A light came on inside the Beast, and Stone saw the man perusing some papers, papers of enormous importance, no doubt. Another gentleman sat beside him. Stone had to smile. The agents must be furious over the light. Even with thick armor and bulletproof glass you didn’t make yourself such an easy target.
The limo slowed as it passed through the intersection, and Stone tensed a bit as he saw the man glance his way. For a brief moment the president of the United States, James H. Brennan, and conspiracy-minded citizen Oliver Stone made direct eye contact. The president grimaced and said something. The man next to him immediately turned the light out. Stone smiled again. Yes, I will always be here. Longer than both of you.
The man seated beside President Brennan was also well known to Stone. He was Carter Gray, the so-called intelligence czar, a recently created cabinet-level position that gave him ironfisted control of a $50-billion budget and 120,000 highly trained personnel in all fifteen American intelligence agencies. His empire included the spy satellite platform, the NSA’s cryptologic expertise, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, and even the venerable CIA, an agency Gray had once headed. Apparently, the folks at Langley thought that Gray would show them preference and deference. He had done neither. Because Gray was also a former secretary of defense, it was assumed that he would show the Pentagon — which consumed eighty cents out of every intelligence dollar — loyalty. That assumption had also turned out to be completely erroneous. Gray obviously knew where all the bodies were buried and had used that to bend both agencies to his considerable will.
Stone did not believe that one man, one fallible human being, should have that much power, and certainly not someone like Carter Gray. Stone had known the man very well decades ago, though Gray certainly would not have recognized his old mate now. Years ago it would’ve been a different story, right, Mr. Gray?
The binoculars were suddenly ripped out of his hands, and Stone was staring at a uniformed guard toting a machine gun.
“You pull these out again to look at the man, Stone, they’re gone; you got it? And if we didn’t know you were okay, they’d be gone right now.” The man thrust the vintage field glasses back into Stone’s hands and marched off.
“Simply exercising my constitutional rights, Officer,” Stone replied in a low voice that he knew the guard couldn’t hear. He quickly put his binoculars away and stepped back into the shadows. Again, one should not argue with humorless men carrying automatic weapons. Stone let out a long breath. His life was a precarious balance every day.
He went back inside his tent, opened his knapsack and, using his flashlight, read over a series of stories he’d clipped from newspapers and magazines and pasted into his journals. They documented the doings of Carter Gray and President Brennan: “Intelligence Czar Strikes Again,” claimed one headline; “Brennan and Gray Make Dynamic Duo,” said another.
It had all come about very quickly. After several fits and starts Congress had dramatically reorganized the U.S. intelligence community and essentially put its complete faith in Carter Gray. As secretary of intelligence, Gray headed the National Intelligence Center, or NIC. The center’s statutory mandate was to keep the country safe from attacks within or without its borders. Safe by any means necessary was perhaps the chief unwritten part of this mandate.
However, the beginning of Gray’s tenure had hardly matched his impressive résumé: a series of suicide bombers in metropolitan areas with enormous casualties, two assassinations of visiting foreign dignitaries and then a direct but fortunately unsuccessful attack on the White House. Despite many in Congress calling for his resignation and the dismantling of the secretary’s authority, Gray had kept the support of his president. And if power slots in Washington were compared to natural disasters, the president was a hurricane and an earthquake all rolled into one.
Then slowly, the tide had begun to turn. A dozen planned terrorist attacks on American soil had been thwarted. And terrorists were being killed and captured at an increasingly high rate. Long unable to crack the inner rings of these organizations, the American intelligence community was finally starting to attack the enemy from within its own circles and damaging its ability to hit the United States and its allies. Gray had understandably received the lion’s share of the credit for these outcomes.
Stone checked his watch. The meeting would be starting soon. However, it was a long walk, and his legs, his usual mode of getting around, were tired today. He left the tent and checked his wallet. There was no money in it.
That’s when he spotted the pedestrian. Stone immediately headed after this gentleman as he raised his hand and a taxi pulled up to the curb. Stone increased his pace, reaching the man as he climbed into the cab. His eyes downcast, his hand out, Stone said, “Can you spare some change, sir? Just a few dollars.” This was said in a practiced, deferential tone, allowing the other man to adopt a magnanimous posture if he so chose. Adopt one, Stone thought. For it’s a long walk.
The man hesitated and then took the bait. He smiled and reached for his wallet. Stone’s eyes widened as a crisp twenty-dollar bill was placed in his palm.
“God bless you,” Stone said as he clutched the money tightly.
Stone walked as quickly as he could to a nearby hotel’s taxi stand. Normally, he’d have taken a bus, but with twenty dollars he’d ride by himself for a change. After smoothing down his long, disheveled hair and prodding his equally stubborn beard into place, Stone walked up to the first cab in line.
On seeing him the cabby hit the door lock and yelled, “Get the hell outta here!”
Stone held up the twenty-dollar bill and said through the half-opened window, “The regulations under which you operate do not allow you to discriminate on any basis.”
It was clear from the cabby’s expression that he would discriminate on any basis he wanted to and yet he eyed the cash greedily. “You speak pretty good for some homeless bum.” He added suspiciously, “I thought all you people was nuts.”
“I am hardly a nut and I’m not homeless,” Stone replied. “But I am, well, I am just a bit down on my luck.”
“Ain’t we all?” He unlocked the doors and Stone quickly climbed in and told the man where he wanted to go.
“Saw the president on the move tonight,” the cabby said. “Pretty cool.”
“Yes, pretty cool,” Stone agreed without much enthusiasm. He glanced out the rear window of the cab in the direction of the White House and then sat back against the seat and closed his eyes. What an interesting neighborhood to call home.
CHAPTER
2
THE BLACK SEDAN CREPT DOWN the one-lane road that was bracketed by thick walls of trees, finally easing onto a gravel path branching from the road. A hundred feet later the car came to a stop. Tyler Reinke, tall, blond, athletically built and in his late twenties, climbed out of the driver’s side while Warren Peters, early thirties and barely five foot seven with a barrel chest and thinning dark hair, extricated himself from the passenger seat. Reinke unlocked the car’s trunk. Inside lying in a fetal position was a fellow in his mid-thirties, his arms and legs bound tightly with rubber straps. He was dressed in blue jeans and a Washington Redskins jacket. A heavy cloth covered his mouth, and a plastic tarp had been placed under him. Yet, unlike most people bound and stuffed in car trunks, he was still alive, although he appeared deeply sedated. Using the tarp, the men lifted him out of the trunk and set him down on the ground.