“Hey, I’m just trying to be realistic here.”

“No, you’re being a classic bureaucrat. You look at how you can’t do something instead of how you can.”

Alex managed a tight smile. “Actually, the Secret Service is pretty can-do.”

“Good. Show me.”

“Give me a break here. I’m doing you the favor. I’m going out on a really big limb and it’s a long way down.”

Annabelle nervously balled her napkin up. “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just…”

“The good news is the Justice Department really wants something to stick on Bagger. If I can dangle a big enough carrot in front of them, we should be able to get some FBI support. Bagger’s been involved in a lot of questionable stuff. Several murders in fact, but the evidence just wasn’t there.”

“I know of a few more, but without his tripping himself up, nothing you can use.”

“Just so you understand, I’ve only believed about half of what you’ve told me.”

She started to say something but Alex said, “But I’m not going to press it.”

Annabelle eyed him curiously. “Why not?”

“Because Oliver told me not to ask too many questions. He said you were a good person with an imperfect past.”

Annabelle studied him closely. “So who was John Carr?”

“He worked for the U.S. government doing some highly specialized work.”

“He killed people, didn’t he?”

Alex looked around but the place was empty and the girl at the counter was too busy reading about Britney Spears’ latest comeback in People to waste time eavesdropping on them.

“He doesn’t do it anymore. Not unless he has to. Not unless someone’s trying to kill him, or his friends.”

“I saw him kill a man,” Annabelle said. “He did it with a knife. Just a flick of his wrist and the man was dead. But the guy was trying to kill us.” She fiddled with her coffee cup. “Do you have any idea what’s really going on with him?”

“Did you hear about Carter Gray’s house blowing up the other night?”

“Yeah, I read about it.”

“Well, Oliver and Gray go way back, and not in a good way. Oliver was at his house, at Gray’s request, shortly before it blew up. And it was no accident. Oliver had nothing to do with it, but somebody else did. Somebody else who might just have Oliver on his target list.”

“So he’s got someone looking to kill him too?”

“Looks that way. And that’s why he didn’t want to hang around any of us.”

“And I was really upset that he abandoned me.”

“Hey, he called me in. I might only be the JV, but I’ve been known to get a few good punches in from time to time.”

“That stuff I said before about you being a bureaucrat.”

“I believe the exact phrase was classic bureaucrat.”

“Yeah, well, I take it back. I appreciate your help.”

“I need to make a few calls. And then I can help you fill in some of the details now that we have the concept nailed down.”

She returned his grin. “I’ve never met a fed like you before, Alex Ford.”

“That’s okay, you’re a new one in my book too.”

CHAPTER 62

AS THE NIGHT SETTLED IN Oliver Stone knew he was still being followed. Well, now was the time to say good-bye to the shadows. He ran for a cab and gave the driver an address in Alexandria. With deadly men in pursuit of him he was heading to a rare book store.

The taxi dropped him off in front of the shop on Union Street a block from the Potomac River. With the hunters behind him Stone hurried inside, nodding at the owner of the place, Douglas. The man had used to be called simply Doug, and had once sold pornographic comic books out of the trunk of his Cadillac. Yet he harbored a secret passion for rare books and a desire to be rich. That dream had gone unfulfilled until Stone had hooked him up with Caleb. Now Douglas ran a successful high-end rare book store. As part of the bargain Stone was given access to the place at all times, and had a room in the cellar area that he used to store some of his most important possessions. And it also provided something else that Stone was going to use right now.

Stone reached the cellar, unlocked a door and entered the room where an old fireplace sat, long unused. He reached inside the fireplace opening, where next to the damper switch was a small pull cord. He tugged and a door on an old priest’s hole-like chamber swung open. The room was filled with boxes stacked neatly on shelves, well above the flood line.

Stone opened a box and pulled out a journal that he stuffed in his bag. From another box he drew out a set of clothes, including a floppy hat, and changed into them. From a small metal box he took out an object that was more precious to him than all the gold in the world. It was a cell phone. A cell phone with a very special message carefully preserved on the built-in recording device.

When he left he did not reverse his path and go upstairs. He walked down a different passageway, toward the river. He unlocked one more door, passed through, knelt down, pulled on an iron ring that was seated into the floor, yanking hard, and a square of floor came up on hinges. He dropped through, traversed a dark tunnel that smelled of river, dead fish and mold, clambered up a set of rickety stairs, unlocked another door and came out behind a clump of trees. He passed along a footwalk by the river and plopped into a small boat owned by Douglas that was docked at one of the slips.

He engaged the Merc outboard and headed south, his white stern light the only sign of him in the darkness. He ran the boat up on the shore about two miles north of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, tying its bow line to a tree. He hoofed it to a gas station and called a cab from a pay phone.

On the ride back to town, Stone read through the journal. These records represented a significant part of his distant past. He had started keeping them almost immediately after he was recruited into the CIA’s Triple Six Division. He had no idea if the CIA still had the division operational and didn’t know if the men who’d attempted to follow him tonight were part of that element. However, he assumed that if they were ordered to kill him they would carry out the task with suitable skill.

Page after page of the journal was turned as Stone took a painful walk through his past work for the U.S. government. Then he focused on several photographs he’d pasted on one page along with his handwritten notes and some bits of the “unofficial” record he’d managed to snag.

He was staring at the photos of his three Triple Six comrades, all now dead: Judd Bingham, Bob Cole and Lou Cincetti. And then he looked at the older bespectacled man in the picture at the bottom of the page.

“Rayfield Solomon,” he said to himself. The hit had been quick and efficient but still one of the most unusual of Stone’s career. It had been in Sa˜o Paulo. The orders had been clear. Solomon was a spy, turned by the legendary Russian operative Lesya, last name unknown. There was to be no arrest and no trial; it would be too embarrassing for the American public to endure; not that lengthy explanations were ever given to the Triple Six teams.

Stone remembered the man’s expression as they burst in the door. It was not fear, he recalled. At best it was mild surprise, and then his features hardened. He politely asked who had ordered him to be terminated. Bingham laughed, but as the leader Stone stepped forward and told Solomon. There was no official requirement to do this. Stone simply felt every doomed man had a right to know.

Rayfield Solomon was a man of average height and build, more professor than secret operative in appearance. But to this day Stone remembered those wondrous eyes that burned into him as he raised his pistol. It was a gaze that bespoke a brilliant mind behind it, and a man who was unafraid of the death knocking on his door. He was no traitor, Solomon said. “You will kill me, of course, but understand that you kill an innocent man.” Stone was impressed at how calmly the man spoke while four armed men encircled him.