The Camel Club (3 page)

He went back inside his tent, opened his knapsack and, using his flashlight, read over a series of stories he’d clipped from newspapers and magazines and pasted into his journals. They documented the doings of Carter Gray and President Brennan: “Intelligence Czar Strikes Again,” claimed one headline; “Brennan and Gray Make Dynamic Duo,” said another.

It had all come about very quickly. After several fits and starts Congress had dramatically reorganized the U.S. intelligence community and essentially put its complete faith in Carter Gray. As secretary of intelligence, Gray headed the National Intelligence Center, or NIC. The center’s statutory mandate was to keep the country safe from attacks within or without its borders. Safe by any means necessary was perhaps the chief unwritten part of this mandate.

However, the beginning of Gray’s tenure had hardly matched his impressive résumé: a series of suicide bombers in metropolitan areas with enormous casualties, two assassinations of visiting foreign dignitaries and then a direct but fortunately unsuccessful attack on the White House. Despite many in Congress calling for his resignation and the dismantling of the secretary’s authority, Gray had kept the support of his president. And if power slots in Washington were compared to natural disasters, the president was a hurricane
and
an earthquake all rolled into one.

Then slowly, the tide had begun to turn. A dozen planned terrorist attacks on American soil had been thwarted. And terrorists were being killed and captured at an increasingly high rate. Long unable to crack the inner rings of these organizations, the American intelligence community was finally starting to attack the enemy from within its own circles and damaging its ability to hit the United States and its allies. Gray had understandably received the lion’s share of the credit for these outcomes.

Stone checked his watch. The meeting would be starting soon. However, it was a long walk, and his legs, his usual mode of getting around, were tired today. He left the tent and checked his wallet. There was no money in it.

That’s when he spotted the pedestrian. Stone immediately headed after this gentleman as he raised his hand and a taxi pulled up to the curb. Stone increased his pace, reaching the man as he climbed into the cab. His eyes downcast, his hand out, Stone said, “Can you spare some change, sir? Just a few dollars.” This was said in a practiced, deferential tone, allowing the other man to adopt a magnanimous posture if he so chose.
Adopt one,
Stone thought.
For it’s a long walk.

The man hesitated and then took the bait. He smiled and reached for his wallet. Stone’s eyes widened as a crisp twenty-dollar bill was placed in his palm.

“God bless you,” Stone said as he clutched the money tightly.

Stone walked as quickly as he could to a nearby hotel’s taxi stand. Normally, he’d have taken a bus, but with twenty dollars he’d ride by himself for a change. After smoothing down his long, disheveled hair and prodding his equally stubborn beard into place, Stone walked up to the first cab in line.

On seeing him the cabby hit the door lock and yelled, “Get the hell outta here!”

Stone held up the twenty-dollar bill and said through the half-opened window, “The regulations under which you operate do not allow you to discriminate on any basis.”

It was clear from the cabby’s expression that he would discriminate on any basis he wanted to and yet he eyed the cash greedily. “You speak pretty good for some homeless bum.” He added suspiciously, “I thought all you people was nuts.”

“I am hardly a nut and I’m not homeless,” Stone replied. “But I am, well, I am just a bit down on my luck.”

“Ain’t we all?” He unlocked the doors and Stone quickly climbed in and told the man where he wanted to go.

“Saw the president on the move tonight,” the cabby said. “Pretty cool.”

“Yes, pretty cool,” Stone agreed without much enthusiasm. He glanced out the rear window of the cab in the direction of the White House and then sat back against the seat and closed his eyes.
What an interesting neighborhood to call home.

CHAPTER
2

T
HE BLACK SEDAN CREPT DOWN
the one-lane road that was bracketed by thick walls of trees, finally easing onto a gravel path branching from the road. A hundred feet later the car came to a stop. Tyler Reinke, tall, blond, athletically built and in his late twenties, climbed out of the driver’s side while Warren Peters, early thirties and barely five foot seven with a barrel chest and thinning dark hair, extricated himself from the passenger seat. Reinke unlocked the car’s trunk. Inside lying in a fetal position was a fellow in his mid-thirties, his arms and legs bound tightly with rubber straps. He was dressed in blue jeans and a Washington Redskins jacket. A heavy cloth covered his mouth, and a plastic tarp had been placed under him. Yet, unlike most people bound and stuffed in car trunks, he was still alive, although he appeared deeply sedated. Using the tarp, the men lifted him out of the trunk and set him down on the ground.

“I scouted this out before, Tyler,” Peters said. “It’s the best location, but a bit of a hike. We’ll carry him using the tarp. That way nothing from us gets on him.”

“Right,” Reinke replied as he stared warily down the steep, uneven terrain. “Let’s just take it nice and slow.”

They made their way carefully down, leaning heavily into tree trunks along the way. Luckily, it had not rained lately and the ground provided firm footing. Still, carrying the man between them on the plastic was awkward, and they had to take several breaks along the way, with the stout Peters puffing hard.

Their path finally leveled out and Reinke said, “Okay, almost there. Let’s set him down and take a recon.”

The two men drew out night-vision binoculars from a duffel bag that Reinke had strapped to his back, and took a long look around.

Satisfied, they took up their trek once more. Fifteen minutes later they reached the end of the dirt and rock. The water was not deep here, and flat boulders could be seen in several locations poking through the surface of the slow-moving river.

“All right,” Peters said. “This is the place.”

Reinke opened the duffel bag, pulled out two objects and set them down on the ground. Squatting next to the larger object, he felt along its contours. Seconds later his fingers found what they were searching for. A minute later the dinghy was fully inflated. The other item he’d pulled from the duffel was a small engine prop that he attached to the boat’s stern.

Peters said, “We’ll keep to the Virginia side. This engine’s pretty quiet, but sound really carries over the water.” He handed his colleague a small device. “Not that we’ll need it, but here’s the GPS.”

“We have to dunk him,” Reinke pointed out.

“Right. Figured we’d do it by the shore here.”

They took off their shoes and socks and rolled up their pant legs. Carrying the captive, they stepped along the soft dirt and rocks lining the water’s edge and then waded in up to their knees and lowered him into the warm water until his body—but not his face—was submerged and then quickly pulled him up again. They did this maneuver twice more.

“That should to it,” Peters said as he looked down at the soaked man who moaned a bit in his sleep. They hadn’t dunked his face because they thought that might rouse him, and make it more difficult to transport him.

They waded back to shore and then placed him in the inflatable dinghy. The men made one more careful sweep of the area and then carried the small boat out to the water and climbed in. Peters started the engine, and the dinghy sped out into the river at a decent clip. The tall Reinke squatted next to the prisoner and eyed the GPS screen as they made their way downriver hugging the forested side.

As he navigated the craft Peters said, “I would’ve preferred doing this somewhere more private, but that wasn’t my call. At least there’s a fog rolling in. I checked the weather forecast and for once it was right. We’ll put into a deserted little cove a couple hundred yards down from here, wait until everything is cleared out and then head on.”

“Good plan,” Reinke replied.

The two men fell silent as the tiny craft headed into the gathering fogbank.

CHAPTER
3

A
LEX
F
ORD STIFLED A YAWN AND
rubbed his tired eyes. A clear voice shot through his ear fob. “Stay alert, Ford.” He gave a barely noticeable nod of his head and refocused. The room was hot, but at least he wasn’t wearing the Kevlar body armor that was akin to strapping a microwave to your body. As usual, the wires leading from his surveillance kit to his ear fob and wrist mic were irritating his skin. The ear fob itself was even more aggravating, making his ear so sore it was painful to even touch.

He touched the pistol in his shoulder holster. Like all Secret Service agents, his suits were designed a little big in the chest, to disguise the bulge of the weapon. The Service had recently converted to the .357 SIG from the nine-millimeter version. The SIG was a good gun with enough stopping power to do the job; however, some of his colleagues had complained about the switch, clearly preferring the old hardware. Alex, who wasn’t a big gun buff, didn’t care. In all his years with the Service he’d infrequently pulled his gun and even more rarely fired it.

This thought made Alex reflect on his career for a moment. How many doorways had he stood post at? The answer was clearly etched in the wrinkles on his face and the weariness in his eyes. Even after leaving protection detail and being reassigned to the Secret Service’s Washington Field Office, or WFO, to do more investigative work at the tail end of his career, here he was again taking up space between the doorjambs, watching people, looking for the needle in a haystack that intended bodily harm to someone under his watch.

Tonight was foreign dignitary protection at the low end of the threat assessment level. He’d been unlucky enough to draw the overtime assignment to protect a visiting head of government, finding out about it an hour before he was about to go off duty. So instead of having a drink in his favorite pub, he was making sure nobody took a shot at the prime minister of Latvia. Or was it Estonia?

The event was a reception at the swanky Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, but the crowd was definitely B-list, many here only because they’d been ordered to attend. The few marginally important guests were a handful of junior levels from the White House, some local D.C. politicos hoping for decent newsprint and a portly congressman who was a member of some international relations committee; he looked even more bored than Alex felt.

The veteran Secret Service agent had already done three of these extra-duty soirées in the past week. The months leading up to a presidential election were a manic swirl of parties, fund-raisers and meet-and-greets. Members of Congress and their staffers would hit a half dozen of these events every evening, as much for the free food and drink as to shake constituents’ hands, collect checks and sometimes even discuss the issues. Whenever one of these parties had in attendance anyone under Secret Service protection guys like Alex would trudge out after a long day’s work and keep them safe.

Alex glanced at his partner for the night, a tall, beefy kid out of WFO with a Marine Corps buzz cut who’d been called in at the last minute too. Alex had a few more years until he could retire on his federal pension, but this kid was looking at more than two decades of riding the Secret Service’s career roller coaster.

“Simpson got out of this again,” the kid muttered. “Second time in a row. Tell me this: Whose ass is getting kissed upstairs?”

Alex shrugged noncommittally. The thing about duty like this, it gave you time to think; in fact, way too much time. Secret Service agents were like jailhouse lawyers in that respect: a lot of clock on their hands to mull things over, creating complicated bitch lists as they silently guarded their charges. Alex just didn’t care about that side of the profession anymore.

He glanced at the button on his wrist mic and had to smile. The mic button had been problematic for years. Agents would cross their arms and accidentally turn it on, or else the mic would get stuck on somehow. And then coming over the airwaves would be a graphic description of some hot chick wandering the area. If Alex had a hundred bucks for every time he’d heard the phrase “Did you
see
the rack on that one?” he could’ve retired already. And then you’d have everyone yelling into his mic, “Open mic.” It was pretty funny to watch all the agents scrambling to make sure it wasn’t
them
inadvertently broadcasting their lust.

Alex repositioned his ear fob and rubbed at his neck. That part of his anatomy remained one large train wreck of cartilage and fused disks. He’d been pulling motorcade duty on a presidential protection detail when the truck he’d been riding in rolled after the driver swerved to avoid a deer on a back road. That little tumble fractured Alex’s neck. After a number of operations and the insertion of some very fine stainless steel, his six-foot-three frame had been reduced by nearly a full inch, though his posture was much improved, since steel didn’t bend. Being a little shorter didn’t bother him nearly as much as the constant burn in his neck. He could’ve taken disability and left the Service, but that wasn’t the way he wanted to go out. Single and childless, he didn’t have any place to go to. So he’d sweated and pushed himself back into shape and gotten the blessing of the Secret Service medicos to return to the field after months on desk duty.

Right now, though, at age forty-three, after spending most of his adult life on constant high alert amid numbing tedium—a typical Secret Service agent’s daily existence—he seriously wondered just how demented he’d been to keep going. Hell, he could have found a hobby. Or at least a wife.

Alex bit his lip to mitigate the smoldering heat in his neck and stoically watched the prime minister’s wife cramming foie gras into her mouth.

What a gig
.

CHAPTER
4

O
LIVER
S
TONE GOT OUT OF THE TAXI.

Before driving off, the cabby said with a snort, “In my book you’re still a bum no matter how fancy you talk.”

Stone gazed after the departing car. He’d long since stopped responding to such comments. People would think what they wanted to. Besides, he
did
look like a bum.

He walked toward a small park next to the Georgetown Waterfront Complex and glanced down at the brownish waters of the Potomac River as they licked up against the seawall. Some very enterprising graffiti artists, who obviously didn’t mind working with water right under their butts, had elaborately painted the concrete barrier.

A little earlier there would have been traffic racing along the elevated Whitehurst Freeway that ran behind Stone. And a jet-fueled nightlife would have blared away near the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Georgetown had many tony places that promised good times for those with lots of ready cash or at least passable credit, neither of which Stone possessed. However, at this late hour most revelers had called it a night. Washington was, above all, an early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise sort of town.

The Potomac River was also quiet tonight. The police boat that regularly patrolled the waters must have headed south toward the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. That was very good, Stone thought. Thankfully, he didn’t pass any police officers on land either. This was a free country, but somewhat less free for a man who lived in a cemetery, wore clothes only a couple of levels above rags and was out after dark in an affluent area.

Stone walked along the waterfront, skirted the Francis Scott Key Park, trudged under the Francis Scott Key Bridge and finally passed a memorial to the famous composer. A bit of overkill, Stone thought, for a fellow who had written song lyrics no one could remember. The sky was an inky black with splashes of clouds and dots of stars; and, with the recently reinstated curfew at nearby Reagan National Airport, there were no aircraft exhaust streams to mar its beauty. However, Stone could feel the thick ground fog rolling in. Soon, he would be lucky to see a foot in front of him. He was drawing near to a gaudily painted building owned by one of the local rowing clubs when a familiar voice called to him from the darkness.

“Oliver, is that you?”

“Yes, Caleb. Are the others here?”

A medium-sized fellow with a bit of a paunch came into Stone’s line of sight. Caleb Shaw was dressed in a suit of clothes from the nineteenth century, complete with a bowler hat that covered his short, graying hair; an old-fashioned watch graced the front of his wool vest. He wore his sideburns long, and a small, well-groomed mustache hovered over his lip.

“Reuben’s here, but he’s, uh, relieving himself. I haven’t seen Milton yet,” Caleb added.

Stone sighed. “Not a surprise. Milton is brilliant but absentminded as always.”

When Reuben joined them, he didn’t look well. Reuben Rhodes stood over six foot four and was a very powerfully built man of about sixty with a longish mass of curly dark hair dappled with gray and a matching short, thick beard. He was dressed in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt, with frayed moccasins on his feet. He was pressing one of his hands into his side. Reuben was prone to kidney stones.

“You should go to the clinic, Reuben,” Stone implored.

The big man scowled. “I don’t like people poking around inside me; had enough of that in the army. So I’ll suffer in silence and in privacy if you don’t mind.”

As they were speaking, Milton Farb joined them. He stopped, pecked the dirt with his right foot three times, then with his left two times and finished this off with a series of whistles and grunts. Then he recited a string of numbers that obviously had great significance for him.

The other three waited patiently until he finished. They all knew if they interrupted their companion in the midst of his obsessive-compulsive ritual, he would have to start again, and it was getting rather late.

“Hello, Milton,” Stone said after the grunts and whistles had ceased.

Milton Farb looked up from the dirt and smiled. He had a leather backpack over his shoulder and was dressed in a colorful sweater and crisp-pressed khaki pants. He was five foot eleven and thin with wire-rim glasses. He wore his graying sandy-blond hair on the long side, which made him resemble an aging hippie. However, there was an impish look in his twinkling eyes that made him appear younger than he was.

Milton patted his backpack. “I have some good stuff, Oliver.”

“Well, let’s get going,” said Reuben, who was still holding his side. “I’ve got the early shift at the loading dock tomorrow.” As the four headed off, Reuben drew next to Stone and slipped some money into his friend’s shirt pocket.

“You don’t have to do that, Reuben,” Stone protested. “I have the stipend from the church.”

“Right! I know they don’t pay much to pull weeds and polish tombstones, especially when they throw in a roof over your head.”

“Yes, but it’s not like you have much to spare yourself.”

“You did the same for me for many a year when I couldn’t pay anyone to hire me.” He then added gruffly, “Look at us. What a ragtag regiment we are. When the hell did we get so old and pathetic?”

Caleb laughed, although Milton looked stunned for a moment until he realized Reuben was joking.

“Old age always sneaks up on one, but once it’s fully present, the effects are hardly subtle,” Stone commented dryly. As they walked along, Stone studied each of his companions, men he’d known for years and who’d been with him through both good and bad times.

Reuben had graduated from West Point and served three distinguished tours in Vietnam, earning virtually every medal and commendation the military could confer. After that, he’d been assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, essentially the military counterpart of the CIA. However, he eventually quit the DIA and became a vocal protester of war in general and the Vietnam War in particular. When the country quit caring about that “little skirmish” in Southeast Asia, Reuben found himself a man without a cause. He lived in England for a time before returning to the States. After that, heavy doses of drugs and burned bridges left him with few options in life. He’d been fortunate to run into Oliver Stone, who helped turn his life around. Reuben was currently on the payroll of a warehouse company, where he unloaded trucks, exercising his muscles instead of his mind.

Caleb Shaw held twin doctorates in political science and eighteenth-century literature, though his bohemian nature found comfort in the fashions of the nineteenth century. Like Reuben, he’d been an active protester during Vietnam, where he lost his brother. Caleb had also been a strident voice against the administration during Watergate, when the nation lost the last vestiges of its political innocence. Despite his academic prowess, his eccentricities had long since banished him from the mainstream of scholarship. He currently worked in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress. His membership in the organization he was meeting with tonight had not been included on his résumé when he sought the position. Federal authorities frowned on people who affiliated with conspiracy-theory groups that held their meetings in the middle of the night.

Milton Farb probably possessed more sheer brilliance than the other members put together, even if he often forgot to eat, thought that Paris Hilton was a place to stay in France and believed that so long as he possessed an ATM card that he also had money. A child prodigy, he had the innate capacity to add enormous numbers in his head and a pure photographic memory—he could read or see something once and never forget it. His parents had worked in a traveling carnival, and Milton became a very popular sideshow, adding numbers in his head faster than someone else could on a calculator, and reciting, back, without faltering, the exact text of any book shown him.

Years later, after completing graduate school in record time, he was employed at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. The only things that had prevented him from having a successful life were his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, and a strong paranoia complex, both problems probably caused by his unorthodox childhood on the carnival circuit. Unfortunately these twin demons tended to erupt at inappropriate times. After sending a threatening letter to the president of the United States decades ago and being investigated by the Secret Service, his NIH career quickly came to an end.

Stone first met Milton in a mental health facility where Stone worked as an orderly and Milton was a patient. While he was hospitalized Milton’s parents died and left their son penniless. Stone, who’d come to know of Milton’s extraordinary intellectual ability, persuaded his destitute friend to try out for, of all things,
Jeopardy!
Milton qualified for the show, and, his OCD and other issues temporarily kept in check with medication, he went on to defeat all comers and earn a small fortune. He now had a thriving business designing corporate Web sites.

They headed down closer to the water where there was an old abandoned junkyard. At a spot nearby there was a great clump of ragged bushes, half in the water. From this hiding place the four managed to pull out a long, crusted rowboat that hardly looked seaworthy. Undaunted by this, they tugged off their socks and shoes and stuffed them in their bags, carried the boat down to the water and climbed in. They took turns at the oars, with big Reuben pulling the longest and hardest.

There was a cooling breeze on the water, and the lights of Georgetown and, farther south, Washington were inviting, though fading with the encroaching fog. There was much to like about the place, Stone thought as he sat in the bow of the little vessel. Yes, much to like, but more to loathe.

“The police boat’s up near the 14th Street Bridge,” Caleb reported. “They’re on a new schedule. And they’ve got Homeland Security chopper patrols circling the Mall monuments every two hours again. It was on the alert e-mail at the library today.”

“The threat level was elevated this morning,” Reuben informed them. “Friends of mine in the know say it’s all bullshit campaign posturing; President Brennan waving the flag.”

Stone turned around and stared at Milton, who sat impassively in the stern.

“You’re unusually quiet tonight, Milton. Everything all right?”

Milton looked at him shyly. “I made a friend.” They all stared at him curiously. “A
female
friend,” he added.

Reuben slapped Milton on the shoulder. “You old dog you.”

“That’s wonderful,” Stone said. “Where did you meet her?”

“At the anxiety clinic. She’s a patient too.”

“I see,” Stone said, turning back around.

“That’s very nice, I’m sure,” Caleb added diplomatically.

They moved slowly under the Key Bridge, keeping to the middle of the channel, and then followed the curve of the river south. Stone took comfort that the thickening fog made them practically invisible from shore. Federal authorities didn’t tolerate trespassers very well. Stone watched as land came into view. “A little to the right, Reuben.”

“Next time let’s just meet in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It requires much less sweat on my part,” the big man complained as he huffed and puffed on the oars.

The boat made its way around the western side of the island and into a small strip of water known appropriately as Little Channel. It was so isolated here that it seemed impossible that they’d glimpsed the U.S. Capitol dome just minutes ago.

Reaching shore, they climbed out and hauled the boat up into the bushes. As the men trudged single file through the woods toward the main trail, Oliver Stone carried an extra spring in his step. He had a lot he wanted to accomplish tonight.