years 7,816 Americans have died at the hands of people like you. All of these deaths have taken place on American soil. Counting attacks overseas, the death toll is nearly ten thousand. Some of these victims were children who were denied the opportunity to grow up to practice any religious faith at all. I will give you twenty-four hours to make your decision. I ask you to consider it carefully. If you work with us, you and your family will live out your lives in comfort. However, if you choose not to work with us . . .” Gray nodded to the man next to him, and the screen went blank.

  Gray looked at six more files in front of him. Four represented other Middle Easterners, much like al-Omari. The fifth was a neo-Nazi based in Arkansas, and the sixth, Kim Fong, was a member of a Southeast Asian group with ties to known Middle East terrorist organizations. These men were “ghost detainees” in the unofficial nomenclature. No one other than Gray and a few select people at NIC knew they were even in custody. Like the CIA, NIC maintained clandestine paramilitary squads in hot spots all over the world. One of their tasks was to capture alleged enemies of America and afford them no due process whatsoever.

  Gray would put similar proposals to all the ghost detainees, although the inducements would vary depending on the intelligence Gray had gathered on each man’s background. Money worked with more of them than one would think. Rich people rarely blew themselves and others to bits for religious or any other reasons. However, they often manipulated other people to do it for them. Gray would be lucky if half accepted his offer, but he would gladly take those odds.

  An hour later Gray left NIC. Only the skinhead had agreed outright to help, doubtless spurred on by Gray’s threat to turn him over to a radically violent anti-Nazi group headquartered in South America if he didn’t cooperate. Other than that, the night had been a disappointment.

  As Gray walked to his car he reflected on the situation confronting him. The violence was mounting on each side, and the harder one side hit, the harder the other tried to hit back. Using just a fraction of its nuclear arsenal, the United States could wipe out the entire Middle East, vaporizing everyone in the blink of an eye, along with every holy site for two of the world’s major religions. Barring that unthinkable scenario, Gray did not see any clear resolution. This was not a war of professional armored battalions versus turbaned rabble in the streets toting rifles and RPGs. And it was not simply a difference of religions. It was a battle against a mind-set, of how people should conduct their lives, a battle that had political, social and cultural facets melded together into an exceedingly complex mosaic of humanity under enormous strain. At times Gray humbly wondered whether the conflict should be fought with psychiatrists and counselors instead of soldiers and spies. Yet all he could do was get up each day and do his job.

  Gray sat back against the worn leather of the Suburban he was riding in while the armed guards all around him kept a close lookout. Gray closed his eyes for fifteen minutes until he felt the vehicle slow. Then came the familiar rattle as the motorcade rolled across the gravel drive leading up to Gray’s modest home. It was as well guarded as the VP’s digs at the Naval Observatory. President Brennan was not about to let anything happen to his intelligence chief.

  Gray lived alone, but not by choice. He went inside, allowed himself a beer to unwind and then headed upstairs to sleep for a few hours. As was his habit before retiring, he picked up the two pictures on the fireplace mantel across from his bed. The first was his wife, Barbara, a woman who’d shared most of his adult life. The second photo was of his only child, his daughter, Margaret, or Maggie as everyone had called her. Had? He had never grown comfortable referring to his family in the past tense. Yet how else did one refer to the dead and buried? He kissed both of the pictures and set them back down.

  After he had climbed into bed, the horrible weight of depression lasted thirty minutes, less than usual, and then Carter Gray fell into an exhausted sleep. In five hours he would rise and again engage in the only battle he now considered worth fighting.

  CHAPTER

  7

  ALEX FORD’S WALK THAT NIGHT took him east, and he soon found himself in familiar territory: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now gracing the area between the White House and Lafayette Park were elm trees and retractable bollards, interspersed with guard booths camouflaged so they didn’t stand out like prison gun towers. However, the key here was, and always would be, security, regardless of how many new trees and pretty flowers they planted.

  “Hey, Alex,” a man in a suit said as he walked out of the front security gate.

  “You going on or off duty, Bobby?”

  Bobby smiled. “You see an ear fob sticking out my ass? I’m going home to the little woman and kids, unless they moved out and forgot to tell me, which isn’t exactly beyond the realm of possibility, since I’m never there. What brings you back here?”

  Alex shrugged. “You know, once you get POTUS duty inside you, you can’t get it out.”

  “Right! I’m counting the days till I see my family more than once a year.”

  “You on the campaign travel team?”

  Bobby nodded. “We leave day after tomorrow to shake some more hands and make some more speeches from Iowa to Mississippi. Because of all the campaign stuff, we were shorthanded and had to pull in some WFOs on twenty-one-day rotations to post POTUS’ and the VP’s families.”

  “I know. The halls at work are pretty empty.”

  “Brennan did a fund-raiser tonight. Kiss-up for dollars. Lucky me, I got to stay here.”

  “Yeah, lucky you.”

  Bobby laughed. “I don’t know if you heard, but the man’s hometown in Pennsylvania changed its name to Brennan. He’s going up there during the campaign to attend the dedication. Talk about your ego trips.” Bobby drew closer and said in a low voice, “He’s not a bad guy. Hell, I voted for him. But he’s a slick one. Some of the stuff he’s done on the side . . .”

  “He’s not the first.”

  “If John Q. Public knew what we did, huh?”

  As he headed off, Alex glanced over at Lafayette Park where the remaining “White House protesters” were located, or at least that’s how Alex and other Secret Service agents politely referred to them. The signs and tents and odd-looking folks had always held a fascination for him. There used to be far more of them, with elaborate signs erected everywhere. Yet even before 9/11 a crackdown had been enforced, and when the area in front of the White House was redone, this created a good excuse to shove these people away. Yet even the powerless in America had rights, and a few of them hooked up with the A
CLU and sued in court for the right to return and the Supreme Court eventually sided with them. However, only two of the protesters had elected to come back.

  During his stint at the White House Alex got to know some of the protesters. Most were certifiably crazy and therefore closely watched by the Secret Service. There was one fellow he remembered who dressed only in neckties, strategically placing them over his body. Yet not all of the protesters were asylum candidates, including the man he’d come to visit.

  Alex stopped by one tent and called out, “Oliver? It’s Alex Ford. You there?”

  “He no here,” a female voice said contemptuously.

  Alex glanced over at the woman as she walked up with a paper cup of coffee in hand. “How’s it going, Adelphia?”

  “Doctors are immorally killing babies all over this country, that’s how it goes.”

  The woman was nothing if not passionate, Alex thought. Adelphia might’ve carried her passion somewhat to an extreme, but Alex still respected her for at least having one.

  “Yeah, that’s what I hear.” He paused respectfully. “Uh, where’s Oliver?”

  “I tell you, he no here. He have somewhere to go!”

  “Where?” Alex knew where both Stone and Adelphia lived but didn’t want to let on to the woman that he had this information. Adelphia, he’d come to learn, was paranoid enough.

  “Not am I his keeper.” She turned away.

  Alex smiled. When he’d been on presidential protection detail, he’d always suspected that the lady had a thing for Mr. Stone. Most of the agents who knew Oliver Stone had written him off as a harmless crackpot who adopted the name of a famous film director for some ridiculous reason. Alex had taken the time to get to know the man, however, finding Stone erudite and thoughtful, and more in touch with the political and economic complexities of the world than some wonks who worked across the street. In particular, the man knew by heart every detail of seemingly every conspiracy ever reported on. Some of the agents called him King Con for this attribute. And Stone played one hell of a game of chess.

  Alex called out to Adelphia, “If you see Oliver, tell him Agent Ford was looking for him; you remember me, right?” Adelphia made no sign that she’d heard him, but then again, that was just Adelphia.

  He headed back on foot to where his car was parked. Along the way Alex passed something that made him stop. On the far corner two men, one black and one white, were working on a freestanding ATM housed in a sliver between two buildings. They were dressed in overalls that had “Service Staff” printed across the back. Their van was parked at the curb. It had a company name and phone number printed on the side.

  Alex slipped into the shadows, pulled out his cell phone and called the number shown on the van. An official-sounding recording answered, giving the business hours for the company and so on. Alex did a quick look-see in the van, then pulled out his Secret Service badge and walked over to the men.

  “Hey, fellows, you servicing the machine?”

  The short man eyed the badge and nodded. “Yeah. Lucky us.”

  Alex looked at the ATM, and his very experienced eye saw what he thought he would see. “Hope you guys are union.”

  “Proud members of Local 453,” the smaller man said with a laugh. “At least we’re getting double time to do this crap.”

  Okay, here we go again.

  Alex drew his pistol and pointed it at them. “Pop the machine open.”

  The black guy said irately, “You Secret Service, what business you got checking out an ATM?”

  “Not that I need to give you a reason, but the Secret Service was originally formed to protect the official currency of the United States.” Alex pointed the gun directly at the black man’s head. “Open it!”

  Stuffed inside the ATM were no fewer than a hundred cards.

  Alex gave the pair their Miranda speech while he put PlastiCuffs on them. Then he called the arrest in. As they were waiting, the black guy looked over at him.

  “We been doing this a long time and had no trouble. How the hell you figure it?”

  “There’s a skimmer reader attached to the card slot. It captures the PIN so you can clone the card. And on top of that banks are cheap. So there’s no way one’s going to pay some union guys double overtime to schlep down here in the middle of the night to service this thing.”

  After the police took the men away, Alex walked down the street to his car. Even after the successful if unexpected bust, all he could think about was one Kate Adams, who fought for justice by day and poured out highballs by night and seemed very close to the big-knuckled Tom Hemingway of the undisclosed supersecret agency.

  Alex could only hope tomorrow would start on a better note.

  CHAPTER

  8

  STONE, MILTON, REUBEN AND Caleb walked along the main trail on Theodore Roosevelt Island, a ninety-acre memorial to the former president and Rough Rider that sat in the middle of the Potomac River. They soon reached a clearing where an immense statue of Teddy Roosevelt stood with his right arm raised to the heavens as though he were about to retake the oath of office nearly ninety years after his death. The area was elaborately laid out with brick pavers, two curved stone bridges over man-made canals of water, and a pair of huge fountains that flanked the statue.

  Oliver Stone sat cross-legged in front of the statue, and the others joined him there. Stone was an enthusiastic fan of T.R., which was the reason they were here, albeit as trespassers, since the island officially closed at dark. He announced in a solemn voice, “The regular meeting of the Camel Club is officially called to order. In the absence of a formal agenda I move that we discuss observations since the last meeting and then open the floor for new business. Do I have a second?”

  “I second the motion,” Reuben said automatically.

  “All in favor say aye,” Stone added.

  The ayes carried the motion, and Stone opened the notebook he pulled from his knapsack. Reuben slipped some crumpled pieces of paper from his pocket, and Milton slid his laptop computer out, then took a small bottle of antibacterial lotion out of his pocket and thoroughly washed his hands. Stone used a small penlight to see his notes, while Reuben read by the flickering flame of his cigarette lighter.

  “Brennan went out late tonight,” Stone reported. “Carter Gray was with him.”

  “Those two are joined at the hip,” Reuben noted hotly.

  “Like J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson,” Caleb added jokingly as he took off his bowler hat.

  “I was thinking more of Lenin and Trotsky,” Reuben growled.

  “So you don’t trust Gray?” Stone asked.

  “How can you trust any prick who actually likes being called a czar?” Reuben replied. “And as far as Brennan goes, all I can say is he should thank his lucky stars for terrorists because but for them his ass would be headed for the unemployment line.”

  “Reading the newspapers again, are we?” Stone said in an amused tone.

  “I use the papers to get my laughs, just like everybody else.”

  Stone looked thoughtful. “James Brennan is a gifted politician, and his intellect is first-rate. But more than that, he has the power to make people trust him. Yet inside, a darker beast lurks. He has an agenda that is not available to the public.”

  Reuben eyed him closely. “It seems to me that you’re describing Carter Gray more than you are the president.”

  Milton broke in exitedly. “I’ve compiled facts on several conspiracies of global proportion that have not been reported by any news media.”

  “And I,” Reuben said as he eyed his notes, “have personally noted three occasions when the present Speaker of the House has been unfaithful to his quite fetching wife.”

  “Personally noted?” Caleb asked skeptically as he stared at his friend.

  Reuben barked, “Two of my close acquaintances in the know keep me abreast of things. Clearly, despite the trouble some of his amorous predecessors have gotten into, it still seems our esteemed congressma
n continues to cavalierly insert his dinky in places it should not be.” He waved his notes. “It’s all here.”

  “What close acquaintances?” Caleb persisted.

  “High-placed sources that desire to remain anonymous, if you must damn well know,” Reuben snapped as he stuffed these allegedly libidinous revelations back in his pocket.

  Milton interrupted impatiently. “Yes, but let me tell you about my theories.” He spent the next twenty minutes enthusiastically discussing theoretical ties between North Korea and Great Britain for purposes of worldwide terrorism, and a possible attack on the euro and yen by a cabal in Yemen sponsored by a top member of the Saudi royal family.

  “I consider these facts material to the worldwide apocalypse that is most certainly on the horizon,” Milton concluded.

  The other members of the Camel Club sat there looking a bit overwhelmed; it was a normal reaction after Milton had delivered one of his convoluted diatribes.

  Finally, Reuben said, “Yes, but that North Korea/Great Britain thing is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think, Milton? I mean the bloody Koreans are absolutely humorless, and whatever else you say about the Brits, they are a very witty people.”

  Stone looked at Caleb. “Anything interesting on your end?”

  Caleb thought for a moment. “Well, we had a real scare when we couldn’t find our Dutch Bible.”

  They all looked at him expectantly.

  Caleb exclaimed, “Our Dutch Bible! It has hand-colored illustrations by Romeyn de Hooghe. He’s generally thought to be the most important Dutch illustrator of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. But it turned out all right. It was there the whole time, simply a clerical error.”

  “Thank God,” Reuben said sarcastically. “We wouldn’t want a de Hoose on the loose.”

  Disappointed, Stone turned back to Reuben. “Other than your lascivious congressman, do you have anything of real interest?”

  Reuben shrugged. “I’ve been out of the loop too long, Oliver. People forget you.”

  “Then why don’t we move on to something a little more concrete?”