Divine Justice (11 page)
M
ACKLIN
H
AYES
did not seem particularly pleased. He and Knox were sitting in front of a fire in the library of a luxurious late-nineteenth-century brownstone in the heart of D.C. that Hayes had access to 24/7. Spy kings, it seemed, had gold-plated perks.
“So you’ve run around interviewing all the usual suspects today and have
no
progress to show for it.”
“I’m not just going through the motions, General. I did my little dog-and-pony show with all of them except for the Reuben Rhodes character, and I’ll catch up to him at some point. They’re all lying. They all know more than they’ll admit. That’s progress right there as far as I’m concerned. At some point they’ll make a slip and then we move in.”
“I seriously doubt the man left them a copy of his travel itinerary.”
“I doubt that too, but Carr is a loyal guy. If we can nail his friends on something, put them at risk for prison time, then that may flush him out.”
“Meaning he’ll come running back here to save his friends? You really believe that will happen, Knox?”
“I’ve studied the man, gone over his career, talked to his friends. Yeah, I think that might happen. And what’s the downside if it doesn’t work?”
Hayes finished off his glass of wine and stared into the fire. “Let me speak frankly, Knox. Hopefully it will be instructive and won’t bore you too much.”
“I doubt anything you have to say would bore me, sir. And you know I’m a sucker for
truthful
information.”
Hayes ignored the barb. “Carr is a killer, clearly. He was at the Capitol Visitor Center that night. We know he murdered Gray and Simpson. That part is simple, the rest is not.”
“And do I finally get to hear the rest?”
Hayes rose and poured himself another glass, this time of scotch, and sipped it while standing in front of the fire. Gazing at this tall patrician figure dressed in a three-piece suit with his beautiful snowy hair, square jaw and twinkling eyes and holding his cut-crystal snifter made Knox fantasize he was in a Hollywood spy film.
Let’s see, how does that story go again? Oh, yeah, bright, refined, patriotic people recruited from Ivy League schools doing their noble best to keep their country safe while nattily attired in their Brooks Brothers suits, bedding all the beautiful women, sucking thoughtfully on their sweet-smelling pipes and remaining high above the riff and the raff. Like me. And John Carr. The riff and the raff.
Knox had quickly found that that notion was indeed a fantasy. Intelligence was a nasty, dirty business and necessitated each side to get as filthy as the other. The only rule was there never had been any rules at all. No, actually he was wrong. There was one rule. People like Macklin Hayes did remain above it all. Untouchable. And yet that rule was not absolute. Look at Carter Gray. John Carr had pulled him right down into the trench shit with him.
You go, John.
Hayes said, “Unfortunately, Carr is also probably in possession of certain information, perhaps even proofs of actions taken by this country at sensitive times, that might, in unforgiving hindsight, mind you, place us in an awkward situation. I’m sure Gray was aware of that as well. I believe he attempted to get to Carr, but as we know, Carr got him first.”
“So in other words he has the goods on us so this is not a case for the law courts?”
Hayes smiled. “I’ve always loved your perspicacity, Knox. Saves so much time.”
“I’m not a hired killer, sir. You ordered me to find him. I will do my best to do so. But that’s it.”
“And that’s all you need do. Others will take over from there.”
“If Carr is as smart as I think he is, he knows all this. He might have devised a way that his violent death will trigger the very disclosure you don’t want. A packet of information to the
New York Times
perhaps in the event a bullet slams into his brain?”
“Find him, Knox, and I believe we can persuade him that such action would not be advisable.”
“What leverage would you have over him at that point?”
“As you said, he’s a very loyal man.”
Knox considered this for a moment. “So his friends are his Achilles’ heel? Only in your version instead of coming back and going to jail he takes the bullet, he falls on the sword
silently
so his friends can what, live?”
“That’s certainly one scenario.”
“One or the
only
one?”
“Just find him, Knox, that’s all you have to do. Any leads of interest?”
“The
friends
have given me squat, and if we have to do this outside the law now it comes back to following the physical evidence as far as it takes me.”
“Back out to the crime scenes then?”
“Yes.”
“Time is not on our side.”
“It never is. This information would have been helpful earlier, sir, in all candor.”
“I’m sure it would have. But there you are.”
“So I’m competing with the cops on this one too? What if they get there first?”
“We’ve taken certain actions that will preclude that from happening.”
“And if some detective gets lucky?”
“That’s highly doubtful because they know nothing of John Carr or his ties to Gray and Simpson. So you have a tremendous advantage there. But if the police get to him first, we will make sure that he will disappear from their custody. National security trumps all, Knox.”
“Of course. Can I inquire as to what the chain of command is on this, sir?”
“You report to me, no one else,” he said sharply.
“No, I mean who do
you
report to, General?”
Hayes finished off his drink and carefully put the glass down on an antique side table. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Good luck. Regular reports.”
“Absolutely,” Knox said, with more edge to his voice than he would have liked. One could push Macklin Hayes only so far, but Knox was getting sorely tempted to push as hard as possible. Like off a cliff.
“One more thing. John Carr is probably the best assassin this country has ever produced. The fact that he was able to single-handedly kill a dozen of our best paramilitary field agents thirty years after he left Triple Six speaks volumes. God, he must have been something else indeed in his prime. What an honor to have commanded such a killing machine. Gray was lucky in that regard. The meteoric rise of his career was tied, in no small way, to Carr’s ability to hit the bull’s-eye time after time.”
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“Just want you to understand the playing field. We need him alive, Knox. We need to know what he has before the sword falls. Never forget that. There may need to be sacrifices, of course.”
As Hayes left the room Knox did indeed understand the playing field. They clearly needed Carr alive.
Sacrifices?
But they didn’t necessarily need Joe Knox still breathing when the dust settled, did they?
Knox left the brownstone, climbed back in his Rover, and drove off in pursuit of apparently the greatest assassin his country had ever produced, while a cagey former general who had no problem allowing his foot soldiers to die to achieve his goals was crowding his rear flank.
Whoopie.
V
ERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
Knox started with the caretaker’s cottage at Mt. Zion Cemetery. He went over every square inch of it, pulling up loose floorboards, emptying every drawer, checking inside the fireplace, and poring over the books Stone kept there, many in different languages.
“If the guy can speak all these languages, he might have already left the country,” Knox told himself. Other than that, the cottage was a bust. The guy had obviously cleaned it out before fleeing. He next set about searching the cemetery. Here he was a bit more fortunate, though it ultimately turned out to be nothing. His sharp eye discerned that one tombstone had been recently moved. He yanked it over and found the small compartment carved in the earth. Whatever had been there, though, was now gone.
The “dirt” Macklin Hayes had hinted at?
Two hours later found him standing in the rear grounds of Carter Gray’s former home. Knox had decided not to go by Simpson’s murder scene. The vacant construction site had not given up any clues on the first go-round and he’d wisely decided that it was probably not going to give up any simply because he went back.
He stared out at the bay. Stone had told the FBI agents that the person who’d blown up Gray’s house might have escaped by jumping off the cliff. He walked to the edge and peered down. Hell of a long dive, but probably easy for someone like Oliver Stone/John Carr.
Okay, he tosses his rifle into the water and jumps. Then where did he go?
He did not for a second believe that Stone had committed suicide. One did not plan hits so meticulously to merely end it all with a plunge off a cliff. He had lived. Knox was sure of that.
Carrying a knapsack over his shoulder, Knox walked along the cliff’s edge, following on land what might have been Stone’s journey in the water. He passed through woods, open fields, and then more woods, all the while keeping his eye on the shore below. Finally, he stopped. There was a bit of a beach down there. Stone had shot Gray before seven a.m. Knox had checked the tide charts. That time of morning would largely mirror the tide he was looking at right now. He eyed the boulders, then spotted the cleft in the rock, the trail coming up. He followed it to where it reached the top of the cliff. There was a path there. He took it. A half hour later he came to the series of shacks.
“Can I help you?”
Knox looked over at the short, squat man in the Green Bay Packers knit cap and greasy coat who was staring at him from beside an ancient tractor with one wheel off.
Knox approached. “I was over at Carter Gray’s house.” He held up his creds. “I’m Agent Knox.”
“Good for you. They call me Leroy because that’s my name. Gray, huh? The important fellow what got himself shot?”
“That’s right. I take it someone’s been by to see you.”
“Hell, yeah. But like I told them, I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’.”
“You live here by yourself?”
“That’s right, ever since my Lottie went to meet her Lord four years ago.”
“Sorry to hear that. Nobody to help you around here? What is it that you do, by the way?”
“Anything I can to make a little money. Had me a helper but he went on.”
“When was that?”
“Same day that man got shot.”
Knox looked anxious but Leroy held up his hand. “Don’t get yourself excited. He was here when them FBI folks come by. You can ask them. He’s old, bum leg, bad eyes and feller couldn’t even talk, just grunted.”
“Tall, short? Fat, thin?”
“Skinny, though with the bad leg it was hard to tell how tall he was. Lot taller’n me, that’s for sure. Big beard and thick glasses.”
“Why’d he leave?”
“Who the hell knows? Been with me about four months. Then he just went moving on. It’s not like I had him locked into no million-dollar long-term contract.” Leroy laughed and shot a glob of spit at the ground.
Knox looked around. “Did he stay in one of those buildings?”
Leroy nodded and pointed at the one closest to the path.
“Mind if I take a look through it?”
“What agency you with again?”
“Federal.”
“I know that. But which one?”
Knox held up his “public” creds close to the man’s face. “
That
one.”
Leroy took a step back. “Go on ahead then.”
Knox inwardly smiled. That was at least one perk you got doing what he did. There weren’t many others.
The search of the shack turned up only one significant fact. There wasn’t a single fingerprint in the place and Knox had brought equipment with him that would show if there were. That alone told Knox that he was probably on the right track. Most people, including gimp-legged, nearly blind mutes, were not known to be so meticulous about wiping away such identifiers.
He left the shack and found Leroy puttering around.
Knox said, “I’m going to have an artist come up here and he’s going to do a composite drawing based on your description of the guy.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.”
T
HE DINNER WAS DELICIOUS,
mostly fried and filling. Abby had cooked it herself and Stone had helped her serve it. It was only the two of them. He’d taken a shower in an upstairs bathroom decorated like something out of a design magazine. The coal company must’ve really paid through the nose.
“So you’re a fan of Shakespeare?” Stone said.
“I read his plays in high school. I could never relate to them before.”
“And now you can?”
“Maybe. He’s got all of what life has to offer, especially the negatives, but I’ve lived the real thing too much to be impressed anymore by a fiction of it.”
Danny came in halfway through the meal, took one look at Stone and his mother in the dining room with their linen napkins and fancy plates, and turned back around without a word. Then a door slammed. Loudly.
Stone glanced after him and then turned back to Abby. “I’m sure he keeps you busy.”
“That’s one way of putting it. You have children?”
“I did. She’s not alive anymore.”
“Sorry to hear that. Danny’s used up about seven of his nine lives and I feel like he took mine right along with his.”
“Were you against him going away? You said you cried a lot.”
“What mother wouldn’t with her only child saying good-bye?”
“Then you’re glad he’s back?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Besides, it’s more likely than not that he’ll be gone again before too many more suns come up. Won’t break my heart again, at least I keep telling myself that.”
“Has he left before?”
“Talked about it a lot, but never pulled the trigger. I guess I’d made up my mind it always would be talk. Then he threw me a curve.” Her voice shook a little as she said this last part.
“Any particular reason he decided to do it this time?”
“It’s hard to tell why Danny does anything. Bullheaded, just like his father.”