David Baldacci - Divine Justice

One of the most interesting pieces of information he'd gleaned from the file had to do with the now defunct Triple Six Division of the CIA, or its "political destabilization" arm as it unofficially had been known to the CIA rank and file. The less polite term of course was "government assassin." Triple Six was one of the CIA's most closely guarded secrets. Officially the CIA did not kill, torture or falsely imprison. Or, for that matter lie, cheat or steal. Unfortunately, the media had made some inroads into the Agency's past, resulting in some embarrassing revelations. Officially, Knox had followed the company line and been upset that the press had ferreted out some of this skullduggery. Personally, he'd never had much use for that side of the Agency. While it was true that the United States was better off with certain people dead, Knox had felt the CIA's best use of resources was in intelligence gathering, not authorized murder or stringing people up by their toes or making them believe they were drowning to induce them to talk. His experience had been that tortured people would tell you anything to make the pain stop. There were far more effective ways to get to the truth.

Gray had apparently concluded that several retired Triple Six assassins had been murdered. Whether these deaths were tied to the unauthorized mission in the former Soviet Union he had no way of knowing. According to one of Gray's bodyguards, the former intelligence head had met with a man at Gray's home on the very night it had been blown up. That man worked in a cemetery in Washington, D.C., and had been questioned by the FBI in connection with Gray's believed murder. And it was this man-the one Macklin Hayes had alluded to-who had suggested the bomber of Gray's home might've jumped off the cliff into the Chesapeake Bay.

Knox smiled grimly as he thought of the name the man had given the FBI agents.

Oliver Stone.

Was he a lunatic or something else? Since Carter Gray was not known to summon mentally unstable people to his home, Knox opted for the latter. Oliver Stone had been accompanied by a Secret Service agent when he'd visited Gray's demolished house. That too was interesting. He would have to get acquainted with Agent Alex Ford.

The last bit of interesting information had to do with a recent disinterment at Arlington National Cemetery. The grave of a man named John Carr had been dug up on orders from Gray. The coffin had been taken to CIA headquarters. Knox did not know the results of that action or actually who had ended up being in the coffin. He had seen some of Carr's confidential military record, and it was an exemplary one. Yet then the man had simply disappeared.

Knox's instincts told him that a man like Carr, with proven killing skills, would've made a productive member of Triple Six. Many of their members had come from the military. And right around the time Carr had vanished from public record was when Triple Six had been at the height of its activity. That had raised more questions than answers.

He reached his house and pulled into the garage. A moment later his daughter, Melanie, opened the door to the kitchen. She'd earlier phoned him to say she was coming over to take him to dinner. After he'd gotten the summons from Macklin Hayes he'd called her back saying he couldn't make it, so he was surprised to see her.

The aroma of a cooked meal reached him from the kitchen. She gave him a hug and ushered him in, taking off his coat and hanging it up.

He said, "I didn't think busy lawyers in private practice had time to cook for themselves, much less anybody else."

"Reserve your judgment until after you've eaten it. I don't watch the Food Network and I don't hold myself out as any sort of cook. But the intent was honorable."

Melanie had taken more after Knox's deceased wife, Patty, than she had her father. She was tall and lithe with reddish hair that she usually wore pulled back. She was a graduate of UVA Law School and a rapidly rising young star at a D.C. powerhouse legal firm. The older of his two children-his son, Kenny, was currently in Iraq with his fellow Marines-Melanie had taken it on herself to make sure her father did not starve or wallow in pity over the recent death of her mother and his wife of thirty years.

The meal was eaten in the sunroom where they shared a bottle of Amarone and Melanie filled him in on the latest case she was handling. Over the years his children had quickly learned that their father never discussed his work with them, or anyone else. They knew he traveled the world, often on very little notice, and was gone for long periods of time. This was explained as him serving his country in a minor capacity with the State Department.

He had once told Melanie, "I'm unimportant enough to where they can call on me whenever they like, and I just go."

That line had worked all the way through middle school. But once his precocious daughter had reached high school Knox could tell she no longer believed it, though she never tried to uncover the truth. His son had just accepted his father disappearing from time to time as the way life was. Now, as a Marine lance corporal serving overseas and trying to stay alive day by day, Kenny Knox had more on his mind, his father hoped, than worrying about what his old man did for a living.

"When you called to cancel," Melanie began, "I was sure you'd be on a plane somewhere. I got the idea of cooking dinner when you said you'd be back home tonight."

Knox simply nodded at this, while he sipped his wine and stared out at the trees in his backyard as they were whipsawed by yet another approaching storm.

"So everything going okay at work?" she asked tentatively.

"Just looking over some old papers. Not that enlightening actually."

It was hard, he knew, for her. Most kids knew exactly what their parents did for a living and consequently could have cared less. While his children were growing up Knox had declined all invitations to parents' career day at school. After all, what would he have said?

"Given any more thought to retiring?"

"I pretty much already am. One foot in the professional grave."

"I'm surprised the State Department can function without you."

Father and daughter exchanged a brief glance and then each looked away, focused on their wine and last bites of roast beef and potatoes.

As she was leaving Melanie let her hug linger around her father's broad shoulders. She whispered in his ear, "Take care of yourself, Dad. Don't push the envelope too hard. Dangerous times out there."

He watched her walk to the cab she'd called to take her home to her condo in D.C. As it drove way, she waved to him.

He waved back, fleeting images of the last thirty years racing through his mind and ending with the image of Macklin Hayes telling him to tread carefully.

His brilliant daughter was right. It was dangerous times out there.

He would call Hayes in the morning. Early. The general was on rooster time. And like the rooster, he believed the sun rose because he did too. He had no answers and many questions. How the general would react to that he didn't know. In the military Macklin had the rep of always getting the job done, by any means possible, which often included excessive losses. After becoming a battalion commander in Vietnam, Hayes still held the record, Knox believed, of having the highest casualty count of any field officer in the war. Yet because those losses often came with victories, at least victories measured in the taking of small hills or even yards of turf, sometimes only for hours, Hayes had swiftly moved up the command chain. Still, Knox did not intend on becoming one of the man's statistics on his way to yet another triumph. The best he could hope for was to thread his way through the minefield, keeping his eye firmly on the target and watching his back at the same time. Macklin was a superb infighter, connected in all the right ways, and a man who excelled at putting other people's necks at risk while protecting his own flanks with skillful dexterity. Competitive past all reason, he reportedly thrashed men half his age in racquetball at the Pentagon's courts. What he lacked in speed, quickness and stamina he more than made up for with sheer guile and peerless vision.