He said, “I didn’t think busy lawyers in private practice had time to cook for themselves, much less anybody else.”
“Reserve your judgment until after you’ve eaten it. I don’t watch the Food Network and I don’t hold myself out as any sort of cook. But the intent was honorable.”
Melanie had taken more after Knox’s deceased wife, Patty, than she had her father. She was tall and lithe with reddish hair that she usually wore pulled back. She was a graduate of UVA Law School and a rapidly rising young star at a D.C. powerhouse legal firm. The older of his two children—his son, Kenny, was currently in Iraq with his fellow Marines—Melanie had taken it on herself to make sure her father did not starve or wallow in pity over the recent death of her mother and his wife of thirty years.
The meal was eaten in the sunroom where they shared a bottle of Amarone and Melanie filled him in on the latest case she was handling. Over the years his children had quickly learned that their father never discussed his work with them, or anyone else. They knew he traveled the world, often on very little notice, and was gone for long periods of time. This was explained as him serving his country in a minor capacity with the State Department.
He had once told Melanie, “I’m unimportant enough to where they can call on me whenever they like, and I just go.”
That line had worked all the way through middle school. But once his precocious daughter had reached high school Knox could tell she no longer believed it, though she never tried to uncover the truth. His son had just accepted his father disappearing from time to time as the way life was. Now, as a Marine lance corporal serving overseas and trying to stay alive day by day, Kenny Knox had more on his mind, his father hoped, than worrying about what his old man did for a living.
“When you called to cancel,” Melanie began, “I was sure you’d be on a plane somewhere. I got the idea of cooking dinner when you said you’d be back home tonight.”
Knox simply nodded at this, while he sipped his wine and stared out at the trees in his backyard as they were whipsawed by yet another approaching storm.
“So everything going okay at work?” she asked tentatively.
“Just looking over some old papers. Not that enlightening actually.”
It was hard, he knew, for her. Most kids knew exactly what their parents did for a living and consequently could have cared less. While his children were growing up Knox had declined all invitations to parents’ career day at school. After all, what would he have said?
“Given any more thought to retiring?”
“I pretty much already am. One foot in the professional grave.”
“I’m surprised the State Department can function without you.”
Father and daughter exchanged a brief glance and then each looked away, focused on their wine and last bites of roast beef and potatoes.
As she was leaving Melanie let her hug linger around her father’s broad shoulders. She whispered in his ear, “Take care of yourself, Dad. Don’t push the envelope too hard. Dangerous times out there.”
He watched her walk to the cab she’d called to take her home to her condo in D.C. As it drove way, she waved to him.
He waved back, fleeting images of the last thirty years racing through his mind and ending with the image of Macklin Hayes telling him to tread carefully.
His brilliant daughter was right. It was dangerous times out there.
He would call Hayes in the morning. Early. The general was on rooster time. And like the rooster, he believed the sun rose because he did too. He had no answers and many questions. How the general would react to that he didn’t know. In the military Macklin had the rep of always getting the job done, by any means possible, which often included excessive losses. After becoming a battalion commander in Vietnam, Hayes still held the record, Knox believed, of having the highest casualty count of any field officer in the war. Yet because those losses often came with victories, at least victories measured in the taking of small hills or even yards of turf, sometimes only for hours, Hayes had swiftly moved up the command chain. Still, Knox did not intend on becoming one of the man’s statistics on his way to yet another triumph. The best he could hope for was to thread his way through the minefield, keeping his eye firmly on the target and watching his back at the same time. Macklin was a superb infighter, connected in all the right ways, and a man who excelled at putting other people’s necks at risk while protecting his own flanks with skillful dexterity. Competitive past all reason, he reportedly thrashed men half his age in racquetball at the Pentagon’s courts. What he lacked in speed, quickness and stamina he more than made up for with sheer guile and peerless vision.
His exact title in America’s intelligence empire was unknown to Knox. The man performed a curious—and as far as Knox was aware an unprecedented—straddle between military- and civilian-sector intelligence factions. It was a powerful position and anyone under his control had to play by his rules or risk the consequences. He had been a close friend and protégé of Carter Gray, and no one could have had a better mentor. Knox would do his best to gauge the general’s true intentions and then hope to fulfill them. Any way one looked at the task it was a formidable challenge.
He closed the door, stoked up the fireplace and picked up his novel with the intent of finishing it tonight. He might not get another chance for a very long time. When the wheels started to spin in his profession, they tended to spin very fast.
And from what Knox had seen in that box of secrets tonight, this time things could easily spin right out of control.
CHAPTER 10
KNOX WATCHED the earth disappear from underneath him as the tri-engine Falcon Dassault jet shot skyward with enormous thrust. The luxurious, wood-paneled interior of the plane only held three occupants, other than the two pilots up front—Knox, Macklin Hayes and a uniformed steward who’d discreetly disappeared as soon as the plane leveled off and the coffee and continental breakfast was served. When Knox had called Macklin at seven a.m. he’d been told to report to a private airstrip near Front Royal, Virginia, that he had no idea even existed. Five minutes after he’d pulled up in his Rover, the plane had lifted from the tarmac.
Hayes had an office in some building in some undisclosed part of Washington, Knox knew, but the man obviously preferred conducting his meetings at thirty-five thousand feet, as though the altitude made for better decision-making, or at least fewer opportunities to be spied on. Knox knew that just the fuel burn for this flight would have paid for some really nice digs in the heart of D.C. Yet it should have come as no surprise that some high-up government folks treated the U.S. Treasury as though it would never run out of dollars. At least it kept gainfully employed the feds who sold T-bills to the Chinese and the Saudis to keep America running.
The former general was dressed in civilian government standard issue, namely a boring suit and an equally boring tie and black wingtips on the feet. His socks were too short, Knox noted, and revealed pale ankles and the bottom of a hairless calf. The man had definitely not scaled the walls of power based on his fashion sense. He’d done it, Knox was well aware, on nerve and brains. The only sign of his former illustrious military career were the three stars on his tie clip.
They made casual conversation while munching an overabundance of carbs, and then the white-haired Hayes took a final sip of coffee and sat back in his leather seat looking expectant.
“Impressions from your reading session?”
“Many. None of them crystallized. I have to say the record is about as garbled as any I’ve seen. There’re enough holes to fly a jet five times the size of this one right through it without even nicking a wingtip.”
Hayes nodded approvingly. “I had the same initial reaction.”
Knox didn’t bother asking about the significance of the emphasized word because he knew from past dealings with Macklin that he would get zip for his troubles. “And I have to say I’m still not clear on the agenda. Where do you want this to go?”
Hayes spread his
long, bony arms. “Where? To the truth. I suppose.”
“You don’t sound convinced of that,” Knox said warily.
“But that could change, depending on what you find out. You know how this drill works, Knox.”
“Gray and Simpson are dead. Do we let sleeping dogs lie?”
“We need to know. What we do after we know? Now that’s another question entirely and one that does not involve you.”
The man has always been subtle about putting subordinates in their place.
“So I go full-bore on this? Is that what you’re telling me, sir?”
Hayes simply nodded. It struck Knox that the former general might have suspected Knox was somehow taping this conversation.
If only I had the balls to.
Knox decided not to press the man on actually verbalizing his answer. For all he knew there was government muscle hidden on the jet somewhere who might be summoned to relieve him of his ride at nearly eight miles up if he pushed Macklin too far. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But Knox didn’t want to find out.
“Tell me how you’ll proceed.”
“I’ve got some leads I can follow up. I take it DCI is off-limits,” he said, referring to the director of Central Intelligence.
“I doubt he’d be much good to you anyway. Intelligence begins at home and his house is unfortunately empty.”
Okay, he definitely knows I’m not taping this.
“Then the FBI agents who investigated the bombing at Gray’s house. The Secret Service agent Ford. What about Triple Six?”
“What about it? Officially it never existed.”
Knox had tired of the word games. Even his natural deference to the man had its limits. “There were subtle references in the papers intimating that somebody was popping retirees from the division and that Gray was aware of it.”
“You can run that down if you want, but a dead end is what you’ll find.”
“How about the unauthorized Soviet op from decades ago?”
“History not worth repeating or dredging up. None of us would look good.”
“You’re not making this easy, General.”
A smile eased across Hayes’ face. “If it were easy why would we call you in, Knox?”
“I’m not a magician. I can’t make things just appear or disappear.”
“We have the disappearing end quite well covered. All we need to find is what we need to make vanish. How about the man Gray met with on the night his home blew up?”
“The famous film director, Oliver Stone?” Knox could not hold back his smile.
“He used to have a little tent in Lafayette Park. Was there longer than anyone else. I believe his sign read, ‘I want the truth.’”
“Looking for the truth right across from the White House? Sort of like hunting for Nazis in a synagogue. You consider him important?”
“The fact that he is no longer where he used to be, yes, I consider him important.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“Not nearly enough. That’s also why I consider him somewhat important.”
“The grave being dug up at Arlington?”
“I was actually in the office on the day Carter Gray ordered that.”
“Did he say why he wanted it done?”
“He was always better at giving orders than explaining them.”
“So who was in the coffin? John Carr? Another body?”
“Neither. In fact there was nothing in the coffin.”
“So Carr might still be alive?”
“He might.”
“Was he a Triple Six? I read part of his military record. He would’ve fit the bill.”
“Take that as your working hypothesis.”
“So that would be the connection to Gray. Do you have reason to believe that Carr and Stone are one and the same?”
“I have no reason to believe that they’re not.”
“So why would Carr kill Gray and possibly Simpson?”
“Not all Triple Six personnel ended their deployment there on good terms. Carr may have been one such.”
“If so, he waited a long time to pull the trigger. And he had just been to Gray’s house. Did he have anything to do with blowing it up?”
“We don’t think so.”
“He could’ve killed Gray when he met with him.”
“Maybe he didn’t have the motivation then.”
“So what changed?”
“That’s for you to find out, Knox. There was the flag and grave marker. A clear sign, I think, that it’s connected to this John Carr and his grave being dug up.”
Knox marveled at how Hayes had gone from knowing very little and letting him find his own way in the investigation to, in a few short moments, shepherding him down the path he wanted. “I don’t disagree. The man just seemed to have done it ass-backwards.”
“Maybe he had his reasons. Regular reports, usual channels. But check back in with me tonight. If you need support, don’t hesitate. We’ll do what we can. Within limits, of course. As I said, not everyone is on the same page over this. Nothing I can do about that. Consensus in intelligence circles these days is as elusive as sectarian peace in Iraq.”
That’s reassuring. The right hand tells me to charge ahead while the left hand uses a knife to slit my throat.
Macklin pressed a button on the armrest of his seat and Knox felt the plane begin a tight bank to the right. Apparently, the flight and discussion were over.
To bolster that deduction Macklin rose without a word and made his way down the aisle to a door at the back of the plane. It clicked shut behind him.
Knox watched the clouds pass by as the plane began its descent through the Virginia sky. A half hour later he was tearing east on Interstate 66 in his Rover.
He would begin with Alex Ford and work his way through the usual suspects. But from what Hayes was both saying and leaving unarticulated, it seemed that all roads might lead right to a man named Oliver Stone.
If Stone had been a Triple Six and was good enough to take out both Simpson and Gray all these years later, Knox wasn’t sure he wanted to run into the gent. Yet those sorts of encounters just came with the territory. And Knox was still standing.
But so, apparently, was Oliver Stone.
Dangerous times indeed.
Retirement was looking better and better. If only he could survive that long.
CHAPTER 11
GREYHOUND DIDN’T TRAVEL to the vicinity of Divine, Virginia. Yet a rusting bus on wobbly wheels with the name “Larry’s Tours” crudely hand-stenciled on the side did. Stone and Danny sat in the back, next to a man who had a chicken in a crate on which he was resting his bare, swollen feet, and a woman who gave Stone far more attention than he would have liked, which included telling him her life story, all seventy-odd years of it. Fortunately, she got off before they did and was picked up by a man driving an ancient station wagon that was missing two of its doors.
They were finally let out at what Stone could only describe as the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It made the one-horse stop Amtrak had dropped them at resemble a glittery metropolis on full throttle.
“Now what?” said Stone, shouldering his duffel while Danny clutched his small suitcase.
“Now we walk and thumb. Maybe we get lucky, maybe we don’t.”
Though it was not yet two in the morning they did get lucky and rode into Divine in the back of a pickup truck, with what the driver told them was a prizewinning hog named Luther who kept pushing his pink snout in Stone’s crotch.
In the distance Stone saw the silhouette of some massive facility. Narrow towers and three-story buildings rose into the dark sky. In the weak moonlight something glinted along the perimeter of the place.
“What’s that?” he said, pointing.
“Some place you never want to end up. Dead Rock. Supermax prison.”
“Why do they call it Dead Rock?”
“It’s built on the site of an old coal mine where about thirty years
ago twenty-eight miners lost their lives in a cave-in. Their bodies are still in there somewhere ’cause they could never get to them. So they just sealed it up. They send the scum of the scum to Dead Rock. Least that’s the official story. Hell on earth.”
“You know somebody in that place?”
Danny looked away without answering.
Stone continued to stare at the complex until they rounded a curve and it disappeared from his view. He realized that the glint he’d seen must’ve come from the moonlight bouncing off the slash-your-ass wire that surrounded the place.
After the truck dropped them off their transportation became their own feet. Divine was still mostly dark at this hour, but Stone could see lights here and there as they trudged down the street. A truck passed them going east. And then another followed. And then another. Stone saw eight in all. Through the dirty truck windows Stone spied lean silhouettes of the drivers as they hunched over their steering wheels, cigarettes dangling between fingers, the windows cracked to let the white cancer-causing vapor escape into the frosty air. All around him he could sense the shadows of the nearby mountains, darker even than the night.