Stone Cold (20 page)

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?”

“Just 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.”

CHAPTER 56

A
NNABELLE WAITED OUTSIDE
until her father returned from the nearby grocery store with Caleb. Without a word of explanation she told Paddy to follow her back to her hotel in his truck. When they got there she led her father up to her room.

Annabelle’s mind was racing. She’d been counting on Stone to help her. And now the man had simply abandoned her, literally closing the door in her face. She should never have trusted him. She should’ve learned by now that you could only count on yourself.

“Annie?” Paddy finally said. “Talk to me, girl, what the hell’s going on?”

She looked over at her father as though she’d forgotten he was even there. “What’s going on is we just got screwed. The help I thought we were going to get with Bagger isn’t coming.”

“No cavalry?”

“No cavalry.”

“The guy named Oliver. Reuben told me a bit about him. Is he the guy who was going to help us do it?”

“Yes, but he’s not going to anymore. He apparently has more pressing business.”

He slapped the arm of his chair. “Now what?”

“Now we run. Bagger will have the airports and train station watched, but he doesn’t have enough manpower to cover the roads. We’ll need to dump your truck. Then we’ll be on our way.”

“On our way where?”

“Does it matter? So long as it’s not here?”

“And we just let Jerry walk away?”

“Better than him
carrying
us away, don’t you think? We live to fight another day.” As soon as she said the words she glanced at her father. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I don’t have another day. I either do it now, or I don’t do it at all.”

“I told you, we don’t have the cavalry.”

“Then I’ll think of something else.”

“You can’t take on Jerry by yourself.”

“I’ve got you, don’t I?”

She looked out the window, shaking her head. “Do you know how long it took me to plan my hit on Jerry?”

“Probably longer than I’ve got left. But I’m not walking away from this. I
can’t
walk away from this.”

“Yesterday you weren’t doing anything to go after Jerry. What’s changed?”

He rose and gripped her arm. “What’s changed is
you.
Now you know I was in jail when your mum got killed. I’m still a son of a bitch, but not as big of a one as you thought.”

“What are you saying, that you’re doing this for me?”

“No, I mean, not just you. I’m doing it for Tammy, because she didn’t deserve to die like that. And I’m doing it for me, because Bagger took the only person I ever really loved from me.”

Annabelle pulled her arm free and looked away.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Annabelle.”

She pointed to the scar on her face. “Let’s just say I never had any delusions that you actually loved me.”

Paddy reached his hand out to touch her face but she jerked back.

“I had no right to do that,” he said. “But I was teaching you a lesson I never wanted you to forget. You blew that claim at the casino. Sure, you were young, and the young make mistakes. But I’ll wager you never made that mistake again, did you?”

“No.”

“I never gave a shit about any of the crews I worked with. Hell, I never bothered giving any of ’em a scar. If they made a mistake I let ’em know it, sure. But I didn’t give a damn if they screwed up down the road with somebody else and got their knees broken for the trouble.”

“So, my scar was what, tough love?”

“Your mum never wanted you to get into the con. But we were shorthanded that summer and it was my idea to use you. You caught on fast, faster than I did at your age. Ten years later you were better than I ever was. Moved on to the long cons while I was still doing my three-card monte on street corners. For chump change.”

“That was your choice.”

“No, not really. Plain fact was I wasn’t good enough to do the long. They say you’re either born to it or not. I wasn’t.”

“Okay, where does that leave things? You can’t do the long and the long is what it’ll take to get to Jerry.”

“I can’t do it without you, Annabelle. But if you won’t help me, I’m going to try anyway.”

“If you do, he’ll kill you.”

“I’m dead anyway. And I doubt even Jerry could come up with a more painful way to die than what I’ve got ahead of me.”

“You are really complicating my life.”

“Will you help me?”

Annabelle didn’t answer him.

“Look, can’t you talk to your friend again? Maybe he’ll reconsider.”

Annabelle was about to say no, but hesitated. What she was thinking was she might go back to Stone’s cottage. If he was there she could make another pitch for help. But if he wasn’t there, which she suspected was the case, Annabelle would just take all of the “files” that Stone had compiled on her and her problems with Jerry. She didn’t want any of that just lying around for someone, cops or bad guys, to find.

“I’ll give it another shot.”

As she walked down to her car she realized she couldn’t just leave her father to deal with Jerry alone. Which meant they would both end up dying.

Some choice.

CHAPTER 57

A
FTER
A
NNABELLE AND
P
ADDY HAD LEFT
, Stone put Caleb in a taxi with some old clothes of his and gave the driver the address of a hotel nearby.

“Oliver, why can’t I stay here?” Caleb said, obviously frightened.

“That would not be smart. I’ll call you later.”

It was only when the cab had driven away and he was finally alone that Stone started thinking about what he’d done to Annabelle.

“I abandoned her,” he said. “After I promised to help. After I told her to stay.” Yet what could he do? And anyway, she’d probably be on a flight within a few hours, on her way to that South Pacific island. She’d be safe there.

But what if she didn’t run? What if she stubbornly decided to go after Bagger anyway? With no support? She’d said she needed the cavalry. Could he still deliver that to her?

The next instant the phone rang. It was Reuben. He said, “Nothing from my contacts at DIA, Oliver. They didn’t know about the cemetery thing. But Milton did find something on the Net. Here, I’ll put him on.”

Milton’s voice came over the phone. “It wasn’t much, Oliver, but there was breaking news about a grave being dug up at Arlington. No one from the government would comment.”

“Did it mention the name on the grave marker?”

“Someone named John Carr,” Milton said. “Is that a problem?”

Stone didn’t bother to answer. He clicked off.

After all these years John Carr had suddenly come back to life. Ironically, Stone had never felt more dead than he did right now.

Why now? What had happened? The truth struck him as he slowly walked back through the cemetery gates and sat down on his front porch.

He’d been set up.

If John Carr was no longer dead, then the person killing old members of Triple Six would now add him back onto his list of targets.

I’m bait,
Stone said to himself.
They’re going to use me to flush the killer. And if he murders me before they catch him, who cares. And even if I do manage to survive? It won’t be for very long.
All John Carr would be now was an embarrassment to the government. His own country would have many reasons to want him dead and not a single one that Stone could think of to keep him alive. It was absolutely brilliant in its simplicity. His death warrant had been signed.

And there was only one man who would’ve been capable of thinking it all up, Stone knew.

Carter Gray! He is alive.

He packed a small bag, locked up the cottage and fled through the woods behind the cemetery.

Harry Finn was carefully balancing a butter knife on a table where he was sitting so the knife was standing up on edge. It was harder than it looked, yet Finn could accomplish it every time and within a few seconds. He did this whenever he was unsure of something. He was seeking balance. If he could do it with the knife, he could do it with his life. At least that was his thinking. It was never that easy in reality.

“Harry?”

He looked up into the face of one of his team members. They had been discussing the Capitol building project over lunch at their office.

“Did you get a chance to review the ventilation plans?” the woman asked.

He nodded. They’d gotten the documentation through an ingenious tactical combination that involved breaking into the van of the architect hired to work on the Capitol Visitor Center. From that they copied necessary information and then used that to phone freak their way to many details of the new construction.

“The plans indicated that it will hook into the Capitol building, but I need to confirm that. We’re going tonight, in fact, to do it. And it should be accessible from the delivery tunnel, but I’m going to verify that too.” He looked at the man sitting next to him, who was going over a set of drawings and specs. “How about the transport?”

“All done.” The man laid out the details to Finn.

Finn glanced down at the ID badge he’d earlier stolen from the SUV. This one badge had gotten him a lot of mileage. With the embedded encryption he could simply change out the surface information—photo, name, etcetera—and the badge would get him into myriad places, none of which he should have access to. He’d heard the government was beginning to discover this flaw in their security system, but Congress moved with glacial speed when it came to things like that. Finn figured they’d have the problem worked out by the time he was drawing Social Security. And even that might be optimistic.

The meeting adjourned and he went to his office and worked for the rest of the day. Later, he changed into a Capitol police uniform, doctored his badge and headed to D.C. that night, where he met up with a buddy, similarly dressed. There were sixteen hundred officers on the Capitol police force to guard roughly one square mile of land. It was a ratio any other city would have killed for. Congress liked to feel safe, and it did control the purse strings.

And yet all that money had not made the folks much safer, thought Finn as he and his colleague strolled around the grounds of the Capitol that night. In fact, he was going to prove the truth of that statement tonight.

They made their way to the construction site of the visitor center and went in, pretending to make rounds. Work here went on 24/7, so he and his buddy jawed with some of the construction workers and then moved along. They passed a fellow officer, whom they exchanged both pleasantries and gripes with. Finn informed the cop that he’d just transferred over from the U.S. Park Police, where he’d been assigned to the San Francisco area.

“Housing is cheaper here,” Finn said. “San Fran is off the charts. I actually bought a town house for what I paid for a condo out there.”

“You’re lucky,” said the other cop. “I was a postal cop down in
Arkansas
before I moved here about five years ago. I’m still living in a three-bedroom apartment in Manassas that I can barely afford, and I’ve got four kids.”

Finn and his friend headed on and finally arrived at the spot that was the only reason they’d come here tonight.

It was right where the plans indicated it would be. Ready access from the tunnel, and by the look of things it was already operational. That would make their task easier. Finn picked the lock of one door and they slipped inside it. He studied the instrument boxes on the wall and then snapped several pictures of the flow schematic. Next he drew a diagram of the area on a notepad, listing all access doors, halls and checkpoints they’d passed. Then they made their way through a series of hallways and into a small HVAC room. The ventilation return was in the ceiling. The opening was too narrow for Finn to get through, but his partner was smaller. Finn gave him a boost and the fellow disappeared into the ductwork. Thirty minutes later he was back.

“Like we thought, Harry, goes right into the Capitol.” The man gave Finn a detailed description of the route he’d just taken, and Finn drew it out on paper.

They slipped back outside, walked away from the Capitol and turned down a street toward the Hart Senate Building. His partner went to the right and Finn to the left. He passed alongside the building, where nine stories up sat Roger Simpson’s office. As Finn counted across the windows to the one he knew was the Alabama senator’s digs, he pointed his finger at the window and said, “Boom.”

He couldn’t wait.

He reached his car and drove off. Turning on the radio to the local news station, he heard the announcer talking about a grave being dug up at Arlington National Cemetery that morning. As yet no one knew why.

“John Carr,” the radio said. “That’s the name of the soldier whose grave was dug up.”

“John Carr,” Finn repeated in a voice brimming with disbelief. Surely his omniscient mother would have heard this news by now.

And he started to wonder if his nightmare would ever end.