He put the phone down and said aloud, “So where are you now, son of Solomon?”
CHAPTER 65
IT WAS MORNING, with a chill in the air. Harry Finn stood by himself, hands in pockets, and stared at it: the empty hole in the ground at Arlington National Cemetery, where John Carr was supposed to be resting, for all eternity. That had been a lie. And why was Finn surprised? The government always lied about the most important things.
Even though he previously believed the man was dead, Finn had researched John Carr’s background. As a Navy SEAL he had done joint intelligence work with the CIA. Using the same skills that he made his living with today, he had slowly unearthed much of the history of his father’s last days, and also the pasts of the men who’d been involved in killing him.
Judd Bingham’s, Bob Cole’s and Lou Cincetti’s histories were pretty much the same. They had worked for the CIA, seemed to relish their duties in fact, until they’d retired to a life of comfort and leisure. Retirements that Finn had abruptly ended.
Only Carr was different. Officially, he had been killed while a member of an army unit, in the type of skirmish that popped up from time to time around the world and to which the United States was morally if not technically required to respond. Before becoming a member of the CIA’s Triple Six Division, John Carr had been one of the most decorated veterans of the Vietnam War, including four Purple Hearts, and none of them for hangnails. There was even talk of his receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military award of all. Every soldier who earned it had instantly attained a place of immortality in the eyes of professional warriors, though many had been awarded the honor posthumously. This had led some to dub it “The medal you’ll never get to see.”
Carr had certainly seemed an ideal man for the military equivalent of an Olympic gold medal. Finn had read the official report with both thrill and horror. Carr had single-handedly saved his ambushed platoon of soldiers in a murderous firefight with a far larger mass of North Vietnamese backed by artillery support. Sergeant John Carr had personally carried four wounded men to safety on his back, repeatedly going back into harm’s way to do so. He had been hit twice by enemy fire and still somehow managed to kill a dozen Viet Cong, three of them in hand- to-hand fighting, while shooting several more out of trees with a marksman’s skill that the report described as nothing short of supernatural.
Finally, manning a machine-gun post, Carr had repelled repeated attacks, survived multiple mortar rounds exploding all around his position and still managed to call in an airstrike that had driven the enemy back, allowing his men to safely retreat. He had walked off the field of battle under his own power despite his uniform being soaked in his blood. Finn could not help feeling a certain level of respect for the man. He had always considered himself to be a soldier of the highest level, but he was thinking that John Carr had perhaps surpassed him on the ability scorecard that all professional military people kept in their heads.
Yet Carr had not been given the medal. Finn didn’t know that it had to do with politics rather than heroics on the battlefield. He didn’t know that John Carr’s growing ambivalence about the war had turned his superiors against him. His CO had not even recommended him for the medal until others had stepped in. Yet somewhere along the line, folks even higher up the command chain prevented a deserving soldier from receiving the military’s highest honor.
Instead Carr had disappeared from the ranks of the army until resurfacing years later, only to die in that minor skirmish and supposedly be buried at Arlington. Finn knew what Carr had been doing in the interim. He’d been killing, on orders from his government. Yet he was a man who had been on the receiving end of death too.
It had taken two years of foraging on databases he was not supposed to have access to, but Finn had learned that Carr’s wife had died one night when their house was supposedly burgled. The couple had had a daughter, but she had simply disappeared too. Finn was smart enough to read between the lines. The “burglary” had CIA hit written all over it. Carr must’ve angered his superiors somehow. Finn had been glad initially to learn that John Carr was dead. He had no interest in killing war heroes who had never gotten their just rewards, nor a man with the courage to buck the most powerful spy agency in the world.
But now perhaps Carr wasn’t dead. And if he wasn’t Finn knew what he had to do. What his mother expected him to do. Whether he liked it or not. And regardless of what sort of man John Carr was, he’d killed Finn’s father. For nothing.
Finn left the graveyard. He had work to do.
For now, John Carr would have to wait.
CHAPTER 66
IT WAS A NONTRADITIONAL penetration so Finn had grabbed a couple of guys from his office who normally sat behind a desk analyzing the data that he and his team of specialists routinely gathered. However, the client on this case had wanted low-level people headed up by someone who knew what he was doing-namely Finn. This was because the facility that manufactured vaccines for several man-made biological germ agents was not considered a high-priority target for terrorists. Still, they wanted to see how it measured up. Enter Finn and company.
They had no trouble scaling the unguarded fence at the rear of the facility, though one of the office boys, a hefty fellow named Sam, had a bit of trouble hoisting his bulk over. Finally, with Finn’s help, he managed.
They were able to enter the facility from the rear through an unlocked door. A door being unlocked in a building housing valuable vaccine was something that sounded impossible but that nevertheless happened every day in countries all over the world. Why, indeed, would someone take home a laptop with the personal data of millions of military veterans only to see it stolen during a burglary? It’s what kept bad guys in business and the good guys on antidepressant drips.
Inside, they spread out, their cover stories having been worked out in advance. Finn had donned a white lab coat he’d carried in a duffel bag. An ID was on a lanyard he put around his neck. He also carried an electronic pad for inputting notes. Thus outfitted, he worked his way to the front entrance area. To the guard stationed there he mentioned the name of a scientist who worked in the building. Finn had gotten the name off the Internet, knowing full well that the chap was on vacation. He’d obtained this bit of intelligence by going through the man’s garbage one night and seeing a copy of the detailed travel itinerary for him and his family that the “genius” had cavalierly thrown away. When he was informed that the scientist was away, he said, “That’s right. Bill told me he was taking the family to Florida.” He then mentioned another name he’d pulled off the building directory. He had pulled this maneuver with the guard to both gain credibility and put the security person at ease. Both of these things were usually accomplished by concocting a personal connection with someone who worked at the place he was targeting.
“I can just pop up and see him for a few minutes,” he told the private security guard. “I know the way. I have some test results to go over for the A/B run they did last week on the two new microbe trial vaccines. You in the loop on that?”
The guard, a kid barely out of his teens who proudly wore the standard-issue sidearm, said, “No, I’m not in the loop on that,” and went back to his coffee and computer screen on which Finn caught sight of an online dating service’s latest offerings.
Finn waited patiently inside the elevator car until someone came along. He held up a plastic card he had just taken out of the slot. “Damn RFID’s malfunctioning again,” he said, referring to the encrypted smart card that was needed to access the elevator. “Third time this month. And every time they said they fixed it. Yeah, right.”
“I know the feeling,” the other man said as he swiped his card through the slot and the doors closed. “What floor you want?” he asked.
“Fifth,” Finn replied, as he put his son’s plastic library card back into his pocket.
He got off on the fifth floor and found the door he wanted right next to the elevator bank. It also required a smart card for entry. He slipped inside a nearby bathroom and dabbed some water on his pants leg. When he
