The Collectors cc-2

by David Baldacci

  “A guy in the intelligence field probably has an alarm system.”

  Stone nodded. “I would be stunned if he didn’t. We’ll disable that first, before we go inside.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “As I once told Reuben when he asked me that, the library is open to everyone.”

  There wasn’t another house within their line of sight, but they still approached the rear of the house to avoid being seen. This required crawling on their bellies, then their knees, and finally crab-walking down a gentle slope twenty yards from the house. They halted here and Stone took another reconnoiter. The home had a walk-out basement with a pressure-treated deck on one end. The back was as dark as the front. With no streetlights and just a dash of ambient light, Stone’s night binoculars were working optimally. Through the green haze of the coated optics he could see everything he needed to.

  “I’m not spotting any movement, but make the call anyway,” he told Annabelle.

  Milton had gotten Trent’s home phone number off the Internet, a far more dangerous threat to America’s privacy than the poor National Security Agency ever thought of being. Annabelle used her cell phone to call. After four rings the voice mail kicked in, and they listened to a man’s voice instructing them to leave a message.

  “Our spy seems to be out in the cold tonight,” she said. “Are you armed?”

  “I don’t own a gun. You?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not into that. I go for brains over bullets.”

  “Good, guns aren’t great things to be into.”

  “You sound like you speak from experience.”

  “Now is not the time to swap life stories.”

  “I know, I’m just foreshadowing for when will be a good time.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be sticking around after this.”

  “I didn’t think I’d be sticking around for this. So you never know.”

  “Okay, the phone box is hanging on a foundation wall underneath the deck. Let’s move, keep it nice and slow.”

  As they crawled forward, a horse whinnied somewhere in the distance. There were small family farms scattered around here, though they were being rapidly ground under by northern Virginia’s colossal residential housing machine that randomly spit out condos, town houses, modest single-family homes and mansions with numbing speed. They’d passed several such farms on the way to Trent’s place, all of which had stalls, hay bales, paddocks and large critters nibbling grass. Fat piles of horse manure left on the streets had served as an exclamation point for the equines’ presence. Stone had almost stepped in some getting out of Annabelle’s rental car.

  They reached the phone box, and Stone spent five minutes evaluating the security system hardwired into it, and took another five minutes to disable it. After he’d rerouted the last wire, he said, “Let’s try the window right here. The doors probably have dead bolts. I brought a tool to force them, but let’s take the point of least resistance first.”

  That point was not the window, which was nailed shut.

  They moved down the rear of the house and finally found one window that was secured with window pins. Stone cut a circle of glass out, reached in, pulled out the pins and popped the lock. A minute later they were roaming down the hallway toward what looked to be the kitchen, with Stone in the lead holding a flashlight.

  “Nice place, but he appears to be a minimalist,” Annabelle noted. Trent’s taste in interior decoration did tend toward the spartan: a chair here, a table there. The kitchen was barren.

  Stone said, “He’s a bachelor. He probably eats out a lot.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s see if he has an office of some kind here. Most D.C. bureaucrats tend to bring their work home.”

  They found the office, but it was nearly as bare as the rest of the house, no papers or files. There were some photos on the credenza behind the desk. Stone pointed to one. A big, bearish man with a bluff, honest face, white hair and thick gray eyebrows was standing next to a smaller, flabby man with a bad comb-over but who possessed a pair of cagey brown eyes and a furtive expression.

  Stone said, “The big man is Bob Bradley. Trent’s next to him.”

  “Trent looks like a little weasel.” She stiffened. “What’s that vibrating sound?”

  “Damn, that’s my phone.” Stone unclipped his cell and looked at the screen. “It’s Caleb. I wonder what they found.”

  He never got a chance to hear.

  The heavy blow from behind knocked Stone unconscious.

  Annabelle let out a scream an instant before a wet cloth held by a very strong hand covered her mouth and nose. As she breathed in the chemical fumes and started to collapse, her gaze fell on a mirror hanging on a wall across the room. In the reflection she could see two men wearing black masks. One had her, and the other was standing over Stone. And behind them she saw a third man. It was the man in the picture, Albert Trent. He smiled, not realizing she had seen his reflection. Within a few moments her eyelids started fluttering, then closed, and she became limp.

  In accordance with Roger Seagraves’ instructions, one of the men removed the watch from Annabelle’s wrist. Seagraves already had a shirt of Stone’s. Although he was not killing them himself, Seagraves was orchestrating their deaths, which satisfied his collection criteria. He would especially covet the addition of a Triple Six, a first for his collection. Seagraves intended on giving it a particularly special place of honor.

  CHAPTER 58

  ANNABELLE REGAINED CONsciousness first. As her eyes came into focus, she saw the two men working away. One stood on a ladder while the other one was handing him things. She was lying bound hand and foot on a cold concrete floor. Directly across and facing her was Stone, his eyes closed. As she watched, his eyelids fluttered several times and then remained open. When he saw her, her gaze directed him to the two men. Their mouths weren’t bound, but neither wanted to alert their captors that they were awake.

  As Stone took in the room, his belly tensed. They were being held in the storage room at Fire Control, Inc. He squinted to see the label on the cylinder the men were preparing overhead. It was suspended from the ceiling by chains, which was why they were using a ladder to reach it.

  “Carbon dioxide, five thousand ppm,” he mouthed as Annabelle tried to understand him.

  The men were going to kill them the same way Jonathan DeHaven had died.

  Stone looked frantically around for something, anything, he could use to cut through his bindings. They probably wouldn’t have much time after the men had left the room before the gas would shoot out of the cylinder and devour the oxygen in the air, leaving them to suffocate. He spotted it about the time the men finished their work.

  “That should do it,” one of them said, climbing down.

  As the man stepped into the wash of the overhead light, Stone recognized him. It was the foreman from the team that had removed the cylinders from the library.

  When the men glanced over, Stone instantly closed his eyes. Acting on his cue, Annabelle did likewise.

  “Okay,” the foreman said, “let’s not waste time. The gas release triggers in three minutes. We’ll let it clear out and then get them out of here.”

  “Where are we dumping them?” the other man said.

  “A real out-of-the-way place. But it won’t matter if they’re found. The cops won’t be able to tell how they died. That’s what’s so sweet about this setup.”

  They grabbed the ladder and left. The instant the two men shut and locked the door behind them, Stone sat up and slid on his butt over to the worktable. He levered himself up, snatched a box cutter off the table, sat back down and propelled back over to Annabelle.

  He whispered, “Quick, take this knife and cut through my ropes. Hurry! We’ve got less than three minutes.”

  As they lay back-to-back, Annabelle moved the blade up and down as quickly as she could from such an awkward position. Once, she hit flesh and heard Stone gr
unt in pain, but he said, “Keep going, don’t worry about that. Hurry! Hurry!” His eyes were on the suspended cylinder. Facing the way he was, he could see what Annabelle couldn’t. There was a timer on the cylinder, and it was counting down fast.

  Annabelle cut as quickly as she could until she felt her arms would drop from her shoulders. Sweat was leaching into her eyes from the effort.

  Finally, Stone felt the rope start to give way. They had one minute left. He pulled his hands apart, giving her more room to work. She cut more and the ropes fell completely away. Stone sat up, undid the bindings on his feet and jumped up. He made no attempt to reach the cylinder. It was too high up, and even if he could get to it and figure out how to stop the countdown, the men would know something was wrong when they didn’t hear the gas release. He grabbed the oxygen tank and face mask that he’d seen on his previous visit and raced to Annabelle’s side. They had thirty seconds.

  He grabbed her bound hands and slid Annabelle to a far corner behind a pile of equipment. He threw a tarp over them, placed his head next to Annabelle’s, strapped the large oxygen shield over both their faces and turned on the feed line. A low hiss and the feeling of a light breeze in their faces showed that the line was working.

  A moment later they heard a sound like a small explosion followed by the roar of a waterfall up close. For ten long seconds it continued, the CO2 coming out so fast and furiously that it covered the entire room almost instantly. As the “snow effect” took place, the temperature dropped dramatically, and Stone and Annabelle began to shake uncontrollably. They sucked deeply on the life-giving oxygen. Yet on the fringes of the air pocket provided by the O2 Stone could feel the draining clutches of an atmosphere that was far closer to the moon’s than Earth’s. It tore at them, trying to rip the molecules of oxygen away, but Stone kept the mask crushed to their faces even as Annabelle gripped him with the strength of extreme panic.

  Despite the supply of oxygen, Stone’s thoughts still became muddled. He felt as though he were in a fighter jet soaring ever higher, the g-forces pulling his face back and up, threatening to rip his head off. Stone could only imagine the horror that Jonathan DeHaven, who’d had no oxygen to draw on, had endured in his final moments of life.

  Finally, the roar stopped just as instantly as it had started. Annabelle moved to push the mask away, but Stone stopped her. Whispering, he said, “The oxygen levels are still depleted. We have to wait.”

  Then he heard what sounded like a ventilator fan come on. Time passed, and with each tick Stone kept his eye on the door. Finally, he moved the mask from his face but kept it on Annabelle’s. He drew a careful breath and then another. He tossed off the blanket, lifted her up and over his shoulder and carried Annabelle to the exact spot where she’d been. Moving as quietly as possible, Stone grabbed up the nearly empty oxygen tank and stood behind the door to the room.

  He didn’t have long to wait. A minute later the door opened and the first man came through. Stone waited. When the second man appeared, Stone swung the cylinder and caught him dead on the skull, crushing it. He dropped as though poleaxed.

  The other man turned in alarm, ripping at the gun on his belt. The tank hit him flush in the face, driving him back against the worktable and into the hard metal of the vise attached there. He screamed in pain and clutched wildly at his injured back as the blood slicked his face. Stone slung the tank once more, catching the guy square on the temple. As the man fell to the floor, Stone dropped the tank, raced to Annabelle and untied her. She rose on shaky legs and looked down at the two battered men.

  “Remind me never to piss you off,” she said, her face very pale.

  “Let’s go before somebody else shows up.”

  They raced out the door, scaled the fence and ran down the street. Three minutes later they had to pull up, breathing hard, sweat running down the dirty creases of their skin. They sucked in delicious air and then jogged another quarter mile until their legs were dead. They slumped down against the brick wall of what looked to be a warehouse.

  “They took my phone,” Stone said, gasping for extra oxygen. “And by the way, I’m way too old for this shit. I seriously mean it.”

  “Mine too . . . and me too,” she answered in halting breaths. “Oliver, I saw Trent in the house. His reflection in the mirror.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “It was definitely him.”

  Stone glanced around. “We have to get in touch with Caleb or Milton.”

  “After what happened to us, do you think they’re okay?”

  “I don’t know,” he said shakily. He lurched to his feet, held out a hand and pulled her up.

  As they started walking fast down the street, she slowed and said quietly, “Is that how Jonathan died?”

  He stopped and turned to her. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged noncommittally but wiped a tear from her eye. “My God.” Her voice shook.

  “Yes, my God,” Stone agreed. “Look, Susan, I never should have let you get involved in this.”

  “First of all, my name’s not Susan.”

  “Okay.”

  “Second of all . . . tell me your real name and I’ll tell you mine.”

  Stone hesitated just for a second. “Franklin, but my friends call me Frank. You?”

  “Eleanor, my friends call me Ellie.”

  “Franklin and Eleanor?” he said, looking bemused.

  “You started it.” She smiled even as her eyes filled with tears and her body began to shake. “Oh, Jonathan.”

  Stone reached out and gripped her shoulder, steadying the woman.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said. “I haven’t even seen the man in forever.”

  “It’s okay if you still care about him.”

  “I wasn’t sure I did until right now.”

  “There’s no law against it.”

  “I’ll be okay. Believe me, I’ve been through far worse.” As soon as Annabelle said that, she started to sob uncontrollably. Stone pulled her close as her legs failed. They both sank to the cement, and Stone kept holding her as her fingers dug into him, her tears dampening his shirt and his skin.

  Five minutes later she stopped except for a couple of last heaves. Pushing away from him, Annabelle rubbed her swollen eyes and her runny nose with her sleeve.

  She said, “I’m sorry. I never, and I mean never, lose control like that.”

  “Crying because you lost someone you love isn’t exactly unusual.”

  “It’s just not . . . I mean . . . You never—”

  Stone put his hand against her mouth and said quietly, “My real name is John. John Carr.”

  Annabelle tensed for an instant and then relaxed. “I’m Annabelle Conroy. It’s nice to meet you, John.” She exhaled a deep breath. “Whoa, that’s not something I do very often.”

  “Use your real name? I can sympathize. The last person I told tried to kill me.”

  He stood and helped her up. As he turned, she kept ahold of his hand.

  “Thank you, John, for . . . everything.”

  He was clearly embarrassed by her gratitude, but she came to the rescue. “Let’s go and see if Milton and Caleb need saving. Okay?” Annabelle said.

  A moment later they were jogging down the road.

  CHAPTER 59

  ANNABELLE AND STONE MADE A phone call from a service station, reaching Caleb. He had not yet fully recovered from finding Norman Janklow’s body but was able to relay some of what had happened. Stone called Reuben, and all arranged to meet back at Stone’s safe house. An hour later they were reassembled, and Stone and Annabelle reported their experience first.

  “Damn,” Reuben said. “Good thing you thought of the oxygen, Oliver.”

  Caleb and Milton told their story next.

  Caleb added, “We called the police from a pay phone. Only took about an hour to find one in our cell-happy world. Thank goodness I remembered to take the candleholder; it has my fingerprints on it.”

  “D
id you touch anything else?” Stone asked.

  Caleb looked worried. “I grabbed the handrail on the outside stoop.” He glared at Milton. “Because gadget boy here decided to scare the crap out of me. And I might have touched something else inside the house, I don’t remember. I’ve actually tried to block it out of my memory.”

  “Your prints are in the federal database?” Stone said.

  “Of course.” Caleb gave a resigned sigh. “Well, it won’t be the first time the coppers have come for me, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”

  “What connection could this Norman Janklow have to all this?” Reuben asked.

  Stone answered, “Janklow could’ve been a spy, like English. That means the books he looked at could’ve been secretly coded too.”

  “They must’ve only pretended to dislike each other,” Caleb said. “To help maintain their cover.”

  “Okay, but why kill Janklow?” Reuben persisted.

  “If he was a spy, once we exposed English, maybe the whole thing started to unravel, and they had to start tying up loose ends,” Annabelle ventured. “They might have gotten English out of the way and left Janklow there dead to confuse things.”

  “I’d say they accomplished their goal, then,” Caleb pointed out.

  “We should go to the police now,” Milton said anxiously.

  “And tell them what?” Stone argued. “The marks in the book have disappeared. And if we explain that we were almost killed tonight, we’d have to admit to having broken into Albert Trent’s home. I’m sure he’s already called the police to report the burglary.”

  He glanced at Annabelle. “And even though you saw him, it’s your word against his. And I didn’t call the police about what happened at Fire Control, Inc., because I felt sure by the time they got there, the two men I attacked would’ve disappeared.” He looked at Caleb. “And since Caleb was at Jewell English’s home and his prints might be found there, if we go to the police, he’ll instantly become a suspect. Couple that with the fact that the authorities already have Caleb and Reuben on their radar, it’s all far too complicated for the police to believe.”