The Collectors (Camel Club 2)

state Jersey shipped its garbage to. The four-day window had dried up their trail. Bagger put his head in his hands. And he’d been the one to suggest the extended time frame. He had, in effect, conned himself.

And that was the bitch’s plan all along. She gave me just enough rope to hang myself.

He rose and went over to the wall of windows. He’d prided himself on being able to sniff out scams long before they had a chance to do him any harm. However, the fact was this was the first con perpetrated on him directly; all others had been focused on his casino. Those were short cons, aimed at relieving money from his craps, blackjack and roulette tables. This had been a long con orchestrated by a woman who knew exactly what she was doing, and used every asset she had, including that old reliable, sex.

Yet she had been so damn convincing. He went through her spiel over and over in his mind. She had turned the tap on and off at just the right interval. She had him convinced that she was a spy working for the government. And these days, with all the crap the feds were involved in, it was hard not to believe even the most outrageous stories.

He gazed out the window, and his mind went back to that telephone call, the one where she wanted to meet after ferreting out his security detail following her. He’d lied that he was already gone from the office, heading out of town. She’d told him point-blank that he was still in his office. That one comment had made him believe that she was legit, that the spooks were really watching him. Watching him!

He stared across the street at the hotel. It reached twenty-three stories off the Boardwalk, identical to his building. The line of windows there looked right into his office. Son of a bitch! That was it! He screamed for his security chief.

After a bit of hassle and tough questioning and finally a call to Reuben’s lawyer, Oliver Stone was allowed in to see his friend in his cell. When the door clanged shut behind him, Stone jumped slightly. He had been imprisoned before, though not in an American facility. No, that wasn’t right, he corrected himself. His recent torture had certainly been by fellow Americans on U.S. soil.

Assuming that the room was being monitored, Stone and Reuben talked in low voices using few words. And Stone started tapping his feet on the concrete floor.

Reuben caught on to what he was doing. “Think the sound will mess up their electronic eavesdropping?” he whispered, his look skeptical.

“Not really, but it’ll make me feel better.”

Reuben smiled and started tap-dancing too. “The fire?” he muttered.

“Yes, I know,” Stone said. “You okay?”

“Just a knock in the head. My lawyer’s going to use that as a defense.”

“Prints on the gun?”

“Accidental touch.”

“Caleb explained things to the police. You were there guarding the books.” Reuben nodded. “Anything else?”

The other man shook his head. “Other than the peep show. Never saw it coming.”

“Following through, just so you know.”

“Connected?”

Stone gave a barely perceptible nod. “Need anything?”

“Yeah, Johnnie Cochran. Too bad he’s in the big courtroom in the sky.” He paused. “Susan?”

Stone hesitated. “Busy.”

As Stone left the building later, he noted that two men—

obviously police—were following at a discreet distance.

“I’ll let you hang with me but just for a little while,” he muttered to himself. He was already thinking about the next person he needed to talk to.

CHAPTER 45

ROGER SEAGRAVES READ THE news story off his computer screen at work. The murder suspect had been identified as Reuben Rhodes. Former military and DIA with a drinking problem who’d burned just about every bridge he had over the years. He worked at a loading dock in D.C. and lived in basically a shack in the outer reaches of northern Virginia. The guy was a walking time bomb, the story had clearly implied. And this hater of war had killed a man who’d made a fortune from providing the deadly toys all armies needed to fight. It really was too good to be true.

When Seagraves first saw the big man entering the house through the back door, he didn’t know what to make of it. A burglar, he thought at first, yet the house alarm hadn’t gone off, and the man came out early the next morning with nothing in his hands. When he returned the following night, Seagraves knew he had a golden opportunity to put a very nice buffer between him and the police.

He pulled his hours for the government and then punched off the federal clock. Now the time was his alone. Seagraves had another little pickup to do. It wouldn’t be as pleasant as his sack time with the lady from NSA, but business couldn’t always be like that. It was important to keep his sources happy and functioning and, at the same time, ensure that no suspicion was falling on them. It was fortunate that with his position at CIA he had informal access to some of the investigations going on regarding domestic spy rings. While it was true that the FBI also played a large role in such matters, and he had few contacts there, it was still an asset to know which persons his agency had deemed “of interest.”

It was a testament to his skill that the arrow had never pointed his way. It seemed the CIA couldn’t believe that one of its former assassins would ever go into business on his own. Did they really think that was how the world worked? If so, he sincerely feared for his country’s safety if its premier intelligence agency could be so easily hoodwinked. Yet then there was Aldrich Ames, after all. But Seagraves was far different than that spy.

Seagraves had killed people under orders from his government. Thus, normal rules of engagement—to wit, law and order—did not apply to him. He was like a professional athlete, able to get away with much because of what he could bring on the field. Yet the traits that made them so formidable on the court or gridiron also made them dangerously aggressive off it. If Seagraves could get away with killing all those years, he felt there was nothing he couldn’t do. And even when he pulled a trigger for a living, he never really felt like he was working for someone else. It was his ass out there, whether in the Middle or Far East or any other place he was directed to go and snuff out a life. He was a loner, his psychological profile had confirmed that, and was one reason he’d been recruited as an assassin in the first place.

He drove to a fitness facility in McLean, Virginia, a short drive down Chain Bridge Road from CIA headquarters. He was playing tennis with his section chief, a man who prided himself on his patriotism, job efficiency and his top spin backhand.

They split the first two sets, and Seagraves debated whether to let his boss win the third set. Finally, his competitive spirit won out, though he made it look close. He had fifteen years on the guy, after all.

“Kicked my butt, Roger,” his boss said.

“I was just on my game tonight. But you didn’t make it easy on me. If we were the same age, I don’t think I could hang with you on the court.”

This man had been a career seat warmer at Langley. The closest he got to real danger were the thriller novels he liked to read. His boss knew very little of Seagraves’ past work for the Agency. The Triple Six Club was a closely guarded secret, for obvious reasons. However, the man did know that Seagraves had worked in the field for many years, in places that the Agency had consistently rated as top “hot spots.” For this reason Seagraves was accorded far more deference and respect than the average wonk down the hall.

Back in the locker room while his boss finished his shower, Seagraves opened his locker and took a towel out. He wiped his face and then went to dry his hair. He and his boss drove to the Reston Town Center and had dinner at Clyde’s Restaurant, settling in near the gas fireplace in the center of the elegant dining area. After eating they parted company. While his boss drove off, Seagraves strolled along the town center’s Main Street, pausing in front of the movie theater.

It was in places like this and in local area parks that spies in the past had made their drops or picked up their money. Seagraves

envisioned the subtle handing off of a bucket of popcorn with something more than extra butter lying within; a subtle but ultimately clumsy practice of the art of espionage. He had already made his pickup spending the evening with his section chief, and there was no chance anyone had observed how it had been done. The CIA almost never undertook surveillance of two employees out together, particularly for tennis and dinner. Their notion of traditional spies mandated that it was a solitary occupation, which was why he’d invited his clueless boss to come along.

He drove home, took the towel he’d kept from the locker room and walked into a small room in his basement that was concrete with specialized lining, his little “safe” room of sorts that kept prying eyes away. He set the towel down on a table along with a handheld steamer. The fitness center’s logo was woven into the towel’s surface. Well, it would have been if this had actually been the fitness center’s towel. It was a very acceptable facsimile, but the logo was merely sitting on top of the fabric, like iron-on patches kids put on their clothes. The steamer quickly removed the logo. On the other side of it was the thing Seagraves had sweated through three sets of tennis for: four two-inch-long slivers of tape.

Using a sophisticated magnifying device that, for some reason, his employer allowed its personnel at certain levels to possess, he read and decrypted the information contained on the slivers. He then reencrypted it and put it in proper form to transport to Albert Trent. This took him until midnight but he didn’t mind. As a killer he had often worked at night, and old habits died hard.