Stone Cold (Camel Club 3)

“Absolutely, buddy, no worries.”

“You can talk to me, you know, about anything.”

Finn smiled. “I thought that was my line.”

“I’m serious, Pop. I know sometimes it’s hard to talk to Mom about stuff. Sometimes you need another guy to kick stuff around.”

Finn reached out and shook his son’s hand. “I appreciate that, Dave. More than you’ll ever know.” I wish I could tell you everything, son, but I can’t. I will never be able to. I’m sorry. He thought this even as his immensely strong fingers tightened around his son’s. He didn’t want to let go.

“Have a good one, Pop.” David closed the door and followed Susie and Patrick inside.

Finn slowly drove off, passing the cars of other parents, who, he was reasonably certain, would never knowingly trade their lives for his.

He looked in the rearview mirror as David disappeared into the school building.

If I fail, son, just remember me for the father I was, not the man I had to become.

Down the hall from Finn’s mother’s room a man named Herb Daschle yawned and stretched as he sat in front of a bed where another man lay unconscious. Daschle had been here since midnight and his shift did not end for another four hours. He nodded to an attendant as she came in to check the patient. It was at that instant that the man in the bed started moaning and a few words rolled from his mouth. Daschle jumped up, grabbed the attendant by the arm and pushed her out the door, slamming it shut behind her. He bent down to the man’s face and listened intently. When he fell silent, Daschle whipped out a telephone and made a call, repeating exactly what he had said. Then he went to the door and called out. The attendant came back in, looking a little flustered. But this had happened before.

“Sorry about that,” Daschle said politely as he resumed his seat.

“You people are going to give me a heart attack,” the woman said under her breath. She didn’t dare say it out loud. No, she didn’t dare. Not with people like that.

CHAPTER 55

“I’M GRATEFUL that Gregori was so helpful,” Carter Gray said to the CIA director.

The men were sitting in the study in the bunker. Gray was actually growing quite fond of his current billet. There was something to be said for living underground. The weather was never a problem, no traffic jams, and he rarely enjoyed anyone’s company as much as his own.

The former Soviet ambassador to the U.S. during the final years of the Cold War, Gregori Tupikov, was no longer serving the Russian people; he was doing quite well serving himself. He was now a fat and happy capitalist and a recent export from his homeland. He had joined an investment group that had taken over the formerly state-controlled coal industry and then sold it to another group of fellow Russians. Gregori had been wise enough to flee the country before the government hammer came down on the country’s newly minted rich. He lived most of the year in Switzerland but owned apartments in Paris and New York, his millions carefully managed by Goldman Sachs.

Gray finished reading over the file report obtained from the meeting with Tupikov. “So Lesya and Rayfield Solomon were married in Volgograd; then the newlyweds managed to get out of the Soviet Union.”

The director nodded. “According to what Gregori remembered and found out from old colleagues, they apparently made their way first to Poland, then to France and from there to Greenland. Was Lesya Jewish, by the way?”

“I don’t know. Solomon was, although he wasn’t a practicing Jew. The spy business oftentimes put a cramp in one’s religious obligations.”

“I make it to the Presbyterian church every Sunday,” the director said.

“Congratulations. If Gregori knew that much back then, why didn’t he do something about it?” Gray answered his own question. “He assumed she was still working for the Soviets.”

“Well, wasn’t she?” the director said in a puzzled tone.

“Of course,” Gray said casually. “And after Greenland?”

“Unfortunately, there the trail turns cold. And it might well remain cold. It was a long time ago, after all.”

“It can’t remain cold,” Gray snapped.

“Where exactly was Solomon found dead? That part of the file is missing too.”

Gray looked up from the documents he was studying, pretending to recall the details. They were actually seared into his mind. “Brazil. Sa˜o Paulo.”

“What was he doing in Sa˜o Paulo?”

“Not sure. He wasn’t working for us then, of course. Lesya had turned him.”

“And he died there?”

Gray nodded. “We were alerted by our contacts in South America. We did an investigation. But it was clear he’d killed himself.”

The director looked at Gray and Gray looked at the director.

“Of course,” the director said. “And Lesya was left on her own?”

“Looks that way. Anything else?”

“Perhaps.”

Gray glanced up to see the director smiling smugly. He recalled that as a young case agent the current CIA director had possessed the worst poker face of any man he’d ever trained, and also a vastly annoying air of superiority, most of it undeserved. Gray believed he had shamed these weaknesses out of the man. Yet as head of the CIA it was clear his insufferable qualities had risen once more.

“Tell me.”

“Gregori must’ve been in a good mood. As you suggested when our man met him in Paris, he fed him lobsters by the ton.”

“And Moskovskaya vodka? That’s his favorite.”

“By the gallon. And we scrounged up a redhead or two.”

“And?”

“And he said that he recalled a rumor that Lesya had to get married.”

“Had to get married?” Gray said, looking puzzled.

The director made a motion with his hand in front of his stomach.

“She was pregnant?” Gray said immediately.

“That’s evidently what Gregori believes.”

Gray sat back. It’s the son out there murdering people. “So based on the rough timeline we’re working with, the child would be in his or her mid-thirties today?”

The director nodded. “But I highly doubt that the kid’s last name is Solomon.”

“But if Lesya and Solomon married in Russia while she was pregnant, and showing, where was the child born? If they left Russia immediately after the wedding the birth could have been in Poland, France, Greenland, or of course Canada.”

“Canada? The last known stop of theirs was in Greenland. Where does Canada come in?”

Gray studied the man who headed up the nation’s premier intelligence agency. He had started out at the CIA, then gone into politics, and there he had stayed until a president of dubious judgment had tossed his friend a political bone and made him CIA director. God help this country.

“Why does one go westward to Greenland except on the way to Canada? Even back then there were numerous direct flights to the U.S. And it was a favorite stopping place for spies. When I was in the field I often stopped in Greenland before coming home. You could always spot someone following you in Greenland. Humanity damn well stuck out in the frozen tundra!”

“Okay, but maybe they came to this country to have the child? That would make him a U.S. citizen. It’d be easier.”

“I don’t think so, not for the birth. And less complicated for her to sneak into Canada and have the baby there than in the U.S. The records could always be falsified later.”

“Even with all that, it doesn’t leave us much to go on.”

“I disagree. From Greenland to Canada the ports of entry are limited, and were even more so back then. Montreal? Toronto? Ottawa? Perhaps Nova Scotia and Newfoundland? We can start there.”

“Start there doing what exactly?”

“We’ll limit it to a single twelve-month period.” Gray named the year. “And we will search the records of births in those places. Just boys for now.”

“Why not girls too?”

“Ju

st boys for now,” Gray repeated.

“That’s still an enormous search. And we have that disaster readiness drill on Capitol Hill coming up that DHS demanded and left us to do the lion’s share of the work. It’s requiring an inordinate amount of our time.”

“The birth records should be computerized now. That should simplify things greatly.”

“Yes, but still. The resources required to—”

Gray leaned forward and silenced the man with one of his most intimidating stares. “The consequences of not doing so are potentially catastrophic to this country.”