Stone Cold

by David Baldacci

  the pair had disappeared. After that the news didn’t get any better. The pistol Stone had taken from Mike was sterilized; the van stolen. Their kidnappers had not mentioned Bagger’s name, so there was nothing to connect any of it to the casino chief. They didn’t even have enough to bring him in for questioning. The authorities were not happy about coming up empty. In the future it was made very clear that the cavalry would not come running when called.

  It seemed to put them back at square one in their war with Bagger.

  Yet it was Oliver Stone who was the most worried. Sterilized weapon, stolen van, no IDs, bound people disappearing in the night with no trace? What if it hadn’t been Bagger’s men who’d kidnapped them? What if instead of being after Annabelle they were after him?

  CHAPTER 50

  WHEN MIKE AND HIS PRISONERS didn’t show up at the pre-arranged spot, Bagger didn’t shout or throw objects. He was far more introspective than most people realized. You didn’t get to his level without thinking things through from every angle.

  The casino boss knew that losing Mike was not a good thing. Worse than that, he didn’t know who he’d lost Mike to, or what Mike might be saying to them. The town was crawling with feds. You could spit on any street corner and hit five of them, easy. Bagger’s instincts had allowed him to survive many dangerous moments. He could sense this was one of them. He could hop on his jet and make a run for it. Yet that cut against everything he’d built his career on. Jerry Bagger never ran from trouble.

  He made some calls. The first one was to bring down some reinforcements from Atlantic City. Bagger then called Joe, his PI guy, and instructed him to dig up some more information that Bagger felt he would need as this whole thing unfolded. The last call was to his lawyer, who knew more of Bagger’s secrets than anyone. The man immediately began constructing alibis and legal strategies in case the feds knocked on his client’s door.

  With that business finished, Bagger decided to take a stroll alone. Unlike Atlantic City, D.C. closed shop early. On a weeknight there were few restaurants, bars or clubs open this late. Yet after about a ten-block jaunt, Jerry found a neon-lighted dive, went inside, grabbed a stool at the bar and ordered a whiskey sour with a chaser from a bartender whose features clearly showed that life had come down on him like a sledgehammer. The fat guy seated next to him gazed droopily into his beer while an Elvis Costello song drifted from the dented jukebox that was coated with decades’ worth of beers and tears.

  Bagger had grown up in places just like this, hustling for scraps. Nearly sixty years later he was still hustling, only the scraps were now valued in the millions. Yet sometimes he wished he were again that dirty-faced kid with the infectious smile and mile-a-minute mouth ripping people off for dollars with tried-and-true scams, the marks never knowing what had hit them until he was long gone and on to the next scheme.

  “So what do people do for fun in this town?” he asked the bartender.

  The man started mopping the bar and said, “It’s not a town built for fun, least that’s my opinion.”

  “Serious business here, you mean?”

  The man grinned. “Only place that can nuke you and tax you.”

  “Some people think we’d all be a lot better off if somebody nuked this place.”

  “Hey, just give me twenty-four hours’ warning.”

  “I’m from Atlantic City.”

  “Cool place. Afraid I dropped enough of my retirement dollars there, though.”

  “Ever been to the Pompeii?”

  “Oh yeah. Neat casino. Guy who runs it is bad news, so I’ve heard. Real hardass. But I guess you gotta be to make money in that racket. So more power to the man.”

  “You been tending bar long?”

  “Too long. I wanted to be a Major League pitcher, but my stuff wasn’t quite good enough. By the time I realized it, pouring drinks was all I knew how to do. But with three kids to feed, you do what you gotta do.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “Cancer, three years ago. Just when things were looking good, life kicks you right in the gut. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Bagger laid ten Franklins down for a tip and rose to leave.

  The stunned bartender said, “Mister, what the hell’s this for?”

  “Just a reminder that even assholes aren’t all bad.”

  Bagger walked back to his hotel. His cell phone was buzzing, no doubt his security detail checking up on him. He had a lot of enemies and his boys didn’t like him being out alone. It wasn’t because they loved him, Bagger knew. If he went down, their jobs went away. In Bagger’s world you got loyalty either at the end of a gun barrel or by waving enough dollars in front of someone. He didn’t bother to answer the call.

  He passed by the Washington Monument and stopped. The 555-foot-tall obelisk wasn’t capturing his attention, it was the man and woman walking hand in hand along the path near the monument.

  Bagger had never had a serious relationship with any woman; he’d been too busy hustling for his fortune. All the women he’d been involved with had either been paid for or looking to get some action from old Jerry in return for giving in. He knew they didn’t really care for him and so he never cared about them.

  That was his life until Annabelle Conroy had come along and turned him upside down. There had been something about her right from the get-go that had hit him in a place he didn’t think he even had anymore. He’d allowed himself to believe that she actually cared for him and not because he could do anything for her.

  And then the bottom had dropped out and here he was in the city he hated almost as much as Vegas, looking to kill a woman he could’ve loved forever. The loss of the forty million hadn’t destroyed him. He could always make more money when it came down to it. Yet Annabelle Conroy had stolen the unthinkable from him: his heart.

  So enraged was Bagger by this sense of betrayal that if he’d had a gun, he would have shot the couple passing just a few feet away from him. It was all he could do to keep himself from running over and pounding both of them into the dirt.

  He turned and walked quickly back to his hotel. When he got there he was in for another surprise. Mike Manson and his sidekick had just returned looking bloody and disheveled.

  Before Bagger said anything to them he motioned to one of his other men and mouthed the word, “Clean?”

  “We searched ’em,” the man said. “No surveillance devices.”

  Bagger looked at Mike. “What the hell happened?”

  “We blew it, Mr. Bagger,” Mike admitted. “We had ’em in the van, then the old guy got the gun away from me and tied us up. Took us all this time to get free and back here.”

  “We had to walk five miles,” the other man said.

  “I don’t give a shit if you had to crawl using your tongues,” Bagger roared. “You let a woman and a damn librarian get the drop on you?”

  “It wasn’t the librarian,” Mike said. “He was an older guy, but he was one serious dude. He stuck a finger against my ribs and my whole body went numb.” He pointed to his wounded ear. “Then he took a chunk of my ear off with a round from my gun like it was nothing. He was a pro, Mr. Bagger. We weren’t expecting that kind of trouble.”

  “Mike, if I didn’t know you’re not a screw-up, I’d put a round right through your head.”

  Mike said nervously, “Yes sir, Mr. Bagger. I know. We crawled behind some trees, and Joe found a chunk of glass we used to cut the ropes off. Right as we were taking off the cops showed up. They must’ve called them. They didn’t see us, though.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The guy who nicked you was a pro, huh? What’d he look like?”

  Mike told him.

  “Maybe a fed?”

  “He wasn’t dressed like a fed. And he was a little old for that. But the guy was still a pro. And he and Conroy were tight.”

  Bagger slowly sat down in a chair. Who the hell was Annabelle hooked up with?

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 51

  THE SENATOR WAS NOT IN TODAY, having departed on a sudden fact-finding trip, taking many of his staff with him and leaving only a skeleton crew behind. Finn had found this helpful information out on Simpson’s Web site, where the senator touted the trip as one that would benefit all Alabamans and Americans. How a first-class trek to the Grand Cayman Islands was going to accomplish that, Finn didn’t know. What he did think was that Simpson had been warned about the other killings and had decided to get out of town. That was all right, he had to come back to D.C. at some point. After all, he was a U.S. senator. They couldn’t avoid their duties forever, though some had made valiant efforts to do so over the years.

  Finn was dressed in government-standard work clothes, his badge dangling from his neck, his case of tools swinging in one hand. His assured demeanor, dead-on photo ID and polished story of work to be done here resulted in his being quickly allowed on his way.

  Getting off the elevator, Finn eyed the glass door of Roger Simpson’s office, the Alabama state flag next to it. The banner was a crimson Saint Andrew’s Cross on a white field patterned after the Confederate battle flag. As it had over 150 years ago for the Union Blue, the flag represented a perfect target for Harry Finn. He walked up to the door and through the glass saw the young receptionist sitting at the front desk.

  He’d enlarged the photos he’d taken of the office and the woman on his previous visit here. They had clearly shown her nameplate on the desk.

  He poked his head in the door and held up his phony work order. “Hey, Cheryl, Bobby from building maintenance. I was called about your front door lock a few days ago. Sorry I’m just getting to it, but we’ve had a backlog. Do you know what’s wrong with the darn thing? We’ve had complaints from other offices about theirs too.”

  The harried young woman, who was fielding phone calls in rapid succession, cupped her hand over the phone receiver. “No idea.”

  “I’ll just take a quick look at it, then. Just sit tight,” Finn said. The receptionist smiled gratefully before turning back to her work.

  Finn knelt down, examined the lock and slid a tiny piece of metal into the keyhole. He spent a couple more minutes pretending to fuss with the door and said, “You’re good to go now, Cheryl.”

  She gave him a wave. As Finn packed up his tools he glanced inside the office. He had already learned there was no alarm panel and no motion sensors, but it never hurt to check again.

  Out in the hall there was a surveillance camera set up on the ceiling at the juncture of two halls. Finn had already timed it. It changed positions every two minutes so it could sweep both corridors. He walked down the hall and watched the camera while checking his watch. It was still on the two-minute sweeps. That would be all he needed. Guards patrolled the halls at night, but he had learned that they did the even floors on odd hours and the odd floors on even hours. He waited until the hall was clear of people and the camera pointed away from him. Then he quickly jimmied the lock of a room he knew was used to store holiday decorations, and slipped inside. He wedged himself in the back, lay on the floor and went to sleep.

  At two minutes after midnight, Finn slipped a video wire under the door of the storage room and did a quick look-see up and down the hall. It was clear. The camera was sweeping the other corridor.

  He hustled to Simpson’s office door. The piece of metal he’d inserted in the lock earlier performed only one function, but did it flawlessly. It made the door seem to be locked when it actually wasn’t if you had one special piece of equipment, which Finn did. He inserted the magnetized end of his tool in the lock, pulled out the metal piece and the door clicked open.

  Finn immediately went to work. He jogged through the anterooms and into Simpson’s spacious office. He knelt down by the desk’s kneehole and flipped the computer CPU around, revealing the back. He unscrewed the cover, slipped his device inside and connected it to other components inside the computer.

  Finn had been able to get his device past security because it didn’t have any explosive materials in it. Instead, the device had been designed to ignite a chemical reaction inside the components in the CPU. It was a reaction that would make the otherwise harmless CPU a bomb, a possibility no one in the computer industry would want you to know. The device had attached to it a wireless receiver with a range of about fifteen hundred yards, more than enough, Finn had calculated. He replaced the CPU’s cover and put the unit back under the desk.

  Next, he sat down at the computer and turned it on. The screen powered up but a password was needed. Busy senators didn’t have time to recall elaborate or obscure passwords, so Finn started simply typing in names. The third one did the trick: “Montgomery,” the capital of Alabama.

  He typed in the commands he needed and then shut the computer down. The last thing he did was place a miniature battery-powered surveillance device near a flowerpot on a high shelf by the senator’s couch. The vines of the plant provided an ideal cover for the tiny camera. Now Finn had a direct video and audio link to Simpson’s office. He would put it to good use.

  He went back to the glass door and checked his watch, waiting for the surveillance camera to click to the other hall. As soon as it did, he was out the door and back into the storage room. He retrieved from his tool bag and powered up a small receiving unit that looked like a BlackBerry, and stared at the picture on the screen. He had chosen the location of his miniature camera well; he could see all of Simpson’s office clearly. He turned off the unit, lay on the floor and went back to sleep.

  The next morning he slipped out of the storage room and spent some time going up and down elevators, pretending to be heading to assignments. Then he walked out of the building with a group of other people, caught the Metro out to Virginia, picked up his car and drove to the office.

  Now all he had to do was wait for Roger Simpson to return. And what a homecoming it would be for the man who’d helped kill his father.

  Yet even more than that, Simpson’s death would mean the end of Harry Finn’s journey. No more killing, no more hearing the story from his mother. Something told him that his mother was only alive because she was waiting for that to happen. As soon as Simpson was dead, Finn suspected that his mother’s life would also end. Revenge was a powerful force, and could keep even death at bay. And when his mother passed, Finn would mourn her, grieve for her, but also be immensely relieved at finally being free.

  After doing some work at the office and going over still more details on the plan of attack against the Capitol, he left and picked the kids up from school. He spent an hour of batting-cage time with Patrick, helped Susie with her homework and went over high school choices with David. When Mandy got back from the grocery store, he helped her make dinner.

  “You seem to be in a good mood,” she commented as he scraped potatoes in the kitchen sink.

  “I had a great day yesterday,” he said.

  “I wish you hadn’t had to pull an all-nighter. You must be exhausted.”

  “No, I’m actually pretty full of energy.” He finished with the last potato, wiped off his hands and slipped his arms around her. “I was thinking we all could take a trip somewhere, maybe out of the country. The kids have never been to Europe.”

  “That would be great, Harry, but it’s expensive.”

  “We’ve had a good year. I’ve got some money socked away. Next summer might be a good time to do it. I’ve sort of got things mapped out.”

  “How come I’m always the last to know about these things?”

  “Just wanted to have my ducks in a row before I presented it to the commander in chief for approval, ma’am. That’s how the navy trains you.” He gave her a kiss.

  “You really do have mood swings, mister,” she said.

  “Like I said before, I see light at the end of the tunnel.”

  She laughed. “Let’s just hope the light isn’t a train heading your way.”

  As she turned back to the stove, Finn’s jovial manner disappeared.

 
; A train heading my way, he thought. He hoped his wife didn’t turn out to be prophetic.

  CHAPTER 52

  AFTER THE SPOILED KIDNAPPING ATTEMPT Caleb and Paddy had stayed at Stone’s cottage, while Annabelle had gone back to her hotel, checked out and moved into another one in a different part of the city. She called Stone with the new address.

  Early in the morning Stone received a call from an upset Reuben.

  “Milton’s driving me nuts, Oliver,” Reuben complained. “He’s cleaned up my whole house. I can’t find a damn thing. And Delta Dawn’s afraid to even come inside because the damn vacuum’s been running nonstop for hours.” Delta Dawn was Reuben’s hound of no pedigree whatsoever.

  His voice dropped to a near whisper. “And you’re not going to believe what he’s done in the bathroom. It looks like something out of a women’s magazine. I’m too damn embarrassed to even take a crap in there.”

  Stone said wearily, “I don’t have room for him here, I’m pretty full at the moment, Reuben.”

  “I know, that’s why I called. I thought Paddy could come and stay with me while Milton bunked with you. I mean, Paddy’s more my kind of roommate.”

  “Finding you the ideal companion is not a priority right now; staying alive is,” Stone said bluntly. “And the less Paddy’s out in public the better.”

  Reuben let out a deep sigh. “Okay, I guess I can hang with Mr. OCD for a little while longer. But we better nail this Bagger creep soon. Milton’s already started to talk about taking me clothes shopping. And I draw the line at that shit.”

  Several hours later Stone watched as a very irritable and