CHAPTER 25

REUBEN CONTINUED WALKING around the casino, trying to memorize as many key details as he could. He didn’t know exactly what sort of intelligence Stone wanted so he decided to be over- rather than underinclusive. In any event it beat the hell out of working on the loading dock.

He finally decided to hook back up with Milton at the blackjack table. When he got there his jaw dropped. Milton had huge columns of chips stacked neatly in front of him.

Reuben said, “Milton, what the hell happened?”

“What happened,” the bettor next to Milton said, “is that your buddy’s up about four thousand bucks.”

Reuben stared at the man and then at the beefy pit boss glaring at Milton and his winnings.

“Holy hell, Batman,” Reuben exclaimed. “Four grand!”

The pit boss leaned down into Milton’s face. “You’re cheating.”

“No I’m not,” Milton said indignantly.

“You’re counting cards, you little slimeball. Is that how you get your kicks? What, the ladies a problem for you? You have to come here and cheat? And then you go home and jack off. Is that it?”

Milton flushed red. “This is the first time I’ve ever been in a casino.”

The pit boss roared, “Do you really think I’m buying that bullshit?”

Reuben said politely, “Look, I’m sure it’s nothing really-”

Milton cut in. “And so what if I am counting cards? Is that illegal in New Jersey? I don’t think so, because I looked it up. And you can employ countermeasures against me, but only if I’m a ‘skilled player,’ which I’m not, and by law the countermeasures you can use are limited. Now, in Vegas you can claim I’m trespassing, read me the Trespass Act and ban me from the casinos for a year, but this isn’t Vegas, now is it?”

“You know all this stuff and you say this is the first time you’ve been in a casino,” the pit boss scoffed.

“I looked all that up last night online. Gee, what a concept. So back off and let me play my cards.”

The thick-necked boss looked like he was going to come over the table at Milton, but Reuben stepped between them. “I think my friend will cash out now.”

“But Reuben,” Milton protested. “I’m on a roll.”

“He’ll cash out now,” Reuben said very firmly.

Later, Milton said to Reuben, “Why wouldn’t you let me keep playing?”

“How about that whole living thing, Milton, you still interested in that?”

“Oh come on, this is the twenty-first century. They don’t do that stuff anymore.”

“You think so? Forget the laws, a casino can pretty much kick you out for any reason they want. You’re lucky the pit boss was probably slow to get to the table. Dollars to donuts we gotta couple goons tailing us right now.”

Milton whipped his head around. “Where?”

“You can’t see them!” Reuben paused. “So how’d you win all that money?”

Milton said in a low voice, “I started out employing a multilevel Hi-Lo scheme with a side count add-on based on the Zen Count system. Of course I was utilizing an overall true count methodology to take into account the multiple decks being played. Later, I took it up a peg to the Uston Advanced Point Count method and paid particular attention to strategically optimizing my bets using the three-color chip scenario to disguise my wager.”

Reuben gaped. “Milton, how the hell do you know all this stuff?”

“I read twelve Internet articles on the subject last night. It was very interesting. And once I read something-”

“You never forget it, I know, I know.” Reuben sighed. There seemed no limit to his friend’s intellectual gifts. “So the pit boss was right, you were counting cards. Luckily you were doing it without a computer, that’s a big no-no.”

“I’ve got a computer, it’s called my brain.”

“Okay, Mr. Brain, just so you know, it’s a rule on recon missions that the team splits everything right down the middle.”

“Down the middle?”

“Yep. So I’m two grand ahead. Now fork it over.”

Milton handed over the cash. “Remember, you have to pay taxes on that.”

“I don’t pay taxes.”

“Reuben, you have to pay your taxes.”

“Uncle Sam can get his pound of flesh off somebody else. And while you were cleaning out the casino I was doing some real intelligence gathering.” He told Milton about Angie.

“That’s sounds really promising, Reuben, good work.”

“The way Angie was eyeballing me, the price might be pretty damn steep.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, you’ve got two thousand dollars.”

Reuben gazed at his friend and just shook his head.

CHAPTER 26

CARTER GRAY WALKED SLOWLY down the long corridor that was for some reason painted a salmon color, perhaps to induce calmness, he thought. However, this was not a building that inspired calm, only crisis. At the end of the underground hall was a solitary room housed behind a bank-vault-class door. He entered his security codes and let the biometric readers sweep over him. The door noiselessly swung open. This James Bond style of security had set the taxpayers back millions. Yet what else were taxpayers good for, he thought. They consumed far too much, paid too much in taxes and their government spent far more than it should, usually on stupid things. If that wasn’t balance, he didn’t know what was.

Gray walked over to the wall of locked miniature vaults and slid his electronic key in one while he simultaneously rubbed his thumb across a fingerprint reader. The door slid open and he took the file out, sat down in a chair and began to read.

A half hour later Gray had finished perusing the file. Next, he took out the photo he’d received in the mail, comparing it with the one in the file. It was the same man, of course. He’d known him very well. In many ways he’d been Gray’s closest confidant. For decades he’d feared that the unfortunate matter of Rayfield Solomon would come back to haunt him. Now it had.

Cole, Cincetti, Bingham, all dead. And Carter Gray had almost joined them. And he would have except for the safe room built underneath the house by the former CIA director and VP who had lived there before him; an underground room that was both fire- and bombproof. When Gray had explained to Oliver Stone that he was both comfortable and secure in his new home, he was being quite literal. And his home included a fortified tunnel that had carried him safely off the property and to the other side of the main road, where a car driven by one of his guards had picked him up. Gray had been gone from the house for over an hour when it exploded. He’d left minutes after receiving the photo. Still, it had been a relatively close call. The FBI had initiated a homicide investigation, publicly acknowledging that a body had been found in the wreckage. Gray had put this in motion behind the scenes. He wanted people to think he was dead.

He would’ve been dead except for the fact that his would-be killer had sent him this photo. What a risk that had been. What a tactical error. And yet it must have been important for the person that Gray clearly understood why he was being killed; that fortunately revealed much about his potential murderer. It was undoubtedly someone who cared very much about Rayfield Solomon. And for Gray, that evidenced a familial relationship or something close to it.

The other targets were now obvious, Gray mused as he sat in his chair a hundred feet underneath the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, a juggernaut he had once commanded. Only the current and former directors of the CIA were allowed in this room. Here there were files that contained secrets the American public would never know. Indeed, there were stories here of which American presidents were ignorant. When one said “files,” of course, one meant more than mere paper. It included flesh and blood. Certainly that had been the case with Ray Solomon. Gray hadn’t known about the order to kill Solomon. If he had he would’ve prevented it from being executed. He had regretted his friend’s death all these years. Yet in this case regret was a very cheap emotion to have. You felt bad, but the other person was dead.