Stone Cold

by David Baldacci

  “While I’m there, you want me to lay down a bet for you at the craps table?”

  “I never gamble, Reuben.”

  “How come?”

  “One, I don’t have any money, and two, I hate to lose.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THE NEXT MORNING Bagger met with Joe, from the PI firm. The man was trim, with calm gray eyes. Though soft-spoken, Joe was not intimidated in the least by the casino king. It was one of the things Bagger loved about him. He sat down across from Bagger and opened a file.

  “We got some quick results on this one, Mr. Bagger.” He scanned the pages and then looked up. “I’ve got a written report for you, but let me just give you the essentials.” He handed a photo across. “We had an associate of ours in Vegas check out the wedding chapel where Conroy and DeHaven were married. It’s a typical mom-and-pop; the same couple run it today, in fact. After a little financial encouragement they let us take a peek at their records, and that’s where we got a copy of that photo. Apparently they take pictures of all the people they marry and put them up on the wall. I’m assuming from the look on your face, Mr. Bagger, that that’s our girl.”

  Bagger was smiling and nodding as he stared down at a photo of a much younger Annabelle Conroy and her brand-new husband, Jonathan DeHaven. “That’s my little friend. Good work, Joe. What else you got?”

  “Well, this has the potential to make our job easier. I’m just not sure yet.”

  Bagger looked up from the photo. “What has the potential?”

  In answer, Joe handed Bagger a newspaper clipping. “The name DeHaven rang a bell for me, but I didn’t know why at the time. Then I did some digging. And bingo!”

  “He was murdered!” Bagger exclaimed, reading the headline.

  “Very recently. Found in some vault at the Library of Congress in D.C. It was all tied into some spy ring going down in Washington.”

  “Are we sure it’s the same DeHaven?”

  Joe handed Bagger another photo of DeHaven from a newspaper article detailing his death. “You can see it’s the same guy, only older.”

  “So Annabelle’s hubby was a spy and got whacked?”

  “Her ex-husband. We also found out that the marriage was annulled a year later.”

  “Annulled? Doesn’t that mean they didn’t have sex or something? For a whole freaking year?” Bagger stared down at Annabelle’s wedding picture. The lady was a stunner. Bagger of course hated the woman for ripping him off, but how in God’s name did her husband keep from jumping her the minute the “I do’s” were said? “Was this DeHaven guy secretly gay or something?”

  “I don’t know the details of why the annulment took place, but it did and was made a matter of record in Washington, D.C., where the couple presumably came back to live. And DeHaven wasn’t part of the spy ring. Details are still coming out and some of it’s being buried because of national security interests, but it looks like he was an innocent guy who got killed because he stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have.”

  A pensive Bagger sat back. Annabelle had conned him into thinking she was with CIA and that the money he had given her was a way for the government to launder cash overseas. But what if she really was with CIA? What if it had been the government that had screwed him? You couldn’t sue the government. You couldn’t kill Uncle Sam.

  He stared across at Joe. “Good work, Joe. Keep digging and see what you come up with.”

  Joe rose. “Already on it, Mr. Bagger.”

  After Joe left, Bagger stared down at the picture of the youthful Annabelle. She looked happy although her new hubby looked like, well, like a librarian.

  Bagger rose and looked out the window, onto his empire that occupied nearly an entire block on the Boardwalk. Making up his mind, he picked up his phone and called his chief of security. “Warm up the jet, we’re heading out.”

  “Where to, Mr. Bagger?”

  “My favorite city. Washington, D.C.”

  CHAPTER 22

  THE NEXT MORNING, while Reuben and Milton drove to Atlantic City, Harry Finn was also busy. He and two team members were surveying a parcel of land near the United States Capitol. Their uniforms were perfect, their equipment spot-on. Most importantly, they exuded the confident air of people who had every right to be where they were. When two Capitol police officers approached them, Finn calmly pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and showed the pair his official-looking orders.

  “I just go where they send me, guys,” he said apologetically. “We won’t be here much longer. It’s the damn visitor center project.”

  “You mean that taxpayer hell pit?” one of the cops growled. The project had become D.C.’s version of the Big Dig fiasco in Boston.

  Finn nodded. “You know in this town everybody thinks somebody else has jurisdiction. So we have to do the same thing ten times because somebody’s panties got in a wad.”

  “Tell me about it,” the other cop said. “Just make it quick.”

  “Roger that,” Finn said, turning back to his work.

  The surveyor’s apparatus they were using was actually a video camera currently filming two entrances to the Capitol building and detailing the rotation of security guards and other essential elements for a successful penetration later. Ever since a man had broken through the Capitol security perimeter with comparative ease, several high-ranking pols had been livid. They had secretly retained Finn’s company to test whether the “enhanced” security measures put in place were the real fix or not. From what Finn had seen so far, they clearly weren’t.

  Back at the office, Finn spent the next two hours “phone freaking.” This was a complex exercise involving phoning one person after another and building on the intelligence with each call to elicit more specific information from each new person called. Finn had used this technique to learn the central location in the United States of the vaccine for a nasty bioterrorism bug by pretending to be a marketing student doing a term paper on commercial distribution techniques. He talked to eight different people, finishing with a vice president of the company that manufactured the vaccine, who unknowingly confirmed the location while answering what he obviously thought was a totally unrelated series of questions.

  Today Finn was gathering info on two upcoming projects: the hit on the Capitol and a far more involved crashing of the Pentagon. While it had been unfortunately proved beyond doubt that one could fly a large plane into the headquarters of the U.S. military and damage it, there were far subtler ways of breaching the facility’s security and perhaps doing more harm than the doomed jumbo jet had. Among other possible scenarios, one could booby-trap the military’s command and control system, or sabotage its air filtration system, killing or sickening tens of thousands of key government personnel, or even blow up the building from the inside out.

  As Finn went about his work, he kept an eye on the Internet for news of Carter Gray’s death. As expected, the authorities were keeping a tight lid on all of it. There had been no leaks and most stories were confined to telling and retelling the glorious career and public service of the dead man, Carter Robert Gray. Finally, Finn couldn’t take it anymore. He went for a walk.

  And then he decided, on impulse, to visit his mother. He would catch a flight that very night, after the kids were in bed. He could see her the next day and be back home that same night. After the navy gig, he had some downtime coming anyway. His was not a nine-to-five occupation. And with several jobs percolating in the prep stage before the field operations would begin, now was actually a good time to go.

  He both loved and hated to see his mother. The routine never varied; it couldn’t, actually. Yet since it had all begun with her, Finn had to return to that touchstone from time to time. It wasn’t like he was reporting in, but in a way that’s exactly what he was doing.

  He booked the flight online and called Mandy and told her. He left work early, drove his two youngest to swimming and baseball practice respectively, and then picked them up later. After they were asleep he left fo
r the airport, for the short ride to one of the longest days of his life.

  CHAPTER 23

  STONE PUNCHED IN Annabelle’s phone number. Four rings went by and he assumed she wasn’t going to answer when her voice said, “Hello?”

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “Oliver, I left a note.”

  “The note is bullshit. Where are you?”

  “I don’t want you involved in this, so just forget me.”

  “I’ve sent Milton and Reuben up to Atlantic City to do a recon on Bagger.”

  “You did what?” she screamed into the phone. “Are you insane!”

  “Now there’s the Annabelle I’ve come to know and admire.”

  “That’s suicide, sending them to Bagger’s turf.”

  “They know how to take care of themselves.”

  “Oliver, I left town so you wouldn’t get involved.”

  “Then come back, because we are involved.”

  “I can’t come back. I won’t come back.”

  “Then just answer one question for me.”

  “What?” she said warily.

  “What did Jerry Bagger do to you to make you rip him off for millions?”

  “I ripped him off because that’s what I do. I’m a con.”

  “If you keep lying to me I’m going to get really upset.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “You helped us, now it’s our turn to help you.”

  “I helped myself. You guys were just in the way.”

  “So be it, but you still need us. And we’re wasting time. If Bagger’s as good as you say he is, you may not have much time left.”

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

  “I’m just being practical. Where are you?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Then let me guess. But if I guess correctly you have to tell me where you are. Deal?”

  “Whatever makes you happy.”

  “I said deal?”

  “Fine. Deal.”

  “Okay, you’ve taken my advice and you’re trying to pin something on Bagger. And what you’re trying to pin on him is the reason you ripped him off. And that’s where you are right now, at a place where he did something so bad to you or yours that you had to come back at him. And do it damn hard. Am I right?”

  Annabelle was dead silent.

  He said, “Now, since I won the bet you have to tell me where you are.”

  “You didn’t give me a specific location.”

  “I didn’t say I’d give you a specific location. In fact, what I told you was far more than just naming a town. But if you want to welch on a bet.”

  “I never go back on a bet.”

  “Then tell me.”

  There was a very long pause. “I’m in Maine.”

  “Where in Maine?”

  “A little south of Kennebunk on the coast.”

  “Is that where it happened?”

  Stone waited through another long pause.

  “Yes.”

  “And what was it that did happen?”

  “It’s my business,” she snapped.

  “I think I’ve proved that you can trust me.”

  “I’m not sure anyone can prove that to me.”

  “Okay, have it your way. I’ll head up to Atlantic City and have a go at old Jerry myself.”

  “Oliver, you can’t do that. He will kill you. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Then my blood will be on your hands,” he said in a joking tone.

  “Don’t screw with me. I don’t need this shit right now.”

  “Exactly,” Stone said in a tight voice. “You don’t need stupid wisecracks from me; you need a plan to get you out of Bagger’s gunsights. And then you need to execute on that plan.”

  “And you think you can do that?”

  “I used to do it for a living. And I’m sure Jerry Bagger is one bad SOB, but my old playground wasn’t exactly Disneyland.” There was silence on the phone. Stone thought she had hung up.

  “Annabelle?”

  “He killed my mother. There, now you know.”

  “What’d your mother do to Bagger?”

  “Nothing. It was my father, Paddy. He ripped Jerry off for ten thousand bucks and it cost my mother her life.”

  “Did he kill your father too?”

  “No, somehow my old man slipped away and forgot to tell my mother that homicidal Bagger was coming to town.”

  Stone let out a long breath. “That’s a lot of baggage to have to carry around. I’m sorry, Annabelle.”

  “I don’t need sympathy, Oliver. I just need a way to take this animal down once and for all, because, to tell the truth, stealing forty million bucks from him didn’t even come close to squaring things with that bastard.”

  “Tell me exactly where you are. I can be there tonight.”

  “How are you going to get here? Fly?”

  “I don’t have the money to fly.”

  “I can get you the plane ticket.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have any ID, and without that I can’t get on an aircraft.”

  “I wish you’d told me, I could get you stuff so good the FBI couldn’t spot it as fake, much less TSA grunts.”

  “I may take you up on that one day. For now, I’m driving.”

  She told him where she was. “You’re sure about this? You can still walk, no questions asked. I’m used to going it alone.”

  “No friend of the Camel Club goes it alone. I’ll see you in Maine, Annabelle.”

  CHAPTER 24

  MILTON WAS STANDING behind some players at a blackjack table watching the action, his gaze roving like a laser beam over the cards coming out of the chute.

  Reuben appeared beside him. “How’s it going?”

  Milton smiled. “This looks like fun.”

  “Well, it’s our job to blend in, so play a few hands. Just don’t lose your shirt. We need gas money to get back home.”

  Reuben strolled along, his gaze wandering here and there, looking for anything or anyone that might be useful. After being in combat in Vietnam he had toiled for years with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, the military equivalent of CIA. Though he’d been out of the game for a long time now, it wasn’t hard to remember how to do it well. And for Reuben, that meant heading to a bar for a drink.

  He parked his butt on a stool and ordered a gin and tonic, checked his watch and ran his gaze over the bartender, an attractive middle-aged woman but with the pasty, beaten-down look of someone who’d spent too many years on the casino clock and under casino lights.

  “So what action looks good these days?” he asked her as he munched on peanuts and idly sipped his cocktail.

  She wiped the bar with a rag and said, “Depends on what you’re looking for.”

  “Something besides slots and dice and other things that cost money.”