Authors: David Baldacci
Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #General, #Thrillers, #FIC000000
R
EUBEN CONTINUED WALKING
around the casino, trying to memorize as many key details as he could. He didn’t know exactly what sort of intelligence Stone wanted so he decided to be over- rather than underinclusive. In any event it beat the hell out of working on the loading dock.
He finally decided to hook back up with Milton at the blackjack table. When he got there his jaw dropped. Milton had huge columns of chips stacked neatly in front of him.
Reuben said, “Milton, what the hell happened?”
“What happened,” the bettor next to Milton said, “is that your buddy’s up about four thousand bucks.”
Reuben stared at the man and then at the beefy pit boss glaring at Milton and his winnings.
“Holy hell, Batman,” Reuben exclaimed. “Four grand!”
The pit boss leaned down into Milton’s face. “You’re cheating.”
“No I’m not,” Milton said indignantly.
“You’re counting cards, you little slimeball. Is that how you get your kicks? What, the ladies a problem for you? You have to come here and cheat? And then you go home and jack off. Is that it?”
Milton flushed red. “This is the first time I’ve ever been in a casino.”
The pit boss roared, “Do you really think I’m buying that bullshit?”
Reuben said politely, “Look, I’m sure it’s nothing really—”
Milton cut in. “And so what if I am counting cards? Is that illegal in New Jersey? I don’t think so, because I looked it up. And you can employ countermeasures against me, but only if I’m a ‘skilled player,’ which I’m not, and by law the countermeasures you can use are limited. Now, in Vegas you can claim I’m trespassing, read me the Trespass Act and ban me from the casinos for a year, but this isn’t Vegas, now is it?”
“You know all this stuff and you say this is the first time you’ve been in a casino,” the pit boss scoffed.
“I looked all that up last night online. Gee, what a concept. So back off and let me play my cards.”
The thick-necked boss looked like he was going to come over the table at Milton, but Reuben stepped between them. “I think my friend will cash out now.”
“But Reuben,” Milton protested. “I’m on a roll.”
“He’ll cash out now,” Reuben said very firmly.
Later, Milton said to Reuben, “Why wouldn’t you let me keep playing?”
“How about that whole living thing, Milton, you still interested in that?”
“Oh come on, this is the twenty-first century. They don’t do that stuff anymore.”
“You think so? Forget the laws, a casino can pretty much kick you out for any reason they want. You’re lucky the pit boss was probably slow to get to the table. Dollars to donuts we gotta couple goons tailing us right now.”
Milton whipped his head around. “Where?”
“You can’t see them!” Reuben paused. “So how’d you win all that money?”
Milton said in a low voice, “I started out employing a multilevel Hi-Lo scheme with a side count add-on based on the Zen Count system. Of course I was utilizing an overall true count methodology to take into account the multiple decks being played. Later, I took it up a peg to the Uston Advanced Point Count method and paid particular attention to strategically optimizing my bets using the three-color chip scenario to disguise my wager.”
Reuben gaped. “Milton, how the hell do you know all this stuff?”
“I read twelve Internet articles on the subject last night. It was very interesting. And once I read something—”
“You never forget it, I know, I know.” Reuben sighed. There seemed no limit to his friend’s intellectual gifts. “So the pit boss was right, you were counting cards. Luckily you were doing it without a computer, that’s a big no-no.”
“I’ve got a computer, it’s called my brain.”
“Okay, Mr. Brain, just so you know, it’s a rule on recon missions that the team splits everything right down the middle.”
“Down the middle?”
“Yep. So I’m two grand ahead. Now fork it over.”
Milton handed over the cash. “Remember, you have to pay taxes on that.”
“I don’t pay taxes.”
“Reuben, you have to pay your taxes.”
“Uncle Sam can get his pound of flesh off somebody else. And while you were cleaning out the casino I was doing some real intelligence gathering.” He told Milton about Angie.
“That’s sounds really promising, Reuben, good work.”
“The way Angie was eyeballing me, the price might be pretty damn steep.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, you’ve got two thousand dollars.”
Reuben gazed at his friend and just shook his head.
C
ARTER
G
RAY WALKED SLOWLY
down the long corridor that was for some reason painted a salmon color, perhaps to induce calmness, he thought. However, this was not a building that inspired calm, only crisis. At the end of the underground hall was a solitary room housed behind a bank-vault-class door. He entered his security codes and let the biometric readers sweep over him. The door noiselessly swung open. This James Bond style of security had set the taxpayers back millions. Yet what else were taxpayers good for, he thought. They consumed far too much, paid too much in taxes and their government spent far more than it should, usually on stupid things. If that wasn’t balance, he didn’t know what was.
Gray walked over to the wall of locked miniature vaults and slid his electronic key in one while he simultaneously rubbed his thumb across a fingerprint reader. The door slid open and he took the file out, sat down in a chair and began to read.
A half hour later Gray had finished perusing the file. Next, he took out the photo he’d received in the mail, comparing it with the one in the file. It was the same man, of course. He’d known him very well. In many ways he’d been Gray’s closest confidant. For decades he’d feared that the unfortunate matter of Rayfield Solomon would come back to haunt him. Now it had.
Cole, Cincetti, Bingham, all dead. And Carter Gray had almost joined them. And he would have except for the safe room built underneath the house by the former CIA director and VP who had lived there before him; an underground room that was both fire- and bombproof. When Gray had explained to Oliver Stone that he was both comfortable and
secure
in his new home, he was being quite literal. And his home included a fortified tunnel that had carried him safely off the property and to the other side of the main road, where a car driven by one of his guards had picked him up. Gray had been gone from the house for over an hour when it exploded. He’d left minutes after receiving the photo. Still, it had been a relatively close call. The FBI had initiated a homicide investigation, publicly acknowledging that a body had been found in the wreckage. Gray had put this in motion behind the scenes. He
wanted
people to think he was dead.
He would’ve been dead except for the fact that his would-be killer had sent him this photo. What a risk that had been. What a tactical error. And yet it must have been important for the person that Gray clearly understood why he was being killed; that fortunately revealed much about his potential murderer. It was undoubtedly someone who cared very much about Rayfield Solomon. And for Gray, that evidenced a familial relationship or something close to it.
The other targets were now obvious, Gray mused as he sat in his chair a hundred feet underneath the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, a juggernaut he had once commanded. Only the current and former directors of the CIA were allowed in this room. Here there were files that contained secrets the American public would never know. Indeed, there were stories here of which American presidents were ignorant. When one said “files,” of course, one meant more than mere paper. It included flesh and blood. Certainly that had been the case with Ray Solomon. Gray hadn’t known about the order to kill Solomon. If he had he would’ve prevented it from being executed. He had regretted his friend’s death all these years. Yet in this case regret was a very cheap emotion to have. You felt bad, but the other person was dead.
Gray put the files back and locked the vault. There were many important folks who would not want the matter of Ray Solomon ever to resurface. They would use all their resources to hunt down whoever tried to kill Gray before the person struck again. And now Gray was fully on their side. His friend had been dead for decades. No good could come from rekindling those fires.
And he had played fair by warning John Carr. The man would get no more help from him. And if he died, he died.
A
S
J
ERRY
B
AGGER
was being driven through Washington he passed by the Justice Department building. On noticing this, he immediately gave the finger to the entire federal agency.
“Talk about a great place for a nuclear strike. And maybe they could take out the FBI at the same time. I mean lawyers and cops, who needs ’em? Not me.” He looked at one of his men. “Mike, you need ’em?”
“No, sir, Mr. Bagger.”
“Good thinking.”
Bagger had received a more detailed report from his PI after arriving in D.C.; that’s why he was now climbing out of the car and walking into a library. It wasn’t any library; it was, for many erudite folks,
the
library: the Library of Congress.
His men made some inquiries, and two minutes later Bagger and his entourage walked into the rare book reading room where the late Jonathan DeHaven, who was also Annabelle’s ex-husband, had once been director. It was also where Caleb Shaw currently worked. The man himself came out of the vaults as Bagger walked in.
To his credit Caleb did not start vomiting on recognizing Bagger from the picture Milton had shown him, although his gurgling stomach made that a clear possibility. Instead, he simply stood there as a smile spread across his face. He had no idea why he was smiling. With a sudden pang of horror he thought it might actually be a first step in his becoming hysterical. He had to do something and fast.
“Can I help you?” he said, walking over to the group of big young men in dark suits surrounding the very fit, sixty-six-year-old, broad-shouldered, white-haired and deeply tanned Bagger, with his broken nose and hideous scar running down one cheek.
He looked like a pirate, Caleb thought.
“I hope so,” Bagger began politely. “This is the rare book thing here?” He looked around.
“The rare book reading room, yes.”
“So how rare are the books in this place?”
“Very, and it’s not just books, we have codex manuscripts, incunabula, broadsheets, a Gutenberg Bible, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s personal library and many other fine works. Some of them the only one of their kind in the world. Literally one of one.”
“Yeah?” Bagger said, clearly not impressed. “Well, I got something even rarer than that.”
“Really, what is it?” Caleb inquired.
“The book that
I
read,” Bagger said. “Because that’s zero of zero.” He laughed and so did his men. Caleb chuckled politely even as he clutched the back of a chair to steady himself.
Bagger put an arm around Caleb’s shoulders. “You look like a guy who can help me. What’s your name?”
Caleb desperately tried to think of an alias, but all that came out was, “Caleb Shaw.”
“Caleb? Whoa, you don’t hear that one every day. You Amish or something?”
“No, I’m a Republican,” Caleb said in a small voice as Bagger’s muscular arm cinched tighter around him.
Is this the same arm that killed all those people?
“Okay, Mr. Republican, is there someplace we can talk in private? I mean, this is a big building. Must be someplace we can do a little mano a mano.”
Caleb had feared something like this. At least in the reading room there were potential witnesses around, if only to see him being hacked to death by the mobster.
“I, uh, I’m quite busy right now.” Bagger’s arm instantly tightened even more around him. “But I can certainly spare you a few minutes.”
Caleb led them to a small office down the hall from the reading room.
“Sit,” Bagger ordered Caleb, and he quickly sat in the only chair in the room. “Okay, now, I understand that the guy who used to run this place got whacked.”
“The director of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division was killed, that’s correct.”
“Jonathan DeHaven?”
“That’s right.” Caleb added in a low voice, “He was murdered. Right in this very building.”
“Wow,” Bagger said as he eyed his men. “In a freaking library. I mean, is this world we live in violent or what?” He turned back to Caleb. “Thing is, I got a friend who knew this DeHaven character. She was actually married to him at some point.”
“Really? I never knew Jonathan was married.” Caleb managed to tell this lie quite capably.
“Well he was. Kind of short-lived, though. I mean he was a book geek. No offense. And the woman, well, the woman wasn’t. She was sort of like a, how do you say—”
“A tornado and a hurricane all wrapped into one?” Caleb offered.
Bagger shot him a suspicious glance. “Yeah, what makes you say that?”
Realizing he had come dangerously close to giving Bagger adequate reason to torture him for further information, Caleb said smoothly, “I was married once too, and my wife left me after only four months. She was a hurricane and a tornado and, like you said, I’m a book geek.” It was stunning how easily lying came to him.
“Right, right, you get the picture. Anyway, I haven’t seen the woman in a long time and wanted to catch up with her. So it occurred to me that she might have heard about her ex’s death and come for the funeral.” He looked expectantly at Caleb.
“Well, I went to the service but I didn’t notice anyone I didn’t know. What does this woman look like and what’s her name?”
“Tall, nice curves, a real looker. Little scar under her right eye. Hair color and style depends on the day of the week, you know what I mean? Her name is Annabelle Conroy, but that also depends on the day of the week.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell at all.” The name clearly didn’t, since Caleb only knew Annabelle by the name Susan Hunter, but the physical description was certainly dead-on. “I’m sure I would have noticed someone like that. Most of the people at the funeral were pretty average-looking. You know, like me.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Bagger grumbled. He snapped his fingers and one of his men produced a card that Bagger handed to Caleb. “You remember something useful, call me. I pay well. I mean really well. Five figures.”
Caleb’s eyes widened as he clutched the card. “You must really want to find her.”
“Oh, you got no idea how bad, Mr. Republican.”