Stone Cold

by David Baldacci

  And so for the first time in four decades, Max Himmerling let a secret slip out. “Solomon wasn’t a traitor. He knew some things, but he didn’t know all of it. People were afraid if he found out the truth, he’d talk.”

  “People like who? Gray? Simpson?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Stone made another nick on Himmerling’s skin. “Max, I’m losing my patience.”

  “It was Gray or Simpson. I never knew which.”

  “And the secret?”

  “Not even I knew that. It involved a mission Solomon and the Russian Lesya handled against the Soviet Union. The whole thing’s on the front burner now. I don’t know why.”

  “One more question. Should be an easy one. Who ordered the hit on me?”

  “John, please—”

  Stone violently seized the man around the throat. “Who?”

  “All I can say is you have the same choice as with the last answer,” Himmerling gasped.

  So Gray or Simpson. Not that he was surprised.

  Stone put the knife away and said, “If you try and tell anyone I’ve been here, you know what will happen. Gray will find out and he’ll suspect you told me things. And you can’t lie to him. He knows ways to get the truth out of the toughest people, much less someone like you. And when he finds out what you told me, guess what, Max?” Stone placed an imaginary pistol against the man’s head and pantomimed pulling the trigger. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

  “Would you have really killed my grandkids?” Himmerling asked in a quavering voice.

  “Just be glad they don’t have to find out.”

  CHAPTER 64

  AFTER STONE LEFT, Max Himmerling breathed a sigh of relief; it caught in his throat. The guards. They’ll know someone came. They’ll contact . . . He ran to pack a bag. He had long ago worked out a doomsday scenario of having to flee. Ten minutes later he was on his way out the door, boarding pass printed out, fake ID in his pocket. The ringing phone made him stop. Should he answer it? Something told him to. He picked it up. The voice on the other end was very familiar to him.

  “Hello, Max. What did you tell him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Max, you’re a brilliant man, but a very bad liar. I don’t blame you. I’m sure he threatened you, and we both know what a dangerous man he is. So what did you tell him?”

  Once more Himmerling spilled his guts.

  “Thank you, Max, you did the right thing.” The line went dead.

  Himmerling dropped the phone as the back door opened.

  “Please,” he said. “Please.”

  The silenced gun fired and the bullet hit him in the forehead. The body was placed into a black bag. In a minute the truck had carried it away. Officially Himmerling would be reassigned to a foreign post on short notice. When the next American chopper went down anywhere in the world, it would be recorded that Max Himmerling had been on it, his body burned beyond recognition. Thus would end the man’s near forty years of service to his country.

  At least he would no longer have to worry about outliving his pension.

  In his bunker Carter Gray smacked his fist into his palm. The loss of Himmerling was a heavy if unavoidable one. Gray knew he should have anticipated it, but he hadn’t.

  He looked back at the computer screen in front of him. He had received the birth records from hospitals in major Canadian cities for the year in question. Even electronically they were voluminous. He had to separate the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, he had known Rayfield Solomon well. They had been good friends, and friendly rivals. Indeed, it could be said that Solomon was the only man of his generation who could match Carter Gray in ability. Gray had to concede that in the field, Solomon might well have been his superior. So uncovering the man’s tracks wouldn’t be easy, but he did have the advantage of knowing him intimately.

  He had focused his efforts on the name of the father listed in the birth records. Lesya would not have used her own name, of course. The name of the son would not help either, since Gray was sure that it would be different today. So it came down to the father. Rayfield Solomon was very proud of his Jewish heritage. Though the demands of his work did not allow him to practice his religion in a traditional fashion—critical missions could not be interrupted even for the exercise of his faith—Solomon had been an ardent scholar of his religion. He and Gray had had numerous discussions about theology. Gray’s wife had been a devout Catholic. Gray had not been particularly religious until his wife and daughter had been killed on 9/11. Solomon had often told him, “Find something to believe in, Carter, other than your work. Because when you leave this life, you leave work behind. If that’s all you have, then you have nothing. And eternity is a long time for nothing.”

  Wise words the man had uttered, though Gray had not necessarily believed them back then.

  His fingers skimmed over the computer keys, trying this and that search combination. The list of names was further and further reduced. He continued to scan the names until he came to rest on one proud father.

  David P. Jedidiah, II.

  He smiled. You blundered there, Ray. You let personal trump professional. Over the years since his family’s death Gray had also become a keen reader of the Bible, so the name of this father had particular relevance for him.

  Solomon was the second son of David, his first legitimate child with Bathsheba. Jedidiah was the name that Nathan, the future King Solomon’s teacher, called him. And in Hebrew Solomon means “Peace,” hence the middle initial, P. Rayfield Solomon had used the name David P. Jedidiah, II, in the birth records. Carter Gray looked at the mother’s name, and then at the son’s. He picked up the phone and relayed this information. “Trace the son,” he ordered.

  He put the phone down and said aloud, “So where are you now, son of Solomon?”

  CHAPTER 65

  IT WAS MORNING, with a chill in the air. Harry Finn stood by himself, hands in pockets, and stared at it: the empty hole in the ground at Arlington National Cemetery, where John Carr was supposed to be resting, for all eternity. That had been a lie. And why was Finn surprised? The government always lied about the most important things.

  Even though he previously believed the man was dead, Finn had researched John Carr’s background. As a Navy SEAL he had done joint intelligence work with the CIA. Using the same skills that he made his living with today, he had slowly unearthed much of the history of his father’s last days, and also the pasts of the men who’d been involved in killing him.

  Judd Bingham’s, Bob Cole’s and Lou Cincetti’s histories were pretty much the same. They had worked for the CIA, seemed to relish their duties in fact, until they’d retired to a life of comfort and leisure. Retirements that Finn had abruptly ended.

  Only Carr was different. Officially, he had been killed while a member of an army unit, in the type of skirmish that popped up from time to time around the world and to which the United States was morally if not technically required to respond. Before becoming a member of the CIA’s Triple Six Division, John Carr had been one of the most decorated veterans of the Vietnam War, including four Purple Hearts, and none of them for hangnails. There was even talk of his receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military award of all. Every soldier who earned it had instantly attained a place of immortality in the eyes of professional warriors, though many had been awarded the honor posthumously. This had led some to dub it “The medal you’ll never get to see.”

  Carr had certainly seemed an ideal man for the military equivalent of an Olympic gold medal. Finn had read the official report with both thrill and horror. Carr had single-handedly saved his ambushed platoon of soldiers in a murderous firefight with a far larger mass of North Vietnamese backed by artillery support. Sergeant John Carr had personally carried four wounded men to safety on his back, repeatedly going back into harm’s way to do so. He had been hit twice by enemy fire and still somehow managed to kill a dozen Viet Cong, three of them
in hand-to-hand fighting, while shooting several more out of trees with a marksman’s skill that the report described as nothing short of supernatural.

  Finally, manning a machine-gun post, Carr had repelled repeated attacks, survived multiple mortar rounds exploding all around his position and still managed to call in an airstrike that had driven the enemy back, allowing his men to safely retreat. He had walked off the field of battle under his own power despite his uniform being soaked in his blood. Finn could not help feeling a certain level of respect for the man. He had always considered himself to be a soldier of the highest level, but he was thinking that John Carr had perhaps surpassed him on the ability scorecard that all professional military people kept in their heads.

  Yet Carr had not been given the medal. Finn didn’t know that it had to do with politics rather than heroics on the battlefield. He didn’t know that John Carr’s growing ambivalence about the war had turned his superiors against him. His CO had not even recommended him for the medal until others had stepped in. Yet somewhere along the line, folks even higher up the command chain prevented a deserving soldier from receiving the military’s highest honor.

  Instead Carr had disappeared from the ranks of the army until resurfacing years later, only to die in that minor skirmish and supposedly be buried at Arlington. Finn knew what Carr had been doing in the interim. He’d been killing, on orders from his government. Yet he was a man who had been on the receiving end of death too.

  It had taken two years of foraging on databases he was not supposed to have access to, but Finn had learned that Carr’s wife had died one night when their house was supposedly burgled. The couple had had a daughter, but she had simply disappeared too. Finn was smart enough to read between the lines. The “burglary” had CIA hit written all over it. Carr must’ve angered his superiors somehow. Finn had been glad initially to learn that John Carr was dead. He had no interest in killing war heroes who had never gotten their just rewards, nor a man with the courage to buck the most powerful spy agency in the world.

  But now perhaps Carr wasn’t dead. And if he wasn’t Finn knew what he had to do. What his mother expected him to do. Whether he liked it or not. And regardless of what sort of man John Carr was, he’d killed Finn’s father. For nothing.

  Finn left the graveyard. He had work to do.

  For now, John Carr would have to wait.

  CHAPTER 66

  IT WAS A NONTRADITIONAL penetration so Finn had grabbed a couple of guys from his office who normally sat behind a desk analyzing the data that he and his team of specialists routinely gathered. However, the client on this case had wanted low-level people headed up by someone who knew what he was doing—namely Finn. This was because the facility that manufactured vaccines for several man-made biological germ agents was not considered a high-priority target for terrorists. Still, they wanted to see how it measured up. Enter Finn and company.

  They had no trouble scaling the unguarded fence at the rear of the facility, though one of the office boys, a hefty fellow named Sam, had a bit of trouble hoisting his bulk over. Finally, with Finn’s help, he managed.

  They were able to enter the facility from the rear through an unlocked door. A door being unlocked in a building housing valuable vaccine was something that sounded impossible but that nevertheless happened every day in countries all over the world. Why, indeed, would someone take home a laptop with the personal data of millions of military veterans only to see it stolen during a burglary? It’s what kept bad guys in business and the good guys on antidepressant drips.

  Inside, they spread out, their cover stories having been worked out in advance. Finn had donned a white lab coat he’d carried in a duffel bag. An ID was on a lanyard he put around his neck. He also carried an electronic pad for inputting notes. Thus outfitted, he worked his way to the front entrance area. To the guard stationed there he mentioned the name of a scientist who worked in the building. Finn had gotten the name off the Internet, knowing full well that the chap was on vacation. He’d obtained this bit of intelligence by going through the man’s garbage one night and seeing a copy of the detailed travel itinerary for him and his family that the “genius” had cavalierly thrown away. When he was informed that the scientist was away, he said, “That’s right. Bill told me he was taking the family to Florida.” He then mentioned another name he’d pulled off the building directory. He had pulled this maneuver with the guard to both gain credibility and put the security person at ease. Both of these things were usually accomplished by concocting a personal connection with someone who worked at the place he was targeting.

  “I can just pop up and see him for a few minutes,” he told the private security guard. “I know the way. I have some test results to go over for the A/B run they did last week on the two new microbe trial vaccines. You in the loop on that?”

  The guard, a kid barely out of his teens who proudly wore the standard-issue sidearm, said, “No, I’m not in the loop on that,” and went back to his coffee and computer screen on which Finn caught sight of an online dating service’s latest offerings.

  Finn waited patiently inside the elevator car until someone came along. He held up a plastic card he had just taken out of the slot. “Damn RFID’s malfunctioning again,” he said, referring to the encrypted smart card that was needed to access the elevator. “Third time this month. And every time they said they fixed it. Yeah, right.”

  “I know the feeling,” the other man said as he swiped his card through the slot and the doors closed. “What floor you want?” he asked.

  “Fifth,” Finn replied, as he put his son’s plastic library card back into his pocket.

  He got off on the fifth floor and found the door he wanted right next to the elevator bank. It also required a smart card for entry. He slipped inside a nearby bathroom and dabbed some water on his pants leg. When he heard the elevator ding, he opened the door to the bathroom, pretending to be rubbing his wet hands dry as the doors to the elevator slid open. The woman stepped off and swiped her card in the secure door as Finn stood behind her, his library card in hand.

  The woman glanced at him and smiled. “Looks like I beat you to it.”

  Finn put his card away. “Hasn’t been a great morning. I spilled coffee on my pants leg on the drive over.” He pointed to the wet stain.

  The woman smiled again. “Bet that woke you up.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Finn as he followed her in.

  “You here to see anyone in particular?” she asked.

  Finn shook his head and held up his phony but genuine-looking ID tag that had the imprint of Homeland Security. “Just a random drop-in. Feds need to see how the tax dollars are being spent.”

  “Don’t I know it. Have a good one,” she added as she walked off.

  Finn strolled around the lab, surreptitiously taking pictures with his buttonhole camera and nodding to people as he walked along jotting down notes on his electronic tablet with his stylus. It really did amaze him. If you looked like you belonged, people never challenged you. He even had several people give him helpful details on certain vaccines’ potencies. He left and made his way back down to the main entrance, courtesy of the help of another clueless Good Samaritan. When he exited onto the main lobby, however, he froze.

  Sam, the fat kid from his office, was up against the wall and the security guard was doing a very unprofessional pat-down. Any person who knew what he was doing could have taken the guard’s gun in a second with no trouble.

  “What’s going on here,” Finn called out as he headed over.

  “Spy!” the guard said. “Caught him red-handed. I’m calling the cops.”

  Finn had no choice now but to pull his credentialing letter and alert their contact inside the building that they’d been uncovered. He didn’t like to have to make that call, but when you brought rookies with you, it sometimes happened. At least Finn had penetrated to where he needed to go. That’s how it would have finished if Sam hadn’t done something incredibly stupid. Panicked at
the sight of the gun, he pushed the guard away and started to run.

  The guard pointed his pistol at Sam’s broad back and shouted, “Stop!”

  “Don’t,” Finn screamed as he hurtled forward. The guard fired his weapon just as Finn collided with him. In an instant Finn had the gun away from the man and pushed his credentialing letter in his face. “Call John Rivers in security, he knows all about—” He broke off what he was saying and stared down the hall. Sam was lying on the floor, blood pouring out of a wound on his back.

  “Son of a bitch!” Finn jumped up and raced to Sam.

  CHAPTER 67

  THE AMBULANCE PULLED AWAY thirty minutes later. After reaching Sam, Finn had stanched the bleeding and then performed CPR on his colleague when Sam had ceased breathing and his heart had stopped, perhaps from shock. The EMTs had arrived and taken over from there. Sam would live, but his rehab would take a while because it looked like the bullet had done some nasty damage to a few of his organs.

  Finn watched the red rack lights until they disappeared. Standing next to him was John Rivers, the head of security, who had apologized profusely for the guard’s shooting Sam in the back when he was not being threatened.

  “Thank God you were there, Harry,” Rivers said. “Otherwise he’d be dead.”

  “Yeah, well, he wouldn’t have gotten shot if I hadn’t dragged him here.”

  “They give us no money or time to train our guards,” Rivers complained. “They spend billions on the facility and security technology, but then they put a gun in the hands of a punk who’s earning ten bucks an hour. It makes no sense.”

  Finn wasn’t really listening. He had never had anything like this