The Camel Club (Camel Club 1)

“Carter Gray will be going to the dedication in Brennan.”

“Damn, I’d say that was worth a face-to-face. How do you want to play it, then?”

“The exit strategy has always been problematic. No matter how we tried to tweak it, there was too much uncertainty. Now, with Gray coming, we have certainty.”

“How exactly do you figure that?”

Hemingway explained his plan and his colleague looked suitably impressed.

“Well, I think it’ll work. In fact, I think it’s brilliant. Brilliant and ballsy.”

“Depending on whether it succeeds or not,” Hemingway replied.

“Don’t be modest, Tom. Let’s call this what it is. A plan that will rock the entire world.” He paused and added, “But don’t underestimate the old man. Carter Gray’s forgotten more than you and I will ever know about the spy business.”

Hemingway opened his briefcase. Inside was a DVD. He tossed it to his companion. “I think you’ll find what’s on there helpful.”

Captain Jack fingered the DVD and watched Hemingway closely. “I did over twenty years with the Company, quite a few under Gray, and you did what?”

“Twelve, all in the field, with two years at NSA before that,” Hemingway answered. “I started at NIC a year after Gray became secretary.”

“I hear they’re grooming you for the top spot. Interested?”

Hemingway shook his head. “There’s little future there that I can see.”

“Back to the CIA, then?”

“It’s a useless anachronism.”

“Right! There’ll always be a CIA, even after the Iraqi WMDs that never were.”

“You think so?” Hemingway said curiously.

“Oh, when I was helping support a host of ‘acceptable alternatives’ to communism, mostly monster dictators, or feeding crack to black neighborhoods to help fund illegal operations overseas, or blowing up democracies in other countries because they wouldn’t support American business interests, I thought to myself, there’s got to be a better way of doing this. But I got over that thinking a long time ago.”

“We can’t win this particular fight with soldiers and spies,” Hemingway said. “It’s not that simple.”

“Then it can’t be won,” Captain Jack answered bluntly. “Because that’s the only way countries know to settle their differences.”

“Dostoyevsky wrote that ‘while nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing is more difficult than to understand him.’”

“You and I have both spent a lot of time there, but do you really think you’ll ever understand the ‘evildoer’ mentality of the Middle Eastern terrorist?”

“How do you know that’s the ‘evildoer’ I’m referring to? We certainly don’t have clean hands when it comes to events overseas. In fact, we created many of the problems we face today.”

“That’s why there’s only one sensible motivation these days: money. As I’ve told you before, I don’t care about anything else. I will go back to my beautiful little island, and I will not stir again. This is it for me.”

“That’s being brutally honest,” Hemingway remarked.

“Would you rather I tell you that my twitching ideology is screaming for me to help make the world better?”

“No, I’ll take the brutal honesty.”

“And why are you doing it?”

“For something better than what we have.”

“Idealism again? I’m telling you, Tom, you’ll live to regret it. Or die.”

“Not idealism, or even fatalism, but simply an idea put into action.”

Captain Jack shook his head slowly. “I’ve fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, ‘My God is better than your God.’ Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn’t matter. Someone will tell you you’re wrong, and he’ll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we’re just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core.”

“Buddha rose above materialism. Jesus was champion of embracing one’s enemies. As was Gandhi.”

“Jesus was betrayed and died on the cross, and Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu who was ticked off Gandhi tolerated Muslims,” Captain Jack pointed out.

Hemingway paced the room. “I remember my father telling me about England’s redrawing of India’s boundaries when it became independent. They wanted to separate the Hindu from the Muslim, but they used outdated maps. Twelve million people had to relocate because the Brits screwed it up so badly. And a half million people died during the resulting chaos. And before that, Iraq was unilaterally cobbled together, causing many of the conflicts we see today. There are dozens of such examples. The strong countries smashing the weaker ones and then avoiding responsibility later for the very problems they caused.”

“You keep proving my point, Tom, that we’re rotten to the core.”

“My point is we never learn!”

“And what, you think you have a better answer?” Hemingway didn’t respond. Captain Jack rose but then paused at the door. “I doubt that I’ll see you again, unless you end up heading to a small island in the South Pacific. If you do, you’ll be welcome. Unless you’re a fugitive. Then, my friend, you’re on your own.”

CHAPTER

26

AFTER HE’D LEFT THE BAR, ALEX Ford grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby diner, wedging his butt between the wide frames of two hefty D.C. cops at the counter. He shared some shoptalk with his law enforcement brethren and also swapped some old doomsday gossip. Alex’s personal favorite was, “At all costs, stay out of the Metro on Halloween.” What Alex really wanted to do was stand on the counter and shout for all to hear that a beautiful woman had just asked him out. Instead, he quietly finished off his cheeseburger, french fries and wedge of blueberry pie washed down with black coffee. Afterward, he headed back to WFO to check his e-mails.

Sykes still hadn’t responded, although Alex had received an electronic receipt that the man had opened the e-mail report. He wandered the halls of WFO, half hoping to run into Sykes and see where he stood on the investigation. Alex had written up thousands of reports, but this one went right to HQ, something not all that common for street grunts like him, who weren’t being groomed to move up the agency’s leadership ladder. When you knew the director’s eyes were going to be running over your feeble attempt at logical composition, it tended to make the neck hairs stand up and start twitching.

He passed by the assignment board and noted that his photo and Simpson’s had been placed under the heading “Special Assignment.” As he looked at the olive-skinned lady staring back at him out of the photo, he muttered the name “J-Glo.” Maybe she should just go back to Alabama. Daddy would probably love that.

He killed some more time at his desk and then decided that if Sykes really wanted to talk, he’d find him.

Out on the sidewalk he sucked in a chest full of crisp night air and smiled as he thought of Kate Adams, and then he walked down the street with a lift in his step that had been absent for a long time. He thought about heading home, but what he really wanted to do was talk to someone. However, all his good friends were married Secret Service agents, which meant if they weren’t on duty, they were spending some rare quality time with their families. And Alex shared little in common with the young bucks at WFO.

This made him realize that in three short years he was going to have to make some pretty major decisions. Would he just retire? Or would he go to another agency, live mostly off his pension from the Service and stockpile the paychecks from the new job? This was known as double-dipping. It was completely legal, and many feds did it to pad their retirement funds. It was a way to even out things after they’d worked for below market-value in the p

ublic sector.

Much of Alex’s adult life had been a blur, learning the ropes at the Service, busting bad guys in eight different field offices, then on to protection detail, where he had spent every waking hour hopping planes and running from one city, one country to the next. He had been so busy worrying about everybody else that he had never spent much time worrying about himself. And now that it was time to think about his future, Alex suddenly felt totally incapable of doing so. Where did he start? What did he do? He felt a panic attack coming on, and not one that another martini would’ve cured.

He was standing paralyzed on a corner deciding what to do with the rest of his life when his cell phone rang. At first the name and number on the caller ID screen didn’t register, but then it clicked. It was Anne Jeffries, the late Patrick Johnson’s fiancée.

“Hello?”