Stone Cold (3 page)

CHAPTER 5

O
LIVER
S
TONE MANAGED
to lift the old, mossy tombstone to an upright position and packed dirt around it to keep it there. He sat back on his haunches and wiped his brow. He had a portable radio beside him on the ground turned to the local all-news station. Stone craved information like others needed oxygen. As he listened to the radio he got an unexpected jolt. There would be an awards ceremony at the White House that very afternoon where none other than Carter Gray, recently retired chief of the nation’s intelligence agencies, was scheduled to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Gray had served his country with distinction for nearly four decades, the announcer read, and quoted the president as saying that Carter Gray was a man that all of America should be proud of; a true patriot and public servant.

Stone didn’t exactly agree with this assessment. In fact, he’d been the reason Carter Gray had abruptly resigned from his post as the nation’s intelligence czar.

Stone thought to himself,
If only the president knew that the man he’s going to be presenting that medal to is the same man who was prepared to put a bullet through his head.
The country would never be ready for
that
truth.

He looked at his watch. The dead could certainly exist without him for a little while. An hour later, showered and dressed in his best clothes, which consisted of secondhand issue from Goodwill, he walked out of his cottage, where he was caretaker of Mt. Zion Cemetery, a stop on the Underground Railroad and the final resting place of notable African Americans from the nineteenth century. The trip from the outskirts of Georgetown to the White House was eaten up quickly by the long strides of Stone’s lean six-foot-two-inch frame.

At age sixty-one, he had lost very little of his energy and vigor. With his close-cropped white hair, he looked like a retired Marine drill sergeant. He was still a commander of sorts, though his ragtag regiment called the Camel Club was completely unofficial. It consisted of himself and three others: Caleb Shaw, Reuben Rhodes and Milton Farb.

And yet Stone might have to add another name to the roster, Annabelle Conroy. She had nearly died along with the rest of them in their last adventure. The truth was, Annabelle was as nimble, capable and nervy a person as Stone had ever met. Yet his gut told him the woman, who was attending to a piece of unfinished business with Milton Farb’s help, would be leaving them soon. Someone was after her, Stone knew, someone Annabelle actually feared. And under those circumstances sometimes the smartest move was to run. Stone understood that concept very well.

The White House was dead ahead. He would never be allowed to enter the hallowed front gates and lacked even the right to stand on that coveted side of Pennsylvania Avenue. What he could do was wait in Lafayette Park across the street. He used to have a tent there until the Secret Service recently made him take it down. Yet freedom of speech was still alive and well in America and thus his banner had remained. Unfurled between two pieces of rebar stuck in the ground, it read, “I want the truth.” So did a
few
other people in this town, it was rumored. To date, Stone had never heard of anyone actually finding it within the confines of the world capital of spin and deceit.

He passed the time chatting with a couple of uniformed Secret Service agents he knew. When the White House gates started to open, he broke off his conversation and watched the black sedan coming out. He couldn’t see through the tinted glass, but for some reason he knew that Carter Gray was inside the Town Car. Perhaps it was the man’s smell.

His hunch proved right when the window came down and he found himself eye to eye with the ex–intelligence chief, new Medal of Freedom winner and major Oliver Stone hater.

As the car slowed to make the turn onto the street, Gray’s wide, bespectacled face stared impassively at him. Then, smiling, Gray held up his big, shiny medal so Stone could see it.

Not having a medal of his own, Stone opted for giving Gray the finger. The man’s smile turned to a snarl and the window zipped back up.

Stone turned and walked back to his cemetery feeling the trip had been damn well worth it.

When Carter Gray’s car turned onto 17th Street, another vehicle followed it. Harry Finn had driven into D.C. that morning. He too had heard of Gray’s big day at the White House and like Oliver Stone had come down to see the man. While Stone had ventured here to show defiance to a man he loathed, Finn had come to continue devising a suitable way to kill Gray.

The drive took them out of D.C. and into Maryland, up to the waterfront city of Annapolis situated on the Chesapeake Bay. It was famous for, among other things, its crab cakes and for being home to the U.S. Naval Academy. Gray had recently traded his remote Virginia farm for an isolated place on a cliff overlooking the bay. Since he was no longer with the government his security detail was much smaller than it had been. Yet because he was a former director of Central Intelligence he still received daily briefings. And he had two guards assigned to him because his past work had angered a number of America’s enemies, who would love nothing better than to put a slug right between Gray’s close-set eyes.

Finn knew killing Gray would be far more difficult than bagging someone like Dan Ross. Because of the complexities, this was one of countless trips he had made reconnoitering Gray. Each time he had used a different vehicle rented under fake names and worn disguises to avoid any profiling. And even if he lost the Town Car in traffic he knew where it was going. He only broke off the tail when the car pulled onto a private gravel road and headed toward Gray’s house and the cliffs, where thirty feet down the waters of the bay boomed against solid rock.

Later, using long-range binoculars while perched in a tree, Finn saw the thing in the rear of Gray’s house that would enable him to kill the man. He actually smiled as the plan swiftly came together in his mind.

That night he took his daughter, Susie, to swim practice. As he sat in the bleachers and proudly watched her small body glide in perfect form across the pool, he imagined the last few seconds of Carter Gray’s life. It all would be worth it.

He drove his daughter home, helped put her and her ten-year-old brother Patrick to bed, had an argument with his teenager and then shot hoops with the boy in the driveway of their home until both were sweating and laughing. Later, he made love to his wife, Amanda, whom everyone called Mandy, and, restless, got up around midnight and packed school lunches for the next day. He also signed a permission slip for his oldest, David, to go on an upcoming field trip to the U.S. Capitol and other downtown sights. David would be attending high school next year and Finn and Mandy had taken him to several school open houses. David liked math and science. He would probably end up being an engineer, Finn thought. Mechanically inclined too, Finn had almost gone that route before his life had taken a bit of a detour. He’d joined the navy, and quickly worked himself to an elite status.

Finn was a former Navy SEAL with special ops experience and combat duty on his résumé. And he possessed unique foreign-language skills from immersion school in California, where he’d spent a chunk of his life learning Arabic, and later acquired the dialects the school hadn’t taught him when on the ground in that part of the world. With his current job he traveled a good deal but he was also home a lot. He almost never missed a sporting or major school event. He was there for his children in the hope that they would be there for him later. That’s the best a parent could shoot for, he felt.

He finished the lunches, went to his small den, closed the door and began drawing up firm plans for Carter Gray. Out of practicality it would not mirror his confrontation with Dan Ross. Yet Finn had never been one to pound a round peg into a square hole. Even killers had to be flexible; in fact, perhaps the most flexible of all.

Finn’s gaze settled on the pictures of his three kids that sat on his desk front and center. Birth and death. It was the same for everyone. You started breathing on one end and stopped on the other. What you did in between defined who and what you were. Yet Harry Finn realized he would be awfully difficult to categorize. Some days even he didn’t truly understand it.

CHAPTER 6

T
HE RENTAL CAR
pulled up to the gates of the cemetery as Oliver Stone was finishing some work. As he brushed off his pants and glanced that way, he had a feeling of déjà vu. She had done this to him before, but had eventually come back. Somehow Stone didn’t think the lady would let that happen again. He would have to see what he could do about that, because he didn’t want to lose her.

Annabelle Conroy got out of the car and walked through the open gates. Her long black coat flapped open in the wind, revealing a brown knee-length skirt and boots; her hair was hidden underneath a wide-brimmed floppy hat. Stone closed the door on the small storage shed near his cottage and padlocked it.

He said, “Milton told me your trip to Boston was a great success. I don’t believe I’ve heard the words ‘brilliant,’ ‘amazing’ and ‘unflappable’ used that many times in describing a person. I hope you recognize yourself.”

“Milton would make a great con. Not that I’d recommend that life to anyone I actually cared about.”

“He also said you looked troubled on the way back. Did something happen?”

She glanced at his cottage. “Can we talk inside?”

Describing the interior of Stone’s cottage as spartan would have been generous indeed. A few chairs, a number of odd tables, sagging shelves of books in multiple languages and an old worm-eaten partner’s desk, together with a small kitchen area, bedroom and tiny bath all outlined in roughly six hundred square feet constituted the man’s entire domicile footprint.

They sat near the empty fireplace on the two most comfortable chairs, meaning the only ones with padding.

“I came here to tell you I’m leaving. And after everything that’s happened, I feel like I owe you an explanation,” she said.

“You don’t owe me anything, Annabelle.”

“Don’t say that!” she snapped. “This is hard enough as it is. So hear me out, Oliver.”

He sat back, crossed his arms and waited.

She pulled the newspaper article from her jacket pocket and passed it across to him. “Read this first.”

“Who is this Anthony Wallace?” he asked after he’d finished.

“Someone I worked with,” she said vaguely.

“Someone you worked a
con
with?”

She nodded absently.

“Three people killed?”

Annabelle rose and started pacing. “That’s the thing that’s driving me crazy. I told Tony to lay low and not flash the cash. But what did he do? He did the exact opposite and now three innocent people are dead who shouldn’t be.”

Stone tapped the paper. “Well, from the looks of it your Mr. Wallace will soon be making it a quartet.”

“But Tony wasn’t innocent. He knew exactly what he was getting into.”

“And what exactly was that?”

She stopped pacing. “Oliver, I like you and I respect you, but this is a little . . .”

“Illegal? I hope you realize that comes as no great shock to me.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“I doubt anything you could have possibly done would surpass what I’ve seen in life.”

She cocked her head. “Seen, or done?”

“Who’s after you and why?”

“That’s no concern of yours.”

“It is if you want me to help you.”

“I’m not looking for help. I just wanted you to understand why I have to leave.”

“Do you really think you’ll be safer on your own?”

“I think you and the others will be a lot safer without me around.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“I’ve been in plenty of jams before and I’ve always managed to get myself out of them.”

“Out of a jam this tight?” He glanced at the paper. “This person doesn’t seem to fool around.”

“Tony made a mistake, a big one. I don’t intend on doing that. I lay low, for as long as it takes, and as far away from here as I can get.”

“But you don’t know what Tony might have told them. Did he have any information that could be used to track you down?”

Annabelle perched on the edge of the fireplace’s raised hearth. “Maybe,” she said tersely. “Probably,” she corrected.

“Then all the more reason for you not to go this alone. We can help protect you.”

“Oliver, I appreciate the sentiment but you have no idea what you’re getting into. Not only is this guy the scum of the earth with a lot of money and muscle behind him, but on top of that, what I did was illegal. You’d be harboring a criminal on top of risking your life.”

“Not the first time on either count,” he replied.

“Who
are
you?” she asked pointedly.

“You know all you need to know about me.”

“And I thought
I
was a world-class liar.”

“We’re wasting time, tell me about him.”

She rubbed her long, thin fingers together, drew a deep breath and said, “His name’s Jerry Bagger. He owns the Pompeii Casino, the biggest in Atlantic City. He was run out of Vegas years ago because he was a whack job. He would literally rip out your intestines if you tried to steal a five-dollar casino chip.”

“And how much did you, um,
relieve
him of?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“It’s important to know how much motivation the man has to come after you.”

“Forty million dollars. Think that’ll motivate him?”

“I’m impressed. It doesn’t sound like Bagger is a man easily conned.”

Annabelle allowed herself a brief smile. “It was one of my better scams, I have to admit. But Jerry is also very dangerous, and not entirely sane. If he even thinks someone is helping me, that person might as well be me. He’ll get the same treatment: death by pain, great pain.”

“You have no reason to believe that he’s aware you’re in D.C.?”

“No. Tony had no idea I’d be coming here. Neither did the others.”

“So there are others on the con team? Bagger might get to them.”

“He might. But like I said, they don’t know I’m here either.”

Stone slowly nodded. “Of course, we can’t be sure of what Bagger really knows or doesn’t know at this point. I’m sure that the public details of our little adventure involving the Library of Congress didn’t include your name or picture. However, we can’t be absolutely certain there isn’t something out there that would help him track you down.”

“My original plan was to head to the South Pacific.”

Stone shook his head. “Fugitives always head to the South Pacific. That’s probably the first place Bagger will check.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Partly, yes. But only partly.”

“So you really think I should stay here?”

“I do. I’m assuming you’ve covered your tracks well. No trails leading here, names, travel arrangements, phones, friends?”

She shook her head. “Coming here was pretty much a spur-of-the-moment thing. And all under an alias.”

“The smart thing to do would be to find out, as quietly as possible, what Bagger knows.”

“Oliver, you can’t possibly get anywhere near that guy. It would be suicide.”

“I know how to look, so let me start looking.”

“I’ve never asked anyone to help me before.”

“It took me decades before I could ask anyone to help me.”

She looked puzzled. “But you’re glad you did?”

“It’s the only reason I’m alive right now. Move out of your hotel and into another one. I’m assuming you have money.”

“Cash is not a problem.” She rose and started to the door but turned back. “Oliver, I appreciate this.”

“Let’s hope you can say that when it’s all over.”