Stone Cold by David Baldacci
CHAPTER 12
JERRY BAGGER NEVER VENTURED much out of Atlantic City anymore. He had his own Learjet but seldom used it. The last trip on it had been the deadly visit to the unfortunate Tony Wallace in Portugal. He once had a yacht but sold it when he discovered he easily became seasick, an embarrassment for a man who prided himself on toughness. Indeed, he rarely left his casino anymore. It was really the only place he felt comfortable these days.
Ironically, Bagger hadn’t been born in Vegas or Jersey. The ballsy, streetwise urban boy had seen his first light in, of all places, Wyoming, on a ranch where his father labored for something less than minimum wage. His mother had lost her life on Bagger’s first day from pregnancy complications, complications any hospital could have easily taken care of. But there had been no hospital within three hundred miles, so she’d died. Bagger’s father had joined her eighteen months later after an accident involving whiskey and a cantankerous horse.
The Wyoming ranch owner had no interest in raising a bastard child—Bagger’s mother and father had not bothered to marry—and he was shipped off to his mother’s family in Brooklyn. It was in the close confines of this New York melting pot, not in the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, that Bagger was meant to be and had thrived.
He had eventually gone back west. After fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays, nonstop hustling and risking and then nearly losing everything he had about a dozen times, he had his own casino. And soon business was so good he started printing money. Then his temper got the best of him and he was eventually run out of Vegas and ordered never to return. He had honored that request, although every time he flew over it he looked out the plane window and ceremoniously flipped off the entire state of Nevada.
Bagger left his penthouse and took the private elevator down to the casino floor. There he walked through a sea of slots, gaming tables and sport betting rooms where gamblers from the novice to the experienced dropped far more money than they would ever get back. Whenever he spotted a kid sitting bored on the floor, with their parents hovering nearby feeding buckets of nickels into the slots—their hands blackened from the process—Bagger would order that food, books and video games be brought to the child, and he would slip a twenty-dollar bill in the kid’s hand. Then he would make a call and someone from the Pompeii would immediately confront the parents and remind them that while children were allowed in the casino, they could not be in the playing areas.
Bagger would crush any adult who crossed him, but kids were not to be screwed with. That would change when they hit eighteen—then everyone was fair game—but until then kids were off-limits. It was shitty enough being adults, was his opinion, so let the little punks enjoy the time they had not being grown up. Underlying this philosophy might have been the fact that Jerry Bagger had never had a childhood. Dirt poor, he had run his first racket out of a Brooklyn tenement house at age nine and never looked back. That hard life was a major reason for his success, but the scars ran deep. So deep he didn’t even think about them anymore. They were simply what made him what he was.
On his walk Bagger made three such calls for kids left in the playing area by their parents, shaking his head each time. “Losers,” he muttered. Jerry Bagger had never bet one dime on anything. That was for suckers. He was many things, but a fool wasn’t one of them. These idiots would scream and jump around after winning a hundred bucks, forgetting that they’d thrown away two hundred bucks for the privilege. And yet this weird psychological quirk humans possessed had made Bagger rich, so he wasn’t complaining.
He stopped at one of the bars and raised an eyebrow at a waitress, who rushed to bring him his usual club soda with a lime. He never drank alcohol on the casino floor, nor did any of his employees. He perched on a bar stool and watched the Pompeii operate at maximum efficiency. All age ranges were represented here. And the whack jobs were aplenty, he knew from decades of experience. There wasn’t a single category of nutcase that hadn’t at one point strolled into his casino. Truth was, Bagger related to them better than he did the “normal” folks.
He eyed a newlywed couple still in their wedding clothes. The Pompeii offered a cut-rate, tips-not-included deal for those wanting to get hitched, which provided a standard room with a sturdy new mattress, a cheap bouquet of flowers, the services of a properly licensed minister, dinner, drinks and twin massages to work out the kinks from all that screwing. And, most importantly, the deal provided fifty dollars’ worth of casino chips. Bagger had no interest in promoting love; he knew from experience that those fifty bucks of free chips typically turned into a two-thousand-dollar profit for the house by the end of a long weekend, even taking into account the freebies.
The couple he was watching seemed to be trying their best to swallow each other’s tongues. Bagger grimaced at this public display. “Get a room,” he muttered. “It’s the cheapest thing you’ll find in this town other than the booze. And the sex.”
Bagger had never married, chiefly because he had never met a woman who could hold his interest. Annabelle Conroy had captured and held his interest. She was beyond mesmerizing. He’d wanted to spend all his time with her. In fact, before he found out she’d conned him, he had wondered if after all these years he’d finally found a lady he could escort down the aisle. It seemed crazy now, considering what had happened, how she’d screwed him over. And yet with all that Bagger just had to grin. What a picture that would’ve made. He and Annabelle as husband and wife? What a hoot.
And then, as was often the case, Jerry Bagger had a brilliant idea while he wasn’t even trying to.
He finished his club soda and headed back to his office to make some phone calls to find out one thing. When she’d been conning him Annabelle had told him she’d never been married or had children. But what if in reality Annabelle Conroy had been married? Because if she ever had said “I do” it was a golden way to track the lady down.
CHAPTER 13
STONE REFUSED GRAY’S OFFER of a drink. The two men settled down in Gray’s comfortable study, which held as many books in as many languages as there were in Stone’s cottage, although here they were kept in much finer style.
Stone looked out the long window that faced the cliffs overlooking the water.
“Tired of Virginia farm country?” he said.
“My ambition as a young man was to be a sailor, see the world from the deck of a ship,” Gray said, cradling his Scotch, his wide face strangely offset by a pair of narrowly placed eyes. There was a lot in that head, Stone well knew. Gray was not a man that one could ever reasonably overestimate.
“A young man’s ambition, can there be a more fleeting prospect?” Stone said idly. The darkness outside the window was complete. No moon, no stars; an approaching storm had hidden the sky.
“I never thought John Carr would be given to lapses into philosophizing.”
“Goes to show how little you really knew me. And I don’t go by John Carr anymore. He’s dead. I’m sure you were briefed on it years ago.”
Unperturbed, Gray continued. “This place used to belong to another former director of CIA, who went on to become vice president. It has everything I need to be comfortable and secure in my old age.”
“I’m so happy for you,” Stone said.
“I’m actually surprised you came. After your little gesture outside the White House?”
“How is the president, by the way?”
“Fine.”
“Did you feel any homicidal impulses when he plunked that medal on you? Or are you over wanting to kill the man?”
“Without directly answering your ridiculous question, circumstances change. It’s never personal. You should know that as well as any man alive.”
“The point is, I wouldn’t have been alive if you’d had your way.” Before Gray could respond, Stone said, “I have some questions I want to ask you and I’d appreciate answers, truthful ones.”
Gray put down his Scotch. “All right.”
Stone turned from the window to look at him.
“Why waste what time we have left playing games that don’t matter anymore? I take it you want to know about Elizabeth.”
“I want to know about Beth, my daughter.”
“I’ll answer what I can.”
Stone sat down opposite him and asked question after question for about twenty minutes. His final one was articulated with some trepidation. “Did she ever ask about me, about her father?”
“As you know, Senator Simpson and his wife raised her after they adopted her.”
“But you told me you brought them Beth when Simpson was still at CIA. If she had said something, surely—”
Gray put up a hand. “She did. It was actually after Simpson had left CIA and begun his political career. Understand she may have mentioned something about it before, but this was the first I’d heard of such a query. They had told her years before of her adoption. It’s not something Beth seemed to dwell on. In fact, I’m not sure she told many people about it.”
Stone leaned forward. “What did she say about her real parents?”
“In all fairness, you should know that she asked about her mother first. Girls, you understand, they want to know.”
“Of course she should know about her mother.”
“They had to be delicate, considering the . . . uh . . . the circumstances of her mother’s death.”
“Of her murder, you mean. By people who were looking to kill me.”
“As I told you, I had nothing to do with that. I sincerely liked your wife. And if truth be known, she’d be alive today if you had—”
Stone rose and stared down at him with a look that chilled even Gray, who well knew how many ways John Carr could kill another human being. And no man he’d ever employed had been better at it. “I’m sorry, John—I mean, Oliver. I admit that was not your fault.” He paused while Stone slowly sat back down. “They told her a little about her mother, all positive I can assure you, and that she had died in an accident.”
“And me?”
“She was told her father was a soldier who was killed in the line of duty. I believe they even took her to your ‘grave’ at Arlington. To your daughter you died a hero.” Gray paused and added, “Does that satisfy you?”
The way he said it made Stone wonder something. “Is this the real truth or the truth Carter Gray style, meaning a load of bullshit to appease me?”
“What possible reason would I have to lie to you now? It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? You and me, we don’t matter anymore.”
“Why did you ask me here tonight?”
In answer Gray went behind his desk and picked up a file. He opened it and held up three color photos of men in their sixties. He placed them one by one in front of Stone. “This first man is Joel Walker, the second Douglas Bennett and the last Dan Ross.”
“Those names mean nothing to me, and neither do these pictures.”
Gray pulled three more photos from the file, all much older and in black and white. “I think these will look far more familiar to you. And the names as well: Judd Bingham, Bob Cole and Lou Cincetti.”
Stone barely heard the names. He was staring at photos of men he’d lived, worked and nearly died beside for over a decade. He looked up at Gray.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because in the last two months all three of these former comrades of yours have died.”
“Died how?”
“Bingham was found in his bed. He had lupus. The autopsy found nothing unusual. Cole hanged himself. At least it appeared that way, and the police have officially closed that case. Cincetti apparently got drunk, stumbled into his pool and drowned.”
“So natural causes for Bingham, suicide for Cole and an accident with Cincetti.”
“And you don’t believe that any more than I do; three men from the same unit dying within two months of each other?”
“It’s a dangerous world out there.”
“Something we both know all too well.”
“You think they were killed?”
“Of course.”
“And you invited me here to what, warn me?”
“It seemed like the most prudent thing to do.”
“But like you said, John Carr is dead. Who looks to kill a dead man?”
“These three fellows had excellent cover. Cincetti was particularly deeply buried. If someone could find him, they could find out John Carr isn’t really in that box at Arlington. That he’s actually a man very much alive who calls himself Oliver Stone.”
“And what about you? Carter Gray was the master strategist for our little group. And you’ve had no cover all these years.”
“I have protection. You don’t.”
“Then you’ve given me fair warning.” Stone rose.
“I’m sorry things ended up as they did. You deserved better.”
“You were prepared to sacrifice me and my friends not too long ago, for the good of the country.”
“Everything I ever did was for the good of this country.”
“At least how you defined it, anyway. Not me.”
“We can agree to disagree on that.”
Stone turned and walked out the door.
CHAPTER 14
CARTER GRAY’S MAIL was screened at an off-site center run by the FBI and then delivered to him in the evening. The courier duly drove up and the mail was given to one of the men assigned to protect Gray. These men lived in a cottage about a hundred yards from the main house. Gray would not agree to anyone living with him in the house, which was protected by a latest-generation security system.
Gray opened the letters and packages, not really focusing on any of them until he reached one item. The envelope was red and had been postmarked from Washington, D.C. There was only one thing in it, a photo. He looked at the picture and then over at the file on his desk. His time had come, it seemed.
He turned out the lights in his study and went to his bedroom. He kissed the pictures of his wife and daughter that had places of honor on the fireplace mantel. In a grotesque twist of fate, both women had perished at the Pentagon on 9/11. He knelt, said his customary prayers and then turned off the light.
Outside, about five hundred yards away from the house, Harry Finn lowered his long-range nightscope. He’d seen Gray open the red envelope. He’d gotten a good look at the man’s face as he stared at the photo. Gray knew. The climb up the sheer rock cliff had been a challenge, even for Finn. But it had allowed him to get this far. And he only had a little farther to go.
Finn waited another hour to allow Gray to fall asleep and then slid over to the gas regulator post. A natural gas line had been placed here specifically because Carter Gray preferred gas heat and cooking. Ten minutes later the gas pressure going into Gray’s home blew out all the pilot lights and overwhelmed the built-in safety systems. In seconds the house was full of the deadly gas. If he were still awake Gray would be able to smell it, because the utility company added an odor to the naturally odorless gas as a warning. Yes, Gray could smell it if he were awake, but that would be all he could do.
Finn loaded one bullet into his rifle. It looked rather ordinary except its nose was green-colored. He took aim and fired at the long window in the back of the house. It was not a difficult shot. The slug cracked the glass and the small amount of flame-creating powder in the incendiary bullet he’d chambered ignited. The roof was blown ten feet into the air while the walls were knocked outward a dozen feet on all sides. What was left of the roof came back down, landing squarely on a raging fire. Within seconds it was hard to believe a house had actually been there at all.
Finn had turned to flee on his planned escape route when he heard a scream and looked back. One of the guards had come out of the guesthouse, been hit with a chunk of flaming debris and was on fire. There was no sign of the other guard. Without really thinking about it, Finn ran forward, tackled the man, who was flailing around, and rolled him on the ground, putting out the flames. Then he leapt up and ran full tilt
Finn took a few steps back and sprinted toward the cliff. He flew out into space and plummeted down, his body unfolding into classic high-dive form. He hit the water cleanly, went under, and then resurfaced. He struck out with a strong, practiced stroke and made it to shore about a half mile down. In a small wooded area here he had covered under a layer of leaves a small motorcycle. He cut through myriad back trails to a main road, then finally pulled off on a small side street where a van was parked. He rolled the bike into the rear of the van, hopped into the driver’s seat and sped off. The van and motorcycle were left at a private garage Finn maintained about ten miles from his house. He drove home in his Prius, and changed in the garage before coming into the house, putting his dirty clothes into the washer and turning on the machine.
A few minutes later he headed quietly upstairs, looking in on his kids. Mandy was asleep; a book she’d been reading was still lying across her chest. He closed the book, put it away and turned off the lamp on her nightstand before slipping into bed. Finn mentally crossed Carter Gray off his list and moved on to the next name.
He looked down at his hands. Even though he’d worn gloves they were slightly singed from putting out the fire on the man. He’d put ice on them and then some salve in the kitchen before coming upstairs. “Don’t do that again, Harry,” he whispered to himself, but still causing his wife to moan and roll a bit in her sleep. He put a hand on her head and started rubbing her hair. His reddened hand and his wife’s beautiful blonde hair; the odd pairing suddenly made Finn want to run as fast as he