Stone Cold (Camel Club 3)

He rose. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Oh, I’m not picky. It can be guys or girls. I mean, when you’re shit-faced on meth, who cares?”

“Okay, I’m leaving now,” Steve said hurriedly.

“One more thing.” Annabelle took out her wallet and flashed a fake badge at him. She said in a low voice, “You recognize the DEA insignia, Steve? For Drug Enforcement Agency?”

“Omigod!”

“And now that you’ve told me about mommy and daddy Brinkman’s estate on the Main Line, I’m sure my strike team will have no problem finding the place. That is if you’re still intending on having a wild party.”

“Please, I swear to God, I was just . . .?

? He put a hand out to steady himself. Annabelle seized it and gave his fingers a hard squeeze.

“Go back to Harvard, Stevie, and when you graduate, you can screw up your life however you want to. But in the future just be careful what you say to strange women on trains.”

She watched him hurry down the aisle and disappear safely back into first class.

Annabelle finished her beer and idly read the last couple pages of the newspaper. Now it was her turn to have the blood drain from her face.

An American tentatively identified as Anthony Wallace had been found nearly beaten to death at a Portugal seaside estate. Three other people had been found murdered at the home on a remote stretch of shoreline. Robbery was thought to be the motive. Although Wallace was still alive, he was in a coma after suffering extensive brain injuries and doctors were not hopeful for a recovery.

Annabelle tore out the story and walked unsteadily back to her seat.

Jerry Bagger had gotten to Tony, one of her partners in the con. An estate? She’d expressly told Tony to lay low and not flash the cash. He hadn’t listened and now he was brain dead. Jerry typically didn’t leave any witnesses behind.

But what had Jerry managed to beat out of Tony? She knew the answer to that question. Everything.

Milton stopped typing on his computer and gazed up at her. “You okay?”

Annabelle didn’t answer. As the train sailed back to D.C. she looked out the window but didn’t see the Jersey countryside. Her confidence evaporated, she now only saw graphic details of her coming death, courtesy of Jerry Bagger.

CHAPTER 5

OLIVER STONE MANAGED to lift the old, mossy tombstone to an upright position and packed dirt around it to keep it there. He sat back on his haunches and wiped his brow. He had a portable radio beside him on the ground turned to the local all-news station. Stone craved information like others needed oxygen. As he listened to the radio he got an unexpected jolt. There would be an awards ceremony at the White House that very afternoon where none other than Carter Gray, recently retired chief of the nation’s intelligence agencies, was scheduled to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Gray had served his country with distinction for nearly four decades, the announcer read, and quoted the president as saying that Carter Gray was a man that all of America should be proud of; a true patriot and public servant.

Stone didn’t exactly agree with this assessment. In fact, he’d been the reason Carter Gray had abruptly resigned from his post as the nation’s intelligence czar.

Stone thought to himself, If only the president knew that the man he’s going to be presenting that medal to is the same man who was prepared to put a bullet through his head. The country would never be ready for that truth.

He looked at his watch. The dead could certainly exist without him for a little while. An hour later, showered and dressed in his best clothes, which consisted of secondhand issue from Goodwill, he walked out of his cottage, where he was caretaker of Mt. Zion Cemetery, a stop on the Underground Railroad and the final resting place of notable African Americans from the nineteenth century. The trip from the outskirts of Georgetown to the White House was eaten up quickly by the long strides of Stone’s lean six-foot-two-inch frame.

At age sixty-one, he had lost very little of his energy and vigor. With his close-cropped white hair, he looked like a retired Marine drill sergeant. He was still a commander of sorts, though his ragtag regiment called the Camel Club was completely unofficial. It consisted of himself and three others: Caleb Shaw, Reuben Rhodes and Milton Farb.

And yet Stone might have to add another name to the roster, Annabelle Conroy. She had nearly died along with the rest of them in their last adventure. The truth was, Annabelle was as nimble, capable and nervy a person as Stone had ever met. Yet his gut told him the woman, who was attending to a piece of unfinished business with Milton Farb’s help, would be leaving them soon. Someone was after her, Stone knew, someone Annabelle actually feared. And under those circumstances sometimes the smartest move was to run. Stone understood that concept very well.

The White House was dead ahead. He would never be allowed to enter the hallowed front gates and lacked even the right to stand on that coveted side of Pennsylvania Avenue. What he could do was wait in Lafayette Park across the street. He used to have a tent there until the Secret Service recently made him take it down. Yet freedom of speech was still alive and well in America and thus his banner had remained. Unfurled between two pieces of rebar stuck in the ground, it read, “I want the truth.” So did a few other people in this town, it was rumored. To date, Stone had never heard of anyone actually finding it within the confines of the world capital of spin and deceit.

He passed the time chatting with a couple of uniformed Secret Service agents he knew. When the White House gates started to open, he broke off his conversation and watched the black sedan coming out. He couldn’t see through the tinted glass, but for some reason he knew that Carter Gray was inside the Town Car. Perhaps it was the man’s smell.

His hunch proved right when the window came down and he found himself eye to eye with the ex–intelligence chief, new Medal of Freedom winner and major Oliver Stone hater.

As the car slowed to make the turn onto the street, Gray’s wide, bespectacled face stared impassively at him. Then, smiling, Gray held up his big, shiny medal so Stone could see it.

Not having a medal of his own, Stone opted for giving Gray the finger. The man’s smile turned to a snarl and the window zipped back up.

Stone turned and walked back to his cemetery feeling the trip had been damn well worth it.

When Carter Gray’s car turned onto 17th Street, another vehicle followed it. Harry Finn had driven into D.C. that morning. He too had heard of Gray’s big day at the White House and like Oliver Stone had come down to see the man. While Stone had ventured here to show defiance to a man he loathed, Finn had come to continue devising a suitable way to kill Gray.

The drive took them out of D.C. and into Maryland, up to the waterfront city of Annapolis situated on the Chesapeake Bay. It was famous for, among other things, its crab cakes and for being home to the U.S. Naval Academy. Gray had recently traded his remote Virginia farm for an isolated place on a cliff overlooking the bay. Since he was no longer with the government his security detail was much smaller than it had been. Yet because he was a former director of Central Intelligence he still received daily briefings. And he had two guards assigned to him because his past work had angered a number of America’s enemies, who would love nothing better than to put a slug right between Gray’s close-set eyes.

Finn knew killing Gray would be far more difficult than bagging someone like Dan Ross. Because of the complexities, this was one of countless trips he had made reconnoitering Gray. Each time he had used a different vehicle rented under fake names and worn disguises to avoid any profiling. And even if he lost the Town Car in traffic he knew where it was going. He only broke off the tail when the car pulled onto a private gravel road and headed toward Gray’s house and the cliffs, where thirty feet down the waters of the bay boomed against solid rock.

Later, using long-range binoculars while perched in a tree, Finn saw the thing in the rear of Gray’s house that would enable him to kill the man. He actually smiled as the plan swiftly came together in his mind.

That night he took his daughter, Susie, to swim practice. As he sat in the bleachers and proudly watched her small body glide in perfect form across the pool, he imagined the last few seconds of Carter Gray’s life. It all would be worth it.

He drove his daughter home, helped put her and her ten-year-old brother Patrick to bed, had an argument with his teenager and then shot hoops with the boy in the driveway of their home until both were sweating and laughing. Later, he made love to his wife, Amanda, whom everyone called Mandy, and, restless, got up around midnight and packed school lunches for the next day. He also signed a permission slip for his oldest, David, to go on an upcoming

field trip to the U.S. Capitol and other downtown sights. David would be attending high school next year and Finn and Mandy had taken him to several school open houses. David liked math and science. He would probably end up being an engineer, Finn thought. Mechanically inclined too, Finn had almost gone that route before his life had taken a bit of a detour. He’d joined the navy, and quickly worked himself to an elite status.

Finn was a former Navy SEAL with special ops experience and combat duty on his résumé. And he possessed unique foreign-language skills from immersion school in California, where he’d spent a chunk of his life learning Arabic, and later acquired the dialects the school hadn’t taught him when on the ground in that part of the world. With his current job he traveled a good deal but he was also home a lot. He almost never missed a sporting or major school event. He was there for his children in the hope that they would be there for him later. That’s the best a parent could shoot for, he felt.

He finished the lunches, went to his small den, closed the door and began drawing up firm plans for Carter Gray. Out of practicality it would not mirror his confrontation with Dan Ross. Yet Finn had never been one to pound a round peg into a square hole. Even killers had to be flexible; in fact, perhaps the most flexible of all.

Finn’s gaze settled on the pictures of his three kids that sat on his desk front and center. Birth and death. It was the same for everyone. You started breathing on one end and stopped on the other. What you did in between defined who and what you were. Yet Harry Finn realized he would be awfully difficult to categorize. Some days even he didn’t truly understand it.

CHAPTER 6

THE RENTAL CAR pulled up to the gates of the cemetery as Oliver Stone was finishing some work. As he brushed off his pants and glanced that way, he had a feeling of déjà vu. She had done this to him before, but had eventually come back. Somehow Stone didn’t think the lady would let that happen again. He would have to see what he could do about that, because he didn’t want to lose her.

Annabelle Conroy got out of the car and walked through the open gates. Her long black coat flapped open in the wind, revealing a brown knee-length skirt and boots; her hair was hidden underneath a wide-brimmed floppy hat. Stone closed the door on the small storage shed near his cottage and padlocked it.

He said, “Milton told me your trip to Boston was a great success. I don’t believe I’ve heard the words ‘brilliant,’ ‘amazing’ and