spy.”
“Well, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?” she said amiably, rising and pouring herself another glass of wine.
“Look, how do I know you’re legit? I call anybody, they never heard of you. Where does that leave me?”
“Money talks and bullshit walks,” she said, sitting back down.
“Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning call your money guy in here.”
Bagger looked at her suspiciously for a moment and then picked up the phone.
The man appeared a minute later. “Yes, sir?”
Annabelle took a slip of paper out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Pull this account up on your computer. It’s at El Banco del Caribe. That’s a onetime password along with the account number. And come back and tell Mr. Bagger the balance in that account.”
The man looked at Bagger, who nodded. The man left and returned a few minutes later.
“Well?” Bagger said impatiently.
“Three million twelve thousand dollars and sixteen cents, sir.”
Bagger stared at Annabelle, the new respect clear in his gaze. He waved his money guy gone. After the door had shut, he said, “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”
“To further allay people’s concerns, we usually do a trial run or runs, as the case may be.”
“You mentioned that. How does it work?”
“You park money at El Banco for two days in an account of our designation; you collect the ‘interest,’ and then the money is put back into your account at your home bank.”
“How much money are we talking?”
“A million is typical. The money you wire down gets ‘mingled’ with other funds. After two days you walk away with a hundred grand in profit. You can do it every two days if you want.”
“Mingled? Don’t you mean finessed?” Bagger said.
She raised her glass. “You learn fast.”
Yet Bagger was scowling. “You want me to put a million bucks of my money in an account of your designation and wait two days for my money plus interest to come floating back to me? Do I look like I got cowshit for brains?”
Annabelle sat down next to him and gently touched his arm. “I tell you what, Jerry, I can call you Jerry, can’t I?”
“I’ll let it slide for now.”
“For the two days your money is hanging out there, my associate and I will stay here at your hotel, with your boys watching us night and day. If your money doesn’t come back into your account with interest just like I’m telling you, we’re all yours. And I don’t know about you, but public servant or not, I like my life way too much to give it up for a bunch of money that I’ll never even see.”
He looked her up and down, shook his head, rose and walked over to the window and looked out through the bulletproof glass. “This has got to be the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m a nutcase for even listening to it.”
“It’s not crazy when you look at the world today. Things have to be done to protect this country, action that is not always completely legal or popular. If the American people knew what really went on?” She shrugged. “But that’s not my field task. My job is to make sure the money gets to where it needs to go. In exchange for your help, you get paid an extraordinary premium, it’s that simple.”
“But this money is all electronic. Why do you have to launder it?”
“Even digital dollars can be traced, Jerry. In fact, they can do it more easily than with real cash. The funds need to be commingled with other sources of money that are nongovernmental. It all gets washed out electronically, sort of like wiping fingerprints off a gun. Then the funds can go to where they’re needed.”
“And you say Vegas already does this? So if I call up and ask—”
She interrupted him. “They’ll tell you nothing because that’s what they’ve been instructed to do.” She rose and stood beside him. “There’s tremendous upside for you here, Jerry, but there’s a downside too. And let me just lay that out for you. It’s only fair that you know.”
She led him back to the couch. “If it ever comes to certain people’s attention that you’ve told anyone about this arrangement—”
Bagger laughed. “Don’t threaten me, little girl. I invented the art of intimidation.”
“This isn’t intimidation, Jerry,” she said quietly, her gaze directly on him. “If you tell anyone about this arrangement, men will come for you wherever you might be. These men will have no fear of anyone you could possibly hire to protect you. They are not bound by the laws of any country, and they will kill anyone remotely close to you, man, woman or child. Then they’ll take you away.” She paused to let this sink in. “I’ve been in the business a long time, and done some things that would probably surprise even you, but these are men I would never want to face, even with a squad of Navy SEALs surrounding me. They aren’t the best of the best, Jerry. They are the worst of the absolute scum. And your last memory will be how could it have hurt so damn much.”
Bagger exploded, “These whack jobs are on our government’s payroll! No wonder we’re so screwed up.” When he took a sip of his bourbon, both Annabelle and Leo noted that his hand shook a bit. “So why the hell would I—” Bagger began.
Anticipating what he was going to say, she cut in. “But as I told my superiors, Jerry Bagger won’t talk. He’ll just collect his exorbitant profits and keep his mouth shut. I don’t throw darts at names on a wall, Jerry. Guys like you are ideal for our purposes. You’ve got brains, guts, money, and you don’t mind playing close to the edge.” She studied Bagger closely and added, “I’d hate to give the action to one of the other casinos, Jerry, but my mission is clear.”
After another minute he grinned and patted her leg. “I’m as patriotic as the next son of a bitch. So what the hell, let’s do it.”
CHAPTER 21
THE CAMEL CLUB HELD A hastily called meeting at Stone’s cottage at the cemetery the morning following their visit to DeHaven’s home. Stone explained to Milton and Caleb in greater detail what had happened the night before.
“They could be watching us right now,” a frightened Caleb said as he glanced out the window.
“I would be astonished if they weren’t,” Stone replied calmly.
His cottage was small and sparsely furnished: an old bed, a large, beaten-up desk covered with papers and journals, shelves of books in various languages, all of which Stone spoke, a small kitchen with a battered table, a tiny bathroom and a scattering of mismatched chairs arranged around the large fireplace that was the cottage’s main source of heat.
“And that doesn’t concern you?” Milton asked.
“It would have concerned me much more had they tried to kill me, which they easily could have despite Reuben’s heroics.”
“So what now?” Reuben asked. He stood in front of the fireplace, trying to work the chill off. He checked his watch. “I need to get to work.”
Caleb added, “So do I.”
Stone said, “Caleb, I need to get inside the vault at the library. Is that possible?”
Caleb looked uncertain. “Well, under normal conditions it would be. I mean, I have the authority to take people into the vaults, but I’ll be questioned as to why. They don’t really like people just bringing in friends and family without advance notice. And with Jonathan’s death restrictions are even tighter.”
“What if the visitor was a scholar from overseas?” Stone asked.
“Well, of course, that’s different.” He glanced at Stone. “What foreign scholar do you know?”
Reuben broke in. “I think he’s talking about himself, Caleb.”
Caleb looked sternly at his friend. “Oliver! I cannot possibly assist in perpetrating a fraud on the Library of Congress, for God’s sake.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. I believe we are now the targets of some very dangerous people because we’re involved with Jonathan DeHaven. So we need to find out whether his death was natural or not. And looking
at the place where he died may help me determine that.”
“Well, we know how he died,” Caleb countered. The others looked at him in surprise. “I just found out this morning,” he said quickly. “A friend from the library called me at home. Jonathan died as the result of cardiopulmonary arrest, that’s what the autopsy reported.”
Milton said, “That’s what everybody dies of. It just means your heart stopped.”
Stone looked thoughtful. “Milton’s right. And that also means the medical examiner doesn’t know what actually killed DeHaven.” He stood and looked down at Caleb. “I want to go into the vault this morning.”
“Oliver, you can’t just show up unannounced as some scholar.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just not done. There are protocols, procedures to follow.”
“I’ll say I was in town for a visit with family and wanted very much to see the world’s greatest collection of books; a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Well, that might work,” Caleb grudgingly conceded. “But what if they ask you some question you don’t know the answer to?”
“There’s no one easier to impersonate than a scholar, Caleb,” Stone assured him. Caleb looked very offended at this remark, but Stone disregarded his friend’s annoyance and added, “I’ll be at the library at eleven o’clock.” He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to Caleb. “This is who I’ll be.”
Caleb glanced down at the paper and then looked up in surprise.
With that, the meeting of the Camel Club was adjourned, although Stone took Milton aside and started talking to him quietly.
A few hours later at the library Caleb was handing a book to Norman Janklow, an elderly man and reading room regular.
“Here it is, Norman.” He handed him a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Janklow was a Hemingway fanatic. The novel he was holding was a first edition, inscribed by Hemingway.
“I would die to own this book, Caleb,” Janklow said.
“I know, Norman, me too.” A signed Hemingway first edition would fetch at least $35,000, Caleb knew, certainly beyond his financial means and probably Janklow’s too. “But at least you can hold it.”
“I’m getting started on my biography of Ernest.”
“That’s great.” Actually, Janklow had been “getting started” on his Hemingway biography for the last two years. Still, the notion seemed to make him happy, and Caleb was more than willing to play along.
Janklow carefully fingered the volume. “They’ve repaired the cover,” he said irritably.
“That’s right. Many of our first-edition American masterpieces were housed in less-than-ideal conditions before the Rare Books Division really got up to speed. We’ve been going through the backlog for years now. That copy was long overdue for restoration, an administrative error, I guess. That happens when you have nearly a million volumes under one roof.”
“I wish they’d keep them in their original condition.”
“Well, our chief goal is preservation. That’s why we have this book for you to enjoy, because it’s been preserved.”
“I met Hemingway once.”
“I remember you telling me.” Over a hundred times.
“He was a piece of work. We got drunk together at a café in Cuba.”
“Right. I remember the story very well. I’ll let you get to your research.”
Janklow slipped on his reading glasses, took out his pieces of paper and a pencil and lost himself in the adventurous world of Ernest Hemingway’s prodigious imagination and spare prose.
Promptly at eleven o’clock Oliver Stone arrived at the Rare Books reading room dressed in a rumpled three-piece tweed suit and holding a cane. His white hair was neatly combed, and he sported a very trim beard along with large black glasses that made his eyes buglike. That coupled with his walking with a stoop made him appear twenty years older than he was. Caleb rose from his desk at the back of the room, hardly recognizing his friend.
As one of the attendants at the front desk approached Stone, Caleb hurried forward. “I’ll take care of him, Dorothy. I . . . I know the gentleman.”
Stone made an elaborate show of producing a white business card. “As promised, Herr Shaw, I am here to see the books.” His accent was thick and Germanic, and very well done.
As Dorothy, the woman behind the front desk, looked at him curiously, Caleb said, “This is Dr. Aust. We met years ago at a book conference in . . . Frankfurt, was it?”
“No, Mainz,” Stone corrected. “I remember very clearly, because it was the season of Spargel, the white asparagus, and I always go to the Mainz conference and eat the white asparagus.” He beamed at Dorothy, who smiled and went back to what she was doing.
Another man came into the reading room and stopped. “Caleb, I wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
Caleb turned a shade paler. “Oh, hello, Kevin. Kevin, this is, uh, Dr. Aust from Germany. Dr. Aust, Kevin Philips. He’s the acting director of the Rare Books Division. After Jonathan’s—”
“Ah, yes, the very untimely death of Herr DeHaven,” Stone said. “Very sad. Very sad.”
“You knew Jonathan?” Philips said.
“Only by reputation. I think it clear that his paper on James Logan’s metrical translation of Cato’s Moral Distichs was the final word on the subject, don’t you?”
Philips looked chagrined. “I must confess I haven’t read it.”
“An analysis of Logan’s first translation from the classics to be produced in North America, it is well worth exploring,” Stone advised kindly.
Philips said, “I’ll be sure to add it to my list. Ironically, sometimes librarians don’t have a lot of time to read.”
“Then I will not burden you with copies of my books,” Stone said with a smile. “They’re in German anyway,” he added with a chuckle.
“I invited Dr. Aust to take a tour of the vaults while he’s in town,” Caleb explained. “Sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Absolutely,” Philips said. “We’d be honored.” He lowered his voice. “Caleb, you heard the report about Jonathan?”
“Yes, I did.”
“So that means he just had a heart attack, then?”
Caleb glanced at Stone, who, out of Philips’ line of sight, gave a slight nod.
“Yes, I think that’s exactly what it means.”
Philips shook his head. “God, he was younger than me. It gives one pause, doesn’t it?” He looked over at Stone. “Dr. Aust, would you like me to give you the fifty-cent tour?”
Stone smiled and leaned heavily on his cane. “No, Herr Philips, I would much prefer you to take that time and begin your friend’s paper on Moral Distichs.”
Philips chuckled. “It’s good to see that distinguished scholars can retain a healthy sense of humor.”
“I try, sir, I try,” Stone said with a slow bow.
After Philips had left them, Caleb and Stone headed into the vault.
“How did you find out about Jonathan’s scholarly work?” Caleb asked once they were alone.
“I asked Milton to dig around. He located it on the Internet and brought me a copy. I scanned it in case someone like Philips showed up, to prove my scholarly pedigree.” Caleb looked disgruntled. “What’s the matter?” Stone asked.
“Well, it’s a little deflating to one’s ego to see how easily a scholar can be impersonated.”
“I’m sure your validation of my pedigree made all the difference to your boss.”
Caleb brightened. “Well, I’m sure it contributed somewhat to the success,” he said modestly.
“All right, take me through your exact movements that day.”
Caleb did so, ending on the top floor. He pointed at a spot. “That’s where his body was.” Caleb shivered. “God, it really was terrible.”
Stone looked around and then stopped and pointed at something on the wall.
“What’s that?”
Caleb looked to where he was pointing. �
��Oh, that’s a nozzle for the fire suppressant system.”
“You use water in here with all these books?”
“Oh, no. It’s a halon 1301 system.”
“Halon 1301?” Stone asked.
“It’s a gas, although it’s really a liquid, but when it shoots out of the nozzle, it turns to gas. It smothers the fire without damaging the books.”
Stone looked excited. “Smothers! My God!” His friend looked at him curiously. “Caleb, don’t you see?”
What Stone was referring to suddenly dawned on Caleb. “Smothering? Oh, no, Oliver, no. It couldn’t have been the cause of Jonathan’s death.”
“Why not?”
“Because a person would have several minutes to escape the area
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