The Collectors (Camel Club 2)

to the CIA’s deputy director of operations.

“Yep. And behind closed doors we can be very candid.”

Trent nodded. “The new committee chairman knows how to play by the rules. They already took a roll call vote to close the hearing.”

“We’re at war with terrorists, so it’s a whole new ball game. Enemies of this country are everywhere. We have to act accordingly. Kill them before they get us.”

“Absolutely,” Trent agreed. “It’s a new age, a new kind of fight. And perfectly legal.”

“Goes without saying.” Seagraves stifled a yawn. If anyone was listening, he hoped they’d enjoyed the patriotic crap. He’d long since stopped caring about his country—or any other country, for that matter. He was now solely into caring about himself: the Independent State of Roger Seagraves. And he had the skills, nerve and access to things of enormous value to do something about it. “Okay, unless there’s anything else, I’ll be hitting the road. Traffic will be a bitch this time of day.”

“When isn’t it?” Trent tapped the briefing book as he said this.

Seagraves glanced at the book he’d given the other man even as he picked up a file Trent had pushed across to him. The file contained some detailed requests for information and clarification regarding certain surveillance practices of the intelligence agency. The massive briefing book he’d left for Trent held nothing more exciting than the usual dull-as-dirt overly complicated analysis his agency routinely fed the oversight committee. It was a masterpiece of how to say absolutely nothing in the most confusing way possible in a million words or more.

However, if one read between the proverbial lines, as Seagraves knew that Trent would do that very evening, the briefing book’s pages also revealed something else: the names of four very active American undercover agents and their current locations overseas, all in coded form. The right to the delivery of these names and addresses had already been sold to a well-financed terrorist organization that would knock on these people’s doors in three countries in the Middle East and blow their heads off. Two million dollars a name in U.S. dollars had already been wired to an account that no American bank regulator would ever audit. Now it was Trent’s job to move the stolen names on down the food chain.

Business was booming for Seagraves. As the number of America’s global enemies continued to pile up, he was selling secrets to Muslim terrorists, communists in South America, dictators in Asia and even members of the European Union.

“Happy reading,” Trent said, referring to the file he’d just given him. It was here that the encrypted identity of the “thunderstorm” would be revealed to Seagraves along with all the whys and wherefores.

At his home later that night Seagraves stared at the name and began plotting the mission in his usual methodical way. Only this time it would take something far more subtle than a rifle and scope. Here Trent came through like a gem with a piece of intelligence on the target that simplified things greatly. Seagraves knew just whom to call.

CHAPTER 5

PUNCTUALLY AT SIX-THIRTY ON a clear, cool morning in Washington, D.C., the front door of Jonathan DeHaven’s three-story home opened, and out he stepped dressed in a gray tweed jacket, pale blue tie and black slacks. A tall, spare man in his mid-fifties with a carefully combed head of silver hair, DeHaven inhaled the refreshing air and spent a few moments gazing at the row of magnificent old mansions that lined his street.

DeHaven was far from the wealthiest person in his neighborhood, where the average price of a towering brick structure would set the purchaser back several million dollars. Luckily, he’d inherited his place from parents savvy enough to be early investors in the choicest D.C. real estate. Although much of their estate had gone to charity, the DeHavens’ only child had also been left a sizable amount to supplement his government salary and indulge certain whims.

Even though this windfall had allowed DeHaven to pursue his life without worrying about earning money by any means possible, this was not true of other dwellers on Good Fellow Street. In fact, one of his neighbors was a merchant of death—though DeHaven supposed the politically correct term was “defense contractor.”

The man, Cornelius Behan—he liked to be called CB—lived in a palatial space that cobbled two original dwellings into a fifteen-thousand-square-foot behemoth. DeHaven had heard rumors that this had been accomplished in the strictly controlled historical area by well-timed bribes. This conglomerate not only boasted a four-person elevator but also had separate servant’s quarters with actual servants living in them.

Behan also brought an assortment of ridiculously beautiful women to his manse at odd hours, though he did have the decency to wait until his wife was out of town, often on one of her shopping sprees in Europe. DeHaven trusted that the wronged woman enjoyed her own dalliances while across the Atlantic. This summoned up an image of the elegantly attractive lady being mounted by a young French lover while perched nude on an enormous Louis XVI dining table with “Bolero” playing in the background. And bravo for you, DeHaven thought.

He cast aside thoughts of his neighbors’ peccadilloes and set off to work with a lively bounce in his step. Jonathan DeHaven was the immensely proud director of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress, arguably the finest rare books collection in the world. Well, the French, Italians and Brits might debate the point, but the obviously biased DeHaven knew that the American version was the best.

He walked about a quarter mile along a series of rumpled brick sidewalks, with a precise tread learned from his mother, who’d meticulously marched every step of her long life. On the day before she died DeHaven was not completely sure his famously imperious mother wouldn’t simply skip the funeral and stalk right up to heaven demanding to be let in so she could commence running things. At one corner he boarded a crowded Metro bus, where he shared a seat with a young man covered in drywall dust, a battered ice cooler wedged between his feet. Twenty-five minutes later the bus dropped DeHaven off at a busy intersection.

He crossed the street to a small café, where he had his morning cup of tea and a croissant and read the New York Times. The headlines, as usual, were very depressing. Wars, hurricanes, a possible flu pandemic, terrorism, it was enough to make you crawl in your house and nail the doors shut. One story dealt with a probe into irregularities in the defense-contracting arena. There were allegations of bribery and corruption between politicians and weapons manufacturers. What a shock! A dollars-for-influence scandal had already brought down the former Speaker of the House. And then his successor, Robert Bradley, had been brutally murdered at the Federalist Club. The crime was still unsolved, although a domestic terrorist group, heretofore unknown, calling itself Americans Against 1984—a reference to Orwell’s masterpiece of fascism—had claimed responsibility for the crime. The police investigation was not going well, at least according to the media.

DeHaven occasionally glanced out the café window at government workers striding with great purpose down the street ready to take on the world, or at least a nebbish senator or two. It really was the most unusual place, he thought. Here you had epic crusaders dancing alongside sleazy profiteers coupled with more than a fair sampling of idiots and intellectuals, with the former, unfortunately, usually holding higher positions of power. It was the only city in the United States that could declare war, raise your federal income tax or reduce your Social Security benefits. The decisions reached in these few square miles of monuments and mockeries made legions of people either furious or euphoric, and those sides kept switching depending on who was in control of the government at any given time. And the fights, spins and conspiracies concocted and then carried out to hold or regain power consumed every ounce of energy that enormously bright and talented people could give it. The swirling, ever-changing mosaic had too many frenetically moving parts for any outsider to even come close to comprehending what was really going on. It was like a lethal kindergarten that never ended.

A few mi

nutes later DeHaven trotted up the broad steps of the massively domed Library of Congress’ Jefferson Building. He signed for the alarmed door keys from the library police and headed up to the second floor, quickly making his way to room LJ239. Located here were the Rare Books reading room and the honeycombed series of vaults that kept secure many of the nation’s paper treasures. These bibliophilic riches included an original printed copy of the Declaration of Independence that the Founding Fathers had labored over in Philadelphia on the march to freedom from England. What would they think of the place now?

He unlocked the massive outer doors of the reading room and swung them back against the inside walls. Then he performed the complicated keypad procedure allowing him to enter the room. DeHaven was always the first person to arrive here each day. While his typical duties kept him away from the reading room, DeHaven had a symbiotic relationship with old books that would be inexplicable to a layperson and yet a bond immediately understandable to a bibliophile of even modest addiction.

The reading room was not open on the weekends, which allowed DeHaven to ride his bike, collect rare books for his personal collection and play the piano. It was a skill he’d learned under the rigorous tutelage of his father, whose ambition to be a concert pianist had been rudely crushed by the reality that he wasn’t quite good enough. Unfortunately, neither was his son. And yet ever since his father’s death, DeHaven had actually enjoyed playing. Despite sometimes bristling under their strict code of conduct, he had almost always obeyed his parents.

In fact, he had really only performed one act that had gone against their wishes, yet it was quite a large transgression. He’d married a woman nearly twenty years younger than him, a lady quite apart from his station in life, or so his mother had informed him over and over until she’d badgered him into having the marriage annulled a year later. However, no mother should be able to force her son to leave the woman he loved, even with the threat of cutting him off financially. His mother had stooped as low as telling him she would also sell all of her rare books, which she had promised to leave to him. Yet he should have been able to stand up to her, tell her to back the hell off. He thought this now, of course, far too late. If only he had possessed a backbone years ago.

DeHaven sighed wistfully as he unbuttoned the front of his jacket and smoothed down his tie. It had quite possibly been the happiest twelve months of his life. He had never met a person like her before, and he was certain he wouldn’t again. Yet I just let her go because my mother bullied me into it. He’d written the woman for years afterward, apologizing any way he could. He sent her money, jewelry and exotic items from his trips around the world, but he never asked her to come back. No, he’d never done that, had he? She wrote him back a few times, but then his packages and letters started being returned unopened. After his mother died, he considered trying to find her, but finally decided it was too late. In truth, he didn’t deserve her anymore.