As Stone looked around he noted that the room was fairly bursting with bodies. There was NFL-sized Reuben Rhodes on the other side of the bed, with diminutive librarian Caleb Shaw next to him. The tall Secret Service agent Alex Ford was on Annabelle’s right and looking equally concerned. Behind them Stone saw Harry Finn.
Finn said, “When I heard about the bomb going off at the park, I knew you had to be in the middle of it somehow.”
Stone slowly sat up. “So what happened?”
Alex answered. “They’re still trying to figure it out. Gunfire and then the explosion.”
“Anyone else hurt? British PM?”
“In Blair before the explosion. No one was shot.”
“With all the gunfire it’s remarkable no one was hit.”
“More like a miracle.”
“No theories?” Stone asked, looking at Alex.
“Not yet. The park is a mess. Locked down tight as I’ve ever seen it.”
“But the PM?”
Alex nodded. “Preliminarily, he was the target.”
“But a pretty poor attempt, then,” said Reuben. “Since the explosion and gunfire happened at a park he wasn’t in.”
Stone eyed Alex again. “Rebuttal to that?” he asked slowly. With each word he spoke his head hurt even worse. Thirty years ago he could have shrugged this off and kept moving forward. Not now.
“Like I said, it’s early yet. But I’ll admit that’s a major puzzler. Not a good day for the PM all around.”
“What do you mean?” asked Stone.
“He twisted his ankle. Moving pretty slow.”
“You know this firsthand?”
“He took a tumble on some interior steps at the White House before the dinner started. Little embarrassing for the guy. Fortunately, media cameras don’t roll inside that part of the building.”
Annabelle asked, “What were you doing at the park last night? I thought you were still in Divine, Virginia, with Abby.”
Stone looked out the window and saw that it was morning. “I came back,” he said simply. “And Abby stayed there.”
“Oh,” said Annabelle in a disappointed tone, but her look was actually one of relief.
He turned back to Alex. “There were four people in the park last night besides me. What happened to them?”
Alex looked around the room before clearing his throat. “Unclear.”
“Unclear as in you don’t know or you can’t tell us?” said Stone.
Annabelle gave the Secret Service agent a fierce look. “Oliver was almost killed, Alex.”
Alex sighed. He had never mastered the art of balancing professional secrecy with the Camel Club’s constant demands for intelligence on mostly classified matters. “They’re reviewing the video feeds and debriefing the human eyeballs on the park last night. They’re trying to put the picture together.”
“And the four other people in the park?” Stone persisted quietly.
“Four people?”
“Three men and one woman.”
“I don’t know anything about them,” replied Alex.
“Where exactly did the explosion happen? I couldn’t really tell.”
“Roughly middle of the park. Near the Jackson statue, or what’s left of it. Pieces of it along with the fence and the cannon were blown all over the park.”
“So there was significant damage?” asked Stone.
“All parts of the park were affected, but the major bomb damage was in a fifty-foot radius. Looks like a war zone inside that ring. Whatever it was, that bomb packed a wallop.”
“There was an overweight man in a jogging suit in that vicinity when the shots started,” Stone noted. He frowned and tried to remember. “I was watching him. He was running for his life from the bullets, and then he just vanished. But that would have put him right at the epicenter of the blast.”
They all looked at Alex, who seemed uncomfortable.
“Alex?” said Annabelle again in a scolding tone.
“Okay, it looks like the guy fell in a hole where they were installing a new tree. The explosion happened at or near that spot. But nothing has been confirmed.”
“Do we know who he was?” asked Caleb.
“Not yet.”
“Origin of the bomb?”
“Unknown as yet.”
“Source of the shots?” Reuben asked.
“Nothing that I know about.”
“I hit something,” said Stone. “As I was falling. There was a man watching me.”
“Could be,” said Alex warily.
“The nurse told me they dug a tooth out of your head, Oliver,” said Annabelle.
“A tooth? Then I hit the man when the explosion happened?”
Annabelle nodded. “Looks to be. If so, he’s missing an incisor.”
“Have you seen any of the video surveillance, Alex?” asked Stone.
“No. I’m technically not part of the investigation, which is why I don’t have a lot of answers. I’m in protection detail, which means my butt, along with a bunch of others, is in the professional wringer right now.”
“Secret Service taking its lumps?” said Reuben.
“Yeah. This is a little more serious than party crashers.”
“I was surprised there were so many in the park last night,” said Stone. “And had read about the dinner, but the papers said the PM was staying at the British embassy as he usually does. What happened there?”
“Late change of plan. He and the president had planned an early working session the next morning. Far easier logistics getting the PM from Blair to the White House.” Alex added, “But it wasn’t made public. And yet you still knew he was going to Blair last night?”
Stone nodded.
“How?”
“I passed the motorcade on the way to the park. It only had one motorcycle officer in the lead, which meant they weren’t going a great distance and thus traffic control wasn’t critical. The D.C. police chief isn’t going to waste valuable resources if she doesn’t have to. And the defensive cone was in place around Blair. As many guns as they had there meant it was a top-level dignitary. The PM was the only one who fit that bill.”
“Why were you at the park at that hour?” Annabelle asked Stone.
“Reminiscing,” he said casually before turning back to Alex. “So why so lax about security last night?”
“It wasn’t lax. And it is a public park,” countered Alex.
“Not when safety is an issue. I know that better than anyone,” rejoined Stone.
“I just do what I’m told, Oliver.”
“All right.” Stone looked around. “Can I leave?”
“Yes, you can,” said a voice. “With us.”
They all turned to look at the two suits standing in the doorway. One was in his fifties, stocky and big-boned with broad shoulders and a gun hump under his suit. The other was in his thirties and lean, under six feet and with a Marine Corps haircut. He was similarly armed.
“Right now,” added the older man.
CHAPTER 6
“Not here,” Stone muttered to himself as the black Town Car pulled into the campus-style setting of the National Intelligence Center, or NIC, in northern Virginia. They passed the lush taxpayer-funded landscaping and headed to the main low-level building that housed a big chunk of America’s intelligence operations.
One wall of the entrance lobby was lined with photos of terrorist attacks perpetrated against the United States. A plaque at the end of this line of devastating images read “Never Again.”
The other wall held the official photos of the men who’d held the position of intelligence czar at this agency. They were few in number, as NIC had only been created after 9/11. The most prominent former director had been Carter Gray, a public servant with many high-ranking government positions to his credit. Gray’s portly face stared out at the men as Stone and his escorts walked by.
Decades ago Stone had worked for the man, when Stone was known under his real name, John Carr. As his country’s most efficient assassin, Carr had used every ounce of courage and cleverness he possessed to serve his country. His reward for that had been the destruction of all the people he had ever cared about carried out by the very same folks he’d so faithfully served. That was one reason Stone had ended Gray’s life. And that reason alone would have been enough.