The Collectors by David Baldacci
“Yes, it is,” Caleb said stiffly. He looked at Mrs. Behan.
“Oh,” Behan said. “My wife, Marilyn. This is, uh . . .”
“Caleb Shaw. I worked at the library with Jonathan.”
He introduced the other Camel Club members to her.
Behan glanced at the church where the pallbearers were bringing the casket out. “Who’d have thought? He looked so healthy.”
“Many people do, right before they die,” Stone said absently. His gaze was on the woman he had spotted earlier. She had put on a black hat and sunglasses and was dressed in a long black skirt and boots. Tall and lean, she cut quite a figure amid all the grief.
Behan looked searchingly at Stone and tried to follow his gaze, but Stone broke it off before the man could do so. “I suppose they’re sure about his cause of death,” Behan said. He added quickly, “I mean, they tend to get these things wrong sometimes.”
Stone spoke up. “I suppose if they have, we’ll know about it at some point. The media usually ferrets those things out.”
“Yes, the journalists are rather good about that,” Behan said with mild distaste.
“My husband knows a lot about instant death,” Marilyn Behan blurted out. When they all stared at her, she hastily added, “I mean, because of what his company does.”
Behan smiled at Caleb and the others and said, “Excuse us.” He took his wife’s arm firmly and led her away. Had Stone detected a hint of amusement in the lady’s eyes?
Reuben’s gaze trailed after them. “I can only visualize that guy now with a pair of panties flying at half-staff on his dinky. I had to cram my fist in my mouth to stop from ripping a laugh during the service.”
“Nice of him to come today,” Stone said. “I mean, for being such a casual acquaintance.”
“The missus seems a complicated piece of work,” Caleb commented.
“Well, she strikes me as sharp enough to know about her husband’s indiscretions,” Stone said. “I can’t believe there’s much love lost between them.”
“And yet they stay together,” Milton added.
“For love of money, power, social status,” Caleb said in a disgusted tone.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have minded some of that in my marriages,” Reuben shot back. “I had the love, at least for a little while, but none of the other stuff.”
Stone was now eyeing the lady in black. “That woman over there, does she look familiar to you?”
“How can one tell?” Caleb said. “She’s wearing a hat and glasses.”
Stone pulled out the photo. “I think she’s this woman.”
They all crowded around the picture, and then Caleb and Milton stared directly at the woman and took turns pointing.
Stone hissed, “Do you two think you could be a little more obvious?”
The funeral party headed to the cemetery. After the gravesite service was finished, people started heading back to their cars. The lady in black lingered by the raised coffin as two workmen in jeans and blue shirts waited nearby. Stone glanced around and noted that Behan and his wife had already returned to their limo. He scanned the surrounding area looking for folks to whom the administration of water torture might be a daily part of life. And you could spot such people, if you knew how to look for them, which Stone did. However, his surveillance turned up nothing.
He motioned for the others to follow as he walked over to the lady in black. She had placed a hand on the rosewood coffin and seemed to be mumbling something, perhaps a prayer.
They waited until she was done. When she turned toward them, Stone said, “Jonathan was in the prime of life. It’s so sad.”
From behind her glasses she said, “How did you know him?”
Caleb said, “I worked with him at the library. He was my boss. He’ll be very missed.”
The woman nodded. “Yes, he will.”
“And how did you know him?” Stone asked casually.
“It was a long time ago,” she said vaguely.
“Long friendships are becoming rarer these days.”
“Yes, they are. Excuse me.” She stepped past them and started to walk off.
“It’s so curious, the medical examiner couldn’t find a cause of death,” Stone said loud enough for her to hear. The comment had the desired effect. She stopped and turned.
“The newspaper said he died of a heart attack,” the woman said.
Caleb shook his head. “He died because his heart stopped, but he didn’t have a heart attack. The papers just assumed, I guess.”
She took a few steps toward them. “I didn’t get your names.”
“Caleb Shaw. I work in the Rare Books reading room at the Library of Congress. This is my friend—”
Stone put out his hand. “Sam Billings, nice to meet you.” He motioned to the other two Camel Club members. “The big fellow is Reuben and that’s Milton. And you are?”
She ignored Stone and focused on Caleb. “If you work at the library, you must love books as much as Jonathan did.”
Caleb brightened as the subject changed to his specialty. “Oh, absolutely. In fact, in his will Jonathan named me his literary executor. I’m in the process right now of inventorying his collection, having it appraised and then sold, with the proceeds going to charity.”
He stopped talking when he saw Stone motioning him to shut up.
She said, “That certainly sounds like Jonathan. I’m assuming his father and mother are dead?”
“Oh, yes, his father’s been dead for years. His mother passed two years ago. Jonathan inherited their home.”
It seemed to Stone that the woman was working hard not to smile at this last piece of information. What had the lawyer told Caleb? That the marriage had been annulled? Perhaps not by the wife, but by the groom at the insistence of his parents?
She said to Caleb, “It would be nice to see the house. And his collection. I’m sure it’s very extensive by now.”
“You knew about his collection?” Caleb asked.
“Jonathan and I shared a lot of things. I’m not going to be in town very long, so would tonight be okay?”
“As it happens, we were going over there this evening,” Stone answered. “If you’re staying at a hotel, we can pick you up.”
The woman shook her head. “I’ll meet you on Good Fellow Street.” She quickly walked to a waiting cab.
“Do you think it wise to ask this woman to Jonathan’s house?” Milton asked. “We really don’t even know her.”
Stone pulled the photo out of his pocket and held it up. “I think maybe we do. Or at least we will soon enough. On Good Fellow Street,” he added thoughtfully.
CHAPTER 29
AFTER CLOSED-DOOR TESTI-mony was completed before the House Intelligence Committee, Seagraves and Trent had a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and later headed outside to stroll around the Capitol grounds. Since their official duties dictated that they spend a great deal of time together, this would raise no suspicions.
Seagraves paused to unwrap a stick of gum while Trent bent down to tie his shoe.
“So you really think this guy is ex-Agency?” Trent asked.
Seagraves nodded. “Triple Six, you know about that bunch, Albert?”
“Only vaguely. My clearance didn’t go that high. The Agency recruited me for my analytical skills, not my ability in the field. And after ten years of their bullshit I’d had enough.”
Seagraves smiled. “Jumping to the politico side really that much better?”
“It has been for us.”
Seagraves watched as his colleague carefully combed his dozen strands back into place, somehow aligning each one perfectly against its neighbor without benefit of a mirror. “Why don’t you just get a buzz cut?” Seagraves said. “A lot of ladies are into that macho look. And while you’re at it get yourself in decent shape.”
“After we finish our careers I’ll have so much money that whatever foreign country I end up in the ladies there will take me any way I want.”
&nb
“This Triple Six guy might be a complication. We might be talking thunderstorm status.”
Seagraves shook his head. “We do that, things will really heat up. For all I know he’s still got connections. And if I did him, I’d have to do his friends. That’s a lot of room to make a mistake and get the wrong people suspicious. For now he thinks Behan’s the guy. If that changes, then the weather forecast might read differently.”
“Are you really sure that’s a good strategy?”
Seagraves’ features turned a notch darker. “Let’s do a reality check, Trent. While you sat safely behind your little wonk desk in nice, comfortable Washington, I was putting my ass on the line in places you’re too scared to even watch on TV. You keep doing what you do, and let me worry about the strategic planning. Unless you think you can do it better than I can.”
Trent tried to smile, but his fear didn’t allow for it. “I wasn’t questioning you.”
“It sure as hell sounded like it.” He suddenly grinned and clamped an arm around Trent’s narrow shoulders. “No time to fight now, Albert. It’s going way too well. Right?” He squeezed tightly and only released his grip when he felt the pain in the other man’s body. It felt good, to feel another man’s suffering up close like that. “I said, right?”
“Absolutely.” Trent rubbed his shoulders and actually looked like he might start crying.
You must’ve had the crap kicked out of you on the playground every day.
Seagraves changed the subject. “Four State Department liaisons dead. That was some original spin.” He’d actually known one of the murdered men; in fact, he’d served with him. A good agent, but millions of dollars easily trumped any friendship he’d ever had.
Trent said, “You expect the government to be creative? So what’s next on the list?”
Seagraves tossed his cigarette down and glanced at his companion. “You’ll see it when you see it, Albert.” He was actually getting a little tired of his junior partner. That was partially what this little jam session was about, making it clear to Trent that he was and would always be a subordinate. And if things got dicey and it looked like the house of cards might tumble down, Trent would be the first person he’d kill for one simple reason: Mice always break under pressure.
He parted company with the staffer and walked to his car in a restricted area. He waved to the guard there who knew him by sight.
“Keeping my wheels safe?” Seagraves said with a grin.
“Yours and everybody else’s,” the guard said as he chewed on a toothpick. “You keeping the country safe?”
“Doing all I can.” Actually, the next thing Seagraves would pass Trent would be key elements of the NSA’s brand-new strategic surveillance plan for foreign terrorists. The media always assumed the NSA was doing things outside the law. They didn’t know the half of it, and neither did the myopic folk up on Capitol Hill. But some well-heeled haters of America living seven thousand miles away and at least eight centuries in the past were willing to pay millions of dollars to know all about it. And money, man, money always carried the day; screw being a patriot. To Seagraves’ mind, the only thing patriots got were a trifolded flag for their troubles. And the major problem with that was you had to be dead to get one.
Seagraves drove back to his office, finished up a bit of work and headed home, which consisted of a thirty-year-old split-level rancher with three bedrooms and two baths, on a quarter acre of drainage-challenged dirt, that cost him nearly half his salary in mortgage and property taxes. He did a quick but intense workout and then opened the door of a small closet in the basement that he kept locked and protected by an alarm system.
Inside, arranged on the walls and on shelves, were mementos of his earlier career. Among other items was a brown glove trimmed with fur in a glass display box, a button from a coat in a small ring case, a pair of eyeglasses on a plastic holder, a shoe hanging from a peg on the wall, a wristwatch, two ladies’ bracelets, a small, blank notebook with the monogram AFW, a turban on a shelf and a worn copy of the Qur’an under glass, a fur cap and a child’s bib. The bib he felt a little remorse for. Yet when one killed the parents, often the child was sacrificed as well. A car bomb, after all, was indiscriminate in whom it destroyed. Each item was numbered from one to over fifty and held a history known only to him and a few others at the CIA.
Seagraves had gone to great pains and undertaken considerable risk to collect these objects, for that’s what this was, his collection. Whether they realized it or not, everyone was a collector of some sort. A lot of people migrated to the ordinary end of the spectrum, collecting stamps, coins and books. Then there were those who accumulated broken hearts or sexual conquests. And then there were those who found gratification in the accumulation of lost souls. At the far end of the continuum, Roger Seagraves collected personal items from people he’d murdered, or assassinated rather, since he’d done it under the color of serving his country. Not that such a distinction made much difference to the victims; they were still dead, after all.
He had come here tonight to place two new objects in the room: a pen belonging to Robert Bradley and a leather bookmark of Jonathan DeHaven’s. They were given places of honor on a shelf and in a shadow box respectively. He did so, placing a number on each one. He was approaching sixty in total. Years ago he had contemplated reaching a hundred, and he’d gotten off to a strong start, since at that time there were many in the world his country needed dead. Then his last few years on the job the pace had slowed considerably; a spineless administration and even weaker CIA bureaucracy had been the cause. He had long since given up his original goal total. He had instead gone for quality over quantity.
Any sane person being told the history of these items might judge Seagraves to be a psychopath maliciously collecting personal items of murdered people. They would be wrong, he knew. It was actually a measure of respect accorded someone from whom you’d taken the most precious thing they had. If anyone ever succeeded in killing him, Seagraves trusted they’d be a worthy enough foe to afford him the same honor. He locked up his collection and went back upstairs to plan his next move. He had something to get, and with DeHaven dead and buried, now was the time to get it.
Annabelle Conroy sat in a rental car at the corner of Good Fellow Street. It had been many years since she’d been here, and yet the place hadn’t changed all that much. You could still smell the moldy stink of old money, though it was now mingled with the equally foul aroma of new currency. Annabelle, of course, had had neither, a fact that Jonathan DeHaven’s mother, Elizabeth, had been quick to pounce on. No money and no breeding was what she had probably told her son over and over until the saying was ingrained on his very impressionable brain, finally allowing his mother to bully him into an annulment. Annabelle had not contested it, because what would the point have been?
Still, Annabelle held no ill feelings toward her ex. He was a man-child in many ways, erudite, kind, generous and affectionate. Yet he possessed not even a sliver of a backbone and ran from confrontation like the proverbial kid with glasses did from the bully. He had been no match for his omnipotent and acid-tongued mother; yet how many sons were? After the marriage had ended, he wrote Annabelle loving, moving letters, showered her with gifts, told her that he was thinking of her all the time. And she never doubted that he was. Deception was not part of his nature; that had been quite a new concept for her. Opposites apparently did indeed attract.
And yet he had never once asked her to come back. Still, compared to the men she’d known in her life, all of them like her on the wrong side of the good and bad equation, he was the light of pure innocence. He held her hand and was quick to open doors for his “lady.” He talked to her about issues of importance in the world of normal people, a place as alien to her as a distant star. And yet Jonathan had made it less strange, less distant, in the brief time they’d spent together.
Annabelle had to admit she’d changed while with him. Jonathan DeHaven, though
She angrily swiped at a tear that fell far too easily down her cheek. The emotion was unusual and unwelcome. She did not cry anymore. She was not close enough to anyone to weep over death. Not even her mother’s. It was true she’d avenged Tammy Conroy, but the daughter had also made herself rich in the process. Would she have done one without the other? Annabelle couldn’t say for sure. Did it matter? Well, she had nearly 17 million reasons parked in a foreign bank account that said it didn’t.
She watched as a gray Nova rattled up to the curb in front of DeHaven’s house. Four men got out: the oddballs from the cemetery who’d said that Jonathan’s death had no official cause. Well, she’d said her good-byes to Jonathan and would now walk through the house, for once without the wretched eye of Mama DeHaven following every swing of her daughter-in-law’s irreverent hips. And then she would be on a plane out of here. Annabelle didn’t want to be on the same continent when Jerry Bagger discovered he was $40 million poorer and erupted on a greater scale than his fake volcano ever had.
The burn of the lava could easily reach D.C.
She slid out of the car and walked toward the house and a life that could have very well been hers if things had worked out differently.
CHAPTER 30
THEY WERE ALL IN THE BOOK vault after Annabelle had been given a brief tour of the main floor of the house. Caleb didn’t open the small safe behind the painting. He had no intention of letting anyone else see the Psalm Book. After she’d seen the collection, they went back upstairs, where Annabelle walked though the elegant rooms with probably more interest than she cared to show.
“So you’ve been here before?” Stone said.
She looked at him blankly. “I don’t remember saying whether I had or not.”
“Well, you knew Jonathan lived on Good Fellow Street. I just assumed.”
“People shouldn’t assume so much, they’d be better off.” She continued to look around. “The house hasn’t changed much,” she said, indirectly answering his question. “But at least he got rid of some of