“The only thing I can think of is that I have a connection to Oliver.”
“But why come after Oliver now?”
“A while back when the president was kidnapped and the U.S. was on the verge of a nuclear strike-”
“Oliver was involved in that!”
“We both were. And not by choice. But when that happened, Carter Gray was also involved. And not in a good way. Oliver’s the reason the guy ended up resigning.”
“So Oliver had something on Carter Gray and used that to make him quit his job?”
“You got it.”
“But Gray’s dead.”
“They never found his body.”
“So maybe the man’s plotting from beyond the grave.”
“That’s what it looks like. And we’re trapped right in the middle of it all.”
“We have to find Oliver.”
“Won’t be that easy. If the CIA is involved you can bet they’ve put the hammer down on the other agencies either to cooperate or stand down.”
“But we just helped the FBI,” Annabelle countered.
“Doesn’t matter. National security trumps everything else. So that means our movements will really be restricted. And unlike in TV shows and the movies, it’s almost impossible to run from the cops. You have millions of eyes watching and somebody will see something and then that’s it. And they sure know what I look like.”
Annabelle held up her bag. “I can do something about that. Step into the changing room.” She had Alex sit on the commode in the bathroom while she pulled out a small box from the bag and readied some items. It took an hour, but at the end of sixty minutes Alex Ford no longer looked like Alex Ford.
He gazed at himself in the mirror. “You’re good at this stuff.”
“Comes in handy. Tomorrow morning we can find a wig shop and get a few other clothes and things to improve the disguise. Give me a little more time with you and I doubt Mrs. Ford would recognize her husband.”
“That wouldn’t be hard since there isn’t a Mrs. Ford.”
She packed the kit back up. “I suddenly realized I’m starving.”
“I saw a McDonald’s down the street.”
“Super-size me,” Annabelle said.
As Alex was walking to McDonald’s he got a call from Stone. “Bagger’s history but Gray almost nailed us,” he told Stone. “Paddy’s dead. Annabelle’s taking it kind of hard.”
“I’m truly sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid I need your help, again.”
Alex listened for a few minutes and then told Stone that he and Annabelle would meet him two nights from now, allowing things to settle down a bit.
He clicked off and hoofed it to the McDonald’s, where he super-sized them both. On his way back, his arms full of artery-busting food, he wondered if this might be one of his last meals.
CHAPTER 83
FOR ONE OF THE FEW TIMES in his career, Carter Gray screamed in uncontrolled fury after being told that Alex Ford had escaped.
With a disgusted look he dismissed the stone-faced men standing in front of him. They’d missed Carr, Lesya and her son, and now this! Such incompetence never would have happened in the old days, he told himself. When he had men like John Carr…
Three deep breaths later and Gray was all business again. It was a setback, but only a setback. He had gotten another intelligence breakthrough barely thirty minutes ago. He’d discovered over the years that they tended to come in bushels.
They had matched the man’s face to a database. The gentleman with Carr and Lesya was named Harry Finn, a former Navy SEAL who now performed consulting work with the Department of Homeland Security as a member of a red cell team. Or he
Gray had already dispatched a team to Finn’s home. He lived in a cozy place in the suburbs; had a lovely wife and three darling children. He coached soccer in his spare time and from all accounts was a model citizen. And Gray was sure that when his men got to the house it would be empty. A phone call he received ten minutes later confirmed this.
However, his team didn’t come away entirely empty-handed. In a safe in the garage they discovered some interesting details. They also found some paperwork about a storage unit. When they got there, they hit the treasure trove. It was filled with the histories of Bingham, Cole and Cincetti. And Carter Gray and Roger Simpson. And finally John Carr. Though nary a scrap of information could be found about Rayfield and Lesya, Harry Finn was undoubtedly their man. Only where was he now? And where were his wife and children? In hiding, of course. And it was up to Carter Gray to flush them out. He only hoped he would have better luck.
Yet he sensed that he would. It was completely counterintuitive for them to do it, but for some reason Gray felt as though Stone, Lesya and Harry Finn were very close by. And if they were, they would succumb to a mistake at some point. It would not necessarily be
He lifted his phone. “Put a trace on every credit and debit card and every cell and hard-line phone registered to the Finn family. You know where he works, so put surveillance on all his co-workers and his office. Watch the kids’ schools and Mom’s book club group. If they show themselves, take them. Move heaven and earth, but get them.”
CHAPTER 84
THEY HAD PASSED ANOTHER DAY sitting in the cellar and now the darkness was settling in. Stone, Finn and Lesya had spent the time developing a plan of action. The next night Stone’s team would assemble and they could execute that plan.
Finn, who’d been pacing in increasing agitation suddenly said, “I have to see my family. Now.”
Lesya started to protest but Stone asked, “Where are they?” Finn told him.
Stone turned to Lesya. “You stay here. I’ll go with him.”
“You’re going to leave me here, alone?” the old woman said.
“Just for a little while,” Stone added. “You’ll be safe.”
The two men left the cellar.
“How bad is your wife?” Stone asked once they were outside.
“Bad! And who the hell can blame her?”
“We can get to them on the Metro and then it’s a bit of a walk.”
“You were Army Special Forces in Nam,” Finn said. “I looked it up.”
“And you?”
“How do you know I was anything?”
“I can just tell.”
“SEAL. Look, we need weapons. They’ll have searched my house by now. I have a storage unit with some stuff in it, but they’ll have found that too.”
“I have a place with guns,” Stone replied.
Thirty minutes later, Stone waited outside while Finn entered the motel room in a run-down area of south Alexandria.
