The Collectors

As he worked, he was listening to the news on a portable radio he’d set on the ground beside him. The news anchor had just launched into a story about the overseas deaths of four State Department liaisons in Iraq, India and Pakistan in separate incidents.

State Department liaisons? Stone knew what that meant. U.S. intelligence operatives had gotten their cover blown and been murdered. The official spin would hide that fact from the public; it always did. Yet Stone prided himself on keeping on top of current geopolitical events. As part of his salary the church that employed him provided three daily newspapers. He cut out many articles and pasted them in his journals. At the same time, he used his experience to discern the truth behind the spin.

His ringing cell phone disturbed these thoughts. He answered, listened briefly and asked no questions. Then he started to run. His friend and fellow Camel Club member Caleb Shaw was in the hospital, and another man who worked at the Library of Congress lay dead. In his haste Stone forgot to lock the gates as he rushed through them.

The dead would have no doubt understood that the living took priority.

CHAPTER 7

CALEB SHAW LAY IN A HOSPITAL bed slowly shaking his head. Around him were the other members of the Camel Club. Reuben Rhodes was nearly sixty years old, over six foot four with the build of a football lineman. He had curly black hair that touched his shoulders and brooding eyes and an unkempt beard that made him appear quite mad at times; which, on occasion, was nearer the truth than not. Milton Farb was five-eleven and thin with longish hair and a cherubic, unlined face that made him look much younger than his forty-nine years.

Reuben was a much-decorated Vietnam War vet and former Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who currently worked at a loading dock after his military career had been derailed by booze, pills and his outrage over the war that he’d indiscreetly vented. He dried out with the help of Oliver Stone, who’d happened upon him at Arlington National Cemetery where Reuben had been unceremoniously lying stoned under a maple tree.

Milton had been a child prodigy of boundless intellectual ability. His parents had worked in a traveling carnival where their son’s mental prowess was exploited in a freak show atmosphere. Despite that, he had gone to college and been employed at the National Institutes of Health. However, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and other destructive mental ailments, his world had eventually come crashing down around him. He became destitute and fell into such debilitated mental shape that a court ordered him institutionalized.

Again Oliver Stone came to the rescue. He’d worked as an orderly at the psychiatric hospital where Milton had been a patient. Recognizing the man’s remarkable abilities, which included a pure photographic memory, Stone managed to get a sedated Milton on Jeopardy! where he defeated all comers and earned a small fortune. Years of dedicated counseling and drug therapies had allowed him to live quite normally. He now had a lucrative business designing Web sites for corporations.

Stone leaned his six-foot-two-inch body against a wall, his arms crossed in front of him as he looked down at his friend in the bed.

Possessing twin doctorates in political science and eighteenth-century literature, Caleb Shaw had worked at the Library of Congress’ Rare Books reading room for over a decade. Unmarried and childless, the library, aside from his friends, constituted the passion of his life.

Caleb had run into some hard times as well. He’d lost an older brother in Vietnam, and his parents had died tragically in a plane crash over fifteen years ago. Stone had met Caleb at the depths of his despair, when the librarian had seemingly lost his desire to keep going. Stone befriended him, introduced him to a bookstore owner in desperate need of help, and Caleb was gradually drawn out of his depression by his love of books. I seem to collect hopeless cases, Stone thought to himself. Though I used to be one myself. Indeed, Stone owed as much to his friends as they did to him, if not more. But for Caleb, Reuben and Milton, Stone knew, he wouldn’t have survived either. After years of performing only destructive acts, Stone had spent the last thirty years of his life seeking a measure of personal redemption. By his count, he still had a long way to go.

Stone’s musings were interrupted by the entrance of Alex Ford, a veteran Secret Service agent who’d played an instrumental role in helping the Camel Club in the past and been named an honorary member of the club for his heroics.

Ford stayed for half an hour and was relieved to find that Caleb would be okay.

He said, “Take care of yourself, Caleb. And call me if you need anything.”

“How are things at WFO?” Stone asked him, referring to the Service’s Washington Field Office.

“Way too busy. The criminal elements have kicked it into overdrive.”

“Well, I hope you’ve recovered fully from our little adventure.”

“I don’t call a potential global apocalypse a little adventure. And I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover.”

After Alex Ford had left, Caleb turned to the others. “It was truly horrible,” he said. “There he was just lying on the floor.”

“And you fainted?” Stone asked, his gaze fixed on his friend.

“I must have. I remember turning the corner, looking for my sweater, and there he was. God, I almost stumbled over him. I saw his eyes. My mind went blank. My chest tightened. I felt so cold. I thought I was having a heart attack. And then I just passed out.”

Reuben put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “A lot of people would’ve fainted.”

Milton piped in, “The National Psychiatric Foundation reports that finding a dead body ranks as the second most traumatic event a human being can experience.”

Reuben raised his eyebrows at this comment. He said, “What’s the number one traumatic experience? Finding your spouse in bed with a monkey holding a can of expired Cheez Whiz?”

“Did you know DeHaven well?” Stone asked Caleb.

“Yes. It’s tragic, really. He was in excellent shape. He’d just had a complete cardio workup at Hopkins. But I guess anyone can have a heart attack.”

“Is that what it was, a heart attack?” Stone said.