The Camel Club (Camel Club 1)

“You don’t think I would know if the man I was going to marry, the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, was a damn drug dealer!” She screamed this at him so loudly that he jerked the phone away from his ear.

“Ms. Jeffries—”

“I’m going to sue. I’m going to sue the FBI and the Secret Service. And you. And that bitch of a partner of yours!”

“Whoa, hold on, now. I can understand that you’re upset—”

“Upset? Upset isn’t even in the universe of what I’m feeling. It’s not enough that Pat had to be murdered, now his reputation is being destroyed too.”

“Ms. Jeffries, I’m just trying to do my job—”

“Save your pathetic excuses for my lawyer,” she snapped, and then hung up.

Alex put his phone away and took a deep breath. He wondered whom the woman might call next? The Washington Post? 60 Minutes? Every boss he’d ever had? He called Jerry Sykes’ private cell number. It went into voice mail, but Alex left a detailed message about his brief but explosive conversation with the bereaved fiancée. Okay, he’d done what he could. The shit was probably going to fly anyway.

He definitely didn’t want to go home now. He wanted to walk. And think.

His wandering took him, as it often did, to the White House. He nodded to some of the uniformed Secret Service that he knew, and stopped and chatted with an agent who was sitting in a black Suburban gulping down black coffee. Alex and the man had started out together at the Louisville Field Office, though their paths had parted after that.

POTUS was hosting a state dinner tonight, his friend told Alex. And then it was off to campaign in the Midwest the next day, with a 9/11 ceremony in New York City after that.

“I like to see a president who keeps busy,” Alex replied. Some chief executives worked their butts off, pulling a full twelve hours during the day, changing into a tux and doing the Washington social two-step and then working the phones from their private quarters until the wee hours. Other presidents liked to cruise through the day and knock off early. Alex had never thought the presidency was a “cruising” sort of job.

He passed into Lafayette Park and was surprised to see a light on in Stone’s tent. Maybe he’d finally found somebody he could really talk to.

“Oliver?” he called out softly while standing next to the lighted tent.

The tent flap fell open, and he stared at a man he didn’t recognize.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, “I was looking for—”

“Agent Ford,” Oliver Stone said as he stepped outside.

“Oliver? Is that you?”

Stone smiled and rubbed his clean-shaven face. “A man needs a fresh start every once in a while,” he explained.

“I came by looking for you last night.”

“Adelphia told me. I miss our chess matches.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t give you much competition.”

“You improved a lot over the years,” Stone replied kindly.

While Alex was on presidential protection detail, he’d visited Stone as often as his busy schedule allowed. At first it was to check up on potential problems near the White House. Back then, Alex considered anyone within a square mile of the place who didn’t carry a Secret Service badge as the enemy, and Stone had been no exception.

What had really intrigued Alex about Oliver Stone was that the man didn’t seem to have a past. Alex had heard rumors that Stone had at one time worked for the government. So Alex went on every database he could think of looking for some history on the fellow, but there was simply none. He didn’t search under “Oliver Stone,” an obviously fake name. Instead, he surreptitiously got Stone’s fingerprints and ran them through AFIS, the FBI’s massive automated fingerprint identification system. That came back negative. Then he passed them through the military databanks, the Secret Service’s own computer files and through every other place he could think of. They all came back zip. As far as the United States government was concerned, Oliver Stone didn’t exist.

He’d once followed Stone to his caretaker’s cottage at the cemetery. He checked with the church that owned it, but they would tell him nothing about the man, and Alex had no probable cause to force the issue. He’d watched Stone working in the cemetery a few times, and when he’d gone off, Alex considered searching the cottage. Yet there was something about Stone, an intense measure of dignity and also a profound sincerity, that caused Alex to finally reject this idea.

“So what did you come to see me about?” Stone asked.

“Just passing through. Adelphia said you were at a meeting.”

“She likes to embellish. I met some friends over on the Mall. We like walking there at night.” He paused and added, “So how are things going at the WFO?”

“It’s nice working cases again.”

“I heard that an employee of yours was killed.”

Alex nodded. “Patrick Johnson. He worked at the National Threat Assessment Center. That’s really been blended with NIC now, but I’m involved because Johnson was still sort of a joint employee of ours.”

“You’re involved?” Stone said. “Do you mean that you’re working the case?”

Alex hesitated. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to acknowledge his involvement. It wasn’t exactly confidential. “I was assigned to poke around, although it seems to have been solved.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“They found heroin in Johnson’s home. They think whoever he was dealing with killed him.” He didn’t mention Anne Jeffries’ call. That part wasn’t publicly known.

“And what do you think?” Stone said, eyeing him keenly.

Alex shrugged. “Who knows? And we’re just really piggybacking on the FBI.”

“And yet a man has been killed.”

Alex looked at his friend questioningly. “Yeah? I know that.”

“Over the years I’ve watched you, Agent Ford. You’re observant, diligent, and you have sound instincts. I think you should use those talents on this case. If the man’s work was sensitive to this nation’s security, a second pair of eyes is certainly in order.”

“I’ve covered the bases, Oliver. If it wasn’t drugs?”

“Exactly. If not drugs, what? I think someone should answer that question very thoroughly. Perhaps the answer lies with his work. Consider that planting drugs at his home would be an easy way to cover something up.”

Alex looked doubtful. “That’s highly unlikely. And quite frankly, NIC is a big can of worms to open for a guy looking to retire in three years.”

“Three years isn’t such a long time, Agent Ford; not nearly as long as the years you’ve already served your country. And unfortunately, fair or not, the end of one’s career is what a person is usually remembered for.”

“And if I make a misstep on this one, maybe I don’t have a career left.”

“But the other important point to realize is this: The end of one’s career is also what you remember most vividly. And you’ll have decades to possibly regret. And that is a very long time.”

Leaving Stone, Alex slowly walked back to his car. What the man said made sense. There were iss

ues that were not clear in Alex’s mind about Patrick Johnson’s death. The drug discovery did seem a little too convenient, and other details just didn’t add up. In truth, he had been only halfheartedly investigating the case, more than ready to follow the Bureau’s lead and its conclusions.

And Stone had been right on another level. Alex had stayed at the Service after his accident because he didn’t want to go out on a disability ride. Well, sleepwalking through a major case wasn’t the way he wanted to go out either. There was something to be said for professional pride. And if U.S. presidents shouldn’t cruise through their duties, Secret Service agents shouldn’t either.

Oliver Stone watched Alex pass out of sight and then quickly walked to his cottage at the cemetery. From there he used the cell phone Milton had given him to call Caleb and tell him of this latest development. “It was a stroke of good fortune that I couldn’t ignore,” Stone explained.

“But you didn’t say anything about us seeing the murder, did you?”

“Agent Ford is a federal policeman. Had I told him that, his duty would’ve been clear. My best hope is that he will dig up something at NIC that would have been beyond our means to do.”

“Won’t that place him in jeopardy? I mean if NIC’s gunning down its own employees, they might not stop at killing a Secret Service agent.”

“Agent Ford is a capable man. But we’ll also have to act as his guardian angels, won’t we?”

Stone clicked off and, suddenly remembering he hadn’t eaten any dinner, went into his kitchen and made some soup, which he ate in front of a small fire he’d built. Cemeteries always seemed to be cold, no matter the season.

After that, he sat down in his old armchair next to the fire with a book that he’d been reading from his very eclectic collection that Caleb had helped him assemble. That’s all he had left: his friends, his books, some theories, a few memories.

He glanced at the box with the photo album again, and, despite