The Collectors

wanted to know how much, how much. Greedy bastards all of them.” She paused again, seeming to search for the words, though she’d practiced them for a long time. “You’re the first one to ever do something for me. And I appreciate it. More than you’ll ever know.” This was probably the first true statement she’d uttered in Bagger’s presence.

They looked at each other, and then Annabelle slowly put her arms out and braced herself. He immediately crushed his body against hers. She almost gagged on his heavy cologne. His strong hands quickly found their way under her skirt, and she let them stay there, enduring his brutish groping in silence. She so wanted to slam a knee into his crotch. Hold on, Annabelle, you can do this. You have to do this.

“Oh, baby,” Bagger moaned into her ear. “Come on, let’s do it. One time before you hit the road. Right here on the couch. I’m dying here. Dying.”

“Trust me, I can feel it against my leg, Jerry,” she said as she managed finally to pry herself away from him. Annabelle adjusted her underwear and pulled her skirt back down. “Okay, stud, I can see I’m not going to be able to resist you much longer. Tell me, you ever been to Rome?”

He looked puzzled. “No. Why?”

“I rent a villa there every year when I go on my rare vacation time. I’ll call you with all the details. And two weeks from today I’ll meet you there.”

“Why two weeks, why not now?”

“That’ll give me time to report in to my new assignment, and maybe use the forty-mil run to leverage something better than Portland.”

“But my offer to come back stands. And I can be pretty damn persuasive.”

She ran a finger slowly over his mouth. “Show me how persuasive you are in Rome, baby.”

The $40-million wire left the Pompeii Casino two hours later. The e-mail that Tony had first sent to the Pompeii’s operations center had a special component to it: ultrasophisticated spyware that had allowed Tony, from a remote location, to take control of the Pompeii’s computer system. With that secret access he had written new code into their money-wiring program.

The three other wires had gone to El Banco, but when they’d sent the $40 million out, it had instead been automatically rerouted to another foreign bank and into an account controlled by Annabelle Conroy. While it would look to Bagger’s people that the money had reached El Banco—a phony electronic receipt would be automatically sent to the Pompeii—not a dime of it would ever come back to him. Annabelle’s scheme had been mainly for one purpose: to get the spyware on Bagger’s computer system. With that done, she was golden. And then she had played her part and let Bagger’s greed and lust bury the man, because the best way to con a mark was to let the mark suggest the con.

Four days from today to the minute, Bagger would grow a little nervous when his money didn’t show up. An hour later he would be getting a sick feeling in his gut. An hour after that he would become homicidal. And Annabelle and her crew would be long gone with over 41 million tax-free dollars to keep them company.

Annabelle Conroy could buy her boat and sail the rest of her life away, leaving the endless cons behind. Yet it was still not enough punishment, she thought as she left Bagger’s office to pack her suitcase. First, though, she was going to take a shower to get the man’s grime off her.

As Annabelle was bathing, she thought again that the money loss was clearly not enough pain for the man who’d murdered her mother over ten thousand bucks that Paddy Conroy had duped Bagger out of. There was never enough pain for that. Yet even Annabelle had to admit, $40 million was a nice start.

CHAPTER 25

ROGER SEAGRAVES HAD DISCOVered where Stone lived and had sent men to the cottage when it was empty. They’d searched the cottage thoroughly, leaving no sign that they had been there. And most important, they had left with Stone’s fingerprints, taken from a glass and a second off the kitchen countertop.

Seagraves had run the fingerprints through the CIA’s general database, finding nothing. Using a password he’d stolen from a fellow employee, he tried a highly restricted database. Access was granted, and he placed the print in the hopper. A minute later this led him to Subdirectory 666, one that he was certainly well acquainted with, although his search request for Stone’s prints came back with “access denied.” Seagraves was familiar with Subdirectory 666 because it was where his own personnel history was kept, or at least the sort of “personnel” he used to be. He had often laughed at the “666” label, thinking it rather cheeky, though accurate nonetheless.

Seagraves exited the computer system and pondered this development. Stone had worked for the CIA, judging from his age, a long time ago. He had probably been an “eliminator” because the Triple Six classification was never given to those who pushed a pencil or pressed computer keys for the Agency. At present, Seagraves didn’t quite know how to take this discovery. He’d since learned that Stone’s librarian friend had been given the task of selling DeHaven’s book collection. Unfortunately, his men’s pursuit of Stone had raised the man’s suspicions. And a Triple Six man was born with inherent paranoia; that was just one of the many qualifications for the job.

Should I kill him now? Or would that dig the hole even deeper? Seagraves eventually decided to forgo that lethal step. He would always have that option later. Hell, I’ll do it myself. One Triple Six to another. Young versus old, and young always won that battle. You get to live, Oliver Stone. For now.

But he would have to do something about the man. And there was no time like the present.

Two days after their last visit to DeHaven’s house Stone and Reuben rode on the latter’s motorcycle to a rare book shop in Old Town Alexandria. The name of the shop was in Latin, and translated meant “Book of Four Sentences.” Caleb had an ownership share in the place, which had once been named Doug’s Books, until Caleb’s brilliant idea to go completely upscale in the very affluent area. Stone was not here because he wanted to look at more old books. He kept some items at the shop that he needed to consult.

The owner of the shop, the aforementioned Doug, who now went by the more formal “Douglas,” allowed Stone unfettered access to his hiding place. This was so because Douglas was terrified of Oliver Stone, a man who’d been described to him by Caleb (at Stone’s prompting) as a homicidal maniac walking free solely on a legal technicality.

Stone’s secret room was in the basement behind a false wall that was opened by pulling a wire hanging in an adjacent fireplace. A former priest’s hole in the ancient building, it now contained many items from Stone’s past life, plus a collection of his journals filled with cuttings from newspapers and magazines.