The Camel Club (Camel Club 1)

“Unfortunately, Caleb’s car rather sticks out,” Stone said. “If they pick up that we’re following them and run the license plate, they’ll be at Caleb’s house waiting before he even gets back there.”

“Oh, dear God,” Caleb said as he gripped the steering wheel and looked like he might be sick to his stomach.

“So what do we do?” Reuben asked.

Stone replied, “You said one of them was talking to the FBI. But the FBI wouldn’t be talking to just an ordinary citizen. I know. I tried. That could very well mean they’re law enforcement.”

“Which means they could be with NIC,” Milton chimed in. “That’s where Johnson worked.”

“A thought that had occurred to me,” Stone replied. “Carter Gray,” he muttered.

“Not a man you take on lightly,” Reuben commented.

Oh, shit!” Caleb whispered. He was staring in the rearview mirror. “That might be their car coming up behind us.”

“Don’t look in that direction,” Stone commanded sharply. “Caleb, take a deep breath and calm down. Reuben, slump down a little in your seat to disguise your size in case they look this way.” As he was talking, Stone took off his hat and slid forward in his seat until he had disappeared from view. “Caleb, can they see your license plate from the street?”

“No, the cars parked in front and back of us are too close.”

“Good. As soon as they pass, I want you to wait ten seconds and then pull out, and turn in the opposite direction from them. Milton, you’re pretty well hidden from view in the backseat. I want you to very carefully glance over and see if they look at us. And I want you to get a good look at them.”

Caleb took a deep breath and then held it as the car passed by slowly.

“Don’t look over, Caleb,” Stone whispered again from his hiding place.

As the car headed on and turned left at the next intersection, Stone said, “Milton?”

“They didn’t look over.”

“Okay, Caleb, go ahead.”

Caleb slowly pulled his car out and turned right at the next corner as Stone sat back up. “Everyone keep a sharp lookout to make sure they don’t return,” Stone said.

Stone looked back at Milton. “What did you see?”

Milton gave a fairly complete description of both men as well as the Virginia license plate number of the car.

Reuben looked at Stone. “I say now we go to the cops. We’ll back each other up. They’ll believe us.”

“No!” Stone said sharply. “We have to get them before they get to us.”

“How?” Reuben asked. “Especially if the killers are the authorities?”

“By doing what the Camel Club used to do very well: seek the truth.”

Milton broke in. “We can start by running their license plate number. It wasn’t a government plate, so we might just have lucked out, and it’s his personal car.”

Reuben said, “Do you know someone at DMV who can run the tag?”

Milton looked offended. “If I can hack into the Pentagon’s database, Reuben, DMV should prove no challenge at all.”

CHAPTER

25

AT NIC HEADQUARTERS THERE was a state-of-the-art gymnasium in the lower level that virtually no one used for lack of time. However, in a small room off the main area there was one person working out.

Tom Hemingway wore only a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a white tank shirt, and his feet were bare. He sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed. A moment later he rose and assumed a martial arts stance. Most people watching him would have concluded that Hemingway was about to start practicing kung fu or karate. These same people would probably be surprised to learn that “kung fu,” literally translated, meant a skillful ability attained through hard work. Thus, someone could be a baseball player and be deemed to have good “kung fu.”

There were four hundred types of martial arts disciplines that had originated other than in China, whereas there were only three indigenous to that country: Hsing-I Chuan, Pa-Kua Chang and Tai Chi Chuan. The key difference between the four hundred and the three was power, as the whole body was used as a means to transfer all kinetic energy of the attacker on to the target. It was roughly equivalent to the speed of a slap with the shock of being hit by a car. A blow struck by a skilled practitioner of any of the three so-called internal martial arts had the power to rupture organs and kill.

During his years in China, Hemingway had found himself drawn to these internal martial arts, if for nothing more than to create a sense of identity that blended better with his surroundings than his blond hair and blue eyes did. Although he practiced the other forms of internal martial arts, Hemingway had become most proficient in the ShanXi House of Hsing-I.

Prior to starting his practice forms, Hemingway had sat motionless for almost an hour meditating. This exercise allowed one to intuitively take in his surroundings, sensing presence long before anyone could actually be seen. This talent had served Hemingway well in the field. As a CIA agent his life had been saved on more than one occasion by his ability to be aware of his enemy in a manner that defied the five human senses.

Through long years of practice Hemingway’s joints, tendons, ligaments, muscle groups and fascia were enormously strong. Decades of spine stretching while executing the twists and turns of his discipline had kept each of his vertebrae in perfect alignment with its neighbor. His sense of balance almost defied human comprehension. He had once stood for six hours on a skyscraper’s one-inch-wide ledge, twenty-one stories up in a driving wind and rain, while a Colombian death squad circled below looking for him. So strong were his fingers that he had to consciously hold back when he shook hands, and even then people frequently complained of his crushing grip.

He now assumed the bamboo stance, which was the critical maneuver in Hsing-I. The bamboo technique was simple physics, and also where the famed power of Hsing-I emanated. Hemingway had killed highly skilled men with just one vector strike off the bamboo stance.

He next picked up a pair of crescent swords, the traditional neijia weapons of the Pa-Kua internal martial art. They were his favorite form of practice weapon. He flew around the room using highly intricate bilateral movements of the curved swords, coupled with astonishingly tight footwork and tremendous centrifugal force that were characteristic of the Pa-Kua discipline

After he had finished his workout, Hemingway showered and changed into his street clothes. As he was dressing, he unconsciously rubbed the tattoo that he carried on the inside of his right forearm. It was composed of four words in Chinese. Translated, it meant “Ultimate loyalty to serve country.” There was a story behind the marking that intrigued Hemingway.

A famous general in the Southern Song dynasty named Yueh Fei had served under a field marshal who had defected to the enemy. This betrayal had sent Fei home in disgust. There his mother lectured him that a soldier’s first duty is to his country. She sent him back to battle with those four words tattooed on his back as a permanent reminder. Hemingway had heard the story as a young boy and

never forgotten it. He’d gotten the tattoo when a particularly troubling mission he performed for the CIA caused him to consider quitting. Instead, he had the words engraved on his skin and went on with his work.

Hemingway drove to his modest apartment on Capitol Hill and went into the kitchen to make wulong black tea, his favorite. He brewed a pot and placed two cups on a tray and carried it into the small living room.

Hemingway poured out the tea and then called out, “Cold wulong isn’t very good.”

There was a stirring in the next room, and the man walked out.

“Okay, what gave me away? I’m not wearing anything scented. I took off my shoes. I’ve been holding my damn breath for thirty minutes. What?”

“You have a powerful aura that you can’t hide,” Hemingway said, smiling.

“You scare me sometimes, Tom, you really do.” Captain Jack tipped back his head and laughed and then accepted a cup of tea. He sat down, took a sip and nodded at a painting of a Chinese landscape that hung against the far wall. “Nice.”

“I’ve actually been to the area depicted in the painting. My father collected that artist’s work and some sculpture from the Shang dynasty.”

“Amazing man, Ambassador Hemingway. I never met him but I certainly knew of him.”

“He was a statesman,” Hemingway said as he sipped his tea. “Unfortunately that’s a breed that’s nearly extinct these days.”

Captain Jack remained silent for a few moments, studying the man across from him. “I tried reading the poetry you told me about.”

Hemingway looked up from his tea. “The Red Pepper collection? What’d you think?”

“That I should work on my Chinese.”

Hemingway smiled. “It’s a beautiful way to communicate, once you get into it.”

Captain Jack set his teacup down on the table. “So what was so important that it had to be done in person?”