The Camel Club

David Baldacci

The first book in the Camel Club series

Copyright © 2005 by David Baldacci

This novel is dedicated to the men and women of the United States Secret Service

And to Larry Kirshbaum, a first-rate editor, a great publisher, and a wonderful friend

PROLOGUE

THE CHEVY SUBURBAN SPED DOWN the road, enveloped by the hushed darkness of the Virginia countryside. Forty-one-year-old Adnan al-Rimi was hunched over the wheel as he concentrated on the windy road coming up. Deer were plentiful here, and Adnan had no desire to see the bloodied antlers of one slashing through the windshield. Indeed, the man was tired of things attacking him. He lifted a gloved hand from the steering wheel and felt for the gun in the holster under his jacket; a weapon was not just a comfort for Adnan, it was a necessity.

He suddenly glanced out the window as he heard the sound overhead.

There were two passengers in the backseat. The man talking animatedly in Farsi on a cell phone was Muhammad al-Zawahiri, an Iranian who had entered the country shortly before the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The man next to him was an Afghan named Gul Khan, who’d been in the States only a few months. Khan was large and muscular with a shaved head. He wore a hunter’s camouflage jacket and was checking his machine gun with nimble fingers. He clicked the mag back in place and put the firing switch on two-shot bursts. A few drops of rain fell against the window, and Khan idly watched them trickle down.

“This is nice countryside,” Khan said in Pashto, a dialect Muhammad spoke but one Adnan had little familiarity with. “My country is filled with the metal carcasses of Soviet tanks. The farmers just plow around them.” He paused and added with a deeply satisfied look, “And some American carcasses too, we have.”

Adnan kept glancing in the rearview mirror. He didn’t like a man with a machine gun sitting behind him, fellow Muslim or not. And neither was he overly trusting of the Iranian. Adnan had been born in Saudi Arabia but migrated to Iraq as a young boy. He fought for Iraq in the horrific war between the two countries, and his enmity toward Iran still ran very deep. Ethnically, Muhammad al-Zawahiri was Persian, not Arab, like al-Rimi. It was another difference between the two men that caused al-Rimi not to trust him.

Muhammad finished his phone call, wiped a smudge of dirt off one of his American-made cowboy boots, checked the time on his very expensive watch and lay back against the seat and smiled as he lit a cigarette. He said something in Farsi and Khan laughed. The big Afghan’s breath smelled strongly of onions.

Adnan gripped the steering wheel tighter. He had never been a careless man, and Adnan didn’t like the Iranian’s flippancy about serious matters. Seconds later Adnan looked out the window again.

Muhammad had clearly heard it too. He rolled down his window and poked his head out, looking up at the cloudy sky. When he saw the wink of red lights overhead he barked to Adnan, who nodded and hit the gas; both men in the back strapped on their seatbelts.

The Chevy flew along the snaking country road, banking so hard around some curves that the men in the rear held on to the hand straps with all ten fingers. Yet even the fastest car in the world couldn’t outrun a helicopter on a serpentine track.

Speaking again in Farsi, Muhammad ordered Adnan to pull off under some trees and wait, to see if the chopper kept going. Continuing in Farsi he said, “Car accident, Adnan? Medical evacuation helicopter perhaps?”

Adnan shrugged. He didn’t speak Farsi very well, and oftentimes nuances in that language escaped him. One didn’t need to be a linguist, however, to sense the urgency in his colleague’s voice. He drove under a cluster of trees, and all three men got out and crouched down by the vehicle. Khan pointed his machine gun at the sky and Adnan slid his pistol out as well. Muhammad just gripped his cell phone and looked nervously overhead. For a moment it appeared that the chopper had left, but then a searchlight beam cut through the tree canopies directly over them.

The next word Muhammad spoke was in English: “Shit!” He nodded at Adnan, instructing him to go for a better look.

The Iraqi ran in a crouch until he reached the edge of the tree line and cautiously gazed up. The chopper was hovering sixty feet overhead. Adnan returned to his companions, reporting what he’d seen.

“They may be looking for a place to land,” he added.

“Do we have an RPG in the truck?” Muhammad asked, his voice slightly trembling. He was used to being the brains behind these sorts of operations rather than one of the foot soldiers who actually did the killing — and often died in the process.

Adnan shook his head. “We didn’t think we’d have need of a rocket-propelled grenade tonight.”

“Shit,” Muhammad said again. “Listen,” he hissed. “I think they’re landing.” The tree canopies were starting to shake from the chopper’s rotor wash.

Adnan nodded at his companions. “It is only a two-person helicopter. There are three of us,” he added firmly. He stared at his leader. “Take out your gun, Muhammad, and be ready to use it. We will not go quietly. We will take some Americans with us.”

“You fool,” Muhammad snapped. “Do you think they haven’t already called for others? They will simply keep us pinned down until help arrives.”

“Our cover papers are in order,” Adnan countered. “The best money can buy.”

The Iranian looked at him as though he were insane. “We are armed Arabs in the middle of pig farmers in Virginia. They will fingerprint me and know in seconds who I really am. We are trapped,” he added in another hiss. “How could this be? How?”

Adnan pointed at the man’s hand. “Perhaps that cell phone you’re always on. They can track these things. I’ve warned you before about that.”

“Allah’s will be done,” Gul Khan said as he put his gun’s firing selector on full auto, apparently in accordance with God’s wishes.

Muhammad stared at him incredulously. “If we are stopped now, our plans will not succeed. Do you think God wants that? Do you!” He paused and took a deep, steadying breath. “Here is what I want you two to do. What you must do!” He pointed a shaky finger at the vibrating tree canopies and said in a firm voice, “I want you to hold them off, while I make a run for it. There is another road a half-mile through these trees to the west. I can call Marwan to come and pick me up in the other truck at that location. But you must hold them off. You must do this!”

Adnan stared sullenly at his leader. By his expression, if there were a literal translation for “chickenshit” in his native tongue, Adnan would’ve certainly used it.

“Go, now, draw them off, it is your sacrifice for the cause,” Muhammad cried as he started backing away.

“If we are to die while you escape, then give me your gun,” Adnan said bitterly. “You will have no need of it.”

The Iranian pulled out his pistol and tossed it to Adnan.

The burly Khan turned toward the chopper and smiled. “How about this plan, Adnan?” he said over his shoulder. “Firing into their tail prop before they can land worked very well against the Americans in my country. Their spines snap like twigs when they hit the ground.”

The bullet hit him in the back of the neck, ironically snapping Khan’s own spine like a twig, and the big Afghani fell dead.

Adnan swiveled his pistol away from his first victim and pointed it at Muhammad, who, seeing this traitorous attack, had started to run. He was not fleet of foot, however, and the cowboy boots he favored were not built for running. Adnan caught up to him when Muhammad fell over a rotting tree trunk.

Muhammad looked up at his colleague as Adnan pointed Muhammad’s own pistol at him. The stream of invectives in Farsi from Muhammad was followed by pleas in halting Arabic and then finally in English: “Adnan, please. Why? Why?”

In Arabic Adnan answered, “You deal drugs, you say, to make money to support the effort. Yet you spend more time shopping for your precious cowboy boots and your fancy jewelry than you do on the work of Islam, Muhammad. You have lost the way. You are American now. But that is not why I do this.”

“Tell me why then!” the Iranian shouted.

“It is your sacrifice for a greater end.” Adnan didn’t smile, but the triumph was very clear in his eyes. He fired a contact shot into the man’s left temple, and no more pleas in any language flowed from the Iranian. Adnan pressed Muhammad’s hand around the gun, then set it down and made his way quickly back to the clearing, where the chopper had landed and one of the passenger doors was now opening. Adnan had lied. It was actually a four-person chopper. Two men got out. They were Westerners wearing grim features, and carrying something between them. Adnan led them back to Muhammad’s body after stopping to retrieve a shotgun from the Suburban.

The object the men toted was a body bag. They unzipped it. Inside was a man, a man who looked remarkably like Adnan and was dressed identically to him. The man was unconscious but still breathing. They set him up against a tree near where the dead Iranian lay. Adnan handed his wallet to one of the men and he placed it in the unconscious man’s jacket pocket. Then the other man took the shotgun from Adnan, pressed Muhammad’s dead hands around it, pointed it at the unconscious man, and fired a blast into his head, instantly wiping away part of his face. A living human to a corpse, in seconds. Adnan was an expert in such things, and not by his choosing. Who would select that vocation, except a madman?

A minute later Adnan and the two men were racing to the helicopter, and they climbed in; it immediately lifted into the air. There were no insignias on the chopper’s sides or tail, and none of the men wore uniforms. Indeed, they barely looked at Adnan as he settled himself in one of the backseats and pulled on his safety harness. It was as though they were trying to forget he was even there.

Adnan was no longer thinking about his dead companions. His thoughts had pushed on, to a far greater glory that awaited him. If they succeeded, humanity would speak of it for generations to come in awed tones. Adnan al-Rimi was now officially a dead man. Yet he would never be more valuable.

The chopper took a northerly route, on its way to western Pennsylvania. To a town called Brennan. A minute later the rural Virginia sky was quiet once more except for the fall of a gentle rain that took its time washing away all the blood.

CHAPTER

1

HE WAS RUNNING HARD, BULLETS embedding in things all around him. He couldn’t see who was shooting, and he had no weapon to return fire. The woman next to him was his wife. The young girl next to her was their daughter. A bullet sliced through his wife’s wrist, and he heard her scream. Then a second bullet found its target and his wife’s eyes widened slightly. It was the split-second bulge of the pupils that signaled death before one’s brain could even register it. As his wife fell, he raced to his little girl’s side to shield her. His fingers reached for hers but missed. They always missed.

He awoke and sat straight up, the sweat trickling down his cheeks before finally creeping onto his long, bushy beard. He poured a bit of water from a bottle over his face, letting the cool drops push away the heat-filled pain of his recurrent nightmare.

As he got up from the bed, his leg brushed against the old box he kept there. He hesitated and then lifted the top off. Inside was a ragged photo album. One by one he looked at the few pictures of the woman who’d been his wife. Then he turned to the photos of his daughter; of the baby and toddler she’d been. He had no more pictures of her after that. He would have given his life to have seen her, even for a moment, as a young woman. Never a day went by that he didn’t wonder what might have been.

He looked around the cottage’s sparsely furnished interior. Looking back at him were dusty shelves crammed with books covering an array of subjects. Next to the large window that overlooked the darkened grounds was an old desk stacked with journals filled with his precise handwriting. A blackened stone fireplace provided much of his heat, and there was a small kitchen where he prepared his simple meals. A minuscule bathroom completed his modest living arrangements.

He checked his watch, took a pair of binoculars from the rickety wooden table next to his bed and grabbed a frayed cloth knapsack off his desk. He stuffed the binoculars and a few journals in the knapsack and headed outside.

The old grave markers loomed before him, the moonlight glancing off the weathered, mossy stone. As he stepped from the front porch to the grass, the brisk air helped carry away the burning sensation in his head from his nightmare, but not the one in his heart. Thankfully, he had somewhere to go tonight, yet with some time to spare. And when he had extra time, he invariably headed to one place.

He walked through the large wrought-iron gates where the scrollwork announced that this was Mt. Zion Cemetery, located in northwest Washington, D.C., and owned by the nearby Mt. Zion United Methodist Church. The church was the oldest black congregation in the city, having been organized in 1816 by folks who didn’t enjoy practicing their faith at a segregated house of worship that had somehow missed the concept of equality in the Scriptures. The three-acre parcel had also been an important stop along the underground railroad, shepherding slaves from the South to freedom in the North during the Civil War.

The graveyard was bracketed on one side by the massive Dumbarton House, headquarters of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and on the other side by a low-rise brick residential building. For decades the historic cemetery had suffered from neglect, with toppled tombstones and waist-high weeds. Then the church had enclosed the graveyard with the fence and built the small caretaker’s cottage.

Nearby was the far larger and far better known Oak Hill Cemetery, the final resting place of many notable people. However, he preferred Mt. Zion and its place in history as a gateway to freedom.

He’d been engaged as the cemetery’s caretaker some years ago, and he took his work very seriously, making sure the grounds and grave sites were kept in good order. The cottage that came with the job was his first real home in a long time. The church paid him in cash with no bothersome paperwork; he didn’t make nearly enough to pay income taxes anyway. In fact, he made barely enough money to live. Yet it was still the best job he’d ever had.

He walked south on 27th Street, caught a Metro bus and was soon dropped a block or so from his “second home” of sorts. As he passed the small tent that at least technically belonged to him, he pulled the binoculars out of his knapsack and from the shadow of a tree used them to eye the building across the street. He had taken the government-issued binoculars with him after serving his country proudly before completely losing faith in its leaders. His real name he had not used in decades. He had been known for a long time now as Oliver Stone, a name he’d adopted in what could only be termed an act of cheeky defiance.

He related well to the irreverent film director’s legendary work, which challenged the “official” perception of history, a history that often turned out to be more fiction than fact. Taking the man’s name as his own seemed appropriate, since this Oliver Stone was also very interested in the “real” truth.

Through the binoculars he continued to study the comings and goings at the mansion that never ceased to fascinate him. Then Stone entered his small tent, and, using an old flashlight, he carefully noted down his observations in one of the journals he’d brought in his knapsack. He kept some of these at the caretaker’s cottage and many more at hiding places he maintained elsewhere. He stored nothing at the tent because he knew it was regularly searched. In his wallet he always kept his official permit allowing him to have his tent here and the right to protest in front of the building across the street. He took that right very seriously.

Returning outside, he watched the guards who holstered semiautomatic pistols and held machine guns or occasionally spoke into walkie-talkies. They all knew him and were warily polite, as folks were with those who could suddenly turn on you. Stone always took great pains to show them respect. You were always deferential with people who carried machine guns. Oliver Stone, while not exactly in the mainstream, was hardly crazy.

He made eye contact with one of the guards, who called out, “Hey, Stone, I hear Humpty Dumpty was pushed, pass it on.”

Some of the other men laughed at this remark, and even Stone’s lips curled into a smile. “Duly noted,” he answered back. He had watched this very same sentry gun down someone a few feet from where he was standing. To be fair, the other fellow had been shooting at him.

He hitched his frayed pants up tighter around his slender waist, smoothed back his long grayish white hair and stopped for a moment to retie the string that was trying and failing to hold his right shoe together. He was a tall and very lean man, and his shirt was too big and his trousers too short. And the shoes, well, the shoes were always problematic.

“It is new clothes that you need,” a female voice said in the darkness.

He looked up to see the speaker leaning against a statue of Major General Comte de Rochambeau, an American Revolutionary War hero. Rochambeau’s stiff finger was pointing at something, Stone had never known what. Then there was a Prussian, Baron Steuben, to the northwest, and the Pole, General Kosciuszko, guarding the northeast flank of the seven-acre park that Stone was standing in. These statues always brought a smile to his face. Oliver Stone so loved being around revolutionaries.

“It really is the new clothes that you need, Oliver,” the woman said again as she scratched her deeply tanned face. “And the hair cut too, yes. Oliver, it is a new everything that is needed.”

“I’m sure that I do,” he replied quietly. “Yet it’s all in one’s priorities, I suppose, and fortunately, vanity has never been one of mine.”

This woman called herself Adelphia. She had an accent that he’d never been able to exactly place, although it was definitely European, probably Slavic. She was particularly unsympathetic to her verbs, wedging them into very awkward places in her speech. She was tall and spare with black hair shot through with gray that she wore long. Adelphia also had deeply set, brooding eyes and a mouth that was usually cast into a snarl, though Stone had sometimes found her to be kindhearted in a grudging sort of way. It was difficult to gauge her age, but she was certainly younger than he. The six-foot-long, freestanding banner outside her tent proclaimed:

A FETUS IS A LIFE. IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IT, YOU’RE GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL.

There was very little that was subtle about Adelphia. In life she only saw the rigid lines of black and white. To her, shades of gray were nonexistent, whereas this was a city that had seemingly invented the color. The small sign outside of Oliver Stone’s tent read simply:

I WANT THE TRUTH

He had yet to find it after all these years. Indeed, was there ever a city created where the truth was more difficult to discover than the one he was standing in right now?

“I go to get the café, Oliver. You would like some? I have money.”

“No thank you, Adelphia. I have to go somewhere.”

She scowled. “Another meeting is where you go? What good does it give you? It is not young you are no more and you should no be walking in the dark. This is dangerous place.”

He glanced at the armed men. “Actually, I think it’s fairly secure here.”

“Many men with guns you say is safe? I say you crazy,” she responded testily.

“Perhaps you’re right and thank you for your concern,” he said politely. Adelphia would much rather argue and looked for any opening to pounce on. He’d long since learned never to allow the woman such an opportunity.

Adelphia stared at him angrily for another moment and then stalked off. Meanwhile, Stone glanced at a sign next to his that read:

HAVE A NICE DOOMSDAY

Stone had not seen the gentleman who erected that sign for a long time.

“Yes, we will, won’t we?” he muttered, and then his attention was caught by the sudden activity across the street. Policemen and marked cruisers were assembling in groups. Stone could also see lawmen taking up positions at the various intersections. Across the street the imposing black steel gates that could withstand the push of an M-1 tank opened, and a black Suburban shot out, its red and blue grille lights blazing.

Knowing instantly what was happening, Stone hurried down the street toward the nearest intersection. As he watched through his binoculars, the world’s most elaborate motorcade streamed out onto 17th Street. In the middle of this imposing column was the most unique limousine ever built.

It was a Cadillac DTS model loaded with the latest in navigation and communication technology, and it could carry six passengers very comfortably in rich blue leather with wood trim accents. The limo boasted automatic-sensor reclining seats and a foldaway storable desktop and was fully airtight with its own internal air supply in case the outside oxygen wasn’t up to par. The presidential seal was embroidered on the center of the rear seat, and presidential seals were also affixed on the inside and outside of the rear doors. On the right front fender rode the U.S. flag. The presidential standard flew from a post on the left front fender, signaling that America’s chief executive was indeed inside.

The exterior of the vehicle was constructed of antiballistic-steel panels, and the windows were phone-book-thick polycarbonate glass that no bullet could penetrate. It ran on four self-healing tires and sported double-zero license plates. The car’s gas mileage was lousy, but its price tag of $10 million did include a ten-disc CD changer with surround sound. Unfortunately, for those looking for a bargain, there was no dealer discount. It was known affectionately as the Beast. The limo had only two known weaknesses: It could neither fly nor float.

A light came on inside the Beast, and Stone saw the man perusing some papers, papers of enormous importance, no doubt. Another gentleman sat beside him. Stone had to smile. The agents must be furious over the light. Even with thick armor and bulletproof glass you didn’t make yourself such an easy target.

The limo slowed as it passed through the intersection, and Stone tensed a bit as he saw the man glance his way. For a brief moment the president of the United States, James H. Brennan, and conspiracy-minded citizen Oliver Stone made direct eye contact. The president grimaced and said something. The man next to him immediately turned the light out. Stone smiled again. Yes, I will always be here. Longer than both of you.

The man seated beside President Brennan was also well known to Stone. He was Carter Gray, the so-called intelligence czar, a recently created cabinet-level position that gave him ironfisted control of a $50-billion budget and 120,000 highly trained personnel in all fifteen American intelligence agencies. His empire included the spy satellite platform, the NSA’s cryptologic expertise, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, and even the venerable CIA, an agency Gray had once headed. Apparently, the folks at Langley thought that Gray would show them preference and deference. He had done neither. Because Gray was also a former secretary of defense, it was assumed that he would show the Pentagon — which consumed eighty cents out of every intelligence dollar — loyalty. That assumption had also turned out to be completely erroneous. Gray obviously knew where all the bodies were buried and had used that to bend both agencies to his considerable will.

Stone did not believe that one man, one fallible human being, should have that much power, and certainly not someone like Carter Gray. Stone had known the man very well decades ago, though Gray certainly would not have recognized his old mate now. Years ago it would’ve been a different story, right, Mr. Gray?

The binoculars were suddenly ripped out of his hands, and Stone was staring at a uniformed guard toting a machine gun.

“You pull these out again to look at the man, Stone, they’re gone; you got it? And if we didn’t know you were okay, they’d be gone right now.” The man thrust the vintage field glasses back into Stone’s hands and marched off.

“Simply exercising my constitutional rights, Officer,” Stone replied in a low voice that he knew the guard couldn’t hear. He quickly put his binoculars away and stepped back into the shadows. Again, one should not argue with humorless men carrying automatic weapons. Stone let out a long breath. His life was a precarious balance every day.

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

THE 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

ALEX FORD 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

OLIVER STONE 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.

CHAPTER

5

THE LATVIAN ENTOURAGE FINALLY retired, and Alex immediately hitched a ride to a federal cop hangout, not far from the Secret Service’s WFO. The establishment was called the LEAP Bar. The acronym LEAP probably meant nothing to the layperson but was very well known to federal law enforcement types.

LEAP stood for “Law Enforcement Availability Pay.” In exchange for being available at least ten hours a day for work that required a badge, a gun and more than a modicum of guts, federal officers received from their respective agencies a 25 percent bump in their base pay. Naming the bar LEAP was a brilliant marketing move by the saloon owners because the place had been packed from day one with pistol-toting men and women.

Alex passed through the front door and edged up to the bar. On the wall facing him were dozens of arm patches with the insignias of law enforcement agencies. Adorning the other walls were framed newspaper articles of heroic deeds by the FBI, DEA, ATF, FAM and other such agencies.

When Alex saw her, he grinned, in spite of wanting to remain cool and unaffected by her presence.

“Beefeater martini on the rocks with not two, or four, but three plump olives,” she said, eyeing him with an accompanying smile.

“Good memory.”

“Yeah, it’s really tough considering you never order anything else.”

“How’s DOJ treating you?”

Kate Adams was the only bartender of his acquaintance who was also a Department of Justice lawyer.

She handed him his drink. “Hunky-dory. How’s the Service treating you?”

“The paychecks keep coming and I keep breathing. That’s all I ask.”

“You really should raise your standards.”

Kate mopped up the bar as Alex kept shooting discreet glances her way. She was five-seven with slender curves and shoulder-length blond hair curling around a long neck. She had high cheekbones with a slim, straight nose between, leading down to a shapely chin. In fact, everything about her was cool and classical until you got to the eyes. They were large and green and, to Alex, evidenced a fiery, passionate soul lurking within. Single, a GS-15 and in her mid-thirties — he’d checked on the government database — Kate looked five years younger than that. It was a pity, Alex thought, since he looked every bit his age, though his black hair had not yet started to thin or gray. Why, he didn’t know.

“You’re getting skinny,” she remarked, breaking into his thoughts.

“Being out of protection, I’m not standing around shoveling in hotel food, and I actually get to work out instead of sitting my butt on a plane for ten hours at a crack.”

He’d been coming here for over a month and chitchatting with the woman. He wanted to do more than that, though, and now tried to think of something that would hold her attention. He suddenly glanced at her hands. “So how long have you played the piano?”

“What?” Kate said in a surprised tone.

“Your fingers are calloused,” he observed. “A sure sign of a piano player.”

She looked at her hands. “Or from a computer keyboard.”

“No. Computer keys callous the tips only. Piano keys hit the full upper part of the finger. And that’s not all. You chew your nails down to the nubs. You have a dent in your left thumbnail, a scar on your right index finger, and your left pinkie is a little crooked, probably from a break when you were a kid.”

Kate stared at her fingers. “What are you? Some sort of hand expert?”

“All Secret Service agents are. I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life looking at hands in all fifty states and a bunch of countries overseas.”

“Why?”

“Because people kill with their hands, Kate.”

“Oh.”

He was about to say something else when a group of FBI agents who’d just gotten off the last shift burst in, strode en masse to the bar and started ordering in loud voices. Alex, pushed away by their sheer number, took his drink and sat alone at a small table in a corner. However, his gaze remained fixed on Kate. The Bureau boys were giving the lovely bartender their fawning attention, which irritated the hell out of the Secret Service agent.

Alex finally turned his attention to the TV bolted to the wall. It was tuned to CNN, and a number of bar patrons were listening intently to the person speaking on the screen. Alex carried his drink over near the set so he could hear better, and watched a repeat of an earlier press conference held by Carter Gray, the nation’s intelligence chief.

Gray’s physical appearance instantly gave one assurance. Though short in stature, he had the weighty presence of granite with his burly shoulders, stout neck and wide face. He wore glasses that gave him a professional air, which wasn’t simply a façade; he was the product of some of the finest schools in the country. And everything the schools hadn’t taught him, he had learned through almost four decades in the field. He did not seem capable of being either intimidated or caught off guard.

“In rural southwest Virginia three alleged terrorists were found dead by a farmer looking for a lost cow,” the secretary of intelligence announced with a completely straight face. The mental image this conjured made Alex want to laugh, but Carter Gray’s grave demeanor extinguished any desire to chuckle.

“Forensic evidence suggests these men had been dead for at least a week and perhaps longer. Using the information database at the National Intelligence Center, we have confirmed that one of them was Muhammad al-Zawahiri, who we believe was connected to the Grand Central suicide bombing and is suspected of running an East Coast drug ring as well. Also killed were Adnan al-Rimi, believed to be one of al-Zawahiri’s foot soldiers, and a third man whose identity is still unknown. Using intelligence developed by NIC, the FBI has arrested five other men with connections to al-Zawahiri and confiscated a large quantity of illegal drugs, cash and weapons.”

Gray knew how to play the Washington game perfectly, Alex thought. He’d made sure the public knew that NIC was the one who’d done the heavy lifting, but he’d also credited the FBI. Success in D.C. was measured in budget dollars and extra scraps of turf. Any bureaucrat who forgot this did so at his extreme peril. Yet every agency occasionally needed favors from its sister organizations. Gray had clearly covered his bases there.

Gray continued. “One of the most interesting facets of this incident is that, based on the investigation so far, it seems that al-Zawahiri killed his two companions and then committed suicide, although it may turn out that his death was somehow related to his drug trafficking. Regardless, we believe that this latest development will send another shock wave through terrorist communities at a time when the United States is making clear inroads in the fight against terror.” He paused and then said in a crisp voice, “And now I’d like to introduce the president of the United States.”

This was the standard drill for these press conferences. Gray would report the actual details in straightforward language. Then the charismatic James Brennan would follow and knock the political baseball out of the park with a hyperbole-laced speech that left no doubt as to who could protect the country best.

As Brennan began his remarks, Alex turned his attention back to the bar and the lady there. He knew that a woman like Kate Adams probably had twenty guys gunning for her, and most of them were probably better prospects than he was. She also probably realized how he felt; hell, she’d probably known how he felt about her even before he did.

He squared his shoulders and made up his mind. Well, there’s no reason I can’t be the one guy out of twenty who sticks.

However, halfway to the bar he stopped. Another man had come in and walked right up to her. The immediate smile on Kate’s face was enough to tell Alex that this person was special. He sat back down and continued to watch as they moved off to the end of the bar where they could talk in private. The fellow was a little shorter than Alex, but younger, powerfully built and handsome. To Alex’s practiced eye the man’s clothes were very expensive. He was probably one of those high-priced corporate attorneys or lobbyists who plied their trade on K Street. Every time Kate laughed it was like a meat cleaver directly in the Secret Service agent’s skull.

He finished his drink and was about to leave when he heard his name. He turned and saw Kate motioning to him. He reluctantly walked over.

“Alex, this is Tom Hemingway. Tom, Alex Ford,” she said.

When they shook hands, there was such strength in Hemingway’s grip that Alex, who was pretty strong, felt a pain shoot up his arm. He stared down at the man’s hand, amazed at the thickness of the fingers and the knuckles that looked like wedges of steel. Hemingway had the most powerful set of hands the Secret Service agent had ever seen.

“Secret Service,” Hemingway said, glancing at Alex’s red lapel pin.

“You?” Alex asked.

“I’m with one of those places where I’d have to kill you if I told you,” Hemingway replied with a knowing smile.

Alex could barely conceal his contempt. “I’ve got buddies at the CIA, DIA, NRO and the NSA. Which one are you?”

“I’m not talking anything that obvious, Alex,” Hemingway answered with a chuckle.

Alex glanced at Kate. “Since when is DOJ mixed up with funny guys like him?”

Hemingway said, “Actually, we’re working on something together. My agency and DOJ. Kate’s the lead counsel. I’m the liaison.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t ask for a better partner than Kate.” Alex put his empty glass down. “Well, I better get going.”

“I’m sure I’ll see you in here soon,” Kate said quickly.

Alex didn’t answer her. He turned to Hemingway. “Hang in there, Tom. And don’t let it slip where you do your Uncle Sam time. I wouldn’t want you to get busted for having to kill some poor bastard who asked too many questions.” He strode off. With the eyes in the back of his head that all Secret Service agents seemed to possess, Alex felt the man’s gaze burning into him. What he didn’t sense was Kate’s worried look following him out.

Okay, Alex thought as the crisp night air hit him, that was a real crappy end to what up until then was just your average shitty day. He decided to go for a stroll and let his Beefeater with a trio of fat olives pickle his soul. Now he wished he’d had a second.

CHAPTER

6

THE PRESIDENTIAL MOTORCADE was returning to the White House after the fund-raising event, passing swiftly through empty streets and closed intersections. Thanks to the meticulous work of the Secret Service advance team, U.S. presidents never spent one idle moment in traffic. That perk alone would be sufficient motivation for some frustrated D.C. commuters to vie for the job. On the drive over, Gray had given his boss an end-of-the-day briefing on all pertinent intelligence matters. Now, in the backseat of the Beast, Brennan was intently studying some poll results while Gray stared straight ahead, his mind, as always, juggling a dozen things at once.

Finally, Gray glanced at his boss. “With all due respect, sir, going over the polls every five minutes won’t change the result. As a presidential candidate Senator Dyson is not in your league. You will win this election by a landslide.” Gray added diplomatically, “Thus, you have the luxury of focusing on other concerns of critical importance.”

Brennan chuckled and put the poll results away. “Carter, you’re a brilliant man but clearly no politician. A race isn’t in the bag until the last vote has been counted. But I’m certainly aware that my considerable lead in this race is due in part to you.”

“I truly appreciated your support during my very rough beginning.”

Actually, Brennan had considered dumping Gray on multiple occasions during that “rough” period, a fact Gray knew well. However, while Gray had never been an ass-kisser, if one were inclined to smooch someone’s buttocks on occasion, the derriere of the leader of the free world wasn’t a bad place to target.

“Are you on to any more al-Zawahiris out there?”

“That incident was a very rare thing, Mr. President.” Gray still wasn’t sure why al-Zawahiri had seemingly turned like that. The NIC chief wanted to assume that his strategy of infiltrating terrorist organizations and employing other tactics to turn them against each other was really starting to pay dividends. However, Gray was far too suspicious a man to rule out alternatives.

“Well, it got us some great press.”

As he had in the past, Gray mastered an urge to say what he really thought about such a comment. The veteran spy had served under several presidents, and they were all much like Brennan. They were not inherently bad people. However, considering their exalted status, Gray found them far more prone to traditional human failings than their fellow citizens. At their core Gray considered them to be selfish and egotistical creatures formed and then hardened in the heat of political battle. All presidents could claim it was about doing good, about furthering the right agendas, about leading their political party, but in Gray’s experience it really all came down to the throne of the Oval Office. Power was the greatest high in the world, and the presidency of the United States represented the greatest power there was; its potency made heroin seem like a placebo.

However, if Brennan dropped dead tonight, there was an adequate vice president ready to step into his shoes, and the country would continue to run. In Gray’s opinion, if Brennan somehow lost the upcoming election, his opponent would simply move into the White House and America wouldn’t miss a beat. Presidents weren’t indispensable, the NIC chief knew, they only thought they were.

“Rest assured, Mr. President, you would know of any more al-Zawahiris the moment I did.”

Brennan was far too wily a politician to accept that statement at face value. It was a Washington tradition that intelligence chiefs kept things from their president. Yet Brennan had every incentive to allow the very popular Gray free rein to do his job. And Carter Gray was a spy, and spies always held things back; it was apparently in their genes never to be entirely forthcoming. It was as though, if they did reveal all, they’d disappear.

“Get some sleep, Carter, I’ll see you tomorrow,” the president said as they left the Beast.

Brennan’s entourage poured out of the other cars in the motorcade. The president’s top advisers and handlers hated the fact that Brennan had chosen to ride alone with Gray both to and from the fund-raiser. It had been a bone thrown Gray’s way for the al-Zawahiri coup, but it benefited the president as well. At the fund-raiser Gray scared the fat checkbooks out of the well-heeled attendees with his stirring talk on terrorism. The tuxedoed crowd coughed up a million dollars for Brennan’s political party. That was certainly worth a private ride in the Beast.

Gray was whisked away from the White House moments later. Contrary to the president’s advice, Carter Gray had no intention of going to bed, and forty-five minutes later he was striding onto the grounds of the National Intelligence Center headquarters in Loudoun County, Virginia. The facility was as well protected as NSA in Maryland. Two full army companies — four hundred soldiers strong — were devoted to the exterior security. However, none had the necessary security clearances to set foot inside any of the structures except in the event of a catastrophe. The main building looked like it was all glass with commanding views of the Virginia countryside. There actually wasn’t a window in the place. Behind the glass panes, the bunker-thick concrete walls, lined with specialized material, prevented human or electronic eyes from peering in.

Here more than three thousand men and women armed with the most sophisticated technology labored 24/7 to keep America safe, while the other intelligence agencies fed NIC with more data every second of every day.

After the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11 and the CIA’s WMD disaster, many U.S. leaders were left wondering if “American intelligence” was an oxymoron. Subsequent governmental attempts at reform had met with little success and had actually created more confusion at a time when clarity and focus in the intelligence sector were national goals. A National Counter-Terrorism Center with its own director reporting to the president and a brand-new Intelligence Directorate at the FBI were added to the plethora of existing counterintelligence ranks that still largely refused to share information with each other.

At least in Gray’s mind, saner heads had prevailed and shredded all these unnecessary layers in favor of a single national intelligence director with his own agency personnel, operations center and, of critical importance, budget and operational control over all other intelligence agencies. It was an old adage in the spy business that analysts got you in political hot water but covert op people landed you in prison. If Gray ever went down, he wanted to be responsible for his own professional demise.

Gray entered the main building, went through the biometric identification process and stepped into an elevator that whisked him to the top floor.

The room was small and well lighted. He entered, took a seat and put on a headset. There were four other people in the room. On one wall was a video screen, and on the table in front of Gray was a dossier labeled with the name Salem al-Omari. He knew the file contents by heart.

“It’s late, so let’s get to it,” Gray said. The lights dimmed, the screen came to life and they saw a man sitting in a chair in the middle of a room. He was dressed in blue scrubs with neither hands nor feet bound. His features were Middle Eastern, his eyes haunted but also defiant. They were all defiant, Gray had found. When he looked at someone like al-Omari, Gray couldn’t help but think of a Dostoyevsky creation, the displaced outsider, brooding, plotting and methodically stroking a weapon of anarchy. It was the face of a fanatic, of one possessed by a deranged evil. It was the same type of person who’d taken away forever the two people Gray had loved most in the world.

Though al-Omari was thousands of miles away in a facility only a very few people even knew existed, the picture and sound were crystal clear thanks to the satellite downlink.

Through his headset he asked al-Omari a question in English. The man promptly answered in Arabic and then smiled triumphantly.

In flawless Arabic Gray said, “Mr. al-Omari, I am fluent in Arabic and can actually speak it better than you. I know that you lived in England for years and that you speak English better than you do Arabic. I strongly suggest that we communicate in that language so there is absolutely no misunderstanding between us.”

Al-Omari’s smile faded, and he sat straighter in his chair.

Gray explained his proposal. Al-Omari was to become a spy for the United States, infiltrating one of the deadliest terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East. The man promptly refused. Gray persisted and al-Omari refused yet again, adding that “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“There are currently ninety-three terrorist organizations in the world as recognized by the U.S. State Department, most of them originating in the Middle East,” Gray responded. “You have confirmed membership in at least three of them. In addition, you were found with forged passports, structural plans to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and bomb-making material. Now you’re going to work for us, or it will become distinctly unpleasant.”

Al-Omari smiled and leaned toward the camera. “I was interrogated years ago in Jordan by your CIA and your military and your FBI, your so-called Tiger Teams. They sent females in wearing only their underwear. They wiped their menstrual blood on me, or at least what they called their menstrual blood, so I was unclean and could not perform my prayers. They rubbed their bodies against me, offered me sex if I talk. I say no to them and I am beaten afterward.” He sat back. “I have been threatened with rape, and they say I will get AIDS from it and die. I do not care. True followers of Muhammad do not fear death as you Christians do. It is your greatest weakness and will lead to your total destruction. Islam will triumph. It is written in the Qur’an. Islam will rule the world.”

“No, that is not written in the Qur’an,” Gray rejoined. “Not in any of the 114 suras. And neither is world domination mentioned in the sayings of Muhammad.”

“You’ve read the Hadith?” al-Omari said incredulously, referring to the collections of sayings and the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the first Muslims.

“And I’ve read the Qur’an in Arabic. Western scholars have never done a good job of translating that language, unfortunately. Thus, Mr. al-Omari, you should know that Islam is actually a peaceful, tolerant religion, though it is a religion that defends itself vigorously. That’s understandable, since some ‘civilized’ cultures have been trying to convert Muslims to their faith ever since the Crusades, first with the sword and then the gun. But the Hadith says that even in jihad, innocent women and children must be spared.”

“As if any of you are innocent,” al-Omari shot back. “All of Islam must fight back against those who would oppress us.”

“Islam represents one-fifth of the face of humanity, and the overwhelming numbers of your brethren believe in the freedoms of speech and press and also equal protection under law. And more than half of the world’s Muslims live under democratically constituted governments. I know that you were trained at a madrasain Afghanistan, so that your knowledge of the Qur’an is limited to rote memory, thus I’ll forgive your seeming ignorance on these issues.” Gray didn’t add that at the madrasa al-Omari’s training would have also included automatic weapons and how to fight holy wars, earning such a training center the dubious title of Islamic West Point.

Gray continued. “You aspired to be a shahid, but you had neither the nerve nor the zealotry to be a suicide bomber, nor did you have the backbone and instincts to be a mujahid.”

“You shall see whether I have the courage to die for Islam.”

“Killing you does me no good. I want you to work for me.”

“Go to hell!”

“We can do this easy or hard,” Gray said, checking his watch. He had been up for thirty hours now. “And there are many ways to attain Janna.”

Al-Omari leaned forward. “I will get to Heaven my way,” he said, sneering.

“You have a wife and children living back in England,” Gray noted.

Al-Omari folded his arms across his chest and assumed a stony look. “Bastards like you will serve us well in the next life.”

“A son and a daughter,” Gray continued as though he hadn’t heard the man’s retort. “I realize that the women’s fate may not overly concern you. However, the boy—”

“My son will gladly die—”

Gray interrupted in a very firm voice. “I will not kill your son. I have other plans for him. He just turned eighteen months old?”

A trace of concern crossed al-Omari’s face. “How did you know that?”

“You will raise him in the Muslim faith?”

Al-Omari did not answer; he simply stared at the camera.

Gray continued. “Well, if you do not agree to work with us, I will take your son from his mother, and he will be adopted by a loving couple who will raise him as their own.” Gray paused for the emphasis he would place on his next words. “He will be raised in the Christian faith in America by Americans. Or not. It’s all up to you.”

So stunned was al-Omari that he rose from the chair and staggered toward the camera, until hands appeared and forced him back into his chair.

The next words out of his mouth were in Arabic, but were nonetheless clear enough. Moments later, his rage uncontrollable, al-Omari had to be physically restrained as the threats continued to flow. Finally, his mouth was taped shut.

Gray pushed the man’s file away. “Over the last few years 7,816 Americans have died at the hands of people like you. All of these deaths have taken place on American soil. Counting attacks overseas, the death toll is nearly ten thousand. Some of these victims were children who were denied the opportunity to grow up to practice any religious faith at all. I will give you twenty-four hours to make your decision. I ask you to consider it carefully. If you work with us, you and your family will live out your lives in comfort. However, if you choose not to work with us . . .” Gray nodded to the man next to him, and the screen went blank.

Gray looked at six more files in front of him. Four represented other Middle Easterners, much like al-Omari. The fifth was a neo-Nazi based in Arkansas, and the sixth, Kim Fong, was a member of a Southeast Asian group with ties to known Middle East terrorist organizations. These men were “ghost detainees” in the unofficial nomenclature. No one other than Gray and a few select people at NIC knew they were even in custody. Like the CIA, NIC maintained clandestine paramilitary squads in hot spots all over the world. One of their tasks was to capture alleged enemies of America and afford them no due process whatsoever.

Gray would put similar proposals to all the ghost detainees, although the inducements would vary depending on the intelligence Gray had gathered on each man’s background. Money worked with more of them than one would think. Rich people rarely blew themselves and others to bits for religious or any other reasons. However, they often manipulated other people to do it for them. Gray would be lucky if half accepted his offer, but he would gladly take those odds.

An hour later Gray left NIC. Only the skinhead had agreed outright to help, doubtless spurred on by Gray’s threat to turn him over to a radically violent anti-Nazi group headquartered in South America if he didn’t cooperate. Other than that, the night had been a disappointment.

As Gray walked to his car he reflected on the situation confronting him. The violence was mounting on each side, and the harder one side hit, the harder the other tried to hit back. Using just a fraction of its nuclear arsenal, the United States could wipe out the entire Middle East, vaporizing everyone in the blink of an eye, along with every holy site for two of the world’s major religions. Barring that unthinkable scenario, Gray did not see any clear resolution. This was not a war of professional armored battalions versus turbaned rabble in the streets toting rifles and RPGs. And it was not simply a difference of religions. It was a battle against a mind-set, of how people should conduct their lives, a battle that had political, social and cultural facets melded together into an exceedingly complex mosaic of humanity under enormous strain. At times Gray humbly wondered whether the conflict should be fought with psychiatrists and counselors instead of soldiers and spies. Yet all he could do was get up each day and do his job.

Gray sat back against the worn leather of the Suburban he was riding in while the armed guards all around him kept a close lookout. Gray closed his eyes for fifteen minutes until he felt the vehicle slow. Then came the familiar rattle as the motorcade rolled across the gravel drive leading up to Gray’s modest home. It was as well guarded as the VP’s digs at the Naval Observatory. President Brennan was not about to let anything happen to his intelligence chief.

Gray lived alone, but not by choice. He went inside, allowed himself a beer to unwind and then headed upstairs to sleep for a few hours. As was his habit before retiring, he picked up the two pictures on the fireplace mantel across from his bed. The first was his wife, Barbara, a woman who’d shared most of his adult life. The second photo was of his only child, his daughter, Margaret, or Maggie as everyone had called her. Had? He had never grown comfortable referring to his family in the past tense. Yet how else did one refer to the dead and buried? He kissed both of the pictures and set them back down.

After he had climbed into bed, the horrible weight of depression lasted thirty minutes, less than usual, and then Carter Gray fell into an exhausted sleep. In five hours he would rise and again engage in the only battle he now considered worth fighting.

CHAPTER

7

ALEX FORD’S WALK THAT NIGHT took him east, and he soon found himself in familiar territory: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now gracing the area between the White House and Lafayette Park were elm trees and retractable bollards, interspersed with guard booths camouflaged so they didn’t stand out like prison gun towers. However, the key here was, and always would be, security, regardless of how many new trees and pretty flowers they planted.

“Hey, Alex,” a man in a suit said as he walked out of the front security gate.

“You going on or off duty, Bobby?”

Bobby smiled. “You see an ear fob sticking out my ass? I’m going home to the little woman and kids, unless they moved out and forgot to tell me, which isn’t exactly beyond the realm of possibility, since I’m never there. What brings you back here?”

Alex shrugged. “You know, once you get POTUS duty inside you, you can’t get it out.”

“Right! I’m counting the days till I see my family more than once a year.”

“You on the campaign travel team?”

Bobby nodded. “We leave day after tomorrow to shake some more hands and make some more speeches from Iowa to Mississippi. Because of all the campaign stuff, we were shorthanded and had to pull in some WFOs on twenty-one-day rotations to post POTUS’ and the VP’s families.”

“I know. The halls at work are pretty empty.”

“Brennan did a fund-raiser tonight. Kiss-up for dollars. Lucky me, I got to stay here.”

“Yeah, lucky you.”

Bobby laughed. “I don’t know if you heard, but the man’s hometown in Pennsylvania changed its name to Brennan. He’s going up there during the campaign to attend the dedication. Talk about your ego trips.” Bobby drew closer and said in a low voice, “He’s not a bad guy. Hell, I voted for him. But he’s a slick one. Some of the stuff he’s done on the side . . .”

“He’s not the first.”

“If John Q. Public knew what we did, huh?”

As he headed off, Alex glanced over at Lafayette Park where the remaining “White House protesters” were located, or at least that’s how Alex and other Secret Service agents politely referred to them. The signs and tents and odd-looking folks had always held a fascination for him. There used to be far more of them, with elaborate signs erected everywhere. Yet even before 9/11 a crackdown had been enforced, and when the area in front of the White House was redone, this created a good excuse to shove these people away. Yet even the powerless in America had rights, and a few of them hooked up with the ACLU and sued in court for the right to return and the Supreme Court eventually sided with them. However, only two of the protesters had elected to come back.

During his stint at the White House Alex got to know some of the protesters. Most were certifiably crazy and therefore closely watched by the Secret Service. There was one fellow he remembered who dressed only in neckties, strategically placing them over his body. Yet not all of the protesters were asylum candidates, including the man he’d come to visit.

Alex stopped by one tent and called out, “Oliver? It’s Alex Ford. You there?”

“He no here,” a female voice said contemptuously.

Alex glanced over at the woman as she walked up with a paper cup of coffee in hand. “How’s it going, Adelphia?”

“Doctors are immorally killing babies all over this country, that’s how it goes.”

The woman was nothing if not passionate, Alex thought. Adelphia might’ve carried her passion somewhat to an extreme, but Alex still respected her for at least having one.

“Yeah, that’s what I hear.” He paused respectfully. “Uh, where’s Oliver?”

“I tell you, he no here. He have somewhere to go!”

“Where?” Alex knew where both Stone and Adelphia lived but didn’t want to let on to the woman that he had this information. Adelphia, he’d come to learn, was paranoid enough.

“Not am I his keeper.” She turned away.

Alex smiled. When he’d been on presidential protection detail, he’d always suspected that the lady had a thing for Mr. Stone. Most of the agents who knew Oliver Stone had written him off as a harmless crackpot who adopted the name of a famous film director for some ridiculous reason. Alex had taken the time to get to know the man, however, finding Stone erudite and thoughtful, and more in touch with the political and economic complexities of the world than some wonks who worked across the street. In particular, the man knew by heart every detail of seemingly every conspiracy ever reported on. Some of the agents called him King Con for this attribute. And Stone played one hell of a game of chess.

Alex called out to Adelphia, “If you see Oliver, tell him Agent Ford was looking for him; you remember me, right?” Adelphia made no sign that she’d heard him, but then again, that was just Adelphia.

He headed back on foot to where his car was parked. Along the way Alex passed something that made him stop. On the far corner two men, one black and one white, were working on a freestanding ATM housed in a sliver between two buildings. They were dressed in overalls that had “Service Staff” printed across the back. Their van was parked at the curb. It had a company name and phone number printed on the side.

Alex slipped into the shadows, pulled out his cell phone and called the number shown on the van. An official-sounding recording answered, giving the business hours for the company and so on. Alex did a quick look-see in the van, then pulled out his Secret Service badge and walked over to the men.

“Hey, fellows, you servicing the machine?”

The short man eyed the badge and nodded. “Yeah. Lucky us.”

Alex looked at the ATM, and his very experienced eye saw what he thought he would see. “Hope you guys are union.”

“Proud members of Local 453,” the smaller man said with a laugh. “At least we’re getting double time to do this crap.”

Okay, here we go again.

Alex drew his pistol and pointed it at them. “Pop the machine open.”

The black guy said irately, “You Secret Service, what business you got checking out an ATM?”

“Not that I need to give you a reason, but the Secret Service was originally formed to protect the official currency of the United States.” Alex pointed the gun directly at the black man’s head. “Open it!”

Stuffed inside the ATM were no fewer than a hundred cards.

Alex gave the pair their Miranda speech while he put PlastiCuffs on them. Then he called the arrest in. As they were waiting, the black guy looked over at him.

“We been doing this a long time and had no trouble. How the hell you figure it?”

“There’s a skimmer reader attached to the card slot. It captures the PIN so you can clone the card. And on top of that banks are cheap. So there’s no way one’s going to pay some union guys double overtime to schlep down here in the middle of the night to service this thing.”

After the police took the men away, Alex walked down the street to his car. Even after the successful if unexpected bust, all he could think about was one Kate Adams, who fought for justice by day and poured out highballs by night and seemed very close to the big-knuckled Tom Hemingway of the undisclosed supersecret agency.

Alex could only hope tomorrow would start on a better note.

CHAPTER

8

STONE, MILTON, REUBEN AND Caleb walked along the main trail on Theodore Roosevelt Island, a ninety-acre memorial to the former president and Rough Rider that sat in the middle of the Potomac River. They soon reached a clearing where an immense statue of Teddy Roosevelt stood with his right arm raised to the heavens as though he were about to retake the oath of office nearly ninety years after his death. The area was elaborately laid out with brick pavers, two curved stone bridges over man-made canals of water, and a pair of huge fountains that flanked the statue.

Oliver Stone sat cross-legged in front of the statue, and the others joined him there. Stone was an enthusiastic fan of T.R., which was the reason they were here, albeit as trespassers, since the island officially closed at dark. He announced in a solemn voice, “The regular meeting of the Camel Club is officially called to order. In the absence of a formal agenda I move that we discuss observations since the last meeting and then open the floor for new business. Do I have a second?”

“I second the motion,” Reuben said automatically.

“All in favor say aye,” Stone added.

The ayes carried the motion, and Stone opened the notebook he pulled from his knapsack. Reuben slipped some crumpled pieces of paper from his pocket, and Milton slid his laptop computer out, then took a small bottle of antibacterial lotion out of his pocket and thoroughly washed his hands. Stone used a small penlight to see his notes, while Reuben read by the flickering flame of his cigarette lighter.

“Brennan went out late tonight,” Stone reported. “Carter Gray was with him.”

“Those two are joined at the hip,” Reuben noted hotly.

“Like J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson,” Caleb added jokingly as he took off his bowler hat.

“I was thinking more of Lenin and Trotsky,” Reuben growled.

“So you don’t trust Gray?” Stone asked.

“How can you trust any prick who actually likes being called a czar?” Reuben replied. “And as far as Brennan goes, all I can say is he should thank his lucky stars for terrorists because but for them his ass would be headed for the unemployment line.”

“Reading the newspapers again, are we?” Stone said in an amused tone.

“I use the papers to get my laughs, just like everybody else.”

Stone looked thoughtful. “James Brennan is a gifted politician, and his intellect is first-rate. But more than that, he has the power to make people trust him. Yet inside, a darker beast lurks. He has an agenda that is not available to the public.”

Reuben eyed him closely. “It seems to me that you’re describing Carter Gray more than you are the president.”

Milton broke in exitedly. “I’ve compiled facts on several conspiracies of global proportion that have not been reported by any news media.”

“And I,” Reuben said as he eyed his notes, “have personally noted three occasions when the present Speaker of the House has been unfaithful to his quite fetching wife.”

“Personally noted?” Caleb asked skeptically as he stared at his friend.

Reuben barked, “Two of my close acquaintances in the know keep me abreast of things. Clearly, despite the trouble some of his amorous predecessors have gotten into, it still seems our esteemed congressman continues to cavalierly insert his dinky in places it should not be.” He waved his notes. “It’s all here.”

“What close acquaintances?” Caleb persisted.

“High-placed sources that desire to remain anonymous, if you must damn well know,” Reuben snapped as he stuffed these allegedly libidinous revelations back in his pocket.

Milton interrupted impatiently. “Yes, but let me tell you about my theories.” He spent the next twenty minutes enthusiastically discussing theoretical ties between North Korea and Great Britain for purposes of worldwide terrorism, and a possible attack on the euro and yen by a cabal in Yemen sponsored by a top member of the Saudi royal family.

“I consider these facts material to the worldwide apocalypse that is most certainly on the horizon,” Milton concluded.

The other members of the Camel Club sat there looking a bit overwhelmed; it was a normal reaction after Milton had delivered one of his convoluted diatribes.

Finally, Reuben said, “Yes, but that North Korea/Great Britain thing is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think, Milton? I mean the bloody Koreans are absolutely humorless, and whatever else you say about the Brits, they are a very witty people.”

Stone looked at Caleb. “Anything interesting on your end?”

Caleb thought for a moment. “Well, we had a real scare when we couldn’t find our Dutch Bible.”

They all looked at him expectantly.

Caleb exclaimed, “Our Dutch Bible! It has hand-colored illustrations by Romeyn de Hooghe. He’s generally thought to be the most important Dutch illustrator of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. But it turned out all right. It was there the whole time, simply a clerical error.”

“Thank God,” Reuben said sarcastically. “We wouldn’t want a de Hoose on the loose.”

Disappointed, Stone turned back to Reuben. “Other than your lascivious congressman, do you have anything of real interest?”

Reuben shrugged. “I’ve been out of the loop too long, Oliver. People forget you.”

“Then why don’t we move on to something a little more concrete?”

The other men eyed him curiously.

Stone drew a long breath. So many birthdays had passed by uncelebrated that he had to actually think about how old he was. Sixty-one, he said to himself. I am sixty-one years old. He’d founded the Camel Club long ago with the purpose of scrutinizing those in power and raising the public cry when they believed things to be awry, which they very often were. He had kept vigil outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue watching and noting his observations and fighting for things that other people apparently didn’t believe were important anymore, like truth and accountability.

He was beginning to wonder if it was worth it.

Yet he said aloud, “Have you noticed what is going on in this country?” He stared at his friends, who didn’t answer. “They may have us believing that we’re better protected. Yet being safer doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re more free.”

“You sometimes have to sacrifice freedom for security, Oliver,” Caleb said as he fiddled with his heavy watch. “I don’t necessarily like it but what’s the alternative?”

“The alternative is not living in fear,” Stone answered. “Especially in a state of fear from exaggerated circumstances. Men like Carter Gray are quite good at that.”

“Well, Gray’s first year on the job you would’ve thought the man would have been run out on a rail, but he somehow managed to turn it around,” Reuben admitted grudgingly.

“Which proves my point,” Stone retorted, “because I don’t think anyone is that good or that lucky.” He paused, obviously choosing his words with care. “My opinion is that Carter Gray is bad for this country’s future. I open the meeting to discuss relevant possibilities.”

His three companions simply stared dully at him. Finally, Caleb found his voice.

“Uh, what exactly do you mean, Oliver?”

“I mean what can the Camel Club do to make sure that Carter Gray is relieved of his post as intelligence secretary?”

“You want us to take down Carter Gray!” Caleb exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“Oh, good,” Reuben added in mock relief. “Because I thought it might be something difficult you were wanting.”

“There is ample historical precedent for the powerless overcoming the powerful,” Stone noted.

“Yeah, but in real life, Goliath kicks the shit out of David nine times out of ten,” Reuben replied grimly.

Stone said, “Then what exactly is the purpose of continuing the club? We meet once a week and compare notes, observations and theories. To what end?”

Caleb answered, “Well, we’ve done some good. Although we never got any credit for it. Our work helped reveal the truth behind the scandal at the Pentagon. That came from a scrap of conversation the White House chef’s assistant overheard and told you about. And don’t forget about the mole at NSA who was altering transcription files, Oliver. And then there was the DIA subterfuge that Reuben stumbled onto.”

“Those events were a long time ago,” Stone replied. “So again I ask, what is the purpose of the club now?”

Reuben said, “Well, maybe it’s like lots of other clubs, except without a building, refreshments or the pleasure of female companionship. But what can you expect when you don’t pay any dues?” he added, grinning.

Before Stone could answer, all four of them had turned their heads in the direction of the sounds filtering through the woods. Stone instantly put a finger to his lips and listened. There it was again: a boat’s engine, and it sounded as though it was right at the edge of the island. They all took their bags and made their way quietly into the surrounding brush.

CHAPTER

9

OLIVER STONE EASED A BRANCH out of the way and peered through this small gap toward the paved area in front of the Roosevelt monument. His companions were also riveted on what was happening nearby.

Two men appeared on one of the gravel paths carrying something on a plastic tarp. One man was tall, lean and blond, the other short, thick and dark-haired. When they laid the tarp on the ground, Stone could see that they were carrying a man bound with straps. They slid the plastic from under him and then swept the area with their flashlights, going grid by grid. Fortunately, as soon as Stone saw the flashlights come out of their pockets, he motioned for his friends to hunker down behind the cover of bushes, with their faces hidden from the beams.

Satisfied that they were alone, the men turned back to their captive. One of them removed the cover from his mouth and placed it in his pocket.

The man made a few sounds, none of them coherent. He appeared drunk.

The short man put on a pair of rubber gloves and pulled a revolver from his coat while the other man undid their captive’s bindings. The short man took a nearly empty bottle from the duffel bag and pressed the semiconscious man’s hands around it and then splashed a bit of the remaining liquid on his clothes and around his mouth.

Reuben was about to charge out of the bushes, but Stone put a hand on his arm. The other man was also armed; a pistol was clearly visible in his belt holster. The Camel Club stood no chance. To reveal themselves now would mean a death sentence.

Meanwhile, the man holding the gun knelt down next to the captive. He took the man’s right hand and placed it around the gun. Perhaps because of the touch of the cold metal, the captive opened his eyes. As he stared up at the other man, he suddenly cried out, “I’m sorry. Please don’t. I’m sorry.”

The short man slid the pistol into the man’s mouth, pushing it against the roof of the mouth. The captive choked for an instant, and then the short man forced the trigger down. At the sound of the shot all four members of the Camel Club closed their eyes.

When they reopened them, the four men continued to stare transfixed as the gun and bottle were placed near the body. A plastic baggie was taken out of the knapsack carried by the other man, and this was laid next to the murder weapon. Finally, a piece of folded paper was placed in the pocket of the dead man’s windbreaker.

Finished, the two men looked around the area even as the Camel Club members shrank farther back in the bushes. A minute later the killers trudged off. As soon as the sounds of their footfalls disappeared, the Camel Club let out a collective sigh of relief. Holding his finger to his lips, Stone quietly led the way out of their hiding place and into the clearing.

Reuben squatted down next to the body. He shook his head and said in a very low voice, “At least he was killed instantly. As if that somehow makes up for being murdered.” He looked at the nearly empty bottle. “Dewar’s. Looks like they got the poor bastard drunk so he couldn’t fight back.”

“Is there any ID on the body?” Stone asked.

“This is a crime scene,” Caleb said shakily. “We shouldn’t touch anything.”

“He’s right,” Reuben agreed. He glanced over at Milton, who was making frantic motions with his hands as he sped silently through his OCD ritual. Reuben sighed. “We should get the hell out of here, Oliver, is what we should do.”

Stone knelt down beside him and spoke quietly but urgently. “This was an execution made to look like suicide, Reuben. Those were professional killers, and I’d like to know who the target was and what he knew that led to his death.” As he was speaking, he wrapped a handkerchief pulled from his pocket around his hand, searched the dead man’s pockets and slid out a wallet. He nimbly flipped it open, and they all gazed at the driver’s license in the see-through plastic. Reuben pulled out his lighter and flicked it on so Stone could read the information on the license.

“Patrick Johnson,” Stone read. “He lived in Bethesda.” Stone put the wallet back, searched the other pocket and pulled out the piece of paper the killer had placed there. By the flickering flame of the lighter he read the contents of the letter in a soft voice.

“‘I’m sorry. It’s all too much. I can’t live with this anymore. This is the only way. I’m sorry. So sorry.’ And it’s signed Patrick Johnson.”

Caleb slowly took his bowler hat off in respect for the dead and mouthed a prayer.

Stone continued, “The writing is very legible. I suppose the police will assume it was written before he supposedly drank himself into a suicidal stupor.”

Reuben said, “He said he was sorry right before they killed him.”

Stone shook his head. “I think he was speaking about something else he was sorry for. The note’s words are just a subterfuge, a typical suicide’s last plea.”

Stone put the note back. As he was doing so, his hand nudged against something else in the dead man’s pocket. He pulled out a small red lapel pin and squinted at it in the darkness.

“What’s that?” Reuben asked, holding his lighter closer.

Caleb said in a hushed whisper, “What if they come back?”

Stone put the pin back and felt Johnson’s clothes. “They’re soaked through.”

Reuben pointed to the plastic baggie. “What do you make of that?”

Stone thought for a moment. “I think I understand its purpose and the soaked clothes as well. But Caleb’s right, we should leave.”

They set off and then realized that Milton wasn’t with them. They turned back and found him crouched over the dead man counting, with his hand reaching over the body.

“Uh, Milton, we really need to leave,” Caleb said urgently.

However, Milton was apparently so traumatized that he couldn’t stop counting.

“Oh, for chrissakes,” Reuben moaned. “Why don’t we all just bloody well count together until they come back and give us some bullets to suck on?”

Stone put a steadying hand on Reuben’s arm and stepped forward next to Milton. He looked down at Patrick Johnson’s face. He was young, though death had already begun to hollow him. Stone knelt and placed his hand gently on Milton’s shoulder and said quietly, “We can do nothing for him now, Milton. And the comfort you take in your counting, the safety and security that you’re striving for, can be defeated if those two men come back.” He added bluntly, “They have guns, Milton, we don’t.”

Milton halted his ritual, stifled a sob and said in a quivering voice, “I don’t like violence, Oliver.” Milton clutched his knapsack closer to his chest and then pointed at the corpse. “I don’t like that.”

“I know, Milton. None of us do.”

Stone and Milton rose together. With a sigh of relief Reuben followed them to the path leading to their boat.

Warren Peters, who’d fired the shot that killed Patrick Johnson, was walking along the trail back to their dinghy when he stopped short.

“Shit!” he whispered.

“What?” Tyler Reinke asked as he nervously looked around. “Police boat?”

“No, almost a big mistake.” Peters scooped up some dirt and pebbles in his hand. “When we dunked him, it cleaned his shoe soles off. If he walked here through the woods, his soles wouldn’t be clean. The FBI won’t miss that.”

The two men hurried back along the path and over to the body. Peters squatted down next to the murdered man’s shoes and pressed dirt and pebbles into the soles.

“Good catch,” Reinke said.

“I don’t want to even think about what would’ve happened if I’d blown that.” He finished his task and started to rise, but his gaze caught on something.

“Son of a bitch!” Peters exclaimed between clenched teeth. He pointed to the note he had pressed into the victim’s pocket: A corner of it was sticking out. “I shoved that all the way in because I didn’t want it to look too obvious. So why’s it visible now?” He pushed the note back in the pocket and looked at his partner searchingly.

“Could an animal have taken a go at the body?”

“After a few minutes? And why would an animal go after paper instead of flesh?” He rose, pulled a flashlight from his pocket and checked the stone floor.

Reinke said, “You must’ve made a mistake with the paper. You probably didn’t push it in as far as you thought.”

Peters continued to search the area and then stiffened.

“What now?” his companion asked impatiently.

“Listen, do you hear that?”

Reinke remained still and silent and then his mouth gaped.

“Somebody running. That way!” He pointed to the right, down one of the trails in the opposite direction they had come.

The two men pulled their weapons and sprinted toward the sound.

CHAPTER

10

STONE AND THE OTHERS HAD JUST jumped into their boat and pushed off. The fog was now dense enough to make navigation tricky. They were perhaps ten feet from the island in the Little Channel when the two men burst out of the trees and saw them.

“Pull as hard as you can and keep your face turned down,” Stone said to Reuben, who needed no such prompting. His broad shoulders and thick arms moved with a Herculean effort, and the little boat sprang away from the shore.

Stone turned to the others in the boat and whispered, “Don’t let them see your faces. Caleb, take off your hat!” They all immediately bent low, and Caleb swept off his bowler and jammed it between his quivering knees. Milton had started counting the minute he climbed onto the boat. The two men on shore took aim at their quarry, but the fog made their targets very elusive. They both fired, but their shots splattered harmlessly into the water a good foot from the boat.

“Pull, Reuben, pull,” a terrified Caleb gasped as he ducked even farther down.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Reuben snapped, sweat trickling down his face.

The pursuers took careful aim and fired twice more. One slug found its mark, and splintered wood flew up and hit Stone in the right hand. The blood trickled down his fingers and onto the boat’s gunwale. He quickly staunched the flow with the same handkerchief he’d used to search the body of Patrick Johnson.

“Oliver!” a frantic Milton called out.

“I’m all right,” Stone answered. “Just stay down!”

The two gunmen, realizing the futility of their attack, raced away.

“They’re going to get their boat,” Stone warned.

“Well, then we have a bit of a problem, because their boat has a motor,” Reuben retorted. “I’m going as fast as I can, but there’s not much gas left in my tank.”

Stone pulled on Caleb’s sleeve. “Caleb, you take one oar and I’ll take the other.” Reuben moved out of the way, and the two men rowed with all their strength.

Ordinarily, after leaving the inlet they would have gone north on the river and returned to their original launching site. Now they simply wanted to get to the mainland as fast as possible, which meant a straight path east. They passed the western tip of the island and made their turn toward Georgetown.

“Oh, shit!” Reuben was staring back toward the island as he heard the boat engine coming. “Row like your lives depend on it,” he bellowed to Stone and Caleb. “Because they sure as hell do.”

Seeing that Caleb and Stone were growing tired, Reuben pushed them out of the way and took up the oars again, pulling with all his considerable strength.

“I think they’re gaining,” Caleb said breathlessly.

A shot hit right next to him, and Caleb joined a cowering Milton in the bottom of the boat.

Stone ducked down as another shot passed by, and then he heard Reuben cry out.

“Reuben?” He turned to look at his friend.

“It’s all right, just a glance, but I’d forgotten how much they burn.” Reuben added grimly, “They’ve got us, Oliver. It’ll be five corpses for those bastards tonight.”

Stone looked toward the wispy lights of sleeping Georgetown. Even though the river was fairly narrow here, with the fog they were still too far away for anyone on shore to see what was going on. He glanced back at the oncoming boat. He could now make out the silhouettes of the two men on board. His mind raced back to the businesslike manner in which the unfortunate Patrick Johnson had been dispatched. Stone envisioned the gun being placed inside his own mouth, the trigger pulled.

Suddenly, the motorboat veered away from them.

“What the—” Reuben said.

“It must be the police boat. Listen,” Stone whispered, pointing south of their position and cupping his ear.

In a relieved voice Caleb cried out, “The police? Quick, get their attention.”

“No,” Stone said firmly. “I want everyone to remain as silent as possible. Reuben, stop rowing.”

Reuben looked curiously at his friend but stopped pulling at the oars and just sat there. “We’ll be damn lucky if they don’t run right into us,” he complained in a low voice.

All of them could now clearly hear the whine of the big engine. Through the fog they saw the green starboard side running lights of the patrol boat passing by less than thirty feet away. The policemen on board wouldn’t have been able to hear the engine of the other boat over their own, nor could they have seen the rowboat, which had no lights. The members of the Camel Club held their collective breath and watched as the patrol boat slowly glided along. When it was finally out of sight, Stone said, “Okay, Reuben, get us to shore.”

Caleb sat up. “Why didn’t you want us to alert the police?”

Stone waited until the sharp outline of land came into view before answering.

“We’re out on a boat we’re not supposed to have, going to a place we’re not supposed to be. A man has been killed and his body left on Roosevelt Island. If we tell the police we witnessed a murder, we’re admitting that we were there. We can tell them we saw two men who then tried to kill us, but we have no proof of that.”

Now Milton sat up. “But you and Reuben were hurt.”

“My hand is only scratched and Reuben’s was just a glance, so there’s no conclusive proof a bullet was involved. Thus, the police are left with the fact that there is a dead body that was transported by boat to the island we were on. We have a boat that could have performed that task quite easily, and there isn’t another such vessel around, since that motorboat will be long gone by the time we explain things. We are persons whom the police might not put much credibility in. So what do you think would be the most logical result of our telling them our story?” Stone looked at each of them expectantly.

“They’d arrest us and throw away the key,” Reuben muttered as he ripped off a piece of his shirt and tied it around the minor wound on his arm. “What I’d like to know is how those two bastards suddenly realized we were on the island.”

“They must have heard us,” Stone said. “Or else they came back for some other reason and noticed something amiss. Maybe I didn’t put the note or the pin back properly.”

“You didn’t say what the pin was,” Caleb noted.

“It was the lapel pin customarily worn by Secret Service agents.”

“You think he was an agent?” Reuben asked as they drifted to shore.

“Presumably, he has some connection.”

When they reached land they swiftly pulled the boat ashore and hid it in an old drainage ditch near the seawall.

“So now what?” Reuben asked as they trudged along through the quiet streets of Georgetown.

Stone ticked the points off on his fingers. “We find out who the murdered man was. We find out why someone would want to kill him. And we find out who killed him.”

Reuben looked incredulous. “And I thought your idea of bringing down Carter Gray was a toughie. Jesus, man, do you understand what you’re saying?”

“Yes, I do,” Stone replied impassively.

“But why do we have to do anything?” Caleb asked.

Stone stared at him. “Men who kill like that tend to clean up all loose ends, which means they’ll do everything they can to track us down and kill us too. We can’t go to the police for the reasons I’ve already outlined. So my very strong suggestion is—”

Reuben broke in. “That we get them before they get us.”

Stone walked on, the rest of the Camel Club hurrying along in his wake.

CHAPTER

11

AS THE VAN PASSED AROUND A bend in the road, the elaborate sign set in foot-high reflective letters came into view:

WELCOME TO BRENNAN, PENNSYLVANIA, BIRTHPLACE OF PRESIDENT JAMES H. BRENNAN

A rendering of Brennan had been carved into the wood beside these words. It was a good likeness. The man in the van’s passenger seat looked at his two companions and smiled. Then he raised an imaginary gun, pointed it at Brennan’s head and “fired,” placing three shots right into the brain of the most powerful man on earth.

The van entered the downtown area: With a population of fifty thousand and fast becoming a major bedroom community of Pittsburgh, Brennan had high hopes for a major renaissance, and the new jobs, emerging business and construction going on around town were a testament to this dream becoming a reality. Much of this hope was based upon it being the hometown of the very popular incumbent president.

Even the unused water tower situated in the middle of downtown had not escaped this push for greatness. At first the town fathers had wanted to put Brennan’s picture and the seal of the president of the United States on the tower. When told that this would neither be legal nor in good taste, they instead painted it in the Stars and Stripes, thereby connecting the man and the town. The three men in the van were also very interested in the nation’s chief executive, for an entirely different reason.

The three men were tall, and possessed the leanness of people unfamiliar with a western diet of saturated fat and sugar. Two were Arab and the other Persian, though they had downplayed their Middle Eastern origins by shaving off their beards and assuming the style typical of college students — namely, baggy jeans, sweaters, athletic shoes and plenty of attitude. They were enrolled as part-time students at the local community college studying basic engineering. In reality each was proficient in certain areas of science that had to do with barometric pressure, wind deflection, air drag and coefficiency as well as more esoteric subjects like the Coriolis effect and gyroscopic precession.

Two of the men were from Afghanistan and in their late thirties, though they looked much younger. The other man, the Persian, was thirty years old and hailed from Iran. Their professors and classmates believed them to be from India and Pakistan. The three Muslims had found that to most Westerners the term “Middle Eastern” covered more than 3 billion people, from Indians to Muslims, with not much attention given to the nuances of nationality or ethnicity. And it wasn’t as though they were an oddity in Brennan. Over the last decade there had been a large influx of Middle Easterners into the United States, particularly in and near major metropolitan areas. Many new businesses in Brennan were owned by hardworking Saudis, Pakistanis and Indians.

When they reached their apartment, a block from Main Street, someone was waiting for them. The man didn’t look at them when they entered, but continued gazing out the window.

He was nearly sixty, though as lean and wiry as the younger men. He was Caucasian and an American, although from the immediate deference paid to him by his companions, he was clearly the leader of this small band. The Muslims referred to him, with respect, as Captain Jack. He had given himself this title based on his preferred brand of liquor. They did not, nor would they ever, know his real name. Captain Jack lived outside of Brennan, in a rental house on the road to Pittsburgh. He had come here, ostensibly, to look for locations for the “business” he was thinking about starting. This had given him ample reason to examine many of the vacant properties in the area.

Captain Jack was looking through his binoculars at Mercy Hospital across the street. Built right after the end of World War II, it was a squat white building with little in the way of architectural interest. It was the only hospital in the immediate vicinity, which was why it had attracted his interest.

There was a drop-off entrance in the rear of the hospital, but the space was very tight, and it was a long hike once inside to get to the admitting desk. Thus, even ambulances almost always dropped off their patients in front, using a wheelchair ramp next to the steps. For Captain Jack, that was a very important element, so critical, in fact, that he had videotaped an entire twenty-four-hour cycle of these comings and goings. They also had floor plans for Mercy Hospital and knew every exit and entrance, from the most obvious to the most obscure.

He continued to watch as a patient was unloaded from an ambulance and whisked through the front doors on a gurney. The trajectory here was excellent, Captain Jack thought. And high ground was almost always good ground in his line of work.

He sat down and watched as one of the men worked away on a laptop while the other two went over some equipment manuals.

“Current status?” he asked.

The Iranian on the laptop answered, “We’ve switched to another chat site.” He glanced at a piece of paper taped to his screen. “Tonight it’s Gone with the Wind.”

“Not one of my favorites,” their leader said dryly.

“What’s so great about a wind blowing?” one of the Afghans commented.

They had chosen a movie chat site listing the fifty greatest American movies of all time. It was highly doubtful that law enforcement agencies would be monitoring people cyber-gabbing about films, so their method of encryption was relatively simple. And then they would move on to another film the next day.

“Everyone progressing on schedule?” Captain Jack asked as he scratched his trim beard.

There were several other operation teams in Brennan. The authorities would of course call them terrorist cells, but to Captain Jack that was simply splitting hairs. American operations teams overseas could just as easily be deemed terrorist cells by the folks they were intending to harm. He should know: He had been on many of those teams. Once he’d gotten past the patriotic claptrap, he’d seen the truth: One should do what Captain Jack did for a living only for those willing to pay the most money. That simple change in philosophy had vastly uncomplicated his life.

The Iranian read through the chat lines. He had done this so often he could decipher the encrypted messages in his head. “All accounted for and all on schedule.” He added with an element of disbelief, “Even the woman is progressing well. Very well.”

The American smiled at this comment. “Women are far more capable than you give them credit for, Ahmed. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”

“The next thing you’ll be telling me is that men are the weaker sex,” Ahmed said scornfully.

“Now you’re getting close to something called wisdom.”

Captain Jack looked at the two Afghans. They were both Tajiks, members of the Northern Alliance before they’d been recruited for this assignment. He spoke to them in their native language, Dari.

“Do they still sell off the daughters for marriage in your country?”

“Of course,” one replied. “What else do you do with them?”

“Times are changing, my friend,” Captain Jack said. “It’s not exactly the fourteenth century anymore.”

The other Afghan piped in, “We have nothing against modern women, so long as they obey their men. If they do that, no problems. They are free.”

Free in that sense was relative, Captain Jack knew.

In Afghanistan, if a woman demanded divorce she lost everything, including the children. An adulterous wife, even one whose husband had taken another wife, was executed, sometimes by her own family. The men in their lives controlled everything: whether they went to school, worked outside the house, who they would marry. These were not conditions originated by the Taliban or Islam, but they wouldn’t necessarily run afoul of them either. They were based on ancient Afghan tribal customs.

“It’s not just the women,” the first Afghan said. “I have to obey my father, even if I disagree with him. His word is final. It is a matter of respect, of honor.”

And so it was, Captain Jack thought. And good luck trying to change that way of thinking considering it’s been around for thousands of years.

Captain Jack rose. “We don’t have a lot of time before the advance team arrives.”

“If we have to work twenty-four hours a day, it will be done,” Ahmed declared.

“You’re in school, remember?” Captain Jack said.

“Only part-time.”

“Brennan, Pennsylvania. I thought only despots named places after themselves,” one of the Afghans said.

Captain Jack smiled. “Brennan didn’t do it, the people named it after him. This is a democracy, after all.”

“Does that make Brennan any less of a dictator?” the other Afghan said.

Captain Jack stopped smiling. “I don’t really care. All you have to remember is we only get one chance at this.”

Across the street at Mercy Hospital an emergency room doctor was walking down the hallway with one of the hospital administrators. The physician was a recent and welcome addition to Mercy, since the hospital was habitually understaffed. As they walked along, the doctor glanced nervously at an armed security guard posted at a doorway.

“Armed guards? Is that really necessary?” he asked.

The administrator shrugged. “Afraid so. Our pharmacy’s been burglarized twice in the last six months. We can’t afford another hit.”

“Why wasn’t I told this before I agreed to come here?”

“Well, it’s not exactly something we wanted to publicize.”

“But I thought Brennan was a peaceful town,” the doctor said.

“Oh, it is, it is, but, you know, drugs are everywhere. But no one will try anything with armed guards here.”

The physician glanced over his shoulder at the security man who stood rigidly against a wall. From the look on the doctor’s face he didn’t appear to share the positive sentiments of his colleague.

As the men passed down the hallway, a uniformed Adnan al-Rimi, his appearance much changed since his “death” in rural Virginia, walked off to patrol another part of the hospital. There were many such dead men walking the streets of Brennan right now.

CHAPTER

12

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF BRENNAN, Pennsylvania, was a faded strip mall that had as its meager tenants a pawnshop, several low-rent mom-and-pop operations, a bail bondsman’s establishment and a fried chicken eatery. All of the other lease space was empty except for one office. The windows of this unit were still covered up, as the build-out had not yet been completed. Actually, the work had never been started, nor would it ever be.

In the far back room behind a makeshift plywood partition were two Arab men and a third fellow. One of the Arabs was an engineer specializing in medical devices, the other a chemist, though both men had other skills as well. The third man, a former U.S. National Guardsman, was sitting in a chair looking nervously at the various pieces of equipment stacked neatly on a long table against the wall; these included wrenches, power screwdrivers, electrical wires and other, more sophisticated equipment. The former National Guardsman was looking nervously at where his right hand had been. A cast had been made of the stump, and a shiny metal socket with metal fingers had been attached to this spot.

“Just relax,” the chemist advised, and he put a gentle hand on the nervous fellow’s shoulder.

The engineer lifted an object out of a long box and held it up. It looked like a human hand. “It’s made of silicone, and we have copied your vein patterns, simulated your natural skin color and even matched it to your skin’s hair color. The metal socket and inner hand attached to your wrist are internally wired, with powered movement and flexibility in all five fingers. The older models only had mobility in the thumb, index and ring fingers. And they were able to engineer down the scale of the wiring so the new generation’s size approximates that of an actual human hand.” He held his hand up against the prosthetic one. “You can see that it’s barely an inch longer than normal.”

The man nodded and smiled. His thoughts were obvious. It did look like a real hand.

The chemist said, “You have a solid wrist joint and good remaining wrist muscles; that will help greatly. The electrodes embedded in the inner hand will have solid connection to the muscle.”

“Yeah, I’m a real lucky bastard,” the man said bitterly.

The silicone hand was put over the socket and the hand securely attached. When that was done, they took the man through some simple exercises.

The engineer said, “When you push your wrist muscles upward, the hand opens. When you relax your wrist muscles, the hand closes. Practice that.”

The man did so about a dozen times while the men watched closely. Each time, he became more comfortable with the manipulations.

The chemist nodded approvingly. “That is good. You are getting it. But you must keep practicing. Soon you will be able to do it without thinking. It will feel natural.”

The man in the chair rubbed the fake hand with the steel hook that constituted his other hand. “Does it feel real?” he asked. “I can’t tell.”

The engineer said, “Someone shaking hands with you will be able to tell it’s not real, simply by the texture and the colder temperature of the skin, but in all other respects it will look very real.”

The man seemed disappointed by this explanation and stopped looking at his new hand.

“You can never be what you were,” the chemist said bluntly. “But it is better than what you had, and we can do your other hand too, if you want.”

The man shook his head and held up his hook. “I want to keep this one. I don’t want to forget what happened to me.”

“You have your uniform?” the engineer asked.

The man nodded as he rose from the chair, still opening and closing his new hand. “That’s another memory, not that I need it.”

“What was your rank?”

“Sergeant. National Guard.” He flexed his new hand again. “And after it’s over?”

“You will be taken care of, as agreed,” the engineer answered.

“It’s nice, to be finally taken care of.”

“We will be in touch, in the usual way.”

They shook hands.

“Feels good to finally be able to do that,” the ex-National Guardsman said.

After he had left, the two men went back to work. There was another box on the table that was marked in Arabic. One of the men opened it. Inside wrapped in plastic was a stainless-steel canister. Inside the canister was a bottle filled with liquid. He lifted out the bottle and held it up to the light.

He well knew that, according to the FBI, the three deadliest substances in the world were, in descending order of lethality, plutonium, botulism toxin and ricin. The liquid in the glass vial was not nearly as deadly as any of those poisons. However, in its own way the substance was still very effective.

The hand he had just placed on the former National Guardsman had a pouch inside. When a tiny release button built into the skin was pushed and the wristbone was flexed a very special way, the pouch opened and any liquid inside it would be secreted through the artificial pores.

As they worked away, the chemist said, “He is bitter, that National Guardsman.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” the other answered.

CHAPTER

13

TOM HEMINGWAY SAT IN HIS modest apartment near Capitol Hill. He had taken off his suit and put on shorts and a T-shirt and was barefoot. Though it was very late, he was not tired. In fact, adrenaline was ripping through his veins. He had just received the news: Patrick Johnson was dead. Hemingway felt no remorse. The man had no one to blame but himself. But there had been witnesses to the killing, and they had gotten away. Of course, that potentially changed everything.

He went into his bedroom, unlocked a hidden floor safe, took out a folder and sat down at his kitchen table. Inside the folder were photographs of over two dozen men and one woman. All were Muslims. The authorities would classify them as enemies of America. The assembling of these people represented two full years of Tom Hemingway’s life. And for those in the group who had run afoul of the law in some way, Hemingway had achieved a miracle. He had made the living appear to be dead.

Hemingway’s father, the Honorable Franklin T. Hemingway, had been a statesman, when that word still carried some actual meaning. He had risen through the ranks to become ambassador to some of the most diplomatically challenging countries on earth. Before his untimely death, he had been hailed as one of the great peacemakers of his generation, a dedicated and honorable civil servant.

Tom Hemingway eventually came to terms with his father’s violent death; however, he knew it was not something he would ever get over, nor should he. He had loved and respected his father, learning civility and compassion by the man’s example. Unlike many other ambassadors who “purchased” their title with large campaign donations and who never even bothered to adequately learn the language and culture of the country they were sent to, Franklin Hemingway immersed himself and his family in the language and history of whatever land he was assigned. Thus, Tom Hemingway had a far better understanding and appreciation of both the Islamic and Asian worlds than virtually any other American.

He had not gone the route of his diplomatic father, however, because Tom Hemingway didn’t believe he had the temperament for such a career. He had instead entered the spy world, beginning with the National Security Agency before transferring to the CIA and working his way up. It seemed an important even honorable career, and he’d thrown himself at it with the work ethic his father had instilled in him.

He’d become a superb field agent, assigned to some of the most dangerous hot spots in the world. He had survived, sometimes just by minutes, attempts to kill him. He had, in turn, killed, on behalf of his government. He helped orchestrate coups that toppled popularly elected governments. He also oversaw operations that created instability in fragile third-world countries, because this was deemed the best way to foster an atmosphere most beneficial to the United States. He had done all that was asked of him, and more.

And ultimately, it had been for nothing. The precious work that he’d performed was a sham, fueled more by business interests than national ones, accomplishing nothing other than making a bad situation worse. The world was as close to destruction as he had ever seen, and Tom Hemingway had seen a lot.

There were many reasons, beginning with critical shortages of water, oil and gas, steel, coal and other natural resources. Rich countries like the United States, Japan and China took the lion’s share of these precious commodities, leaving scraps for the poorest nations. But it was more than the historically complex issue of the haves and the have-nots. It was a fundamental question of ignorance and intolerance. Hemingway had always considered ignorance and intolerance to be like commas, because you often found them in pairs, and almost never did you find one, ignorance, without its evil twin, intolerance.

At age forty Hemingway’s father had helped create peace in lands that had known only war. At the same age his son had helped to rip peace from lands all over the world, leaving much of it in shambles. It had been a devastating revelation, given his provenance.

And then he had sat down and looked at his options, and a plan had slowly coalesced. There were many who would have looked at what he intended and called him hopelessly naive. That was not the way the world worked, they would have argued. You are doomed to pitiful failure, they would have pronounced. And yet these were the same people who had performed atrocities in certain parts of the world under the pretense of helping them. They committed these “crimes” for reasons as crude as money and power and expected to have their own way without ever being seriously challenged by those they had so clearly wronged. Now who was the naive one? Hemingway thought.

His “official” occupation had allowed him to crisscross the Middle East over the last few years. During that time he slowly formed the pieces to his puzzle, meeting with people he needed assistance from. He found skeptics aplenty, but then one man, someone he deeply respected and a longtime friend of his father’s, agreed to help. The man gave Hemingway not only access to people but the necessary funds to construct an elaborate operation. Hemingway did not believe for an instant that this gentleman didn’t have reasons of his own to do so. However, Tom Hemingway, American-born and -bred, even with all his contacts in that region and familiarity with its language and culture, couldn’t have possibly pulled off something this monumental on his own. And if he suffered from a certain idealism that bordered on naiveté, he was brutally realistic about how best his plan could be successfully carried out.

He often wished his father were still alive so that he could ask for his advice. He knew, though, what Franklin Hemingway would say: It is wrong. Don’t do it. But the son was going to do it.

And what was his true motivation? Hemingway had asked himself that question often as the process was unfolding. He had come up with different answers at times. He had finally concluded that he was not doing this for his country, and he was not doing this for the Middle East. He was doing this for a planet that was quickly running out of second chances. And perhaps also as a tribute for a father who was a man of peace but who died a violent death, because people patently refused to understand each other.

Perhaps it was as simple, and complex, as that.

CHAPTER

14

THE BODY OF PATRICK JOHNSON was discovered early the next morning by a group of fifth graders and their teachers from a Maryland elementary school, who wanted to learn more about Teddy Roosevelt. Unfortunately, they learned far more than they’d bargained for.

Later that morning Alex Ford was driving his creaky government Crown Vic into work and thinking about what he’d be doing that day. If nothing else, duty at the Washington Field Office provided a lot of variety. The head of WFO, the special agent in charge, or SAIC, believed that agents with broad experience in all areas of concern to the Service were better agents because of it. Alex generally agreed with this approach. Already this week he’d performed surveillance on a couple of ongoing cases, pulled a few hours of prisoner transport, stood post for several visiting foreign dignitaries and been called in once as part of the Gate Caller Squad maintained 24/7 at the WFO’s duty desk.

The Gate Caller Squad, part of the Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence Squad, was summoned whenever someone walked up to the White House, knocked on the gate and wanted to see the president without an appointment, which happened more frequently than most people imagined. There was one guy who showed up every six months and informed the guards that this was “his” house and they were all trespassing. There was also increased activity like this when the moon was full, the Service had discovered. Such bizarre behavior would win the gate caller a visit from the Secret Service, some shrink time and possibly a trip to jail or St. Elizabeth’s, depending on how deranged the agents found the person.

Alex parked his car, walked into the WFO, nodded to a broad-hipped female guard in the lobby, swiped his security card in the slot in the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor, where the Metro Area Task Force was located. For part of his work, Alex was assigned to the task force, as were many of the more veteran agents at WFO. The task force worked closely with Virginia and Maryland state police and other federal law enforcement on myriad financial felony cases. That was the good news. The bad news was that criminals were so active the task force had more work than it could reasonably handle.

The Service had three floors in the building, and he headed to his wall-less work cubby in a large open area of the fourth floor. There was an e-mail from Jerry Sykes, his ATSAIC, or assistant to the special agent in charge, telling him to come up to the sixth floor as soon as he got in.

Okay, that was a little out of the ordinary, he thought. Had he violated some civil rights he was unaware of when arresting the two ATM goofballs last night?

Alex rode the elevator to the sixth floor, got off and walked down the hallway, nodding to people he knew along the way. He passed the duty board that hung on one wall in the corridor. It had magnetic pictures of all the agents at WFO arranged in clusters according to their current assignments. It was a good, if not exactly high-tech way of keeping abreast of people’s whereabouts. There was also an electronic backup duty roster, because some pranksters would switch the pictures of agents on this board to other assignments. So an agent tasked to Criminal could suddenly find himself, at least according to the board, being in the desk-bound insomniac land of the Recruitment Division.

A few of the pictures were hung upside down; that meant that an agent was leaving the WFO for an assignment elsewhere. There were also red or blue dots on many of the pictures. This didn’t designate whether an agent was a Republican or Democrat, though some agents tried to sell that line to their friends and families who visited here; it designated whether the agent lived in Virginia or Maryland.

Sykes rose from his desk when Alex appeared in the doorway.

“Have a seat, Alex,” Sykes said, motioning to a chair.

Alex sat and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “So am I in trouble, or is this just a fun date?” Alex smiled and, thankfully, Sykes grinned in return.

“Heard about your heroics last night. We love agents who work unpaid overtime like that. Feel free to do it more often.”

“Well, I wouldn’t turn down a nice bump in salary as a thank-you.”

“In your dreams. Got a brand-new toy for you, something really hot.” He tapped a file lying on his desk. “This came on a slingshot from HQ to the SAIC here and then on to me.”

Alex looked doubtful. “My load’s pretty full, Jerry. So long as people use money, other people will try and steal it or forge it.”

“Forget that for now. How about making a run at a homicide?”

“I don’t remember that being in our statutory mandate,” Alex said slowly.

“Check your badge and your paycheck. It says Homeland Security now and not Treasury, so we have lots of new goodies in our bag to hand out.” Sykes glanced at the file. “A man named Patrick Johnson was found this morning on Roosevelt Island with a gunshot wound in his mouth, a revolver and bottle of Scotch next to him and a suicide note in his pocket.”

“And he is?” Alex asked.

“Employed at N-TAC,” Sykes replied, referring to the National Threat Assessment Center. “In other words, he’s one of us. That’s where you come in.”

“But N-TAC’s not really part of the Service anymore, not after the intelligence shake-up. It’s with NIC now. Along with damn near everything else.”

“Right but we still have our fingers in that pie, and Johnson at least technically was a joint employee of the Secret Service and NIC.”

“Gunshot wound to the mouth, guy was probably drunk, revolver right there and a note. What’s to investigate?”

“Suicide is what it looks like so far, and it’ll probably stick. Since it occurred on federal property and he was a federal employee, the FBI and Park Police are investigating. But we want somebody looking out for our interests too. If it was a suicide, we can handle the spin okay. But if it’s something else, well, then, we need to run that down. That’s where you come in.”

“Why Roosevelt Island? Was Johnson a T.R. freak?”

“That’s for you to find out. But don’t let the Bureau run you off.”

“So why am I so lucky, Jerry?” Alex asked. “I mean isn’t this something for the Inspections Division to do?”

“Yes. But I like you,” Sykes replied sarcastically. “And after all that time on protection, you really need as much real work as you can get.”

“Funny, that’s what they said when I went into protection detail.”

“Whoever said life was fair?”

“No one who’s ever worn a badge,” Alex shot back.

Sykes took on a serious expression. “You’ve seen the kids running around here. They’re good and they’re smart and they work their butts off, but their average experience is less than six years. You’ve got three times that. And speaking of baby agents, take Simpson with you. Rookie needs some breaking in.”

“I’m curious,” Alex said. “Has Simpson got any strings upstairs?”

“Why?” Sykes asked, although Alex thought he saw a smile flit across the man’s face.

“Because the crap duty doesn’t seem to stick to that rook, that’s why.”

“All I can say is Simpson’s the blessed relation of some big muckety-muck, and people tend to give ‘that rook’ a little slack. Do not feel so inclined. Here’s the file. The crime scene awaits you. Go get ’em.”

As Alex rose, Sykes added, “The ninety-day report cycle is out on this one. We want daily detailed e-mails. And just so you know, they’ll be going directly to the SAIC and HQ.”

“Okay.”

“Like I said, Alex, this one is hot, treat it accordingly.”

“I get the point, Jerry.”

Alex returned to his desk, hung his jacket over his chair and opened the file. The first thing he encountered was a photo of Patrick Johnson looking very much alive. There was a hand-scribbled note that said Johnson was engaged to be married. The name and phone number of his fiancée were underneath this note. Alex assumed the woman had already been told of the man’s death. Johnson’s employment history looked pretty routine.

Johnson had been with the N-TAC division of the National Intelligence Center, or NIC as the D.C. bureaucrats referred to it. In layman’s terms N-TAC put together information and strategies that cops could use to prevent everything from presidential assassinations to terrorist attacks to another Columbine. No Secret Service agent ever wanted to arrest an assassin. That meant the person you were guarding was dead.

Alex remembered the huge battle that erupted when NIC made clear it wanted to absorb N-TAC into its intelligence empire. The Service had put up a vigorous counterattack, but in the end the president sided with Gray and NIC. However, because the Service had such a unique relationship with the president, it had been able to keep some connection to N-TAC, which was why Johnson had still technically been a joint employee of the Service, if in name only.

Alex flipped through the rest of the file making mental notes. Finally, he stood and put on his jacket. He grabbed Simpson on the way out.

Jackie Simpson was petite and dark-haired with an olive complexion and strong facial features dominated by a pair of startling blue eyes. Though a rookie at the Secret Service, she was no novice when it came to detective work, having spent nearly eight years as a police officer before joining the Service. When she spoke, no one could miss Simpson’s southern origins, in her case Alabama. She was dressed in a dark pantsuit and carried her sidearm on a belt clip riding near her left hand. Alex raised his eyebrows at the three-inch blocky heels she wore that still left her six inches shorter than he was. Then his gaze took in the wedge of red handkerchief poking out from the lady’s breast pocket. That was a little fashion statement that could get you killed. Alex also knew that her pistol was a custom piece that she had somehow gotten approval for. The Service liked uniformity when it came to its agents’ weapons, in the event they had to share ammo during a shoot-out.

Like many people in a new job, she was full of bountiful enthusiasm as well as a startling lack of tact. When told of their new assignment, she responded, “Sweet.”

“It wasn’t too sweet for Patrick Johnson,” Alex pointed out.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Glad to hear it. Let’s go.” Alex walked off fast, leaving Simpson to scurry after him.

CHAPTER

15

DJAMILA, THE NANNY, CHANGED the diaper of the youngest boy, then turned her attention and considerable patience to feeding the one-year-old’s two brothers, aged two and three. After she’d finished this task, she played with them and then put the boys down for naps. She took her prayer rug out of the bag she brought with her to work and prepared to perform the salat, or prayer, by undertaking the ablution, or wudu, of the face, head, hands, arms up to the elbows, and the feet up to the ankles. Barefoot, Djamila faced the qibla, the direction of Mecca, and performed her prayer. It was a ritual she did five times each day beginning two hours before sunrise and ending with the last prayer at nightfall, when the twilight disappears. This was Djamila’s second prayer of the day, performed at noon, when the sun begins its decline.

A few minutes after she’d finished, the boys’ mother, Lori Franklin, came downstairs and gazed admiringly at her well-kept house and then looked in at her sons sleeping very soundly in their respective berths in the large playroom. Franklin was barely thirty and very attractive, with a slim, yet curvy figure and well-toned muscles. She carried a small bag with her.

“Going to the club, miss?” Djamila said.

“Yes, Djamila; a set of tennis and then who knows.” She laughed lightly and drew a contented breath in the way that young, well-off people often did. She nodded at her sons. “I see you have the army down already.”

“Yes, they are good boys. They play hard and sleep harder.”

“They’re good boys with you. They aren’t so good with me, or the three nannies that came before you. Now I can actually have a life even if my husband works twenty hours a day. Men, Djamila, can’t live with them, can’t live without their W-2s.”

“In my country a man he is head of the home,” Djamila noted as she put some toys away in a storage box. “A woman’s duty is to help her husband, keep the home in a good way, and to take care of the children. But you must marry a man you respect and whose wishes you can carry out with a good conscience. Your husband is not your master; only God is.”

The American rolled her eyes. “Oh, men are kings here too, Djamila, at least in their own minds.” She laughed again. “And I gave George the family he wanted. And I give him his wishes when he really needs me to. It’s not such a bad bargain.”

“So you won’t be back this afternoon,” Djamila said, frowning, as she hurriedly changed the subject. She had found her employer far too frank sometimes.

“I’ll be here in time to make dinner. George is out of town again. You can eat during the day now, can’t you? Your fasting thing is over?”

“Ramadan has passed, yes.”

“I can never keep the dates straight.”

“That is because they change. Ramadan is celebrated in the ninth month of the Islamic year. It was then that Muhammad received the first revelation of the Qur’an from the angel Gabriel. But Muslims use the lunar calendar, so Ramadan comes earlier every year. My parents have celebrated Ramadan during winter and also during summer.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to celebrate Christmas in July. And I can’t imagine fasting like that. Djamila, it can’t be healthy for you.”

“Actually, it is very healthy. And the women with child or nursing, they do not have to fast. The sawm, how you say, the fasting, it purges the body of bad thoughts. It is a cleansing, focusing time of life. I enjoy it very much, and I do not feel hungry at all. I eat the sahur before dawn, and after sunset I can eat the meal. It is not much of a sacrifice.”

Djamila didn’t add that one American meal typically equaled three of hers. “Then at the end of Ramadan we celebrate. It is called ‘id al-fitr. We wear new clothes and exchange nice meals and visit with our friends and family. It is very much fun.”

“Well, I still think it’s unhealthy.” Lori Franklin looked out the window. “It’s a beautiful day, so why don’t you drive the boys to the park and let them burn some energy up? That way the house will be a little quieter when I get home.”

“I will take them, miss. I like to drive very much.”

“Women aren’t allowed to drive in your country, are they?”

Djamila hesitated and then said, “It is true that a woman cannot drive a car in Riyadh, but that is just a local law that has nothing to do with Islam.”

Franklin looked at her with pity. “You don’t have to make excuses. There were lots of things you weren’t allowed to do over there. I know. I watch the news. Forced marriages and men having lots of wives. And you had to wear all those veils and things to cover up your body. And no education. You have no rights at all.”

Djamila looked down for a moment so Franklin wouldn’t see the resentment reflected in her features. When she looked back up, she forced a smile and said in a positive tone, “What you say is not Islam that I know or that most Muslims know. Muslim women are not forced to marry. It is a contract between man and woman, and also between their families. If a divorce happens, God forbid, the woman she is entitled to much property from the man. This is her right by the law, you understand. And a man may have more than one wife, but only if he can support them all equally. Unless a man he is very rich, he only has one wife. And Islam says all should learn, men and women. I receive a good education.

“As for dress, the Qur’an does not say wear this or that. It tells both men and women to be modest and righteous in their dress. God is loving. He knows if one believes in him, that person will make the right choices. Some women choose the veil and the abaya, what you call a body cloak. Others do not.”

“Well, it’s very different here, Djamila. In America you can do anything you want to. Anything. That’s what makes this country so great.”

“Yes, I have heard that. And yet sometimes is doing everything you want to do really that good?”

Franklin smiled. “Absolutely, Djamila, especially if you don’t get caught.”

“If you say so,” Djamila replied, but she didn’t believe any of it.

“Women really run this country, Djamila, we just let men think they do.”

“But women in America, they were not allowed to vote until the twentieth century, is that not so?”

Franklin looked a little put off by this comment but then waved her hand dismissively. “That’s ancient history. Let’s just say we’ve made up for lost time. And the sooner the Muslim women figure that out, the better.”

Djamila chose not to respond to this. She had been instructed not to address such issues with her employer, and yet sometimes she could not help herself.

Franklin said, “I wish you’d reconsider and come live with us. This house is huge.”

“Thank you. But for now I would like to keep our arrangement the same.”

“Okay, whatever you want. I can’t afford to lose you.”

She blew kisses at her sleeping family and left. As Franklin pulled out of the driveway, she glanced at the white van parked there. It had never occurred to her that it was somewhat odd that a woman who before coming to the United States had never driven a car would have shown up for a new job with her very own van and valid driver’s license. However, Franklin already had far too much to occupy her mind than to worry about such a trivial incongruity.

She was in fact not going to play tennis or cards at her country club. In the small bag she carried was a negligee of breathtaking sheerness. She was already wearing the matching thong, and she had seen no reason to wear a bra for what she would be engaged in doing that afternoon. Her only problem would be convincing her very young lover not to tear them off her body.

Djamila went to the window and watched her employer drive away in her little Mercedes sports car. On one afternoon when George Franklin took the day off to spend some time with his sons, Djamila followed Lori Franklin to the country club, where she got into the car of a man who was not her husband. Djamila followed them to a motel. She suspected that that was where the woman was heading now. After all, it was a bit difficult to play tennis without a tennis racket, and Franklin’s was still hanging on a peg in the garage.

Men were clearly not kings in America, Djamila had concluded after only a few weeks in the States. They were fools. And their women were whores.

After her charges’ nap she took them to the park, where they played to exhaustion. Djamila smiled as she watched the oldest boy take great pleasure in running circles around his brothers. Djamila wanted sons, lots of them. And then her smile faded. She doubted that she would ever live to become a mother.

She fed the boys snacks from a picnic basket she’d prepared. After that, Djamila had to chase down the oldest boy, Timmy, to retrieve her cell phone and car keys from him. He’d done this before whenever she left her purse in a place he could reach. She didn’t mind; all children were curious. She loaded the boys into the van, where they immediately fell asleep. Then she took out her rug and performed her midafternoon prayer next to the van. She had brought a small bottle of water and a pan with her to perform her ablution.

While the boys slept, she drove all around Brennan, Pennsylvania. As had often been the case in this area, the town existed because the railroad gods had long ago decided to put a station stop here. These trains carried some passengers but mostly coal and coke to the steel mills and the eastern ports. Now Brennan was rebuilding itself into a posh suburb of Pittsburgh. The town had quaint shops and restaurants, regentrified homes and a sparkling new country club.

Djamila stopped often to take pictures with a small digital camera no bigger than her index finger. As she did so, she spoke into a small recorder, describing things that should have held little importance to a foreign-born nanny shepherding three slumbering boys around; however, all of it interested her. Then she covered the outlying areas, paying particular attention to road configurations.

Finally, she pulled up in front of a beautiful fieldstone estate that was set well back from the road and behind a low wall of locally quarried stone. Such a pretty home, she thought, but far too big. In America everything was too big: from the meals to the houses to the cars to the people. The only things that weren’t big were the clothes. Djamila had seen more butts, breasts and bellies in the last few months than she had seen in all the preceding years of her life. It disgusted her.

Give Djamila the jilbab and a khimar to cover her body, give her even three other wives to compete with, over such “freedom.”

She frowned as she glanced at the sleeping children. Yes, her employers disgusted her with their money and loveless marriage. Even the children in the backseat in one sense disgusted her because they would grow up one day and believe they ruled the world simply because they were Americans. She put the van in gear and drove off.

Djamila would report in tonight on her computer, at the movie site. According to her memorized schedule, the chat room for this night dealt with a film called To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a strange name for a movie, but Americans, she knew, were strange. Yes, strange, violent and, most frightening of all, completely unpredictable.